"Did I just see that lifeform being brought back to life after a fatal injury?" he asked.
"We believe so," Shivia said, "Needless to say, we have to know more about what happened. Is it some general breakthrough that can be applied to our longevity programs, or, more likely, is it some specialism in the design of this creature that allows for it to be revivified to continue fighting?"
"If that is the case," the admiral mused, "it would revolutionize warfare. Soldiers that keep getting up to continue the fight."
"One of our researchers joked that they were zombies. The name sort of stuck. Now we are calling them Z-Forms."
"Z-Forms," the admiral tasted the word in his mouth.
"This is top secret, admiral," Shivia said, "We don't want a hint of this technology getting out till we understand it and control it."
"Of course, Shivia. And I am taking a personal interest in this research. Just tell me what you need and I shall make sure you have it."
"For now," Shivia said, "I need reinforcements. We have to capture some of these creatures so we can experiment on them."
"Consider it done."
***
It wasn't long before Shivia's wishes were being acted on. Only days later, on Jade Stone, all Skydancer's ground forces were being committed at the site of the seismic event. Dropship after dropship arrived with wave after wave of drones, depositing them at the entrance to the opening in the cliff. Among the drones were a sprinkling of humans, mostly spread among their drone charges, but one group was standing together, a group of elite soldiers. Keen and Punter had been attached to their unit, and Keen was standing with the commander of the elite unit, a man called Croop, while Punter was mingling with the rest of the team.
Keen had been expecting some small amount of rest after her close call when Base South was overrun but instead, here she was, hurled back down to the surface with a bunch of gung-ho fools that were going to drag her right down the throat of the biggest concentration of hostiles they could find, and, to top it all off, it was raining. It was a depressing kind of gray rain that came down vertically from the sky. Her armor insulated her from the damp and from the cold, but the rain still cut visibility, made footing treacherous and just plain brought her down.
"What's the plan?" she asked Croop.
Croop hadn't volunteered any information about his rank, so she didn't feel she had to show him any particular deference. If she wanted anything, she just went up and asked him, and he hadn't shown any displeasure with the arrangement yet.
"Why are you suddenly so interested in the plan?" he countered.
She pointed to a cuboid structure with a hatch and readouts that an engineering drone was loading onto the roof of the team's transport.
"Because of that," she said, "Is that what I think it is?"
"What do you think it is?"
"Don't dick around, Croop. I know you are planning to capture one of these hostiles-"
"Z-forms," he corrected.
"And I'm not sure you realize how dangerous even one..."
She trailed off as she saw an engineering drone bringing another cube towards them through the rain.
“All right,” she said, “I suppose we'd better get on with it.”
The speed with which Skydancer's ground attack forces had cleared an area of primeval forest, landed dropships and disembarked drones and infantry was impressive. Skydancer had delivered every drone type in its arsenal, from scout drones the size of chickens, to a pair of frontal assault machines, FAMs, that resembled tanks. Their propulsion was gravitic, allowing them to drop to the ground for a low profile, or soar over the tree tops to clear terrain. The FAMs were part of the advance guard of twenty drones that headed up hill towards the Seismic Source Location, the area that was strongly suspected to be the source of the hostiles. The drones picked their way through the trees, while the FAMs floated just above the tree tops, flipped on their backs to allow the deadly main turret weapons to fire directly downward if necessary. Above this tight group, scramjets circled looking for disturbances in the surrounding jungle.
Keen had to admit, from where she was watching, forgotten by the special forces grav transport, it looked like an impressive site. She knew the firepower deployed would be able to do devastating damage to any opponent, especially an opponent that didn't seem to he able to challenge for atmosphere superiority. She wondered if the hostiles would even be able to penetrate the extremely heavy armor of a FAM with their short range weapons.
The advance guard marched right up to the crack in the cliff, the enemy's front door, according to their suspicions and didn't even pause. The drones just marched on in. They were already receiving images from the chicken drones that had entered, at a run, five minutes earlier. They saw a large tunnel, large enough for the two FAMs to navigate side-by-side with the regular drones beneath. Keen was watching the feed, like most other members of the ground forces, with a slight delay so the powers that be could cut off transmission if there was anything they wanted to keep secret.
The first contact wasn't long in coming. A single hostile popped up from some crevice in the wall but was targeted and blown to pieces before it could even open its mouth. The drones marched on, grinding the monstrosity's remains into the rock. Keen didn't feel at all reassured. She knew the hostiles were quick learners and that they were cunning.
"All right," Croop said, "Let's follow the vanguard in."
They climbed into the grav transport and were deposited at the cliff face seconds later, a very ordinary cliff by the standards of the planet.
"Okay people," Croop said, "We go in nice and slow, and we follow the drones nice and tight."
"Yes sir," a chorus of voices.
Keen was still getting her feed, and had seen three more hostiles pop up and be destroyed before the elite group she was now part of had even entered the aperture in the cliff face. Chicken drones were milling about at the cave entrance, going into the cave one by one, creating a relay so communications could be sent backwards and forwards to the drones at the head of the advance, the one's doing all the fighting.
