“Come along, then.” Colonel Stuart pushed ahead, and continued up the corridor. “No reason to spend a single moment on this hellish ship beyond what is absolutely necessary.”
This can’t possibly be right.
Alysande stared at the strange, pulsating thing before them, willing herself not to be sick all over the floor.
Not possibly right at all.
“This is it,” Betsy said, seeming to take the whole thing in stride.
“It’s ... it’s just... it’s a ...” Alysande’s tongue felt thick in her mouth, and she had trouble forming a thought.
Logan stood to one side, eyes scanning the entrance through which they’d come, and the valvelike doorways on the opposite sides of the room. He glanced over his shoulder at the thing, his expression one of supreme disinterest. “It’s a brain.”
“Eh,” Kitty said with a shrug. “I’ve seen bigger.” Alysande was sure they were having her on, playing a little joke at her expense, but she couldn’t muster the concentration to object. Her every energy, at the moment, was devoted to regarding the pulsating thing before her with commingled fascination and horror.
“Fascinating.” Raphael stepped closer, and reached a tentative hand out, as though to touch the thing. Then, remembering himself at the last minute, he blushed, like an art lover so overcome they almost laid hands on a masterpiece in a museum. Holding his hands behind his back, he leaned in close, bringing his nose within inches of the things subtly vibrating surface. “It’s organic, clearly, but there appear to be technological elements incorporated into the design as well.”
The thing looked precisely like what it was: a gigantic brain. It was almost five feet tall, a little more in diameter, roughly spherical with irregular pits and prominences here and there. Bits of metal and crystal were everywhere, protruding from the dark, fleshy surface, or just visible below it. The worst of it, though, Alysande was convinced, was the arrhythmic pulsations that shook the brain from time to time, like a bowl of gelatin set to quivering by passing footsteps.
“It’s an immense, artificial brain,” Betsy explained, stepping forward to stand beside Raphael just short of the thing, “an amalgam of technology and organics.” “And this is the dingus that controls the fleet’s defenses?” Logan asked.
“Down to the smallest cannon,” Betsy answered.
Kitty walked the perimeter of the giant brain, her expression thoughtful. “Is it... alive?”
“In a sense.” Betsy stretched out her hands, holding them with palms only inches from the brain’s surface. “It has a kind of sentience, though perhaps not like you or I would understand the term. I suppose you could say that it is aware and leave it at that.”
“Is it aware of us?” Alysande’s mouth felt dry, and she tightened her grip on the pistol.
Betsy shook her head. “No. It’s funny, really. Its ‘senses’ come from countless points on the hundreds of ships of the fleet, but it can’t ‘see’ this room at all.”
“So we’re in its blind spot, then,” Kitty said.
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Just like the slaves in the hallways.” Kitty rubbed her lip for a moment, and then looked up, her eyes meeting Betsy’s. “Could you do to it what you did to them?”
“How do you mean?” Betsy cocked her head to one side, perplexed.
“Well,” Kitty answered, “just like you clouded the minds of those slaves, could you kinda ... I don’t know... hypnotize the brain into thinking its defenses are active, while shutting them down at the same time.” Betsy thought for a moment. “I suppose that it’s possible.”
Alysande nodded, and glanced at the young American girl with burgeoning admiration. “Then the Kh’thon wouldn’t know that they were vulnerable until after the Sentinels had struck.”
“That’s what I’m hoping.” Kitty gave a slight smile.
“Well,” Logan said. He turned around and popped a single blade from the back of his right hand. “I’d planned on bein’ a bit more hands-on, but that works, too, I guess.”
“Whatever we do,” Alysande said impatiently, “we should do quickly and be gone. I don’t relish the notion of being onboard when those Sentinels arrive. Assuming, of course, that your friends are able to hold up their end of this bargain.”
