Armored-ARC

by John Joseph Adams

  “Why can’t you destroy it in simple spacesuits?” Falcone was growing more agitated as he checked the time. “Or shoot at it from your troop carrier?”

  Bridgie kicked the hollow Uutherum armor, producing a resounding clang. “Our armor—even this armor—has a composite coating that resists the spore’s implantation and digestive capabilities.”

  Wiping his forehead, Falcone glared. “Why not build the whole station out of it, then?”

  “It’d cost quadrillions. But you’re the official here, you sell it,” Bridgie said. “I’m just the specialist. And I’m not putting any of my Surge teams out there in suits that aren’t armored to survive incidental contact.”

  There wasn’t any point in explaining why firing away from space vessels wouldn’t work. Even the nervous administrator knew what had befallen the unlucky Gebran, years earlier. Laser shots that missed the nuclei just spread Spore chunks around so they could grow again. “What about the three other knockboxes out there? What’s in those?”

  “Groceries from Earth,” Falcone said, “headed for the human colonists on Porrima.”

  “And any aliens who can’t get enough of dark chocolate,” Temmons piped up. “I can call up the full inventory, if you want.”

  “No thanks,” the administrator growled, turning toward the exit. “I have an evacuation to start!”

  Seven kilometers. Just in the hour Bridgie and her crew had been unloading the Uutherum knockbox, the latest iteration of Skippy had grown to seven kilometers in radius. And, as the occasional quakes told everyone, that radius went not just laterally, but down, as well, into the guts of ASPEC’s asteroid. The rock was far too large a body to be fully undermined, as yet, but it was losing the battle.

  Bridgie was, too. As the manifest indicated, she’d accounted for enough Uutherum armor to encase thirty-two space starfish. The armor,and its various attachments, lay half-assembled across the cargo floor. Useless. O’Herlihy had looked at the wild possibility of cramming a human wearer inside: the central armor body was more than wide enough to accept a human torso, with arms and legs splayed outward through the side holes. But humans’ eyes were not where their tummies were—and no helmet on the station would marry to the fifth arm-hole opening. The sleeves for the arms were wide enough to permit a human head, but, as O’Herlihy had observed, it would be like wearing a dunce cap—pulled down over your face.

  “Wondrous diversity in the galaxy,” Bridgie said, defeated. “Nobody can use the same tailor.”

  “Let me work on something,” O’Herlihy responded. “If you don’t mind me breaking a few of these.”

  Bridgie felt a light rumble beneath her boots. “No, go ahead.”

  Remembering the one remaining container inside, Bridgie re-entered the knockbox. Temmons was still there, messing with the big dodecahedron. “Got anything, Q/A?”

  “Cue hay?” A simulated human voice responded from the onyx device. “What deviltry be this?”

  “What the hell?”

  Temmons ran his hand over the pentagonal screen and grinned. “It’s the Uutherum’s idea of an English error message. I kind of like it.”

  Bridgie rolled her eyes. With so much new knowledge coming from the skies, Earthbound linguists were determined to give other species everything they needed to be able to communicate. More often than not, their zeal to play a major role in space travel had resulted in them providing way too much information. The result was that the knowglobes—the not-really globular databases that Signatory cultures sent each other—were programmed to communicate using just about every word that had ever been in the English tongue, regardless of current usage. After all, many of their own languages had stopped evolving centuries before.

  “Prithee, dude, what’s up?” hummed the console.

  “We don’t have time for this,” Bridgie said. Who ever would have time for it, she wondered. Temmons muted the interface and punched up a series of schematics. The pictures spoke better than the words, the chief found: one image after another of the proper donning and operation of the Uutherum armor. For an Uutherum, that is.

  Bridgie knelt for a moment and stared at the image. She had seen an Uutherum before, but never really looked at one carefully. Humanity, long so anxious to find the universe in its own image, was still dealing with a serious case of letdown. There were no bipedal humanoid creatures in the Orion Arm, no cute and cuddly aliens. Precious few could share the same air and gravity, even with environment suits.

