The Frozen Sky

by Jeff Carlson

  Beside Vonnie, Metzler had accessed a different datastream, scrolling through the ESA beacons and listening posts. What was he looking for? As Vonnie stared, Ash sprinted into the compartment and took her station. Somehow that broke Vonnie’s spell.

  “We need to jam the FNEE det codes!” she said.

  “You can’t interfere,” Frerotte said, but he allowed Vonnie to clone his display.

  She swam through fifty reports salted with white noise. FNEE sims were poor compared to ESA sharecasts. The Brazilians’ mecha-to-mecha radar targeting included a half-second lag, which left false images in their net. Their diggers tended to stab at sunfish who’d moved farther than the mecha anticipated, whereas the gun platform overcompensated, leading its targets too far.

  The lag was increased by modifying FNEE signals into holo imagery for the benefit of human controllers. Vonnie needed five seconds to pinpoint the active key among a myriad of inventory, select, arm, and detonation codes, partly because the writing was in Portuguese.

  In that time, another sunfish died. Two more scored hits against the digger, bashing its sensors with rock clubs.

  One of those sunfish was Sue. Clinging to the digger with four arms, she stretched and contracted and stretched again, hammering her primitive weapon on its gleaming alumalloy skin. For an instant, Sue seemed to have stunned the machine.

  The digger shrugged her off. It tossed her into the wall. Simultaneously, it stabbed up with its arms, slicing open the belly of Sue’s companion. Then it advanced on Sue.

  Run! Vonnie thought. She reached for the FNEE det code, hoping to countermand it—

  —and the digger decided it was clear of the blast zone. Its telemetry winked. The charge exploded, bringing down two hundred meters of rock in a shuddering chain reaction. Rubble clanged against the digger. The machine stumbled, lunging through the ricochets and blowback.

  Where was Sue?

  Dead and wounded sunfish mingled with the rock. The digger snared two small, twitching bodies as it clattered from the avalanche, then squeezed them tight against its underside. It rejoined the battle, using its arms to chase a third sunfish toward the gun platform.

  The chain guns fired. The sunfish fell. The digger also took five rounds, which killed one of its captives in a splash of blood. The mecha looked pitiless, but Vonnie knew there were human beings behind every decision.

  Who was controlling the FNEE gun platform? Ribeiro?

  Ash was equipped to stop them. If she hacked into the FNEE grid, the combat would end — but the young woman’s face was like stone. She’d become the strict, sober Ash again, not the secret friend who’d whispered and laughed with Vonnie.

  That left Metzler and Frerotte. Frerotte had said he wouldn’t interfere, and yet in the same breath he’d given Vonnie access to the ESA/FNEE command feed. Part of him must be glad to see the Brazilian mecha destroyed. Would he help her?

  “The FNEE used the noise of their guns to conceal the second digger’s approach,” Vonnie said. “My guess is the rest of their machines are closing fast.”

  “Leave them alone,” Ash said.

  “Can our spies generate sonar calls for the sunfish? If we locate the other mecha, the sunfish might run before they’re boxed in.”

  “Don’t do it.”

  Vonnie snarled at Ash with bitter reproach. “You have your specimens and your alliance with Brazil. You don’t need to kill the whole colony, do you?”

  “Hey! Enough!” Metzler said. “I have some funny readings from our spies.”

  Vonnie glanced at the sims he’d posted on her displays. While she was bickering with Ash, Metzler had aimed thirty percent of their spies away from the battle to scan the surrounding area. New blurs of motion and sound were rapidly approaching the fight from below.

  “Those aren’t FNEE diggers,” Vonnie said.

  “No,” Metzler said.

  Is it Lam? she thought. The signatures were too varied. The blurs weren’t a single entity. Forty distinct contacts bunched and spread and revealed eight more behind them, threading through the catacombs in packs.

  “It’s the larger breed of sunfish,” Frerotte said. “Our spies recognize the ultrasound.”

  Vonnie smiled a thin, savage smile.

