While all this was happening, Fritz was testing the computer systems, together with the newly augmented sensors, and also trialling the parameters of available flight control with and without computers or AIs. Flying the beast without AIs or computers was possible, but created a very obvious strain on the major and Harry’s capabilities. Satisfied, the major nodded. ‘Right, back to base, refuel, rearm, provision and off we go hunting a sub. Any questions or observations not already covered? No. OK, take us back to dock twelve, please, Harry. Base Techs, please stand by, we will be there in ten minutes. Mudshark techs, please also report. Once docked, you have one hour for final checks of all systems.’
An hour and fifteen minutes later they were heading at speed out of the bay towards the point in the moderately salty ocean from where they had originally recovered Mudshark.
As they had some five hundred kilometres to go and the AIs were perfectly capable of running the ship, the humans dozed away the couple of hours’ travel time. The major alerted them all when they were fifty kilometres out and they went to light alert as Mudshark slowed down to twenty-five kilometres per hour. They already had their combat suits on, so it was more of a heads up to visit the loo, grab a snack and a drink, then run checks at their appointed stations. Glint and Flint were inside the Manta V submersible checking the systems and running some last-minute adjustments on the Harpoon for probable subsurface deployment, so Marko called them up to come to the cockpits.
They cruised around the area where they had first spotted Mudshark from the air prior to organising its retrieval.
‘Major Longbow.’
‘Games Board monitor. How may I be of service?’
‘I wish to conduct a background interview with one of your crew as to how this craft was captured by you.’
‘Yes, of course. Sergeant Major Spitz, can you assist, please?’
Marko groaned to himself then turned from his engineering board to look at the monitor, first affixing a welcoming smile on his face. The once-human had lowered himself to Marko’s face level and was looking intently at him as if he was some moderately interesting biological specimen. Marko looked at the handsome male face and wondered if the individual ever thought of his family or had even visited them since he had been recruited as a child. He had changed beyond all the usual human augments into the part human but mostly audiovisual recording and editing antigravity-assisted machine.
‘Sergeant Major Marko Spitz. For our viewers, can you please tell us your thoughts and actions when this craft was liberated from the Gjomvik interlopers.’
Marko, who had done so many interviews that he’d lost count, slipped into what Jan called his ‘Sphere persona’. She’d teased him about it many times, saying that he almost came across as being knowledgeable and sincere.
‘It is amazing to think that only forty-eight standard hours ago we captured this craft. At the time the major had been way ahead of us, flying high cover for our hovercraft, when he relayed sensor data of two escape pods disappearing over the horizon. Some hours earlier one of our satellites had noted a large, unusual disturbance on the ocean surface and, as we had been out doing test firings and aerial recovery of the Harpoon seizure and electronic control missile, we were vectored to investigate. The Aurora combat reconnaissance and surveillance aircraft the major was flying had been stripped of its weapon so that it could carry its standard surveillance drone and the Harpoon. The high-speed drone had relayed the first images of Mudshark as its chameleon-ware shut down. Major Longbow made a snap decision and deployed the Harpoon, realising that this craft was something new, because the Intel AI could not identify it as an Administration craft or any other known vehicle. The Harpoon accelerated to Mach 4 to get to Mudshark as quickly as possible; it was quite literally down to its last ten litres of pure fuel water as it deployed its air brakes and latched onto the communication mast at about thirty kilometres per hour, shearing it off, then swinging around and locking into the electronic feeds.’
Marko watched the monitor as he was talking, knowing that as he spoke the hybrid of human and machine was editing and splicing images of the Aurora and the Harpoon missile into its data feeds, over the recording that it was making of him. Marko wondered how much humanity the monitor still retained as he continued his story.
‘The Harpoon’s control protocols, designed by Sergeant Fritz van Vinken, then crashed what remained of Mudshark’s computers and seized control of the propulsion systems. Control was given to Fritz at his console aboard our hovercraft so he could start moving Mudshark away from the area. We rendezvoused with the craft some hours later and jumped across into the open hangar door to take possession. As we discovered later, the only reason it was afloat, with no AG, was due to the huge amount of flotation built into it. We then managed to coax one hundred kilometres per hour out of it and nursed it back to the base.’
