The Moldy Dead Read Online Free Page A

alone on this alien planet.  Even the
Huouyt, who had murdered the Ooreiki in cold blood, was at least familiar to
him.  The alien blackness was not.
    But when Bha’hoi took a step toward
him, his electric, white-blue eyes were more alien than anything Esteei had
ever known.  He ran.  And, as an ancestral prey species, the Jahul were fast. 
The Huouyt, with his three legs, was not.
    Behind him, the Huouyt laughed.  “I
can always take your pattern and do it myself, Jahul!”
    Panic powering him, Esteei didn’t
stop running.
    Once Esteei was out of range, he
turned back to look.  He saw Bha’hoi’s silhouette against the light of the ship,
saw him climb aboard and watched the tiny square of light disappear as the gate
drew up.  An instant later, the ship began drifting into the night sky,
blocking out the stars. 
    In moments, Esteei was alone with
the Geuji.
     
    #
     
    The hexapod wasn’t listening to
them.
    Not smart enough, his peers
thought.
    But Crown was skeptical.  The
hexapod wasn’t even trying to communicate with them.  Like Crown, he was
scared.
    He thinks he’s going to die.
    Apparently, he didn’t realize what
the aquatic alien was doing.  The aquatic alien wasn’t there to kill the
hexapod.  He was there to kill the Philosophers.
    And, Crown knew with horrible
certainty, he would be back.
     
    #
     
    Bha’hoi returned, two days later. 
Esteei was burying the dead Ooreiki that the Huouyt had pushed off the ship and
was collecting their oorei for transport back to Poen when the ship set
down in the same indentions in the sand from last time, startling him.  When
the gate began to open, it didn’t even cross Esteei’s mind to pick up one of
the Ooreiki’s weapons.
    He fled.
    When Bha’hoi stepped out, he was
dragging a wooden crate.  He saw the Ooreiki rifles still strewn on the beach,
looked out at Esteei, and snorted laughter.
    “What are you doing?” Esteei
called, eying the crate.
    “Come find out,” the Huouyt offered,
disappearing once more into the ship.
    Hesitantly, worried at the range of
the Huouyt’s weapon, Esteei got just close enough that he could hear something
moving inside the crates, then stopped.
    “What is it?” Esteei called.
    “ Vaghi ,” Bha’hoi said, dropping
a second crate beside the first.
    Esteei recoiled.  “The vermin? ”
    “The very same,” the Huouyt said. 
He boarded the ship once more and returned with a third crate.  “I hear they
have an appetite for the same molecular makeup as the Geuji.  We’ll see.”
    Esteei was stunned.  Voracious, vaghi could eat six times their own weight each day and breed dozens of times a
week.  More, if food was plentiful enough. 
    “But the Geuji are sentient.”
    The Huouyt snorted.  “Of course
they are.  It took me two tics after first stepping off the ship to determine
that.”  The Huouyt tapped its downy head.  “Simply because your brain is the
size of a pebble, you assume everyone else’s is, too.”
    “Then what…?”
    The Huouyt’s cilia rippled over its
body, amusement pouring off of him in a wave.  “The Huouyt are next in queue
for a planet, little Jahul.  This one has an ocean absolutely unpopulated by
native filth.”
    The Huouyt are aquatic.
    Terrified, Esteei said, “You don’t
need to kill them.  The Geuji aren’t using the ocean.  You can share the
planet.”
    “The Huouyt don’t share.”
    Esteei stared at him, unable to
speak.
    “Now,” Bha’hoi said, returning his
attention to the crates.  “You have a decision to make, little Jahul.  Will you
hold still while I kill you quickly, or will you make me leave you here on
Neskfaat, to starve to death?”
    “Neskfaat…?”
    “It’s what we’re naming it.  It
means—”
    “Holy water.”
    Bha’hoi’s face twisted into a
frown.  “Yes.”  He moved to the closest box of vaghi, which squealed
when he neared.
    “You loose those things on the land
and you’ll never get rid of them,” Esteei said,