by Mel Keegan
“Another time,” Dario agreed. “I’ll come back with you, if Harrison can achieve this armistice of his.”
Even then Shapiro was studying every aspect of the planetary data a layperson could grasp, struggling in a limited time to understand the environment in which the Zunshu had evolved. Knowing where they came from might afford a glimpse of how they thought – Marin hoped so, though for himself, he was conscious mainly of a leaden sense of foreboding as the ship levelled out, shed speed. Forward momentum fell to just a few meters per second; repulsion systems assumed station keeping, maintaining its position relative to the platform, against the cross-currents.
The transspace drive was parked in low orbit, surrounded not only by gundrones and sensor platforms, but by a swarm of gravity mines such as had destroyed the London and its battle group, and devastated the two fortified moons in this system. It was as safe as Lai’a itself, while a fraction below the ship, no more than 200 meters ahead, the platform remained utterly passive.
A pace at Marin’s left hand, Travers was intent on the navtank and Marin heard the soft rasp of his breathing, a sound of exasperation. “Like waiting for the other shoe to drop,” Curtis remarked to no one in particular.
“Every device we have is on standby,” Rusch told him. “If they show us a gun, there can be a howling cavity in the atmosphere where this object used to be, and a small chunk of super-compressed stuff dropping straight down to the core of this planet … gravity weapons,” she added, “are a bitch.”
“And who knows it better than the Zunshu?” Vidal said darkly. “They’re not going to hit us now, Lex – well, not unless they have this hypothetical doomsday weapon ready to come online. If they have, we’re history – but then, so are they.” He made a sound of bitter humor. “Mission accomplished: the Zunshu are obliterated, though they did it by their own hand rather than strike up a conversation.”
“Yes, well, I just as soon not be obliterated along with them,” Dario observed. “Mark – you seeing this?”
They had approached the platform from one of its shortest sides. The great shape was slowly coalescing out of the background murk of what was technically salt water, but so heavy with contaminants, Marin wondered how anything lived in it at all. Local species seemed not to notice the noxious pall – they might rely on it, he allowed. He was no planetologist or xenobiologist, but grade school kids studied creatures who breathed hydrogen, swam in liquid ammonia, metabolized rock.
The platform brightened in the wide discs of the floods from Lai’a, but beyond the lights it dimmed swiftly away into murk and twilight. The surface shone dully, with no specific color or shade. No edge was straight; every corner and angle was a smooth, organic curve, almost as if the structure were alive, or had grown here rather than being built. Vast swathes of the upper surface were dark with colonies of some dense, deep red kelp which whipped in the currents from the ship’s repulsion.
Enormous shoals of bioluminescent creatures raced away from Lai’a, riding the powerful bow wave as the ship cruised to a dead stop on complex Arago fields. Marin leaned closer to the display, the better to see and fully expecting searchlights to strike out from the platform, or a dock opening to launch a craft, a comm pulse, a gun barrel – anything to acknowledge the intruder’s presence.
Nothing. The Sherratts, Rusch, Jazinsky and Shapiro had gathered at the end of the tank, discussing options, ‘game plans,’ as Vidal called them, but the biggest challenge Marin perceived was the complete lack of any reaction at all from the platform.
“Lai’a, is there any change in their transmission?” Mark asked as the repulsion brought the ship onto station keeping a scant 200 meters from the structure.
“No change, Doctor,” Lai’a told him. “It is broadcasting from an armored node on the outside of the platform, not from a source within. Do you wish to announce our presence here?”
“Like they can’t look out a freakin’ window and see us?” Vidal was pacing. “Mahak, this is wrong. You know this is wrong. I’m starting to wonder if Neil’s right, 161-D has been abandoned. Maybe the Zunshu left for other systems centuries ago. We’re looking at a – a husk. This can’t be it … sure, it was their home base when the Ebrezjim got here, but – look at this!”
“I’m looking.” Mark was still, studying the graphical overlay Lai’a had projected into the navtank.
