An entire squadron of sneekbots was deployed around them in protective concentric circles. They skittered over the rough terrain, their antenna buds probing for any sign of movement, warm bodies, or electronic activity. So far the ground ahead was clear of any ambush, booby trap, or sensor.
Morton’s virtual vision showed him Cat, Parker, and the Doc taking a slightly different route down from the saddle, keeping to the high ground until they were a lot closer to the town. “On the good side, we can always keep track of her.”
“Unless she goes truly native and ditches the armor.”
“I doubt she’d go that far. And the sensors would pick her up if she tried to take anything from base camp.” He stuck another of the little disks on an outcrop of rock that had withstood a small mudslide. As well as observing the vast open space above the Trine’ba, it acted as a communications relay across the Regents.
“Four more just launched,” Rob said.
Morton watched the alien flyers set off across the smooth waters of the Trine’ba, flying low, and keeping parallel to the shore. They all used broad fans of sensor radiation to sweep across the shallow ripples. Morton’s armor suit stealthed down, its chromometic skin melding into the tawny beige of the landscape, while its thermal emission matched the temperature of the mud. The sneekbots folded their crablike bodies to the ground and sent their main arrays into hibernation mode. The flyers didn’t even bother probing the hillside.
“Wonder what they’re looking for?” Rob asked as his suit returned to life.
“Mellanie said a few people stayed behind. They’re probably causing some trouble for the Primes.”
“Great, that’s all we need, enthusiastic amateurs stirring things up for us.”
Morton smiled. “So you think we qualify as professionals, do you?”
“Listen, I’ve been doing this kind of work for a while now. I know what I see, and you guys took on the basics in training. In any case, we’ve got the kind of equipment that can do some serious damage. If we find these farm boys we need to get them to back off.”
“Yeah, I figured that.”
“So how come Mellanie knows about the locals and where they’re at?”
“This was where she was when the Primes invaded, right here in Randtown.”
“No shit. And this is where you got sent. There’s a coincidence.”
“Yeah.” Morton wanted to grin, but it was something that had bothered him, too. Still, too late to worry about it now.
He was surprised by the scale of activity where Randtown had once stood. A vast block of machinery that resembled a human chemical refinery had been assembled along the shore, extending for a couple of kilometers on either side of the old quayside, and even standing on stilts to arch over some bays and inlets. Bright lights blazed from every point of the structure, illuminating exposed equipment buttressed by thick metal girders. Behind that, on the gentle slope leading up from the back of the town, boxy buildings and large cylindrical storage tanks had been set up on the old human road grid. Spaced between them were a number of large fusion power plants. The old highway leading back through the Dau’sings had been widened. It was carrying a lot of traffic out to Blackwater Crag, big slow vehicles spitting out black exhaust smoke as they lumbered along. Rows of long buildings were just visible at the foot of Blackwater Crag, stretching back along the valley. A string of flyers patrolled above the refurbished road, dipping in and out of the smothering clouds.
Outside the original town limits, six broad terraces had been bulldozed into the bumpy foothills, with a further two under construction. They seemed to be parking, or holding areas, covered with unopened pods of equipment, vehicles, and flyers; four vast open arenas were filled with aliens.
“Well now, finally!” Morton said as they wormed their way along the ruined tree line at the top of the foothills. The hardy pines were suffering badly in the sickly winter climate. Slushy water clung to every needle, turning them a dull unhealthy sepia. Many trunks had fallen, ripping out huge circular wedges of dripping soil as long mudslides undermined their roots. It was perfect cover. The sneekbots maintained their protective perimeter, crawling their way through the fungal muddle of broken twigs and mulched needles.
He used the suit’s sensors to zoom in on the naked creatures parading across the nearest arena below. They were quad-symmetric, with four thick legs at the flared base of a sallow-colored barrel body. When they moved, it was with a rocking motion as the legs bowed and flexed along their whole length. Four arms emerged just above the legs, almost as thick as the lower limbs and moving in the same long curving motions. Morton didn’t think they had joints like elbows and knees, the whole thing was elastic. The crown sprouted a further eight appendages, four stumpy trunks with an open mouth; while between them four tall slender tendrils that ended in bulbous lumps of flesh waved about like corn in the wind.
“Solid-looking brutes,” Rob said. “There must be thousands of them down there.”
Morton gave the arenas another scan with his suit’s optical sensors. “More like tens of thousands.” He was recording the scene for the navy. The first communications wormhole was due to open in another seventeen hours; he’d be able to send them the information then. It would be interesting to see what their analysts came up with.
“They’re all fitted with a transmitter gadget, look,” Rob was saying. “I just keep getting that analogue hash coming from them.”
“Right.” Morton was watching a pair touching their long upper limbs together. An alien kiss? A fuck? “I know we’ve only just seen them, but they all look identical to me.”
Rob snorted. “Very not politically correct.”
“I was wondering if they were clones. Some kind of disposable construction crew? Just a thought. Their army might be the same. A perfect soldier replicated a hundred million times. It would explain their dire lack of tactics, all they ever do is use numbers to overrun us. They don’t mind the slaughter because they’re not losing individuals the way we are.”
