CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
So? I thought you country boys could rub your psoriasis together and start a fire? Where’s that pioneer spirit?
Rook, to Rand
The flying saucer was fifty feet wide. When it had covered most of the distance separating it from the intruders, it halted. It remained motionless, lying dead still without sound or motion.
Suddenly the honeycomb-cells began shedding harsh light, the saucer’s underside a solid convex of brilliance. One of the embryo-mecha began to glow. Its egg expanded and rose into the air toward the saucer. Rand and Annie stopped their withdrawal and watched what was happening.
Again there was the regal female voice, reverberating from the saucer, the cross-echoes making it difficult to understand. But Rand thought he heard, “Nine-X-Nineteen has been selected for transmutation. The quickening will begin. Retrieve a Scout pod and transfer it to Hive Center.”
The egg had disappeared and the unborn Scout was enclosed in a larger globe of light, some sort of lifting field. It looked similar to the ones Rand and the team had fought. It was slowly unlimbering, its contours still curved to its confinement, the way a baby bird’s are to its shell for the first few moments after it breaks free.
Rand and Annie watched the mecha borne away by the saucer. He’s being promoted? Rand tried to puzzle out. He didn’t know much about how Invid society really functioned; nobody did, or at least nobody who was talking.
Annie shook him and he realized that time was wasting away.
In the Hive Center lay one of the bio-constructs that was the Regess’ direct contact with each installation and every individual of her far-flung realm. It was the center of the hive’s reverence, obedience … adoration. It spoke to the hive members, and with them, and for them.
It was situated in a shallow nutrient pool about five or six yards wide, filling two-thirds of it. A half-dozen mature light-stalks blossomed around it, beaming down nourishing rays—radiating flowers like the Flower of Life and yet unlike it.
The darker chocolate-orange of the Hive Center’s floor was broken across its entire span by large and small dark pink circles. It looked as if a hundred spotlights of various sizes shone there. But the only visible path of light was the incandescent beam that shone down on the Sensor, the coordinating intellect-clearinghouse of the hive.
Mecha stood by as the Regess spoke. Listening to her were a single looming Scout unit and a half dozen and more of the smaller, more highly evolved, trumpetsnouted Controllers.
“The proliferation of the Flower of Life on Earth has reached a critical phase, a triggerpoint,” it said. “Soon the mass thriving of the Flower will be assured, and we will need the Human race no more, and Earth will be the homeworld that will replace our beloved Optera. But we must pass that triggerpoint, we must have more Human slaves to spread the Flower of Life to every corner of the Earth.
“And to increase our supply of slaves, we must have more mecha, as rapidly as the Evolving makes that possible. Prepare now for the arrival of the retrieval droid, and the quickening of a new Scout ship!”
One of the Controllers began making stiff-armed gestures to the others, like some ancient Roman military salute sequence. The other Controllers moved to their places, and in moments the hulking Scout ship, standing immobile on one of the lighted circles, began descending into the floor. In a moment it was gone and the aperture closed.
“I guess that thing there is the brains of the outfit,” Rand whispered, where he and Annie poised in concealment behind two fibrous columns.
“Yeah, well, it may have it in the brains department, but—” She made a face. “Ugh! It gives a whole new meaning to ‘ugly’!”.
The thing that Rand thought was a Sensor was a huge mass of wetly glistening, sickly pink coils. It looked like someone had knotted a length of enormous small intestine beyond any unsnarling. Its stench clogged the warm, humid air of the hive center.
A retrieval pod entered, bearing aloft the hatchling it had fetched. “Scout Trooper ready for quickening,” the Regess announced. The saucer set its burden down exactly where the previous one had stood, the hatchling booming as it landed. The lifting field disappeared as the saucer’s underside dimmed. The retrieval pod whisked away.
The hatchling’s optical sensor opened, exposing the vertical row of three lenses. “Activate canopy,” the Regess commanded. Long segmented metal tentacles extended from somewhere above, their articulated fingers working quickly. The Scout’s cranial area was opened and a broad plate or hatch swung up.
