Aleksandr’s face turned white. “Surely not…”
“They’re gonna torch us with their exhaust!” Christopher said. “This thing has no radiation shielding! The dose will be in the thousands of rads!”
Zara almost threw up in her helmet at the thought of the ghostly tingling sensation that they would feel—innocent enough in itself, but a certain precursor to a horrible death.
Chapter 24
“This is murder!” cried Yong Liu, one of the scientists. “I came to understand life, not end it!”
“It’s self-preservation,” Seung replied coldly.
“I will have no part of it!” Liu lunged at Liao, knocking him flying. Imparting his inertia to Seung also had the effect of allowing him to stop almost at the center of the bridge. He grabbed the virtual control stick and yanked it back. Dawn’s rotation was abruptly halted.
Seung then lunged up at Liu from the floor but missed, instead hitting the top of the dome and bouncing off. He pushed himself down toward the floor and flipped around, so that his feet made contact, and tried again. This time he was on target and collided with Liu. The two men became an intertwined mass of flailing limbs as they hit the top of the dome. The rest of the crew scattered around the bridge, getting as far as they could from the fight.
“The missiles are avoiding us!” one of the others said, watching the radar’s projected tracks for the pushers. “The pack is splitting apart!” The six remaining pushers diverged from their cluster formation and headed towards both ends of Dawn. The crew watched in fear as the predators circled them, using their powerful engines to brake and then converge on the ship.
Liao was back at the controls. “They must be bombs!” he said. “I’m going to spin the ship to try to knock them away!” With that, he fired all her attitude control thrusters at once. Dawn spun on her axis and precessed chaotically like a spinning top that was about to fall over. The crew was pinned painfully in a huddle against one side of the bridge as the ends of the ship became centrifuges. “We can only pray this works!” Liao yelled as he was flung away from the console.
The pushers backed away and activated their powerful side thrusters until they matched Dawn’s rotation. Then, using their main engines to counteract centrifugal force, they closed in gradually. The crew watched in horror as the apparently smart silver cylinders moved in for the kill. The sun and the other crew members’ shadows flashed across their field of view every few seconds as the ship spun.
Three pushers attached themselves successfully to the outside of the forward ring, equidistant from each other, and immediately sent a pulse of heat to set the powerful adhesive that would hold them fast. Dawn’s crew braced for the end, imagining them exploding and blowing the atrium into a million pieces. Not daring to move, they watched the new additions to their craft as they fired their side thrusters to slow its rotation.
“Holy crap!” Christopher said. “I can breathe again!”
“Those little miracles adapted to the situation perfectly,” Aleksandr said, open-mouthed. “Not too shabby for a completely untested technology!”
“Time check?” Arthur Sudbury asked, uttering his first words since launch.
“Seven minutes to intercept.”
“Dawn to Eris. Come in, Eris,” the radio spouted.
“Should I answer them?” Christopher asked.
“Negative,” Arthur said.
“Dawn to Eris. We are a sovereign ship of China, and interference will be taken as an act of war. Over.”
Aleksandr looked at Christopher. “Bullcrap,” Christopher said. “Gimme the mic.” He grabbed it before Aleksandr could stop him.
“Chris, no!”
“Eris to Dawn,” Christopher said. “You are not a sovereign ship. You are the asset of a private entity, built with stolen money. We are claiming rights to that entity. Prepare to vacate the ship and board Eris.”
“You’ve got to be damn well kidding me.” Seung’s voice was unmistakable. “Turn around now or face the consequences.”
“Nice work, Chris,” Aleksandr said, angrily. “You had to give away our intentions, didn’t you?”
“But… I was just… they already know we aren’t just doing a friendly flyby,” Christopher protested.
“Never give the enemy any information,” Arthur said, tonelessly. “Anything they learn can be used against us. Too late now, though.”
Christopher sighed. “Four minutes to go. Range: three kilometers.”
“Got a good visual now,” Aleksandr said. A camera view was displayed at the front, but everybody craned their necks to the windows anyway. Dawn sparkled in the sunlight. “Amazing,” Zara said.