“Could be. It makes as much sense as any other idea. Let’s see if we can get a closer look.”
With the sneekbots prowling ahead and behind, they began to worm their way deeper through the decaying foliage of the fallen trees. Morton could see several hundred aliens working on the long refinery station by the shore. The giant machine was still being extended. Both ends were sheathed by a network of scaffolding that supported cranes and hoists. Aliens swarmed all over the new components that were being added. They must possess an excellent sense of balance, Morton thought; he couldn’t see anything equivalent to a human handrail on the narrow metal struts that they moved along.
“Ho, did you see that?” Rob asked.
“What?”
“One of those things just took a crap off the top of the refinery station.”
Morton tracked his optical sensors along the colossal structure. Now he knew what to look for, he could easily find evidence of more casual defecation. The pipes and girders were splashed with tacky brown patches. “So? They never got around to inventing a flushable pan. The Doc was saying we need to watch out for a different philosophy more than any other type of variation between us.”
“I’m not sure that’s a question of psychology or even bad plumbing. Leaving your own waste products around like that is a very counterproductive thing for a species to do. Everyone develops disposal mechanisms, both social and practical; it’s one of the first signs of civilization emerging. You don’t just wait for the rain to wash it away.”
“You have no idea what their digestive biochemistry is like,” Morton said.
“Face it, their crap could be the perfect fertilizer.”
“Then they’d collect it and transport it to a field. No, we’re missing something. You may have been on the right track with your clone army idea.” He paused, unhappy. “Though even they wouldn’t deliberately foul their own environment. Nothing would. This doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe the clone cle
an-up army is due to arrive next.”
Rob chuckled. “You want to put some money on that?”
“No way.”
After another half hour of cautious movement through the moldering forest, they had moved as far west as they could go before risking open ground. The fallen trees had also brought them to within six hundred meters of the force field protecting the alien town. They sent a trio of sneekbots on ahead, but stayed under cover of the sopping wood as the invisible sun finally fell below the horizon.
“Another difference,” Rob said.
“What?”
“There’s no color on anything they build, no finish or decoration. All the external material is raw.”
“They’re color blind as well.”
“And immune to esthetics?”
“Okay, then. You tell me.”
“I don’t know why, I’m just pointing it out. Their culture has no art.”
“Have you seen the crap flooding the unisphere these days?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, but don’t forget this is a military invasion base. It’s bound to be functional.”
“Could be. What do you make of the setup?”
Morton switched his attention back to the alien activities below him. The angle just allowed him a narrow view along the front of the refinery station. Machinery and tightly packed pipes produced a metal precipice fifty meters high. It was lined with wide orifices that were pumping out torrents of liquid. He counted sixteen of the big jets squirting bilious foaming water out into the lake shallows.
“I guess we know what resource they were after when they came here,” Rob said. “The lake itself.”
“What the hell is that stuff?” Morton wondered. Lights on the top of the refinery station cast a bright illumination across the shallows. The aliens had done a lot of work along the shoreline. Long concrete ramps now extended out into the water, reaching almost to the force field, a kilometer and a half away. In between them, the lake had been divided up into a number of pens by heavy netting. Morton realized there were a lot more ripples in the pens than there were out beyond the force field. Yet there couldn’t be any breeze inside the shielding. He zoomed in for a clearer look at whatever was stirring the water.
The pens were filled with some kind of living creatures. A lot of living creatures. It was their writhing forms thrashing about just below the surface that was causing all the disturbance.
“They’re bioforming the planet,” he said. “That’s what this station is, that’s why they wanted the lake. Jesus.”
“You might be right,” Rob said. “They’ve certainly got big-scale expansion plans. Access sneekbot three-oh-six.”
When 306’s sensor feed flipped up into Morton’s virtual vision he saw the little machine had crept right up to the force field. The first reading was the strength of the field. They didn’t have anything that could penetrate, it was even strong enough to withstand the tactical nukes they’d brought. He concentrated on the excavation that the aliens were making a hundred meters inside the boundary, clawing out a deep bunker that they were lining with concrete and metal. A tower of machinery was being assembled in the center. The Doc had been right: technological solutions did refine machines down to identical functions. Morton recognized some of the sections without having to reference his e-butler. The aliens were building a force field generator.
“Track right,” Rob said.
He swiveled 306’s antenna buds: six hundred meters away, another generator bunker was being dug out.
“Those generators are a lot more powerful than the ones they’re using now,” Rob said. “At this rate it’s only going to take a couple of days to finish them. After that, they’ll be truly impregnable, and we’ll be truly screwed.”
“Only the town has a force field so far,” Morton said. “We can play hell with everything else they’re doing.”
“Whose chain are you trying to jerk here? This is where it’s at, right here in town. We’ve got to hit that monster station. Don’t screw around; use the nukes.”
