All right, here it goes

[doldonius]

Not sure about the title yet, and shall probably change a lot, but gotta get rid of it for a while. Criticism expected, welcome, and encouraged.

Invasion

Someone entered. Allan tried to raise his eyes, and failed. He raised his head instead, and still had to close his left eye to obtain a decipherable picture.

"C'mon in, General," he said heartily.

"What's this stench?"

"Moonshine. I meant to aim for whisky, but it would take longer than... Uh, never mind. Help yourself."

"Forbidden substance?" the General was probably shocked, but Allan couldn't see him well enough to tell.

"Yes, General. Punishable on detection. So shoot me if you will, or sit down and join the party. I'd rather you shoot. Whatever comes might turn out to be much less pleasant."

"Those thugs never let us armed dirtside, so don't worry. Got any idea what's going on?"

"What day is it?"

"December 3."

"Then we've just lost contact with Brahe 778 and your sensors show a screenful of hostile targets converging on Solar System."

"How in the burning hell... It's top secret!"

"Maths, General. Pure first grade maths. The length of the jumps they had to make divided by their battleships' jump speed. Added a day for each colony between us and their closest fleet, and there it was, the exact date of the doom."

"Neat thinking... I guess."

"That's what I do for a living. Or, rather, used to do."

"Damn, you're getting me depressed. Where's that moonshine of yours?"

"Right behind you, on the lab table. A few glasses, too."

There was some clinking of glass, then the General must have taken a sip, as his breath was kicked out of him by the stinging liquid.

"Sit back and enjoy our last hours, General."

"Anything else we can do, McKoney?"

"No, General," Allan said firmly. "This war was lost the moment it was started."



A while ago he took a deep breath and said, "No, mister President."

Mr. George Scrub the XIII, the Most Democratically Elected Hereditary President of the Civilised Worlds, lifted his eyebrows in a vane attempt to comprehend the fact that someone contradicts him, but promptly fell back asleep. This was the usual outcome of his attempts to comprehend anything. Someone shouted, "Treason!"

"I was asked a direct question by my President," Allan returned calmly (or so he hoped,) "and gave the best answer I could give, just like a good constituent should have done. I might be wrong, but it's the only answer I have."

"Nonsense!" General Gordon cut in. "They're just a gang of meek civilian blobs of alien shit!"

"And that's the way we'd better let them be, General. Have you met any Gennara recently?"

"No... Why? They've been gone for years."

General Gordon seemed to have some comprehension problems as well, but at least managed to stay awake and support the conversation to an extent. He wasn't even drooling. Having spent two days among the Presidential Guard officers, Allan suddenly felt that he almost liked the old cutthroat.

"Exactly. To be even more exact, the last of the Gennara was eliminated by the Blobs 76 days after the Church of Genn attacked a remote Blob colony. That was the time it took the Blobs' newly built battleships to reach the last system inhabited by Gennara. Then, the Gennara were gone."

"These Gennara were a bunch of fanatics," Gordon snapped. "Declared wars upon everybody they met. Blobs or not, they wouldn't last for another year. Us, or maybe Lyrrcuds would've finished them off anyway."

"Not as fast, General, and not to the last cub. We wouldn't have hunted down every single one of them."

"That's what I say. These Blobs are just a sorry lot of savages without any sense of honour."

That was not what the General had said earlier, but Allan decided to let the matter be.

"General, the problem is that they're neither a lot, nor a gang," he said instead. "They're rather one single organism. That's why they wouldn't simply forgo those two colonies the Gennara managed to capture — losing half of their fleet in the process, I must add. The Blobs might not really need them just as we don't really need our toes, but they stroke back as surely as you would if anybody hit one of your toes."

"Crap! What kind of a fight could they give? Those pacifists..."

"They're no pacifists. Ask a Gennara if you ever meet one. They're reluctant to go to war just as you and I are reluctant to put our fingers into a mincer, and exactly for the same reason. You cannot just tell your finger that it's a soldier now and send it off to die. Whatever harms your finger, you feel the pain. So do they. Or, rather, it. You hurt one Blob, and they all feel the pain. They didn't want that war with the Gennara. It was forced onto them."

