by Paul Collins
Whatever was inside this particular platform was not obeying the rules. It was willing to break things and leave a serious mess behind as long as it killed the intruder. That meant that what was guarding the place now was a recent addition, probably installed by the mole. It made sense. If some authorised person came aboard, they would have studied the maintenance and usage manuals, and they would steer clear of all the standard traps and intrusion preventatives. What was guarding the platform now was designed to catch people who were authorised to be aboard.
On the other hand, Anneke was not authorised to be aboard so she was healthily paranoid about everything. This helped her to escape the first attack.
To say she had managed to escape an initial attempt at mincing was not saying much. She was new to the platform, so the guard program had expected her to be less cautious. A monstrous computer-generated creature, all teeth and claws, lashed out a fraction too early. Its talon grazed her thigh, but adrenaline disguised the pain. She ran down passage after passage, fleeing the burglar control. It was fast, but not so fast that it could keep up with her.
Time to slow it down more.
She fled into the next passage, spun round and pushed the heavy bulkhead hatch shut, dogging it tightly. For a second, she leaned on the hatch, gasping for breath, her eyes wide. Anneke felt a massive impact on the other side that cracked the welds on the bulkhead wall hinges. The force of the blow knocked her to the deck.
She scrambled to her feet, limping slightly now due to the gouge in her thigh armour field. Throbbing pain let itself be known. Anneke tried several doors along the passageway. All were locked. Indeed some had been welded shut, and the welds looked bright and fresh. Scorch marks on the walls indicated a combat zone.
Someone has had serious trouble staying alive.
As Anneke found more and more doors refusing to yield, and more blows were hammered into the bulkhead hatch behind her, she started to hyperventilate. She was trapped inside a nightmare with no prospect of escape. Unless she was stupefyingly lucky, she was going to die there in a pockmarked graveyard left over from an old-time war.
Using the best stealth cloaking technology Fat Fraddo could steal, Anneke had brought the two-seater craft in under the OEP’s belly, heading aft. Then she had slipped into one of the platform’s metal armpits, looking for what her design specs suggested might be a platform ejection tube. Anneke’s logic was simple: she needed to avoid all normal docking ports and standard approach vectors. But kitchens and repair shops produced garbage, and garbage needed to be dumped sometimes, such as in energy signature shutdowns. Entry via a dump tube would not be easy, merely less hazardous than the battle platform.
Approaching the OEP for the first time had given Anneke a real sense of its size. Her ‘scooter’ was like a gnat buzzing around the dinosaur. Up close, though, she could see huge, straight-edged channels cut into the hull. More evidence of battle. She felt a ghostly chill imagining all the men and women who had died more than a thousand years ago. People who had gone to war and never returned. Well this is war. Am I going home? I don’t have a home, so maybe not.
Anneke shook off her mood, found the galley dump and, after removing layers of metal slag with a plasma file, climbed inside. Here the welcoming atmosphere was breathable and at normal pressure. She was at once alert. Anything welcoming was bound to be a trap.
Was the platform now manned? If so, by whom, and why? It must have been done recently. Nobody had lived on the OEP for a thousand years. Had the mole placed a skeleton crew here? Were they already in the process of stealing a dreadnought?
Must proceed carefully.
She made a sensor sweep of the surrounding passages, detecting no life signs. Nor did she get a signal back from the microprobe, not even an automated echo pulse when pinged by her exploratory signal.
Not good. In fact, bad. If it’s still working, why’s it silent?
Suddenly an odd thought occurred to her: it was scared.
She wondered suddenly if Oracle was ever afraid. It had love-pleasure levels, altruism, mathematics and senses ranging from gravity to gamma rays, including radar, tilt, touch, flex, bend, strain, capacity, magnetic field, temperature, moisture and proximity. Why not fear?
Well, if she got out of this spooky mausoleum in one piece, she would make it a point to ask. And maybe she would be nicer in general to AIs in future. Maybe.
