Sean Dalton - Operation StarHawks 03 - Beyond the Void

by Sean Dalton - [Operation StarHawks 03]

  About then he heard footsteps. Kelly froze, his breath locking up in his lungs. He pressed his back to the wall and strained to listen. At first all he got were echoes, then his hearing sorted through them and he determined that they were coming his way from the direction he was heading.

  He could reverse direction, but Kelly’s stubbornness made him hold his ground.

  His heart, however, was jumping erratically. He didn’t want to admit he was afraid. But he had to. It could be another damned warbot hunting for him, and he knew he didn’t have a prayer against one of those. Still, he didn’t run for it.

  The footsteps stopped, and that worried Kelly even more. He listened for what seemed like an eternity, aware that he was probably being picked up on a scanner but still unwilling to start making noise until he had to.

  He closed his eyes a moment, regulating his breathing and trying to pull himself under control. He realized he was gripping the circuit interrupter too hard and consciously loosened his fingers around it.

  Just as his nerves were about to unravel, the footsteps started up again. They were irregular, sometimes rapid, sometimes slow. Kelly frowned. Somehow they didn’t seem to belong to a machine.

  Eagerness leapt inside him, but he reined himself in. Something alive and fugitive didn’t mean it was friendly. He’d seen what the Visci looked like, but there could be other, equally hostile species aboard this city-ship. If it should be one, his circuit interrupter wasn’t going to be of much use.

  Kelly eased along silently until his shoulder pressed against a small bulkhead rib. That would hide him until X was almost on him. Maybe. He hugged the wall, trying to flatten himself as much as possible.

  The footsteps halted again and stayed quiet for so long that Kelly’s nerves were screaming by the time X finally started coming. Kelly tensed himself. Just as X came even with him, Kelly sprang, grasping the wrist of X’s knife hand and stepping in close to land a couple of hard chops to the throat and ribs while X was still reacting.

  He heard a grunt and grasped a thatch of wiry hair. Kelly brought up his knee as he pulled X’s head down. There was a satisfying thud and X sagged. The knife clattered upon the floor. Kelly hobbled back, his knee aching, and looked for the knife. He couldn’t find it in the gloom.

  His quarry lay facedown on the floor, but Kelly had already determined he was human. Cautiously he knelt, wishing the light were better, and reached through the gloom for X’s shoulder. X, however, snaked out an arm and grabbed Kelly by the throat, heaving him over in a fierce roll to his back. Suddenly, not quite sure how it had happened, Kelly found himself on the bottom and X on top. X was throttling him. Kelly thrashed and did his best to pry X’s fingers off his throat. His ears roared; the gloom began to swim around him. Kelly brought up the circuit interrupter to X’s carotid and zapped him with it.

  It was a low voltage current and couldn’t do much harm, but it startled X. His grip loosened, and Kelly kicked him in the stomach, thrusting him back. Kelly scrambled up, heaving for breath. His throat felt like mashed gristle.

  “Now, you blob-lover, try some of this—”

  “Boss!”

  Just in time Kelly held his punch. He blinked in the gloom, trying to see X’s face. But he didn’t have to. Only one person in the galaxy called him that.

  “Caesar?”

  “Yeah!”

  Caesar loomed close and gripped his shoulders with a gleeful shake. “Yusus, you nearly scared me to death, jumping out of the dark like that! You okay? I thought by now you were probably chopped liver.”

  “Almost,” said Kelly. He massaged his aching throat. “That was the sloppiest Kramer flip I’ve ever seen executed.”

  “Worked, didn’t it? Caught you like a flat.”

  “Yes,” said Kelly ruefully, “it did.”

  “I’d like my prong back,” said Caesar.

  Kelly crouched at once and began to feel along the floor. “It slid out of sight down here somewhere.”

  Caesar knelt and searched with him. “Got it! You could have rimmed out my guts at one point. Instead you tried to electrocute me.”

  Kelly showed him the circuit interrupter. “I was cleaned out, prong and all. This was all I could find. You want a probe?”

  “No, but Phila will.”

  “Phila! How many of the others have you found?”

