Return to Krell

"Small suns path," he explained. Of course, he was measuring time by how far the suns would have moved across the sky.

"Yes! Good Sleethe, good! And how many of those does it take for the suns to rise and set?"

He took a moment to think, miming the passage of the twin stars overhead.

"Ten and four," he said with a shrug.

"Fourteen hours in a Krell day, perfect, that must mean that there are twenty eight hours in one rotation. You're a genius and you don't even know it," she said excitedly as she recorded the information. There was a problem to be solved, and so the marshland around her fell away, her fear of the giant scholar evaporating as she tapped at her touch panel.

"So if a day here is twenty eight hours, then how long is a week?"

Sleethe pondered for a moment, then shrugged. Damn it, the Krell were too primitive, they lacked the necessary knowledge to track the orbit of their planet and to keep accurate time. Life on the Pinwheel was so regimented, so orderly, they were probably called when they were needed and left to their own devices when they weren't. It was easy to keep the time when the sunlamps in the ceiling of the torus turned on every day at precisely oh-five hundred hours, and shut off at twenty-two hundred hours, when you couldn't go ten feet without seeing some kind of digital clock or hearing an announcement over the intercom.

This wasn't going to work, what she needed was a frame of reference.

Lena turned her eyes back to the giant scholar, wracking her brain as she tried to think of a solution. There was a radiocarbon dating tool in her pack, the straps of which were now digging uncomfortably into her bare shoulders, but that method of dating only worked on dead tissue. You couldn't carbon date a living creature. There must be some way to measure age in a Krell without having to rely on asking them, like the rings of a tree trunk, or dental growth standards in humans. If only Sousa were here, he'd be able to figure it out. Would she just have to give up and accept defeat?

The scholar shifted positions, spreading its immense weight about and getting comfortable. How much did it weigh? Large predatory dinosaurs could weigh up to about twenty tons, this Krell could conceivably exceed that.

Now that he was closer, and she was no longer cowering in terror, she could get a better look at him. Someone had painted him with the same scholar symbol that Lena was wearing at some point, it was on his shoulder rather than his belly, as his fleshy underside now seemed to be inaccessible due to his four-legged gait. The vibrant red dye was faded and old, but still visible. The aliens must reapply it periodically.

What shocked her more than its sheer mass was the fact that Sleethe had barely reacted when the scholar had risen from the marsh like a surfacing submarine. This was normal for him, mundane. How many of these things were scattered around the planet, could they grow even larger than this? Was this the fate of all long-lived Krell, to spend their later years living alone in the wilderness like a feral animal? She began to wonder how they fed themselves, and how much energy they must expend, even with their slow metabolism. Then she remembered how it had snapped up that deer. They probably ate everything that crossed their path. Would it have eaten Lena if Sleethe hadn't been with her?

The scholar lifted its massive arm, the width of Sleethe's torso, and scratched his neck idly. Something flashed in the dim twilight, and Lena's eyes immediately locked onto it. There was something dangling from its wrist.

"What's that on his wrist?" Lena asked Sleethe, forgetting that her translator was now doing a fine job and that she could have asked the question herself. She was almost afraid to speak to it directly, it looked like something that the ancient Aztecs or the Incas might have worshiped as a deity, Quetzalcoatl in the flesh.

The scholar replied, the sound waves making the water around Lena's ankles ripple, and Sleethe turned to her as he conveyed the beast's booming reply.

"Old necklace."

So it was one of the Krell necklaces, beads and shells woven together with strings made from grasses and plant fibers. At some point the scholar's neck had been small enough that the necklace would fit around it, but now the jewelry was little more than a bracelet.

Hang on, whatever materials that constituted the necklace would be dead, and it would therefore be possible to carbon date them. Carbon-14 is a radioactive isotope, found in the air in carbon dioxide molecules, and a small amount of this isotope enters the body of every living thing through the food chain. At least where carbon dioxide is present in the atmosphere, as it was on Krell. When the organism in question dies, it stops taking in Carbon-14, and the isotopes present in its body begin to decay. That radioactive decay is measurable if one has the appropriate tools, and thus it becomes possible to estimate the time of death by measuring the rate of that decay. She had brought the tool with her, the same one that she had used to date the wood in the temple. This might be her best chance to get some kind of accurate measurement of time in terms that she could understand.