"This is a slight problem," Punter said, in a message intended only for her, "If the drones keep vaporizing the hostiles, there won't be anything for us to snatch."
"Don't worry," Keen said, "I'm sure we'll have plenty of hostiles, all too soon."
"Always cheerful boss."
As if to confirm what Keen had said, another Z-form popped out of hiding. This hostile waited till it was below a drone before revealing itself.
"Damn their stealth is good," Croop said.
The drone was confused, suddenly taking damage from below and unable to see a target. Its fellow drones were packed in too tight to see what was going on, or to be able to fire effectively.
"Take control, Croop," Keen urged, "Sort them out."
"Can't," The team leader said, "They're being commanded through a different circuit. Anyway. It's not our job to make sure this attack succeeds. We have a specific mission, capture us a hostile. But it might be a little more difficult than I had envisaged."
"Well it's obvious how to grab one," Keen said.
"Enlighten me."
"Do you think all the hostiles hidden among these walls have popped up? You are probably surrounded by them. You just have to start looking."
"We can't pull your little trick from Cursed Rock," Croop said, "We don't have a topographical map of the tunnel from before this incursion. Every last one of these rocks in here could be a hostile and we'd never know. They move too slow for the motion detectors, their bodies are at ambient temperature, they can alter their color and even the roughness of their carapace. How are we supposed to spot them in here?"
"Stop moving," Keen said, "We spread out into a line and combine the processing power of our suits. Ladar scan the walls to the best resolution you can, and rescan every second, not comparing to the previous scan, but to the original scan."
"Okay," Croop said, "I get it. Their movements a
re too slow to appear on scans updated from just the second before, but there will be a bigger discrepancy over time, so we keep the original scan."
"And we can't move till we are sure this section of corridor is clear. We have to give them enough time to betray themselves."
"You heard the lady,” Croop said, “Spread out people, and start scanning."
Minutes passed, with no discrepancies in the scans, minute after minute. Then they could hear the crunching impact of drone feet coming down the pipe from the direction of the entrance.
"Reinforcements," Keen muttered.
And that was when they got their first contact. They detected enough movement to suddenly paint the outline of a hostile. It was closest to a slug called Mengar, who immediately pinged the team leader.
"Instructions?"
Keen thought that was an excellent question. What exactly was their plan for when they detected one of the hostiles.
"Engage," Croop ordered, "Non lethal munitions."
So that was it. They were going to knock the thing out with beanbags. Mengar started firing. His first shots were impressively accurate, and Keen could believe these were elite soldiers. Mengar kept his finger on the trigger, and, under sustained fire, the creature had great difficulty doing anything, but it did climb to its feet, and it did open its mouth and start sending a beam of warping energy in the direction the beanbags were coming from.
"Increase munition velocity," an order from Croop, "But gradually, we need to keep the impacts non lethal."
The creature could obviously take a great deal more concussive energy than a human. Mengar was increasing the power of each shot from his weapon, but it was too late. The creature had reached him. The automated systems in Keen's armor muted the screams. Two more troopers had reached the scene, one, called Deever, approaching from further into the passage and the other, called Helpern, approaching from the direction of the entrance. They caught the creature in a crossfire, their weapons already adjusted to the power level that Mengar had reached. The creature was thrown to the ground by the force of the impacts, but it continued struggling.
"It won't stay down," Helpern said, her voice impressively calm, "I don't think it has a nervous system that can be shut down by concussive impacts."
"Agreed," came the team leader's voice, "Go to plan B."
By then, two more of the team had arrived. The creature was causing chunks of stone to fountain around it as it flailed wildly with its mouth weapon. Both the new troopers advanced while Helpern and the other beanbag gun operator kept the creature pinned with gunfire. One was torn into shreds by the creature's mouth weapon at such close range. His suit blossomed like a flower and the flesh boiled out from the inside. The other trooper got behind the creature however, and clamped one hand on the left side of its head and one hand on the right. The creature, its elbow and knee joints more flexible than those of a human, started to tear at her armor with its claws.
The creature had ripped away two panels of armor and left deep gashes by the time Helpern had dropped her weapon, run over and grabbed the creature's arms. Next she trapped the creature's legs by kneeling on them.
Another trooper appeared, dropping his weapon among the rocks and fumbling to extract something from a pouch attached to the flanks of their armor. The trooper extracted a cage-like device. Soon they had the cage tightly clamped round the creature's head, keeping its mouth shut and they had its arms and legs bound and immobilized too.
"Okay," Croop said, "We're not done yet. We have to get this guy loaded on the back of the transport."
The troopers worked fast, and by the time Coop and Keen had arrived, the creature was already half in a crate.
“Let's get another one,” Croop said.
***
Keen and Punter were among the detachment sent to deliver the creatures to Seat of Reason. The creatures were very securely shackled to the kind of racks uses for transporting drones. They were bound at wrist, ankle, waist, chest, and neck, and their jaws were bound shut. Nobody had tried feeding them yet but that didn't seem to bother the creatures. The hold containing the Z-form specimens, as they were being termed, was in the belly of the spaceship, with no windows and just a single door. There was no furniture and the surroundings were particularly grim and depressing. Keen and Punter were often put on guard in the hold, with instructions to kill any specimen that might manage to escape its confines. It was excruciatingly boring duty, with each watch, alone in the dark hold lasting four hours.
