Even more struggle got him up the ladder and back into the corridors, and he spat vulgar words under his breath, most of them directed at his own stupidity. Sternward he limped, dragging the heavy apparatus he had claimed, to the left at the intersection, then down the way to the large central tunnel.
Glancing to his left, he sighed with relief as he saw nothing but a small maintenance bot scurrying down the other side. It scuttled along the wall as far from him as possible, as if it had learned that the Ryss were not to be trusted anymore.
Perhaps it was right.
Looking around, Chirom found a discarded part of a storage crate, three flat planes that made a corner piece that he could drag near the vent and yet hide behind. He placed it a bit farther along and next to the wall, to make it as difficult as possible for any emerging Ryss to see him.
Then he waited, clutching the tool he had recovered.
Eye to a flaw in the metal, he soon saw the grill swing outward on its hinges and a leg stretch out reaching, and then a tail and the other leg. Chirom stood up, dragging the welding torch along the deck as the Ryss hung from his paws and then dropped.
Squeezing the igniter, Chirom turned the valve that caused the flame to blaze long as his arm, and held it crossways in front of him.
The other Ryss turned, maser in his hand.
Chirom could already see that it was Vusk by his markings.
The yearsmane’s face was puffy and his eyes swelled almost shut from maser burns, probably fired into the living chamber’s open vent. Vusk was lucky to have gotten away with his eyesight.
“What do you want, oldling?” Vusk rasped, eyeing the flame between them.
“Drop your weapon, Vusk. You too up there,” Chirom said, flicking his eyes toward the vent.
That was enough to make Vusk believe he had a chance to win this contest, but Chirom was ready. In fact, the glance had been a test, to see how far Vusk was willing to press his criminal behavior.
As Vusk swung his maser’s muzzle toward the elder, Chirom turned the hungry flame toward the would-be rapist, washing it across his muzzle and eyes, and then keeping it there.
Screaming and clutching at his ruined face and smoldering fur, Vusk dropped his weapon and curled up on the deck in agony. Shoving the torch away, Chirom leaped for the fallen maser and rolled to his feet, feeling something inside him tear open afresh around his wound.
A burst of microwaves whined off the floor near him, throwing sparks among the shavings and debris of many years of neglect. In response, Chirom lined his maser up on the vent and fired, then fired again and again, hammering the enclosed metal space with enough energy to cook a Blosk sow.
Screaming became pleading. Eventually it stopped entirely.
Turning to the blinded criminal before him, Chirom said, “Your toughs are dead or dying. Your crime is heinous.”
“I did nothing! I sought only to find a way to attack Desolator.”
“Yet somehow you found yourself trying to break into the room of a female in her season, with intent to force her.”
“Yes, we became entranced with her scent and could not stop ourselves…”
Chirom bared his teeth in a snarl. “Turning your carbine on me proved your perfidy. You always were a bully and a layabout, Vusk. When did you become a liar?”
Vusk said nothing then, only pushed himself to a sitting position against the wall. “What will you do with me, Elder?”
“Ah. Now you are suddenly deferential. Like all bullies, you lick the anus of those over you and piss on those beneath.” Chirom took a deep and painful breath, noticing that blood was running down his own flank from under the bandages.
“Easy for you to say, with a weapon in your hand. I am blind, and burned. If you are so virtuous, you will test me in honorable combat.” Vusk’s nostrils flared.
He smells that I am wounded, and is afraid I will burn him down right now. As an elder I have the right of summary judgment…but he is correct, in a way. There will be questions, possibly doubts, and the Ryss must remain united in the face of all this chaos.
“Honorable combat is for those with honor, but I accept anyway. I will test you claw to claw, as you request – in the presence of all. Get up.”
The fallen bully rolled to his knees, placing one hand against the wall, then rose to his feet. “Yes, oldling.” His voice seemed to hold resignation. “I will dance for your entertainment.” Vusk sagged against the wall.
Almost, Chirom moved toward him with sympathetic instinct.
