Roboteer

by Alex Lamb

  Ira exploded out into the room. The nearest Earther barely had time to react before Ira had wrenched the gun from his hands, turned it and fired point-blank into the man’s harness controls. He brought his feet up and planted them hard against the Earther’s chest. He launched himself at the next man, using the first as reaction mass and breaking his ribs at the same time.

  Ira controlled his spin so that as the second man shouldered his rifle, Ira lashed out with the gun he’d taken, using the butt as a club. The plastic stock smashed the Earther’s weapon sideways. Then, as he started to slide right, Ira fired once into the man’s harness and a second time into the floating rifle, sending it spinning out of range. He finished off with a passing kick to the trooper’s head.

  By then, the third soldier had been given enough time to attack. He cannoned into Ira, sending them both crashing against the wall. Ira smiled evilly as they wrestled. The Earther had made a classic macho mistake. Direct physical assault was not the way to stop a Galatean starship captain. Ira yanked up his arms, freeing them from the soldier’s grasp, and grabbed the man’s right wrist. Then he forced the elbow back in a direction nature had never intended it to go. There weren’t that many ways to really hurt someone in an armoured spacesuit, but aiming for the joints was always a good bet. While the Earther screamed in silence, Ira gave the other arm the same treatment. That was one trooper who wouldn’t be firing guns at people for a while.

  He looked up to see Rachel finishing off her set. Her style was very different from his – more like deadly combat pinball. She ricocheted around the room firing, spinning and kicking. The last man’s head jerked sideways as Rachel’s scissoring leg connected sharply with his helmet. She ended by tidily catching the gun Ira had left tumbling with one hand and arresting her drift by grabbing a plasma pipe with the other. She smiled breathlessly and shook the rifle. Ira pushed himself close so they could talk.

  ‘Let’s go and get Will,’ said Rachel.

  ‘Agreed.’

  Ira unclipped the dogfight harness from the man with the broken arms and fastened it around his own suit. Rachel took another from one of her own victims. Better armed and better equipped, they headed back the way they’d come, rifles at the ready.

  Ira slowed as they approached the outer chamber. He and Rachel nosed through the doorway, expecting to be surrounded and outgunned at any moment. However, a very different scene met them.

  As Ira had expected, there were dozens of dead robots, but two giant waldobots were still alive. They hovered menacingly in the middle of a cloud of mashed Earther remains. There was no sign of Will.

  Ira scanned the dark outer reaches of the chamber for movement. There was none. The roboteer must have survived the blast somehow and fled down a different tunnel. As he jetted over to touch helmets with Rachel, something overhead caught his eye. Crossing in front of the blanket of stars that filled the kite-shaped hole above them was the silhouette of a human figure, the first of dozens.

  Searchlights stabbed down onto the chamber floor. Earther reinforcements had arrived.

  ‘Oh, shit,’ Ira muttered to himself.

  He looked to Rachel. She nodded grimly.

  Together, they started retreating again, firing as they went.

  18.5: WILL

  Will met Hugo outside the primary habitat core.

  ‘What happened?’ demanded Hugo. ‘Where were you?’

  Will had to broadcast direct from his implant to talk since the radio mike on his suit had been trashed along with everything else.

  ‘Into the airlock first, then I’ll explain.’

  They clambered inside and Will told Hugo what had happened as the air cycled. Hugo’s face became grave.

  ‘So you see,’ said Will, ‘I need to get fluid transport up and running before we turn on the shields.’

  For a moment, Hugo looked annoyed. His pet project had been shelved.

  ‘There’s little point in protecting a ship that’s already full of Earthers,’ Will pointed out, as patiently as he could.

  Hugo nodded. ‘I know. Let’s get to work.’

  They emerged into the recently cleaned habitat interior. Gone were the frozen bodies and the strange strands of alien webbing. The walls had been scraped back to the metal and re-clad with white impact foam. A flat plastic floor had replaced the clan-parents’ wallowing pool, and the room now contained mounted combat couches and monitor banks pirated from the Nanshan. The empty space above was strung with elastic cords for easy zero-gee manoeuvring. The place smelled as clean and artificial as any ordinary vessel. But for the room’s peculiar high ceiling and bulging walls, a visitor could be forgiven for thinking the place had always been occupied by humans.