  “Zip,” said Caesar. “Phila and I were caged together. She got us out of that little playhouse, and so far we’ve figured out the teleport grids and part of how this place is laid out. Most of it is dock pods and hangars. There’s a vast central control area. Then everything else is storage and labs.”

  “Good work.”

  Caesar shrugged. “Phila’s the one who plugged into the central system and got all the information. Not that she’s brilliant or anything. It took her a while to get the hang of binary. She nearly brought down the emergency seal bulkheads at first. And there are a lot of surveillance tabs. It’s a very suspicious system. She has to keep exiting every few seconds and finding another route of communication in.”

  “So where is she?”

  Caesar jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Back that way. She says the prisoner holding pens are this way, the way you came from. I was going to reconnoiter.”

  “I don’t like leaving her on her own,” said Kelly. “I want us to stick together. Let’s go get her. Then we’ll find the others.”

  “Yo.”

  Getting to his feet, Caesar took the lead along the service corridor.

  “We got loose. You got loose. You know something? I don’t think these robots are all that smart. I mean, they’re armed, some of them, and they have surveillance all over the place. But they don’t seem to have any AI in their programming. So it’s not that hard to step around them if you have to. Also, in the main corridors you’re likely to run into some that have been switched off. Like they don’t have a job to do at the moment and have been shut down to conserve energy or something.”

  “Makes sense,” said Kelly.

  “Yo, but it gives me the creepilworts. This whole place has nothing but machines rolling around in it. Makes you wonder who built it, a race of machines?”

  “The machines have masters,” said Kelly grimly.

  “But where? Is this place run by remote control, or what?”

  “No, the Visci are on board. Have you seen any robots carrying boxes?”

  “What kind of box?” said Caesar, glancing back.

  Kelly gestured with his hands to indicate size. Caesar nodded.

  “Once. So?”

  “So a Visci was inside. They’re something between a liquid and a gas. The robots carry them around and speak for them.”

  “And they feel like warm pudding.”

  Kelly frowned. “What’s that? You’ve encountered one?”

  “Sort of. We didn’t know what it was and we didn’t stop to chat. Not exactly candidates for the Alliance standard of beauty, are they?”

  Kelly didn’t feel like joking. “No. You were lucky. I watched one kill 41.”

  “What? You serious?” Caesar turned around and stopped. His face was a pale blur in the gloom. “41’s dead?”

  “Yes. The Visci smothered him. It was deliberate, cold-blooded murder.”

  “ Yusus,” said Caesar softly. “I always figured old 41 had as many lives as a cat. I—I’m sorry, boss.”

  Kelly nodded and looked away, his throat working. As soon as he could manage his voice, he said, “They intend to invade Earth and take it over as their new home planet. Some kind of plague is killing them where they come from.”

  “Now that’s just too bad. They can go squat on somebody else’s world.”

  Kelly grasped Caesar’s shoulder. “We’re going to stop them. Whatever it takes, their plan ends here.”

  Caesar’s gaze met his. “I get you, boss. Will do.”

  The translation system reported unauthorized queries coming through the lines, but no trace back had as yet been accomplished.
Maon applied the proper pressure and eyes opened. It remained difficult to adjust to seeing through such distorted vision, requiring reflected light, inversion, and binocular coordination. Periphery was limited, making it necessary to turn the head in order to scan. Even then, head movement was limited, making it necessary to turn the entire body in order to scan completely.

  Long ago, it had been a mark of great strength to ride a Svetzin. Before age and before the plague. Now, it was harder to maintain control. And some of the patterns were different than memory told, bringing puzzlement and sometimes confusion. Had Svetzin changed so much? Evolved so quickly? There was no longer a bifold lobe at the rear of the brain to grasp. Without its centralization, control was made more difficult, for separate centers of the brain had to be located and pressured.

  Sensory impressions had also changed. Too many scents proved a distraction. This Svetzin did not seem as strong as its ancestors. Heart raced blood too fast, upsetting brain patterns with excessive oxidation. Lungs had voluntary and involuntary muscles in the way of humans, making control harder. Muscle spasms also distracted. This Svetzin was a fighter. Once Maon would have relished the challenge; now it made an annoyance.