With greater resolution afforded by proximity, it was mapping the inside of the platform now – a labyrinth of compartments across forty distinct levels, some with fifty meters of open headspace, others formed like tokomaks around dense clusters of machinery which could only be the mechanisms of life support, power and data conduit. Structural members fanned in peacock tails, on wild diagonals, flanked by open tunnels which Marin thought might have been technicians’ spaces. At this level the infrastructure was semi-recognizable, though the closer one looked, the more confusing the details became.
In any comparable human or Resalq installation, decks would be designed according to ancient Euclidian geometry. Here, compartments more nearly resembled bubbles, and tunnels that might be engineers’ crawl-ways spiraled apparently without plan. A compartment might extend upward through five levels, and halfway through its soaring height, corkscrew through 90o and head away, only to branch off into flocks of balloon-like satellite sections resembling soap bubbles, all jostling for space and changing shape as they were limited by major structural bulkheads.
“Organic, isn’t it?” Dario murmured. “It reminds you of the way memory is stored holographically in their AIs, don’t you think, Mark?”
“It does. It’s … beautiful,” Mark said slowly. “It’s as if the interior wasn’t designed but just happened, spontaneously.”
“But there’s no pattern to any of it.” Travers’s right gauntlet indicated a section of the graphic that seemed as random as the scatter of pebbles on a beach. “How do they find their way around, through 2500 cubic kilometers of this?”
“You mean, humans couldn’t find their way,” Jazinsky cautioned. “Welcome to their world, Neil. We knew they’d be different. Their minds are … alien. Surprise.”
“Echo location?” Vidal suggested. “Maybe the patterns of these chambers and vessels give off different sound signatures. They might ‘see’ the returning sound-picture in a hundred different shades or pseudo-colors. If they’re sensitive enough, they might be able to perceive signals right into the lower radio bands.”
“Or scent location,” Marin added. “Like wolves tracking prey, they follow a spoor – or the way ants follow pheromone trails.”
“Alien.” Rusch’s voice was hushed. “Humans and Resalq turn out to be more similar than we realized. We both see with eyes, hear with eardrums, breathe with lungs – respire the same gases, need the same basic nutrition. Damnit, Harrison … I’m not so sure you can even communicate with these people. ‘Talk’ will certainly be the wrong word, even if we can figure out how to exchange coherent information.”
He turned back from the flatscreen where he had been reviewing a chemical analysis of the internal environment. “I’m sure of nothing, Lex, except that we have to try. I came here wondering if I could stop an all-out war, avoid having to wreak havoc, perhaps eliminate a great many sentient beings in order to win survival for our kind, our worlds. I was ready for a fight, face to face, looking down the barrel of a gun! The truth is, I was ready for a legal argument – to be told why we’re so evil, extermination is too good for us. I’ve been framing answering arguments, making cases, since we launched out of Hellgate. But this …” He sighed over the comm. “There’s no way to talk, and we haven’t – yet – seen a creature to talk to.”
Mark stirred restlessly. “Lai’a, we need an entry point. Can you locate the computer core?”
“I can make informed speculation,” it warned.
“Best guess,” Shapiro invited. “Get us as close as you can to the core. I don’t suppose you’ve seen anything remotely resembling a docking port, a hangar, a
hatchway?”
“Nothing, General.” Lai’a paused. “The liquid inside the platform is very pure by comparison with that outside, though levels of calcium, sodium, silicone, carbon, copper, magnesium and sulphur are far higher than would be tolerable to Resalq or humans. Visibility will be good. Chemical signatures throughout the platform suggest it is illuminated via bioluminescence. It will be lit, but not bright. Carrying lights suitable to Resalq and human vision will be advisable.
“Temperatures across the interior range from 3oC to 17oC; pressures are comparable to water at the 50 meter depth. Life forms abound within, many static – plants with a biomass equivalent to trees such as elm or Jupiter spruce, and which are almost certainly used to cycle and refresh the aqueous environment to support the animal forms.
