Return to Krell

She glanced back at Sleethe, an odd feeling of foreboding overtaking her. What were these 'metal eggs'? She swiped at the touch screen, bringing up the next picture. It portrayed what looked like a baby Krell curled up inside an egg, little more than a tiny lizard at that stage of their lives. She had handled such juveniles back on the Pinwheel, during the breeding epidemic that had almost crippled the station.

"The metal eggs birthed new Krell out of season...Sleethe? What is this? Some kind of breeding program? A genetic experiment?"

He couldn't give her an answer, he had no frame of reference. His people had no knowledge of genetics and biology. Who knew in what ways these Brokers had exploited them, free of all scrutiny from those more versed in science and ethics. They had come offering friendship, and they had instead used the Krell to breed a disposable army.

Lena pressed on, her excitement giving way to disgust. The next slide was a carving of dozens of Krell standing in formation as they were presided over by a Broker.

"Those hatched from the metal eggs grew faster than their swamp-born kin, reaching maturity quickly. In a single...season, finally a concrete measure of time for once, the young came of age. Accelerated growth..."

Yes, this was some kind of genetic manipulation. The Krell hadn't been able to breed fast enough to replenish their numbers, and so the Brokers had bred more of them through artificial wombs, tweaking their genes or perhaps altering them through other means in order to speed up their growth.

"The new generation numbered more than the trees, more than the stars. They crashed over the enemy like a great wave, and drove them away from the Benefactor's homes."

Here was an engraving of a horde of Krell descending upon a swarm of Bugs and fighting them off. The Brokers looked on from above, presiding over the battle but never seeming to take part. At first the Krell looked like they were flying, but on closer inspection they seemed to be swimming, this scene was taking place underwater. There were strange objects that Lena couldn't identify, boxes and spheres floating about that might represent anything. The next scene showed dozens of Broker ships landing in a clearing and disgorging the army of Krell.

"The Benefactors were pleased, and returned the soldiers to the swamp. But those born of the metal eggs knew nothing of their home, they knew nothing of the ways of their people. They were as hatchlings, lost and without purpose."

The next relief showed what looked like elders, based on their size, trying to teach younger Krell. Some were painting, others carving murals, one was cultivating plants and another seemed to be collecting fish beside a lake. Clearly their accelerated growth had meant that the generation of Krell that the Brokers had reared for war were lacking in fundamental skills, as they had essentially skipped over their upbringing. It wasn't hard to imagine what kind of social problems might have ensued. The Brokers had dumped a population of Krell back onto the planet who had only known war, and who were probably incapable of caring for themselves in the wild.

Her dislike of the Brokers was slowly turning to contempt.

She scrolled to the final image, and this one was very much like the first. The Krell were returning to their usual business and it seemed as if the elders had succeeded in reintegrating the soldiers.

"In time those born of the metal eggs learned the ways of our people, and took their place among us. The Benefactors...gave us their debt?"

They kept bringing up this 'debt' and Lena wasn't sure what that meant. It seemed that the Brokers at least felt some responsibility towards the Krell for the services that they had rendered, was that the reason that the planet's orbit was clogged with Broker defensive structures and drone ships?

The Brokers always tried to come off as mysterious and omnipotent, never showing themselves and only interacting with other races through proxies. But it seemed that in reality they had lost all of their colonies to the Betelgeusians, and they had been forced to seek help from the most primitive species encountered in the galactic arm to date.

It was no wonder that the Brokers didn't want anyone visiting the planet. If the knowledge got out that they had manipulated the Krell and used them as disposable soldiers, how might the other members of the Coalition react? It would cause an interstellar incident. Her mind flashed back to the underwater structure that was hidden at the bottom of the lake, were there more secrets hidden down there?

They would never have let her come here if they had thought her capable of deciphering the Krell language and writing system, and why should they? This was all software that she had developed herself, it wasn't available to the public and they would have had no way of knowing about it beforehand.