"Sleethe, ask the scholar if I can take a closer look at the necklace."

He relayed her request, and the scholar reached its long arm slowly towards her. A powerful urge to flee overcame her as his leathery hand came to a stop not a foot away, so large that it could have plucked her off the ground like a toy, but she powered through it and slung her pack off her back. She rummaged inside for the handheld tool, drawing it and taking a tentative step forward.

The scholar seemed unconcerned. He was so large that she couldn't possibly harm him in any way, and he had no natural predators. She reached out towards the dangling beads and shells, the garment remarkably intact despite its obvious age and the wear and tear that this creature's lifestyle must subject it to.

"When was this made?" She asked, taking a piece of carved wood in her hand and running it under the lens of the scanner. It was about the size and shape of a pocket watch, smooth and polished, with a decorative rune carved into its surface. There was a hole drilled in the top through which the string was threaded. These necklaces were made for individuals, the materials harvested on or near the day of their use. Just like when she had constructed the necklace that was now hanging about her shoulders, it was another one of their rituals, an event that the recipient was expected to attend. The scholar would know when this had been made, it would have been present.

It replied, and Sleethe translated the answer for her.

"Scholar says eight seasons."

Eight seasons, perfect. Now if she could get a fairly accurate reading from the carbon dating tool, then she could compare the two numbers and come up with an estimate of how many years constituted a season.

Her eyes narrowed as the result appeared on her wrist monitor. This wood had died roughly two hundred years ago. It couldn't have been cut more than a couple of days before the ceremony, so that meant...

She turned to her wrist computer, bringing up the calculator function and entering in values as the two Krell watched her curiously, her fingers flying across the touch panel.

"Yes!" Lena exclaimed, the glow of the hologram reflecting in her eyes as she read out the results. "I've got it, one Krell season is...twenty five years. Really? You guys only have a breeding season once every twenty five years? I guess you have to give the generation that was conceived during the last one time to grow and mature. That explains what happened on the Pinwheel too, we've only been in contact with your people for about twenty years, that's why your reproductive method took us off guard. So if a season is twenty five years, and your first contact with the brokers was twelve seasons ago, that makes...three hundred years!?"

She glanced up at the scholar who was waiting patiently, her eyes wide.

"Scholar, how many seasons have you been alive?"

The giant creature rumbled a reply, and Sleethe translated for her.

"Scholar says doesn't know. We don't count that."

Just like Sleethe then, the scholar didn't know its own age. The Krell really didn't seem fond of time keeping. The timescales that they lived on were so much larger than those of humans, and their metabolisms were so slow. Lena was gradually starting to understand their way of thinking, and why they appeared so deficient to humans. Those who didn't know them better often assumed that they were stupid, slow in the sense that they seemed to live in another world, scarcely reacting to what happened around them and spending the majority of their time sleeping.

An hour was but the blink of an eye for them, a day inconsequential. They went into heat once every twenty five years, they only ate a meal every few months, for the vast majority of their lives their metabolisms were slowed down to a crawl. They spent all of their time basking and sleeping. If this enormous Krell was any indication, then they lived for centuries. Obsessing over hours and days would be like a human trying to manage their life down to the second. It just wasn't a useful expenditure of effort.

An idea occurred to Lena, and she spoke through her translator again. This thing was old, it had been alive for at least three hundred years and change, likely longer. She had hoped to meet someone who had access to better records of what had happened during their campaign to retake the Broker colonies, but this specimen was so old that it might actually have lived through it. Perhaps it was even one of the Krell who had been artificially conceived by the Brokers.

"Were you alive when the Benefactors arrived?"

The scholar replied affirmatively, Sleethe translating the powerful blast of sound for her.

"Did you fight in the war?"

Another affirmative reply.

"Will you tell us what happened? What you saw?"

The giant Krell shifted its immense weight, settling in the mud, and then began to relay its story as Sleethe translated for Lena's benefit.