  Will started issuing orders to the nestship as he hurriedly shucked off his suit.

  ‘Activate transport heater coils. Charge primary and secondary pump drivers. Initiate smart-blood infusion.’

  All across the vast reaches of the nestship, machinery stirred into life. He pulled himself down to his new couch and strapped himself in.

  ‘Hugo, I’ll need you to watch over the safety metrics for me. This is going to be tricky.’

  Hugo dragged himself into his couch and started tapping rapidly at his console.

  ‘I’m ready.’

  Will shut his eyes and concentrated on the ship. He could feel the smart-blood jetting into the vessel’s massive arteries.

  ‘Begin fluid transport,’ he told the ship.

  Immense mechanical valves began to pump like giant hearts. His new hybrid solution started circulating and, with it, the hundreds of robots and sensors it carried. Awful grinding sounds echoed as icebergs shifted and broke under the mounting pressure.

  Hugo sucked air through his teeth. ‘Gently does it,’ he recommended. ‘We nosed into the red just then.’

  Will eased back on the pumps. The minutes ticked by but the situation didn’t improve. The transport system was having none of the effects he’d hoped for. The sensors were moving far too slowly to do any good, so the patch where the EM bomb had gone off remained dead.

  On a whim, Will searched his new mind for ways his smart-cells might help to break up the ice. Millions of tiny SAPs trawled their records and shouted back their answers. There were plenty. Apparently the smart-cells he’d been multiplying had already used such methods to adapt to the brutal conditions in his storage tanks. They had, in effect, become extremophiles, just like the single-celled organisms Galateans had been using for generations to build their ecology. They were perfectly equipped for the job. For a start, they could begin secreting a powerful antifreeze. Command sequences and molecular models floated to the front of Will’s mind.

  Will laughed aloud. Here was another piece of the Transcended puzzle – one he should have seen earlier. He passed the new orders to the smart-cells all over the ship. The results were practically instantaneous: the ice started melting, the pressure dropped and the model of the artery network that had been taking shape in Will’s head suddenly surged with clarity and insistence.

  It took Will a moment to realise why the effect was so pronounced. He’d never bothered to analyse the ice in the tubes. Now he could see that it was far from pure. There were plenty of organic compounds already in it and the cells were absorbing them at a voracious pace. By instructing them to melt the ice, he’d inadvertently doubled their food supply.

  Will’s model of the ship rapidly spread and grew, revealing things he hadn’t even thought to look for – like the Fecund food stores. They contained as many tons of protein as he could ever need. Then there was an arsenal, where weapons were stored for the half-born to use in hand-to-hand fighting.

  The dead patch in Will’s map shrank to nothing and revealed that Rachel and Ira were in trouble. They were holding off a tide of Earther soldiers bearing inexorably down on the habitat core. Will woke his army of Fecund-designed robots. It was time to see what his new ship could do.

  18.6: IRA

  Ira threw away the empty ri
fle and brought up the spare he’d snatched on his way back through the plasma pipe room. At first, it looked like the frenzied, bloodthirsty attack from Will’s two remaining waldobots was going to be decisive. But the new wave of troopers brought cutting lasers and more EM bombs. From the cover of the lower chamber, he and Rachel looked on as the robots were stunned and dismembered by dozens of swarming men.

  Now the two of them were all that stood between the Earther hordes and the habitat core. Unsurprisingly, they’d steadily lost ground. For the last twenty minutes they’d been locked in a pattern of fire and retreat, taking as much tactical advantage of the narrow doorways between chambers as they could. But their ammunition wasn’t going to last for ever. And with each step back that he and Rachel took, more side passages opened up for the invaders to explore. It was only a matter of time before they were cut off and surrounded.

