by B. V. Larson
“Forget him. Access that tutorial and tell me how to work this damn thing as fast as possible.”
It took an agonizing five more minutes for Marvin to explain the gist of how to fly the scooter. When I retracted my gauntlets and took the controls with my thin-gloved hands, Kwon put a massive fist on my shoulder.
“Boss, I’m coming with you.”
“This thing’s not built for two, especially two people in armor. We’re lucky Lobsters are so big anyway, but even so it’s going to be overloaded. Fuel shows almost full, but if the usual rules of this place hold it won’t last as long as it should.” I shoved his hand off me. “Sorry, Kwon, but I have to get going if I’m going to stop Sokolov from blowing up the control center and trapping us all in here.”
“We should be able to get out of the planet. I saw a few gaps in it when I was on Valiant.”
“I know, but what if this planet controls the whole ring network? What if Sokolov’s bombs shut them all down? How many hundreds of light-years are we from home? How do you feel about building and populating a generation-ship so your descendants will make it back to Earth in a few thousand years?”
“I could get into the populating part—but no, I don’t like the rest.”
I rolled my eyes.
Hansen approached with another idea. “We could follow you on a surfboard. The marines brought a couple along.”
“Repellers aren’t fast enough. I’m not going to throttle down, either. I have to go alone, guys. Work on a backup plan while I try to catch Sokolov. Hansen, I’m leaving you in charge. Kwon’s suit has a quantum ansible you can patch into. Call Marvin and see if he can help you activate one of these alien shuttles. Maybe you can pilot something else if you can figure out the controls.”
“How do you even know where Sokolov is?” Kwon argued.
“I’ve got the arrogant prick on my HUD. He hasn’t turned off his transceiver beacon. He doesn’t actually know much about the battlesuit he’s wearing, but he might think to ask the brain at any moment. Now get out of my way, and get to work. That’s an order.”
Kwon grumbled but backed off.
A moment later I lifted off in the scooter and flung myself into space.
-24-
Flying inside a large enclosed space always impressed me more than open space, especially with just a faceplate between me and the view. It’s like the difference between looking at a mountain and the inside of a sports stadium. The mountain may be much bigger, but the artificial structure is somehow more impressive.
My HUD had placed Sokolov at two hundred miles ahead of me, but he wasn’t accelerating. That showed he wasn’t a complete amateur at flying. A beginner would have accelerated too much and then had to decelerate the rest of the way, wasting a bunch of fuel. Coasting was much more efficient.
I accelerated slowly, carefully watching my gas gauge. When I estimated that I was going just a little faster than Sokolov, I shut down the tiny reactor and let the engine die. The batteries showed full, so I set the repellers to one percent and tried them out. Life would be a lot easier if I could use a normal, rechargeable power source.
Immediately the scooter began to wobble. I tried to adjust the tiny grav forces generated by the repellers, but no matter what I did I couldn’t keep them stable. The machines of the Ancients continued to screw with me, but at least I knew they must be screwing Sokolov in the same way.
My suit radar said the cloud was about three thousand miles away floating in the approximate center of the golden sphere. That was all I knew about my environment. The tiny sensor was designed to give a marine vital information at close range and was nearly worthless at planetary distances.
I thought about hailing Sokolov, but not wishing to give up the element of surprise, so I kept silent. Most likely he hadn’t spotted me yet. We cruised this way for quite a while. I checked back in with Hansen and was told the crew was working on getting a shuttle working but making slow progress. Trying Marvin, I couldn’t reach him.
Eventually the cloud in front of me began to resolve itself into large, individual blips. Switching to my best optical zoom, I chose the largest contact I could find and focused on it.
Rather than easing my mind, doing so added to my worries. What I saw was a Macro battleship. It was larger than their run-of-the-mill cruisers, larger than Valiant and almost as big as Stalker. To me it radiated cold, implacable menace.
Once I had wrapped my mind around that ship, I started to understand what the cloud was, and what I was seeing. More than two dozen Macro vessels, cruisers large and small, surrounded the battleship. None showed any power readings or movement whatsoever, so it seemed my theory about a boneyard or collection may be correct.
