Laura gave him an amused look. “You’re safer with her than you are with your gun.”
“No way. Any giant freaking lizard so much as blinks at me is going to be shoes.”
“Assuming you see it before it bites your head off,” Laura said.
Timer glanced uncertainly at the silt laden waters, realizing he couldn’t see very far below the surface. He swallowed, and started pushing through the water a little faster, eager to get to the other side.
Once across the river, they headed northwest over the flood plain to the ridge separating them from the industrial complex. The ridge ran west towards Parson’s Range, a large stone massif that stood between them and the crash site. Bandaka led them up the tree covered slope, expertly navigating a path between rock walls that would have barred their way without his guidance. When they were more than half way up the ridge, a harvester swept in low over the tree tops on its way to unload its cargo, unaware of their presence. Soon after, they crossed the top of the ridge and halted near a rock ledge where they could observe the alien structures and the narrow flood plain beyond.
When all eyes were on the facility, Beckman asked, “Anyone see anything that looks like defenses?”
There was a muted round of negatives from the team.
“It’s got to be guarded,” Hooper said.
Beckman nodded. “Yeah, but by what?”
Bandaka’s eyes darted from Beckman to the sergeant and back again. “I can find out.”
Beckman turned to the native hunter, “How?”
Bandaka gave him a knowing look as he held up his spear and thrower. “With these.”
* * * *
Bandaka had been gone more than an hour when an emu trotted to the edge of the forest. The tall flightless bird hesitated, reluctant to leave the safety of the forest, then a rhythmic beating of spears on spear throwers sent it charging at a full sprint onto the smoothly bonded surface. It loped toward one of the small domed buildings at fifty kilometers an hour, but was quickly frightened by the glare of the beams and the heat from the tower’s rings. Spooked, it changed direction, trotting a short distance toward the river then stopping, instinctively wary of the danger lurking in the water. The emu took several cautious steps, its tiny head turning left and right on its spindly neck, searching for safety, then it broke into a loping sprint for the trees. It had taken barely ten steps when it was engulfed by a cloud of black smoke. When the smoke cleared, the flightless bird had vanished.
Tucker whistled appreciatively.
“God damn!” Steamer muttered.
“Kentucky Fried Emu!” Nuke declared.
“Anyone see where that came from?” Beckman demanded.
Vamp, the only member of the team not watching on binoculars, looked up from the crystal ball and shook her head. “No movement.”
“I got zip,” Hooper said.
Nuke, who’d been filling in for Virus on communications, listened to the recovered communicator, unable to detect any signals. “I don’t think it’s remotely controlled.”
“That smoke indicates the bird was incinerated.” Dr McInness lowered his binoculars and turned to Beckman. “We’re looking for a thermal weapon.”
“Microwaves?” Markus asked.
“I didn’t see any light, so it’s probably not a plasma weapon,” Dr McInness said. “Whatever it is, it’ll require a lot of power, and if those small buildings are power plants…”
“Right.” Beckman said. “Break into teams, one per building.”
Hooper organized the teams while they waited. Soon, a rust colored dog dashed out of the trees. The dingo was so skinny, its bones could be counted through its skin, yet its lean muscle gave it a surprising turn of speed. When it was well clear of the forest and its pursuers, it slowed, avoiding going too close to the unfamiliar structures. A yell from the trees sent the skittish dingo trotting across the clearing between the southern power plant and the central structure. The wily old scavenger skirted the nearest domed building, sniffing the ground, then it broke into a sprint and vanished in a puff of smoke.
More gasps and impressed whistles sounded down the line.
“I saw a flash on the building closest to the river,” Xeno said. “Two thirds of the way up.”
They all focused their binoculars on the eastern tower.
“Got it,” Hooper declared. “There’s a recess, and what looks like a turret mounted in it. It’s white like the towers.”
Beckman carefully examined the location with his binoculars. “I see it,” he said as he spotted a circular turret mounted with a short translucent tube.