  The Uutherum donning the armor in the image looked to Bridgie more like something she’d seen under a microscope in university. So strange, to watch the spongy mass slipping into its encasement, plugging contacts into its mushy center before slipping its tendril-tipped arms through the slots into the conical gauntlets. It required a second Uutherum to affix the front and back discs, sealing the unit. Bridgie watched to the end of the sequence, where the Uutherum spun in mid-methane, operating its attitude control thrusters and wielding, with surprising accuracy, its laser attachments.

  Yes, they would be good to have around against Skippy, Bridgie thought. Just not here. There weren’t any methane oceans near ASPEC for the Spore to threaten. Just an asteroid, which seemed to be rumbling its disapproval again of its rude visitor.

  “Temmons, you’ve been looking at this longer than I have. Is any of their armor dual-purpose? Can we kit-bash something between their stuff and what we have on the transport?”

  “No, but I did find out that starfish are part of the class Asteroidea,” the kid said. “That’s not relevant, but it’s certainly interesting. You know, because we’re on an asteroid.”

  “Remind me to send you back to your parents,” she said, smoldering. If we don’t get digested first. “Schematic is up,” she yelled over her shoulder. “O’Herlihy! Tell us what you need!”

  “A pelvis three times as wide!”

  Bridgie turned from the knowglobe screen to see yet another odd sight: her hundred-plus kilo sidekick, his beefy torso encased in the central Uutherum armor piece. Two crewmates supported O’Herlihy, whose legs poked through the unit, straddling the space between the openings at an obviously painful angle.

  The chief could barely suppress her laughter. “I don’t think you have the crotch for that outfit.”

  “Not if I ever want to have children,” O’Herlihy said, grinding his teeth. “Get me up on something, guys.” With an effort made difficult not by his weight, but by the awkward shape, his colleagues hefted the encased specialist on top of a meter-high surface in the knockbox. O’Herlihy promptly fell backwards, leaving him staring at the metal ceiling. “I’ll be all right,” he said. “Just bury me this way.”

  “We may have to!” Bridgie stepped over to examine her partner. “Too bad they don’t make automobiles anymore. You could be a mascot for a tire company.” With the circular openings at the center, it really did look like he was wearing a metal wheel.

  O’Herlihy gasped, struggling to get comfortable. “You can’t walk with it on—but with the attitude jets on the Uutherum arm pieces, we ought to be able to hover out there.”

  “Arms on your legs and head, too,” Temmons said. “You won’t be able to see!”

  O’Herlihy’s head jerked. “You want to wear this, kid?”

  “No thanks.”

  Bridgie thought for a moment. “We’ll worry about that later,” she said, turning to fish around in the gear that Falcone had sent down. “Is there room for an air tank in there with you, Mike? It looks like it bulges in spots.”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  Snapping open his shell, Bridgie found ample room at O’Herlihy’s side to deposit an oxygen tank. Poking the rebreather in his mouth, Bridgie winked. “Sorry about this. It was your idea.”

  His expletive in response was inaudible.

  With the help of her comrades, Bridgie fastened the long, tapering Uutherum arm cones first over O’Herlihy’s legs, and then his arms. The sensor disc sealed off the hole at his midsection; there was
nothing to attach the probes to inside, but she figured this was indignity enough. The small thruster assembly sealed the opening on the back of the unit. Finally, trying not to meet his glare as she did so, she brought down the shroud of the fifth arm over his head.

  “Seals activated,” she said. “Can you see anything in there?”

  “No,” he replied, the muffled sound barely audible through the casing.

  Studying the schematics at the knowglobe, Temmons called out to the entombed soldier. “Mike, are the servos working? If the armor’s online, you ought to be able to work the arm attachments with your hands.” The Q/A looked awkwardly at his boss. “Avoid the lasers, if you can.”

  It wasn’t a problem. “No, nothing,” he said—or so it sounded.

  Bridgie cracked open the seal on the shroud over his head. Spitting out the rebreather, O’Herlihy spoke more intelligibly. “There are lights that I can see inside the gauntlet over my head. They blinked on when you made the initial seal—and then blinked off.”

