Frazzle's informant had told us that only one Pug-bear at a time visited the egg-dome. The creatures were more fractious and likely to fight over nests when they were in an egg-laying mood.
Kasm had seen at least two escape down the tunnel before I'd arrived through the transporter, which meant there might be even more. The information we had received was wrong, and I was left wondering what we'd be facing when we got through the tunnel.
It was a long walk. The tunnel was some type of transparent, plastic-like material, but ice crystals on the inside made it difficult to see out. There was nothing outside to see anyway. I could more or less make out the outline of the nearby giant planet and some low, jagged mountains, but little else.
The tunnel meandered aimlessly across the terrain, bypassing craters and moving diagonally up and down slopes. The air was breathable but quite dry, something I'd expected, knowing the Pug-bears' preference for dry nesting grounds. I was near the end of the line of Sim-tigers. They were in no hurry since they realized there was nowhere their enemies could go to escape.
Kasm mentally suggested that I drop back and guard the tunnel entrance. "We're going to burst out and attack all of the enemies we find. Dec, you stay near the tunnel and make sure none get past while we're busy."
I mentally assented to his request and slowed down. The Sim-tigers gradually moved out of sight ahead of me. The tunnel was quiet, except for the sound of my steps and my breathing.
There was a sudden sharp right turn, and the dome appeared. It was difficult to see much. The dome, like the tunnel, was covered with tiny ice crystals and what looked like dust on its outer surface. The combination made it quite dim inside. This was a drawback to me, but the low light level didn't hamper the Sim-tigers much. Their eyes were more cat-like than not, and they saw better in the dusk than humans.
They charged out of the entrance, and the battle was instantly on. There were far more Pug-bears in the dome than I'd anticipated. The place held more than twice the number of my small force. The Sim-tigers, though outnumbered, attacked with their usual fury and were holding their own when the Pug-bears' numbers were suddenly reinforced by a large number of sub-adults, some so young that they were in the nasty, spider-like form that disgusted me.
The Sim-tigers chopped with their swords and raked with their claws while the Pug-bears slashed with their single-clawed legs and snapped at the tigers' legs with their dripping mandibles. The spiders climbed over the backs of a couple of the tigers, sending the tigers into a whirling spin as they tried to rake the things off of them. The spider venom was different enough from the adults' poison that it caused a reaction from the tigers. They were mostly immune to the adult venom, but the spider-venom was more concentrated, and the two beset tigers suddenly slowed in their movements and became shaky and disoriented. Some of the adult Pug-bears moved to take advantage of the disability.
I'd remained by the tunnel entrance and had been ignored until this point. I raised the anti-matter rifle I'd taken from where the dead marine had dropped it and systematically began to shoot at the adult Pug-bears. I took four down with four shots before they became aware that I was there. The rest instantly tried to overwhelm me mentally, and their attack was vicious. My sight blurred for an instant, but then my psychic defense rose to the challenge. My vision cleared just in time for me to sweep a burst of pulses across a rapidly advancing line of spiders and older juveniles, any of which would have instantly killed me.
I checked the ground nearby and zapped a couple of stray spiders, then went back to concentrating on the remaining adults. Two were trying to circle behind Kasm as he faced two more. I shot both of them but then had to dissolve some more of the younger ones. The situation was a mess, and I wasn't sure that we'd come out whole.
The battle suddenly resolved into one-on-one conflicts, which the Sim-tigers quickly won. One remaining Pug-bear sprinted away but was overhauled and cut down. There were still several spider forms and sub-adults wandering around, but they didn't seem to have any direction with the loss of the adults. I carefully shot as many of them as I could see, and the unoccupied Sim-tigers killed the rest.
The fight was over, and Kasm came back to me, stopping briefly to inspect his two wounded compatriots. They were still shaky and under the venom's effect, but it was starting to fade.
"Kasm, let's destroy the eggs in the nests before any others hatch," I said aloud.
He turned to the nearest nest and started crushing the large number of eggs there. The rest of the Sim-tigers followed suit while I used the rifle to wipe out distant nests. There were probably over a thousand eggs contained in almost a hundred nests. The blasted creatures were undoubtedly prolific.
We'd just finished the destruction when Joe came bursting out of the tunnel.