“Conan might take it out,” Hooper suggested, referring to the largest of their recovered weapons.
Beckman shook his head. “It’s stationary. Conan might not detect it, and even if it did, we have to assume that weapon has a counter battery capability.” Beckman remembered a similar weapon in the Andes, that could locate the source of any attack, and instantly destroy it. He wasn’t going to risk that again.
“It might not be necessary,” Dr McInness said cautiously. His binoculars were focused on one of the towers to the left.
Beckman pointed to the gun emplacement on the right. “Doc, it’s over there.”
“I know,” Dr McInness said without reorienting his binoculars. “But it’s the only one.”
Beckman furrowed his brow. “There’ll be one on every tower, maybe two.” He was certain the facility would have three hundred and sixty degree coverage, with overlapping fields of fire.
“I can see depressions on the other towers, where weapons could be mounted, but they’re empty.”
“What?” Beckman said, surprised.
Every pair of binoculars on the ridge searched the other towers for more weapons, then sounds of astonishment rippled down the line as Dr McInness suspicion was confirmed.
“What the hell is wrong with them?” Timer asked, amazed.
“There’s a huge blind spot on the west side!” Beckman said incredulously, realizing it was why the two animals had been able to run a short distance before being killed.
“It’s a trap,” Hooper warned.
Tucker nodded. “Got to be. Those sons of bug-eyed bitches are just itching to fry us.”
“Maybe they haven’t had time to finish their defenses,” Markus suggested.
“If it’s a scientific expedition,” Dr McInness added, “They might have few weapons.”
“Either way,” Beckman said, “We go in after sunset.”
* * * *
The moon appeared as a blurred orb through the energy curtain as Beckman’s squad waited at the edge of the artificial surface surrounding the installation. The harsh glare of the five energy beams bathed the area in an unnatural white light, denying him the cover of darkness he’d hoped for. He double checked they were dead center of the weapon’s blind spot and confirmed the mounts visible on the other power plants were indeed empty. Finally, Hooper signaled his squad was in position, hidden at the edge of the forest, ready to provide fire support should it be needed.
Beckman nodded to Hooper, then led his squad out toward the central tower. He’d decided to bypass the power plants to save time, much to Dr McInness’ dismay, choosing instead to focus on the installation’s main building. As they approached the massive central tower, the roar of steam blasting under pressure from the vents filled the air and the radiant heat from the energy rings clawed their skin and cast a dull red hue over their clothes. When they reached the foot of the tower, they found a seamless, spotlessly clean white wall with no visible entry point.
Xeno shielded her face from the ferocious heat with her arm. “We’ll fry if we stay here!”
“Anyone see a door?” Beckman asked, drawing his special.
“Blasting it might trigger an alarm,” Markus warned.
Beckman ran his hand over the milky white metal experimentally, finding it surprisingly cool under the searing heat. He stepped back and fired a single exploratory burst with his
midget. The small weapon punched a neat hole in the wall surrounded by hairline fractures.
“It’s brittle!” Dr McInness said astonished. “It might be ceramic!”
Beckman holstered the midget and drew his 9 mm Beretta. “Let’s see how brittle.”
He fired several shots into the ceramic metal composite in a vertical line. The big, relatively slow moving slugs caused more fractures than the midget’s hypervelocity particles. Beckman nodded to Timer, who stepped forward and slammed his rifle butt into the web of cracks. The fracture lines multiplied, but the wall held.
“One shaped charge ought to do it.” Timer said.
“Make it fast,” Beckman ordered.
While the others moved away, Timer placed a shaped charge in the middle of the fracture lines, activated the timer and stepped clear. “Fire in the hole.”
The air shook as the explosive punched a meter-wide opening in the wall. Beckman stepped through with his Beretta drawn before the smoke had cleared, finding a deserted passage running parallel to the outer wall. Jagged triangular wall fragments littered the floor, visible in the soft orange tinted light that glowed from the walls. He sniffed the air, finding it filled with the same strange odor he’d encountered in the beetle-like machine.