***

The Krell were packed like sardines inside the craft, its featureless, white walls pressing down on them as they brushed shoulders. There were maybe fifty of them crammed into the Broker vessel, and Rahee was among them. All but a handful had been born of the metal eggs, and they knew only war. From the moment that they had cracked the shells of their eggs and they had emerged into the light, they had been trained for a singular purpose, to take back the Broker colonies from their insectoid enemies.

The ever expanding wave of Betelgeusian fleets had landed on the shores of Broker space one season prior, the mercantile race of traders finding themselves overwhelmed and completely unable to handle the threat. The Bugs had crashed down on them like a ruthless tide, seizing their fertile core colonies one by one, leaving the Broker forces in disarray. They had rallied what soldiers they could, artificial constructs and drones that fought on their behalf, the Brokers themselves too frail and too few to fight. But as their manufacturing centers fell along with their planets, their capacity was reduced little by little, until even what little resistance they were able to mount against the marauding insect fleets was crushed. But now that tide was being turned, the Brokers were retaking their lost planets with the help of the Krell.

They had descended from the skies one day on their shining, silver ships, both to extend the hand of friendship and to deliver a dire warning. Soon the Betelgeusians would turn their compound eyes on the Krell, so they had been told, and the tribal reptiles would be unable to endure. They had proposed a Coalition between races, a joining of their two peoples for the benefit of both. Take back the lost colonies of the Brokers, and in turn the enigmatic strangers would protect their home.

The elders had convened a great meeting, the first of its kind, in which representatives from a hundred villages had traveled to debate this proposal. In the end they had agreed, pledging kinship to the Brokers, and in doing so compelling the disparate tribes to come to their aid.

The Krell had left their planet by the tens of thousands, the Brokers arming and training them for conflict. They bestowed technological wonders upon them, weapons that could kill from great distances, armor that made one almost impervious to harm. Even so, their kin died by the thousands, the Brokers using their metal eggs to replenish the dwindling numbers of their army. This new generation grew to maturity alarmingly quickly, and many were cut down just as fast, expended on the battlefield like ammunition.

That was what Rahee had been told by the older veterans in any case. The grizzled soldiers were his only connection to his people's culture and their oral history, as he too was born of the metal eggs. He had no mother, no father. He had been birthed by a cold machine rather than by a warm body. He had been Krell only in flesh back in those days, his mind and his soul had belonged to the Brokers.

The alarm rang out, echoing inside the tiny craft as the Krell shifted restlessly. They knew it almost by instinct, they had been conditioned to respond to the sound from the day they were hatched. Unlike his own people, the Brokers only taught what was needed and no more. Which alarm to respond to, how to fire a gun, and how best to counter the Bugs.

He checked his weapon and his gear as he prepared for the drop, the ceramic armor that enclosed him in a protective shell was the same matte white as the walls of the craft, as was the rifle that he held in his hands. He didn't like to wear the suit, it chafed against his scutes, something about it felt wrong.

There was a rush of wind as a hole opened in one end of the craft, the featureless walls splitting apart as if the hull was no harder than mud. The Krell marched forward, jumping into the void two by two, until Rahee was standing on the lip of the dropship. He looked out over the landscape, the smell of salt reaching his snout. Every colony was new, different, no two were alike. After fighting on a dozen worlds he had become numb to the changes in gravity and atmosphere. This one seemed to be an endless expanse of ocean, the horizon flat in all directions, the blue sky almost indistinguishable from the water save for the presence of a few fluffy clouds. All around him were more of the cigar-shaped, silver vessels, hundreds of them disgorging their cargo of troops. The Krell leap from the ships and landed in the water far below, the white foam from the splashes of his fellow soldiers visible on its calm surface.

He braced himself, taking a deep breath that would last him for an hour and change, then he jumped. There was a brief rush of air before he felt his body enter the water, the height of the fall and his immense weight driving him far below the surface. The armor was light, it did not weigh him down. He looked about in an effort to get his bearings as he tumbled, finally locating the glow of the system's blue-tinted star above him as his nictating membranes covered his eyes to protect them from the saltwater.

His kin were all around him, using their muscular, oar-like tails to swim into formation. A voice echoed through the water, powerful and resonating as it reached his ears. It lacked the poetry of the Krell, it was their Broker commander, ordering the attack to begin.