“Discrete machinery is in operation across the platform; heat blooms suggest generators; pulse signatures suggest convection fans and pumps. However, a small fraction of such machinery is operating, by comparison with what I would have predicted as necessary to maintain this environment. It is likely the water-filtering ‘trees’ and bioluminescent lights have replaced machinery which has ceased to function.
“The platform is entirely pressurized – I will take care to cause no change in this pressure while intruding a docking tube into the likeliest point of entry. Drones will cap the aperture upon your exit, leaving a valve to permit traffic in both directions, pending your return.
“I can detect no evidence of automata coming online,” Lai’a finished. “However, I recommend a backup of gundrones.”
“How far to the computer core?” Shapiro wondered.
“If my speculation is correct,” Lai’a said in a musing tone, “just less than 1500 meters. I have charted the most direct route; your nav feed will be updated. Much of the machinery in operation across the platform functions within sealed chambers, which you must detour around. Some chambers enclose vacuum; others are filled with inert gases at ambient pressures. Take extreme care when investigating machinery. Malfunction will surely result from the flooding of vessels which must remain dry. The viability of the whole platform could be compromised. I am deploying drones to extend a docking tube, and cutting has commenced on the Zunshu hull.”
Mark’s voice cracked like a whip. “Reaction? They have to know we’re cutting though! The AI –?”
“No reaction, Doctor,” Lai’a told him, “which is curious indeed. As I have reported before, the AI appears to be dormant, save for periods of activity measuring between 0.5 seconds to 2.5 seconds.”
“Hiding,” Travers whispered.
“Or intermittent,” Dario added. “Malfunctioning.” He took a sharp breath. “What chance, Lai’a, their AI is just … on the fritz?”
“Information remains insufficient to speculate, Doctor,” Lai’a said, “though malfunction is far from impossible.”
“Life forms,” Marin wondered. “This is the Zunshu home? Then they’re in there! They have to know we’re here – they must know we’re cutting a way in! Where are they?”
“You mean, why aren’t they targeting us with every cannon they can bring to bear?” Shapiro rasped.
“Life forms abound,” Lai’a repeated. “Harmonics from the cutting equipment are carrying clearly through the liquid environment. Our presence is no secret, and an estimated five thousand life forms are rapidly exiting the immediate area.”
“Running away?” Travers demanded.
“As in, women and children first … or vulnerable domestics and juveniles, or whatever the local equivalent is.” Vidal was watching a thermoscan where colored swatches, looking almost like amoeba, raced through the graphical plot of the platform. “But … you see this, Harrison? If we’re watching the civilian population taking off fast – and that’s predictable – the guard ought to be forming up to protect the retreat, yes?”
Shapiro made doubtful noises. “In human understanding, yes. But nothing here is familiar.” He watched the thermal image for several moments. “They’re leaving no one behind.”
“Doesn’t mean we won’t walk into a regiment of automata,” Travers warned.
“They ought to be activating right now.” Dario was running the thermal data again, in greater detail. “Automata are machines with a big, fat power cell sitting in the chest cavity. They run hot, at least equivalent to human body temperature. We’d be seeing heat signatures if they were there.”
“There’s … nothing,” Marin said, at risk of redundancy, and shivered. “This is too weird. Mark, you have the feeling we’re walking into a very big, very nasty trap?”
“I don’t know.” Mark hesitated. “If they were inclined to suicide to take us with them, with some kind of doomsday bomb, they’d have done it as soon as we started to cut our way in. Why would you wait, and put your civilians through fear, horror, panic, when the end’s always going to be the same? You wouldn’t. So …”
“So they run away,” Travers said slowly. “All of them.”
“Hiding – like the AI.” Rusch made a sound of pure frustration. “They’re not going to talk, Harrison. And I don’t think they’re going to fight – they did that in orbit, and on the edge of the system. They gave us a whipping that cost us two lives and two grievously injured, punched holes in Lai’a and took our ordnance down to critical levels. If we’d arrived in this system with any ordinary ship, they’d have reduced us to scrap metal. That was the fight. This? There’s nothing here but people – and I use the term loosely! – who just pick up and run, like a disorganized civilian population full of the young, the old, the infirm. No automata. No defenses.” She paused. “Help me here – is anyone making sense of this? There’s no rhyme or reason in anything we’re seeing.”