  Ira ducked as another volley of projectiles streamed past. In the unyielding silence and low light, the only way he could tell he’d been fired at was by the flash from the enemy’s muzzles and the dull thudding as the ammunition hit the wall he was clutching. The shooting was fierce. The Earthers had entrenched again.

  He glanced across to Rachel on the other side of the doorway. She nodded. On the count of three, they pushed hard away from their hiding places, firing between their feet as they flew towards the next chamber.

  Ira roared at his enemy even though he knew they couldn’t hear it. It helped him deal with the ever-present terror of having a ripper-round penetrate his suit. With a practised, synchronised movement, he and Rachel reached out to grab the edges of the entrance and swung themselves around into firing positions. This time, though, the Earthers were ready for them.

  The moment Ira started reaching, the ceramic wall he was aiming for was peppered with tiny craters. He had no choice but to snatch his hand back and sail uninterrupted into the depths of the chamber beyond.

  Rachel had made it to her shooting place and looked back at him in distress. The Earthers took advantage of her distraction and surged sideways into the newly secured room, firing as they came.

  ‘Look out!’ Ira yelled as he wrestled with his harness thrusters.

  But she couldn’t hear him. Rachel noticed just in time and rolled back from the doorway, losing her grip as she did so.

  Ira groaned. Now they were separated and both exposed. Death wouldn’t be long in coming. He fired and manoeuvred in a desperate attempt to regain the ground he’d lost.

  He was so focused on the Earther soldiers darting back and forth on the other side of the deadly portal that he didn’t notice the wall rippling at first. Only when the jets of ice started shooting out of it did it occur to him that something was happening.

  The wall split abruptly to reveal a horribly organic-looking orifice. Through it tumbled things out of nightmare – giant scorpions, each twice the size of a man. They thrashed and flicked their way into the room in bursts of ice and leapt like fleas across the void towards the Earther forces. Ira had to thrust aside in a hurry to get out of their way.

  At first, he could only gape at the emerging horde. Then he broke into a guffaw of understanding. Will was back.

  The soldiers forgot Ira and Rachel in an instant and turned their fire onto the tsunami of furious machines. Another EM bomb flashed. The front wave of robots jerked and drifted lifelessly, but twice as many poured through to replace them. The results were inevitable. One by one the men were seized, either whole or in parts. They were dragged, kicking and thrashing, back through the aperture in the wall. Ira watched in wordless awe. The zeal with which the machines recycled Will’s enemies was chilling.

  Then, as swiftly as it had begun, the battle was over. Ira and Rachel hung wordless in the snow-filled room, watching the few remaining robots scuttle back to their orifice. The last one in line changed course and paused just in front of them. Ira’s heart bobbed up to his mouth as he locked gazes with the many-eyed mechanical monster.

  The scorpion gestured with a peculiarly delicate claw. On my back, it was saying. The motion was strangely human. Ira could almost imagine Will Kuno-Monet sitting behind its lidless eyes. He erupted into laughter again and grabbed on.

  18.7: WILL

  Will trembled as his new network gathered power. As the fluid moved faster and faster, it felt like parts of his mind he never knew existed were waking up. Of course, that wasn’t far off what was actually happening. The smart-cells were rapidly laying nerve tracks along the tunnel walls and clustering together to form regularly spaced cognitive nodes. His mind was growing to fill the ship.

  Will hadn’t predicted this side effect of his idea. The sensation of empowerment was so strong it frightened him.

  ‘Are you ready to activate the shield?’ asked Hugo.

  It took Will a moment to work out where the voice was coming from. Yes, of course, near his human body, down there in that tiny habitat core. Will opened his eyes and blinked hard.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  Hugo smiled. It was the first time Will had seen any sign of happiness on the man’s face since New Angeles.

  ‘First, we need to power the associated suntaps,’ said Hugo. ‘I’ve marked them for you. They’re in hull sections three, four, eleven, twelve, twenty-one …’

  But Will had already guessed what to do. He could feel the quagitators waiting all over his inner skin and opened up the suntaps with a kiss of thought. They struggled a little at first, being so old and brittle, but Hugo had done his work well. Beams of electrons flashed out into the sun like the tongues of hummingbirds.