  Earth was so far removed from this moon, the men and women who’d given the orders to approach the sunfish had yet to learn the results of their operation. The radio delay meant several minutes would pass before the politicians and gene corps personnel knew if the mecha had been successful. But they must be happy. They must have congratulated each other on arranging the charade between the ESA and the FNEE.

  It wasn’t fair. They were comfortable in their board rooms and offices. They had unlimited luxuries and the promise of years more of the same. Their homes weren’t being invaded. Their families weren’t under the gun.

  Vonnie imagined them casually checking their datastreams. Would they even bother to look at the reality of their crime? If they found it distasteful to see the guts strewn across the cavern, they could turn off their displays. They could count their numbers instead: how many sunfish captured; how many bodies secured; their stock projections and trade agreements.

  I hope the sunfish rip you apart, she thought.

  They should have realized other tribes would come. The larger sunfish had heard their cousins screaming. They’d smelled blood and wounded prey. Had they brought every warrior in their colony?

  “Tell the FNEE to get out,” Metzler said.

  “Too late.”

  Metzler looked at her with embarrassment and determination. “If the mecha set more charges, they might be able to seal themselves off from the larger sunfish,” he said.

  Frerotte opened a channel to Koebsch. “Sir, there are more sunfish closing on the FNEE mecha — the larger sunfish. I count forty-eight or fifty-two.”

  Koebsch nodded. His face was harried. “Let me patch you to Colonel Ribeiro,” he said.

  “Yes, sir.” Frerotte tapped at his display, adding the spies’ data to the ESA/FNEE command feed. Through a short audio malfunction, Vonnie heard a blip of male voices shouting in Portuguese. An AI in her station automatically translated Ribeiro’s words: “Regroup. Regroup. Where is Platform 2?”

  Their melee with the smaller breed was winding down. The gun platform chattered once more, nailing a wounded sunfish digging pitifully at the cavern ceiling. The intact digger pursued four sunfish to the wall, catching three, pummeling them, but the slower, limping digger dropped its specimens to enact repairs on its breastplate.

  The gun platform sidled toward the digger to assist. The mecha hunched together like living animals, although the illusion faded when they extended micro arms and a welding torch between them. All three mecha were splattered with gore and dust.

  “Contact in ninety seconds,” Frerotte said.

  “I’m picking up another group of lifeforms approaching from the south,” Metzler said.

  “More sunfish?” Koebsch said.

  “Too soon to tell.”

  You wanted a goddamned war, Vonnie thought. You’re about to get more than anyone expected.

  Her eyes brimmed with tears. She couldn’t bring herself to look at Ash. Instead, she counted the dead sprawled throughout the cavern, mourning each of their nimble little shapes. Her AI had identified Sue among the corpses.

  “There’s a third group in the area to the southwest,” Metzler said. “This one is moving away from the battlefield.”

  “Let me see,” Vonnie said.

  Beyond the end of their maps, west of the coordinates where they thought Sue and Tom’s colony was situated, vague rustles of movement led away into the ice. There were no sonar calls mixed with the activity. The smaller sunfish were operating with as much stealth as possible even if moving by feel and scent hindered their escape.

  “They’re evacuating,” Vonnie said with relief.

  “They might be flanking the mecha or trying to intercept the larger sunfish,” Frerotte said.


  “Not likely. Too much of the rock collapsed in the blasts. The FNEE only left a few ways in or out. None of those openings connect with the colony.”

  “I think Sue led a diversion,” Metzler said. “Her pack went after the mecha to buy the others time to get away. If Sue won, they’d come back. But they heard Sue’s pack dying, and the blasts were too close to their home.”

  “The whole region is unstable now,” Vonnie agreed, highlighting the spies’ radar. “We might see a wider collapse.”

  “Fifteen seconds,” Frerotte said.

  The FNEE mecha separated from each other. The two diggers hurried to form a triangle with the gun platform, protecting it on either side.

  Metzler posted sims of the three separate contacts around the mecha — the smaller sunfish in flight — the approaching swarm of the larger breed — and the third, unknown group of lifeforms, who were also closing on the scene. As he sifted through his data, the spies recorded sonar cries from the third group and tagged it: Sunfish, Breed II.

