Warstrider: All Six Novels and An Original Novella

by Ian Douglas

  Eight meters, now. Had it seen her yet? She felt an unpleasant tingling against the bare skin of her upper arm, her right hand, her face and neck exposed by the mask. What was the nano count here, she wondered? She could imagine the dead layers of her epidermis beginning to dissolve under the unseen assault of Xeno nano-D. Or was the tingling psychosomatic only? She couldn't tell.

  She was afraid.

  Under the direction of its organic components, the rock threader was repairing itself. »Self« did not, could not, differentiate between those parts of its body that were organic and those smaller, internal fragments that were complex, self-replicating machines, for that symbiosis between organism and living machine was old, old . . . billions of years old, perhaps. Even the far vaster and more able memories of Self had long since lost all but hazy impressions of its own evolutionary genesis within the caverns of some cooling, far-distant world, and those impressions were not part of the group-mind memories retained by »self«.

  It did retain memories of Self, of course, memories of a vast and dazzling intelligence from which »self« had been agonizingly torn at some vaguely recognized period of time in the past. Alone, here on the thin and alien shores of the great Void at the heart of the universe, it knew that its one chance of completion was to repair the damage it had suffered so that the threader could return to the warmth and wholeness of Self. The damage was not severe; worst was the loss of nearly half of the individual fragments of »self« that directed the threader; these were being replaced from the pods still rising on the magnetic sea from the not-Rock passage nearby.

  Since it experienced its surroundings as Mendings of separate sensations from separate parts of its being, the group organism did not think in terms of linear time, but it knew that it would return to Self in the not-distant future. Stored within its inorganic memory were millions of bits of data acquired during its short stay here at the edge of the Void. Self would especially savor the taste of data about the mysterious opponents here, the not-Selves that, impossibly, moved and fought and destroyed almost as though they were somehow alive. Self would welcome that data, replicating it and distributing it throughout the body for future buddings of »selves«.

  And »Self« would again be part of Self, merging »consciousness« with Consciousness, »mind« with Mind. The pain, the loss, the utter diminishment would at last be gone.

  The emotion-analogue shivering through its separate units at that group thought might have been recognizable to humans as joy.

  »Self« possessed eighteen separate external senses. None of these quite corresponded to sight, though three perceived and measured electromagnetic energy falling upon the surfaces of its bodies. Most were distantly analogous to human senses of taste or smell, enabling »self« to sample its chemical and electrical environment. Only one, sensitive to nearby heat sources at frequencies of between 1012 and 1014 hertz, created something within the group mind that could be thought of as a visual image. Another, sensitive to vibrations through the surrounding rock, was something like hearing.

  Still. »self« was only dimly aware of the approaching not-Self, a pattern of greater heat against lesser heat, a shambling but regular tremor of vibrations through the rock, a thing almost invisible. In its Boolean framework of is and is-not, »self« could perceive the heat-shape and recognize it as not-Self

  Neither was it Rock, for it was moving, though it did taste, rocklike, of chemical salts and hydrocarbon compounds, of water and incredibly pure traces of metal and less-identifiable but apparently artificial substances. If it moved, was it alive the way »self« was alive? That was difficult to say, though the thing jittered and flickered with the electrochemical currents that mimicked, distantly, the more powerful ebb and flow of life within »self's« group being.

  The tastes of chemical salts and water were very strong now, and »self« recoiled. It could absorb most substances, using its internal chemical control to disassemble and rearrange their chemical structures in order to grow inorganic machine components or to reproduce itself. Some substances, however, posed special difficulties, and liquid electrolytic compounds—such as salt water—could be deadly, for they could disrupt the electrical conductivity within »self's« tissues and inorganic components, a disruption equivalent to intense pain that was potentially fatal. Self, »Self« remembered, had more than once sensed vast reservoirs of salt water within the universe of Rock and drawn back from them, unable to approach.

  And a glowing column massing nearly sixty kilos that was at least seventy percent salt water was now moving steadily toward »self« with something that might be interpreted as grim purpose.