“Auto-sequence final burn,” Aleksandr said. The Eris turned 180 degrees and gave an eight-second pulse of thrust. “Trajectory dead-on for interception.”
“They’re straining to turn their ship, but the pushers are holding her steady,” Christopher said, looking at the telemetry stream on his tablet. “The problem is, the pushers’ fuel supply is very limited. Once it’s exhausted—which will come much faster with only six of them—they’re useless.”
“We need to get in there ASAP,” Aleksandr said. “By the way, we’re passing around to the night side of Earth in two minutes.”
“Here, you’ll need these,” Arthur said, tossing them each a pair of goggles. They flew in a straight line in the weightless environment. They resembled swimming goggles and were fastened tightly to the head in the same way. “They’re made of visiglass and will give you augmented reality so you can find your way around.” He turned to the man on his right. “Ready with the honeybees?”
“Affirmative.”
“Honeybees?” Zara said.
“They’re small, flying robots, about the size of their namesake,” Christopher replied, turning to face her. “They’ll disperse in all directions and map the layout of the ship while cooperating as a swarm. Our goggles will then give us a 3D view of the inside of Dawn, so we can find our way around.” Zara nodded, noting that she could already see translucent representations in her goggles of the others’ positions in the cabin.
“The bees will be very useful,” Arthur said, “since they’ll likely have switched all the lights off inside to foil us. Even the atrium, whose layout is known, will be impossible to navigate in the dark. Also, the honeybees have thermal cameras and will mark the locations of any people they come across.” He turned to Bruce, his right-hand man. “What’s the exterior made of?”
“Stainless steel, I think,” he said, looking intently through his binoculars.
“That’s going to be a bitch to cut with a laser—it’ll reflect the light,” Arthur said.
“Plasma torch?” Bruce suggested. Arthur nodded. The gleaming spaceship, growing ever larger, began to darken rapidly as the Earth’s shadow enshrouded them.
“I have a particular objective once we get inside,” Christopher said. “They’re using a thirty-two-kilobit encryption system for their communications. As long as the comms are still active, their ground control team can take control of the ship and override anything we do. I’ve got to find the right equipment bay and pull the key out. It’s about the size of a flash drive. Then I’ll replace it with ours, and Dawn’s link to them will be severed.” Zara’s eyed narrowed as she scanned the 3D view of the ship on the heads-up display, wondering where Seung was. I’m coming to get you, asshole.
“One minute,” Aleksandr announced. “Range: three hundred meters. Grapples ready.”
“Two hundred meters.”
The radio came to life. “Eris, this is Dawn Mission Control in China. Cease your approach immediately and back away. This is your one and only chance; otherwise there will be harsh consequences for all involved.”
“One hundred meters. Docking auto-sequence initiated,” Aleksandr said, ignoring the threat.
“The pushers’ fuel is nearly depleted,” Christopher said. “Ten percent remaining.”
Eris’s outside lights came on, their gla
re reflecting from Dawn’s enormous mirror-like surface. “Damn, that’s big,” Zara said.
“Fifty meters… forty… thirty…”
“Crap: pushers one, three, and five are out of fuel!” Christopher said. “We can’t control Dawn any longer.” Right on cue, Dawn began to roll slowly.
“Dammit!” Aleksandr said. “I’m going to have to fly by hand to try and match its rotation.”
“Use those fighter pilot skills, brother. I’ll be ready to grapple,” Christopher said. Aleksandr punched the side and upward thrusters to keep their craft circling Dawn. Christopher grabbed another lever, and four long, flexiform robot arms sprouted from the top of the Eris with adhesive pads at the end.
“You don’t have to be exact, Alex,” Christopher said, with urgency in his voice. “Just get us within ten meters, and roughly synced to their rotation. The grapple arms will do the rest.”
Aleksandr’s concentration was total as he fought to keep up with the rolling ship. “Damn! Chris, can you get it now?”