She made sure all her dampening fields were on and her personal stealth cloaking was at maximum. It was not foolproof, but it stopped her feeling completely exposed.
For the next hour, Anneke systematically checked offices, defunct automated workshops, robotic assembly points, storage bays, and crew quarters.
She found the first body in the crew’s quarters.
Necrosis readings told her it had been dead for at least twelve hours. The cause of death was obvious: its head was missing. Though even with the head still attached, the man would have been dead. He had been ripped apart. He looked like he’d been used to make a hamburger.
Anneke threw up, then vaporised the vomit with wide beam laser. Leave no trace, destroy all evidence. She moved on, queasy but wary. She had seen many mutilated bodies before yet had never thrown up. Something had induced her nausea.
Maybe the body had been ripped up and left there to horrify whoever found it. Perhaps wanting her to be cautious. Too cautious. No need to wonder what had happened to the microprobe. It would have been vaporised by now … the suitcase wouldn’t be too…
‘Snap out of it,’ she told herself.
She took several deep breaths then continued her search. If the lost coordinates were on the platform they, like any electronic evidence for upcoming refits, would be in the central AI computer, the Hub.
The Hub was at the platform’s gravitational centre.
One kilometre inboard and a dozen levels up. How deep into the trap does the rat have to go?
Partially disassembled equipment was everywhere. A massive engineering overhaul and machinery rewiring was in progress. But by whom?
She had seen some personnel – bits of one, anyway. You could not refit a dreadnought without experienced personnel. Twelve hours ago there had been at least one living breathing human being on board the OEP
Chances were there were others. Maybe the mole himself was there.
Anneke stumbled upon three more bodies in a claustrophobic corridor that led towards the Hub. Further on she discovered several more. Nothing personal, then. Something just doesn’t like humans. In all she counted twenty-eight bodies. Each was severely crushed, ripped open and decapitated. The killer seemed not to realise that humans were easy to kill, and was going to more trouble than necessary to make sure they were dead. An animal?
But there could not be any animals on board an OEP.
Could there? The image of scrabbling talons clawing at her sprang to mind. Whatever had attacked her would be on her trail by now. The bulkhead would not have lasted long against its onslaught.
She did not throw up again. She wanted to, dry-retching several times, but her stomach was empty. She ran more sensor sweeps, checking for moving bodies, anything. Nothing was alive in her vicinity.
Anneke then performed the grisly task of picking through remains of a body, stepping cautiously around coagulated lumps of glistening muscle and scattered intestines, looking for clues as to what had happened. The most recent deaths had occurred only three hours earlier, not long before she had boarded the platform. Perhaps she had only managed to get aboard because whatever was guarding the place was busy killing.
Then she found the e-pad.
It was clutched in the stiffened hand of a woman whose face had survived the frenzied attack that turned the rest of her body into raw meat. The expression on her face arrested Anneke. It was not fearful, but rather peaceful, as if her mind had fled before her final moments.
Anneke shuddered, and then cleaned the blood off the e-pad, downloading its contents to her own. A quick check confirmed what she
had suspected.
The OEP had been brought online six months earlier, and outfitted with a skeleton crew increased to the minimum necessary for a big refit job. There were thirty-four of them. Six people were unaccounted for.
The downloaded data also confirmed fragmentary information Anneke had found on the mole’s e-pad. The refit job was for an Old Empire dreadnought.
Anneke sent a compressed data burst to the suitcase AI on her docked scooter, and pocketed the e-pad. With it were orders to relay everything to RIM headquarters in the event she did not return, or if the scooter came under any kind of attack. That done, she headed for the Hub.
If by chance she got there first and found the lost coordinates … what to do? Wipe them off the main drive? Probably. Better to have nobody in charge of this monster than the mole. That would spoil his scheme permanently. Then again, maybe he already had the coordinates …
Anneke’s confidence was further dented when she heard a noise. She froze, controlling her breathing. The sound was non-human. She checked her scanner and swore softly. Something was headed her way. Why hadn’t the scanner alerted her? Then she realised it was set up to detect living creatures.