Kitty put her hands on her hips, her chin held high. “Don’t worry about our friends, colonel.” She grinned slyly, and pointed with her chin to the far side of the room. “Might be better to worry about your own, eh?” Alysande turned to see Raphael poking around at a mix of organics and crystals on the far chamber wall. The spy stopped, glancing up to see the attention suddenly turned on him, and shrugged. “Just thought I’d see what could be seen. No harm done.”
Alysande narrowed her eyes. “Don’t. Touch. Anything.” Then she turned her attention back to Betsy. “Ms. Braddock, are you ready to begin?”
Betsy, her hands still held with their palms facing the brain’s surface, her eyes closed, took a deep breath and sighed. Then she opened her eyes with a slight smile. “Begin? Darling, I’m nearly through.”
Betsy turned her attention away from the others, and back to the enormous brain. She closed her eyes again, and reached out with her thoughts, brushing against the cool, alien intellect of the enormous organ.
It was unsettling, the brain that controlled the fleet’s defenses. Just as its corporeal self was constructed of organic material intermixed with metal and crystal, so too did its consciousness seem an uneasy blend of mind and machine. The brain’s thoughts were simple but quick, rarely rising above the level of awareness one would find in a house pet, but processing more sensory input than Betsy could sort through in a lifetime.
As she became gradually more at ease touching minds with the consciousness of the Fathership brain, Betsy began to recognize something almost like a personality, in amongst the metallic protocols and crystalline thoughts. Something simple but devoted, quick to anger but eager to please.
You’re a fierce guard dog on the outside, Betsy thought, but nothing but a cuddly puppy on the inside, aren’t you?
She reached out with her mind, her thoughts fluttering against the brain’s consciousness.
Good boy, she sent to the brain in wordless concept-images. You just want approval, don’t you? Well, we’U see what we can do about that.
Moments passed, and then Betsy pulled her hands back, in a motion that wasted no energy, and opened her eyes once more.
“Okay,” she said, turning to the others, the strain only slightly audible in her tone. “I should be able to keep the brain occupied a while, but we shouldn’t waste any time.”
“What did you do?” Kitty asked.
“Would you believe that I’m tickling its belly, and keeping it distracted from its watchdog duties?”
“That makes about as much sense as anything in this place,” Logan snarled. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
“Can’t go that way,” Logan said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder and heading back the way they’d come.
“Um, but isn’t the landing bay that direction?” Kitty asked, pointing farther up the corridor.
Logan had been scouting ahead, making sure their route was clear.
“Yep,” Logan said simply. “But that deserted intersection up ahead ain’t so deserted anymore.” He glanced over at Betsy. “You’ve got some pretty impressive mojo, Bets, but I’m guessin’ that even you can’t keep the Fathership’s brain buffaloed and still cloud the perceptions of a few dozen servitors at the same time.”
Betsy recoiled a fraction, her hand flying protectively to her throat. “Um, no, I’d rather not try, thank you.”
“Then we can’t go that way.” With that, Logan continued walking down the corridor, heading to the next juncture.
They were halfway to the landing bay when everything went horribly wrong.
Using the memories she’d gleaned from their Exemplar prisoner as a guide, Betsy had directed the group along an alternate route
. This path, however, required them to make use of a kind of elevator, a roughly spherically shaped chamber that descended from one level to the next.
“I don’t like it,” Logan said warily. “Enclosed space,
no way out, nowhere to run if this thing goes somewhere we don’t like.”
“Yeah,” Kitty said with a half-hearted shrug, “but what are you gonna do? This is the only ‘lift’ in sight, and we don’t know how long it’ll take to make a circuit and come back this way.”
“Are there not any stairs?” Alysande asked. Though she was loathe to admit they shared anything in common, the diminutive Canadian’s concerns were her own. “Our options would improve immeasurably on a stairway.”
“No, I’m afraid not.” Betsy shook her head. “It’s this or the rush-hour pedestrian traffic back that way.” She jerked her head back indicating the way they’d come.
Raphael stepped forward, and examined the walls of the chamber. They appeared to be made out of some highly durable, completely transparent material. “A glass elevator,” he mused. “I believe I read about that in a story, once upon a time.”
