Paul Collins - Earthborn The

"For crying out loud! Quinn!" shouted a voice. "We're under attack!"

Welkin jerked from his thoughts.

Over to his left, three of his party had broken rank and were stumbling back to the ship.

"I don't see anything!" Welkin shouted. Panic swept through him.

"Go to ground!" their group leader snapped. Two of them followedthe order. The other kept going.

He had almost made it to the gaping docking tube when bullets thudded into him. He crashed down and was still.

"Cover!" snapped a voice made tinny by the transmitter. "Sightings?"

"Glover here," came a cautious voice. "I've scanned them." He paused, but Welkin could hear his labored breathing. "They're everywhere," he whispered in a disbelieving tone. "Space demons above!

The ground's crawling with Earthborn!" he shouted suddenly.

Welkin looked about frantically. Before he could see anything, gunfire sent him scurrying for cover.

He hugged the ground so closely he could almost smell the dirt through his filters.

The others started fleeing through the rubble. Erratic gunfire echoed off the decaying walls. Welkin chanced a quick look and saw two make the ramp. He watched with horror as the doors closed. A third crew member barely touched the ramp when he suddenly flung up his arms and toppled to the ground.

"Flankers' report," Welkin said hesitantly. None of his training on Colony had prepared him for this.

Welkin switched channels, frantically searching for voices. A white silence overrode the busy static from the field station. "Colony. Do you read me, Colony? Red Tag reporting."

Through his faceplate he saw the crippled craft tilted at an unnatural angle. Its solar shields were up. It may as well have been a blank wall of metal. Colony was maintaining radio silence. "Colony, do you read me?" His communications circuits cut out.

"Ohmistars," Welkin mumbled. "Ohmistars. Ohmistars." He wanted desperately to be out of here. He wanted space. He wanted the dull thready thrumming of Colony's main drives as he slept. He wanted to look out of a viewer and see the comforting vastness of star-flecked space. Most of all he wanted his

cocoon of metal. Solid, reliable metal.

He took a deep breath and trembled. He was going to die out here. He searched his mind for some procedural tactic that would get him back on board Colony. But there was nothing.

Welkin looked up bitterly at the towering citadel that was Colony.

The ship seemed to pierce the very sky. Even as he watched, cumulus clouds had swept in on the prevailing wind, enveloping the upper decks like cotton candy. He could barely make out the burnt orange and red COLONY lettering emblazoned on the ship's pitted hull. Colony was a mass of twinkling multicolored lights dotting a shark-gray carapace that loomed above Melbourne like a mechanical monster. Eyes winking from every surface; an omnipotent being that would be tracking him this very moment. But he was simply too insignificant—and too contaminated!—to retrieve.

Welkin was just getting up when suddenly he was jerked backward. He tried to scream, but the grip on his throat almost made him gag. He kicked and thrashed, but whoever had him was immensely strong.

His assailant twisted him about. The world blurred.

Welkin expected to feel the jaws of some hellish Earth beast bury themselves in his throat. He already had his eyes closed to shut out his death. When, after what seemed a harrowing few minutes, nothing happened, he snapped open his eyes fearfully.

He was shocked to see a human female standing in front of him. Her face was weathered and deeply tanned. Her black, gray-flecked hair was cut close to the scalp; her eyes were a glittering green. A strong jawline, rounded nose, and taut cheeks gave her a fierce appearance. An Earthborn primitive. Rough, tanned, and—he snagged on the word— hard.

Welkin lashed out with his foot, but she was too quick, too trained, he realized with a start. She spun him about again and pulled him backward like a cat dragging a wounded bird.

Then she was still. Her arms held him immobile for a moment before she ripped off his faceplate.

"NO!" he tried to scream, but she clamped a callused hand over his mouth.

Welkin squirmed, holding his breath for as long as possible before he was forced to exhale. His bulging cheeks deflated like a burst balloon. He knew he was going to die a terrible death, his lungs hemorrhaging as they tried to extract oxygen and nitrogen from the poisonous atmosphere of this world.

It was either breathe—and be poisoned—or faint and maybe die anyway.

His face went red, his eyes bulged with the effort. His captor peered at him quizzically as if she couldn't quite work out what he was doing. Welkin gasped a few times before realizing that he could breathe. But how was that possible? The elders had assured them that Earth would have to be terraformed before the Skyborn could live there again. It would take years to heal the damage caused by the Earthborn vermin. Yet this air actually smelled nice. It smelled . . . he hunted for the word. Fresh.

Unrecycled. He had a sudden understanding that left him dizzy. The air on Colony had been manufactured and recycled for three hundred years. Three centuries of endless human respiration, clotted with stale esters and chemical by-products. Why, this Earthborn woman might well believe she was asphyxiating if she ever got aboard Colony! What a strange notion, as if Colony were somehow . . .

abnormal.

He turned frightened eyes to his assailant, but she held a finger to her mouth and demonstrated slow and easy breathing.

Welkin's heart was yammering so hard his body was rocking with its urgency.

"You keep reel quiet, ki'," she said, then drew a finger across her throat. There was no mistaking that gesture.

Her pronunciation was drastically clipped, but he had little difficulty understanding her. The purely functional components of a language were the last to change, and judging by their surroundings it didn't look as if the Earthborn had much high art or literature.

Welkin's throat constricted. His short, staccato whimpering sounded like that of a trapped animal. She seemed to understand this.

The only other noise now was of bricks being dislodged, the sound of scurrying people. Sibilant commands. Something heavy being hauled across the ground.

The Earthborn woman looked down at Welkin. "They'r strippen you' bloke. Gor ani foo withem?"

Welkin frowned with the effort of trying to decipher her words. They might have been, "They're stripping your blokes. Got any food with them?"

Welkin shook his head. He dared not speak. His mind was screaming crazy things at him. Zedda and Efi — they had made it back safely. But Glover and a few others hadn't. They're being stripped like when they're dead! He felt sick. I'll be dead soon. I can breathe this air for now, but I bet it's full of slow-acting poisons!

The woman's eyes closed to slits. She indicated with her chin. Welkin followed her gaze.

"Feras-scumma-the-eart."

Welkin nodded as he tried to decipher her words. "Ferals. Scum of the earth." Clothed in all manner of cloths and dangling trinkets, they were like prehistoric creatures. Furtive rodents scurrying about like frenzied atoms. Suddenly, long-bladed machetes rose and fell in rhythmic blows. The creatures grunted with the effort. Blood flicked from the glinting blades like ragged crimson ribbons.

Welkin shuddered and his mouth dropped wide. Then he ducked down, his head close to the earth, hyperventilating.

"Your Colony tapes didn't tell you about ferals, did they?" the woman said brutally, dragging his head back up. "They soak their hair with water and crushed chalk—clogs it up and makes that godawful color.