Bitemarks 5.7

Bitemarks 5.7

Ed didn't realised he'd passed out, or whether he was really conscious. The sky was black and the stars twinkled, vanishing entirely every time he blinked. Somewhere around him he could hear the soldiers moving around. He caught the faint voice of General Tober.
"That kid's got balls. Stevens, see what you can do for him."
A soldier's face loomed over him. He spoke to Ed and snapped his fingers to the left and right. Ed's eyes lazily followed them.
"He's dazed sir. And fatigued." said Stevens, "Don't think he's concussed though." He looked down at Ed again. "I'm gonna reseat your jaw. This is gonna hurt, try not to flinch."
Ed nodded, as best he could, and braced himself. Stevens clicked his jaw back into place and he'd been right, it hurt. Ed winced but managed to restrain the urge to flinch or yell. Stevens offered him a hand and pulled him up into a sitting position. Ed put a hand gently on his chin.
"That feels funny." he managed.
"You're gonna need medical attention and some painkillers." said Stevens, "Get that jaw looked at."
Now that Ed was sat up he could see General Tober, Alf and the other soldiers and the body of Skarletta, her head a few feet away.
"My men are shutting that radar terminal down." said Tober.
Alf shook his head.
"It may be too late for that." he pointed at the broken device on Skarletta's back. "Even if she was only transmitting for a few seconds..."
"How will we know?" asked Tober.
"We won't." said Alf, "Not until they arrive. We have to assume she was successful."
"A whole race of those things?"
"Perhaps." said Alf, "Maybe they died out long ago. Maybe they're so far away we'll have died out before they arrive. Or maybe we're in big big trouble."
"They could annihilate us." said Tober.
"No." said Ed, still nursing his jaw. "They don't want to kill us."
Tober looked confused.
Ed looked down at his free hand, still devoid of fingerprints from the acid.
"Every human has a unique fingerprint." he mused, "A great way of keeping track."
"What are you saying, Ed?" asked Alf.
Ed stood up.
"It's all too convenient. Our blood sustains them. They can pass on a portion of their strength, making weaker copies of themselves? All the better to keep the cattle in line. Livestock, all uniquely branded. They don't want to kill us. They want to control us."
"Why?" said Tober. "Why would they need us?"
"I don't know." said Ed, "But my guess would be that they're an old, dying race, technologically advanced, practically immortal but unable to breed. Maybe they created us, maybe they put us on this planet, who knows. But without them here to enslave us, control us, we overbred, became independent, developed our own technology. They left us here so long we evolved."
Alf snapped his fingers.
"The AB blood type!"
Ed nodded gently.
"But then why didn't it react with Beaclair's blood?"
"'Cos Beauclair was still essentially human. The mother was the only alien. The others were merely granted a taste of the master's power to keep everyone else in line. I guess whatever plan they had for us was put on hold when the Mother was buried in the ice."
The long wail of a siren signalled the arrival of Ed's ambulance.
"So what now?" said Tober.
"Well General", said Alf, "My 'boy' here is going to take a well earned rest while the rest of my field team finds the spawn this thing left behind."
"There's more of them?"
"Weaker ones, we hope. We'll have to work together to take them down while my scientists learn what they can from the alien's body."
"Your scientitsts?" said Tober, "This is a military situation."
"General please. We have diagnostic equipment that doesn't even exist until we announce it. Right now you and I need to prepare for an invasion that might never come..."