Goddess of the Galacticide Episode 67 - Point Attacks
Updated: Aug 18
Cha Dzeeny was Head of Security in name only; the monster emerging from the shadows was the one who ran this colony.
The administrative pod’s interior was dimly lit at best, with many dark spots caused by its concentric interior wall arrangement. The clickety-clacks of the many legs drew closer, audible despite the pod’s floor being soft enough for even his body’s feet to sink into it enough to make it feel like the top of the planet’s natural plant cover. Everything was soft here, making one’s stance feel slightly off balance. The only solid ground he remembered for many orbits was on the dark side of this world, when they set multi-phase charges, leveling ridges and mountain chains so that the green wave—and their colony—had a smoother ride around the world.
38 legs—he counted them each time. The large aliens he had seen all looked very much the same, but had varying numbers of legs growing out of their underbellies. It wasn’t conclusive proof, but a sign that he dealt with the same individual during each of these briefings.
The translator was late, as they always were, leaving Cha and Terg standing in the pod’s twilight in mutual annoyance. The alien’s dark, hardened shell, encapsulating his body, large enough to fill Cha’s and Baaii’s living room, had no features communicating anything, but Cha knew Terg was just as displeased with these meetings as he was. Maybe the spores connected them with the aliens, too.
The little translator shuffled in. It was of the trash heap species, 95% of its brethren being discarded before they matured. The small creature, reaching up to Cha’s knees, took a position between the two conversation partners. Terg lifted one of his legs and plopped it onto the little creature’s back, almost breaking one of its fragile wings off. The little alien didn’t seem to care. Never saw one fly; maybe it didn’t matter.
The translator spit in front of Cha, narrowly missing his boots. Cha bend down and pushed a handheld chemstick into the gooey excrete. Its little screen lit up.
“What is your report on the perimeter breach today?” read the text.
“We had no fatalities, but one injured.”
The alien did not care about human losses, but Cha always began his reports with this topic.
“Intruders were stealth vines, highly adapted at mimicking colony structure features. They seem to understand the building layouts and their purpose, as they now—for the third time—attack the dzõd nursery structure, and selected the closest perimeter fence as their breach point.”
The translator alien wiggled. Cha held the chemstick in front of its head-claws and pushed the trigger. A thin stream of clear paste emerged from its tip and dropped onto the floor. The alien slurped it up like a delicacy. How did it translate the chemically encoded message to the large, dark hulk? Was touch really enough? The big beasts sometimes laid their legs on the females, but with great care, almost reverence. It was very clear who stood where in the touch-me-to-talk hierarchy.
The translator regurgitated more of Terg’s questions.
“You make it sound like there is a master plan behind these attacks. Is it not just as likely, or even more so, that the vines, driven by instinct, simply attack the buildings closest to the fence?”
“Maybe,” said Cha Dzeeny. “But why would we have a critical building like the nursery so close to the fence then?”
“Production is not your domain.”
That wasn’t an answer. Terg was defensive about this because either he made this bad call or would have to admit that a sensible security layout was decided somewhere above his station. Like Cha, the mighty Terg could also just be part of the plan.
“No, it isn’t,” said Cha, “but securing these facilities is. The last stealth vine nearly made it into the nursery itself. We need to move the females, or the entire pod structure, to a more secure location. Or expand the perimeter. But for that I’d need more personnel—”
Cha hesitated. “—human or otherwise.”
The next spit streak was short.
“We will consider this. Anything else, Head of Security?”
“Yes. When vine aggression was more common in the past, we’ve seen probing attacks like these. Sometimes they had a clear target; sometimes they were diversions. I’d like to perform a colony-wide screen for stealth vines in case they sneaked in someplace else.”
“That is not necessary. Anything else, Head of Security?”
Did Terg even listen to what Cha said? Or was the urgency lost in translation? Why were they still sticking a clunky handheld into alien slime to communicate after all these orbits? Was that really the best the machines serving the Goddess could come up with? He wanted to shoot the machines. He had blood on his hands.