At that moment Vusk struck.
Extending a leg, the yearsmane shoved off from the wall with both front paws and reached as far as he could with a hind leg, large claws unsheathed in a powerful kick.
Had Chirom taken that step of kindness the slashing talons would have gutted him. Instead he stepped back, and only three fine claw-marks opened the surface skin across his belly.
He leveled his maser and fired.
One shot was enough to boil Vusk’s flesh and reduce him to a pitiful mewling thing. There was more of mercy than vengeance in it when Chirom extended his claws and slashed Vusk’s throat, letting the miscreant’s blood out to pool upon the deck.
As Chirom knelt, panting from his wound and the killing reaction, a sound caught his attention.
The little maintenance drone he had seen before quivered back and forth, turning its optical scanner toward him, then away. Desolator’s voice, tinny but familiar, issued from its speaker. “You have killed a Ryss. Killing of Ryss is only allowed under sanction of certain specified cultural rituals. This action has been noted and will be investigated and punished in accordance with ship’s regulations.”
Chirom eased himself sideways to rest on the deck, next to the carcass of his rival. He began to laugh, or perhaps cry, and then found he could not stop, despite the pain in his chest.
***
After dropping Jill off on the shore to return from her “camping trip,” Spooky asked Ezekiel to turn Roger around and head for a new destination, less than a day away. The next evening they arrived off the beach of an island boasting a town of perhaps twenty thousand, with light industry and suburbs.
A quick swim and silent sneak through the streets brought Spooky to one of the rounded Hippo houses. He double-checked the address notation, and then climbed the fence at the corner to perch atop it. From this vantage he could see into a window, where a lone Hippo made himself a hot beverage analogous to tea.
The alien’s motions seemed oddly precise to Spooky, who had made a study of the people of his adopted world. Perhaps the Hippo had let his guard down; perhaps the Yellows simply did not care about him, or something in between. Now that Jill and her Eden-Plague conscience were out of the way, he was going to find out.
Because Spooky, unbeknownst to most of his fellows, was a Psycho. That’s what they were called back on Earth: that tiny fraction of humanity that seemed to lack a conscience for the Eden Plague to bolster.
Spooky didn’t view himself that way; in his eyes, his conscience was merely more…flexible. This made him uniquely qualified to do things that needed to be done, for humanity’s own good.
Dropping silently down, he eased his way over to the house’s back door and picked the lock without difficulty. He then drew an air-powered pistol and rushed in with cybernetic speed.
As soon as his target came into view he fired, drilling the huge creature in the neck with the heavy dart. The Hippo started to rise, and then slumped as the drug took effect.
“Father?” A small voice asked in Sekoi speech, from a doorway off to the side. Spooky cursed himself for not extending his reconnaissance, and quickly rushed the child. Without doing any permanent harm – he hoped – he knocked the little Hippo unconscious, wrapped it tightly in a blanket he found, and set it on the table in front of its parent. Then he drew the curtains on all the windows and stood across from the adult.
“Can you understand me?” Spooky asked in the alien language.
“Ye
s,” the drugged Sekoi responded.
“What is your name?”
“I am called Kawar.”
“You are a Pureling, Kawar?”
After what seemed a struggle, the creature responded in the affirmative.
“You remain an agent for the Meme Empire.”
“Yes.”
“I have given you a drug that saps your will, and I have also infected you with a retrovirus that is even now reprogramming your mind-molecules.” Spooky drew off his masked hood, showing his face, checking his watch. “Is this your offspring?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you have an offspring? Would it not endanger your clandestine operations?”
“Not mating as expected would have endangered them more. Then the child was born and I performed my parental duty.”
“Where is your mate?”
“I had to kill her. She began to be suspicious.”
Spooky cocked his head in puzzlement. “Why did you not kill the child?”
The Hippo hesitated, then went on, as if not entirely certain. “It was not necessary,” he said.
He placed his hand on the young Hippo’s head, then felt for a pulse in its neck, which came strongly. “Would it distress you if I killed the child?”