Working my optics outward as I approached, I found the edge of the Macro squadron and the beginning of another one of unknown design. The next group of vessels was also alien to me, but then I recognized a ship type I’d only ever seen on vids.
They were Nanos.
That confirmed it. The cloud I saw was made up of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of ships the golden machines had collected over the ages.
What was Sokolov’s plan, I wondered? Did it have something to do with the ships or was their location a coincidence? I scanned further, seeing scores of alien vessel types ranging from tiny to large either alone or in groups of twos and threes and even dozens. The explorer in me surged with the desire to find out what they held in technologies and the greedy part of me wanted to acquire those technologies.
Then I saw it: An anomaly in the boneyard.
Right in the center floated a golden cube that appeared to be made of Ancient-style slabs fitted together like a three-dimensional puzzle.
The center. The control center. That had to be Sokolov’s objective—it was the only thing that made sense.
I brought up the aiming reticule on my HUD, laid it on Sokolov and looked at the hit probability displayed there. 0.00376%. No way I was hitting his flyer from over a hundred miles away. Checking the navigation numbers, I realized I’d cut his lead to ten minutes, but he’d started decelerating and I’d soon have to do the same. When I did, he’d probably see the engine flare pointing directly at him.
Then things would get interesting.
If I were Sokolov, what would I do? Myself, I’d land and wait with my beam rifle aimed carefully, taking all the time I needed to burn my enemy down from a nice steady position. But Sokolov wasn’t trained in personal combat like I was, and ambushing me would be an all-or-nothing gamble.
No, I thought he would make a run for his objective.
Another question occupied my mind: was Sokolov suicidal? He had two grenades with him. Would he be willing to die to take down the slab control center and free his girl? I thought of the Adonis imprisoned next to her and didn’t see that happening.
So he must be intending to plant his bombs and run. Catching me in the blast would be a bonus. Letting the grenades explode might leave everyone stranded forever without working rings. Nothing said this golden planet and its multidimensional maze housed the only control center, but it might.
Bottom line, I had to stop him for everyone’s sake. I’d kill him if that’s what it took. Given his actions thus far, I thought I could do it. There was a slim chance I’d face an eventual hearing, but I was willing to gamble I’d walk away as a free man when it was over .
Seeing Sokolov begin his deceleration, I calculated the remaining fuel on my scooter and pushed the timing to the very edge. I spent my time waiting and watching the digits turn over until the last possible moment for me to start my braking. The tiny fusion drive flared in my direction of travel like a blowtorch, and I clamped my knees tightly onto the scooter and placed my hands firmly on the grips. Next I added in a little repeller.
I’d figured this last, unstable bit of help would do two things. One, it would slow me further so I wouldn’t hit quite as hard. Two, the bucking and twisting provided ready-made dodging in case he tried—yes, there went the first sh
ot from his laser, missing me by a mile. It would be insanely bad luck if he hit me, but then again, that would be no comfort if the universal wheel of misfortune landed on my number.
Not being able to see a damned thing, I had to rely on my suit radar and the ability of the brainbox to control the landing. At the end, my feet and knees were clenched around the scooter while I waited for the impact.
Whatever I hit drove my knees up into my faceplate, bruising my face even with the gel pads that cushioned my cheekbones. I gasped as the breath was driven from my lungs, and I felt my right hand go numb as it struck something hard.
Then I was down—if that was the word—perched atop my crushed scooter. A dribble of pressurized fuel sprayed into the near-vacuum and sparks flared as the little vehicle’s electrical systems was torn apart.
Fortunately a marine battlesuit is much tougher than a Lobster-built scooter, and mine had stayed intact. I rolled to my feet and found myself on the outside of a golden slab. For a moment I felt a wave of déjà vu, probably brought on by the terrain’s resemblance to the Square back on Orn Six. In this case, however, I stood on the outside of a cube approximately a mile on a side feeling the light tug of gravity that was about half a G or so.