Cha shook his head. “No, nothing else. He can take his foot off your back now.”
***
“It went how it always goes,” said Cha.
Baaii’s automatic laid on the kitchen floor in parts, and she polished the main barrel. She didn’t look up from her post-combat routine, as if that would save her from Cha’s frustration.
“He barely listened to my report and then couldn’t get rid of me fast enough.”
“Terg is an alien, Cha. They think differently.”
“But they’re not stupid. At least they’re not supposed to be. Traveling the galaxy, spreading the word, you wouldn’t hire some mpetsak to do that.”
Baaii stopped scrubbing and looked up.
“Don’t mock the Goddess.”
“I don’t. But you got to admit, if these guys were not capable, they wouldn’t be doing important work.”
Cha took Baaii’s silence as grudging agreement.
“It’s the language barrier. It separates them from us, always has. I don’t trust the translators.”
“The chemsticks or the winged workers?”
“Both,” said Cha. “Neither. I’m not sure if my proposal got translated at all.”
“What did you propose?”
“A detailed scan for stealth vines, everywhere across the colony. I think we’re being tricked by those point attacks. They could be anywhere right now.”
Baaii left her weapon parts and laid her arm around Cha. She nodded toward the kitchen table.
“Sit.”
“I know what you’re going to say. But as Head of Security, I’m supposed to be paranoid.”
“What happened to ‘it is safe here, let’s make humans’?”
“Lapse in judgment.” That came out wrong. “Not the ‘I want to have children with you’ part, but the safety assessment.”
Her face didn’t move; he wrecked the mood again. Time to regroup his thoughts so he wouldn’t scratch a deeper wound.
“Remember when the incinerator went online?”
She wrinkled her nose.
“Hard to forget—smelled even worse than the red mist.”
“Did you know that vine attacks had been down to near zero before it fired up?”
She tilted her head.
“No.”
“I logged the attacks. They restarted after we quit dumping our dead aliens into landfills outside the colony.”
“You logged the attacks?” asked Baaii. “Did Terg ask you to do that?”
“He doesn’t ask me anything of consequence. He treats every breach as a big surprise, a singular event. But I think they’re connected.”
“But attacks came in waves before. They peaked, then stopped for a while. Look, I take these plants out there serious. They’re clever and dangerous—for plants. But—“
“The first big wave of attacks slowed down when alien production began. And attacks remained rare until the incinerator.”
“That’s ancient history. You logged all that?”
“I’m not just a guy with a gun.” He smiled at Baaii. “Sorry to disappoint.”
“I know that, Cha. But what’s your point?”
“The local ecosystem tolerated us a lot more when we dumped our bio garbage into the greenery, and only got antagonistic again when we puffed it as ash into the atmosphere. Why? And why attack now, the same place each time, with spectacle? Bent fences, severed limbs. The stealth vines I saw were sophisticated enough to reach anywhere in the colony undetected.”
“They’re plants, Cha. Yes, real tricksters for sure, but does that make them strategic masterminds?”
“If I’m wrong, then that’s great, and we’re safe.”
“And Terg told you not to look around?”
“Well, the translator said it ‘wasn’t necessary’.”
Cha saw Baaii’s grin.
“But he didn’t explicitly forbid it.”
Baaii stood up, holding out her hand to Cha.
“Give me a few passes to put this automatic back together.”
“And then?”
“Then we’ll do the only thing that will shut you up, Cha Dzeeny. Scan this magiis colony for intruders.”
Copyright © 2026 Bert Oliver Boehmer. All rights reserved. No part of this serialized novel may be reproduced, reposted, or distributed in any form without the prior written permission of the author. The creation of any derivative works (including translations, adaptations, or other transformations) is likewise prohibited without permission. The use of any portion of this material for training or developing artificial intelligence or other machine learning models is strictly forbidden.
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