by Isaac Hooke
“All right,” Rade said. “Guess we’re good to proceed, then. Bender, send the HS3s forward please.”
The three HS3 scouts flew above the disk and disappeared.
“Bender, go!” Rade said.
Bender moved Juggernaut onto the disk. As soon as the mech stood still, it too vanished.
“TJ, go!” Rade said.
And so the party members walked one at a time onto the Acceptor and disappeared in turn.
When all the mechs save Electron and Nemesis had gone through, Rade instructed Units C and D to carry the glass tank onto the device.
When they were gone, he glanced at Nemesis.
“After you,” Shaw said.
Rade took his place on the disk.
four
A moment later the ice walls winked out around Rade, replaced by black stone. A rocky passage lay before him, ascending to a sunlit opening. His headlamps illuminated the robot units ahead of him in the passageway: the two Centurions carrying the glass Phant trap between them and scaling the slope toward the cave mouth. Beyond the pair he caught a glimpse of another mech before it moved outside.
Underneath him resided another flat metal disk, covered in Fibonacci spirals, a twin to the one he had just left behind.
Rade stepped off the Acceptor. He noticed the heavier gravity immediately.
“What are the Gs, El?” Rade asked his AI.
“A little more than Earth gravity,” Electron answered. “At one point oh three.”
On the disk, Nemesis materialized.
Rade glanced at the overhead map. The HS3s had assumed positions outside the opening, and mapped out what appeared to be a rocky outcrop overlooking a plain.
Rade climbed the passage, following the robots to the opening. He stepped through. He indeed stood at a cave mouth, though it was situated upon a mountain. Below, a vast black plain spread out before them. The sky was gray, cloudless. Above resided a red and blue gas giant similar to Saturn, though it had four large ring systems. The giant was about the size of a human head in the sky, while the rings spread out to three times the radial length.
The other Hoplites and robots resided on a ledge next to the cave. Rade stepped aside to make room for Nemesis.
He continued to gaze at the sky and spotted a blindingly bright blue dot to the left of the gas giant, obviously the system’s sun, or suns. When he looked directly at it, his photochromatic filters muted the brightness automatically. He zoomed in, curious if he could discern more than one star, but even at the stabilized 183x zoom, it still appeared as a lone sun.
He reset his zoom.
“My guess is this is a moon of some kind,” Lui said.
“I’m assuming there is atmosphere?” Rade said. He noticed that the rotors on the HS3s were spinning.
“Yes,” Lui replied. “The air is mildly toxic, but we could breath it for a couple of hours if we had to. The oxygen content is thirty percent: similar to Earth during the age of the dinosaurs. We can expect bigger lifeforms, should we encounter any. And also bigger explosions.”
“Hell ya,” Bender said. “The bugs are going to fry.”
“Too bad we have no incendiary throwers,” Fret said.
“I’d say this is the closest to an Earth analog we’ve ever seen,” Lui said. “I can only guess how far away this system is from our own solar system. It’s probably at least on the far side of the galaxy, like Surus suggested. Or it could be in another galaxy entirely.”
“I assure you, we are in the same galaxy,” Surus said. “Even the Phants don’t have the technology to traverse galaxies. Not like the Elder.”
“You talk as if the Elder were still alive,” Tahoe said.
“Perhaps they are,” Surus said. “But back to the matter at hand: look there.”
Rade turned toward Surus, who was standing in Shaw’s passenger seat and pointing behind them.
Rade pivoted around, and saw black peaks in the distance beyond the summit of the current mountain, thrusting past it to poke into the lower atmosphere.
“Do you see that east-west trending ridge in the distance?” Surus said.
“That’s not a ridge,” TJ said. “That’s a bunch of Mount Everests clustered side by side.”
“I was right,” Surus continued. “This is a conquered world. Those are the remnants of geronium feed piles; the raw elements were digested by Phants and deposited on the surface to form those mountains, likely an eon ago. The crust of this planet has been completely transmogrified by the Great Formers: those creatures known as slugs and crabs that you once fought. And the Phants have sapped it all.”
“You mean they’re here?” Bender asked.
“No, the moon is spent,” Surus said. “The crust cannot be converted further. The hive that did this would have departed an age ago. There is a chance we may find a colony of the former inhabitants somewhere ahead. Likely bioengineered to withstand the atmospheric changes produced by the Formers: the ‘toxic elements’ that Lui mentioned. If we do find a colony of survivors, they will have no knowledge of their true history, and likely will have forgotten their Phant conquerors. Typically, after the cleansing, cultural archives are lost, and the survivors devolve into a caveman level society, early Tech Class I on the developmental scale. Sometimes preservation depots are left behind by the Phants, and the survivors can find these and rediscover some of their lost technology, but such depots are the exception rather than the norm, created at the whim of the conquering hive. When the Phants leave, usually the former inhabitants rarely bounce back to anything beyond a preindustrial phase, or late Tech Class I, even with the presence of preservation depots.”
“I can see why,” Tahoe said. “With the crust destroyed, there is no way to grow crops. No natural resources. No oil or gas for industrialization. No iron for building. Only the hardiest races could survive this. It’s like being trapped in the dark ages without any food sources.”