  “More of the larger kind,” Vonnie said.

  Were they from a new colony or were they a hunting party rejoining their tribe? They were well-positioned to head off the smaller sunfish, but they did not angle toward their fleeing cousins. They dropped through the catacombs toward the mecha.

  “They’re confronting the loudest enemy instead of the easier prey,” Metzler said. “Why?”

  The FNEE gun platform opened fire as eight sunfish sailed into the open. Its twin guns traversed from low to high. Ribeiro had anticipated the sunfishes’ tactic of bouncing off the floor and ceiling.

  His foresight was effective. 20mm rounds pierced the sunfish, killing six. The two survivors didn’t fly much longer. The gun platform crossed its fire again, winging both. One sunfish was dashed against the rock. The other spun backward in a veil of blood.

  “Like shooting pigs in a farmyard,” Ash said.

  Vonnie turned to bark at her, but what was the use? She has to believe they’re just animals, Vonnie thought. Otherwise we’re murderers.

  A second wave leapt into the breach. FNEE radar counted twenty-eight sunfish. Their small bodies rocketed through a new pattern, four high, four low, twenty bouncing sideways or straight at the mecha. Most of them hurled rocks as they jumped, adding to the bedlam in the air.

  The gun platform overreacted. It centered its fire on the upper part of the storm. Its programs surely included AMAS surface-to-space defense systems. By default, it considered the overhead targets most critical.

  It shot three sunfish and nine rocks unerringly. Then the sunfish in the lower half of the wave reached the diggers. More sunfish entered the cavern as the mecha flailed at their small adversaries — and when the diggers were enveloped, the gun platform raked its fire over the diggers and sunfish alike.

  Ricochets sprang from the diggers’ alumalloy frames, shredding sunfish, annihilating a digger’s gear block. Bullets careened from metal and rock like high velocity hail.

  The digger slumped and went down in a heap of bloody sunfish, kicking as it fell.

  They’re winning! Vonnie thought, feeling sick and exultant. The cost to the sunfish would be staggering. Dozens were dead. But they were winning.

  Four sunfish reached the gun platform. They clubbed its eyes. They screeched in its ears. The gun platform reeled from the disruptions, unable to track its targets or to process new commands. Vonnie cheered silently.

  Beside her, Metzler uttered one sound. “Christ.”

  A second FNEE gun platform waddled into the cavern through the gaping fractures left by the explosion. Behind it lurched another digger. Too many of the sunfish were engaged with the original mecha. They launched themselves at the new gun platform, but they were too far away.

  It squeezed off eight controlled bursts. With each burst, a sunfish died. Then it swept its guns across the cavern, concentrating on the biggest groups.

  That quickly, the tide was turned. The new gun platform cleaned off its brother. It freed the battle worn digger.

  Working together, the two gun platforms wasted every living thing in sight, firing continuously until a meter-long slab dropped from the ceiling and two hunks crumbled from the walls.

  The roar of the guns couldn’t mask the high-pitched screams as the last sunfish cavorted and dodged among the ruptured bodies of their tribe.

  There was no mercy offered except to a few crippled, spasming sunfish. Some individuals could barely raise an arm in self-defense before the FNEE diggers collected them, gumming up their wounds with foam spray, binding them in wire. Many others were left to bleed out.

  “I can’t watch,” Metzler said, raising his glove in front of his eyes. Then he dragged his arm laterally. He wiped the FNEE sims from his display and turned his attention to the sharecasts from the ESA spies.

  Surreptitiously, Vonnie instructed her station to copy the FNEE datastreams. She could broadcast the massacre systemwide. Billions of people would be outraged… and yet… and yet the gene corps and the politicians had what they wanted. Worse, they could claim they were innocent. The sunfish had attacked them, not vice versa.

  At least it’s over, she thought. But the activity in the ice wasn’t done.

  “Oh no,” she said, reacting to an alarm.

  The second pack of sunfish — the group who’d elected not to pursue their smaller cousins and hurried toward the mecha instead — were about to make their own appearance on the battlefield. There were sixteen of them. They had no chance where fifty-two warriors had failed.