"Pugs!" he shouted.
We'd been flanked, and there were a large number of Pugs following him through the tube. They'd come through the transporter and killed the second marine before he could react. The remaining Sim-tiger had attacked them and taken out a couple but then had been hit with an anti-matter shot.
The next few minutes were frustrating for both my group and, doubtless, the Pugs also. Neither party dared shoot down the tunnel. It was a thin-walled plastic tube with too many turns. There was no way to fire an anti-matter weapon down it without hitting the side and evacuating both domes.
I was at a loss as to how to proceed. I didn't dare send Kasm and his friends down the tube. They would doubtless kill a bunch of Pugs, but there was almost a hundred percent chance that at least one of the Pugs would shoot at them and evacuate the domes.
We stayed out of the direct line of fire from the tube mouth while I tried to think of how to approach the problem. It turned out to be self-resolving. The Pugs, seeing no one there to meet them and only knowing that Joe had run down the tube ahead of them, approached the nesting dome in a large group. They paused several yards back in the tube for a moment, and I heard their sibilant speech.
There was a curious effect as I heard them talking in their own language and still gleaned the meaning mentally. Without realizing it, I'd reached out to their minds, nasty as they were, and tuned in. They were preparing to charge out and try to overwhelm Joe. They figured he'd be hiding in one of the cubicles; apparently, they didn't have a very high opinion of humans.
I waved the Sim-tigers out of sight, and they faded back into cover on the other side of the central jungle or garden, whatever it was. Joe stood in the open, looking at me for a cue. Chancing that the Pugs weren't quite ready, I ran across the mouth of the tunnel to Joe's location. There was a series of hisses, and several poison splinters flew across the space and struck the central plants. None had come close to me, fortunately. I was glad. I'd seen many humans die quickly and horribly from the toxin.
One of the jungle plants must have been sensitive to the poison in the splinters. It began to sway, and then its tendrils curled up almost as quickly as an animal could move. It made some shuddering movements and then perceptibly began to wilt.
The Pugs, having missed me, were now confident that there was only one human there. I don't think they differentiated me from Joe. They let out a loud series of hisses and came charging out into the central part of the dome, looking for easy targets.
By then, Joe and I had taken cover around the edge of the nearest cubicle, and no one was in sight. I summoned Kasm mentally.
"Kasm, they are all out in the open, and none of them have anti-matter weapons. They only have splinter guns."
That was quite to his liking. The Sim-tigers were immune to the Pug-bears' venom, and the glass splinter toxin didn't seem to affect them at all. The Pugs were just getting organized when the tigers charged around the plants with loud roars.
Two Pugs fell immediately to the sharp swords, and the rest bolted variously towards the tunnel and the nearest cubicle. The two that came towards the cubicle ran right into my single anti-matter pistol shot. I'd carefully aimed downward so that the dome floor would dissipate the bolt should I miss, but I didn't. Their lower halves disappeared with the weapon's characteristic crackling noise. The Pugs dropped. The nearer one was dead, but the other had been struck lower down in the legs. It made an effort to recover and shoot splinters at us. I quickly shot again, and this time, the bolt dissolved the creature's head.
Only one survived to make the tunnel opening, but it was pursued by two Sim-tigers and didn't make it very far down the tunnel before being pulled down. By then, the rest of us were in the tunnel mouth and heading back to the transporter head. I wanted to get out of there before more Pugs showed up and trapped us again.
When we reached the main dome, a small group of Sunnys stood indecisively near the tunnel entrance. They started to run when the Sim-tigers charged out, but Kasm dashed in front of them and headed them off. The rest of the tigers surrounded the nearly hysterical small, furry aliens, preventing them from trying to escape. Joe and I came out of the tunnel a little after the tigers. We weren't nearly as fast.
The Sunnys had been preparing to die, not knowing what the Sim-tigers were, but at the sight of us, they perked up a little. It was apparent that they recognized humans.
