He grinned and walked towards the spiral staircase that wound its way around the central munitions accelerator tube which ran almost the entire length of the mainly organic, living ship. As he walked down the steps, he patted the deep mahogany hues of the wooden structure in admiration of humanity finally acknowledging that working with environments and living structures was so much better than forcing them to be subjected to the collective will. He knew that the ship Basalt did not have a conscious entity, but smiled, wondering, as he saw one of the exquisite, deep purple-blue flowers with its emerald-green leaves growing high up one of the walls. The crew had all seen them on and off over the years, interspersed with regular rose varieties, with sweet scented blooms lasting months before being absorbed back into the wooden structure.
In the galley, he was met by Marko and the two ACEs who were also making sandwiches and hot drinks to take back to wherever they were working.
On one of the main galley-length screens they watched more and more creatures join in the slaughter as the blood of thousands dropped into the water, spreading out and creating a frenzy of feeding desire.
Marko watched, holding a sandwich, as some of the creatures they had suspected were there, started to arrive. Huge eel-like animals slithered up out of the depths, nosing around. Most, on seeing the Urchins, backed off to wait as a few of the smaller ones slipped up onto the coral to try and get at the increasing piles of protein. One ventured just a few metres too close and an Urchin leapt up to seize its head and sever it from its body, then reached down into its thrashing remains, cutting away its three spinal columns.
Glint watched, leaning against one of the galley tables, munching on a roast pork sandwich.
Flint stood on the table with a datalink from one of his front legs attached to Clint's head, also savouring the sandwich. He shook his small head, complaining. 'You never put enough pepper in the apple sauce for me, Glint!'
Glint swallowed and looked at his friend sternly. 'So get your own digestive system, Flint. You know how to make one. Hey, Marko. How about we give Flint some more abilities? He should be able to eat stuff, you know. Unnatural, this linking to us to get his jollies while I or Nail am eating something. What do you reckon?'
Veg and Marko chuckled as Marko replied. 'You better go talk with Harry. Actually, it's about time for some more ACE upgrades anyway. Yeah, I am OK with it. You happy about getting a bit larger, Flint?'
The mechanical spider harrumphed. 'Finally, I get asked!' He pulled a face at all of them as he withdrew his link to
Glint and leapt off the table, heading out the door and talking over his shoulder, 'I shall go talk with Harry. He will advise me best.'
Glint shrugged as Marko raised his eyebrows at him in question. 'It's not as if we have not talked about this, Marko. You always said he could not have the augments as it would make him too big for most of his engineering work. And he's a bit grumpy lately. What's with that?'
Veg looked across at the sleek gunmetal-grey ACE and frowned. 'Have a think about that, Glint. Thought about the date recently? When Flint was made the indenture was for a specific time. That time is due. Harry has not told Flint yet if he wants him to stay, or for Flint to start his own journey through life. I suspect Harry wants him to stay, we all do, but I know that it is troubling Flint.'
Glint frowned with his frill standing up behind his head. He looked at his front hands, nodded, then looked at Veg and Marko, saying in a small voice, 'You are right, you are quite right. That was not kind of me. Think I'll get Nail, Ngoc and Spike and go have a talk with him. Had not thought about that, or what we will do with Spike. We just made him. We did not consider sending him off on his own. Is this something all parents go through?'
Veg and Marko both nodded as Glint walked out, then came trotting back to make another pork sandwich with extra pepper on the apple sauce. When he left a few moments later, Veg lightly punched Marko on the arm.
'You did well with that one, Marko. Great guy. And you never did indenture him, did you?'
Marko smiled a tiny smile and then had a touch of sadness, missing Jan. He took in a long breath and sighed it out, shaking his head. 'No. He is not indentured. We all made him. He belongs to himself. I know that you feel the same about Nail, Harry feels it about Flint and Minh the same about Ngoc. Tough business this being a parent to a created.'
He turned to Veg, who he considered to be one of his best friends, and added, 'That is one thing I do not know about you, Veg. You ever had children?'