  “I knew this was crazy,” Bridgie said. “The thing wants something else. Maybe those sensors are wanting to plug into an Uutherum brain in his belly or something.” Bridgie pounded her fist on the armor. “This is pointless. There’s nothing we can jury-rig here if we can’t get these things to activate!” Feeling another rumble beneath—this one followed by an emergency klaxon—she looked to see Temmons scanning another schematic with interest. “Got any miracles?”

  The teenager slapped the knowglobe. “No sweat!”

  “Don’t you start with the ancient lingo!”

  “No,” Temmons said, indicating the visual display before him. “The operator’s manual says the problem is that you’re not sweating.”

  “Sure I am,” O’Herlihy said, straining. “Dammit, we all are.”

  “I mean, you’re not perspiring the right kind of stuff.” Temmons rocked the squat knowglobe around on its pentagonal bottom to show what he was seeing. “When they’re outside of their habitat, Uutherum excrete their own private atmospheres through their skin—or scales, or whatever.”

  Bridgie looked. “That’s handy. And unpleasant.”

  Temmons swept his hand across the device again, calling up a cutaway visual of an Uutherum spawn, bobbing inside armor filled with a dark liquid. “It’s not a suit. It’s an aquarium!”

  Struggling to see, O’Herlihy groaned. “Who would design a suit like that?”

  “We would,” Bridgie said. “They’re environment suits, just like ours. Our suits wouldn’t activate if the diagnostics found a problem with the oxygen supply.” Her brow furrowed. “So what are the suits expecting to find in there?”

  Temmons flipped to another schematic. “Glycerine.”

  Bridgie’s crew burst out in incredulous laughter. “The explosive stuff?”

  “No,” Temmons said, “that’s something else. It’s also called glycerol. Sugary. Comes out of their fat.” He pointed to an entry on the screen. “Apparently the Uuthersuits are looking for the wearer to be in a suspension of glycerol—or something like it.”

  “Sweating sugar.”

  “As they live and breathe.”

  Bridgie tossed the spare arm to the floor. “No heads—and living off their body odor. What the hell kind of allies are these?”

  “I don’t know,” Temmons said, “but if I were starting a candy company, I might want a few Uutherum around.”

  Bridgie crossed the room to the knowglobe and looked at the schematic. Manufactured by the same foundry that forged the armor she used every day, the Uuthersuits seemed a confused mess inside. “Maybe we can deactivate the circulation system?”

  “I don’t think so. It’s tied in with the whole life support set-up,” Temmons said, standing. “I wouldn’t know where to begin.” Clasping his hands before his mouth, the boy blew into them and rocked on his heels.

  Bridgie had known Q/A long enough to recognize defeat in her staff brain. “I think we’re screwed,” she said, listening to the klaxon sound again. Either Skippy had gotten closer, or it was digging dangerously far into the substrate of the asteroid. Seconds later, Falcone confirmed it over the public address system. Outside the knockbox, the evacuation was complete. Her specialists were the only ones left on ASPEC.

  “Get out while you can, Yang,” Falcone said, voice booming through an empty station. Bridgie shuddered a little to be addressed personally in such a manner. They really were the last ones.

  They’d lose this round, she realized. Looking at the armor pieces around her, she wondered what the Uutherum did when all was lost. Kneeling by the knowglobe, Bridgie scrolled back to the images of the creatures. A recording showed Uutherum valiantly—if they understood valor—battling the Spore in a methane sea. In an asteroid belt, much like the one they were in now. In the thin purple clouds of some foreign planet, acting in concert with…

  …something else.

  “Wait a minute.” Bridgie said. “What’s that?” Fumbling with the touch-sensitive controls, she gave up and activated the voice interface. “Frame that recording back ten seconds!”

  “All-righty, then,” the knowglobe responded.

  Bridgie watched the stellar starfish spiraling away from an engagement with the Spore—even as a huge, snakelike figure soared toward danger on propulsion rockets of its own. “Hold,” she said, touching the image. “What is that?”

  “An Uutherum,” the knowglobe responded. “Natch.”

  Bridgie enlarged the image on the display. Of course.