Which meant the AI creature had located her.
Anneke sprinted out of the chamber, reached an intersection, then stopped. Decision time. Left, the Hub and maybe the lost coordinates. Right, the scooter.
She hesitated. What to do? She was not working for RIM now. They had officially disowned her, at least till the evidence was in. Maybe the best course of action was to get out in one piece, then call in the Sentinels. Let them take care of it. Bad move. Who knew if the lost coordinates would still be there, or if the mole would have successfully downloaded them?
Anneke remained stock-still. She could hear the voice of Uncle Viktus ringing in her brain: You are responsible to the principle of RIM even if not to RIM itself. Remember that.
Okay, she remembered it. But did that mean she had to die, and horribly, for that principle? Is that what Uncle Viktus wanted for her?
Punching the bulkhead wall angrily, Anneke turned left, heading for the Hub. She soon realised she had made a grave mistake. She had assumed there was only one invincible monster aboard, shredding humans. But there were three of them and they were stalking her. Now that she had reset the scanner for noise trace and Doppler movement, she realised they were herding her and this meant they knew she was scanning them. They were not just mindless animals. It made sense. They were probably automata, left to guard the platform like antibodies in a human’s bloodstream. She was a virus being hunted down.
Anneke broke into a headlong run. The things, whatever they were, did not have a turn of speed. They were relentless, so they did not need it. Her only chance was to stay ahead of them.
She reached the Hub, vaporising the bulkhead door and neutralising several low-level booby traps as she travelled. The AI stood before her, the size and shape of a fuzzy-edged tree. An Old Empire supercomputer, an earlier generation of AI, a ‘bush’ brain that used micromanipulators to handle laser communicators using non-visible light. The walls were signal receptors.
But Anneke had little time. According to her scanner, the three predators were converging. Jacking into the main console, she scanned for the lost coordinates. And found them. Just like that.
Anneke frowned. Something was wrong.
‘Too easy?’ she muttered to herself. ‘Too easy always means “trap”.’
‘You are looking for the lost coordinates,’ boomed a synthesised voice.
Anneke started. She had not realised computers had voices back then. Silly, really. Why not?
‘I am,’ she replied.
The voice made her uneasy. It was like talking to a god, or how she imagined it might be.
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Why are the coordinates not encrypted or protected?’
‘The encryption was broken several hours ago by someone who faced the fear of his life. The coordinates’ location has been downloaded. There is now no further need for concealment.’
‘Who did this?’
‘An Etark and a human.’
‘Describe the human.’
The AI gave an accurate description of the mole’s most recent renovation.
He’s obviously had a renno. ‘Is he still here?’ Anneke asked.
‘No.’
‘You don’t know where he went?’
‘Arcadia. Cloud City.’
‘Why? What’s there?’
‘You know what is there.’
‘The first coordinates?’
The AI did not answer. The three red blips on her scanner caught Anneke’s attention. They were close. Too close. It was time to go.
But one last question …
‘What are those things out there?’
‘THMEs. Transmogrified humans. Massively enhanced.’
Anneke had heard rumours of such creatures. ‘They were once human?’
‘Yes.’
‘What are they now?’
‘Killing machines.’
She downloaded the coordinates and got out quickly. But not fast enough. As she darted along an exit corridor something slashed at her from a side passage. She screamed, feeling a hot pain in her arm, but kept going. Two hundred metres on she slowed to check her wound. Damn. It had trashed the field armour and bitten into her flesh, nicking an artery.
Anneke had to stop the blood flow, but the scanner showed a THME was lumbering in pursuit, closing the gap at its leisurely pace.
Well, she would die either way. She cauterised the wound with her laser and jabbed a pain-go stiletto into her leg, but that took too long. As she straightened and turned the THME charged her, bellowing with rage, triumph, or high spirits.
