“What is it?”
“They’ve got xenocs in here. Xenocs I’ve never seen before.” She scanned her sensors across the creature inside the cube, building up a pixel file image for the Edenist. It was bipedal, shorter than a human, with four symmetrically arranged arms emerging from mid-torso. No elbow or knee joints were apparent, the limbs moved as a single unit. Bulbous shoulder/hip joints hinted at a considerable articulation. All four arms ended in stumpy hands with four claw-fingers; while the legs finished in rounded pads. The head was a fat cone, with deep folds of skin ringing a thick neck, which would permit a great deal of rotation. There was a vertical gash, which could be either a nose or mouth, and deep sockets that could have held eyes.
“My God, Samuel, it’s sentient. It’s wearing things, look.” She focused on an arm, where a silver bracelet was wrapped around the wizened caramel skin. “That could be a watch, I think. It’s certainly technological. They caught a sentient xenoc and stuffed the poor bastard for their kids to look at in this freak show. Oh for Christ’s sake, what are we dealing with here?”
“You’re jumping to some very wild assumptions, Monica.”
“Then you explain what the fucking hell it’s doing in here. I’m telling you, they put it on show. It must have come from one of the planets they stopped at.”
“You’re in an archive, not a circus zoo.”
“Is that supposed to make me happy? So this is scientific not entertainment. What were they doing studying it? It’s sentient. It’s not a laboratory creature.”
“Monica, I know it’s shocking, but it isn’t relevant to our current situation. I’m sorry, but you’ll just have to ignore it for the moment.”
“Jesus fucking wept.” She spun round, and marched back towards the terminal where Oski and Renato were working. Heat and anger kept her going for several paces. Then she stopped and scanned the cube again. Her suit lights refracted off the gritty ice with its dark adumbrate core of sorrow and suffering.
When they’d come on board, she’d wondered about Tyrathca souls watching them. Now all she could think about was the soul of the unknown xenoc; lost and alone, crying out desperately for others of its kind. Could it see her now? Was it shouting its pleas for salvation from some obscure corner of the dreadful beyond? Unheard even by its own deities?
The medical monitor warned Monica she wasn’t breathing properly. She made an effort to inhale in a regular motion. “Oski? How are you doing?”
“I’m not sure. There are some files in here that look like communiqués. I’ve just reverted to our fall-back option. We’re copying every memory to analyse later.”
“How long?”
“Programming is almost complete. It’ll take half an hour to datavise all their files over to our processors.”
“We can’t afford that.”
“I know. The bitek processors can shunt the information directly over to Oenone and Lady Mac in real time. We just have to hope the Tyrathca don’t come in here and find out what we’re doing until it’s finished.”
“That’s a safe enough bet. I expect they’ll be too busy chasing us.”
* * *
How the hell did they get up there? Ione asked.
At least three Tyrathca soldiers were cantering along ring five’s ceiling gantries. The narrow metal walkways threaded amongst the crane rails and irrigation pipes were shaking alarmingly as the heavy bodies thundered down them. But they were holding. And they provided the Tyrathca with a dangerously effective vantage point.
There were now six separate smears of billowing dust blotting out entire sections of the ring, evidence of shattered towers caught in the increasingly brutal crossfire. Tyrathca bodies lay everywhere, bleeding fluid and heat onto the cold alloy floor. One of the two remaining serjeants was limping badly, its suit leg crushed almost flat around the knee. Caught by a huge chunk of debris whose inertia defeated the binding generators. Several processors and hardware units on its belt were dead, ruined by maser fire.
Worse, from a tactical viewpoint, only one Tyrathca was currently stalking it. The remainder had moved away from the mayhem it’d unleashed to chase down the remaining heat trails. Four of them, including one breeder, were congregating round the open airlock into the control offices.
“They know we went in there now,” Samuel datavised.
“The ones on the gantries will be looking for us,” Ione datavised. “And they’ll see us soon enough.”
