The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Second Annual Collection by Gardner Dozois (ed)

Author:Gardner Dozois (ed) [Dozois, Gardner]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: anthology, SF
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2005-07-01T07:00:00+00:00

ITEM (7) From Colonel Kohn’s Notebook

We have them aboard now, the two Alfans, and yes, everybody else in the mining camp is dead.

The technique reminded me a bit of Ted Szczech’s abduction. Something broke the slurry pipe, that set off alarms, and when a repair crew went out to fix it the Cousins ambushed them. The Arkies used poisoned arrows as well as bronze hand weapons, and with the bearpigs to aid them soon forced their way inside.

The Alfans say two species fight together like humans with war dogs or war horses or war elephants. Only here there’s a family connection much more direct than ours with our symbionts. They recognize each other by smell, and seem to feel a kind of tribal loyalty. There may even be a telepathic bond — the Arkies seem to give orders at a distance. They’re the most intellectual members of the clan, but even the ones we think of as beasts are—as Mayakovsky noted so long ago—disturbingly intelligent. In fighting, the bearpigs display initiative and cunning as well as savagery.

Down below, they’re dragging the bodies out into the open, into the glaring lights. The bearpigs begin to feed and the scene is garish, horrible, a kind of Grand Guignol theater. The Arkies look on, but don’t share the meal. Clearly, humans are not eligible for the company of their gods in Valhalla.

Watching the butchery, I know we’ve lost the war. Period. We have to assume that the four of us in this flyer and the people holding out at Main Base and maybe the guards at the shuttleport are the only survivors. So back we go.

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