by Hank Davis
“Meaning?” Reynold inquired as he followed.
“Me and Dowel,” Jepson flipped a thumb towards the other local climbing up after Reynold, “have been working together for a year now, and we’re good.” He entered the cab. “Mark seems pretty able too, but I’m damned If I know what use we can find for Brockle.”
“Brockle would be fat boy,” said Plate, following Dowel into the cab.
“You guessed it.” Jepson took the driver’s seat.
Along one wall were three fold-down seats, the rest of the cab being crammed with tractor controls and a pile of disconnected hydraulic cylinders, universal joints and PTO shafts. Reynold studied these for a second, noted blood on one short heavy cylinder and a sticky pool of the same nearby. That was from the original driver of this machine . . . maybe. He reached down and drew his pulse-gun, turned and stuck it up under Dowel’s chin. Plate meanwhile stepped up behind Jepson and looped a garrot about his neck.
“What the—” Jepson began, then desisted as Plate tightened the wire. Dowel simply kept very still, his expression fearful as he held his hands out from his body.
“We’ve got a problem,” said Reynold.
“I don’t understand,” said Jepson.
“I don’t either, but perhaps you can help.” Reynold nodded to one of the seats and walked Dowel back towards it. The man cautiously pushed it down and sat. Gun still held at his neck, Reynold searched him, removing a nasty-looking snubnose, then stepped back knowing he could blow the top off the man’s head before he got a chance to rise. “What I don’t understand is why you contacted us and asked us for our coordinates.”
Plate hit some foot lever on Jepson’s seat and spun it round so the man faced Reynold, who studied his expression intently.
“You weren’t supposed to get in contact, because the signal might have been traced,” Reynold continued, “and there were to be no alterations to the plan unless I initiated them.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Jepson whispered. “We stuck to the plan—no one contacted you.”
“Right frequency, right code—just before we blew the device.”
“No, honestly—you can check our com record.”
Either Jepson was telling the truth or he was a very good liar. Reynold nodded to Plate, who cinched the garrot into a loop around the man’s neck and now, with one hand free, began to search him, quickly removing first a gas-system pulse-gun from inside his overalls then a comunit from the top pocket. Plate keyed it on, input a code, then tilted his head as if listening to something as the comunit’s record loaded to his aug.
“Four comunits,” said Plate. “One of them sent the message but the record has been tampered with so we don’t know which one.”
Jepson looked horrified. Reynold tapped his com button. “Spiro, disarm and secure those two in there with you.” Then to Jepson, “Take us to the hideout.”
Plate unlooped the garrot and spun Jepson’s seat forwards again.
“It has to be one of the other two,” said Jepson, looking back at Reynold. “Me and Dowel been working for the Cause for years.”
“Drive the tractor,” Reynold instructed.
The farm, floodlit now as twilight fell, was a great sprawl of barns, machinery garages and silos, whilst the farmhouse was a composite dome with rooms enough for twenty or more people. However, only three had lived there. One of them, according to Jepson, lay at the bottom of an irrigation canal with a big hydraulic pump in his overalls to hold him down. He had been the son. The parents were still here on the floor of the kitchen adjoining this living room, since Jepson and Dowel had not found time to clear up the mess before going to pick up their two comrades. Reynold eyed the two corpses for a moment, then returned his attention to Jepson and his men.
“Strip,” he instructed.
“Look I don’t know—” Jepson began, then shut up as Reynold shot a hole in the carpet moss just in front of the man’s work boots.
The four began removing their clothes, all with quick economy but for Brockle, who seemed to be struggling with the fastenings. Soon they all stood naked.
“Jesu,” said Spiro, “you could do with a makeover fat boy.”
“Em alright,” said Brockle, staring down at the floor, his hands, with oddly long and delicate fingers trying to cover the great white rolls of fat.
“Em alright is em?” said Spiro.
“Scan them,” Reynold instructed.
