"They discovered some Worms hiding at the perimeter, but they immediately went into caverns under the buildings," Cindy said.
Giving up so easily, doesn't make sense, Keane thought.
Rambling moved one of the shuttles and stopped next to a quiet looking perimeter building.
"Why'd he stop?" asked Keane.
Cindy was on the com. "Sir, Rambling wants to explore a couple of the structures on each side of the main thoroughfare. He doesn't want them coming up behind him while he's planting the bomb."
Keane nodded that he had heard. He wondered why the Worms were now avoiding conflict when they had earlier acted as if it was their favorite activity. It bothered him. He decided he wanted a look at the city and the route the marines were taking, but rather than activate another screen at his position he walked over to where Mundahan and Cantrell were busy.
"Worms are exiting a couple of caverns and they are running back toward the city center. They appear to be fleeing."
Mundahan had two screens active. One showed the city as a whole, with an icon blinking near the center where the defenses had been in the unfinished city. The other was a closer view, depicting the marine advance from the city's edge. A vector showed their progress down a wide passage that bisected the city but split around its central vegetated area. Keane stopped behind Cindy and casually laid his hand on her shoulder for a moment.
"I'm just going to stand here for a while and watch. Cindy, if the marines need air support, tell June. She'll arrange it according to what you call for."
"Yes, sir. There's no need yet. But ..." She cocked her head to one side as if listening. "Now the Worms have stopped running. Others are exiting the city caverns. Major Rambling says he thinks it's because he's outnumbered now."
"Are they firing on him?"
"Not ...yes, he reports small arms fire from their hand held energy guns. No attempt at communication. He's returning fire. Looks like the Worms seem to be assembling some type of heavy weapon. Wait, we've also got movement by some of the worker robots farther in. I see ...They're more pulsars. The robots are manning them!"
Shit! Keane thought.
Before he could say anything, the Doc Travis shook, almost seeming to buckle from a large plasma blast from the city. The auto return fire mechanism worked perfectly; within a second the Doc Travis cannon lasers blew a hole into the atmosphere and then two plasma blasts exited toward the planet. The first one met with another incoming plasma bolt that showered the Doc Travis with florescent colored fireworks, while the other shot down to the planet and erupted in boiling blaze of color. Bits of debris were visible within the rising clouds of flame and smoke.
"How are the shields holding?"
Harriette had come to the control room with Jergens to help monitor their improvements to the shield, while he concentrated on EW and defensive measures. She turned away from her holo and answered. "Sir, without the new shields we'd be dead. The weapon we just destroyed was almost twice as powerful as the one we saw on the other planet. The second blast was deflected with our counter measures, reducing its power. We couldn't have taken many more, though. It would have drained the secondary coils needed for containment."
Keane decided to get the ship out of range in case there was another concealed defensive site. The risk to the ship was too great.
"Lieutenant Chavez, take us to the other side of the planet. Com, contact Major Rambling. Tell him to set his bomb and withdraw, now. Give the shuttle pilots our coordinates and have them meet us in orbit. We're going to be leaving."
"Aye, aye, sir."
"XO, I think we'll be okay with the planet's plasma weapons destroyed, but I'm still concerned about Rambling. Can you take the bridge and give him whatever support he needs? I'm going to my cabin and think about a few things."
Dunaway looked at the dark circles under the captain's eyes. "Sir, you may want to consider thinking about them after some sleep, if you don't mind me saying."
"It's okay. I'll get some rest shortly. Let me know when Rambling has the bomb planted and his men are in the shuttles and on the way to join us."
"Aye, aye, sir."
***
Keane didn't want any distractions while he took a few minutes to analyze the whole situation and the many factors that were running through his mind. The unresolved actions of the robots and Worms on the ship bothered him but he wasn't certain why. He wanted to leave the plasma bomb concealed in the city when he left in case circumstances later dictated he destroy the place, yet he wondered whether it was wise to wait.
