by V. B. Larson
This time Jarmo shook his head.
Droad looked him in the eye. “I’d like to give you your second chance at Steinbach, Jarmo. But the Mech is better for solo duty. Lieutenant?”
Lieutenant Rem-9 reported instantly for duty.
“Go retrieve the General, please.”
Moving with sudden, unnatural speed, the mech raised his plasma cannon and vanished through the cooling ring of melted metal that had been the blast doors. Droad looked after him, wondering if he had done the right thing. He trusted Jarmo’s judgment more, but without Jarmo at his side, things wouldn’t have felt right.
Twenty-Two
Rem-9 moved swiftly through a hatch, down a long ladder of steel tubing and through a low-ceilinged chamber into a service elevator. The elevator hummed vaguely while he descended. He knocked out the overhead lighting with his plasma cannon. Standing tensely in the dark, he held his plasma rifle ready, muzzle directed at the elevator doors.
There were three possible destinations for Steinbach. He would definitely move to a spot where he could use his codekeys in private. Somewhere that would afford him a considerable amount of power. That meant either the laser turret, the engineering deck or the redundant bridge. The redundant bridge was a less elegant, smaller and more functional version of the bridge, located in the center of the ship. In case of a ship board disaster, navigational control could be diverted to that location. The mech headed for the redundant bridge first.
The elevator halted and the doors slid open. A long corridor stretched seemingly into infinity ahead, going right to the center of the ship and the redundant bridge. The corridor was choked with bodies, mostly of unarmed crewmen. Clearly, the aliens had slaughtered them. Rem-9 wondered if any of the crew or passengers aboard were still alive. He doubted it.
As he stepped out, he felt a deep, throaty rumble from somewhere inside the ship. If he had been able to smile, he would have. The primary engines were being stoked. He had guessed correctly. Someone was working the controls in the redundant bridge.
The slideway was not functioning. Nimbly vaulting the bodies, he raced up the corridor. Reaching an intersection, he slowed and caught a fluttering movement out of the corner of his eye. The culus was too close for his plasma cannon, so he smoothly grabbed it and destroyed it with his clicking, partially-metallic hands. He threw the destroyed alien over his shoulder, where it smashed into the bulkhead behind him. It slid to the floor and began to quiver and bulge. The shrade inside burst out of its guts, hissing and spraying vicious liquids about the corridor. The mech had his plasma cannon targeted and turned the shrade into molten, bubbling flesh. Satisfied both aliens were no longer a threat, Rem-9 set off down the corridor again at a dead run.
It wouldn’t be long now before more aliens were on him, the sentinel had had long enough to communicate with its comrades. As he ran, Rem-9 couldn’t help but wonder if the redundant bridge was in the hands of the aliens, if he was racing into a trap. Could they have learned enough of human technology to operate the Gladius? He couldn’t be sure, of course, but he would put nothing past them.
He slowed as the entrance came near and approached with extreme caution. The security doors yawned wide. He listened for a moment, hearing movement inside. Then mumbled cursing.
The mech lieutenant quickly identified the source of the sounds. He rounded the corner and advanced on the militia General. Steinbach was bent over a control board, inserting his codekeys into the slots beneath the board and fiddled with the controls. He moved with quick, fluttering motions that displayed his state of high tension. The mech noted the bodies of several multi-tentacled aliens on the floor, a variety that he had not previously encountered. He wondered if they could be technicians, as they didn’t look to be effective combatants. Perhaps these were the types that had flown the Stormbringers against the human forces.
When Steinbach looked up, it was into the dark muzzle of a huge plasma cannon. He squeaked, staggered back.
“You are away from your assigned post,” Rem-9 said.
A rapid series of emotions flickered across Steinbach’s face. Shock, rage, frustration, then calculation and finally a welcoming smile. “Lieutenant! You have survived! Excellent!”
The mech stared at him with fixated optics.
“I couldn’t know if anyone was left alive in the wake of these aliens. I’m glad you’re here, I need your help and your guns to fend off the aliens that are sure to try to retake this bridge.”