"Well," she said, leaning back and resting her head on Sleethe's lap. "It seems that the Brokers have underestimated us. That's what happens when you think that you're smarter than everyone else, you get taken by surprise when someone proves you wrong. But I guess you knew all of this already, didn't you? You just had no way to tell anyone."

Sleethe huffed, combing her damp hair with his fingers. Maybe he understood, and maybe he didn't, but Sleethe was Sleethe and she was just happy to be around him.

There were still some questions left unanswered however, most notably when all of this had taken place. If only there was someone that she could ask about it. As she looked down at the monitors, enjoying the sensation of Sleethe's fingers running through her hair, the splash of red runes and pictograms that was painted across her belly jumped out at her.

Of course! How could she have forgotten? The Krell elder had written her vocation right on her skin, scholar, which meant that there must be other scholars around here somewhere. Otherwise why would the elder have known which symbol to use off the top of his head?

"Sleethe!" She exclaimed, springing to her feet and turning to face him. "I need to find a scholar!"

CHAPTER 10: SCHOLAR

"Now why the hell would a scholar be all the way out here?" Lena complained to nobody in particular, trudging through the mud as she followed Sleethe through the dense undergrowth. They had traveled some miles downstream, Lena riding her reptilian companion like a boat again, following the instructions of the elder. Sleethe had taken her to see him, and she had asked him where she might find a fellow scholar. She had only been able to understand some of the reply that he had given, but he had directed them to follow the river downstream by a measure of distance that meant nothing to her, and then to search in the bogs. Fortunately the vague instructions meant something to Sleethe, and he had taken her to what she had to assume was the correct location.

All of the other Krell lived in the village, so why was this scholar out in the middle of the swamp? Was he exiled? Some kind of hermit maybe? It didn't look like there were any structures out here, no huts or neighboring villages. There wasn't much of anything, really. After a while the thick mangrove forests that bordered the Krell settlement had given way to marshland, flat terrain with a few scraggly trees clinging to life here and there. There was a layer of water that covered the muddy ground, almost knee deep to Lena, she could feel the damp earth beneath her bare feet. Where the mud had been mostly barren before, it was now covered in reeds and grasses, these species apparently able to cling to the mud without the help of the mangrove roots. Maybe the soil was of a different quality here, or maybe these plants were just very specialized, she couldn't say.

The going was certainly easier without her suit and her boots, she was growing accustomed to feeling her way along with her toes. In fact, in the nature documentaries that she was fond of watching, the hosts often removed their boots when they traversed this kind of terrain. It was easy to see why. There was much less danger of becoming tangled, or stepping on some kind of animal if you could use your toes to probe the waters ahead of you.

It had already been late in the day when they had set off, Lena unable to contain her excitement until the following morning, and the twin suns were just dipping beneath the horizon. She always got like this when there was a problem that needed solving, she couldn't get a wink of sleep until she found a solution. Truth be told, it was actually much cooler now, and the planet was so dim that this twilight was hardly a noticeable deviation from the norm.

Sleethe marched through the tall reeds beside her, the plants barely reaching his knees, but they were at waist height for Lena.

"You see anything, big guy?"

He rumbled a 'no', and shook his leathery head.

"Just what the hell are we looking for, anyway? Does he live in a cave? A hut? Can you tell me why he doesn't live in the village with the rest of his kin?"

"Too big," he replied, giving her a sideways glance.

"Too big? How could he be too big? The elder is huge, and he can still fit in the village. He's so big that he makes you look like...well, me. Ok, bad analogy, but how can a Krell possibly get so big that he can no longer live in the village? He'd have to be...no, no. That's impossible."

Sleethe must not have understood her, or maybe something was being lost in translation. The elder was so large that she sometimes found herself wondering how he could even move. The strain on his bones and joints must have been immense. There had to be some kind of upper limit on Krell growth, otherwise they'd get so large that they'd no longer be able to move, they wouldn't be able to feed themselves. Could that be the only reason that they died of old age? Perhaps they got so large that, like a beached whale, their bodies just gave out?