Not having time to fool with amenities, I simply forced contact with their minds and ordered them into the transporter with Joe. Then I contacted Frazzle, ensuring that he had the ship's
transporter linked to the outbound function of this one. Joe looked my way, and I nodded and pointed my finger at him. He waved and pressed the button, and they were off to the ship. I waited a minute and then hit the call button. The rest crowded in when the door popped open. It was pretty tight, but we all managed to squeeze in. Kasm was last, and there was no space for him, but he solved that by simply jumping onto the tightly packed backs of his fellows. This put his face right next to mine, and we looked companionably into each other's eyes.
I pressed the go button, and the transporter did its thing. It still made me feel a little woozy, despite the large number of transitions I'd made through them. The Sim-tigers weren't bothered by the effect, as far as I could tell.
The door opened just as Kasm opened his mouth and licked my ear. I recoiled, shocked, only to sense that he was mentally laughing. Sometimes, his sense of humor was a little ridiculous. He growled in his low voice, "You don't taste too bad. Better, at least, than those spider things."
I responded in kind, "I don't mind you licking me, but better not let Liz see you. She might be jealous."
He was quick on the come-back, "No. She knows I like her more than you."
I snorted as he turned and jumped out into the cargo bay.
We were shortly back in the bridge area. I started to explain to Liz and Frazzle how the raid had gone, but then I realized that we had not captured any of the hatchlings or recorded their distress cries. My face fell.
Liz asked, "What's the matter?"
"We failed to get the distress call that we need. I lost two men, and we failed," I responded.
"No. You rescued twelve Sunnys and killed a bunch of the enemy and, look!" She pointed at one of the other Sim-tigers. He was clutching a battered spider. Three of its legs were missing, and it looked about half dead.
He held it up for me to inspect. As if on cue, it made a thin, squalling moan. I grabbed the digital recorder from my belt and thumbed it on. I judged that we had what we needed and nodded at the tiger a minute later. He simply squeezed tighter, and the spider's carapace crunched. It went limp, and he dropped it in the waste disposal.
"How many Pug-bears are left?" asked Liz.
I thought about it a moment, "Well, there were only supposed to be three, according to Frazzle's informant, but we found more. I think it's safe to assume that the information was wrong, and we'd better proceed as if there are many more."
"I don't think it matters," Liz said. "Our luring tactic should work on one or many. Now, let's see about bunching any remaining Pug-bears."
Frazzle had been searching through the transporter network on the surface. Several of the domes had transporters, although the Pug-bears only used tunnels. It was pretty easy to see that only a few of the domes were connected with tunnels, and we figured that those would be the only likely ones for Pug-bears.
I turned the recorder on and listened carefully to the sounds. Simultaneously, I reached out on the Pug-bears' mental frequency and broadcast the distress call along with the sense of it coming from the most isolated dome.
I hadn't tried to sense the aliens before. Somehow, it didn't always occur to me to use my mind that way, but now I could feel that there were many of them from the strength of their response. They were moving quickly through the connecting tunnels and heading towards the remote dome. I kept the distress broadcast going for a moment longer, then stopped.
"Frazzle, can you get in contact with the remaining Sunnys?" I asked.
"Already done dat, Dec," he answered. "Deys ready to run to the transporters and come up to the ship."
"Have them start then. How many are there?" I asked.
"We have room, barely," he answered. "Dere nearly a hundred of them."
I was surprised. This would make the ship very crowded. "How about Pugs?"
"Deys mostly in their own habitats over that way," he pointed. The Pugs needed a different air mixture to be comfortable and tended to stay segregated from the Sunnys and Pug-bears unless under orders.
"Let's give them something to worry about," I said and nodded at Liz. She was sitting at the weapons station and immediately fired an anti-matter burst at the central Pug dome. The center of the structure disappeared, and the walls collapsed, followed by a burst of condensation that shot up from the evacuating, linked domes. I figured that would take care of the Pugs. Now we just had to wait for the Sunnys to come through.
That took about thirty minutes. Whistle called up from the cargo hold and chirped at Frazzle over the intercom. The Oberon Sunnys were all on-board and safe.
That was Liz's signal to shoot the Pug-bears' domes, and she did, destroying most of their surface installation.
She was finishing her destruction when Frazzle let out an excited whistle, "Dec, Dec! Deres another FTL coming! It just dropped out of FTL status and is heading this way."
"How long before it gets close enough to detect us?" I asked.
"Maybe not too long," he answered. "Deys moving pretty fast."