“What happened up on the main bridge?” asked Rem-9.
Steinbach’s face fell. “It was awful. A fierce struggle. Hundreds dead on both sides. I was one of the few survivors, knocked out and left for dead beneath a pile of aliens and Mai Lee’s simians. Not, mind you,” he added hurriedly, “that I was in any way working with that witch and her band of renegades. But when humans face aliens, one must choose one’s own kind to stand with.”
The mech was not able to nod, his neck being constructed of rigid materials. But he was capable of sarcasm. “The way you stood with the rest down at the spaceport?”
Steinbach blanched, but quickly recovered. “Look, I panicked. It’s one thing to stand shoulder to shoulder against a normal, human foe. It’s quite another to hold before an onslaught of vicious, seemingly invincible aliens.”
For a fraction of a moment, Rem-9 was almost taken in. “But you have not operated like a man in a panic, General,” he said quietly, nudging Steinbach in the chest with the muzzle of his weapon. “You operate like a man with a plan.”
“I didn’t say I lost my mind entirely,” complained Steinbach, waving for him to remove his offending weapon. Rem-9 didn’t budge. “Besides, all that is history now. All that matters is that we take over the ship and get rid of these damned aliens. I can be very useful there.”
“Yes, the codekeys,” said Rem-9, nodding to the slots at the base of the control boards.
Steinbach appeared startled. “Ah, yes. We must power up the ship and escape to warn the Nexus.”
Rem-9 began to reply, but at that instant, there was a rustling sound out in the corridor. Without hesitation, the mech vaulted the control board. He crouched beside Steinbach, leveling his weapon on the entrance.
The aliens came in a rush. Rem-9 scattered the first wave of killbeasts with several powerful gushings of energy from his weapon. The attack lulled somewhat. Occasionally, a culus dashed through the entrance and got in close. The mech obligingly tore them appart bare-handed.
“We will never take the Gladius back to the Nexus. I insist you direct the pistol you have concealed behind your back at the entrance and help me in defending this position.”
“But don’t you see?” Steinbach sputtered. “They’re a genetically superior species. We can’t win.”
Rem-9 stopped firing for a moment, his optics swung up in honest surprise. “Why do you say that?”
“Isn’t it obvious? They can rip us apart. Any one of their various types could kill any one of us.”
“I reject your theory. I have slain many in hand-to-hand combat. Even if they could defeat me, I would not consider them genetically superior beings.”
“But it’s not just that,” Steinbach sputtered. “It’s their entire attack, their entire approach. No band of humans could drop onto a planet and just openly assault an indigenous species the way they have. They breed so fast, they are so technologically competent.”
Rem-9 shrugged his massive shoulders. During their conversation, he had made good use of his weapon killing several more aliens. Those that got in close gave him a workout with his grippers. “Your arguments are absurd. Genetic superiority is determined solely by which species survives. No other determiner is worthy of consideration.”
“That’s just the point! There must be a hundred thousand of them left down there on the surface. Even if we kill all those on the ship, what are we to do with all those aliens down there?”
“Kill them,” said the mech simply.
“But what if we can’t kill them all?
”
Again, Rem-9 looked at him in incomprehension and surprise. He attempted to explain the situation to Steinbach once again. “If there are a hundred thousand, and we kill only ninety-nine thousand of them, then we lose. On the other hand, if we kill them all, we’ve won. I suggest you continue firing your weapon.”
Steinbach threw a few shots at the entrance, scoring no hits. “We must run. We must salvage what we can.”
The aliens gathered themselves for a final suicidal assault, but couldn’t overcome the mech’s firepower, blinding speed and strength. A heap of smoldering bodies choked the entrance.
“They seemed desperate.”
Steinbach snorted. “Not as desperate as us. Come, let us ready the engines for flight while we have the time.”