Plate stepped forwards with a hand scanner and began running it from head to foot over each man, first up and down their fronts, then over them from behind. When Plate reached Brockle, Spiro called out, “Got a big enough scanner there, Plate?” which was greeted by hilarity from his four troops. When Plate came to one who had been in the grain carriage with Brockle, he reacted fast, driving a fist into the base of the man’s skull then following him down to the floor. Plate pulled his solid-state laser from his belt, rested it beside the scanner then ran it down the man’s leg, found something and fired. A horrible sputtering and sizzling ensued, black oily smoke and licks of flame rising from where the beam cut into the man’s leg. After a moment, Plate inspected the readout from his scanner, nodded and stepped back.
“What have we got?” Reynold asked.
“Locater.”
Reynold felt cold claws skittering down his backbone. “Transmitting?”
“No, but it could have been,” Plate replied.
Reynold saw it with utter simplicity. If a signal had been sent, then ECS would be down on them very shortly, and shortly after that they would all be either dead or in an interrogation cell. He preferred dead. He did not want ECS taking his mind apart to find out what he knew.
“Spiro, put a watchman on the roof,” he instructed.
Spiro selected one of his soldiers and sent him on their way.
Having already ascertained the layout of this place Reynold pointed to a nearby door. “Now Spiro, I want you to take him in there,” he instructed. “Tie him to a chair, revive him and start asking him questions. You know how to do that.” He paused for a moment. They were all tired after forty-eight hours without sleep. “Work him for two hours then let one of your men take over. Rotate the watch on the roof too and make sure you all get some rest.”
Spiro grinned, waved over one of his men and the two dragged their victim off into the room, leaving a trail of plasma and charred skin. Like all Separatist soldiers they were well versed in interrogation techniques.
“Oh, and gag him when he’s not answering questions,” Reynold added. “We all need to get some sleep.”
Reynold turned back to the remaining three. “Get in there.” He pointed towards another door. It was an internal store room without windows so would have to do.
“I didn’t know,” said Jepson. “You have to believe that.”
“Move,” Reynold instructed.
Jepson stooped to gather up his clothing, but Plate stepped over and planted his boot on the pile. Jepson hesitated for a moment then traipsed into the indicated room. One of the troops pulled up an armchair beside the door and plumped himself down in it, pulse-gun held ready in his right hand. Reynold nodded approval then sank down on a sofa beside where Kirin had tiredly seated herself, her laptop open before and connected to her aug. Plate moved over and dropped into an armchair opposite.
“That’s everything?” Kirin asked Plate.
“Everything I’ve got,” he replied.
“Could do with my sat-dish, but I’m into the farm system now—gives me a bit more range,” said Kirin.
“You’re running our security now?” Reynold asked.
“Well, Plate is better with the physical stuff so I might as well take it on now.”
“Anything?”
“Lot of activity around the city, of course,” she replied, “but nothing out this way. I don’t think our friend sent his locator signal and I don’t think ECS knows where we are. However, from what I’ve picked up it seems they do know they’re looking for a sev
en-person specialist unit. Something is leaking out there.”
“I didn’t expect any less,” said Reynold. “All we have to do now is keep our heads down for three days, separate to take up new identities then transship out of here.”
“Simple hey,” said Kirin, her expression grim.
“We need to get some rest,” said Reynold. “I’m going to use one of the beds here and I suggest you do the same.”
He heaved himself to his feet and went to find a bedroom. As his head hit the pillow he slid into a fugue state somewhere between sleep and waking. It seemed only moments had passed, when he heard the agonized scream, but checking his watch as he rolled from the bed he discovered two hours had passed. He crashed open the door to his room and strode out, angry. Kirin lay fast asleep on the sofa and a trooper in the armchair was gazing round with that bewildered air of someone only half-awake.
Reynold headed over to the room in which the interrogation was being conducted and banged open the door. “I thought I told you to keep him quiet?”
