Tevun-Krus #35 - Best of '16

Divergence - A Short Story by @elveloy

Myth: Oxford Dictionary definition:

A traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining a natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events.

A widely held but false belief or idea.

Divergence

Tekla was hiding behind a rocky outcrop, studying the family group from a safe distance, when he first saw mist rising from the valley. He blinked. Mist? Automatically he glanced upward at the bright blue sky, not a cloud in sight.

Even as he watched, small pools of mist welled up between the trees, covering the ground and leaving the tree-tops above looking like leafy islands in a grey-blue sea.

If he didn't know better, he'd have thought it was a cloud of virodust. Except that no-one from the Federated Expeditionary Forces would be using virodust, not on a planet they were studying. And especially not on a planet where an intelligent species was evolving. Tekla knew it couldn't be virodust, but it sure as hell looked like it.

Grimly, he turned his scanner away from the family, and instead, pointed the instrument in the direction of the mist.

Flaming quasars! It was virodust.

Virodust, only ever to be used as a last resort, and even then, only with special permission from the Federated Council. He could barely remember the last time permission had been granted. Some place out at the arse end of the galaxy... P'murt 5, that was it.

A rogue species of tapeworm had gone viral, threatening to wipe out every life form on the planet, including itself. After much careful deliberation, a version of virodust had been released to cleanse the world. Genetically engineered to lock on to the programmed species, it searched out and killed them all. Every last one. Genocide. But only for that one species; the dust had no effect on any other lifeforms present.

So who had released it here? And, more urgently, what—or who—was the target?

Tekla looked across at the family, now huddled together, staring at the mist. The leading male bent to pick up a dead branch, and the rest of the tribe followed suit, picking up whatever was nearest to hand, stick or stone, to use as a weapon.

Tekla felt his stomach sink. He had a horrible feeling he knew who the target was.

He calculated the distance from the mist to his tribe. Was he already too late to save them?

The augmented section of his brain slipped smoothly into action, analysing the chances, assessing the options. Almost before he had finished thinking, he was opening the secure channel on his com-unit to the rest of the fleet.

"Evacuate!"

~~~

"Tekla, it's too late for your tribe, but there are others we can save. Return to your vessel immediately. The largest concentration of Species ZA3897 is in the lower half of the planet. Co-ordinates follow..."

The instructions from the command ship continued, but Tekla had tuned out after the first few words.

Maybe the information was wrong. Maybe there was still time to rescue his tribe... but then, mist swirled around the leading male's feet and he lunged forward, flailing wildly with the branch as if the mist was a living thing. A second later, he fell straight to the ground—lifeless.

Tekla stared helplessly, as the mist engulfed the rest of the tribe he had been studying for weeks, killing everyone. He fought back useless tears, feeling sick at heart.

Who had done this horrendous thing? Released the virodust on an unsuspecting planet without authorisation?

Anger swept in to replace the grief. Whoever it was, they must have known the survey teams were here. He'd bet anything the perpetrators were a small squad, maybe even one or two ships, slipping in under their noses to loose their deadly cargo around the planet.

Had they realised he was standing right here? Or didn't they care? He set the scanner to search the surrounding sky for unidentified ship emissions.

Were they still spreading their poison, or had they fled? One thing was certain, they couldn't have gone far. The thought burned in his mind.

Hastily, Tekla returned to his vessel, but instead of going to meet the rest of the survey teams, he went hunting.

A blip showed on his screen, up in the top right hand corner. Immediately, Tekla changed course toward the foreign object, then ensured his tractor beam was primed and ready. Much as he longed to blast the intruders out of the sky, he knew he needed to bring them in alive for questioning. It was imperative they find out how the perpetrators had got their hands on this supposedly quarantined product.

He bore down on the intruders at maximum speed and within minutes, he was on their tail. The target ship was small and fast but no match for Telkla's top of the range Federation vessel. He got up as close as he could before pinning them with the tractor beam.

"What the flaming quasars did you think you were doing?" He couldn't help demanding as he reeled them in.

"Let us finish!" came the frantic reply. "We have to wipe them out before they can destroy the planet."

"What are you talking about?" said Tekla. "Sticks and stones? Hardly dangerous weapons!"

"Our prophet had a vision. If left unchecked, this species will end up killing everything else on this world, even the air and the seas. This is a truly evil species. You have to listen to us..."

Tekla rolled his eyes and shut down the communicator. Another religious nut group. But this one had got hold of virodust. They'd be spending the rest of their lives in detention.

~~ ~

Hovering over the lower half of the planet, a hundred small survey ships locked on to members of the indigenous species under threat, careful to choose only adults of breeding age, and children. Working swiftly, they tranquilised them and transported them up to their holding bays. Once aboard, the indigens were cycled though decontamination to make sure they had not absorbed any of the virodust, or indeed any local contaminants. Then they were placed carefully in individual capsules which would take care of waste products and provide fluid and nutrition intake, and stacked efficiently in the hold.

"How many did we save?" asked Thairal, the survey fleet captain.

Paxt, her second-in-command, pursed her lips. "The maximum we could. A hundred per ship," she replied.

"Only 10,000! Out of a total just short of a million?" Thairal was grim. "Is that enough to re-establish the population?"

"It'll have to be. We can't save any more."

"It will be another fifty hours before we can start releasing them back into the wild," commented the Captain, looking at her com-unit. "I hope we don't lose any in the interim. No matter how careful we are in the handling, it's always a stressful process."

"Will they remember anything of this?"

The Captain shook her head. "Nothing of their time here. If anything, a few might remember the mist flowing toward them, filling up the valleys, but the memory won't last long. Their brains are not that developed as yet."

~~ ~

70,000 years later.

"This is interesting," John Dawson looked across at his fellow anthropologist. "The aboriginal people in Australia have more than one legend about a great flood. Did you know that the great flood myth is perhaps the most common around the world? It occurs on every continent in some form or other."

"You could almost believe it was some sort of race memory," laughed Scott.