“Let me help you with that sling,” Wrik says gruffly. For all the tone and the angry expression on his face, he too seems to regret the recent violence. He is surprisingly gentle as he tends the Dua-Denlenn’s arm and does not meet the alien’s bemused eyes.
Friends we are not and may never be, but we are not strangers. Violence between those who are networked is unsettling and fraught with consequences I had never before considered.
“Now that we are somewhat restored,” Dusko asks, “what follows?”
I am again surprised by the Dua-Denlenn’s easy switch from adversary to ally, how readily he leaves prior resentments and grudges behind, far more so than a human could.
“This place,” I say, “from what I have been able to uncover seems to have been a form of ark.”
“Ark?” Dusko asks.
“Old Earth word,” Wrik responds, “from a story. Think of it as a super-lifeboat for a species fleeing disaster.”
I nod. “Well described. While I have never discovered what disaster overtook my Creators, it seems clear that they gained an upper hand in the wars. This vessel is immense, but its construction is crude. Its design shows signs of haste to my analysis. I believe it may have been built near the end of the war. The Infestors intended this Artifact as a redoubt, an ark from which to relaunch their species in a different time and place. Its drive is not the standard space drive of any of our peoples. Some aspects of it remind me of the transdimensional drive of the Murch. A new and unreliable science perhaps, but one which allowed this immense ship-factory and biological treasure house to hide in a bubble of space-time, aging far less rapidly than the galaxy through which it wandered.
“I speculate from observations I made before landing that it was damaged and wandered randomly off course. Perhaps the flight crew, or the main AI, were destroyed or damaged. I doubt they intended to lay somnolent this long. Some AI remained intact and elected to orbit this brown dwarf, a useless coal of a star that no star-farer would likely approach.
“Now that we have arrived, unwisely bringing live Infestors, even if they are the mere equivalent of feral children, and the Artifact is waking up. Not all at once, or properly, but I suspect it is downloading information into the two surviving warriors. They now command the simple worker drones that we have encountered. In a short while those basic drones will begin to change, some into warriors others into science or engineering specialists. They will reinforce each other in the hive mind, eventually producing higher-order queens and finally an Empress.
“We must prevent that. This place must be destroyed.”
Wrik and Dusko exchange uneasy looks.
I smile at Wrik. “I am Maauro now and will never be M-7 again, but in this I agree with my Creators’ original intentions. This species has been inimical to all life it has encountered. While we and the Infestors were alone in our section of space, we did find evidence that they had enslaved and destroyed others. If not stopped here, they have the potential to do catastrophic harm.”
“How can we stop them?” Wrik says, waving his hands at the ship about us. “With what?”
“We must penetrate the command or engineering spaces before the waking drones turn into warriors and begin to fight effectively with weapons. I have an idea, but it must wait until I inspect the machinery.
“After that we can attempt to regain the Stardust and flee with Jaelle.”
“Jaelle!” Wrik sits upright. “No. She’s here?”
“She was most insistent on accompanying me on this rescue attempt.”
“Dammit! I hoped she was safe on Ebosue.”
I look at him. “Knowing her as you do, did you believe that was probable behavior for her?”
He sighs. “No. I hoped she would remain behind, or that you, as you were in the grip of your imperative last time I saw you, wouldn’t have taken her. I don’t know why she takes these risks.”
“She believes her network with you is worth maintaining, even at the risk of her existence.”
“She shouldn’t take such risks, not for me.”
“She disagrees. I disagree too.”
Wrik continues to look at the floor but he reaches out with his right hand and runs it over my right cheek. It is a characteristic affectional gesture he uses when he is unable to verbalize his thoughts. I am glad I am again Maauro, as M-7’s surface was far less pleasingly textured.
“Shall we proceed with eliminating this threat?” I ask.
“I’m with you,” Wrik says.
“Is there somewhere else to go?” Dusko grumbles but climbs to his feet.
Wrik offers me the laser.
“No,” I reply. “My plasma jets and flechettes are on line and I won’t be missing anymore. I am also working on some additional munitions inside my body, unpleasant surprises for our enemies if they can be cooked in time.”
Dusko grabs the water can by the bar I have bent around it and we proceed out of the crusher and back into the factory. I search for a cart or something that I can carry the biologicals in. Nearby I find what I need, a work cart. I operate it with a lead from my midsection that conveys power. This should prevent any monitoring system from locating me by a power drain. I convert the remaining Infestor matter inside me to fuel for myself. Hopefully I will find higher quality fuels in the engineering section. We speed down long, darkened corridors and descending ramps. This section of the ship has not awoken yet. We will not be so fortunate when we get near the command and engineering spaces.
Chapter 28
We marched in silence for hours, taking ramps, broad stairs, and even occasionally a bare pole that Infestors used for dropping through levels. They evidently didn’t fear heights, as one pole seemed to drop nearly a mile. Dusko and I flatly refused to try those, knowing we would be unable to stop ourselves, or handle the fact that the poles were in openings too wide for us to easily mount and dismount them. Maauro solved the problem by holding each of us firmly under one arm as she leapt across and wrapped her legs around the pole. I guessed there were no Infestors within screaming range the first time she tried it. By the fifth time, neither Dusko nor I closed our eyes. By the tenth, it almost seemed a sensible thing to do.