His wrist com tingled.
"Keane here."
"Captain, you wanted to be notified. Major Rambling has planted the bomb and is on the way to the ship."
"Thank you. Keane out."
One problem solved, at least for now. The latest city defense laser pulse had been a whopper, even if they had destroyed the source seconds later. But what if Xanadu had even stouter defenses? Would it be wiser to just return to Earth at this point? He already had a wealth of intelligence about the alien species. But was it enough? He really didn't think so. And the captives-he couldn't just leave knowing they were being held on Xanadu, could he? The fighting here had been different than on Sleepy. Would Xanadu in turn be different, more complex? Damn. Twice now he'd taken out the area where some of the captives thought nerve centers of the cities were buried. Was that true? And if so, did it matter? He had directed Doc Travis to the other side of the planet, completely out of danger. They were on the way now, with Rambling ready to meet them in orbit. What next?
It was no tingle this time. The screen in the day cabin brightened and dinged loudly. He looked up from his reverie. John Dunaway's stern face met his gaze.
"Captain, a small ship just lifted off from the city. It came from one of the areas we'd been over but didn't go beneath. It's fast, sir. Very fast."
"Track it and try to intercept. I'll be there in a moment."
His day cabin was just down the passageway from the Control room. A moment later and he was entering.
"Captain Present!" One of the enlisted ratings notified the room in a loud voice.
"At ease." He signed in and strode quickly over to Dunaway's station, right next to his. "Talk to me, John."
"Sir, I believe it must be a Worm courier ship or something in that class. It's headed out on a vector that could take it toward Xanadu."
"Can we intercept?"
" Eve is calculating now."
Keane felt a slight tremor in the ship. He looked over at the environmental console and saw both loading bays open. The shuttles were here.
The AI presented some numbers and vectors on the screen. "Interception is possible but only by overriding safety margin parameters of the drive and induced gravity field."
"How far past safety margins, Eve?" Keane asked.
" Doc Travis would be right at the limit, Captain," Eve replied, recognizing his voice. "I do not recommend except for extreme emergency. A decision in needed within one point three four minutes for intercept to be possible under those conditions."
Keane shook his head. "No. We won't risk the ship. We'll let it go. Helm, set course for Xanadu at all speed consistent with safety. June, I want that bomb Major Rambling placed detonated as soon as we're in line of sight."
"Aye, aye, sir," she replied without hesitation.
Every person present in the control room waited and watched as screens depicting the alien planet changed due to the ship's vector and the planet's rotation.
"Line of sight now, Captain."
"Go."
A brilliant white light obliterated the alien city. Whether the decision was right or wrong, Keane thought, at the very least that place is no longer a threat to humanity.
Chapter Seventeen: Smarter and Stronger
Satan came into the Garden and engaged Eve in conversation. "Didn't God say you could eat everything in the Garden?" Satan asked.
Eve replied, "Everything but the tree in the center
of the Garden. We cannot eat or even touch it, lest we die."
"You'll not die," Satan scoffed, "God knows that if you eat it you shall become as gods knowing good and evil."-King James Bible
Doug walked back to his Wah, a three hour journey that gave him time to think about Clemmie and life on the God forsaken planet. It was the rainy season, and although the rain was sometimes hotter than one would like, the makeshift umbrella helped. The water did eventually cool on the body, which was better than the typical one hundred and ten degree days. The Sinchik didn't seem to mind the heat, and Doug swore that the planet was getting hotter each year. There were more and more fabrication sites with robots working day and night to change one part of the city or another. It never seemed to stop. When you thought it was complete, some other device under construction propped up. The latest resembled a Lego Land building designed by some devilish virus, he thought. Trying to figure out its purpose was just as hard, since questions were punished.
