Zoe's Tale (Old Man's War, #4)(23)

That's when the colony representatives sent each colonist the last file their PDAs would receive. It was a video file, shot by the Conclave and sent to every other race in our slice of space. In it, the Conclave leader, named General Gau, stood on a rise over-looking a small settlement. When I first saw the video I thought it was a human settlement, but was told that it was a settlement of Whaid colonists, the Whaid being a race I knew nothing about. What I did know was that their homes and buildings looked like ours, or close enough to ours not to matter.

This General Gau stood on the rise just long enough for you to wonder what it was he was looking at down there in the settlement, and the settlement disappeared, turned into ash and fire by what seemed like a thousand beams of light stabbing down from what we were told were hundreds of spaceships floating high above the colony. In just a few seconds there was nothing left of the colony, or the people who lived in it, other than a rising column of smoke.

No one questioned the wisdom of hiding after that.

I don't know how many times I watched the video of the Conclave attack; it must have been a few dozen times before Dad came up to me and made me hand over my PDA - no special privileges just because I was the colony leader's kid. But I wasn't watching because of the attack. Or, well, I should say that wasn't really what I was looking at when I watched it. What I was looking at was the figure, standing on the rise. The creature who ordered the attack. The one who had the blood of an entire colony on his hands. I was looking at this General Gau. I was wondering what he was thinking when he gave the order. Did he feel regret? Satisfaction? Pleasure? Pain?

I tried to imagine what it would take to order the deaths of thousands of innocent people. I felt happy that I couldn't wrap my brain around it. I was terrified that this general could. And that he was out there. Hunting us.

[page]
 
Two weeks after we landed on Roanoke, Magdy, Enzo, Gretchen and I went for a walk.

"Watch where you land," Magdy told us. "There are some big rocks down here."

"Great," Gretchen said. She shined her pocket light - acceptable technology, no computer equipment in it, just an old-fashioned LED - at the ground, looking for a place to land, and then hopped down from the edge of the container wall, aiming for her preferred spot. Enzo and I heard the oof as she landed, and then a bit of cursing.

"I told you to watch where you landed," Magdy said, shining his light on her.

"Shut it, Magdy," she said. "We shouldn't even be out here. You're going to get us all in trouble."

"Yeah, well," Magdy said. "Your words would have more moral authority if you weren't actually out here with me." He flicked his light up off of Gretchen and toward me and Enzo, still up on the container wall. "You two planning to join us?"

"Will you please stop with the light?" Enzo said. "The patrol is going to see it."

"The patrol is on the other side of the container wall," Magdy said. "Although if you don't hurry it up, that's not going to be the case for long. So move it." He flicked the light back and forth quickly in Enzo's face, making an annoying strobe effect. Enzo sighed and slid down off the container wall; I heard the muffled thump a second later. Which left me, feeling suddenly very exposed on the top of the containers that were the defensive perimeter around our little village - and also the frontier beyond which we were not allowed to go at night.

"Come on," Enzo whispered up to me. He, at least, remembered we weren't supposed to be out and modulated his voice accordingly. "Jump down. I'll catch you."

"Are you dumb?" I asked, also in a whispery voice. "You'll end up with my shoes in your eye sockets."

"It was a joke," Enzo said.

"Fine," I said. "Don't catch me."

"Jeez, Zoe," Magdy said, in a definite nonwhisper. "Will you jump already?"

I hopped off the container wall, down the three meters or so from the top, and tumbled a little when I landed. Enzo flicked his light on me, and offered me a hand up. I took it and squinted up at him as he pulled me up. Then I flicked my own light over to where Magdy was. "Jerk," I told him.

Magdy shrugged. "Come on," he said, and started along the perimeter of the wall toward our destination.

A few minutes later we were all flashing our lights into a hole.

"Wow," Gretchen said. "We've just broken curfew and risked being accidentally shot by the night guard for this. A hole in the ground. I'm picking our next field trip, Magdy."

Magdy snorted and knelt down into the hole. "If you actually paid attention to anything, you'd know that this hole has the council in a panic," Magdy said. "Something dug this out the other night while the patrol wasn't watching. Something was trying to get in to the colony from out here." He took his light and moved it up the nearest container until he spotted something. "Look. There are scratches on the container. Something tried to go over the top, and then when it couldn't it tried to go under."

"So what you're saying is that we're out here now with a bunch of predators," I said.

"It doesn't have to be a predator," Magdy said. "Maybe it's just something that likes to dig."

I flicked my light back up to the claw marks. "Yeah, that's a reasonable theory."