  Though it wasn't aware of the fact. »self« possessed one emotion fully in common with humans, a reflexive and primitive urge toward fight or flight basic to any species' survival.

  »Self« was afraid.

  The wounded Xenophobe machine/creature was only a handful of meters away now, a limp, black tube thicker than Katya was tall. The entire mass was faintly pulsing with some inner life, like the steady thud of some monstrous heart.

  One of the broken travel spheres lay at her feet. Inside its meter-wide bowl-shaped hollow, three Xenophobes floated on greasy slime trails, black slug-things like lumps of grease that were somehow managing to slide up the walls of their prisons, defying gravity. Their movements did not appear to be due to muscular contractions, or any other mode of organic locomotion Katya was familiar with. Individual Xenophobe cells, apparently, could also somehow use or manipulate the ambient magnetic field.

  Within the opening in the Cobra's flank, dozens of Xeno bodies appeared to be meshed together in a network of thread-thin, translucent filaments. It reminded her, somewhat, of a crude model of a human brain, with neurons joined to neurons in a complex web of cell bodies, axons, and dendrites, multiple paths whose traceries determined the shape of human thoughts.

  That, Katya knew, was a simplistic interpretation colored by her own prejudices of what was and was not life. Each individual Xenophobe cell, a slug shape the size of her head, was an incredibly complex mix of living and inorganic parts. Was it intelligent apart from the main body? No one knew, not even Dev, for his communication had been with a network of some trillions of the things spanning the crust of an entire planet. Most researchers assumed that a single Xeno unit was unintelligent . . . no brighter than a single neuron in a human brain.

  But was that true? Impulsively, Katya stooped above a Xenophobe sliding slowly across the ground between the broken sphere and the Cobra, thrusting her comel-clad hand down and touching its glistening surface, feeling its black, soft-skinned slickness through the cold and cushioning layers of the living DalRiss translator.

  . . . move . . . move . . . move . . .

  . . . and a desperate, soul-wrenching need to be joined to others . . . emptiness . . . loneliness . . .

  Katya screamed, a despairing wail reflecting the emptiness coursing through her soul.

  "Kat!" Hagan's shrill cry cut through the static. "Kat! Are you—"

  "I'm fine!" She hoped he could hear her. Her compatch didn't pack much power. Dazed, she stood, her knees threatening to give way entirely and pitch her back to the ground. Lone Xeno organisms were not intelligent. That was clear enough now, though they burned with a kind of programmed lust for some particular action. The comel, she realized with a kind of detached wonder, had somehow translated that programming, the blind instinct to join with others of its kind, into something recognizable as emotion.

  An empty wanting, a hunger that had nearly overwhelmed her.

  "Sssss—in the way, Katya! Move aside—ssst!"

  "Negative! Negative! Nothing's wrong!"

  Nothing was wrong . . . for the Xenophobe horror a few meters before her remained unmoving. From here, she could see the intricate weave of its repair work around the edges of the hole in its side, as fibers grew from tar-dripping edges according to some master program whose workings she could appreciate but only dimly perceive. The Xeno organism she'd t
ouched was flowing up the side of the Cobra now, and into the embrace of outflung, living fibers. Almost, she imagined, she could sense a kind of relief in the way it slithered in close against a hundred identical, glistening bodies.

  Something reached for her from the interior of the Xeno combat machine, a tar-black pseudopod that was part molasses-thick liquid, part living units.

  How do they do that? she wondered. The creatures possessed nothing like skeletons, internal or external, but working together they seemed able to exercise considerable strength. Perhaps the micromachines inside their bodies somehow interlocked, creating temporary skeletal support.

  The arm swayed closer, an extension of self like the hungry embrace of an amoeba. Dazed, Katya took a half step back, then stopped. Was this an attack, or . . .

  Damn it, we're here to try to communicate with these things! She thrust her comel-covered arm forward, touching the swaying, dripping extension of self growing from the Xeno machine's wounded side.

  She touched the mind of »self« and nearly fainted.

  The pseudopod spilled down over her arm . . . her chest . . . her head, engulfing her in blackness.