Their traitor had been strapped in a chair, a gag in his mouth. He was writhing in agony, skin stripped off his arm from elbow to wrist and one eye burnt out. The trooper in there with him had been rigging up something from the room’s powerpoint, but now held his weapon and had been heading for the door.
“That wasn’t him, sir,” he said.
Reynold whirled, drawing his pulse-gun, then tapping his com button. “Report in.” One reply from Spiro on the roof, one from the other trooper as he stumbled sleepily into the living room, nothing from Kirin, but then she was asleep, and nothing from Plate. “Plate?” Still nothing.
“Where did Plate go?” Reynold asked the seated guard.
The man pointed to a nearby hall containing bunk rooms. Signalling the two troopers to follow, Reynold headed over, opening the first door. The interior light came on immediately to show Plate, sprawled on a bed, his back arched and hands twisted in claws above him, fingers bloody. Reynold surveilled the room, but there was little to see. It possessed no window so the only access was the door, held just the one bed, some wall cupboards and a sanitary cubicle. Then he spotted the vent cover lying on the floor with a couple of screws beside it, and looked up. Something metallic and segmented slid out of sight into the air-conditioning vent.
“What the fuck was that?” asked one of the troops behind him.
“Any dangerous life forms on this world?” Reynold asked carefully, trying to keep his voice level.
“Dunno,” came the illuminating reply. “We came in with you.”
Reynold walked over to Plate and studied him. Blood covered his head and the pillow was deep red, soaked with it. Leaning closer Reynold saw holes in Plate’s face and skull, each a few millimetres wide. Some were even cut through his aug.
“Get Jepson—bring him here.”
Jepson seemed just as bewildered as Reynold. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
“Are you a local or what?” asked Spiro, who had now joined them.
“Been in the city most of my life,” said Jepson, then shifted back as Spiro stepped towards him. “Brockle . . . he might know. Brockle’s a farm boy.”
“Let’s get fat boy,” said Spiro, snagging the shoulder of one of his men and departing.
Brockle came stumbling into the room wiping tiredly at his eyes. He almost looked thinner to Reynold, maybe worn down by fear. His gaze wandered about the room for a moment in bewilderment, finally focusing on the corpse on the bed.
“Why you kill ’em?” he asked.
“We did not kill him,” said Reynold, “but something did.” He pointed to the open air-conditioning duct.
Brockle stared at that in bewilderment too, then returned his gaze to Reynold almost hopefully.
“What is there here on Rhine’s World that could do this?”
“Rats?” Brockle suggested.
Spiro hit him hard, in the guts, and Brockle staggered back making an odd whining sound. Spiro, obviously surprised he hadn’t gone down stepped in to hit him again but Reynold caught his shoulder. “Just lock them back up.” But even as Spiro turned to obey, doubled shrieks of agony reverberated, followed by the sound of something heavy crashing against a wall.
Spiro led the way out and soon they were back in the living room. He kicked open the door to the room in which Jepson’s comrades were incarcerated and entered, gun in hand, then on automatic he opened fire at something. By the time Reynold entered Spiro was backing up, staring at the smoking line of his shots traversing up the wall to the open air duct.
“What did you see?” Reynold asked, gazing at the two corpses on the floor. Both men were frozen in agonized rictus, their heads bloody pepper-pots. One of them had been opened up below the sternum and his guts bulged out across the floor.
“Some sort of snake,” Spiro managed.
Calm, got to stay calm. “Kirin,” said Reynold. “I’ll need you to do a search for me.” No reply. “Kirin?”
Whatever it was it had got her in her sleep, but the sofa being a dark terracotta colour had not shown the blood. Reynold spun her laptop round and flipped it open, turned it on. The screen just showed blank fuzz. After a moment he noticed the holes cut through the keyboard, and that seemed to make no sense at all. He turned to the others and eyed Jepson and Brockle.
“Put them back in there.” He gestured to that bloody room.
“You can’t do that,” said Jepson.
“I can do what I fucking please.” Reynold drew his weapon and pointed it, but Brockle moved in front of Jepson waving those long-fingered hands.