  42.

  “We need to stop the sunfish or Ribeiro,” Vonnie said. “There’s no excuse for more killing. Ash! They have all the captives and tissue samples they need.”

  “I can’t make the sunfish go away,” Ash said stubbornly.

  “What about sonar calls from our spies? Anything. Maybe we can distract them. They might recognize a warning.”

  “Got it,” Metzler said, but Frerotte acted first. He uploaded their linguistic databases to the spies, selecting a short menu of sunfish calls. “Here,” Frerotte said.

  The spies mimicked Tom’s screech from his encounter with Probe 112. Pärnits believed the sound was a challenge and a boast that Tom’s tribe was a ferocious entity. Unfortunately, the spies relied primarily on radar and passive sensory arrays. They weren’t designed to transmit signals other than encrypted data/comm, so their sonar was short range.

  Frerotte shook his head. “The spies probably aren’t loud enough. I’m not sure—”

  The new sunfish changed course, swinging away from the FNEE mecha. As they did, they piped and shrieked at the rock separating them from the blood-soaked cavern.

  Were they sounding out the mecha? Not with so much rock between them, Vonnie thought. She believed the sunfish were teasing their enemy, trying to provoke the machines into rushing after them. Was that to set an ambush? Did they plan to bring a tunnel down on the mecha?

  The sunfish dove through the catacombs, taking one, two, three turns to maintain the same heading. They were moving in the direction of the ESA spies.

  “They heard us,” Vonnie said.

  “Did they?” Metzler asked. “They’re trending toward our spies, but there’s another place they could be going. They must know where to find Tom and Sue’s abandoned colony even if they’ve never been inside it.”

  “You think they always intended to run for the colony.”

  “Yes. Our AI tagged something weird in the FNEE datastreams. This group is exclusively male. From their size, they might be immature males.”

  “But the smaller breed evacuated,” Vonnie said. “There’s nothing in the colony.”

  “Maybe the smaller sunfish left their old and wounded behind,” Metzler said. “There might be farms. This is the larger breed’s chance to raid the place.”

  “Smart,” Frerotte said.

  “Raccoons and dogs raid garbage cans,” Ash said. “I’m sorry. Dawson’s right. Nobody with any brains sends unprotected
troops at a gun emplacement.”

  “We employed ’human wave’ tactics in World War One,” Frerotte said, coming to Vonnie’s aid again. “The Americans did it at Gettysburg. The Chinese nearly won the North-South Korean War with mass infantry charges.”

  “That’s different,” Ash said.

  “Is it?”

  “Those soldiers carried weapons.”

  “The sunfish used rocks like shotgun fire,” Frerotte said. “They tried to bring down the ceiling again. You can’t fault them for not having our technology. The Zulu overwhelmed the British Army using spears and human waves.”

  Why are you helping me? Will you keep helping me? Vonnie thought as she waited and watched.

  The sunfish were masters at feinting, traps, and decoys. Their lives were an endless game of hide-and-seek, so why hadn’t they gone after their smaller cousins instead of attacking of the mecha? Because they’d been drawn to the carnage on the battlefield? They might have hoped to find the mecha weakened by their cousins, then destroy the machines themselves, claiming all of the dead for food.

  Did they realize the mecha weren’t living creatures?

  How intelligent are they really? she thought, feeling a pang of doubt. Ash had raised an excellent point. Frontal assaults on a gun platform would have resulted in heavy casualties for armored human commandos. The sunfish tribes had lost more than fifty lives. Twenty more had been wounded and captured. That wasn’t intelligent. It was unreasoning instinct.

  Metzler saw her eyes and said, “Von, they couldn’t have understood what they were getting into. They’ve never met war machines.”

  “They fought me. They should know what machines can do.”

  “That was probably a different tribe.”

  “They’re drifting out of range,” Frerotte said.

  “I wish we could piggyback a spy onto one of the sunfish,” Metzler said. Blatantly trying to ease the tension, he added, “I’d give my left testicle to see what’s inside the colony. Are there pools? Beds? Maybe it was a penthouse.”