The mech brushed him away from the control boards and grabbed both the General’s wrists in one, massive gripper. He plucked Steinbach’s pistol from his hands like a father removing a dangerous tool from the hands of his young son. “You are not worthy of being armed. You are more likely to shoot me than the enemy.”
Steinbach complained bitterly, but Rem-9 ignored him. He bent over the control board and began making adjustments. He reported his situation to the Governor.
“Things have not gone well here,” Droad told him on the phone. “The aliens haven’t let us rest. They now carry weapons from the crew. We have to do something before we’re all killed.”
“I suggest we flush the ship, as Mai Lee desired, but in such a way that we may survive,” said the mech.
“No, no!” hissed Steinbach at his side. “If you release radiation while the core is hot you’ll disable the ship! None of us will escape!”
Droad’s tiny image smiled. “I overheard what the good General had to say. I think that is an excellent idea. This ship is the only way out of the system, and therefore the only threat to the rest of the Nexus.”
“I agree.”
“What is your plan, then?”
“I have been unable to gain control of the laser turret. The situation suggests that the aliens now have control of it. A heavy knot of their communications patterns are emanating from there as well.”
“That makes sense. We have been unable to do anything with the laser from the main bridge, either. In fact, the skald has done little else but try to operate it, to our surprise. No one suspected him of such technical knowledge. For a time we tried to restrain him, but once we realized his task was futile, we let him try. I believe he has completely lost his mind.”
“It leads one to wonder what horrors he endured during his stay in the nest,” said Steinbach. “Horrors we should all be escaping now.”
“I believe we need to rejoin our forces,” Rem-9 told the Governor. “Before releasing the radiation, I will seal off the connecting corridors between the bridge areas and the laser turret. We can meet there and retake the laser control center.”
Droad nodded. “I believe the turret is relatively close to the hold.”
Five minutes later, the mech made the final preparations for releasing a deadly blast of radiation into the ship. Steinbach was almost beyond self-control.
“I can’t believe this! You’re killing us both, you’re killing everyone aboard the ship! This ship is the only way out! Can’t you understand that, you great freak?”
“You would have me risk all the Nexus trillions, not to mention abandoning the millions down on Garm to save ourselves?”
Steinbach sputtered, unable to answer. His eyes roamed the room, searching for a weapon. Rem-9 was unconcerned. He had already made sure that nothing effective was available. He placed his gripper on the final execution switches. Doors all over the ship slid shut as a thousand bulkheads sealed themselves. A roiling cloud of superheated radioactive gases bubbled into the reserve ventilation tanks.
Steinbach uttered a sound of terror and threw himself at Rem-9. He wrapped himself around the giant’s right arm. Rem-9 flicked his gripper in annoyance. Steinbach was sent staggering.
He closed the contacts, releasing the radiation. Alarms sounded, the control board lit up with lurid red and orange warning lights.
“You’ve killed us,” croaked Steinbach in dismay. On unsteady feet, he headed for the open corridor. the mech followed.
After a moment’s thought, he handed the General his pistol back. The man no longer had any call to use it on him.
For an instant, Steinbach eyed the sleek black barrel of the pistol with murderous intent.
“Fear has stolen your reasoning. You need me to survive, however slim that hope may now be,” the mech told him gently.
Taking a deep breath, Steinbach ran after him down the corridor, seemingly resigned to his fate. Rem-9 was vaguely glad that he didn’t have to kill the man. Enough humans had died, lately.
They rejoined with the governor in the corridors. Many of the remaining men were wounded, all of them were breathing hard. The aliens had not let them rest.
“So, we meet again, General,” said Droad. “For once, we are all on the same side.”
Steinbach said nothing. He gripped his pistol with both hands and watched the corridor intersections intently.
As they approached the laser turret, they were ambushed by a force of killbeasts with hand-cannons. The first rank of militiamen went down in a storm of gunfire. Rem-9 got in close with the killbeasts, smashing them down with his grippers. The things sprang back up, bouncing like rubber from the steel deck. Though the aliens’ limbs were broken they fought on savagely. The mech finally snapped the last killbeast’s carapace open across his knee. A sickening crunch sounded and the thing finally sagged down. The ambush had been repelled.