Doug walked through the middle of the city to cut down time. Normally he would go around the perimeter, as the plants and forest on the other side of the wall seemed more natural. Hot rain would hit large flowering pink and purple flowers nicknamed purple haze, producing a pleasant smell that attracted 'beebats', small yellow bat-like creatures with long beaks. But this time of the year, seeing the flowers reminded Doug of man's trap in life, for the beebats were trapped in a cycle that troubled Doug.
The enigma of the alien bats revolved around the question of why they seemed to abandon their children. The captives noticed this the first summer after the crash. It ended up being a quite simple answer. The yellow-colored bats, roughly the size of mice, would extract honey from the flowers for their children living in baby bat hives, similar to bee hives, except that the baby bats would live off the flower's honey since the parents would one day disappear and not be around to assist the children. One day Doug found out why.
Once the beebats had gotten enough honey for their children, and in turn had pollinated the purplehaze flowers, the flowers then ate the bats, similar to the Earth Venus Flytrap, capturing the little creature as food. This gave nourishment for the fertilized purplehaze to produce new bulbs that became new flowers in the next season. Each year the purplehaze died and it was the new plants that would feed the beebats growing children. The plant and beebats had a symbiotic system in play. Regardless of how balanced and natural this process was, it bothered Doug inside because somehow he felt like the beebat. He tried not to think about the sweet summer smell of the purplehaze as he walked into the center of the city. He had one more hour to get through, and wanted to think of how he'd get off the planet rather than depressing evolutionary cycles.
As Doug walked through the alien city, he had an idea of how he might be able to help the next human ship, if there was one. Surely Humanity wouldn't just let ships disappear without coming back to investigate? No, another was coming eventually, and he needed to find an effective way to combat the alien weapons. He walked past a shiny blue square building. These were the ones that hummed-probably a supplementary power junction supporting the weaponry of the city. They must support the energy guns that disabled the ships, and the tractor beams that forced it down. Those areas were protected by guard robots, and although the robots seemed innocuous, they were deadly. They were capable of killing humans. A couple years back, one of the captives tried to evade them in order to enter the alien weapons site and ended up getting his neck broken.
Doug kept that in mind as he neared a robot guarding a large spherical building. Why was the building being guarded? It was on the outskirts and not a known weapon site. As he passed he heard a sound of a person yelling. Someone was inside the sphere. It had to be a human hostage. It sounded like a woman's voice. Doug carefully walked up, about two yards away from the guard robot. He stopped, looked at the shiny metallic device and waited. He wasn't sure if the robot would respond as he had not asked a question, nor had he tried to enter the sphere. After a few seconds he saw a woman being dragged out of the sphere by another robot. She was being taken to a small transport ship. She saw Doug and yelled something unintelligible at him.
The woman's words got cut off by the robot touching the back of her head with a waving appendage. He assumed it gave her an electric shock-or maybe even killed her. She collapsed into limp immobility and was carried into a small shuttle waiting nearby. It lifted silently under anti-gravity and headed out into space. Originally, people thought they went to another location on Xanadu, but eventually some of the persons being transported returned. One of them said that they'd been transferred to a ship and gone to another planet.
Why the Sinchiks would take humans to another planet and bring some back made no sense. Then again the whole Sinchik race made no sense. The robots were very smart, or at least were very intricately programmed. They knew the technology to build the city, make the weapons, and protect the Sinchiks.
The one thing Doug felt sure of was that it wasn't the Sinchiks that were the ultimate worry, it was the damn robots. He suspected they had to be both manufactured and operated, for the most part, somewhere beneath the city. The Sinchiks were like a well-armed, wealthy nation that over-expanded and became fat and lazy from success. Those thoughts ran through Doug's head as he stared at the six-foot long, silver plated robot. He swore as he saw the robot swivel toward him on its treads. It was time to move on and get away from the sphere. The robot was making him feel like a beebat next to a flower that was ready to take a bite.
Chapter Eighteen: It didn't fool Eve
May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't.