“You’re mostly right,” Surus said. “Though there are usually sparse natural resources scattered about. And small plots of land capable of supporting crops. But even so, such resources are an island amid a wasteland sea, definitely not enough to support more than a few thousand inhabitants. It is why races rarely survive when a hive departs, unless they are bioengineered to endure, perhaps as part of some deal struck by the conquered with the hive in exchange for not resisting the initial invasion.”
“Mmm,” Rade said. “I seem to recall the Phants making a similar offer to humanity.”
“It was a good thing you refused,” Surus said.
“Yeah,” Rade said. He returned his gaze to the black plains before him. “So before we teleported here, you told me you had a faint reading on our prey?”
“Yes,” Surus said. “It’s coming from the north. There is a hillock there. I’m highlighting it on our shared displays.”
Rade stared at the horizon. A green triangle appeared above it. There, a tiny bump protruded from the otherwise flat plains in the distance. He zoomed in and realized the hump was indeed a hillock, black and pocked with holes. “Looks like a big termite mound.”
“Or a piece of green cheese gone bad,” Bender said.
“So that’s what you keep in your pants,” Manic said.
“Har,” Bender replied.
“They never cease bantering,” Surus commented.
“I know,” Shaw said. “Sometimes I feel like a teacher herding her school kids on a field trip. But when the fighting starts, I promise you, these are the men you want at your side. And the interesting thing: you can also use their classy banter as a gauge for how bad the fighting is.”
“How so?”
“Well, when things get bad, let’s just say you’re going to hear a lot of inappropriate comments.”
“More inappropriate than what I’ve heard already?” Surus asked.
“Ma’am,” Bender said. “Trust me. You haven’t heard anything inappropriate yet.”
“Lui, what exactly are we looking at?” Rade said,
trying to steer the conversation back to the hillock.
“If I had to guess, I would say it was an alien nest of some kind,” Lui said. “Maybe created by the former inhabitants of this colony, as Surus was suggesting earlier.”
“I believe that is exactly what it is,” Surus said. “Inside, we’ll likely find a pre-industrial civilization harboring our prey.”
“Will this civilization be dangerous in any way?” Tahoe asked.
“It’s hard to say at the moment,” Surus replied. “But I think it would be safe to err on the side of caution.”
“Our prey knows you’re here, right?” Rade said.
“He can sense my presence equally, yes,” Surus replied.
Rade glanced directly down at the mountain. A path wound its way to the plain below. “All right. Well. We can talk about this all day, or we can start making our way toward that hillock. I elect we do the latter. Units C and D, stay behind and guard the entrance to the Acceptor. Notify us if you spot any incoming tangos.”
“Are we authorized to engage these tangos?” Unit C asked.
“You are,” Rade said. “Protect the cave at all costs. Units A and B, take over the portage of the Phant trap. Tahoe, bring us down.”
Tahoe organized the group into two fire teams, and the Hoplites descended the winding path in traveling overwatch. One HS3 led the way, the other two dispersed down the mountainside and made directly for the plain below, where they would wait for the others. The two robot porters brought up the rear, carrying the Phant trap. Rade could have had a single Hoplite port that glass container, but he wanted to keep every last one of his six mechs combat ready.
The winding route proved treacherous, and very often the way became so narrow that the Hoplites were forced to hug the rock wall and proceed crabwise, one foot at a time, toes pointed outward. They had to use their jumpjets to cross sections of the path that had fallen away entirely.
“Why would the Phants who conquered this world place their Acceptor in such an inaccessible place?” TJ said when the squad finally reached the ground.
“My guess is they wanted to keep it away from the inhabitants,” Fret said.
“That would make sense,” Tahoe said. “Except that only Phants can activate the teleporters. So Surus, why?”
“It could be they simply wanted a place that was near to the geronium feed piles,” Surus said. “That way they could teleport here from the mothership, feed, and then return when they were glutted.”
“Sound like lazy bastards to me,” Manic said.
“Your kind of people, huh Manic?” Bender said.
Rade surveyed the plain. “All right. Bender, activate the holographic emitters on the HS3s and send them out to survey the north, east and west. I want them to continually increase their altitude at the same time, until they reach a height of ten K. I’m expecting to get some good reception, considering that this is a preindustrial race.”
He pulled up the signal pollution graph on his HUD. Sure enough, it was empty save for the spectrum produced by his team.
A moment later the HS3s disappeared. They hadn’t even begun to move, yet. He glanced at his overhead map. The dots showed that the HS3s were still there, heading in the indicated directions.
The vanishing act could be explained by the fact that all three HS3s were fitted with holographic emitters, using tech designed by Surus to decrease the weight, allowing the drones to still fly despite the load. It was apparently tricky to hide the motion of the four rotors each drone used, but Surus had found a way. It was tech that not even the military had.
When Rade asked why she hadn’t yet patented it, Surus replied: “You think I’m going to give humanity my best kept secrets?”
“If she doesn’t patent it, then I will,” Bender said.
“You’ll do no such thing,” Rade told him. “This is for us, and us alone. For the Argonauts.”