“We’ve finished programming the file extraction,” Oski said. “The data is being received by the starships.”
“Excellent. Get out of the archive, I’m about to blow the airlock. Ione, can you take out the soldiers on the gantries?”
“I’ll try.”
“At this point, you’re not expendable to us, okay? We’re going to need back-up to get out of here.”
“Understood. But only one of me will be able to keep up with you on the ramp.”
The injured serjeant raised its missile launcher, and fired the two remaining smart seeker missiles. They soared off into the gloom, twin spikes of intense amber light, seemingly rising out of sight around the ring’s curvature. It began to limp into the seething dust, heading back towards the archive. Searching round on its belt, Ione found a magazine containing neutron pulse missiles. Only four of the twelve responded to a datavise. She slipped the magazine into the launcher anyway.
When the others made it to the shelter of the ramp, she could then make life seriously unpleasant for the Tyrathca left in ring five.
* * *
Samuel and the last serjeant were waiting for Monica, Oski, and Renato right outside the archive. Monica’s thoughts were still in such turmoil after finding the xenoc that she didn’t trust herself to say anything to him.
“There’s still one soldier-caste left up on the gantry,” Samuel datavised. “Not that it matters much now.” He triggered the charges he’d laid around the airlock.
They were close enough to see the flash: a dazzling ripple of pure white light that burst across the ring, fading fast.
Samuel started running straight at it. They only had a hundred and fifty metres to go. He datavised instructions to the others, who activated their rocket launchers. A semicircle of towers fell in unison as the missiles pulverised their ground floors. Dust strangled the thin plumes of potent flame, sending out a curtain of impenetrable darkness that fountained straight upwards.
The airlock leading to the ramp had been wrenched to one side by the charges Samuel had laid around its rim, buckling the thick slab of titanium like so much plastic sheeting. A tide of rock had spewed out of the gap, narrowing it still further. His boots dislodged small loose fragments as he scrambled up. There was enough space to pass through, providing he turned sideways. As soon as he was on the other side, he started slapping EE charges on the walls. Monica and the others wriggled through the gap, with the serjeant bringing up the rear.
* * *
Eighteen combat wasps were closing on Lady Mac, the third time in an hour Hesperi-LN’s defences had launched such a salvo at them. Each time, Lady Mac had simply jumped away before any of them were in range, leaving the drones to search round helplessly for their target.
“Good job the Tyrathca never met anything hostile when they were on their voyage here,” Joshua remarked. “I mean, Jesus, they are absolutely crap at space warfare. Why do they keep firing salvos when we’re far enough above the planet to jump?”
“They’re lulling us into complacency,” Ashly said cheerfully. “They’ve worked out roughly where we’ve got to emerge next time, and they’ve flown their superweapon there ready to zap us.”
“Nope. Keeping the jump emergence coordinate as a random variable is file-one in the combat manual.”
“They wouldn’t have a superweapon anyway,” Liol said. “Building stuff like that takes inventive flair. And they just ain’t got it.”
“They do seem to be very dogmatic,” Dahybi said. “As they haven’t got a combat capable
starship to field against us, their options are limited.”
“Limited, yes,” Joshua agreed. “But not to one.” He studied the tactical display. The nearest combat wasp would be close enough to start deploying submunitions in another two minutes. “Stand by for jump. Sarha, how’s the memory dump coming on?”
“No problems, Joshua. The bitek array is accepting the load.”
“Great, let’s hope there’s something useful in there.” He cut the fusion drives, holding the starship stable with ion thrusters. The flight computer showed him the energy patterning node status as the combat sensors retracted. “Here we go.” They emerged forty thousand kilometres from the combat wasp swarm. Hesperi-LN’s SD network took nearly three minutes to acquire lock on.
“Are you launching another combat wasp?” Liol asked.
“Not yet,” Joshua said. He datavised the bitek array for a link to the exploration team. “Where are you?”
