Youth is Wasted on the Young p.15
Amy hunkered down in one of the empty egg cubicles, keeping as low as possible against the front wall as a group of angry Wirrn stalked past on long legs. She held Schwillic in the crook of one arm, and an unconscious Stanley lay across her knees.
Schwillic vibrated against her ribs, and a piercing whistle drew the Wirrn off around the next corner.
"How did you do that?" Amy whispered.
"Ventriloquism. I was always good at it as a child," he vibrated back softly. "How's Stanley?"
"I think he's okay." The boy gave a groan right on cue. Amy grinned. She jogged her knee, she was getting a cramp. "Stanley," she whispered fiercely. "Wake up, I can't keep carting you around like a sack of grain."
He pushed himself up and scrubbed at his eyes. "What happened?" He suddenly remembered and his head whipped around wildly, looking for Wirrn.
"We got away," Amy said. "But I don't know for how long. They're looking for us."
"So what now?" Stanley asked.
"We get out," Amy said resolutely. "Schwillic, you said you found the exit. Show us."
"We'll never get out that way," Schwillic protested.
"Never say never," Amy said. "We haven't got any choice."
-----
They ran.
It had started out so well. But it seemed like no matter how many Wirrn they dodged, or how many Schwillic fooled into going another direction, there were always more Wirrn around the next corner.
Finally they just stopped trying and ran, sprinting to keep ahead of the angrily buzzing, long-legged insects.
They ran out into a huge open space.
Horses fled in every direction.
Amy stumbled to a halt and stared, open-mouthed. The dirt floor covered several acres and a herd of horses roamed free, a few deer and a couple of bison mixed in.
She looked up. Rank upon rank of egg cubicles, thousands of them, their tubes shining like Christmas lights, rose up in tiers to the beehive-like opening twenty stories above their heads. Blue sky showed through the opening, morning sunlight flooded the atrium.
Wirrn flew in and out of the hive above them, one slowly descended carrying a somnolent deer which it deposited on the floor at the far end of the herd. There was no way up to that opening, not without wings.
"Come on!" Stanley grabbed her hand and yanked her into a massive pile of hay near the wall. Schwillic burrowed in beside them and Wirrn poured out of the corridor behind them, searching.
-----
The pilot landed the chopper in the wheat field at Amy's last coordinates. The platoon of Marines piled out first -- guns ready, establishing a perimeter. Rory and the Doctor, Dutch and the Colonel piled out after them. They spread out to see what they could find.
Wheat fields, Rory thought, standing hip high in the waving stalks. He was getting heartily sick of wheat fields.
"Over here!" One of the Marines raised a hand, beckoning.
They trotted over to find a gap in the wheat, and what looked like a freshly dug grave.
"Oh my God!" Rory fell to his knees, his heart stopped in his chest. "Amy!"
He felt the Doctor's hand on his shoulder. "Steady on, Rory."
"But, Doctor!"
The Doctor knelt and ran his long fingers through the loamy soil at the edge of the mound. "Dutch!" he yelled over his shoulder.
The sheriff trotted over. "Scan that!" The Doctor pointed.
Dutch unlimbered his portable scanner and waved it over the site. Rory's heart beat desperately in his chest. Blue sky and birdsong faded behind the staticy numbness in his head, a sense of emptiness where Amy should be.
"Nothing," the young blonde sheriff said. He adjusted some controls. "Just dirt, no electromagnetic signature, no anomalous mass, no heat signature. Just a pile of fresh dirt."
Rory breathed out in a whoosh, bending forward like a man released from hell.
"Here!" another Marine yelled from the other side of the chopper. They trotted around, batting aside the wheat. It wasn't easy to run in a field of wheat, especially for the short Feyanorans. They found another pile of freshly dug earth.
"And I bet if we kept searching, we'll find another," the Doctor said.
They did.
The Doctor nodded, peering at the mound of dirt they'd found some distance from the chopper and the first two.
"Thought so. That's why you couldn't find them Colonel, why they dropped off your scans, they buried themselves. Probably couldn't fly fast enough to get away otherwise. Perfect natural camouflage."
"That wouldn't have stopped electromagnetic scans," Tildaith pointed out.
"No, but I'm betting they could have countered any scans with those antenna of theirs. They don't just receive signals, they send them too, how else do you think they communicate in space?"
"The more I hear about these creatures the less I like them," Dutch complained.
