Knowing Slab was an air breather, the lab drone wrapped one its free tentacles around his throat, and began to squeeze while nano membrane reached his elbow, then slid along his forearm and engulfed his hand. He felt the nano membrane force its way between his fingers, trying to pry them loose. He realized he lacked the strength to resist for long as the combined might of billions of nano machines fought to subdue him.
An urgent, incomprehensible moan sounded to his right. Slab’s eyes darted towards the sound as Cracker, too paralyzed to speak, made another meaningless noise.
What? Slab wondered, confused.
Cracker moaned again, opening his mouth wider as he strained to make a word.
Speak up!
Cracker partly closed his mouth, and hissed, turning his eyes towards the bench.
Snake noises?
He wanted to tell Cracker what a bloody useless idiot he was, when suddenly he realized what he meant. He wasn’t hissing like a snake, he was hissing like a burning fuse!
The nano membrane pried Slab’s little finger free, but he still had enough control to twist the laser cutter away to the left, forcing the beam up to the bench. He angled the laser along the bench top, slicing through Bill’s backpack, then Cracker’s, where it tore through his last six sticks of dynamite.
The explosion blew out the wall and sent the lab drone inspecting Bill’s pack spinning across the room. The shock wave swept across the laboratory, clearing the bench tops and hurling the floating lab drones against the far wall. The nano membranes covering Slab and the others, so fluid in appearance when moving, acted like shields, absorbing the blast. A spinning lab drone crashed through a wall into a central power conduit, exploding in an electrical flash, then the lights winked out immersing the lab in darkness.
Starved of photo electric energy, trillions of nano machines turned to gray ooze.
Slab blinked, adjusting his eyes to the sudden darkness, sensing the binding force holding him down had become a cold gooey mass dripping onto the floor. He lifted his arm, trying to peer at the fluidic blob pooling in his hand, and wondered, What is this crap?
* * * *
The lights in the cargo shaft winked out as the explosion in the medical lab above cut the shaft’s power supply. Vamp, Timer and Dr McInness braced as the cargo platform they were trapped in lost touch with the wall’s magnetic strip, and began to fall through darkness. It picked up speed as the floor tilted down on one side, then the platform burst out into a light filled section of the shaft. With power suddenly restored, automatic emergency measures activated, pulling the platform back towards the magnetic strips, but only one magnetic lock found a connection. It jerked the platform towards the silver strip with a crash, then hanging by only one lock, the platform swiveled. Suddenly the floor rotated to the vertical and the transparent dome faced sideways into the cargo shaft.
They slid together down onto the side of the dome as the brakes applied, bringing the platform to a halt. A moment after it stopped, a hail storm of lab equipment and wrecked med drones, blown out of the biolab far above where Slab and his companions were held, peppered the side of translucent canopy facing up into the shaft. White impact points appeared with each strike, then the body of a brown feathered egret struck with a thud, and slowly slid off the dome, leaving a smear of blood behind. A heavy machine struck next, sending cracks multiplying across the translucent surface, linking the white impact points into a spider’s web of fractures.
When the hail storm of debris ended, Vamp breathed a sigh of relief, even as the platform rocked slightly as it hung from a single magnetic lock. To her right, the elevator door vanished as emergency escape measures activated. She looked up, sensing, rather than seeing a dark mass high above silhouetted against the distant light of the sky. She peered at it, confused for a moment, then jumped to her feet.
“Get out!” she yelled in a voice filled with fear.
Dr McInness lay closest to the exit, but couldn’t walk. Vamp ran to him, caught the back of his jacket and dragged him towards the open archway. They were below the next deck up, and some way above the deck below. There was a small ladder near the magnetic strip, but she knew there was no time.
“Timer! Help me!” she yelled.
Timer staggered towards her with a welling bruise on his forehead where he’d struck his head as he’d fallen. He grabbed the scientist’s other arm.
“What are you doing?” Dr McInness asked apprehensively.
“Best you don’t know!” Vamp said, then nodded. They threw him through the archway onto the deck below, then grabbed their weapons and jumped after him.