Timer scowled after his first few breaths, “What’s that disgusting smell?”
Dr McInness wiped his eyes with a handkerchief as the alien air began to irritate his eyes. “Hmm, trace elements of ammonia, sulfur and methane.” He inhaled more deeply, adding. “It’s breathable, but less oxygen than we’re used to. Avoid exerting yourselves, or you’ll feel like you have altitude sickness.”
Beckman coughed. “It wasn’t this bad in the beetle.”
“The beetle kept opening its rear hatch, letting our air in,” Xeno said.
Beckman started down the passage to the right. Just like the beetle, there were no visible doors or controls, only sonic sensors they couldn’t see or use. The walls and floor were featureless metal, broken by small rectangular light panels emitting a feeble yellow-orange light.
“Major,” Xeno called from the rear of the group.
Beckman turned to see she was looking at a slight recess in the wall.
“This remind you of anything?” she asked.
“It does,” Beckman replied as he stepped into the shadowed recess, virtually a twin of the elevator they’d encountered in the beetle. A moment later, he found himself in a wide domed room. Ten control panels were spaced around the walls, each with its own overly wide chair, and a large circular window was embedded in the center of the floor. He stepped from the elevator, pistol leveled, finding the control room empty.
“Hiding again,” he muttered to himself. “Sneaky little critters.”
Dr McInness appeared in the spot Beckman had just vacated, his face glowing with excitement. “Fascinating!”
“So what do you think, Doc?” Beckman asked. “Is it a teleport?”
“No, just a very fast elevator, with no gravitational or inertial effects. Impressive. I expected something like that in a ship, but in an elevator, that’s just showing off.”
“So no more elevator music?”
“Not where they come from.”
“I never liked elevator music anyway,” Beckman said as he approached the circular floor window. It was composed of curved segments separated by thin metal frames. Several of the segments were cracked, while one section was filled with a gray metal panel. Beckman looked down through the window into a yawning abyss that revealed the tower was a vast hollow cylinder. “Wow!” He took an involuntary step back, fighting vertigo.
When he regained his equilibrium, he looked down warily at a circular black machine floating in the center of the chamber beneath the glass. Five glowing transmission beams reached from the outer wall to the machine, feeding it energy from the power plants outside, while a series of red laser beams stretched from the machine to the wall, aligning its precisely in the centre of the chamber. The skin of the machine was laced with conduits that snaked over it like veins, and anti-gravity panels glowed bright blue beneath it, balancing it in the air. Below the machine, swirling brown clouds boiled furiously, prevented from rising by an invisible barrier as large intakes sucked the clouds from the chamber. Filters separated the gases before expelling the residual steam through the tower’s external vents, while a brilliant conical beam blasted down from the machine into the dirty clouds below and vanished.
The rest of the team gathered around the edge of the window, except Markus whose attention had been captured by one of the wall mounted screens. Dr McInness paced around the edge of the window with an increasingly puzzled look.
“Don’t worry Doc,” Beckman said, “I don’t know what the hell it is, either.”
“It’s a drill!” Markus declared. The screen before him depicted the central cylindrical structure in profile, sitting on the ground, with horizontal lines dividing the strata below the surface. Markus indicated a vertical line stretching from the cylindrical structure down into the ground. “It’s drilling a shaft, a deep shaft.”
Beckman gauged the width of the shaft at nearly twenty meters. “That’s a big hole!”
“And they’re nearly through the crust,” Markus added ominously.
“Man, if they dumped a bomb down there,” Timer said, “They could smoke the whole freaking planet.”
“They could do that from orbit,” Dr McInness said absently as he approached Markus’ display. “This is what the boreholes were for. They were looking for a place where the Earth’s crust was thin, to build this! Or others like it.”