  But the freedom from a carrier created great satisfaction. Freedom from that box, that prison, even for the short while this body could remain alive was worth all annoyance and effort. Soon, there would be an end to all dependence, and the Visci could be free in the oceans of Earth.

  Soon. Soon.

  Maon gave the command, and right hand touched a control. A screen lit, and eyes absorbed information.

  “Unauthorized data transfer routed to repair unit 1101010 in service corridor 000011.”

  The translator took the command straight into binary: “Seek and cancel data transfer.”

  Cancellation came at once. Maon watched intently. Seconds later a new unauthorized data transfer began. The trace reported a different line of use. Maon canceled it. Seconds later data transfer began again. Again on a different line.

  Maon considered this. A deeper trace went out, checking all the lines of use, and Maon discovered the data transfer still originated at the same repair unit. An intelligence was manipulating the simple programming of the library computer.

  Maon stood and turned the body about. Two carriers waited nearby with siblings Suol and Kaen. Maon dispatched a trio of fighters to catch the intelligence and identify it.

  Speak Maon: “If human, it will bear out my theories on the resourcefulness of this species.”

  Speak Suol: “We disagree. Humans are not the threat you consider.”

  Speak Kaen: “They are parasites. Weak. Unaware of us. They would make useful servants and should remain upon the planet.”

  Speak Maon: “They must be destroyed. We have observed their capacity for resistance.”

  Speak Suol: “Why have they been captured so easily? Their behavior pattern shows they have limited experience with superior life forms. Once frightened by immersion contact, they serve without resistance.”

  Speak Kaen: “They are not significant from the other species that we have observed with them.”

  Speak Maon: “They are devious and stubborn. They resist the idea of serving. Even frightened, they will resist. We could never trust them. Much energy would be wasted watching them. They must be destroyed. I have guided the work of Holborn. His antidote for our affliction will in turn become the biotoxin that will destroy humans. The retro-virus injected into the DNA code of these samples—”

  Maon’s translator overrode it, sending an alert in rapid binary. The intelligence had escaped. The fighters required instructions.

  Maon gave a search and locate command and returned to the discussion with its siblings.

  Speak Suol: “You live in the past. Dreams of old greatness, even dreams of riding lesser beings such as this body you inhabit. There is danger in this practice. We are beyond bodies.”

  Anger touched Maon. It almost broke the speech pattern by saying, “Then why do we need them so much?” but it waited for Kaen’s turn.

  Speak Kaen: “Agreed. It is unwise to go so far without your carrier and habitation.”

  Speak Maon: “Prison! I, hate the box!”

  Speak Suol: “Discipline yourself, sibling. Our task is greater than personal emotion. We have searched time for generations; now our task is soon accomplished. Nothing must jeopardize our victory.”

  Speak Kaen: “Agreed.”

  Speak Maon: “I have not lost the task. I have ever kept it before me. It is foolish to accuse me of less just because I see need for eliminating the humans. Our plan will go forward. No changes from the program I have set. Agreed?”

  Silence.

  In its rage Maon lost partial control, and the body went into spasms.

  Two. Separate. I am—

  One!

  Maon regained control, but the spasms continued in a light series, irritating Maon who was not ready to surrender this ride so soon. Only a Svetzin was strong enough to be ridden, and in this time there were no more Svetzin besides this one unit. It must endure longer.

  Speak Maon: “Agreed?”

  Speak Suol reluctantly: “Agreed.”

  But Kaen did not speak. Its carrier bore it away.

  Maon let it go. Kaen had fertilized and was close to reproducing. Kaen had never been very reliable. Had it not threatened the triad of family, Maon would have wished Kaen to go inert.

  Suol’s carrier brought it closer. Disapproval from Suol’s thoughts touched Maon, but Suol had not leave to speak in the broken pattern, and Maon did not reestablish a new one. Maon needed its attention elsewhere, for there was much to be done before launch.