Checking my HUD, I found Sokolov’s general direction and began to run past cubes and windows. My nightmare would be getting there too late with him gone and my not knowing which of the many entrances or portals he’d used.
Just in time, I leaped over a low jumble to see my quarry disappear through a window. Nearby, his own vehicle rested. It was a one-man maintenance pod by the look of it. Crashed against the impervious golden metal, it appeared to be damaged beyond repair.
For a moment I considered the possibility of a booby trap, perhaps one of his two grenades left behind on a short timer. If so, my best bet was to get through the window as quickly as possible, so I powered forward and launched myself at the portal. Just before I vanished, I thought perhaps I saw the beginning of a flash, as if from an explosion.
Rolling to my feet on the other side, I found myself in a place far different from what I expected. Instead of golden cubes and windows, swooping lines of silvery-white crystal like spun glass rose from the ground and filled the air, curving among themselves to eventually attach to the walls and ceiling. Beneath me, in the direction of the gravity anyway, lay clear, hard material. Nothing here resembled a cube. It was as if the builders had deliberately changed themes avoiding any reference to the rest of the machine.
The deck, or floor, wasn’t even level. Instead, it undulated like a kid’s skateboard park and curved upward in all directions.
My perceptions did a flip-flop as I realized I’d arrived inside a sphere at least five hundred yards across. I saw Sokolov walking up the far wall without difficulty, which triggered the further realization that the gravity must be set to make “down” point toward the inside surface of the globe, the exact opposite of on a planet.
I ran toward him, dodging among the crystal strands. As he knew I was here anyway, I opened up a short-range channel.
“Sokolov, don’t do this,” I said, huffing over my microphone. “There’s no guarantee destroying the control center will free Natalia. It might kill her!”
“Better for all of us to die destroying this abomination than live like this,” he replied, panting. “We’re nothing to the Ancients—you’ve seen their work! We’re specimens. Rats to be studied. Things to be collected. Our machines, our ships, our very bodies are of scientific interest to them, but they don’t care. They have no feelings, but I’ll make them feel. I’ll make them feel fear.”
Sokolov’s anger was understandable, but I figured he’d “gone round the bend,” as Adrienne would say. Not so far that he couldn’t function, unfortunately, but enough to be immune to reason. Still, I tried.
“Listen to me. Marvin figured out a way to keep Valiant from being pulled down. That means we have time. With all of our resources and Marvin’s technical brainpower, we can figure out a way to get her out of the box. General Sokolov, if you drop those grenades and come back with me now, I give you my word as a Star Force officer that I will do everything I can to free Natalia and return her to you.”
A hundred yards in front of me I saw him turn, grenade in one hand. I wondered where the other had gone, but right now that hardly mattered. One nuke or two, we would be just as dead.
“I tried for two years to free her and failed, but I found out a lot about this place in the process. You’d think a rat can’t possibly understand the complex machine he’s trapped inside, but you’d be wrong. This rat figured things out. Even if I don’t know why something works, I learned how to use it. You hardly know how anything works anyway, do you, Riggs? Do you know how a factory does what it does?”
“Vaguely,” I said, keeping him talking as I moved slowly toward him. Sokolov liked an audience, so I would do my best to give him one. “I know it uses incredible numbers of nanites to build whatever we want one molecule at a time if necessary.”
“Yes, you see! We figure out how to use advanced technology, but we can’t create it ourselves. We’re primitives. We know how to fly the ships, but we can’t build the ships without our magic factories, can we? Well I, Anton Vitaly Kushkin Sokolov, have deciphered the technology of the Ancients.”
“And now you want to destroy it?” I asked. “What sense does that make? Your accomplishments thus far have been amazing, General. Let’s study and learn some more. I bet we can figure out how to do things we’ve hardly even thought of starting with releasing the woman you love. The stuff I’ve seen here—instantaneous transport and communication across vast distances, forcefields, even control of time itself—think of what we could do with them, all thanks to you. You’d be a hero, lauded across Earth’s federation.”
