Never Drop War Beasts Onto a Human Planet

The Carveth empire had a pretty unique way of conquering planets.

Instead of blasting military targets with orbital strikes and then sending in soldiers backed up by fighters and armored vehicles to defeat the remaining sapients on the planets of interest, they would instead drop genetically created war beasts onto the planet and then return in a year or two to take over once the sapients had been slaughtered.

It was a quite effective tactic and had been used for over 364 years since they found a planet full of ferocious beasts they were able to retrieve samples from with a great loss of life. After tinkering with their genes, the beasts were put to use in cleansing planets.

A small genetic change to ensure that the beasts would die after 15 months without a specific chemical compound only found on their home planet, and they had the perfect weapons.

Until they found a planet named dirt or ground or something.

The seeding ship slipped into the planet’s atmosphere under full stealth mode and relying only on passive sensors to ensure the primitives would not detect even the slightest hint of electronic noise.

As the ship circled the planet mapping the various landmasses, they drop landing pods with the war beast cargo in efficient locations. Not too close to large population centers but not too far away that the beasts couldn’t get to them.

The pods were the only technical connection to the Carveth empire and unfortunately they had to have a certain level of technology in them to safely land and release the beasts. But the commanders of the empire decided that the risk of the primitives finding and using the pods was very low due to them having to deal with the hordes of war beasts rampaging through their cities.

Once the ship had delivered the last pod, mapped the last frozen continent and determined where the major population centers were, they signaled the pods to release the beasts, and then the ship left orbit and warped out for the main fleet to continue their planning for the new acquistion in a years time.

Sally and her little brothers were wandering in the forest again looking for something to defeat the boredom of school vacation. They were getting under their parents feet a bit too much so they were told to go out and play, giving them the freedom to go a bit further than their parents expected.

They had decided to go deeper into the woods instead of down to the beach and things were getting a bit quieter than usual. The normal animal sounds had been lacking and it made the forest feel weird. Usually there were birds singing and small animals scurrying in the leaves but today there was more of a waiting feel to the forest.

As they came to a creek, Sally noticed a weird looking pile of purple fur or something on the far bank. It looked like an animal but there was something off about it to her eyes and she felt a bit scared. Of course as soon as they saw the strange animal, her brothers went splashing through the creek to get as close to it as they could.

“Frank, Robert, come back here. It could be dangerous.”

“Nah sis. It’s hurt. I can see something oozing out of it’s leg. Hey Frank, how many legs does this have? I can see six legs.”

“Yeah. What animal has 6 legs? I know insects have six legs and spiders have eight, but this isn’t an insect or spider, it’s got fur or something like fur. Sally what is this animal?”

Sally went over to her brothers to make sure they were safe. She was their elder sister and that was her job. As she got closer she could see that the boys were right and this animal had six legs. The legs looked slightly different to the dog’s legs she knew about and the fur didn’t look right either. The fur looked like it was trying to change color but was too weak and went back to the purple color she first saw.

As she got to her brothers she could see the animal was panting and had an injury on a couple of it’s legs. The blood was a strange orangish color and nothing like she knew about. The beast started to whine and it looked so pitiful that Sally felt sorry for it even though it was so strange looking.

It didn’t look like a cat, dog, dingo, kangaroo or any of the animals she had seen at the zoo or home or even seen in pictures in her books. The strangest part is that it had six legs and was purple. Sally didn’t know what to do and was feeling like she should get an adult to come out when her brothers decided to try and pick it up.

The animal tried to snarl when they picked it up but it didn’t sound good and soon just whimpered and panted in what Sally thought was pain. At this she told her brothers to put it down and get a bandage out of their emergency kit. Basically it was just a small bag with some matches, bandages, a space blanket and plastic bags that they carried with them everywhere.

She told the boys to get some water in the plastic bag so she could clean up the wounds and then bandage them then they would see about carrying it home for their parents to look at.

It took them a couple hours to return home but all three kids made it with their find and as they came up the track to the house, their father walked around the corner and saw them.

“Okay you kids. What do you have there. It better be something important to bring it home or your mother is going to give you a good talking to.”

“Dad, we found a strange animal. It was wounded and we bandaged it but we thought we better bring it to you because it is weird.”

“What do you mean weird?”

“Well it’s purple and has six legs.”

“What the hell? Are you kids joking with me? Because it isn’t funny to lie like that.”

“No dad. We really did find a purple animal. It’s got six legs and two of them are wounded. It’s weak so we gave it some water and brought it back. It’s funny because it doesn’t really feel as heavy as what it looks like.”

“Okay, lets have a look at your beast. And it better be purple or there’s going to be a lack of TV for all three of you for a few days.”

Well a few minutes later and the TV time was saved but dad was seriously shocked and called for Sharon to come out quick smart and bring the phone.

Their mother came out asking why she had to bring the phone and she came to a complete stop when she saw a heap of purple fur laying on a couple space blankets with a couple white bandages around a couple legs.

Twenty minutes later and after answering all the normal questions about where, when, who, what, why and repeating the answers when the questions repeated, the final decision was to call the vet to come out and see if he knew what the heck they were dealing with.

The kids brought the animal up to the veranda and put it down on a couple old blankets out of the sun with some water. They wanted to get some food for it but no one knew what it ate and whether it would be allergic to anything.

The vet arrived after a long 45 minutes and was curious why he was summoned. After 5 minutes of staring, his training kicked in and he started to examine the beast.

He asked Sharon and Adam to help him and was getting Sally to write down notes as he thought of them during his examination.

“Okay Sally, the beast is covered in what looks to be purple fur but it is trying to change color like a chameleon. The beast is too weak from the look of it to be able to complete the color change and thus it is defaulting, I mean, staying this purple color.

“Adam, can you help me turn it over gently? That’s it. Sharon, can you get me a old cloth and wet it down so we can wash it to check for any more injuries. Yeah that’s it. I can see some scrapes and what look like bruises but I can’t see indications of any broken bones.”