The monitor nodded, gracing him with a tight little smile as it spoke. ‘My thanks, Sergeant Major, and my compliments to you. Folks, it looks like things are starting to happen. We shall bring you the action of the day in this special presentation from the Games Board, so stay focused on us! And now a message from our very latest Games Board-approved energy drink. Vapour! Drink it to stay alert and focused while relaxing and enjoying all the Games Board presentations! And yes! It is perfectly safe, designed specifically with you, our wonderfully supportive viewers, in mind. Gloriously safe even for the pregnant among you who are bringing into our Universe the next generation of viewers, who we of the Games Board will faithfully serve as always.’
*
Three
The major keyed his microphone again. ‘We are in the main area. Sergeant van Vinken, you ready to go? Right, do your stuff.’
‘Subsurface drones deploying, aerial drones away.’
The plan was to drop ten Intel drones around the area, within a one-kilometre radius of the battle site. Nautical Meteorological had advised them earlier that the area in question had been relatively quiet at the original battle time, although, with two of the planet’s moons in conjunction, the tidal flows would peak six hours after they had arrived in the vicinity, which would mean unpredictable high waves. Everyone was now constantly watching their own instruments and keeping an eye on the Intel feeds as well. They scanned the entire area, found nothing, recovered the drones in sequence, stepped out another kilometre and did it all over again, and again and again.
They had covered a rather large chunk of water. It was midafternoon, the ocean was now very lumpy with the huge tidal shifts and Marko, for one, was getting rather annoyed about still being in combat gear. It was really good kit, but it was designed to keep them alive, not necessarily comfortable. So, as always it seemed, the excitement started when they were ready to go to sleep with Fritz yelling, ‘Contact, contact, fifteen degrees starboard, seven hundred and fifty metres, depth eighty-five metres, sea mount; anomaly is present on top of the sea-mount, considerable aquatic-life activity around it.’
Count on Fritz to be correct in his language most of the time, Jan mused, and it was always good for the monitors.
‘Seal up, combat protocols! Stand-off at five hundred metres,’ the major responded. ‘Recover, refuel and redeploy drones.’
Fritz, totally immersed in his numerous data feeds, reported again: ‘Drone six destroyed, sir, drones five and seven under attack. Same as the octopoids in configuration, but massing twenty-five to thirty-five kilograms, and a few up to the one-hundred-kilogram mark.’
‘OK, let’s climb to fifteen metres and take the speed up to two hundred, co-pilot. If any surface targets are acquired, Staff Jan Wester, you are cleared to engage.’
‘Acknowledged, Major.’
‘Anomaly moving towards the centre of our orbit. Surmise that it is the Gjomvik Submersible, as it is trying to communicate with this craft,’ Fritz called out.
From the co-pilot’s chair, Harry asked, ‘Method?’
‘Long-wave acoustic. Comms buoy away.’
T
he major nodded his approval. ‘Acknowledge the signal. Is it human or AI?’
‘Feels human, sir,’ Fritz replied. ‘Female Germanic accented. Unusual for an AI.’
‘Right, Fritz, standard parley protocol.’
‘No acknowledgment, sir, but it’s still moving, being intensely attacked. It must be a very tough piece of kit.’
On a side screen Marko watched the visual feeds from the submerged drones, fascinated as hundreds of squid-like creatures zoomed up out of the depths to engage each drone. The controlling computers on board Mudshark and the small computers in each of the drones tried every defensive tactic available to them, from firing tiny short-range high-speed torpedoes into the larger octopoids, to tumbling into the masses of smaller ones to suck the creatures into the twin, side-mounted, shrouded propellers, to lasering the eyes of the creatures with intense ultraviolet light, or high-speed ramming. But the numbers of octopoids just kept increasing, slowly wearing the tough little drones down.
The major went to his main weapons expert. ‘Harry, quick idea?’
‘Well, if that sub is tough enough to withstand those critters, it could probably survive smart depth charges, sir.’