“No! You don’t understand at all!” Sokolov raised the grenade over his head in both hands. “The more mankind learns, the less he becomes. There’s always one more technology, one more scientific advance that promises to fix our lives, but none of that matters without the people we love.”
A choked sound, a sob even, came over the com-link.
“Yes, General. Yes, you’re right,” I said, still moving slowly forward. I was about thirty yards away now. “The woman I love is on Valiant, so I understand perfectly. I’d do anything for her. If it was Adrienne in that box, I’d move heaven and Earth to bring her back to me and hold her in my arms and kiss her once again. To have her lie beside me in my bed and wake up next to me in the morning…”
“Maybe that’s possible,” Sokolov said. “What if I offer you love returned? What if I break this machine, release us all, and allow us to study the wreckage? They can manipulate time, Riggs. I’ve seen it. What if you could reach back and pluck your dead love from the past?”
Inside my helmet, I blinked. Was he talking me down, or was it the other way around? I had to admit his offer was tempting.
“If I thought you could do it, Sokolov, I might take you up on it. But you’re here to wreck this place, not utilize it.”
Step by step I edged closer to him, rifle slung and hands held out nonthreateningly. “Whatever you intend,” I told him as he watched me, “I can tell you believe in it. I can see that. Even if you hate me you love Natalia, and I’m sure she loves you. Wouldn’t she be heartbroken if you were gone? If you left her there all alone? Come on, Anton. We can work this out. You don’t have to die to free her.”
Sokolov’s eyes bored holes into me through our faceplates, now not more than ten yards away from each other. “I never intended to die. I was going to plant the bombs on timers and leave. Everyone would have survived. Natalia would be free, Valiant and her crew would be free, and with the factory we could build ourselves a habitat. We could all live long, happy lives watching our children grow up. It’s only your presence here that’s forcing my hand, Riggs. So now…now we die together.”
He pressed the grenade trigger and slammed it, two-handed, onto the deck.
I was already moving. I’d seen it in his eyes, his irrational willingness to destroy everything. Darkness of the mind drove him. Demons I could never understand twisted his psyche into knots a whole herd of shrinks probably couldn’t unravel.
I hit him with a flying tackle. I didn’t even know why. The grenade’s explosion would render anything I did irrelevant. At that point I just wanted to punch this idiot in the face one last time before I died.
The deadly sphere rolled away from us, spinning.
As I repeatedly smashed my armored fist into his faceplate, I wondered how long a delay Sokolov had programmed into the device and thus how long I had to live.
Hammering with all my nanotized and Microbed strength backed up by the augmentation of the suit, I was able to crack the smart glass by the fourth blow. It tried to seal and heal, but I clamped my legs around his torso like a wrestler and alternated punches, left-right, left-right.
Finally, my gauntlet drove a crackling mass of glass in to cut Sokolov’s face. Blood spurted and air rushed out of his suit. He coughed and struggled weakly, but I could tell I’d beaten him.
Only part of my mind wondered why we hadn’t been incinerated yet. Halting with my bloody fist raised above him, instead of smashing him again I reached down to unplug his laser rifle and pull it out of its holder, tossing it away. Then I leaped off the fallen man and raced for the grenade.
Obviously Sokolov had either made a mistake in setting the detonator or the device had glitched. It still might be counting down, or maybe it wouldn’t go off at all, but what irony it would be if I died because I was indulging in administering a beating instead of taking care of business.
I could hear Sokolov whimpering on the com-link as I scrambled across the bright glassy surface. Sliding on my knees, I scooped the grenade up like a soccer goalie and spun it until I could see the readout.
It read 0.00, and the timer wasn’t blinking.
It should have gone boom. Sokolov hadn’t made a mistake. The thing must have malfunctioned. Only, I’d never heard of such a thing happening. Marine equipment was robust. Of course, anything was possible in this place, but short of my mother’s gods deciding to intervene on my behalf, I just couldn’t see how it hadn’t gone off.