“Is it getting colder or is it just me?” Dusko asked.
“You are correct; it is getting colder,” Maauro said. We approached a large door with a smaller personnel hatch in it. Maauro scraped frost off a plast-glass panel. She peered through then cracked the hatch. “The temperature is bearable for several hours but will not be comfortable. The chamber inside is immense. It would take hours to find a way around.”
“So through is best,” I said.
Dusko merely sighed. “Let get it over with.”
We slip in through the hatch, small by Infestor standards, but big enough for all three of us to pass together. The vast room beyond was filled with a variety of tubes of varying thickness, ice-blue, but with dark distortions in them. Their ranks seemed to stretch forever. We moved quickly through the forest of tubes until I came to one that was clearer than the others.
“Damn!” I said, jerking to a stop.
Inside was what looked like a slender girl. For a second I thought it was a human then realized it was a humanoid alien. The body was slight, the hair short, and the features too delicate and elfin for a human. The skin appeared to be gray.
“I do not recognize this species,” Maauro said. “We were only aware of the Infestors and our own kind when I was first operational. Wrik, do you know it?”
Something tickled my memory. “A Vanian!”
“What?” Dusko demanded.
“A species wiped out in the Great War with Conchirri predators. Only one was found alive by Captain Rainhell’s expedition over fifty years ago. This one must have been captured many millennia ago. Maybe there are others in here.”
“The last survivors of a species,” Dusko mus
ed. “Could they be revived?”
“We do not have the time to spare, nor do we have the resources to take them with us if we did,” Maauro said. Her voice held a tinge of sadness. Perhaps it was the sympathy of one refugee of time for others, but what she said was true.
We looked at acres of tubes containing lifeforms of various types.
“What is this?” Dusko murmured.
“A collection,” Maauro replied. “Lifeforms they wanted to keep for when they reestablished themselves.”
“You mean like pets?” I said.
“Who knows?” Dusko added.
She nodded and we passed through the vast forest of cylinders, trying to avoid looking at the distorted forms inside their frosted columns.
Maauro stopped suddenly as we entered an open area, waving us back. She turned and whispered to us. “We must find another way. There are Infestor drones uncrating some supplies. They’re preoccupied, but we dare not approach.”
We backtracked as overhead lights brightened and power sources hummed more loudly. The Artifact was becoming livelier by the minute. I wondered how much longer we could remain undetected.
Maauro gestured to us to follow. We went down a side corridor toward an area that resembled the factory section we’d passed through earlier. She paused occasionally to listen at the walls. We finally reached what looked like a loading area. Maauro went up to a terminal screen and after some hesitation extended her fingertip filaments into it.
A few seconds later she smiled. “Excellent. I have infiltrated this subsystem, which is not hooked to anything significant.”
“How does that help?” Dusko asked, looking back the way we came as if he feared a horde of Infestors was around the turn.
“We cannot remain forever undetected wandering the Artifact. The engineering section on this vessel is near the ship’s center. This is a cargo chute system. I will look for a cargo carrier that we might use, intrude into the system, and secure us transport.”
***
I concentrate. This subsystem is not without its safeguards. But this is not a warship with intruder control stations. I am easily able to reroute cargo carriers by minimally interfering with their programming, below a level that would set off a maintenance program, or worse, a security alert.
Cars of various types stop in front of us. Some are obviously not useful: carriers of liquids, corrosives, or biological material. One carries radioactive elements and I stop this one long enough to extend a shielded tube from my midsection and take on as much fuel as I can. While my system can convert anything to energy, high-level radioactives yield the most energy. I decontaminate myself by absorbing any radioactive sections into my interior and replacing them with clean sections. Then I can safely rejoin the others.
I finally find a gray car with seating suitable for Infestor work drones. This must be a maintenance unit for taking them to the site failures and breakdowns.
“Get aboard,” I direct. Wrik and Dusko hesitate. I recall that most biologicals dislike small and dark spaces. “I will provide light.”
They climb in behind me and I emit visible light through my eyes. “Secure yourself in the webbing.”
“Not exactly comfortable,” Wrik says, climbing onto a side bench and putting his arms through webbing and crossing them. Dusko duplicates his position on the other side of the railed, gray-metal car.
“Be warned,” I add, “acceleration forces will be considerable.”
“Lovely,” Dusko says.
The cart plunges forward.
***
The cart pulled away at 2g’s or better. A canopy slid over us, blocking out the worst of the rush of wind and we passed into the bowels of the Artifact. There seemed to be a million kilometers of tubing intersecting every two hundred meters. We didn’t need Maauro’s eye-lights, as the cart turned out to have lights fore and aft. I quickly found this to be a mixed blessing. Other carts flashed by—over, alongside, even intersecting, missing us by meters of programmed perfection. After the first dozen brushes with death, I began to have confidence that we would not be fused into a glowing ball of crushed metal. Then I remembered that the Artifact was over fifty centuries old and, according to Maauro, seemed to have been thrown together in a desperate hurry.