Rand could see a softly lighted area within the cranial compartment, but he couldn’t tell much more about what was going on. “Insert drone Nine-X-Nineteen,” the Regess’ eldritch voice said.
From a conduit high in the wall, there came another egg, this one far smaller than the mecha’s. Clusters of gracefully-waving tendrils, like undersea plants, floated at the top and bottom of the embryo.
Within the embryo was something curled up that looked shrunken and wizened even though its skin had the moist, hairless look of the unborn. It appeared to be mostly head, its arms and legs degenerated and vestigial. Its dark eyes were bottomless, liquid black slits; Annie couldn’t decide whether they were as unseeing as a seconds-old kitten’s, or windows to some all-observing intellect. Drone Nine-X-Nineteen’s nose was a bony button.
A crest of hard plate made a ridge from its massive, convoluted brow back across its skull. Its skin seemed to be a lusterless gray-green, its brow and skull mapped by a craniological nightmare of bulges and eminences. It was all but chinless, its mouth seemingly a tiny bud.
Rand and Annie looked at the face of the enemy.
Drone Nine-X-Nineteen, still in its egg, was wafted by unseen forces, to nestle in the dimly lit womb of the Scout’s head.
“Drone in place,” the Sensor reported to itself.
“Bad place,” Annie muttered. Rand nodded.
The tentacles closed the canopy of the quickened Scout; the optical scanner came alight, glowing red. “Transmutation completed,” the Regess declared. “Prepare next Scout Trooper for quickening.” The Scout that carried—or had become—Nine-X-Nineteen sank out of sight like its predecessor.
“Rand,” Annie said plaintively, “I’m scared.”
“So’m I, Mint. Let’s get this thing over with and get out of here.” A retrieval pod was bringing in another Scout. “Dammit! We must’ve gotten here right in the middle of Motherhood Week!”
Annie swallowed. “Then let’s blow that Sensor thing and get out of here!”
“Fine with me, but we have to find it first, remember? And it could be anywhere in this maggot factory.”
She looked at her watch. “That means it’s time for Contingency Plan B, huh?”
Rand nodded, checking his own watch. “I hope Scott and the others aren’t napping.” He looked around him. “I’d hate to be stuck in this neighborhood at night.”
Scott was wide awake and swearing, looking at his military chronometer. He and the others were gathered under snow-covered firs behind a line of drifts, watching the pass from the shadows.
“They’re late with their signal!” And he had no idea whether Annie and Rand were in trouble or had simply, in their sloppy civilian way, forgotten the timetable.
If they’re goofing around up there …
But Lancer grabbed his armored shoulder. “There they are.” He pointed.
Three quarters of the way up one of the peaks that flanked the fortress, light was flashing from one of the many niches or tunnel openings or launch bays or whatever they were.
Scott and Lancer trained their computer-coupled binocular on the spot. The binocular showed Annie, sitting on the edge of one of the niches, angling a mirror from her pack, using it as a crude heliograph. It would be impossible to answer by the same code, since the Invid might have picked up the flashes. He turned to Rook, who stood with Marlene and Lunk.
“Just as I figured: they need a decoy. Okay, Rook, get moving.”
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br /> She nodded, snowflakes glistening in her long, strawberry-blond waves. “Wish me luck.”
Annie continued her signaling, hoping the team had noticed it. It only made sense not to use a radio inside the fortress, but she would have felt better hearing Scott say, “Affirmative.”
She heard the heavy tread of mecha round a corner, coming her way unexpectedly. Annie fumbled with the mirror and lost it as she dove for cover. She had no choice but to hang from the brink by her fingers, as two towering Controllers marched by.
“Unidentified intrusions registered along Perimeter Sixteen,” the Regess’ voice warned. “Investigate!”
After they had passed, Annie hauled herself back up again. But she felt a sinking unease. Suppose her signal hadn’t been seen? She looked around for some other reflective surface that would serve, but could find none.
Maybe Rand and I are on our own? Maybe we’d better start improvising?