When they reached the correct side passage, Droad sent the mech Lieutenant into the contaminated regions to get the flitter and bring it back up to the external ports around the laser turret. It was time to abandon the ship after making sure the laser couldn’t be used against the human forces on Garm. There was no more point to staying with the Gladius. She had become a deathtrap, a tomb for men and aliens alike.
To reach the turret control room they had to cross a maze of catwalks that encircled the huge laser apparatus itself. A flock of culus squadrons attacked them when they were most vulnerable. Two men were knocked from the catwalks and fell screaming to their deaths. The skald fell too, but managed to latch onto the safety webbing. Sarah and Bili pulled him back up.
Above their heads the coils crackled with vast energy stores. Static lifted their hair and their clothing. Hot breaths of air struck them from the cooling vents.
“They’re readying the laser to fire,” said Droad in a dead voice.
No one replied.
When they reached the control center, they leapt through the smoking hole Jarmo produced with his plasma cannon. There was no hesitation anymore, little caution. Most of them figured themselves as dead, they took what little joy there was left in life from hitting back at the enemy.
Inside the control center was a Parent, a team of arls working with the controls and two juggers. The three large aliens were crammed into the limited space. Despite their situation, the humans gasped at the ghastly sight of the Parent. Quivering polyps raised sensory organs in alarm at their approach. The two juggers then rushed them, roaring their battlecries. They fought with great physical power and skill, but couldn’t face the combined firepower of the humans. Only Gunther was brought down, killed by a jugger’s teeth that mauled his head.
It was Sarah who sidestepped the fighting juggers and raced to the Parent. She emptied her pistol and reloaded five times before the monster finally sagged down in death. The arls were coldly blown to fragments by the victorious humans.
All of them took a moment to catch their breaths and marvel at the grotesque Parent except for the skald. Coming from his habitual spot at the rear of the company, he sprang forward, pushing his way to the laser controls. His pallid limbs swung in great strides, his peculiar, rolling gait more pronounced than ever.
He attacked the control
boards in wild abandon, working levers and clittering at keys feverishly. He hummed an odd tune as he worked, shuffling his feet from side to side. Flecks of saliva formed white dots on his face, sprayed the controls. Warning lights flared into life, a deep rumbling sounded in the equipment, signifying that the laser was refocusing.
“Hey, stop that lunatic!” ordered Droad in alarm. He rushed to the control boards.
Jarmo and Sarah beat him to it, however. Jarmo grappled with the man, and was immediately surprised with the supple, wiry strength in his skinny limbs. He tried to contain the thrashing, moaning skald. He became concerned that the man would break his bones in his struggles.
“He’s trying to aim it,” said Sarah, frowning at the controls. “How would he know how to aim a weapon like this?”
“I don’t know,” grunted Jarmo. He felt more than heard a snapping sound. The skald’s arm had broken, but his struggles to get to the controls didn’t slacken.
Sarah moved to face him. “What are you trying to do?”
The skald locked his eyes with hers. She saw a desperate need to communicate there. His lips quivered and worked, his tongue rolled about slackly within his mouth. “Feasting.” he whispered. “The lines of the Feasting.”
“That’s what he’s been saying all along,” remarked Droad, joining them. “The mech Lieutenant has reached the flitter. He should be here in ten minutes or so. Any idea what he’s going on about?”
“He was with me in the nest. The Feasting was what the aliens did with us. The Parent and her commanders ate humans and other types of meat. The Feasting appeared to be some kind of ceremonial meal. They did a lot of it.”
“So what does ‘the lines of the Feasting’ mean?” asked Droad.
The skald’s struggles had subsided; he stood in Jarmo’s implacable grip, eyes flicking from one of them to another.
“Perhaps he means the queens,” suggested Jarmo. He loosened his grip a fraction, pitying the man. “Maybe he knows where the Parents are in their nests, and is trying to aim the laser at them.”