“I read it too,” Kitty said, shouldering past him, “but unless you think we’re more likely to find a giant peach somewhere around here that’ll get us back home, this is our only way back to the ship. So move it or lose it.” Raphael treated her to a smile that didn’t reach his eyes, and followed her in. Betsy went next, followed by Alysande. Logan lingered for a moment outside.
“I still don’t like it,” he said, shaking his head. Then he gritted his teeth and stepped onboard.
The door, so transparent and clear that it was almost invisible, slid shut behind him, and the chamber began to sink through the floor.
“Woof!” Kitty doubled over, her hands on her knees. “Wasn’t expecting that. ” She looked down through the transparent floor of the mobile room.
Where before they had been on the solid, and opaque floor of the ship’s deck, now the lift was descending through a vast, cavernous space. It seemed to extend in all directions, apparently limitless, crisscrossed with a network of walkways, ramps, and landings.
The transparent lift, which seemed to be following a vertical track identical to the horizontal walkways that skeined the open space, was rapidly descending toward a wide, gray plain below them.
“First floor, coming up,” Betsy said cheerfully. “Ladies’ sundries, jewelry, electronics, and long-way-round to the landing bay.”
Visible straight down below their feet, the gray floor rose up to greet them, an aperture irising open just as they reached it, just large enough for them to pass through.
And that was when everything had gone wrong.
The door to the lift flowed open, and Kitty phased, instinctively, for all the good it would do her.
There, in the wide open space before them, towered seven inhuman figures, each stranger and more grotesque than the last. They were each a hundred feet tall if they were an inch, looking like a cross between a man, an octopus, a Thai dinner, and a nightmare.
“Um, hi?” Kitty gave a little half-hearted wave.
“Friends,” Betsy said, her voice level but strained, “meet the Kh’thonic Collective.”
As Kitty’s eyes adapted to the gloom, she noticed in addition to the seven inhuman creatures before them a human wearing robes that appeared to be made out of golden light, while in the wings more human shapes lingered, hefting what appeared to be strange, alien weaponry.
“You bitch,” Colonel Stuart said, wheeling on Betsy. ‘You set us up?”
“What?!” Betsy’s mouth gaped, and her eyes went wide. “What possible benefit could there be in it for me to do so?”
“I don’t know,” Colonel Stuart snarled. ‘You tell me.”
“Ladies,” Raphael said behind his hand, his eyes on the Kh’thon, whom he then flashed with a careful smile before continuing. “This is neither the time nor the place for bickering.”
“I gotta say, I agree with Raph on this one.” Logan popped his claws with a snikt, and gave a feral grin. “Now’s the time for scrapping.”
“I’ll have to disagree, friend,” Raphael said, and stepped out of the lift. Arms held wide, he began walking toward the Kh’thon, a broad smile on his face. “Now is the time to negotiate.”
36
Doug Ramsey was caught in the middle. It was the same old story, really. Scylla and Charybdis, a rock and a hard place, the devil and the deep blue sea. Or, in this particular instance, two giant, feral Sentinels, one of them shaped like a humungous snake with arms, the other like an impossibly enormous spider. And both of them programmed to kill all mutants.
Which, considering that Doug and his two companions definitely fell under the umbrella of “all mutants,” was not exactly welcome news.
To make matters worse, though, more Sentinels were arriving by the moment. Some were small, no more than a few inches long, other as tall as Rogue or taller, but all of them feral, all of them adapted along strange paths of evolution and chance, each design more outlandish than the last.
“Okay, boys,” Rogue said, swatting at a winged Sentinel no bigger than the mosquitoes whose shape it had adopted. She sized up the competition. “I figure I can handle Charlotte the Sentinel over there”—she pointed to the giant spider—“but that’ll leave the snake without a dance partner.”
Hank, who’d already tacked his glasses into his shirt pocket, cracked his knuckles like a concert pianist limbering up for a performance, and shucked off his shoes. “I believe I can address that concern, my dear lady. Though my preference is always for matters cerebral, I’ve had my fair share of experience in the corporeal realms as well.”