“Coming up to level two,” Monica replied. “The ramp is sealed behind us, so if we don’t get ambushed, we’ll be at level one in another twelve minutes.”
“Okay, thanks, Monica. Syrinx, we’d better start finalizing our next move.”
“Agreed. We must assume the blackhawk will try and follow us again.”
“I can throw it off with multiple consecutive jumps. Can you do something similar?”
“No problem. Designate a rendezvous coordinate.”
“That’s trickier. This bloody diversionary battle has screwed around with our vector. I can get a rough alignment on the second planet with a small burn. We’ll slingshot around it, and re-align on the Orion nebula. After that, we can lose the hellhawk.”
“Very well. Oenone will swallow out to the second planet as soon as we’ve picked the team up. See you there.”
* * *
The second level cavern housed a gigantic fusion generator, three pale metal spheres standing one on top of the other, eighty metres high. Arching buttresses of pipes and cables were wrapped around the main section like mechanized viaducts, sinking away into the walls and floor. A quintet of heat exchangers surrounded it. Fluids had leaked from their valves and feed tube junctions, dribbling down the casings to solidify in colourful multi-layered ribbons. The cavern’s irradiated rock kicked off datavised Geiger warnings as soon as the exploration team bounded in from one of the corridors.
“This is it,” Samuel datavised. “Our shortcut.”
“It will be very short with this radiation level if we’re not careful,” Monica datavised. “This is as bad as a fission core meltdown. What kind of fuel did they use?”
“Heaven only knows.” Samuel scanned his sensors across the pipes that disappeared into the curving apex overhead. “Any of those three.” His suit’s tactical program datavised the designation icon to the others, highlighting the pipe he’d chosen. “According to the file Oski pulled from the control offices it’s a thermal gas duct. The exchangers transferred some of their heat along it to keep the level-one lakes warm. It’s an express route straight there. All we have to do is slice it open.”
Monica didn’t argue with him, despite the sudden doubts. She’d stayed with Oski and Renato in the archive, leaving details of their withdrawal to Samuel. That was teamwork. And it was as though he’d been her partner forever. They knew they could rely on each other now. She took the stumpy laser rifle from her belt, datavised its control processor for a continual burn, and lined it up on the pipe he’d designated.
Five ruby red beams stabbed out, puncturing the pipe. Bright molten metal droplets drizzled down slowly, losing their radiance before they reached the ground. Monica’s radar caught the movement just before the maser beam hit her suit. A couple of homing grenades fired immediately from her dispenser, looping through the three dimensional maze of pipes to smash the corridor entrance where the Tyrathca soldier was lurking.
Backwash from the EE blast rolled her across the ground to clang against the base of a heat exchanger. Her infrared sensor caught a blur of motion away on the other side of the chamber. Radar was useless, there was too much machinery in the way.
“They’re in,” she warned.
“Oski, Renato, finish cutting the pipe open,” Samuel ordered. “We’ll take care of them.”
One of the Tyrathca cannon fired, blowing a hole in the side of the fusion generator. Monica grabbed her missile launcher, and fired off a pair of smart seekers. Samuel was kangaroo jumping up the side of a heat exchanger. Homing grenades spat out of his dispenser, zipping away to pummel the corridor entrances. Maser beams slashed at him. Monica’s sensors triangulated their origin, and she launched more smart seekers in retaliation. Explosions ripped round the chamber as the corridor entrances were closed.
“Pipe’s open,” Oski datavised.
“Go straight in,” Samuel datavised. “We’ll cover you.”
Monica dived under a buttress, scanning at ground level. The lower section of four hot Tyrathca spacesuit legs was visible ahead of her, below a coil-wound beam. She chopped them with the laser, slashing straight through the fabric. Large globs of weird purple gel burped out, oscillating wildly as they bounced off the floor and machinery. The Tyrathca stumbled and fell. Monica slid the laser along its flank. A tidal wave of gel blobs erupted. Then the body went into explosive decompression.
