Tugboats closed in and towed the spaceship back to the piers and loading bays that stretched for over a hundred kilometers along the coast. This was the main planetary spaceport that MorningLightMountain had built to handle the cargo flying between the planet and its offworld territories. Thousands of flights arrived and departed every year, pouring heat and mildly radioactive contaminants into the local environment. Nothing grew within a hundred kilometers of the spaceport anymore, no crops or weeds of any kind, turning the land behind the shore to a desert of sodden lifeless soil. Even the sea was dead, a choppy expanse of gray water with a thin skin of ochre scum.
Once the ship was docked, a sub-herd of soldier motiles came on board. They were slightly smaller than standard motiles, with better sight and hearing; they could move faster as well, and had a much greater agility, though they lacked any long-term endurance. Encased in dark armor they were two and a half meters tall, with electronic sensors complementing their natural ones and limb strength enhanced mechanically. Every arm gripped some kind of weapon. Under direct microwave linkage with MorningLightMountain, they approached the two bipedal alien motile captives with considerable wariness. The immotile wasn’t sure of their potential, so it was taking every precaution. The compartment they’d been confined to was heavily shielded, and they’d been under constant observation for the whole flight back from the asteroid fragment where their ship had been lurking. Physically, they had done nothing, remaining almost motionless for the whole time. Their suits, however, had been emitting those strange microwave pulses almost continually.
When the soldier motiles came into the compartment both creatures stood upright. MorningLightMountain watched the process with considerable interest. Their legs bent in the middle, pushing the main bulk upward. They seemed to have no trouble standing still while balancing on only two legs. A great range of electromagnetic emissions were pouring out of the suits again, the usual fast short pulses. MorningLightMountain ignored them and told the soldiers to load both alien motiles onto the waiting ground vehicle. As the sub-herd moved forward to grab them, the taller of the two swung its upper torso limbs around knocking their pincers away, and tried to speed past them. It could move surprisingly fast, but the soldiers were ready for it, and lifted its twisting body off the ground, carrying it down the ramp to the waiting ground vehicle. The second, slightly smaller alien motile offered no resistance as it was dragged along behind. Both of them were dropped into the cage. A force field flicked on around the mesh.
MorningLightMountain drove the vehicle along the road connecting the spaceport to its original valley. Long black clouds boiled overhead as they did ceaselessly these days. Rain lashed down across the road’s stone and metal surface, warm water saturated with soot particles. The road was hemmed in on both sides by buildings of toughened plastic, shielding manufacturing machinery from the acidic rain. Big vehicles shuttled between them, carrying components around. Herd after herd of motiles worked around the huge blocks of industrial machinery, servicing and repairing. They didn’t live as long as they used to two thousand years ago, especially in and around the spaceport. Many of them had sores and scabs mottling their skin from cold radiation burns. Limbs often trembled and shook from the damage that heavy metal contamination inflicted on their nervous systems. They ate from troughs filled with a treaclelike nutrient sludge that was processed in food factories scattered across the territory’s farmlands. Sensor stalks twitched constantly and gave poor visual reception, degraded by airborne irritants gushing out of the refineries.
In the mountains behind the industrial landscape where the radioactivity was considerably reduced, fields cloaked every slope in a drab unvarying gray-green patina. Plants struggled out of the thin sandy soil, forced into overactive life by chemical fertilizers that were spread across the terraces by farming motiles and tracked vehicles. All wild plants had been eradicated from the planet now, surrendering their valuable land to the intense agricultural cultivation vital to feed the billions of motiles.