“Little closer…” Christopher watched outside as his finger hovered over the button. Eris moved in gradually, while fighting the centrifugal force as the pushers had already done.
“Now.” Christopher pushed the button. The four immensely strong hose-like arms homed in on spots on the moving surface and stuck themselves fast. Eris’ crew cheered. The grapple arms then drew Eris closer to the hull and rotated the ship ninety degrees, so she was perpendicular to Dawn.
“Sweet!” Christopher said. “Now to stop this damn thing from spinning. At least our main engines are pointed the right way.” Aleksandr applied a burst of thrust. The immense force of Eris’s main engines stopped the combined ships’ rotation within seconds.
“Deploying docking adapter,” Christopher said. A telescoping circular tube, around one and a half meters in diameter, extended from the top of Eris’s hull. Its end adapted to the convex surface of Dawn and clamped on, forming an airtight seal.
“Equalizing pressure in the adapter,” Aleksandr said, punching another button. A hiss could be heard, lasting roughly thirty seconds. While this was going on, the commandos unbuckled and waited in a tight group near the hatch in the ceiling.
Arthur held a device about the size and shape of a gasoline can with its spout extended. Others held beach-ball-sized silver shape-shifters and a large cylindrical can. “Pressure equalized; seal is good,” Aleksandr said.
“Open the hatch,” Arthur commanded. The hatch at the far end of the docking tunnel swung inwards, and he sprang through the opening “Stay back, and shield your eyes!” he said.
A blinding cone of plasma extended ten centimeters from the device’s nozzle, and he wasted no time in swinging it in a circle around the exposed outer skin of Dawn. It cut the metal like a hot knife through butter, and a rough circle of the material fell inward, edges still glowing.
“It’s dark inside,” Arthur said. “Get the shape-shifters in.” The men behind him tossed the heavy devices to him, and he passed them on into the darkness.
“Honeybees?” Arthur asked. The large can was passed to Arthur. He pressed a button, and the end popped open. A low hum filled the air as thousands of the small devices flew through the hole in the hull.
“A room, about four meters on a side,” one of the others said as a view of it appeared in his goggles.
“It appears to be a laboratory,” Arthur replied. “No hazards detected, and the air’s breathable. Let’s go.” The commandos piled through the tunnel and into the space beyond.
“Should we go?” Zara asked.
“Not yet. Let them sort it out first,” Aleksandr replied, his hands still shaking a little from the adrenaline of the fight to dock with Dawn.
Chapter 25
“I can’t hear a thing,” Arthur said once inside Dawn, hoping the honeybees would have the sense not to fly into his mouth. “The door from this room is locked—no surprise. Well, at least the interior walls in here aren’t shiny, so we can use a laser on them. Bruce, do you want to do the honors?”
A device about the size of a large bottle of dish soap was handed to another man. The shape-shifters floated slowly across the room, undulating slowly as though they were itching for a fight. The others shielded their eyes instinctively as Bruce switched the laser on. The wall sizzled and popped as the intense beam melted it. Within seconds, he had carved a roughly circular hole in the wall. He switched it off and kicked the piece of metal through into more darkness. The honeybees swarmed through, and a long access tunnel showed up on their goggles.
“This probably goes the whole length of the metallic section,” Bruce said. “It’s totally quiet.” They drifted slowly towards the floor, as Dawn was still under power.
“You take three guys down towards the rear of the ship,” Arthur said, “and I’ll take three towards the front. The crew could be hiding anywhere.”
Bruce and three of his fellows pushed through the hole and down the access shaft. “Try every hatch,” he said.
“All locked, dammit,” one of the others said when they reached the bottom.
“Okay well, we’re just going to have to pick a place and start cutting our way through,” Bruce said. “Let’s go halfway back up and start there. Hopefully we don’t damage something crucial.”
Arthur and his men reached the other end of the shaft. “This probably leads into the atrium, since we didn’t dock that far from it,” he said, while trying to open the hatch. “Locked.”