"That's what I..."

"They didn't want it, but they have won it. In their very own way. By destroying all Gennara, each and every one of them. Once again, General, they aren't truly individuals. They don't even quite understand the concept, not on any level beyond being intellectually aware that such thing exists. Something attacked them, and they destroyed this whole something. Leaving no survivors, because they themselves can restore their whole race if only one survives.

"And that's another problem if you're getting in a war with the Blobs. They're single cells — not quite literally true, but close enough. They can duplicate within 20 hours. It takes the halves 20 more hours to reach maturity, just give them enough food. And they don't even need to teach them, because every Blob simply shares their whole knowledge.

"Even if you can destroy their ships, and I wouldn't take this for granted, we cannot defeat their way of reproduction. It would take us at least a decade and a half to replace our lost. The Blobs will replace any losses less than half their whole population in less than a day, and with no attached costs. And they can do it over and over again, each day, every day."

"But you've said they don't really need these outer colonies."

"They may not need them, but they'll fight if we attack. That's not a question of what they need. That's the way they are."

The next day, the Most Democratically Elected President's computer generated image gave a speech that in essence meant, "You're soldiers now. Go die". The Blobs were the appointed target mincer. Allan told his dean he had to do some research. And he did it, too. The topic was alcohol.



"Damn it," Gordon said for the hundredth time. "We sure as hell underestimated these guys. And you were right all along."

"I also underestimated a couple of things," Allan woke up to answer modestly.

"Like what?"

"Hiccups. I had no idea they can be so violent."

"To hell with hiccups. The other one?"

"This puke of a President. Their whole bunch of... how did you say?"

"Shitheads. And they should take this as a compliment."

"Absolutely. I know I used to be a heartless bastard myself at the exams, but actually killing my whole own species... It doesn't add up, General."

A shrill beep came out of General's pockets. He fished out a commtab, peered at it for a short while and said, "It's Patrick, McKoney. My army's gone. They're in orbit."

Allan saluted with his glass and finished its contents in two giant gulps. "Then, that's got to be it. Billions of years evolving, building cultures and, you know, all that. And gone in, you know. The seconds it took an idiot to babble an order."

Gordon undertook a dangerous journey to the lab table and brought another chemical bottle.

"Only two left," he said, trying with moderate success to refill their glasses.

"Should do. It's about, you know, to start... right about now."

"Any idea what it's gonna be like, McKoney?"

"Nope. None noticed anything but the Gennara. And Gennara, you know, left no records. Might've been eaten."

"Why?"

"How else could single cells fight?"

"Damn it."

They did their best to finish that bottle, and failed.



First, Allan thought he was being digested by a Blob. Then, he wished he were. Every movement he attempted, every sound he heard, and especially every bit of broken glass shining on the floor under the morning sun were causing him severe headaches. Someone groaned nearby.

"The hell's going on, McKoney?"

"Hangover," he managed to say, and the effort made his heart pound. "Never expected to live long enough. Wish I didn't."

"To hell with it. Why are we still alive?"

"No idea," Allan shrugged, and promptly regretted it. "Water. We must drink water."

He went to the lab table, disconnected his apparatus from the water pipe and sucked a few gulps from the tube. The effect was most interesting.

"Get over here, Gordon!" he shouted. "It works!"

He had to fill an empty bottle and come to the rescue, though.



They were feeling much better in an hour or so when Gordon said, "All right. Time for a little recon. You with me?"

"Let's go and take a look," Allan shrugged. "Get some data and analyse it. Unless, that is, it gets us first."

"That's the spirit!"

The first thing that didn't look right was the checkpoint at the building exit. President's Men controlling it were nowhere to be seen. Allan took a picture from the wall and threw it towards the door. Checkpoint gates yelled and turned on red lights sensing the picture's metal frame, but nobody showed up. Gordon looked into the guard box, raised his eyebrows and picked up two gun belts complete with guns and spare batteries.