“Unless,” Travers said grimly, “the Zunshu left this planet.”
But Mark made negative gestures. “They wouldn’t abandon it and then leave it defended like the jewel in the crown. As Lex said, we paid dearly to get through those defenses. No, Neil – she’s quite right, nothing we’re seeing makes sense. But you can be sure, this is the Zunshu home. They might be elsewhere too, on a hundred other colony worlds, but this is home. The extravagant defense zones tell us so.”
“And we can pinpoint the colonies,” Shapiro added, “when we interrogate the AI. We might have to track the Zunshu from system to system, but do I believe we’ve seen the worst they can throw at us. How long till the boarding tube is established, Lai’a?”
“Ten minutes,” Lai’a estimated. “Please enter the jump bay at your earliest convenience. It will be flooded to match pressure, temperature and salinity factors native to the platform interior.”
As it spoke, Fargo and Fujioka, Rabelais and Queneau appeared. As Travers and Marin, Vidal and Shapiro, Kulich and the Sherratts stepped out to make space in the confines of the physics lab, they took station. In the chemistry lab opposite, Leon and Roy, Rodman, Inosanto and Perlman gathered to watch the threedee. Grant would be monitoring the datastream from the Infirmary, and if Hubler was half coherent by now, he might be watching.
Jon Kim should have been there, touching gloves with Shapiro as he passed by. Tonio Teniko should have been standing back in the shadows, watching Vaurien with those hot, dark eyes. Marin felt their absence keenly, and knew Travers did also, since Neil asked,
“Lai’a, how’s Richard doing?”
“Neural grafting has commenced,” Lai’a told him. “Bone welding is complete. Edema in the limbs is under nano dispersal. Captain Vaurien is in deep shock. Cardiac and pulmonary function are severely irregular. Hepatic and renal function appear compromised. Doctor Grant is assisting, and nanotherapy is under design. Adequate brain chemistry has been restored. Captain Vaurien remains on pervasive life support pending corrective procedures; a cryogen tank is on standby.”
“I had to ask,” Travers muttered.
“If you hadn’t, I would have,” Jazinsky said in a rasping voice as the service lift went down fast.
The jump bay was opposite armoury. Tra
vers and Vidal had already been down here, setting out the full weapons array, and Dario swore as he saw the ordnance they would load into the receivers and mounts on each hardsuit. He and his equero had never been soldiers – neither had Jazinsky, but she had served long enough with a commercial salvage crew to be no stranger to the hardware. To Travers, Marin, Vidal and Shapiro, it was all grimly familiar. Six gundrones – the size of oil barrels, roughly spherical, gunmetal blue, armored and armed more heavily than any of the suits –idled between the armory and the jump bay.
“You may take station in the jump bay at your convenience,” Lai’a said over the quiet loop. “The entry point is secured; the boarding tube is in place. I detect no response from the occupants of the platform.”
Shapiro was clipping a small Chiyoda rotary to his forearm. Three pulse weapons were already mounted on his left shoulder, and a maglev-fed grenade projector on the right forearm. “Life signs in proximity to the boarding tube?”
“Many plants; many small creatures. No life readings corresponding to defense formations or ambushes.” Lai’a paused. “The AI has activated … and shut down again. Time online: 1.9 seconds.”
“Fluttering,” Dario growled as he finished with his weapons. “On and offline – intermittent. Damnit, I need Tor.”
“Not yet having Tor,” Midani Kulich said with bleak determination, “having me, getting good deal … me had became soldier. I became. In days of war, Resalq and Zunshu. I was being good fighter.”
“Very good fighter,” Dario sighed. “I remember Kjorin, when we opened the stasis chamber and you and Emil came tumbling out.” He had checked every weapon, and swore lividly. “All right, Mark – let’s just get this done.”
And Lai’a: “Step into the jump bay and standby for flooding.”