“Stand by.” The man behind him wielded a laser cutter. The hatch was of more solid construction than the walls and took around twenty seconds to cut out. He kicked the still-glowing metal in and the honeybees swarmed through into the dark space. An echo told them that it was large. Their goggles showed them that it was the first deck of the atrium, eighteen meters in diameter and two meters high.
Something else was also lurking there, given away by heat signatures. “Crap! Shape-shifters!” Arthur said. Before the words had left his mouth, three of the fluid-like machines, positioned at the edges of the deck, stretched into long tentacles and made toward the cut-out hatch. “Get ours out there now!”
The spheres were tossed through the hatch. They instantly began to morph—one into a shield to protect the hatch, and the others into snakelike forms ready to attack. The shield was instantly punched through by an enemy machine, in a shower of electrical sparks, as it reached for the men. The rest of the one covering the hatch morphed into a sheath to enclose and subdue the attacker, which then attempted the same trick.
Both tried for a few seconds to get the upper hand. The friendly shape-shifter then produced a limb, with a hatchet-like blade at the end, and began to hack at its opponent. The other four machines, two attackers and two friendly, coiled around and struck at each other like snakes attempting to get the upper hand. Blades grew and sliced through tentacles in attempts to disable each other.
The men stayed back from the hatch, watching in amazement as the vicious robotic fight took place. Sparks flew and popped, parts exploded, electricity sizzled, and bright flashes lit up the deck as the chaotic melee continued with superhuman strength and speed. Burning, hacked-off pieces of tentacles flew everywhere, useless without their main processors. Two fires started, and acrid smoke filled the air.
Meanwhile, the honeybees worked their way through the atrium and continued mapping the rest of the decks. Everyone watched as the map of the ship’s interior continued to evolve.
“Looks like plants and junk… aha! We got our first live one!” Arthur said. “Seven decks up. Let’s wait until the robots fight it out—hopefully ours will win—and then we’ll head up.” After several minutes, the shape-shifters had cut each other into small enough pieces that they were no longer a threat. Neither side was truly victorious, but the threat to the men was removed. The pieces still gave off sparks, and the hot air was thick with the smell of burnt metal and electricity.
“Let’s go,” Arthur said. They piled through the hatc
h into the deck and up towards the circular opening at the center, still in complete darkness.
Arthur jumped from the floor, propelling himself up through the access path until he reached deck seven. Then, still traveling at speed, he grabbed the edge of the deck and changed direction like a gymnast on a bar. He now flew directly at the heat source, at the edge of the deck, twisting around in mid-flight so he was heading at the target feet first.
On arriving, he used his feet to cushion the impact and stop, as though landing from a jump. A scientist was found cowering behind some ferns. “Don’t hurt me!” the man whimpered, with his knees up and his arms protecting his head.
“We’re not here to hurt anyone,” Arthur said, “However, we do need to restrain you. Hands behind your back.” The man obliged. Arthur slipped some plasticuffs on him and tightened them in one fluid movement. He then pulled out a small device that looked like a hockey puck. It spooled out a thin steel rope, the end of which he clipped to the man’s cuffs. The bottom of the puck was coated with an auto-activating adhesive. Arthur clapped it onto the ceiling, two meters above him, immobilizing the scientist.
“Glad you neutralized the shape-shifters up there,” Bruce said on hearing the reports from above.
“Yeah—damn things were lethal,” Arthur said. “Hope there aren’t any more down where you are.”
“We’ve broken through from the access shaft into a room that’s full of what seem like silver tennis balls,” Bruce said. “Haven’t a clue what they are.”
“If I had to guess, I’d say they’re scientific probes, intended to be scattered on Jupiter’s moons,” Arthur replied.
“Makes sense,” Bruce said. “John’s cutting through the opposite wall—actually, it’s done now. Honeybees going in… looks like we’ve found the main access shaft. It’s about three meters wide and runs the length of this end of the ship. It’s still completely dark and quiet. Eerie, almost. Haven’t found another living soul yet. We’ll go down and investigate… oh crap! Shape-shifters!”
Zara's Flight: Book One of the Kato's War series Page 9