"Fully charged and in order," he said handing one to Allan and putting the other one on. He definitely liked being armed, and Allan discovered that he liked being armed as well. "How does one shoot this?" he asked. Gordon explained, destroying the gates in the process. Allan looked around for a similar target and smiled as two surveillance cameras turned into hot debris.

"That was one ghastly smile," Gordon commented. "You know, you might have made a good soldier."

"Huh? Thanks, I think."

The campus was silent. Almost. Allan caught a laughter coming from Computing and Communications' window and they went in taking out another security gate as they entered.

"Hey! Mr. Attins? Daniel?" Allan shouted.

"Get in here, gentlemen," someone answered cheerfully.

It was Roy Utochka from System Administration, peering at his favourite old viewscreen.

"Gone," he announced. "All of them, gone."

Allan looked at the switching pictures and realised that they were coming from security cameras all around the campus and the town. The President's Men were nowhere to be seen. Before he could say anything, though, Roy put his hand up, pointed to the screen and switched to a view of something very familiar — and very empty.

Actually, Allan was there a few days ago, and so was Gordon. It was the President's council room.

"Can you magnify this?" he asked. Roy clicked a button a few times.

Right below the throne lay the insignia of the Most Democratically Elected President, in seven neat rows.



The next data source stood right outside campus. A full sized Blob, but with that faint blueish membrane glow peculiar to freshly divided specimens.

"See?" Allan said. "They didn't even need to send a full complement of troopers. One quarter of them, food, three days en route, and there you are."

The Blob started to move at them. Gordon's hand jerked towards his holster but froze halfway even before Allan could interfere. Gordon reached for the test-tube in his pocket instead and took a sip.

"Hello, Professor. Hello, General." The Blob's voice was a perfect baritone of an accomplished lecturer. They — it — learnt each and every method of communication they encountered, even added pseudo-organs to their bodies to do so, and obviously took great pride in using them with class. "177th Birds of Prey report that a group of Rollach battleships is approaching Marrey. They're waiting for your orders."

"177th? Kossela?"

Gordon reached for his commtab, switched it on, glanced at the Blob in utter bewilderment and typed in a code.

"Kossela?" he said again. Then, after a pause, "Casualties?" His eyes grew even wider and fixed on the Blob.

"All right. Here's the situation, Jerry. We also lost the President's Men, and from what security cameras show, all the politicians and the President himself are gone, too. So consider that damn treaty dissolved. Give these bastards a warning, then one warning shot, and if they don't turn back at once, give them hell. — Sure, would be nice. Tell you what, you've got plenty of your birds sitting idle. Now think how many families on Marrey want their girls and boys back home. — Jerry, I've just seen a professor of exology dispose of two spycams in five shots. — Neither are the Rollies. They're slavers, not fighters. — Already? That's my point, Jerry. They'd rather back off than fight any day. Train these folks enough to look scary and make sure Rollies know who they are. — Sing 'Let my people go' to them and destroy something valuable until they make up their stinking minds. — You too. Over and out."

He switched off, still staring at the Blob. "Don't know how you did it, folks," he said finally, "but thanks. And I've got to run, there's my whole army out there not quite knowing what Universe they're in."



"I thought you were eliminating threats much more thoroughly," Allan said when Gordon was gone.

"Oh, the threat is done with. The threat to both our species, I must add."

"Wait a second. Do you mean they weren't..."

"I've often told you how much information you're losing with your sense of smell being so limited. Otherwise, you'd notice it yourselves, and long ago."

A ripple went over the Blob's outer membrane.

"I strongly advise, Professor, to keep the fragments we have saved for your scientists under the same conditions and with the same precautions as those other deadly organisms we talked about back then. We don't want this strain to reappear ever again."

"Neither do we," Allan replied, his hand stroking his gun. "Neither do we."