“Reminds me of the amusement parks of my childhood,” Dusko shouted, after one particularly sickening drop.
He must have read the surprise on my face. “What, did you think humans invented amusement parks? Or did you imagine that I was never a child?”
“It’s difficult,” I returned, “to think of a Guildmaster as having once been an innocent child.”
Did a look of sadness pass over the Dua-Denlenn’s face? “Perhaps there was never much innocence.”
I looked back at him directly. Maauro had her eyes fixed ahead and appeared to be ignoring us. “Looking for sympathy? Understanding?”
“Perhaps something like that. I’ve made it clear that I have thrown in my lot with you, yet you still treat me as an enemy.”
“Do you think I’ve forgotten how you and Truf used me like a dog? Do you think I forget what you made me complicit in? You think I can forgive that?” I spat back.
Dusko shrugged. “I would if our positions were reversed. But you are an alien and how your mind works eludes me. So maintain your war with me if you wish. It is one-sided.”
“I’ll trust you when hell freezes over. Forgiving will take longer.”
“What do you say, Maauro?” Dusko added, a malicious smile playing over his face.
“I am not qualified to mediate between the sensibilities of your two species,” she said. “My own moral code is more like that of a human’s, I think, though M-7 may have been more like you, Dusko. I agree with Wrik that trusting you will be a long, involved process. Please try not to give us a reason to kill you in the meanwhile.”
If the implied threat frightened Dusko, it did not show in his sharp-featured face.
“We are nearing the Engineering levels now,” Maauro added.
The car continued to drop through levels and turn through tunnels. After a while I simply closed my eyes, hoping the ride would end before I became nauseated. I did promise myself that I would throw up on Dusko if I couldn’t hold out.
Mercifully the repair car slid to a halt. Dusko and I stumbled out. Maauro, immune to vertigo, held us both by the arms and deposited us on the oversize chairs nearby while she moved the car to a sidetrack. By the time she came back, we’d recovered enough to stand.
Maauro pinned herself against the interior hatch, infiltrating it with her finger filaments. “Nothing on the other side,” she reported, then rolled back the hatch, and we entered the ship proper again. The sound of massive engines reverberated in our ears: the hum of reactors, the snap of massive electrical circuits opening and closing. Occasionally, we heard something that sounded like a voice booming over us. This part of the ship was fully alive.
I glanced at Maauro. While I had a laser, she was clearly our only real defense. She gazed back, her eyes level and serious, but to my surprise she returned a small smile. I followed her into the ship. We entered the titanic engine spaces and I stared up at the machinery. Reactors the size of office towers stood under circulating fans as big as helo engines hung from the massive pipes girding the ceiling. The hum of engines, fans and circuits opening and shutting was deafening.
Maauro turned and handed us both small earplugs that she must have manufactured in her body. We gratefully put them in. We followed her as she headed for the largest gold and black tower, crowned by a cupola. Maauro seemed to have settled on it as the control center. We moved at a near run, through what felt like the streets of an abandoned city. When we paused at one corner, I asked Maauro where everyone was.
She placed her hand on my head and I heard her through bone conduction. “Remember, the Artifact is waking from a sleep of 5
0,000 years. Most of its systems must of necessity be automatic, especially in engineering, which had to run constantly. We may also have destroyed most of the quickened drones that were available when they attacked the Collector and me. No doubt more are being decanted, but it takes time for drones to become aware and useful for even simple tasks. Longer still for warriors or anything more complicated to mature. Otherwise, we would not dare move as fast as we have been.
“What Infestors are still alive are likely stalking the Collector’s forces. In that much she serves my purposes still.”
Maauro moved on and we followed. Block after block, we raced from cover to cover. The only movement we encountered was mechanical. Infestors evidently used their drones for much of what we would use robots for, but still there were some machines. Sweepers, repairbots, and other basic machines scurried from opening to opening in the vast engine room on errands.
Maauro stopped us at another corner and pointed. Five hundred meters ahead and above, a half-dozen pallid drones festooned with equipment marched across a bridge. We cut back and went up the next alley, crossing the broader boulevard there.
And ran straight into an Infestor warrior. We and the warrior froze in surprise. Not so Maauro, who blurred into attack speed, crashing into the Infestor and knocking it off its feet. She slammed her fist down on the crocodilian skull. The Infestor’s six-limbs spasmed horribly, then froze.
“Gods,” Dusko said, his face ashen. I knew I looked no better.
“It is not one of the Collector’s,” Maauro said, picking up its plasma rifle, a weapon far too large for either of us to handle. “It is too small, only newly converted from a drone. They must have had a supply of young warriors decanted also. Very few, or we would have seen them in the first attack. Come, the situation grows more dangerous by the minute.”
Fatigue forgotten, we raced the remaining steps to the control tower. It took Maauro only seconds to defeat the passive security locks. The panels slid open to reveal more Infestors, small and pallid, handling equipment and machinery. I cut loose with my laser, aiming for a headshot. Maauro fired flechettes. In seconds we picked them off; the last one died in the act of reaching for a large button I was sure was an alarm.
My Outcast State (The Maauro Chronicles Book 1) Page 31