“What’s below the crust?” Beckman asked.
“The mantle, which is molten lava,” Dr McInness replied, “And the core, which is a giant spinning iron ball. Nothing they can’t find on millions of uninhabited planets.”
“They’re not on millions of uninhabited planets,” Markus said. “They’re on one, inhabited planet.”
Beckman wiped his watering eyes, stinging from the irritating atmosphere. “All right people, go over this place with a fine-tooth comb. Look for anything: hair follicles, scales, creepy green skin. I want to know what they’re after. And don’t touch those control panels, I don’t want any more stretcher cases.”
He watched the team disperse to examine the various control consoles, then wandered back to the circular floor window. There was something about it that bothered him. The floating drill head directed a stream of energy into the earth, vaporizing vast quantities of solid rock every second. He guessed the heat on the other side of the window must have been incredible, yet the window was cool to the touch.
“Major,” Markus called, motioning for Beckman to join him and Dr McInness at a display panel showing a real time image of the hole Timer had blown through the outer wall. “There’s something outside, admiring our handy work.”
“It’s probably an automated repair unit,” Dr McInness suggested.
Beckman activated his radio. “Hooper, is there anything near our entry point?”
“Negative.”
“It might be too small for him to see,” Dr McInness said.
Beckman hit the transmitter again. “Have Cougar check it with his scope. It might be small, about two to three meters from our entry point.”
“Major.” Xeno called from a control panel on the far side of the window.
Beckman hurried to her, avoiding stepping on the floor window. “Got something?”
She indicated the side of the control panel. The lower half was blackened and charred, and the metal had buckled. The floor by contrast was clean and smooth. “It was damaged, before it was installed. There’s another damaged panel over there.”
Hooper’s voice sounded in Beckman’s earpiece. “There’s a red golf ball sized object floating outside the entrance. Cougar’s got it sighted.”
“Don’t shoot,” Beckman radioed as he approached the panel Xeno had indicated. “Just keep an eye on it.” The damaged control panel had a diago
nal crack across its surface, and was scratched from attempts to scrub it clean. He passed his hand over it, trying to activate its proximity sensor, but the surface only flickered with blurred colors, close to shorting out.
That’s what’s wrong with the window! The transparent panels were cracked and a metal slab had been cut to replace a missing window. Below in the drill chamber, one of the five energy emitters was circular, while the others were all elongated. He approached the window thoughtfully. “This thing is jury-rigged!”
Dr McInness face beamed with relief. “I knew it! It has to be a forced landing!”
Markus looked more reserved. “Or it’s sloppy maintenance.”
“This is a fantastic opportunity! We have to help them!”
“They don’t want our help, Doc” Beckman said.
Markus gazed thoughtfully at the improvised power transmitter below. “So what we have is two million tons of mothership, stranded like a beached whale and no one to help it.” Markus watched their expressions before adding meaningfully. “It’s a gold mine, waiting to be mined.”
Dr McInness eyes narrowed in alarm. “You can’t be serious! We can’t even figure out the artifacts we’ve got! What would we do with a mothership for God’s sake?”
“Get every scientist on the planet to study it for a hundred years,” Markus replied. “Advance our technology a hundred thousand years, in a single century.”
Dr McInness looked appalled. “You don’t know what you’re talking about! Even if we could figure out their science, we couldn’t use it. Our industrial base would be far too primitive. The Romans could never have produced a microchip, even if they knew what it was. It’s impossible!”
“Are you sure?” Markus persisted. “Suppose there’s a computer on board that explains how their technology works? How to build industries to make motherships? What then? All we have to do is translate their language, and we’ve got it all.”
“Tempting as it sounds,” Beckman said, “Stealing their technology isn’t our mission,”
It’s not your mission, Markus thought.
The scientist turned to Beckman. “Major, we know they’re not here to attack us. We should report back immediately.”
The Mothership Page 17
