The armor would have protected the raft’s crew against the philes, except that the force of the craft’s impact was enough to start seams all across the domed surface.
They poured from every building in sight, philes of every size. Some of them leaped aboard the raft even as momentum carried it cartwheeling down the street. Their timing was as flawless as that of the phile that had first leaped onto a grip on the survey craft’s underside. Their numbers were staggering. Even without the chicks clinging to the backs of some of the females—of most of the females—there were thousands of the blue-scaled killers in view.
Tracks of dazzling orange began to tear pavement apart and rake the philes that leaped across its length. A phile whose legs and haunches had been vaporized continued to crawl on its elbows toward the disabled raft. The expression on its dying face could only have been delight.
Covering fire from the other survey craft could not slow the tidal motion of the philes. Waves of activity were visible in the far distance, surging toward the first chance of prey in days, weeks. And the downed craft already boiled with ravenous life even if no more philes arrived to fight for a purchase among their frenzied fellows.
Fragments of armor plate glittered in the air. The philes were tearing it away so violently that the raft seemed to have exploded. The orange energy-beams ripped a brilliant, useless circle just beyond the fallen craft. Beasts shriveled away like insects in a flame, but if they survived at all, they survived to tear deeper into the vessel.
One of the crewmen was dragged out to dissolve in seconds among the claws and teeth of countless starving philes. It had been a bristly octopod like the one who led RyRelee to the Coran’s chamber.
The survey craft disintegrated in an orange flash. The point of view rocketed upward with a suddenness that might have been simple reality instead of a result of editing the transmission. The city gleamed for a moment, purified by distance of the unchecked hordes of starving philes that now were its sole population. In another instant the exploding thermonuclear device transformed the distant city into a gorgeous pearl, expanding across the surface of the planet.
The next image was from farther away still. It took a moment for RyRelee to realize the scale. The small sun glowing against blackness had been a planet. It had been Doronin before the Cora cleansed it once and for all.
“That could be Earth in a hundred years or less,” said the Coran. “You must track down the phile and destroy it, emissary. And you must act very quickly now. Should this phile be a male, then once it is destroyed our concern regarding this world will be allayed. However, should this be a gravid female like the one that got loose on Doronin. . . . Then, if there is any indication—any suspicion at all—that she may have produced a brood, our only recourse will be to sterilize the entire land mass and hope that other cultures will develop from other regions of this planet.
“So you understand, RyRelee, the extreme importance of your mission on Earth.”
“Yes . . .” said the emissary very softly, his thoughts already totally absorbed in his mission.
But he was thinking that fate plays strange tricks and that it was fortunate the Cora themselves lacked telepathic ability. An agent in this dangerous profession often reaped wealth from clandestine operations of his own, and there were fortunes to be made through smuggling beasts for blood sports, if one had all the right connections. The starship that had crashed on Earth had been acting under RyRelee’s orders before the disaster, and RyRelee knew with certainty that the escaped phile was a gravid female.
His real mission would be to make equally certain that it was kept alive without the knowledge of the Cora. Earth would prove a perfect breeding ground, and fate had given RyRelee the chance to make good on a scheme that had almost fatally miscarried.
Chapter Four
It waited in its burrow beneath the river bank, waited patiently for its wounds to heal—patiently, for it watched the boats pass up and down the Tiber, and it knew it was only a short matter of time before its red dreams were fulfilled.