  Chapter 18

  At the bottom of the Xenophobe hierarchy is what we call the cell, because it seems to resemble a single, gigantic neuron within a complex nervous system. Like a plant or animal cell, it is composed of smaller units and is quite complex, a living organism that can survive for a time isolated from the parent body. This cell is constructed from something like cytoplasm, microscopic subcells that are analogous to the cells in our own bodies, and nanomachines. It measures perhaps twenty-five centimeters across and masses about a kilogram. As far as we can tell, it can carry memory, perhaps a kind of organic programming, but is not, of itself, intelligent.

  A number of cells networked together, however, can display a definite intelligence, even though that intelligence appears to be quite different from anything we are familiar with.

  —from a report given before the

  Hegemony Council on Space Exploration

  Devis Cameron

  C.E. 2542

  From his vantage point halfway up the barren slope of Henson's Rise, Vic Hagan watched with dumbstruck horror as something like molten asphalt extruded itself from the wrecked Cobra and spilled over Katya's body, engulfing her. Lipinski was screaming at him over the comlink to fire, fire, but he couldn't shoot without hitting Katya, who might still be alive.

  He kicked his RLN-90 into motion, lumbering down the slope toward the Xenophobe machine. He needed to do something, but he could only watch helplessly as the black, tarry mass withdrew back into the opening in the Cobra's side, leaving nothing behind at all.

  "My God, it swallowed her!"

  And now, the Cobra was in motion, gliding with a serpent's undulations toward a black-pit fissure at the center of the crater. Hagan had seen similar craters on Loki and elsewhere. They were called tunnel entrances, though there was no actual tunnel as such, and they appeared to be gateways of a sort to the network of SDTs that formed the Xenos' underground highway net. Xenophobe machines had been seen leaving and entering those fissures, which consisted of rock somehow turned plastic and yielding by intense magnetic fields.

  "Lieutenant, you gotta help her!"

  Hagan bit back a curse. Lipinski's shrill commentary was doing little to help the situation, even if the kid was right. Experimentally, he raised his Scoutstrider's right arm, engaging the targeting system for his autocannon.

  The agonizing part of the situation was not knowing whether Katya was alive or dead. He'd just watched the thing gulp her down whole . . . but he'd seen ViRrecordings of the first contact on Alya B-V, where Dev Cameron had been nearly completely engulfed by a mass of Xenophobe cells lining the walls of a subterranean cavern. This could be the same thing and Katya might still be alive inside that monster, but if so she was being kidnapped. Once the damaged Cobra reached the tunnel entrance, there'd be nothing anyone could do for her.

  Grimly, he targeted the ground in front of that writhing, misshapen serpent and triggered a long burst of high-explosive shells. The Cyclan autocannon slammed off three rounds, the heavy thud-thud-thud rocking Hagan's strider back with the recoil. The detonations walked across the Cobra's path, a triple burst of man-sized explosions that tore up the ground and splattered the crawling horror with stinging shrapnel and rock.

  The Xeno machine ignored him, writhing over the cratered ground with an almost comical haste. Hagan took aim again, this time targeting the machine-creature's flattened hood. Katya had vanished into the thing's swollen midsection and must be there still. Perhaps he could kill the monster by cutting off its head, then free Katya before the thing crushed or smothered her.

  He fired again, a second chain of autocannon fire barking and snapping across a range of nearly one hundred meters. With enhanced, telescopic vision, he could see the shells slamming into the Xeno's neck just behind the raised and quivering cobra's hood, saw the explosions savage that black-gray hide from the inside, blowing out great, gaping holes with each impact.

  Lipinski, controlling the Ghostrider's 100-MW laser now, added his machine's high-tech violence to the attack. The Cobra's hooded head seemed to deflate suddenly, then dropped away, literally blasted from the Xeno's body.