They hit the deck heavily, then the dark mass Vamp had seen shot into the light. The falling cargo platform crashed into their platform’s dome, showering thousands of translucent shards into the shaft and tearing their platform away from its single magnetic lock. Together, the two wrecked cargo platforms tumbled into the shaft, bouncing off each other and the shaft walls as they fell.
“Ouch!” Timer said. “Next time, I’m taking the stairs.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Dr McInness said as color began to return to his face.
Vamp helped the scientist to his feet, supporting him as they started along the landing. They were more than halfway around the shaft before an arch appeared in the inner wall, revealing a corridor leading to a large circular room with a domed ceiling. In the center of the room was a single chair of the familiar squat design. The walls and floors were featureless and smooth, made of the same glassy black material used on control consoles and sensor surfaces.
“Do you mind?” Dr McInness asked, indicating the seat.
Vamp lowered him onto the chair, which he found surprisingly uncomfortable due to its lack of padding and odd contours. As soon as he sat down, a sphere of light appeared at what would have been eye height for the amphibian species, but was only chest height for him.
Cautiously, he probed the light with his finger tips, finding it made his skin tingle. “It’s some kind of field.”
She gave it a wary look. “Don’t mess with it, Doc. No telling what it is.”
“It’s obviously a control interface.”
Timer glanced back into the short corridor. “Or it might call an army of pissed off tinheads to kick our butts.”
Dr McInness eased his hand into the sphere, finding the tingling sensation increased.
Vamp gritted her teeth. “Doc, you shouldn’t play with stuff you don’t understand. Remember what happened to Virus.”
“Nonsense. We must dare to learn.” He jumped as if his hand was being bitten off. “Aaarrrrgh!”
“What is it?” Vamp rushed forward.
He grinned. “Just kidding. It’s actually quite pleasant. Feels a bit like a glove.”
“Not funny!” She punched his shoulder hard.
He pushed his hand fully into the sphere of light and the room vanished, replaced by a sea of stars. The blue green Intruder homeworld floated beneath them. Wispy white clouds drifted through its atmosphere above continents and oceans. The shape of the continents was unrecognizable, as was the large ocean that dominated the northern third of the world. A vast polar cap crowned the northern ocean, reaching well beyond what would have passed for the arctic circle on Earth. Sunlight lit the western hemisphere revealing mountains, deserts, vast cultivated plains and cities that swallowed every coastline, but no forests or jungles. They had been cleared eons before. The mountain ranges, rather than being capped with snow, were tipped in metal. They had long ago been hollowed out and filled with immense atmosphere scrubbers that replenished the world’s oxygen, something its ecosystem had lost the capacity to do. Surrounding the continents were oceans underlaid with quilted patterns that marked vast marine farms. They spanned the great oceans at every depth and produced the bulk of the world’s food supply.
By contrast, the eastern hemisphere was in the midst of night. Its outline was marked by the light of one unending city that ran along the coast for thousands
of kilometers. It formed a single band of light that wound around bays and inlets until it vanished beyond the edge of the world. The lights charted the course of thousands of rivers, estuaries and lakes, many of them artificial, designed to provide an ideal home for billions of inhabitants.
Floating above the world were thousands of ships, and structures so large they were cities in their own right. The ships ranged in size from a few hundred meters to leviathans resembling the mothership many kilometers in length, while the great orbital cities were spheres hundreds of kilometers across. Each city followed a similar pattern, a central disk with spherical domes on either side filled with spires. The central disk provided power, atmosphere and gravity, making life virtually indistinguishable from the continent wide cities below. The orbital cities and visiting ships floated above the world in layers, each layer a higher orbit, stacked on top of each other out to the fringes of the planet’s gravitational field. Flitting between the ships and the orbital cities were thousands of small cargo vessels, streaking in and out of orbit at a frenetic pace. Some were aerodynamically streamlined, others were not. In the distance, the orbiting cities became tiny specks, while many more went unseen at even greater distances. Towering above it all, a radiant yellow-orange star shone, slightly smaller than the sun, yet a third closer to their planet than Earth was to its sun. To eyes evolved under a warmer yellow sun, the star cast a bright orange hue over every ship and city in orbit, and slightly tinted the color of the oceans and polar caps.