Rogue flashed him a lopsided grin, and then glanced over at Doug.
“That means it’s up t’ you, boy,” she said.
“Yes.” Hank glanced his direction. “If you can get the central computer up and running, there should be a way to override the Sentinels’ command protocols.” “Erm, sure?” Doug managed a weak smile. “It’ll be a piece of cake, right?” He winced, hoping that neither of them noticed how his voice cracked like a kid about to be booted from the boys’ choir, but if they had noticed, they gave no sign of it.
“’Atta boy,” Rogue said, and punched him lightly on the upper arm. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, I believe we’re keepin’ our hosts waitin’.”
With that, Rogue spun on her heel, and launched into the air like a missile, aiming for the towering spider Sentinel.
“After you, my dear.” Hank doffed an imaginary hat, and crouched low, collecting energy in his legs like coiled springs. Then, in one fluid motion, he exploded into the air, twisting around in midleap so that he hit the nearest wall feetfirst, then pushing off and rebounding straight at the snake Sentinel, his arms held wide, enormous hands open and grasping. The snake
Sentinel fired round after round from its arm-mounted weapons, but Hank’s movements were too quick and erratic for any of them to strike home.
Which left Doug swatting away minuscule mosquito ’bots, while in the shadows scavenger Sentinels and lower-ranking predators eyed him hungrily. Swallowing hard, and hiking the strap of his leather satchel higher on his shoulder, he set off into the gloomy depths of the facility.
Only minutes after first being told that he was a mutant, Doug had been asked to establish a meaningful dialogue with a potentially hostile extraterrestrial. He’d been sleeping, before that, so this came as a pretty rude wake-up call. A short while after that, he’d found himself halfway across the galaxy, on a megastructure called a Dyson sphere, where he had to decipher the controls of an ancient stargate to prevent the complete destruction of Earth. He’d even traveled to Asgard, the otherdimensional home of the Norse gods.
And yet, none of that led Doug to expect that he’d one day be standing inside a giant robot head, as big as the capitol dome in Washington, D.C. Much less on a hovering platform, hundreds of feet above the ground.
Tricking the floati
ng platform into carrying him up from the factory floor had been the easy part. It had its own independent operating system, requiring a simple security authorization code to unlock all of its features. It had taken Doug only a matter of moments to convince the platform that he was a fully authorized repair technician, put the platform’s operating core in a diagnostic mode, disable all of its onboard security procedures, and then slave the command system to his voice-print. When he was through, the platform would take him wherever Doug wanted with nothing but a word, his own high-tech flying carpet.
Which he would need, since a brief survey of the area suggested that the Master Mold’s operator core— the central computer that could regulate all of the factories processes, and remotely operate any Sentinels, whatever the make and model, whatever the distance— was located high overhead, inside the hollow “head” of the Master Mold itself It was fitting, Doug supposed. After all, the operator core was the facility’s “brain,” and isn’t that where a brain was supposed to be found?
Once he had the floating platform on a leash, as it were, it was time to take it out for a walk.
“Platform,” Doug said, stepping onto the middle of the disc, keeping careful hold on his satchel. “Elevate.”
With a whispered hum, the platform began to rise up in the air, buoyed by some variety of suspensor fields whose functioning was far beyond Doug’s kin.
What do I know? Doug ruminated, feeling butterflies in his stomach, and trying not to look down. I’m a software guy. Floaty-disc tech? That’s hardware.
Gradually picking up speed, the platform rose higher and higher, remaining so perfectly level that, if Doug had closed his eyes, the only way he’d have known they were in motion at all would have been the whisper of wind on his cheek as the air rushed past.
But Doug wasn’t about to close his eyes. Heck, he was afraid even to blink for fear that he’d miss the moment when he’d have to tell the platform to stop and they’d careen into the ceiling above at high speed.
The Return Page 17