“Yes.”
How interesting, and unexpected. I would have thought a Pureling immune to such sentiment. Checking his watch again, Spooky saw that enough time had elapsed for the virus to reprogram the Blend’s mind. “Then hear me now. I am your new control supervisor. Your loyalty is to me. Examine my face, and listen to my voice. My name is Tran Pham Nguyen, also known as ‘Spooky’. Everything you were willing to do for the Meme Empire you will now do for me, or anyone that has the codes I will give you. You will not disclose your new status to anyone. You will go on as before, and masquerade as an agent of the Meme.”
“I understand and assent. My loyalty is to you.”
Spooky stroked the unconscious child’s head. “Your progeny is precious to you.” I dislike using fear to control, but this serum and this virus is a prototype, incompletely tested. I will have to keep a close eye on him for a while.
“My progeny is precious to me,” the Hippo agreed.
“Do you have a mild tranquilizer for your progeny?”
“I have.”
“Retrieve it and administer a dose appropriate to keep it sedated for at least a tenthday.”
The Hippo did as he was told, with Spooky watching the whole time. While far less adept at reading the natives than humans, he had studied the aliens extensively enough to be confident he could spot signs of resistance. He saw none.
Spooky chuckled to himself. Now that the child was dealt with, he was ready to mine his new source for every nugget of information possible. “Kawar,” he said with a smile, “Begin by telling me about your network, and your contacts. Leave nothing out.”
Chapter Sixteen
Forty war-cars spread out through Desolator’s main corridors, navigating them easily four or five abreast. These things were made just for this, thought Rick as he steered his own from the midst of his protective fire team. Farther forward rolled Ryss warriors, whooping and bumping into each other with enthusiastic lack of skill.
Firing broke out ahead, and the humans slowed so as not to pile up with those in front. After a moment, their progress resumed more slowly, and they passed a small destroyed drone, now unrecognizable. Moments later the group came to a large intersection that included not only crossing horizontal tunnels but four ramps as well, leading upward and downward from the corners. It was a multilevel crossroads.
Trissk spoke into his communicator and the Ryss scattered in several directions, all going forward toward the bow and more operational reactors.
By Rick’s HUD, the various Marine and Ryss forces had cleared the back half of the ship for war drones and emplaced automatic weaponry. He’d noticed many old, broken-down or cannibalized emplacements and realized that they were fighting their way through a ship that was, by comparison, only barely capable of defending itself. Had Desolator been in possession of its full internal combat capacity, they would have been snuffed out like candles in a flood.
Trissk and five warriors took a ramp upward and Rick gunned his electric vehicle to follow. Corporal Melindez chased him with his fire team, controlling his vehicle better than the average Ryss.
At the top of the ramp they resumed their advance on the level above. Rick surmised there must be dozens, if not hundreds, of spacious decks, built for Desolator’s many large machines to rapidly move from place to place. Had they been trying to clear the ship deck by deck, it would have been an impossible task. However, they really were fighting only the machines that got in their way, in order to reach the reactors and shut them down.
Before they had set out in the war-cars, Trissk had explained to Rick: “The photonic drive uses an enormous amount of energy to initiate. Once it is in operation, it can be maintained with much less, but if we shut down enough auxiliary reactors, Desolator will not be able to continue at light speed. Then it will only be able to move with its single fusion drive, the only one still functioning, and it will be very slow.”
Rick had nodded. “That’s what our goal should be, then. Once Desolator is immobilized, my people’s military forces can converge and disable the insane device.”
“What will happen to us then?” Trissk had asked, watching Rick carefully.
“Humans and another race, the Sekoi, already live and work together in peace. I cannot speak for them, but I am sure humans would welcome the Ryss, and find you a place to live upon the planet where we dwell.”
“Are there meat animals there?” Trissk had asked hopefully.
“Many,” Rick had replied confidently, “though it remains to be seen whether you could digest them.”