No one spoke for a long time, so captivated were they by the blue green globe below and the technological triumphs that floated above.
Finally, Timer said, “I guess that’s not Earth.”
“It might be,” Dr McInness whispered, “A million years from now.”
* * * *
Slab tried to stand, but found his legs were like rubber. He rolled off the examination table onto the floor, landing in a slippery puddle of nano slime. Nearby, Wal fell onto the floor and lay there twitching, while Bill dropped his legs over the side of his table and sat up, supporting himself with his hands.
“They’ll be coming,” a raspy voice announced from the dark. It was the voice of a man starved of food and water and wearied from countless examinations. He’d been spared dissection because he was the only sentient specimen the ship had obtained. The weary man sat up, weak but glad to be free after days of confinement. He lowered himself onto his feet then gingerly made his way to where Slab was learning to crawl. He gave Slab a friendly smile.
“G’day,” the man said, slipping an arm around the big ex-footy player and helping him to his feet. “I’m Dan.”
Slab tried to speak, but his tongue wouldn’t obey. He made an unintelligible slurring sound, but found that if he used Dan for support, he could stand.
Cracker spotted a familiar dark shape on the floor. He eased himself off his table and walked stiff legged to where Bill’s Browning A-bolt hunting rifle lay. It was loaded, but in the darkness and wreckage of the lab, there would be little hope of finding more ammunition. With the gun in his hand, and two sticks of dynamite in his pocket, Cracker’s spirits began to rise. He held the gun up to show the others, but Bill barely noticed. His attention was on the faint glimmer light coming from the elevator shaft. There was no sign of movement, but he realized Dan was right, they didn’t have much time.
Wal staggered to where the bench had been. Twisted metal surrounded a hole blown through the bulkhead by the dynamite. It opened into another large room containing rows of large transparent cylinders filled with a clear, slowly bubbling liquid. The explosion had shattered many of the containers, spilling the liquid onto the floor. Wal didn’t recognize the room as a medical facility, but he saw a faint illumination coming from a corridor at the far end. He turned back to the others and pointed to the hole.
“Thaa waaay!” In spite of Wal’s rubber lips, they understood his meaning.
Slab let go of Dan, and tried walking on his own. His legs were weak, but this time he managed to keep his balance. He moved from table to table, leaning on each for support as he headed for the escape hole.
Wal tripped over the twisted metal at the bottom of the hole and fell onto the thin layer of viscous fluid covering the floor in the next room. He tried cursing, but the sound that came from his mouth was unintelligible. The others clambered through, splashing him as their boots trampled the fluid. He wiped the strange substance from his face, feeling a tingling sensation as it reacted with his skin. He looked at the clear liquid on his hand in amazement, then stood up and smiled at the others.
“I feel bloody fantastic!” He said with growing amazement, his paralysis vanished and every ache in his body gone.
The others looked at him curiously, feeling like old men, barely able to stand.
“It’s this stuff,” Wal declared enthusiastically. “Try it!”
“Pih orf, Waa!” Slab growled.
Wal breathed in deeply. “It’s amazing! I feel ten years younger!”
“Yuuu loo like shii,” Slab slurred.
Wal snatched the rifle from Cracker’s hands, then used the butt to smash one of the containers. A wave of clear liquid poured out, washing their wobbly legs out from under them and saturating them as they splashed on the floor.
Slab sprung to his feet and stomped towards Wal with clenched fists. Wal shrank back grinning, “You feel better, don’t you?”
Slab raised his fist, about to let Wal have it, when he realized he did feel better. Much better! It was as if the years had vanished. He lowered his fist, flexing his shoulders, testing his new found strength. “Jeez, I reckon I could go four quarters at the Gee! And kick a dozen goals!”