The huge man gave Marko the saddest of smiles as tears welled up in his eyes. He nodded. 'Yes. Yes, I did. Two of the most beautiful people I ever had the pleasure of knowing. I buried them so long ago ... a hundred or so years after I finally made it back to Earth as a part of Stephine. I knew them for the first twenty-five and twenty-three years of their wonderful lives and then saw them as old people who had never given up hope of seeing me alive again.'
He sobbed once, as Marko hugged him. 'Thank you, Marko. I am OK. I just miss them a lot. Stephine would not allow me to take their souls. She could have, but said that it would not have been fair. And, yes, to answer your question: I still look after the great-great-grandchildren and their kin from afar. Some of them have Soul Savers and have been regenerated many times. They are great people, but none can replace your own children.'
He took a large silk handkerchief from his pocket and loudly blew his nose. He wiped his eyes, gathered the drinks and sandwiches he had made for the others, smiled wanly at Marko and walked out of the mess. Marko stood and watched him go and wondered again if he would ever learn of Veg's story. He made a large pot of tea, gathered a few mugs, tucked a large tin of biscuits under his arm and slowly walked down a few decks thinking of Veg and Stephine.
In one of the engineering bays he met Jasmine, Minh Pham and Julie, who were stripping out one of the four turbine pods from a Maul, one of the three they had onboard. They all had their heads up inside various parts of the brute of a machine, as he called out. 'Cuppa tea, guys!'
They stopped what they were doing to accept the steaming mugs of tea and proffered biscuits. As they sat on the workbenches, they watched the unfolding drama on the planet moon below them.
The Urchins had tightened their barricade of the reef area, waiting for more and more creatures inflamed with bloodlust to try and take the steadily growing stockpile of food behind them.
Minh shook his head. 'There is much more food than they could possibly ingest. May I suggest that this is more than simple food gathering as even they could not eat that much.'
Jasmine nodded. 'This has had me wondering from the onset. Oh! Look, more Urchins, all much smaller. A later hatching maybe? Maybe they are what the food is being gathered for?'
'No, I think not, Jasmine,' said Minh. 'Look, they are acting as an outer cordon.' He paused, tapped his wrist and spoke again. 'Fritz, are your gravity monitors showing anything inside the tree structure, close to the Urchins, moving about?' They all heard Fritz's adolescent voice. 'Yeah. We have been sensing something slowly coming down the inside of the structure for the last couple of hours. Pretty big. Easily out mass any of those suckers and everything they have killed so far. Holy shit! Look at this! What the fuck is that? On the five kilometre screen.'
They all quickly looked at one of the smaller screens to see four dart-shaped aircraft moving quickly, just above the wave tops, aimed directly at the Urchins. The darts, which had been flying abreast, changed their formation to the front two flying almost nose to tail with the other two holding station to their left and right. Two of the smaller Urchins sprang up from the sea's surface to intercept them. The lead dart suddenly flashed open dozens of bladelike fins and went straight through the Urchin, slicing it to pieces, and carried on accelerating towards the larger Urchin which started to scatter. One of the trailing darts sliced the other, smaller, Urchin in half then climbed to chase one of the larger Urchins which was rocketing up the side of the coral wall. The dart did not slow down as
it severed away the tail of the Urchin with long blades, then with an almost nonchalant gesture, flicked out another set of blades to cut the Urchin into three pieces.
'Itthen landed high up on the curving wall of the coral tower and opened out its streamlining to resemble an eight-metre long beetle-type creature. Fritz zoomed the watching cameras onto it and they were just starting to make out the smallest details when it suddenly puffed into thousands of tiny pieces. Simultaneously, the other dart beetles disappeared in the same way with the resulting fragments gently raining down towards the sea, excepting for some tube-shaped pieces which appeared from the clouds of debris, then vanished again. All creatures except the Urchins rapidly fled from sight.
There was silence for a few seconds, then the major was yelling. 'Get the drones away! Quickly, before we lose them!'
Nail started to boost his drone hard away from the coral tower when it flashed out of existence. Glint was right beside his friend who let out a terrible mewing sound and collapsed.