Morton risked raising his head slightly, looking directly at the force field and the town it enclosed. The vast chunk of alien machinery along the waterfront could have been a light-year away for all the chance he had of reaching it. “Fuck it, there’s no way in!”
“Maybe we could get in from the water side? Force fields don’t function so good in water, the denser the material the less effective they are.”
“Could do. Water’s not that dense, though. We’d have to scout around, test the field integrity on the lake bed.”
“These suits can handle a dive.”
“Yeah, but will the dump-webs work underwater?”
“I’m not sure, we could—Uh oh, what have we here?”
One of the sneekbots had registered movement several hundred meters deeper in the dead forest. It clambered up on top of a moldy log, looking along a line of stumps. A human shape crawled across the little open lane from one decaying canopy to the next.
“So Mellanie was right,” Rob said. “Not just a great ass, huh?”
“No,” Morton said absently. Two more humans were sneaking after the first. From what he could make out they were dressed in some kind of dark ski suits. They didn’t register on infrared. Somebody knew how to rig the thermal fibers, he acknowledged. “This can’t be good for us, they’re going to strike something.”
“Relax, man, our stealth is good.”
“Theirs isn’t.” His virtual hand touched the Cat’s icon. “We’ve found whatever’s left of the locals. Access our sneekbots.”
“I see them, Morty. Looks like they’ve developed a purpose in life.”
“It’s a damn stupid one,” the Doc said. “If they start shooting at the aliens they’re just going to get themselves killed.”
“They look like they know what they’re doing to me,” Rob said. “Let’s see where they’re going.” Five sneekbots set off through the forest, keeping parallel to the three humans. They soon overtook them, and began scanning ahead.
“Part of our mission is to rescue and assist any surviving humans,” the Doc said.
“I think that referred to noncombatants,” Rob told him.
“That’s what these idiots are, they just think they’re fighters.”
“They fooled me.”
“The Doc might be right,” the Cat said. “These bumpkins aren’t helping us by causing a fuss. You should stop them, Morton.”
Why me? he thought. Any other time, it might have been flattering.
“Uh oh,” Rob said. “We might be running out of time.” The sneekbots were picking up standard Prime electromagnetic emissions. Four armored aliens were patrolling the foothills along the top of the dead forest.
Morton pulled a detailed map out of his grid, and studied it. “If I was going to ambush them I’d do it there,” he said, and indicated a small, deep ravine that cut clean through the foothills to spill into the Trine’ba just east of the town. The aliens would have to cross it somewhere. “They’ll be out of sight from the town, and shielded. Perfect spot.”
“Yeah,” Rob said. “Not bad for a bunch of amateurs.”
“Get over there and talk to them,” the Doc said. “They should at least know we’re here.”
“If you ask me, these guys know what they’re doing,” Rob said. “I don’t think this is their first turkey shoot.”
“You’re making a mistake if you let them do this.”
“Doc’s right,” the Cat said. “Go break up the fight, boys.”
Morton knew she was right. Cat’s Claws couldn’t afford anyone interfering in their mission, no matter how well intended. “We’ll try.”
Rob carried on grumbling, but he followed Morton back through the thick layer of mildew-steeped needles, keeping under the lacy roof of decomposing bark. Even as they began, Morton knew they were cutting it close. The alien patrol was making good time out in the open, and the ambush team was almost in position.
“We’ll swing around your way,” the Cat said. “Just in case you screw up. I’m bored with dropping these sensors, anyway.”
“Fuck you,” the Doc said. “We can’t see anything past Blackwater Crag yet. We need to expand the network.”
“You’re becoming a bad pain-in-the-ass barracks-room lawyer. I don’t like that. You do what you do, and let me do what I know needs to be done.”
“This is not about you, bitch.”
“Temper temper.”
“Hey, heads up, people,” Rob exclaimed. “We have something interesting here.” The sneekbots were reporting some kind of electromagnetic interference inside the ravine. It wasn’t the kind of jamming effect that would cut the aliens off abruptly from the town, but a more subtle distortion, reducing their bandwidth and disrupting the remaining content. “Somebody knows what they’re doing.”
The ambush party spread out along the edge of the ravine. They unstrapped long, bulky cylinders from their backs, and aimed them down into the black gash in the landscape. Morton’s e-butler started running comparisons with known weapons types.
“Son of a bitch,” he said when it finally gave him an approximate match.
“They’re Prime guns.”
“Wonder where they got them from?” Parker said in amusement. “They are big beauts, aren’t they?”
“It’s what you do with them that counts,” the Cat retorted.
Morton was seriously considering walking a sneekbot up to one of the ambushers, and trying to talk with them that way. He didn’t because he was worried they’d simply shoot the little bot, which would blow everyone’s cover.
The aliens began their descent into the ravine. It was a steep V-shaped cleft leading down to a torrent of white water racing along a bed of gray-white stone. Lichen-covered boulders stuck up out of the soil on either side, forcing the aliens to take a slow zigzag path as they picked their way to the bottom. One of the sneekbots perched on the edge above them relayed the image as they sank below direct line of sight with the town.
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