The shuttles had lifted off for a moment and used their drives to scorch the sand, preventing the sand-crawlers from breaking through to the surface and coming to attack the humans as they walked out onto the sand. The Marines had spread out and were maintaining a perimeter, although Simon privately suspected that some of them wanted trophies to take back to their base. One of the crawlers — a spider-like creature that they rarely saw openly — had been yanked out of its nest and torn apart by one of the Marines. Simon envied them their powered armour. Without it, they would probably have been forced into stony ground too, not unlike the settlers.
“Hurry,” one of the Marines ordered. At Simon’s request, a small party had been sent to contact the Crabs and invite them to leave as well, although he’d detected little enthusiasm for the job. Humans had been told for so long that they were vastly superior to any alien race that even the decent ones believed it. “We may not have much time.”
The women were already onboard the shuttles. Given their condition, the Marine CO had ordered that they be sent up first, in order for the doctors to take a look at them. Simon wondered if Alice would want to stay with him, if she discovered other options, yet it didn’t matter. Restoring them all to health would take time and effort. Simon turned to look back towards Haven and smiled. The town probably wouldn’t last a month without the humans attempting to maintain it, and then there would be no trace that they had ever lived on the surface of the godforsaken world. The bandits would be all that was left of humanity on the penal world.
He looked back towards the shuttle as he stepped through the hatch, climbing into the ship’s interior. It felt wonderful to be in an air conditioned compartment again, although it was a mocking reminder that he and his fellow settlers stank. Once they were in orbit, who knew what would happen to them? He hadn’t had a proper shower in years. Swimming in the planet’s lakes and oceans was nothing more than a quick way of committing suicide.
And then he heard the howling.
Neil watched, keeping his expression blank with an effort, as the aliens marched into one of the shuttles. Actually, calling it a march was being generous, he decided; it looked more like a scuttle. The Crabs hadn’t believed the Marines at first — why should they, when the only Marines they had encountered beforehand had been the ones who had boarded their ships — yet the sight of the shuttles had convinced them. Only a few had chosen to leave the planet though, much to Neil’s surprise; the remainder had chosen to remain in their underwater colony and stay away from the human race.
His head snapped up inside his helmet as his audio receptors picked up the howling. It was coming from human mouths, yet there was nothing human in it, as if an alien was speaking through their vocal cords. His sensors picked them up a moment later, tall figures sneaking through the jungle, heading right towards the shuttles. Before he could do more than raise his weapon, the jungle parted, revealing the bandits in all of their glory. Neil shuddered. Whatever they had once been, they had forsaken it long ago; they had even forsaken their humanity. They were monsters.
The bandits were naked, carrying nothing, but spears and a handful of projectile weapons that they carried as if they intended to use them as clubs. Their eyes were bright with madness, a madness that sought to devour everything on the planet. The Empire had dumped thousands of criminally-insane men on the surface, yet being on the planet — surviving when so many others had died — had only made their condition worse. He understood, now, why the women of the settlement had been so scared of the bandits. These weren’t just evil men; these were men for whom the concept of right and wrong had faded away long ago, if they even had the intellect to understand how far they had fallen. The human beast, stripped down to its essentials, was not a pretty sight. The bandits only wanted to survive. They had literally nothing else to live for.
“My God,” one of the Marines breathed. “Sir…?”
“Hold your positions,” Neil ordered, over the secure channel. The howling of the bandits was growing worse, as if they were posturing over an issue beyond the comprehension of a sane human being. They lifted their primitive weapons and waved them at the Marines, stamping their feet and howling their feelings; they weren’t, as far as he could tell, actually speaking in any language. They might have lost their grasp of the human tongue long ago. “Let the Crabs get into their shuttles and then we can fall back…”
One of the Crabs, just for a second, came into view and all of the bandits stared at it. A moment later, their howls grew louder, as if the mere sight of the alien had brought on a mental shift. They seemed, almost, to be shouting out a word, although Neil’s suit couldn’t translate it. That was odd — as far as he knew, few had been on the planet long enough for it to develop a dialect of its own — yet it was the least of his worries. The lead bandit had lifted a primitive stone axe, held it to the sky as if he expected the local star to bless it, and then hurled it right at Neil’s armour. It glanced off, of course, yet it was the signal for the bandits. They all started hurling their axes at the Marines and, past them, at the Crabs.
“Shoot the axes down,” Neil ordered. His weapon interlinked with the suit’s systems, spitting out bursts of plasma towards the axes, destroying them in flight. He half-expected the bandits to realise what they were up against and start running, but instead they charged — right at the Marines. Neil didn’t have a moment to act before one of them landed on top of his suit, clawing at the armour. He saw the man’s eyes through the visor and shuddered. There was no sign of any rationality there. “Take them out.”
He plucked his attacker off his armour and threw him towards the edge of the sand, where the crawlers were lying in wait. The bandit didn’t have a moment to scream before a crawler appeared and gnashed his head off, dragging the remainder of his body under the sand. The other bandits were rapidly disposed of by the Marines, yet none of them had the sense to run, to flee the gods in invincible armour. It dawned on Neil that, just perhaps, the bandits had wanted to die, that they hadn’t wanted to remain alive on the penal world. Or maybe not; if they’d wanted to die, their world offered many ways to do it, some almost painless. There were already signs of life stirring in the jungle, drawn by the smell of blood and dead bodies.
“Get into the shuttles,” he ordered. He took a moment to check in with the other Marine parties. Between them, they’d liberated nearly a hundred thousand prisoners. It looked impressive, but he knew that the Empire had funnelled over two million prisoners onto the penal world. What had happened to the others? There was no way to know for sure, but it was easy to guess. Their penal world had killed them. “It’s time to get the hell off this planet.”
“And thank god for that,” one of the Marine said.
Neil didn’t bother to argue. He shared the same sentiments.
“The shuttles are returning to their ships now, Admiral,” the communications officer reported. “The freighters are already preparing to flicker out to the rendezvous point.”