Oski’s manoeuvring pack fired at full power, lifting her towards the apex of the cavern. Every suppresser program she had that could squash down on her fear was in primary mode. They must have worked, she was quietly delighted at how calmly she was reacting to being shot at. Guidance programs bent her flight around the clutter of arching pipes as she rose higher and higher. She actually passed a two metre section of the pipe on her way up, its edges still glowing pink as it tumbled end over end.
A maser beam struck her legs. The suit’s tactical program shot a homing grenade down in response. Then she was concentrating solely on her flight, arrowing for the gaping hole they’d sliced in the pipe. Its rim flashed past her, catching her shoulder, and scraping along her arms. Then she was completely inside. Radar was the only sense which functioned in here, showing a rigid, featureless tube stretching out above her for nearly three hundred metres. Her manoeuvring pack thrusters throttled down, slowing her to a less reckless speed as the gravity dropped off. A second armour suit slid into the pipe below her.
“Hell of an escape route,” Renato datavised.
* * *
Etchells had no warning that the Oenone was going to swallow away from the twin moons. The crew were still boring him crazy with their promises and propaganda when it happened. But he felt it go, a massive tear in the uniformity of his distortion field.
What are you doing? he asked. The Tyrathca ships were still hours away.
We’re leaving now, Ruben said. Why don’t you go home? Think about what we’ve been saying.
There was a momentary lapse in the affinity contact. Etchells observed the amount of energy Oenone applied to open the wormhole interstice, determining the terminus location. They had returned to that damn arkship!
Why are you here? he demanded. What’s so special about that ship?
If you join our efforts to solve this crisis, then such questions will be answered for you, Syrinx said.
Fuck your psychobabble bullshit. He sent the energy flashing through his patterning cells, uncomfortably aware of how much he had expended in warding off impacts from the Lagrange point particles. A wormhole opened, and he dived down it, emerging into real space again, barely twenty kilometres from the arkship.
The Oenone was probing the ancient vessel very thoroughly with its distortion field (an act which Etchells didn’t understand). And the large Tyrathca ship was firing its secondary drive, moving up from its holding position at the front of Tanjuntic-RI. Etchells didn’t really want to go into combat against the xenocs at this point, especially not with uncertain allies like the Edenists.
Oenone was performing another swallow manoeuvre.
You can’t elude
me, Etchells said.
Fine, Syrinx replied with icy superiority. Follow us in, then.
Etchells derived the voidhawk’s wormhole terminus. Which was impossible. They were swallowing inside the arkship. There were cavities in there, he could feel them. Tenuous bubbles within the hard rock. So very small.
He didn’t dare. That kind of accuracy was staggering.
The Tyrathca ship had risen above the arkship’s horizon. It launched fifteen combat wasps straight at him. He swallowed away fast.
* * *
The level-one cavern was quickly and silently saturated with light, revealing the cyclorama of frozen water. Ripples and waves were caught in mid-swell, drained of colour as they had been of heat. The endocarps were different. Flat cliffs of rock, rimmed with ledges of metal just above the ice. One of them boasted a tiny pinprick of warmth. Five armour-suited figures hovered in front of it, watching the light source expand; twisted fragments of starlight threaded through the length of the wormhole to spray out at random. There was no other indication of the terminus opening.
As the light dimmed it shone across Oenone’s marbled blue hull, glinting off the crew toroid. The huge voidhawk swept round the lake’s curvature towards the exploration team, skirting the rickety old axial gantry with simple grace.
You’ve no idea how good it is to see you, Samuel said, accompanying the statement with a wash of gratitude and relief.
You too, Oenone replied. I knew I could do this.
* * *
Etchells conceded defeat. He wasn’t going to find out why the two starships had come here, not now. Oenone was inside the arkship for less than five minutes before swallowing away again. Its wormhole terminus opened out above the star system’s second planet. The Adamist ship jumped there as well.
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