She stopped, watching as Sleethe began to sniff the air. He must have smelled something. Lena opened her mouth to ask him what his was, but he put a finger to his lips, gesturing for her to be silent. Well, he had no lips, but he had learned to mimic the gesture well enough. He pointed into the distance, and Lena squinted, trying to see through the blanket of mist.

There was a shape there, not a Krell, something else...

From beyond the fog bounded a deer, prancing on four spindly legs, its body coated in a layer of fine brown hair that camouflaged it against the swaying reeds. It was a mammal, the first one that she had seen so far on Krell. Had they evolved here too? It looked so much like a water deer, uncanny. Could this be an example of convergent evolution, animals that lived in similar environments adapting similar traits?

She crouched, trying to stay out of view behind the straw-colored stalks, and raised her wrist computer. She zoomed in, taking a few snapshots before the skittish creature notice Sleethe, hopping off towards the cover of a felled tree. It slowed when it reached the rotten wood, sniffing it experimentally. The trunk had obviously fallen at an angle and was now jutting up into the air at forty five degrees, probably still attached to the stump by a few broken fibers. Must have been a big tree, how had it gotten here? There were none like it that she could see.

There was a terrific splashing sound, and the deer bleated in alarm, a crack like thunder silencing its terrified wail. The felled tree was moving, rising high into the air. That was no tree, it was a giant alligator! Its skull must have been ten or fifteen feet long, its monstrous jaws now closed around the struggling deer like a bear trap, pearly teeth as long as her index finger interlocking like a giant zipper. This was no Krell, it was a dinosaur, its horny scutes as black as night and as large as roofing tiles. Water rained down from its lower jaw, the leathery skin beneath its throat vibrating as it rumbled, a sound so deep and resonating that it seemed to shake the very planet that they were standing on. The thing rose like some kind of living obelisk, Lena now able to make out its neck and shoulders, it was so large and heavy that most of its titanic body had been hidden beneath the mud. Like a crocodile waiting for passing prey, it had been lying there with its mouth open, so large that it hadn't even crossed Lena's mind that it could be anything but a tree.

It juggled the now limp deer in its mouth, biting down on it and moving the body towards the back of its throat, the sound of bones snapping like matchsticks reaching Lena's ears as she was transfixed by the macabre sight. It ate the deer, swallowing it almost whole, and then with a monumental crash it fell back to the marsh. It sprayed dark water like a tidal wave, displacing the liquid with its sheer mass, the ripples of which reached all the way to Lena despite her distance from the creature.

Lena could see the tip of its tail, what must have been thirty or forty feet from its head. Was it possible? Could this be a Krell that had grown to fifty feet? She couldn't even process what she was seeing, this wasn't even an animal, it had more in common with a tornado or an earthquake. It was a force of nature made animate, it could have crushed a UNN dropship like a used soda can.

It noticed them, turning its head in their direction, so large that it almost seemed to move in slow motion. Lena dropped to all fours instinctively as she felt its yellow eyes find her, tears welling in her eyes and snot leaking from her nose as she trembled, a primal terror that she had never experienced before overcoming her. It was like a nightmare. She wanted to run but she was frozen stiff, she wanted to scream but her voice had left her. Her lizard brain took over, her most primal instincts ordering her to hide from the gaze of this predator lest she become its next meal.

She yelped as she felt something touch her back, looking up through bleary eyes to see Sleethe staring down at her. He was perfectly calm and confident, cocking his head at her as if confused by her reaction. He warbled sympathetically, her translator buzzing in her ear.

"Do not fear."

She took a few sobbing breaths, composing herself as she rose slowly to her feet, Sleethe holding her shaking hand in his.

"Scholar," he said, pointing to the giant monster as it watched them curiously.

"Sorry," she said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. "I wish you'd warned me beforehand."

"Sleethe said big."

"I guess that's on me then."

The ground shook as the monstrous Krell began to lumber towards them, crawling on all fours as a crocodile would, rather than rising to the usual upright posture. Was it so large that it could no longer stand? It strode slowly across the marsh, but it was so huge that within moments it was upon them. Lena had only ever seen something this large once before, when she had visited the Museum of Natural History in Chicago. She had seen Sue, the largest and best preserved tyrannosaurus fossil in existence. Sue was forty feet long, and this Krell was a little bigger than that. More importantly, Sue had lived sixty five million years before Lena had been born, and this Krell was staring right at her.