Anneke had a nightmare glimpse of a creature the size of a bear, covered in natural body armour, talons flexing, mandibles and jaws snapping like bolt-cutters. She dived aside, narrowly missing the blurred slashing arm that ended in razor-sharp talons several centimetres long. This ex-person was demented, not augmented. That was an advantage. Intelligence was always more frightening. Anneke wondered if the mole had left them.
I’llget you for that! flashed through her mind.
As she rolled to her feet the creature spat at her. The gob hit her in the face, narrowly missing her left eye. She cried out in pain but kept moving, ducking, picking up speed. It was only when she had pulled away, felt a momentary reprieve, that she realised she had almost been blinded in one eye. Her left eyebrow had frizzled away.
A quick glance at the scanner showed that the THMEs were trying to block off her escape route. Obviously, they knew about the docked craft. She sent a data burst to the suitcase AI on the scooter, giving it all the info she had amassed so far, including her present situation, and a warning.
Then she ran like she had never run before.
MAXIMUS figured he had less than thirty seconds to live, which was depressing. All his grand schemes for plunging the galaxy into war and chaos had come apart in this moment. He was going to die and no one would truly comprehend the sheer magnificent audacity of his dream. Such was life, and life was unfair. Maximus expected his life to start flashing before his eyes.
Although that didn’t happen, there were flashes.
‘We’ve got you zeroed, Mr Brown. Throw down your weapons and we’ll make this nice and quick.’
Maximus considered putting up resistance, but these thugs might go for the seven per cent premium. That would give him some breathing time.
He slowly unstrapped and unbuckled his armoury belt and tossed it away. Their sensors would tell them when he was done. He had other devices of course, as they would expect him to. Unfortunately, this assumption on their part would make them wary about collecting the premium. It would be safer to kill him, surely they had figured that out. How many bodies did he have to leave behind to ram that message home?
A burly man with red hair and a pale freckled face stepped into view. Behin
d him a slight man with Asian features peered from around the bend. The other two Maximus knew were there remained out of sight. That was bad, they were starting to take him as seriously as he deserved.
‘They said you were good,’ the freckle-faced man drawled. ‘They were wrong.’ He spat phlegm.
Maximus wanted to kill him where he stood. The effort to refrain cost him some composure.
‘There’s always someone better,’ he called back.
The other man laughed.
‘Not so cocksure now, hey, Mr Brown?’
‘Fool,’ hissed Freckles’ companion from behind him. ‘Eliminate him now before he kills you.’
The red-haired man turned and glared at his companion, though more in perplexity than anger.
‘But he’s worth more —’
Then came two bright flashes from behind Maximus’s tormentors.
The Asian man leapt into view, twisting in mid-air, bringing his gun up against an unseen assailant. A third flash caught him full in the chest and vaporised a hole the size of a melon. He was dead before he collapsed. Maximus didn’t know what was going on but decided he had to balance the books.
‘Hey, you!’
The red-haired man swung about, indecisive. Maximus flicked something at him, which landed on his neck, immediately starting to sizzle. The red-haired man screamed, clutched vainly at his throat, and died.
The Envoy-alien stepped into view. He eyed the red-haired corpse, noted the wound, then looked at Maximus’s left hand. The fingernail of the last finger, one of the prosthetics, was missing.
‘A nerve toxin?’ he surmised.
Maximus’s lips twitched in acknowledgement. He had no illusions that he was in the presence of one of the deadliest killers he had ever met face to face. The creature made Kilroy look like a clumsy toddler.
‘Turpelo,’ said Maximus.
Ah. One of the Prime Illegals. Efficient.’
‘What now?’ said Maximus.
It was uncanny how similar this creature was to the Envoy, as though they were twins. Perhaps they reproduced asexually; some kind of cloning or budding. Hell, all insects looked alike anyway.