The major gave a curt nod. ‘Fritz, flash her the specs of what’s coming down the chute, advise her we are trying to help.’
The seconds ticked past before Fritz spoke. ‘She acknowledges, sir, but is being very rude about it. Says she has some missiles left and if she goes down, we will as well.’
The major shrugged. ‘Fire the squibs. Watch for missile launch. Deploy craft Orbital countermeasures. Marko, get the drones to clear the blast area.’
They could feel the thumps on the outer hull as the packages of mini-explosive squibs were fired from their mortars. Harry had suggested, before they put to sea, that they would be perfect for the octopoids. Dozens of the fist-sized directional grenades, each with a pair of high-speed water jets attached, sprayed out to circle and sink around Fritz’s ‘anomaly’, the mercenary sub.
Marko could see the aerial missile countermeasures drones start to circle Mudshark, as Mudshark itself continued to orbit above the ocean waves with the sub at its centre. The drones spaced out so that any three of them could see each quadrant around Mudshark. The teardrop-shaped lifting bodies had stubby wings, carried six short-range micromissiles each, plus a small powerful pulse laser, with a comms system that created a swarm mentality between them.
The submerged drones moved at full speed out of the blast area but he noted that two were very slow. ‘Five and Seven appear to be damaged. They will probably not make it. Replacements on standby.’
The rail guns started firing as targets were acquired around the comms buoy. Fritz saw how close the octopoids were to the buoy so he brought another one online, then held it in the launch mortar tube on standby.
Fritz took down all communications a fraction of a second before the squibs’ detonation and then brought them up again just as the comms buoy was destroyed by a ricochet with a howling screech erupting from all their headphones. With his ears ringing, Marko advised, ‘Drones Five and Seven destroyed, replacements away. Reserve down to five. Aerial drones reconfigured for water surface operations if required. New comms buoy in position in thirty seconds.’
The major growled. ‘OK. Jan, watch that shooting, we only have one other comms bouy in reserve!’
Jan yelled back. ‘Sorry, the round bounced off a large octopoid which was on an intercept with us. It is no longer.’
The major resisted the urge to glance over his shoulder at her, looking down at his screens instead, only to see more of the creatures rising to the churning sea surface. ‘Damn! Increase speed to max, height to max. I wonder if these things can launch themselves out of the water? Jig and jive, Harry!’
Bugger, Marko thought, as he always hated that movement. He loaded a motion-sickness package into his bloodstream from his bioware as Jan yelled again: ‘Sir, we have octopoids, big bastards, landing on the rear housings! So, yes, they most definitely can launch themselves from the water! They are ripping the covers off the AG units!’
‘Shit! Jan, deal with them as best you can; I am releasing the AI proxies to your control.’
Seconds later Marko saw the titanium-clad proxies appear on each side of the rear deck, firing slow-speed big-calibre gel rounds at the octopoids. As the gel rounds hit, they ripped away great lumps of flesh and gristle, injuring the main body parts of the creatures so that they slumped and slid off the casings into the sea below.
Marko’s system warnings were starting to go off as his hearing recovered. ‘We have critical damage. Port-side AG unit is dropping power, sir; down nine per cent and falling. I have compensated. Coolant levels are also down; if we can get it, we need additional fuel water.’
‘Do the best you can, Marko, I will not risk sucking some of those critters into the water tanks.’
‘Understood. I have maxed the atmospheric collection,’ Marko said, as Fritz interrupted.
‘Gjomvik pilot says she is going to surface, then eject. At her current speed she will surface in five minutes. Says she is covered in the octopoids, with a very large one trying to drag her back down. She has a major problem with her propulsion system. Says she is going to go for a rapid surfacing and try to get clear as her craft hits the surface. Gutsy!’
‘Fritz, kamikaze the nearest drone into that big octopoid!’
‘On it!’