“We done nuthin! We done nuthin!”
Spiro and his men grabbed the two and shoved them back into the room, slamming the door shut behind them.
“What the fuck is this?” said Spiro, finally turning to face Reynold.
The laptop, with its holes . . .
Reynold stepped over to the room in which Spiro and his men had been torturing their other prisoner, and kicked the door open. The chair lay down on its side, the torture victim’s head resting in a pool of blood. A sticking trail had been wormed across the floor, and up the wall to an open air vent. It seemed he only had a moment to process the sight before someone else shrieked in agony. The sound just seemed to go on and on, then something crashed against the inside of the door Jepson and Brockle had just been forced through, and the shrieking stopped. Brockle or Jepson, it didn’t matter now.
“We get out of here,” said Reynold. “They fucking found us.”
“What the fuck do you mean?” asked Spiro.
Reynold pointed at the laptop then at Kirin, at the holes in her head. “Something is here . . .”
The lights went out and a door exploded into splinters.
Pulse-fire cut the pitch darkness and a silvery object whickered through the air. Reynold backed up and felt something slide over his foot. He fired down at the floor and briefly caught a glimpse of a long flat segmented thing, metallic, with a nightmare head decked with pincers, manipulators and tubular probes. He fired again. Someone was screaming, pulse-fire revealed Spiro staggering to one side. It wasn’t him making that noise because one of the worm-things was pushing its way into him through his mouth. A window shattered and there came further screaming from outside.
Silence.
Then a voice, calm and modulated.
“Absolutely correct of course,” it said.
“Who are you?” Reynold asked, backing up through the darkness. A hard hook caught his heel and he went over, then a cold tongue slammed between his palm and his pulse-gun and just flipped the weapon away into the darkness.
“I am your case worker,” the voice replied.
“You tried to stop us,” he said.
“Yes, I tried to obtain your location. Had you given it the satellite strike would have taken you out a moment later. This was also why I planted that locator in the leg of one of Jepson’s men—just to focus attention away from me for a while.”
&nbs
p; “You’re the one that killed our last unit here—the one that planted the device.”
“Unfortunately not—they were taken out by satellite strike, hence the reason we did not obtain the location of the tactical nuclear device. Had it been me, everything would have been known.”
Reynold thought about the holes through his comrades’ heads, through their augs and the holes even through Kirin’s laptop. Something had been eating the information out of them even as it killed them. Mind-reaming was the reason Separatists never wanted to be caught alive, but as far as Reynold knew that would happen in a white-tiled cell deep in the bowels of some ECS facility, not like this.
“What the hell are you?”
The lights came on.
“Courts do not sit in judgement,” said the fat boy, standing naked before Reynold. “When you detonated that device it only confirmed your death sentence, all that remained was execution of that sentence. However, everyone here possessed vital knowledge of others in the Separatist organisation and of other atrocities committed by it—mental evidence requiring deep forensic analysis.”
Fat boy’s skin looked greyish, corpselike, but only after a moment did Reynold realise it was turning metallic. The fat boy leaned forwards a little. “I am the Brockle. I am the forensic AI sent to gather and analyse that evidence, and incidentally kill you.”
Now fat boy’s skin had taken on a transparency, and underneath it could be seen he was just made of knots of flat segmented worms some of which were already dropping to the floor, others in the process of unravelling. Reynold scrabbled across the carpet towards his gun as a cold metallic wave washed over him. Delicate tubular drills began boring into his head, into his mind. In agony he hoped for another wave called death to swamp him and, though it came physically, his consciousness did not fade. It remained, somewhere, in some no space, while a cold meticulous intelligence took it apart piece by piece.
Paul Ernst
Here’s a story from the grand old days of the sf pulp magazines. The story’s protagonist was the only one manning an emergency station on the Moon, and was bored out of his skull, wishing something would happen to ease the ennui. Be careful what you wish for . . .