-General George S. Patton
The damaged robot, Unit 77 of Colony 743, thought of itself as C-77. During the invasion of human organic units, a plasma bolt had damaged it and shocked its CPU into immobility. It came back to its senses when magnetic pulses began saturating it. It began a routine information query. The master unit of C-743 failed to respond. It could only conclude it must have been destroyed. Thus, it must now take over Master Functions for Colony 743 unless an older, and thus higher rated unit, was located. It also realized it was a prisoner of the unchipped human organic invaders. It was being held in what it soon recognized must be a closed partition of a human interstellar transportation unit. There was only a faint signal from MH-1, indicating the interstellar transportation unit was blocking most of the electromagnetic fields. But at least MH-1 was intact and would calculate a final solution.
The rounded subroutine section atop its frame blinked and changed color as it began the course of action it had decided on. First it tried once more to contact Master Unit C-743, then gave up for the present. It sent another query requesting any Master Units and any Subunits within range to acknowledge but take no action. This request was answered by two intact Subunits, S-455 and S-945. It began turning slowly, searching, searching ...movement stopped. It sent a tentative signal to the computer console Fred Jergens had been recording results on while he and Harriette were performing the MRI on it. When they made their hurried exit to inform Captain Keane of what they'd discovered, he hadn't bothered turning it off. It was still open and easily accessible to anyone who cared to do so. C-77 scanned for a communication connection. All seemed to be of an ancient variety as they used lower complexity protocols. Even so, there was the challenge of getting access codes. With the advanced systems at C-77's disposal, this did not take long. C-77 sent an array of signals to connect to an internal low security wireless ship communication system. This then allowed access to some organic unit's unencrypted password files.
The access created a snowball effect. C-77 opened files and analyzed data, though this took a long time before it could really get anything useful; a full seven minutes of computing and searching the ship's contents before it entered a central data warehouse. C-77 knew the humans would consider this dizzying speed-and the difference between it and the organics gave C-77 confidence in its supreme evolutional advantage, or the robot equivalen
t of confidence. The organic beings, which C-77 discovered called themselves humans, had a ship data format that was in old binary, but it was data that had more lockdown codes. Eventually C-77 hit the right solution and was able to interface. Not only were the files now open, but none of the other files were locked down. They were all controlled by the same password, now conveniently accessible after further analysis.
It rapidly downloaded all the data available from Jergen's accessible memory files. It then used his password to very carefully try to enter the massive CPU controlling the ship after first setting up a covering code to fool the CPU into thinking it was a routine inquiry. The CPU was actually a conglomeration of 2,048 smaller CPUs that worked together as a single unit called Eve. It was inefficient too, but because of the density of systems it posed a challenge. Eve would be the toughest system to crack.
It didn't fool Eve at first, but patient work allowed C-77 to finally enter into one of Eve's files. It was a minor one and didn't lead to any others, but C-77 was patient, knowing there must be a way to go from this file further into the circuitry governing the CPU. While it was about this task, it examined its mangled elastic metal treads, along with the straps holding it to the dolly. Several manipulating arms extended, probing the parts. It found that its treads could not be repaired but it continued on, examining the two dollies it was attached to. A few moments of experimentation enabled it to extend two strong, still-working appendages to the floor and move the dollies by pushing on it. It knew exactly where it wanted to go. Unerringly it worked itself over to the hatch its two subordinate robots were locked behind. To its mind, the lock was simple enough. Tiny tentacles extended from the end of an appendage, probed the lock, and in a few minutes had it open. It raised the bar and pulled open the hatch.
A quick test determined that both units were in working condition. It gave them orders and they began to move. Both units came out into the room with the small damaged robot. Using their repair mechanisms, within a half hour they had the master unit ready to move under its own power. It ordered them to the closed hatch that it knew was being guarded by humans. It examined it and determined which way it would open. When that was done, it ordered the two subordinate units to a new position where they wouldn't be seen when the hatch opened. There it waited behind them. It gave no further orders because it was not yet ready to move on. First it needed to complete its invasion of the ship's CPU and take it over.
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