The others stood up, flexing and stretching. Not only were the after effects of the electric shock gone, but old muscles felt young again, tired joints moved like silk. Even Dan’s weathered face, dehydrated and starved, now glowed with renewed vigor.
Wal opened the water bottle by his side, gulped down the last of its contents, then held the bottle under the small waterfall of fluid draining from the container he’d smashed.
“What are you doing now?” Slab demanded.
Wal gave him a larcenous grin. “Mate, do you know what women would pay for this stuff?”
Slab looked astonished, then exchanged thoughtful looks with the others. Moments later, they were all gathered around the broken vessel, filling their canteens with the miraculously curative liquid.
CHAPTER 19
Beckman stood before a blast door the size of a four story building. The massive door could have withstood a hydrogen blast, yet it had been shredded like paper. Slag bubbles had solidified on the deck and jagged metal shards framed the circular opening like serrated teeth. Stretching behind them, through the labyrinth of empty corridors they’d followed to reach that point, was a tunnel of destruction stretching from the outer hull all the way into the heart of the ship.
“This is one seriously messed up hunk of junk,” Nuke said as he ran his hand over congealed rivulets of metal.
Beckman drew his carbon steel commando knife and dragged it across a slag bubble experimentally, unable to even scratch it. “Whatever this stuff is, it’s tougher than steel.”
He sheathed his knife, then stepped cautiously through the opening into a vast chamber. Its towering ceiling was shrouded in darkness while the far walls were barely visible several kilometers away. A few scattered sunbeams shone down through blast holes, penetrating the darkness with columns of light. Hanging precariously from the shadowed ceiling were twisted metal girders, monuments to the massive structure which had once filled the chamber.
Beckman studied the nearest sunbeam, following it to the floor where he found a matching exit wound. Whatever had caused the damage had passed right through the chamber and kept on going. Silver metal lay in a frozen whirlpool around the exit wound, cooled before it could pour out into space. Spanning the floor of the great cavern were mountains of blackened metal frameworks, rising like fune
ral pyres from a frozen sea of shining slag.
Bandaka wrinkled his nose at the pungent stench pervading the chamber. “Death walks here,” he whispered as he made a sign.
Beckman started forward, followed warily by the rest of the team, all of whom were strangely silent in the face of such destruction. He hadn’t gone far when he spotted a partially buried octagonal capsule. One of its sides had melted into the slag, while the upper transparent surface remained intact. He peered through the view window, finding nothing but ash and a skeletal outline of an amphibian imprinted on the inside by a brilliant flash.
One by one, they discovered fragments of more octagonal capsules, torn from the most remote corners of the great chamber. They’d been spared liquefaction by their distance from the forces that had been unleashed on the sleep chamber, but unable to avoid the after effects of the searing heat.
“Must have been thousands in here,” Markus said, wondering How can this ship be a threat to us? They’re all dead!
Beckman glanced at one of the octagonal transport cells, and tried to imagine how many could have been stored in this space. “Not thousands. Millions!” He tried to imagine the sleep chamber as it had been, a vast honeycomb structure laced with thousands of narrow canyon-like aisles. Once it had been the most heavily armored section of the ship. Now, it had been reduced to an empty tomb.
Bandaka, unnerved by so much death, wondered how the lost spirits of the ship would find peace. He said nothing, knowing the balanda soldiers would not understand, but he privately wished Mulmulpa was there. The old man, with his dreaming vision and spiritual insight, would have known how to put the dead to rest.
“Could it be a colony ship?” Xeno asked.
“It’s wrapped in a lot of armor to be the Mayflower,” Tucker said doubtfully.
“It’s not a colony ship,” Virus said weakly as he sipped from his canteen. From the recesses of his tortured mind, he sensed the ship was designed to function in a way that suited the nature of the species who built it. He knew they thought of it as a mother-ship, but there was more to the meaning of that word than he understood. There was a power in the mother aspect which eluded him. It was part strategy, part technology, part biology. He shook his head slowly, frustrated that the answer was just beyond his reach.
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