On the bridge, Stephine yelled at Fritz as she ripped the data cables connecting her helmet from her control boards. 'Sever, sever, sever the link!'
He was not quite quick enough and after letting out a tiny moan slid down in his seat.
Seconds passed as Stephine first checked that Fritz was still breathing, then she called out, 'Topaz to the bridge! We have an immersion feedback emergency!'
The major called across. 'Lily. Did any of the drones make it out? Any other injuries?'
Lily nodded. 'Just one drone. Have it high above the tower, orbiting. Nail is down. Nil cerebral function according to Glint and Marko. They are isolating him. Patrick is preparing an isolated cybernetic unit so an in-depth investigation can be carried out. He says it is an hour away from initialisation. The only surviving Games Board monitor is two kilometres away from the coral tower. 'It is still in datalink with their lander.'
She turned and looked at Stephine, who was holding Fritz's head. 'I am sorry, Stephine. Glint did everything he could, but Nail's upper conscious mind is gone. He says there is no trace of it. He thinks that whatever destroyed the drone may have snatched his mind from it. That's one of the risks of total immersion, but it should not have happened. We have fail safes and buffers.'
Stephine nodded in answer, still stroking Fritz's large bald head. 'Oh, that is not good, that is bloody awful, actually. Poor darling boy is probably down there with beautiful Fritz. Isolate the comms links that were associated with the drones, please, Lily. We will need to examine them carefully in case whatever took them left surprises behind.'
A minute later Topaz, the AI designer, fabricator and medical unit, arrived on the bridge and immediately placed a soft helm over Fritz's head with large leads running from the back of it into her own head unit. No-one spoke, waiting for Topaz to report.
Ten long minutes later, the ovoid AI settled down towards the floor with her sturdy little legs folding out beneath her. Topaz turned her head unit to face the major.
'My preliminary thoughts are that Fritz is now the equivalent of an intellectually handicapped human. The memories will all be intact, the personality operating on a basic level. He will be able to perform most of the tasks of human existence, but his higher levels of cognitive thought are a jumbled mess. 'Itis as if the cumulative parts that make him Fritz are no longer communicating either with themselves or with us.'
The major nodded, answering, 'OK. So we won't have to place him in a tank, or intensively care for him. Right. Prognosis, Topaz?'
The AI expanded its head unit a little higher with her elegant humanoid face frowning. 'With Patrick's help to operate some of the more esoteric software that Ernst left for our use, we should be able to rebuild those non-connecting parts of his mind within seventy standard hours. We can simultaneously do the same for Nail. It is of course still a risk that we will not get a 100 per cent success.'
The major nodded again, letting out a long sigh. 'There is always that risk in immersion trauma. The question really is: are the parts of their conscious minds down on that tower with whatever destroyed the drones and monitors? Oh, and what the fuck was that, anyway?'
Patrick was the first to answer. 'I am looking through all the datastreams and as part of emergency protocols I have been allowed access to the Games Board feeds as well. Observe the nearest video screens to you.'
They all looked at the nearest screen as Patrick showed them a hazy image of what could only be an enormous Urchin who was a part of the outer structure of the coral tower.
He spoke about the image. 'I have assembled this image from the gravity sensors that were in operation in the seconds leading up to the drone destructions. I believe what is in the middle of the tower is actually part of its tail. We could see it moving, but had no idea what it was.'
After a few seconds, once they had all absorbed the information, the major said slowly: 'Crap! So this thing is enormous. Much bigger than any Urchin we have seen before.'
Stephine was quick to answer that one. 'It would stand to reason. Any queen, and I do believe that that is what we are dealing with here, is always much bigger than its offspring. We have initiated the mind recoveries for Fritz and Nail. Don't worry, Patrick, I am sure that we will get 100 per cent of them back. In fact, I can assure you that we will.'
Marko, who along with other members of the crew were at their workstations, looked across his screens to prioritise what things he needed to be doing and what he was responsible for. He looked at the water fuel levels that he had available to him and sent a quick message to Harry stating that they needed more. The 'message acknowledged' icon came up on his comms screen and a moment later Harry spoke.