"Oh, they're magnificent creatures," the Doctor said jovially, rocking back and forth on his heels. He saw the disbelieving looks Rory, Dutch, and Tildaith were giving him. "What they're doing is wrong," he reassured them. "But as a lifeform they are fascinating."
"Just ignore him," Rory said, turning to the other men. "He gets like this sometimes."
"Thanks heaps, Rory," the Doctor said sarcastically.
"Well, you do."
"If the two of you are done bickering," Tildaith said. "We've still got 300 people missing and a hostile alien force on our hands. If you're satisfied that your friend is not here, then we need to continue the search."
"Quite right!" the Doctor said, sticking a finger in the air. He strode off back to the chopper.
Dutch and Rory followed. "Is he really always like this?" Dutch asked in sympathy.
"Yeah," Rory said.
Tildaith ordered his Marines back into the chopper and climbed aboard himself. He found the Doctor hunkered down at the small tech station, his knees poking up like an adult in a child's school chair.
"What about this?" The Doctor turned the monitor toward the Colonel. It showed a round, golden-gray dome in the middle of the sea of wheat. The color blended so perfectly that it was only the early morning shadow that gave it away.
As they watched the satellite feed, a tiny figure, like a bee, darted up out of the hole in the center of the mound.
-----
They were attacked by a flying squad of three Wirrn out on patrol before they reached the hive.
"Jam them!" the Doctor yelled over the scream of machine-gun fire from the turrets. He saw the communications officer's fingers move over his board as he instinctively obeyed, just as the chopper deformed its rotors and spun through a 360 degree roll. He and Rory grabbed for handholds as the straps meant for people half their size strained to keep them in their seats.
The maneuver flung off two of the Wirrn, which had latched onto its hull, and they were blasted to pieces by the turret gunners.
The third Wirrn actually managed to hold on and pried the side door open. It stuck its head in, one leg snatching at the Marine nearest to it. Its proboscis started smoking.
"Gas!"the Doctor yelled.
Colonel Tildaith, closest to the door, calmly reached up, jammed his pistol in the monster's neck and blew its head half off its neck.
The proboscis stopped smoking. The dangling head, dragged down by the weight of the body, slid down the gap in the door, and then slipped out, falling.
Tildaith calmly holstered his weapon, and wiped his ichor-coated hands on a black handkerchief. "Get these doors open and air this gas out of here," he ordered calmly.
Rory stared at the Doctor wide-eyed. He'd never seen a 12 year old kill a monster before.
The Doctor looked grim. But he helped open the doors on his side.
-----
"Lieutenant, did you manage to jam them?" Tildaith asked, looming over the pilot and communications officer in the cockpit.
"Yes sir," the lean, dark-skinned boy replied. "But I don't know if they managed to get off a message before that."
Tildaith considered. "Right, this is no longer a search and rescue, it is now a military operation. Pilot, turn us around and take us back to the farm."
Rory started to protest.
Tildaith held up a hand. "I'm not abandoning your friends. But I will not risk everything on them being able to pull down this one chopper. We’re the only ones who know what is going on. We need backup, firepower, and a plan."
Rory grit his teeth.
The Doctor said nothing.
-----
"Doctor, this is taking too long!" Rory said as the two of them stalked over the tarmac toward the sheriff's ATV. Rory felt like hell, he was gritty with wheat chaff, sticky from fear sweat, worn out from worrying, and he wanted a shower and Amy. Not necessarily in that order.
"I know, Rory." The Doctor had a heavy-jawed look about him that spoke ill for anyone who got in his way. "Tildaith has a point. We can't risk everything on the Wirrn managing to wipe out everyone who knows about them. That's what they were trying to do with that trap at the harvester. But we need to start moving on this."
The Doctor climbed into the ATV and immediately went to the back wall, opening storage panels one after the other. He kept talking, "There's a better than even chance that Amy is in that hive. And it would be foolish to rush in and confront an entire hive of Wirrn without backup. But that hive suggests the Wirrn are working to a plan. That's not something they built in a hurry. Yet they've managed to keep it secret until now.
"But this," he waved his hand at the deserted farm around them, still searching. "This suggests they're getting ready to act. They're not hiding any more and that is a cause for worry."
He found what he was looking for. He turned, holding a heavy, blocky pistol in his hand. He checked the magazine, chambered a round, and set the safety with a familiarity Rory wouldn't have expected. He turned it around and handed it to Rory butt first.
Rory stared at him in frightened amazement. "You're giving me a gun?" He took it tentatively.
The Doctor gave him a heavy, weary look. "As much as I don't like them, I like the idea of losing my friends even less."
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