The enemy was somewhere below them, dug into what had once been a Broker settlement, but was now a teeming insect hive. There was no cover in the open water, nowhere to hide when the bolts of superheated plasma began to shoot up from the dark depths like burning stars, boiling the water around them and scalding Rahee as they passed him by. He swam, charging along with his kin, more like a shoal of giant fish than any recognizable military formation.

The Broker ships dropped torpedoes, the sleek, silver tubes shooting past the formation of Krell and leaving trails of bubbles in their wake. There were a series of orange explosions, blooming like fiery flowers as the torpedoes found their targets, softening up the Bug defenses before the Krell assault. After a moment Rahee was hit with a wall of force that sent him reeling, the shockwaves from the explosions finally reaching him. He recovered quickly, winding through the water as he dodged the relatively slow-moving return fire.

As the ocean floor came into view, the wall of glowing shields that he was so accustomed to seeing were not present, they likely couldn't function in liquid because the magnetically contained plasma would boil the water around the wielder. Instead the Bugs were taking cover around rock formations and sprawling corals. The sunlight was dim at this depth, and so their iridescent carapaces were illuminated by the red glow from nearby hydrothermal vents, the tall towers belching dark plumes of bubbling water. There was a Broker facility nearby, silver metal standing out against the surrounding nature, its blocky sections connected by glass tubes.

The Brokers were an aquatic race, but unlike the Krell who were equally at home on land and in the water, they needed pressurized suits when they ventured onto the surface. That was one of the factors that made the Krell so valuable to them as soldiers, they could travel anywhere that a Broker could.

The Bugs were much the same, the insectoid aliens modified their bodies to suit whatever environments they found themselves in. These ones had fins on their limbs that allowed them to swim, along with frilly gills on their chests that would let them filter oxygen from the water. Rahee had fought them on land too, where they had no such adaptations.

The Krell returned fire once they were in range, their gauss rifles more accurate and reliable than the plasma weaponry favored by the Bugs when used underwater. The almost featureless, white rifles released a hail of magnetically accelerated flechettes, shaped like needles and sporting hydrodynamic fins to keep them on target. Where the projectiles hit their marks, colorful carapaces shattered, the injured Bugs struggling or floating limply as their wounds leaked smoky clouds of ichor and viscera.

The clouds of debris from the torpedoes were slowly falling back to the ocean floor, leaving large holes in the Betelgeusian lines, and the Krell took advantage of the cover that they provided as they reached the bottom. They landed as if in slow motion, kicking up clouds of silt and sand as they touched down, immediately taking cover in the maze of coral formations and chimneys.

Rahee reloaded his weapon, keeping a lookout through the murky water as his kin landed beside him, like paratroopers in microgravity. They stayed low, moving through the water with their rifles raised, walking along the bottom with the sluggish and bounding gait of deep-sea divers.

Soon after rounding the nearest chimney, the heat from the boiling water that it was expelling felt even fifty feet below the dark plume, they encountered the enemy. The Bugs fell upon them, engaging them in close quarters with their plasma pistols and sharp daggers drawn. They were about five feet tall, covered in a stiff exoskeleton, bipedal but with two pairs of arms. Their colorful shells shimmered in the light of the vent. The aliens came in a rainbow of iridescent hues, reds and golds, greens and blues. Their compound eyes glowed an eerie green, their insect mandibles moving ceaselessly as they attacked.

Rahee batted them aside like they were no more than dolls, the usual speed of the hostile aliens hampered by the water, and he dashed them against the sharp coral. There was a scuffle as the squad of Krell battled the Bugs, blades flashing and plasma pistols boiling the water around them, clouds of kicked up silt and streams of bubbles reducing visibility. The daggers used by the insects were sharp, but not enough to pierce both the Broker armor and the layers of bony scutes that protected the reptiles, their brute force and sheer mass making short work of the Betelgeusians. The Krell tore them limb from limb, crushing their chitinous carapaces with vicious punches and heavy slams from their muscular tails. Bursts of needles from the gauss guns nailed their targets to the rocks, the aliens twitching and spewing blood from their gills as they fought to free themselves.