Keen often found herself approaching the creatures to ward off boredom. She made sure her heavy blaster rifle was firmly in her grip and ready for use at a moment's notice and then she walked right up to the racks. There were seven of them each floating on a small grav engine and each loaded with a single specimen. The dim lighting in the hold was brighter around the creatures, thanks to lights mounted on the racks. The little circle of light only accentuated the gloom of the rest of the hold.
Keen happened to be standing next to Z-form specimen six. She put her face nose-to-nose with the creature and stared into one of its eyes. The eye was like no other she'd seen before, and she'd seen quite a few strange, alien eyes, not least the empty eye pits of the Buzzers.
This eye however was like liquid. It was like a drop of amber, exuded by a tree in response to injury. There was no structure to it, just an orange globule in a face of gray, unhealthy looking flesh.
"The sooner we get you delivered for dissection the better," she said to the creature.
The monster couldn't reply of course, with its jaws clamped shut, but it didn't seem oblivious to her. Her presence was provoking a reaction, she could see in the twitches of its facial muscles. Then the eyes changed color, went blood red.
"Ugh," she said, and took an involuntary step back.
She went back to her post, standing in a position where she could fire on any escapees before they reached the door to the hold. It was a ridiculous precaution to have her in here wasting her time. The specimens were clamped tightly to their racks and they weren't going anywhere.
"Just another two weeks to the Seat of Reason," she told herself, "just another two weeks and we can dump these monsters off and never see them again."
***
"These experiments can't be carried out here," the station commander, Bragg, was saying, his voice raised and anxious, "These creatures are just too dangerous."
"Oh, pish posh," Shivia said, "We've had more dangerous lifeforms than this here for study. That's the whole reason it was constructed out here as part of this asteroid. For ease of quarantine and, if need be, destruction."
They argued a while longer but Shivia was Bragg's superior, so there was only one way the conversation could end. Shivia would have her way, but Bragg insisted on some upgrades to lab security and also insisted that the labs would be housed in a newly excavated part of the asteroid, away from the main tunnels. Both of them were satisfied at winning some concessions and both left the meeting more or less content.
After the meeting, Shivia went to a tower that she liked, a tower that projected from the surface of the asteroid and gave a virtually unobstructed view of almost an entire hemisphere of the asteroid. She took some time and looked for an area for the site for the new Z-form annex. The asteroid was far from a perfect sphere of course, but neither was it as irregular as most asteroids. That had been one of the reasons it had been chosen as home for the research base. Its large mass and relative uniformity made construction of the tunnel complex within relatively straightforward.
Shivia's view of the asteroid was overlaid with existing station schematics as she picked out the location of her new labs. She would have a design finalized within days and the giant engineering robots that roamed the surface of the asteroid would have the tunnel complex almost built before her first specimens arrived.
Chapter 16
––––––––
"I think the surface gives the best chance of survival," Knave said, "We've seen th
at with the Buzzers hiding out there. There were still units out on the surface until just a few days ago, units that we hadn't found for weeks, and there might still be Buzzer units out there now for all we know."
Altia was silent, considering.
"And," Knave went on, "the surface must be absolutely strewn with supplies. There are fresh environment packs for our suits, and there are a lot of munitions just lying around. I've done a survival course too. I'm pretty sure I can build a well camouflaged shelter."
"No," Altia said.
"No?"
"No. I don't want to spend my last few days of life scrabbling around on the frozen surface of an ice moon."
"You don't?"
"Not while there are still things to be learned down on the new level we discovered. I'll understand if you don't want to come with me. If the powers smile down on you, there is a chance you could survive until this planet is eventually retaken, if it is eventually retaken."
"I don't understand."
"I'll likely only last a week or two before the supplies in my environment pack run out, assuming the Buzzers don't find me, but I will be learning new things."
Knave paused for a second. Altia seemed adamant about going back into the complex, and he had no intention of spending his last week or two of life alone.
"I'm coming with you."
"You don't have to," Altia said, her eyes searching what she could see of his face through the visor of his suit.
"I know," he said, forcing his face into a resolute mask, to reassure her, "Lead on."
They quickly retraced their steps towards the room that led down to the hidden level.
"How long do you think it will be before the Buzzers get ground troops down here on the surface, in the complex?" Altia asked as they walked.
"I don't know," Knave said, "On the usual schedule of a planetary invasion, I would say days or weeks, if not months. Usually a presence is established in system, then supply corridors are pushed through to the target planet, then superiority must be established in orbit, over at least half a hemisphere of the target, and, usually, only then do the first battles for atmospheric superiority start. A few successes are usually required before the first slugs are sent down in dropships to start crawling the surface, up close with the enemy. This invasion is definitely not happening on that type of cautious schedule."
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