The closest drone peeled in towards the slowly surfacing submarine and accelerated to its maximum speed, driving itself deeply into the giant squid-like creature before collapsing its tiny antimatter core containment, with the resulting explosion shredding the creature into dozens of pieces. The submarine accelerated upwards, no longer being held back, although smaller creatures still attempted to intercept it, as the major barked out, ‘Glint, get to the Manta. I will open the main hangar door so you can launch the Harpoon. Do this right, people, and we will get the pilot and the sub.’ They all nodded as he added: ‘Fritz, get the specs on the sub’s ejection pod. Tell her she will not survive if she goes into the ocean with those bastards down there. We are going to have to go for an aerial recovery.’
Fritz spoke while his fingers flew in a blur over three separate touch panels. ‘Acknowledged; have the info. Pod is basic teardrop configuration of 1200mm diameter, 3200mm long. Has a small antigravity unit capable of sustaining the pod at ten metres up for three hours.’
‘Good. Fritz, put two of the airborne drones on the surface to act as backup comms links.’ The units instantly decelerated and dropped down onto the water, watching for the ascending sub.
Fritz counted down. ‘Two minutes to surface on my count. Stand by, stand by, five, four, three, two, one, mark! I have the emergence point, as indicated on screens.’
The major took control and swung Mudshark in a hard banking turn, which it was probably never designed to do, then deployed the main air brakes, dropping the speed to one hundred kilometres per hour as he yelled out, ‘Jan, everything you have across the emergence point, please. Door coming open; hang on everyone — this is going to be interesting. As soon as you get a target, Glint, fire!’
Mudshark was pitching, rolling and yawing in an alarming fashion. The major and Harry, even with the aid of the computers and the AIs, were barely maintaining control of the craft as they approached the emergence spot at speed. Between them they were all furiously compensating for the now-open front hangar door and ramp and the constantly moving turrets of the rail guns. Jan timed it perfectly, halting fire and switching targets just as the Gjomvik one-man sub erupted out of the water, rising a full four metres or so from the surface with another large octopoid clinging to its stern.
The Harpoon flashed across the rapidly closing space between them and the sub, as the ejection system ripped the entire front cone, housing the cockpit, off the wasp-shaped machine, and blasted it into the air. Simultaneously, something — and Marko could only presume it was Glint — engaged the largest oc
topoid on the remains of the sub as it started to splash back onto the surface. The entire head portion of the creature disintegrated and the thought flashed through his head: That’s some very efficient shit in action!
The major hauled the nose of the protesting Mudshark high into the air, following the ejection pod, as two large octopoids exploded through the ocean’s surface, seizing onto the pod. An instant later the entire assemblage of pod and octopoids smashed in through the open hangar doors to crash hard against the left side of the enclosure, shoving Mudshark hard to port.
Marko’s control panel was going berserk. The ammunition power feed onto the starboard guns had become intermittent and Jan was yelling in his ear to get it back online; the ramp hydraulics were jammed solid as linear gun rounds from Glint blew the remains of an octopoid right through it. The starboard main propulsion was rapidly going offline with small octopoids slithering into its air intakes and causing it to rapidly drop thrust, slewing the whole craft sideways as the port-side thruster tried to keep forward speed. Marko cut power to it and ramped up the centre thruster to one hundred and ten per cent.
The port-side AG unit was also failing, further dropping them dangerously towards a rollover point as the major, who was hell bent on legging it out of the area, poured on the power. They had a flash message from Fritz that he had the sub under his command and had it making best speed full astern, away from the area. Marko overrode the major’s command protocols and lowered the front cockpit as best as he could to try and tidy up the airflow, and at the same time Harry was overriding Jan’s control of the guns, hauling them back towards the body of the craft.
The sea, twelve metres below them, was a boiling confusion of small octopoids trying to launch themselves on board; the countermeasure orbiting sentries destroyed most of them but dozens still made it onto the ship. As Marko glanced into the side monitor to see what was happening in the hangar, it appeared to be complete bedlam. Glint seemed to be trying to shoot the remaining large octopoid in the head, without destroying whatever was in line of sight behind it. The octopoid seemed more determined to get at the sub’s pilot, with the engineering proxy arriving to try to get to her first and protect her.
Crystal Venom Page 4