  “Give me the files on Uutherum, Life Cycle of,” she instructed the device. She looked over to O’Herlihy, struggling to extricate himself from the armor. “Wait a minute, Mike. We may have something!”

  “What the hell is that smell?” Falcone said as he stepped off the shuttle and into the station he’d abandoned hours before. It had taken a while to return following the all-clear signal; still longer to study the asteroid’s new maw where the barracks had been. Indeed, Seven-Alpha was gone without a trace. Now, he was first to return to ASPEC—and anxious to find its savior.

  Certain he would find Chief Yang in the EVA ready room, Falcone was surprised to find the sickly sweet smell growing stronger as he approached. Sticky marks dotted the floor and some of the walls. Touching a spot on a doorjamb, the administrator brought his fingers to his nose.

  “Sorry about the mess,” Bridgie said. “We didn’t think you’d mind.” Falcone looked inside to see her sitting at a bench, bluish-black hair completely smeared with a shiny substance. Behind her, members of Surge Teams One through Four tossed greasy ragged clothing to the floor, en route to the bathing stations.

  “Yang! What in the world?”

  “Did you see it?”

  “Yes, the Spore is gone. But how?” He looked at her tunic, sagging with the brownish liquid. “And what happened to you?”

  Bridgie laughed. “Then you didn’t see what we did. Hold on.” Fumbling for her personal viewpad, she cued up a video sequence. Wiping the screen clean as best as she could, she handed it to the administrator. “We had Temmons record the mission from the transport.”

  Falcone watched first in anticipation—and then, stunned silence. As the Spore quaked and burbled, a shadowy mass entered the scene. Not one Uutherum, but thirty-two—connected midsection to midsection, like vertebrae in a spine. All trailing the head of the serpent, a larger pyramidal structure with melon-sized transparent orbs on each face.

  “The armor was for individual Uutherum,” Bridgie explained, running a hand through her knotted mass of hair. “But they’re not born as individuals. They’re segments of the Uutherum parent—or queen, if you will.”

  “A big snake!”

  “Sort of. The ‘starfish’ live as part of the parent until they fall off the tail, so to speak. But if there’s trouble, they can run back to mama.”

  “So where do the Uutherum parents come from?”

  “The stork. Who cares?” Bridgie gestured to the video. “The fact is, we knew th
at we couldn’t see anything from inside the Uutherum’s armor—and that there wasn’t any other way to look outside. But then I saw the queen. That was what was in the buried container way at the front of the knockbox—the armor for the queen.”

  “The head of the snake.” Falcone wiped the screen with his fingers and squinted. “Someone could fit inside there?”

  “I did, anyway,” Bridgie said. “Had to sit in a lotus position until my legs fell asleep. But at least I could see. The queen does have eyes, of a sort. So the head had portholes. And once we started hooking the others onto the back of the head, I discovered I had command-in-control systems for the whole length up there.” She nodded to Temmons, who leaned against the far wall, admiring the female Specialists as they headed for the showers. “Q/A found the instructions on the Uutherum knowglobe and helped me figure it all out on my headset.”

  Falcone watched the recording as the giant armored serpent lumbered into the space above the asteroid, carried along on multiple jets. Jerking violently at first, the fused Uutherum armor’s movements soon became smooth. Circling the Spore, the lengthy figure paused for a moment—before firing one laser after another into the maw below.

  “Those shots are coming from the segments,” Falcone said.

  “They’re coming from your Surge Team,” she said.

  “You’re kidding,” he said, looking at the door to the bathing station. “They were all with you up there? Stuffed inside those little compartments?”

  “Where they couldn’t see,” Bridgie said, becoming a little amused as she realized the scope of the feat. “Once we started hooking the segments together, we realized that the queen didn’t carry any of the weaponry—her ‘kids’ did. And the system wouldn’t work unless there were warm bodies in the armor. So I had to carry them all along for the ride.” She looked at the writhing image on the screen, dealing death to the Spore. “The whole thing was inspired by those costume things on Earth—you know, the Chinese dragons.”

  Falcone blinked, amazed. “Your idea, Yang?”