"Hello scholar," Sleethe called out, Lena edging slowly behind him as she monster tracked her with golden eyes the size of softballs. There was no reverence in Sleethe's voice, no respect that he had not afforded the other Krell. He was treating this as any old conversation, but this specimen was as a God to them. Good lord, it was over half the length of a blue whale!

It opened its mouth and replied, its tone so low that she felt it more than she heard it, rattling her bones like someone had taken her by the shoulders and was violently shaking her. The translator had completely given up, it couldn't even attempt to parse this.

"Sleethe, you'll have to translate for me, his voice is out of range of my pickup."

"He asks why we come," Sleethe said. He used his long tail to nudge Lena out from behind his back, and into the open so that the giant Krell could see her. He pointed to the red runes on her belly, and the scholar's reptilian pupils tracked his clawed finger, its nictating membranes blinking slowly as it examined her. Sleethe must be showing it that she too was a scholar.

Lena composed herself, trying to calm the frantic beating of her heart. If she could wrestle a salamander then she could do this too. She might not be able to understand the giant creature, but it could understand her.

"We come seeking knowledge," she said, trying to sound confident despite the wavering of her voice. It was a simple enough phrase, and the translator seemed to do a fair job, as the giant Krell gave her its reply. She could feel its breath on her skin even at this distance, it could have blown her off her feet like a jet engine if it had been so inclined.

"Scholar asks what knowledge you want," Sleethe relayed. What did she want to know? She had been so frightened by the sudden appearance of the giant krell that she had very nearly forgotten. Ah yes, the Brokers. What she needed most right now was a timescale, when the Brokers had arrived on this planet, and when the campaign to retake their lost colonies had ended.

"I want to know...when did the Benefactors arrive here?"

The great beast cocked its enormous head at her, it was the size of a car, and then it emitted a booming reply. Lena had to stop herself from covering her ears reflexively, its voice almost loud enough to hurt.

"Scholar says ten and two seasons."

"Twelve seasons ago?" Finally, a measurement of time that made sense. 'Season' must refer to mating seasons, or so she assumed, but how many Earth years passed between seasons?

"Sleethe," she said, "come here. I need your help with something."

He turned to her, and crouched lower, watching her as she began to tap at her touch screen. It projected a flickering, orange hologram, the scholar looking on with mild interest as she began to enter in numbers.

"Ok, I need your help here, big guy. You're the key to this, so try to understand."

She had brought up the calculator function on her wrist-mounted computer, and it was time to do some math. Sleethe had lived and worked alongside humans, she knew that he had some grasp of human timekeeping.

"I need to know how long a Krell season is in Earth time, understand? Do you know how long a year is?"

He shook his head, and she cursed under her breath.

"Alright, what about a month? Do you know what a month is? If they told you that you were being deployed to the front, and that it would take two months to get there, how long would that be in seasons?"

He shrugged his broad shoulders.

"Come on Sleethe, you can't be a soldier if you don't understand time keeping. Maybe I'm going about this the wrong way..."

Perhaps using large measurements was throwing him off. If she started from the bottom rather than the top, maybe he would have a better idea of what she was talking about. After all, they seemed to describe numbers in values of ten.

"Imagine I'm your commanding officer, you know what that is?"

He nodded.

"Good, alright. I'm your commanding officer, and I tell you to be ready for roll call in one hour. Understand?"

Again he nodded, progress!

"You understand how long an hour is on the Pinwheel? How long is that for a Krell? If the elder told you to be somewhere in an hour, how long would that be?"

He scratched the leathery pouch of skin that hung beneath his lower jaw as he considered, Lena could practically see the gears turning in his head. Math apparently wasn't one of his strong suits. Finally he held up a finger and thumb to the sky and closed one eye, like he was measuring something that only he could see. Lena gave him a 'what the hell' expression, and then he did it again.