Rook activated a control, and her Cyc’s tires extruded heavy snow studs. She left her thinking cap off, letting her hair blow in the wind on the chance that the aliens might think her less of a military threat if they didn’t see that she was a Cyclone warrior.
She jumped from ridges and traveled under the tree canopy as much as she could, hoping that the enemy couldn’t follow her back-trail through the snow and find signs of her teammates’ presence. Then she howled out into the open, making the treacherous approach uphill toward the fortress. It wasn’t long before a flight of Pincer Ships dove at her, their shadows flickering across the snow.
Rook gave a wild, scornful laugh, elated by the thrill and risk of it all. “Come on!” she called up. “I’ll race you to the mountain top!”
The Pincers swooped close but held fire for the moment, trying to determine just what kind of threat they faced. Their scanners studied the racing cyclist.
In the Hive Center, sheets of light and electrical discharges raced across the heaving, visceral mass of the Sensor. “Patrol reports bio-energetic activity in the approaching vehicle. Protoculture emanations registered! All available units converge and intercept!”
Rand, watching from concealment, held Annie well back. “Keep your head down!”
“But—what’s happening?”
Rand checked his watch again. “It all hit the fan just at the time Rook was supposed to start her diversionary run!”
As the Invid closed the distance, Rook hit a switch on her right handlebar and tensed herself like a coiled spring.
A change in the din and the Saint Elmo’s fire along the Sensor made Annie point and tug Rand’s arm. “Look, it’s stopping! Is that bad?”
Rook! he thought. He felt a stab of despair and loss so powerful that it nearly staggered him.
“Intercept and neutralize!” the Regess commanded, as the Pincers raced to obey.
Rook concentrated everything on her timing. Calculations meant less now than instincts and years of experience in evading the Invid. At a certain moment she slewed around a stand of pine and laid down the bike in a spume of snow, throwing herself clear of the on-purpose grounding, diving into a snow bank.
The Cyc lay dead, its Protoculture engine off. Rook lay doggo as the Pincers rounded the trees and went on past, following their Protoculture detectors, suddenly confused. They raced on, splitting up, casting about like bloodhounds for a scent.
Rook pulled herself up a little and smiled at the receding Invid personal-armor mecha. “Ciao!”
An instant later the smile disappeared. Rand, get busy! Get out of there! She was frowning at the fact that she was worrying so much over him—and Annie, of course …
She hadn’t let anybody mean anything to her since she had quit her old biker gang. This caring for someone—especially a dumb country boy—was making her angry with herself and with him, too.
“It can’t be a coincidence,” Rand said tightly. “That heap o’ guts out there—that thing is the Sensor we’re looking for!”
Annie gripped his shirt. “D-d’you think it knows we’re here?”
“If it does, we’re in a lot bigger trouble than I thought.”
The obscene loops of the Sensor were dark and quiet. Still, the quickening of Scouts went on. Rand watched as more Controllers went to take up positions near the stinking mass of the Regess’ local embodiment.
Something occurred to him, and he gazed at Annie apprehensively. She had been possessed by an alien intelligence once before, in the Genesis Pit. What if it should happen again? But no, she seemed to be behaving normally—quaking with fear.
Rand tried to calm himself and take in the situation. “The place is crawling with guards.”
“M-my skin’s crawling, too!”
He picked a route and led the way from cover to cover. The Controllers were all concentrating on the quickening, gathered to one side of the Sensor. Then the two reached the opposite side of the monstrous mound of alien bowels. Annie skittered after Rand, quiet as a mouse, but she lost her footing and was about to go sprawling.
But Rand had turned, and he caught her. The descent of yet another Scout ship into the floor had covered the noise. “Watch what you’re doing!” he wispered fiercely, turning her around and rooting through the pink rucksack.
She was puffing, wiping the sweat from her brow, fanning herself with the E.T. cap. Rand mumbled, “Where is it—ah!”
He drew out an instrumented cylinder the size of a pint beercan. A shaped-charge cobalt limpet mine, something the team had been saving ever since the raid on Colonel Wolfe’s goodies warehouse. “This should do the trick.” And we’d better not be hanging around when it does!