  But the Xenophobe machine kept moving, crawling now, if anything, faster than before. Hagan could see the body reshaping itself as it moved. The swollen rear portion was smoothing over now, the spines and tentacles reabsorbing into the rest of the body mass. The stump behind where the head had been rounded itself off, the ragged end smoothed over, and Hagan felt a sick, jabbing anguish at the realization that this, this creature did not keep its brains in the same place that terrestrial animals did. He'd known that, of course, but he'd had to try. The "head" lay discarded on the barren crater floor, already fragmenting into deadly Xeno Gammas; the rest of the Cobra continued to slither toward the tunnel entrance, half a kilometer away.

  Lipinski loosed another laser bolt, searing the Cobra's side.

  "Hold fire, damn it!" Hagan barked.

  "But . . . but . . ."

  "Look, kid," Hagan said, rage and terror and hope all draining from his thoughts at the same moment, leaving him terribly tired. "If she's dead, there's not a damned thing we can do for her. If she's alive, we could kill her. Either way . . ."

  He didn't add that maybe, horribly, Katya was still alive and wishing she were dead, because trapped inside the Xeno she didn't have a chance. Her life support pack and mask would give her a couple hours of air; she might live that long, if the thing didn't . . . digest her before that.

  Hagan's strider AI recognized the symptoms of a profound psychological shock building within Hagan's brain and body; had the man been in his body, that body would have been violently sick. Skillfully, the AI interceded, interrupting a series of C-socket impulses that could have thrown the Scoutstrider on its side, all coordination and control gone. As it was, the RLN-90 stumbled to a halt, autocannon arm tracking back and forth helplessly, almost as though it was trying to make up its mind.

  The Cobra reached the tunnel entrance, nosed into it, and vanished as slickly as a snake slithering down a hole.

  Katya was sure that she was going mad. When the Xenophobe's mass engulfed her, cocooning her in suffocating blackness, her old claustrophobia had risen from nightmare corners of her mind, a haunting horror thought dead, now demonically alive and hungry and wildly raging through the fragmenting shards of her awareness.

  She couldn't move, she couldn't see, she couldn't hear. With her eyes wide open, she was surrounded by a dark more profound than anything she'd ever experienced, worse by far than that time, years before, when equipment failure had awakened her, isolated and alone, within the linkage capsule of a starship and nearly driven her insane. She could feel her captor's body—bodies?—pressing around her. Where it touched clothing or survival pack or comel she felt only pressure; where it touched bare skin she felt a wet, faintly coo
l clinginess that reminded her of thick mud. It was like drowning, like being buried alive, her worst, worst nightmares given substance and form and texture.

  Her throat was raw; she thought she must have screamed, even though she had no memory of it. For a horrible several moments, she felt she was going to be sick in her breathing mask, but by clenching eyes shut and fists closed and jaw tight she battled back, fighting the choking, gagging raw terror that threatened to consume her, and pushed it back, holding it, by main force of will, at a metaphorical arm's length.

  Strangely, when she was able to think again at all, she was steadied by the presence of . . . something that seemed to be with her inside her skull, an awareness not her own that manifested itself, not in words, but as impressions.

  . . . curiosity . . .

  . . . fear—pain—need-flee-Unity . . .

  . . . wonder . . .

  Most powerful of all was the realization that she was alive, that the Xeno had not killed her. She could not move; the interlaced cells were pressed roundabout her, covering every square centimeter of her body. If it hadn't been for her mask, she would certainly have suffocated . . . or drowned. It felt as though she'd been stuffed into a barrel filled with some heavy, viscous liquid. She could feel the Xeno's movements as a rippling, almost peristaltic surging, but her cocoon muffled the sensations and protected her from injury.

  I'm aboard a Xenophobe combat machine, she thought . . . and she was scared by the hysterical edge that grated around the borders of that thought. It's . . . taking me for a ride. . . .

  Where?

  Though she'd lost all orientation when she'd been swallowed, the blood pounding in her temples, the congested feeling behind her mask felt like the sensations of being upside down. Desperately, she tried to organize the limited data reaching her panic-shocked brain. Yes . . . it definitely felt like she was upside down, or nearly so, moving in a generally downward direction. It was a little like sliding headfirst through a dark and cramped tube, like, she imagined, dropping down a garbage chute while trapped in a wet and clinging mass of garbage.