The Xenocide Mission Read Online Free PDF Page B

– even extraterrestrials deserved that most basic of considerations . . . didn’t they? Not least from a reputable warrior like Barabadar.
    Oomoing disciplined herself to take in the rest of the information; she could bother with her opinions of it later.
    There were two survivors
.
    At last! Oomoing was transfixed by this final portion of the memories Fleet had given her. The mental images were fuzzy and indistinct: he had only seen them on a display and the camera images were obscured by the soldiers carrying them. They weren’t moving.
    The captives put up resistance but were subdued
eventually.
    They were dressed in spacesuits, that much was obvious. And at first glance they looked very different. One tall and thin with two legs, a rough analogue of the Kin shape but with not enough arms; the other shorter and apparently with four legs, nothing like a Kin at all. Two sexes? she wondered. Interesting diversity. . .
    ‘Fascinating,’ she said.
    Fleet smiled. ‘Your brief, Learned Mother, is to find out all you can about these things. My mother wants to know their strengths, their weaknesses . . .’
    ‘Their level of threat?’ Oomoing said sardonically.
    ‘Most especially. And, if you can, to work out how they were able to reach our solar system.’
    And hence, whether we can travel in the opposite
direction
. Oomoing read between the lines without difficulty. She searched carefully: there were no further revelations lurking at the back of her skull. ‘There’s still information I need,’ she said. ‘If Barabadar wanted to find out about them, it would have been a lot more . . .
constructive
to capture some alive. Why was no quarter given?’
    ‘I know what I know, Learned Mother,’ Fleet said apologetically. ‘My mother is on her way – she’s coming from the other side of the system – and she might allow you to Share.’
    Might
, Oomoing reflected. Naturally she would ask, but Barabadar would be senior enough to say ‘no’ if she chose.
    ‘I look forward to meeting her when she gets here,’ she said.
    ‘Um, not here,’ Fleet said. ‘At the asteroid. We’ve had a ship on standby for two days, waiting for you to wake. We leave in two hours.’

Three
    Day Eight: 10 June 2153
    The airlock door slid into the hull and the asteroid was in front of her, a mountain in space that filled the constricted vision of her space helmet. Oomoing gazed at it hungrily, her eagerness conflicting with the conviction of her senses that the millions of tons of rock were poised above her, ready to fall on top of her at any moment.
    Even her inexpert eye could see that the asteroid had been in the wars. She could see the furrows ploughed by the assault squads’ lasers, the gobbets of molten rock left in their wake. She could see the three surviving assault craft; the attack over, they hung in space next to the rock, sleek and dark.
    Her eyes settled on a particularly big hole. ‘Mother of the Sky, that must have a big bang!’ she said. ‘I hadn’t realized the battle was so fierce.’
    ‘That was the launch bay for their ship, Learned Mother,’ Fleet’s voice said in her helmet speakers, with the kind of respect that only comes when someone says something very stupid. ‘It’s where we’re going in. Colonel Stormer is keen to meet you.’
    ‘And I him.’ Oomoing covered her embarrassment with genuine feeling. Stormer, the male who had led the attack, would only have been obeying the orders of Marshal of Space Barabadar, but the unreasoning ferocity of such an assault still appalled her.
    A line strung from the ship’s airlock faded into the distance, merging into the colours of the asteroid, and Fleet clipped her suit’s harness onto it. ‘Just step out, Learned Mother. I’m right behind you.’
    ‘You’ve got the equipment?’ she asked.
    ‘Right here, Learned Mother.’
    So Oomoing jumped out into space. Her Reserve training came back to her and she didn’t make too bad a job of going down the