The illusion would only work against primitive races of course, as modern tech would easily see through the ruse, via LIDAR and thermal vision for example. And if the members of the current preindustrial species were able to see on the thermal band, then it wouldn’t work at all.
Rade considered that at the height the drones would be flying at, the HS3s wouldn’t have been visible to ground observers anyway, not unless these aliens had something like a primitive telescope.
“What if our prey has installed advanced sensory tech around the nest?” Lui said. “Sensors beyond the current Tech Class of the aliens?”
“I guess we’ll find out soon enough,” Surus said. “Though I’m hoping our prey hasn’t had time. He would have arrived somewhere around four to six weeks ago.”
“And you said he already knows we’re here?” Lui said.
“That’s right,” Surus said. “We must keep a watchful eye for any incoming search parties.”
The HS3s separated, with one moving north to scout the plain, and the other two east and west to follow the mountain range. All three shot upwards, too, rapidly increasing their altitude.
Rade was able to receive clear reception from the drones out to ten kilometers in the north, east and west directions. Each of those scouts also hovered at a height of ten kilometers, giving him a clear picture of the plains and mountains. There were no tangos out there. Not a one. The black plains continued to the north to infinity, with only that lone hillock interrupting the otherwise flat terrain. Behind the squad, the east-west trending mountain range continued to the horizon on either side, and to the south, the mountains grew higher and higher until they did that thing of biting into the sky and piercing the lower atmosphere.
“Bender, have the HS3s maintain their current separation from the squad as we advance,” Rade said. “Units A and B, watch our six. Tahoe, take us forward.”
Once more Tahoe formed two fire teams of three mechs each and had the Hoplites advance in traveling overwatch. The HS3s maintained their ten-kilometer gap to the north, east and west.
Wish we could have brought the Raptor along, Rade thought. Though he supposed that the HS3s were proving to be a great eye-in-the-sky alternative.
The mechs advanced at a moderate pace, though it seemed slow compared to the dwarf planet with its lower gravity. The best description of the ground below was of a packed, gritty mixture of soot and sand, as if thousands and thousands of pounds of shale had been pulverized to form this black sand-like grit. The grit swallowed the feet of the mechs, but underneath that loose layer the particles seemed compacted, and hard. Meanwhile, the two robot porters sunk into the black sand up to their calves with each step.
The loose particles quickly refilled the footprints the Hoplites left in their wake, so that the depressions the squad made were much smaller than the size of their steel extremities. There were no such depressions in front of the Argonauts to follow, which told Rade dust storms occasionally swept the landscape clear. Unless their quarry had brought some air-capable vehicle through the Acceptor, such as a small air stallion, and used it to cross these plains.
The lower legs of the mechs soon became covered in the black dust they kicked up, and it interfered with the camouflage ability—though since the rest of the mechs were colored black by the camouflage skin to match the surface anyway, it didn’t really matter.
In about an hour, the lead HS3 had flown close enough to the hillock to determine its size: it was about a kilometer high, and roughly circular in shape, with a radius of twenty kilometers. Rade sent the HS3 down to explore the pock marks he had seen from afar, and invariably they proved to be small tunnels that ended in a blockage only a few meters inside.
“So, Surus?” Rade said. “What do you think?”
“Our prey is definitely somewhere inside there,” Surus said. “I’m getting the strongest sense of him than ever before.”
Closer to the bottom of the hillock, the HS3 discerned two large forms residing near the opening of one of the pockmarks. Rade instructed the HS3 to keep its distance from those forms for the moment.
The creatures looked vaguely similar to beetles with those bodies segmented into heads, thoraxes and abdomens. The abdomens were bulbous, and covered in a thick, rainbow-hued carapace. Each of them had six jointed legs: two pairs emerged from the abdomen, with the final set attached to the thorax. The limbs were covered in large hairs, as well as several talon-like, downward-curving spurs. The front right forelegs were wrapped with what looked like red fabrics near the top, with two dangling balls of silver hanging from them. That was the only “clothing” the creatures wore.
On the dark, rainbow-hued head, which was elongated like an alligator’s, several small dots arranged in a diamond shape could have been eyes. Two long antennae protruded from the head above those eyes. A pair of thick mandibles composed the maw region; beyond, what looked like part of an esophagus could be seen—it was covered in small white hooks or teeth. Two forward-faced prehensile limbs emerged from the thorax underneath the head, reaching past the mandibles. The multiple pincers at the tips looked capable of operating tools.
On the dorsal area of the thorax, several fist-sized tubules pointed skyward. From the way the tips expanded and contracted, Rade guessed those were used for respiration.
“Well well well,” Bender said. “We gots ourselves some classic bugs.”
The opening the pair guarded appeared darker than the surrounding pockmarks, and Rade suspected it wasn’t plugged like the rest. The speakers on the HS3s picked up a very soft chittering, which coincided with one or another of the alien sentries rubbing their mandibles together.
“What do you think about sending in the HS3 for a closer look, Surus?” Rade asked.
“I wouldn’t recommend it,” Surus said.
“I agree,” Tahoe said. “Look at how small those eyes are, if they’re even eyes. My guess is they have very poor eyesight. Especially if they dwell in caves, which is what it appears they do.”