  Kelly held his breath and squirmed deeper into the cavity beneath the floor. Above him a warbot clumped back and forth in a search pattern. Its scanner must be fairly primitive or else its instructions were incomplete. Obviously it had found Kelly for it kept circling over his hiding place, but it seemed not to know what else to do.

  Kelly, however, wanted its weaponry. Clutching the circuit interrupter in a sweaty hand, Kelly eased his legs up beneath him. From this angle he could see a jack bolt on the right heel of the warbot, for recharging. That’s what he had to hit with the interrupter.

  Small target. One chance.

  He swallowed, his heart beating hard. In his mind he tried to stay loose, not put too much pressure on himself, not lock up.

  It was turning, walking away. Wait ... wait ... now.

  He came up in a surge, his arm and shoulder hitting the floor grille and knocking it open with a crash. He was just centimeters away from the warbot’s heel. It turned at the torso and aimed at him. Kelly jammed the interrupter upon the jack bolt.

  Blue fire sizzled around his hand. The warbot froze in that twisted position, its right weapon still aimed at Kelly. Its headlights went out.

  Relief swamped Kelly. He scrambled out of the hole and made a kick jump at the warbot, sending it toppling with a crash that would probably bring a whole squadron of rusty buckets coming. Using the probe, Kelly opened its torso plate and swiftly disconnected the power pack before it could switch over to auxiliary batteries and reactivate the warbot. He swiveled off the left forearm, which was really a plasma launcher. Tucking the power pack under his arm, he hooked up the launcher and was in business.

  Wasting no more time, he starting running up the service corridor.

  Caesar was sixty meters ahead of Kelly and in trouble. The plan had been to split up in hopes that a warbot would follow each of them. The first had gone after Kelly. But the remaining two stayed on Caesar’s tail, ignoring Phila. Now that was discrimination, if he ever saw it. What was this, pick on men and leave women alone day?

  He had barely managed to scramble up here into the ceiling struts where cables and loose wiring tangled everywhere. He figured they wouldn’t shoot so freely where there was a chance of damaging circuitry. But his little scoot up the access ladder hadn’t been quite fast enough to avoid getting one leg sc
orched pretty badly. It hurt enough to make him cry out, and cold chills of shock kept running through him, throwing off his concentration.

  So here he was, one little ape up on the monkey bars, and it took only-one slip or one grab of a non-insulated cable to say bye-bye to Mrs. Samms’ red-haired boy.

  He had his prong and a probe. Neither was much good against a pair of black, metallic giants with blasters for hands. But even giants had their weak spot. He stared bleakly down at the tops of their heads and wondered what it was.

  Kelly had said be quiet, not alert the whole place to what was going on. But, hell, these tin cans had shot first. One of them now aimed upward with extreme care. Caesar could see the muzzle dilating down to a small aperture, which meant the warbot intended to fry him between the eyes with a millimeter-thin beam of plasma.

  “Not so dumb after all,” muttered Caesar, and scrambled precariously among the struts to a new perch.

  The warbots shifted ponderously beneath him, scanning. Caesar opened his tunic and peeled a skin bandage off his rib cage. He had to bite back a yelp. It had been on there too long and it took a little hide with it. But the slim, finger-length capsule looked just as new as the day he’d stolen it from the munitions lab back on Station 4. He’d kept it all this time, afraid to use it because nitrax-5 was as dangerous as a sun going nova. It wasn’t in usage yet because the lab boys couldn’t figure out how to make it safe for the user. Caesar had itched to have one, just one capsule, simply because it existed. He’d seen the demo tapes of its tests. It made a contained explosion, small in radius compared to its power. Beautiful. If set off inside a metal container, it expanded the metal, then contracted it so the box had a tiny, crumpled appearance. Very neat.

  But another demo tape showed that the same-size capsule blew the same-size metal container to such micro bits that the whole lab rained ash. That was the tape that had to be edited to remove footage of the technician who left a few body parts lying around.

  Caesar swallowed hard, beginning to sweat. A fifty-fifty chance at best. Who knew what age did to this little bomb? Who cared? He couldn’t wait.