  ‘Suntaps fired,’ said Will.

  Hugo stared at him. He had still been reading out his list when Will interrupted.

  ‘Already? All of them?’

  Will nodded.

  ‘Right,’ said Hugo. ‘Well, at this distance, we’ll still have a few minutes before they connect.’

  ‘Nine minutes, fifty-two seconds and counting,’ said Will.

  ‘Right,’ Hugo said again, sounding a little disturbed this time. ‘That’s … exactly right.’ He paused. ‘Listen, there’s something I want to say.’ The physicist stared into his monitor for a few seconds, then back at Will. ‘I know I may have made a mistake I’ll regret for the rest of my life, however long or short that might be, but I’m glad I chose to come with you. Otherwise I would have never seen all this. I would never have witnessed this moment.’

  Will smiled. ‘I’m glad, too,’ he said, but Hugo held up a hand to silence him.

  ‘Please, hear me out,’ said Hugo.

  Will grinned to himself. Amazing – Hugo still managed to be annoying even when he was trying to be nice.

  ‘I want to say thank you …’ Hugo paused, his face clouding with pain. ‘For coming to get me. I didn’t think—’

  Will’s smile fled. ‘Forget it,’ he said quickly. New Angeles was not an episode he wanted to revisit. ‘Really.’

  Hugo nodded. The two men sat in silence till power started to course back from the nearby star into the nestship’s capacitor banks.

  ‘It’s time,’ said Will.

  All across the ship, Hugo’s spiky accelerators began to fire. He watched the monitors avidly as beams of flickering violet light connected with the weird iron exohull. It became smooth and silvery as the metal rippled and began to run. The rupture near the stem sealed over as the weird substance sheathed the ship like a reflecting skin. The mystery of the peculiar alloy that had so distressed Hugo on their first visit was now explained.

  Hugo cackled in delight. ‘The whole ship is now covered in distributed matter, you see,’ he announced excitedly. ‘The space where the exohull sits is in a state of quantum agitation. Thus, the iron loses its particulate properties, just like the electrons in the suntap. It sits in superposition until you fire something at it, which temporarily collapses the wave. So whenever something hits the shield, it always interacts with a nucleus because the nucleons are everywhere! It’s like being surrounded by a shell of solid qua
rks!’

  Will nodded absently. He could already feel the theory of the thing in his head like a solid object, along with its cunningly contrived logical holes, courtesy of the Transcended.

  ‘What shall we do about the Earthers outside?’ he said. ‘The Nanshan is still crawling with troops and we just effectively severed our tethers to it. All our supplies are aboard.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Hugo eagerly, his eyes shining. ‘We need some way to make the other ships back off.’ He pressed his fingers against his lips. ‘If only we had one of those bosers working, that’d solve the problem.’

  ‘Bosers?’ said Will.

  ‘What I call the coherent-matter cannons. After Bose–Einstein Condensate. They’re like the shield, only they fire distributed iron instead of holding it. The ship has eight of them, but I never had the time to look at them properly.’

  ‘We could repair one,’ Will suggested.

  Hugo frowned. ‘I doubt it. It was hard enough getting the shielding finished. It could take days.’

  Will smiled. ‘I don’t think so. Show me which is in the best condition.’

  Hugo regarded him nervously for a moment, then pointed out one of the weapons on his display. ‘There.’

  Will shut his eyes and extended his senses towards the boser mounting. The smart-cell nodes nearby started issuing instructions to the robots directly. They scurried across it, scanning and analysing. They reported what needed fixing and what would have to be replaced.

  At the same moment, Will’s factories started extruding and assembling the larger parts. Meanwhile, the microscopic components were constructed on-site by his smart-cells. The protein circuitry Will could make was far more efficient than the kind the Fecund had used.

  Robots gathered the pieces and slotted them into place. In a matter of minutes, Will had the weapon repaired. He was barely involved with the process by the end. He watched in wonder with Hugo as the ship healed itself.

  ‘We’re back!’ came Ira’s booming voice from the airlock.