Annie whispered, “Hey! I carried it; I think I ought to be the one to plant it—”
She dropped her cap and stifled a squeal as she reached frantically to catch the bomb, Rand having casually tossed it to her while the Controllers inserted another drone.
It was supposed to be totally inert until it was armed, but—“Talk about dumb” she said, giving him a venemous look. Then she turned to attach the limpet to the side of the Sensor’s pool. She set the timer’s blinking numerals. “One minute enough?”
He was setting a second sapper charge for sixty seconds. “Let’s hope so.” They couldn’t take a chance on a longer setting; one of those enemy mecha might decide to take a stroll at any second.
They nodded to each other. No going back now! They stole off the way they had come. They were halfway across the floor when Annie realized her head felt cold. Even though she knew it was crazy, she looked back instinctively for her treasured cap. It still lay where she had dropped it.
Then, somehow, her feet had tangled up and she was falling, almost cracking her chin on the floor. From her loosened pack jounced an adjustable ordnance tool, ringing like an alarm bell.
“Disturbance in Hive Center!” thundered the Sensor, in the voice of the Regess.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
Plutarch said courage stands halfway between cowardice and rashness. Shakespeare said it mounteth with occasion.
What we’ve got here is living proof.
Scott Bernard’s mission notes
Rand skidded to a halt, spun, and saw what had happened. “Typical!”
But he went dashing back, as Controllers turned to converge on the spot where Annie lay. Their bulging arms were raised and pointed, and their built-in weapons were ready to fire. “Intruders. Two in number. Neutralize them,” the Regess exhorted her troops.
Annie levered herself up miserably. “No, please don’t! We didn’t mean anything!”
Rand calculated time and angles. “Just hang tough, Mint. These jerks won’t know what hit them in a coupla’ seconds.”
“Surrender, Humans, or be destroyed,” the Regess demanded. Rand watched the Controllers close in, his hand on his H90. Then he holstered it and put both hands over his ears and opened his mouth wide, to lessen the impact of the blast. Annie, terrified, did the same. “Humans, this is your final warn—”
Mo
st of the blast from the limpets’ shaped charges was directed inward, into the grotesque coils of the Sensor, but the backwash was more than enough to knock the leading three Controllers sideways.
The Sensor bore the brunt of a stupendous blast.
Marlene gasped.
Scott, too busy to notice, was watching through his binocular as smoke roiled from one of the snowpeak’s upper openings. “They did it! Isn’t that a beautiful—”
He lowered the binocular and turned, hearing Marlene cry out and then collapse into racking sobs. Rook and the others rushed to her side. “Is it the same thing as last time?” Lancer asked, gently trying to quiet her.
“She’s screaming at me!” Marlene managed, through convulsing shudders.
Lunk’s low brows met. “Who is?”
Rook tore her gaze away from the smoking fortress and tried not to fear that Rand had been hurt or killed. “Is there any way we can help, Marlene? Tell us what to do!”
Marlene was on her knees, holding her head in her hands. But she shook it no, her hair swinging.
“Let’s get moving,” Scott barked, to snap his team out of it. “Rand and Annie might need help even more.”
“I … don’t … believe it,” Annie stammered, gazing upward.
Rand stood tranfixed near where she lay, looking up as well. “That—that thing …”
The Controllers were all down, smoking, either from the initial blast or from secondary explosions. And the Sensor had vanished from its nutrient bath, all right. But now sickly pinkish blobs of it, in various sizes, bobbed and drifted around the Hive Center. They tumbled like slow-moving meteors, drifting, caroming off each other, spreading like floating amoebas to fill the place.
My god! We hit it with enough wallop to knock off a half-dozen Shock Troopers and yet—“It’s dissolved into some kind of, of protoplasmic flesh!” He wasn’t even sure what the phrase meant himself. Perhaps, he babbled to himself, “Protoculture ectoplasm” would be more the term?
Annie was struggling to get to her feet. “It’s coming straight for us!” The deploying blobs had somehow located them, and were homing in from all over the chamber like evil clouds of murderous jelly.
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