'I wonder if it would be a good idea to go hide somewhere for a few days. Let things settle down as we have no idea of how that queen, or whatever we should be calling it, will react to us parked in geosynchronous orbit. Would not surprise me if she sent someone to come have a poke at us.'
No-one said anything for a few moments, as everyone looked at the possible scenarios and of how they would be affected.
Stephine was the first to speak. 'I concur, Michael. 'It would be a logical course of action to take.'
The heads of the crew members seen in Marko's screens nodded with Lily, who then quietly spoke. 'The astronomical drones identified a wh9le group of high-value large asteroids in the belt, two Lagrange points further out from here. We could resupply our water reserves while we wait.'
The major, who was sitting inside his command unit, scratched his head, nodded and then, in a slightly frustrated voice, said, 'OK. That's a smart move. But ... we do not know what happened to the conscious minds of Fritz and Nail. What if they exist within that Urchin? Is there any way of finding out?'
There was a prolonged silence as they all thought about the ramifications of that scenario: if their friends' minds, or even just parts of their minds, were within the Urchin. Veg was heard to clear his throat before he said, with deliberation, 'It is possible. Some examples of cross-transference of consciousness do exist in history. However, it was a short lived thing before self-recognition of soul was then absorbed back into the capturing host completely. The host's behaviour was modified, of course, with the new information, but I have to stress the separate mind states were short-lived.'
The major cut across Jasmine, who had started to speak. 'OK, how about we get moving and carry on this conversation as we move away? Lily, lay in the jumps to those asteroids. Stephine, please get a message to the Games Board stating our intentions. Everyone else start prepping Basalt for probable conflict.'
Marko, who was shunting energy around the ship in readiness for the jumps, was keen to hear what Jasmine had to say. 'Jasmine. You and Lily are of the Haulers. What do you know about this?'
Jasmine sent him a quick kissing icon and then said, 'Mind transference is one of the fields that the Hauler, Chrysanthemum, who created us, studied for tens of standard years. He came up with very simple nanote technologies. The nanotes wou
ld infest a host body and gather all the minute pieces of information. When assembled this information would create a conscious mind post-transference. Amongst the data blocks we brought with us, when we joined Basalt, is how they are made.'
Stephine, who Marko could see was furiously busy recalling the orbital drones -while Minh Pham directed those closest to Basalt to dock and refuel themselves - and at the same time was dealing with the Games Board's officials arguing the perceived dangers from the Urchins, also excitedly asked Jasmine, 'This is most interesting, Jasmine. If our dear Fritz and Nail are in the Urchin, and, even if by some remote possibility are conscious of their surroundings, we could invigorate their proxy minds further, to a degree that they could pass on information about the Urchins. Is that possible?'
They felt Basalt starting to move out of orbit and felt surges of acceleration as the ship hurried to the first jump point.
The major, somewhat belatedly, gave orders. 'All crew: to your stations please and strap in. This is going to be fast and furious.'
Marko gave Lily and Jasmine a wry smile as he activated his seat, which extended itself and enfolded him. They both blew him a kiss and got about the business of preparing the ship for the first jump with Jasmine replying as she worked.
'Yes, Stephine. We think that that may be possible. The faster we can deliver a nanote package down into the Urchin queen the better, though. The specifications are available now. 'Itis a simple add-on to our existing microsurgical nerve nanotes.'
The major quickly gave a briefing. 'Crew. Do anything that can be done right away to aid the remnants of Fritz's and Nail's minds if they do exist within the queen. We would need to launch a delivery as soon as possible.'
Veg equally quickly said, 'Good. Shunt the files to me, please, Jasmine. I shall prepare them.'
A few moments later Veg had the files in his own sub-systems and started programming the tens of thousands of reserve nanotes they held in storage for medical use. While he was busy doing that, Patrick prepared one of the limited number of fully camouflaged sub-Al controlled Fast Movers that they carried onboard.
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