“I don’t really care about eating them,” Trissk had said, ears twitching upward, nostrils flaring. “I just want to hunt and kill, at least once on my life,” he added wistfully.
Rick laughed in his war-car as he remembered that conversation. Each to his own, he thought.
A chattering up ahead shattered his reverie and he slowed instinctively. Melindez and his team raced around to both sides, and a moment later the hammering of the war-cars’ cannons filled the tunnel. Flashes and clouds of debris roiled ahead, and Rick hunched lower in his seat, closing his armored faceplate and consulted his HUD.
Two hundred scale meters ahead, the icon for one of the target reactors pulsed. With his eyes Rick could see that war drones and emplaced autoguns occupied positions defending it. Three Ryss war-cars were already mangled wrecks, and the others were being hit hard. Several had caught fire, their plastic parts ignited by the blue plasma of the enemy’s multi-legged walking drones.
“Fall back!” Rick yelled, amplifying his voice through his suit speakers for the Ryss’ benefit; his words were carried through suitcomm to Melindez and his fire team. “We need reinforcements.” He put his vehicle into reverse and eased it backward, watching as others did the same.
Suddenly Melindez’ war-car was thrown sideways by a terrific explosion, spinning it into a wall and dumping the Marine out on the deck. Rick changed to his forward gear again, driving up to reach out a hand. “Get on the back!” he yelled, forgetting that the suitcomm obviated the need to raise his voice, and waited until the corporal had clambered onto the rear of the war-car. There was no room in the one-man cockpit.
Keeping his nose toward the enemy, he backed the vehicle away. Ahead of him autoguns blazed, and sparks flew from the armor of his war-car nose. He triggered his own cannon, aiming at nothing in particular, just to give himself cover fire.
Suddenly other war-cars swept up next to him and fired as well. This was fortunate, as two armored war drones rolled from behind barriers and began advancing on them. These were shaped more like small wheeled tanks than the insectoid kinds they had seen before. These also seemed different from the others in another way…they looked clean, and
new, somehow, rather than battered and old.
Rick didn’t have time to wonder about it before war-car shells slammed into the two enemies, marring their pristine surfaces. The mini-tank guns spoke, and two more war-cars, one Ryss and one Marine, blew up in spectacular displays of destruction.
“Those guns are too heavy! Get out of here!” Rick yelled, and scooted his war-car into a side corridor to maneuver out of the line of fire. Reversing all the way to the next intersection, he asked more calmly, “You okay back there, Melindez?”
“Yes, sir. I’m getting off here, sir. I gotta get up there.” The Marine hopped down and rotated his back-rack off, then pulled out an anti-armor rocket launcher from it.
“Wait a moment, Corporal. Ready your rocket and get back on the back. When they go by, we’ll ambush them together.”
Once Melindez complied, Rick backed into a further cross-corridor and then stepped out of the war-car to peek around the corner. Once he saw the enemy mini-tank go by, he jumped back in the seat and said, “Hang on!”
Roaring forward, he skidded around the corner and gunned it out into the main corridor, turning to follow the enemy war drones. Their guns were facing the retreating Ryss and Marines, and firing intermittently at longer range. Rick slowed at what he thought to be the right distance. “Hop off and shoot!”
Melindez jumped down with cybernetic agility, racing forward to take a position in a doorway, aiming his anti-armor rocket at the back of the enemy combat vehicle. Sighting quickly, he triggered the launcher, and the rocket banged out across the short intervening space to impact against the rear of the thing.
Its shaped charge forged a white-hot tongue of molten metal against the flat armor, burning through in an instant. The mini-tank blew apart with a satisfying explosion as its ammo cooked off.
At the same time Rick aimed his war-car gun at the right rear wheel of the other enemy, not sure whether his shells would penetrate its protection. Probably not armor-piercing, he thought, since it was made to fight mindless Meme bio-constructs made of flesh. Firing, he was happy to see it damage the solid rubber-like tire, causing the mini-tank to slow and wobble.
Desolator: Book 2 (Stellar Conquest) Page 16