Victory at all costs (Spinward Book 3)

by Rupert Segar

  “Can you give me a close up of blister on his left forearm, doctor?” said the medic.

  Robert held his scanner over the swelling and relayed the visual to the medic’s pad. The image was fascinatingly grotesque: at the top of the swelling the skin was stretched so tight that it was almost transparent, revealing the wiggling of the larvae inside.

  “I think this one is about to hatch,” said Dr Robert. “The blisters take about twenty-four hours to produce a new brood of mosquitoes, all of them infected with the space leprosy virus.”

  “And the blood test?” said the medic, making notes on his pad.

  Dr Robert used a hypo syringe to extract 10 millilitres of Garth’s blood. The medic could see the blood filling the small plastiform tube. Robert snapped the blood filled cylinder out of the syringe and held it up on his side of the window.

  “I’m going to put this sample in the small airlock below this window,” said Dr Robert, reaching down. Instead of putting the blood sample he had just taken into the airlock, Dr Robert swapped it for another.

  “Unfortunately, the gamma and delta rays used in the sanitising cycle will kill any viruses or bacteria in the bloodstream, but they’ll still be detectable.”

  Four hours later, the mailbox sized hatch just below the window opened. The medic retrieved his blood sample from the tray inside and promptly left, along with the rest of the platoon. As soon as their ground vehicle cleared the lane, a small crowd crammed into the isolation ward.

  “I think that’s the last we’ll see of them,” said Robert peeling off the cosmetic blisters from the colonel’s chest. “Marines are as tough as they come but no-one wants to catch leprosy. That close up you showed him was a nice touch. How did you do it?”

  “It wasn’t us, it was the Sentinel on board our ship,” said Thistle.

  “We accessed Dr Gomez’s library and the Sentinel did the rest,” said Nigeal.

  “But your ship is in high orbit, what about the time delay?” asked the Intendant.

  “We don’t do time delays, we have alien technology,” said Nigeal, smiling. The Sentinel hijacked the scanner’s signal at the precise moment that Dr Robert held it over the fake cyst. Those wiggling bugs looked really creepy.”

  “Don’t forget my fake blood sample,” said Dr Alicia Gomez. “Extracting a few million merozoites from Dr Robert’s blood and mixing them in with Garth’s wasn’t exactly simple.”

  “Thanks for the reminder I’m still infected with leprosy parasites, Alicia,” groaned Robert.

  “You’ll be alright as long as you keep taking the tablets.”

  +++

  One day later, Robert and Alicia were both hunched over a table vid screen in the surgery. They were looking at blood samples.

  “This is an original blood sample. I’ve taken a dozen of these for further studies,” said Alicia. “Here are the four legged spider mites in Garth’s blood.”

  The screen changed. The molecular microscope showed a moving stream of red corpuscles and spider mites.

  “And this is when I mixed in the merozoite parasites from your blood stream.”

  “That was the sample I switched for the medic?” asked Robert.

  “Not exactly, this was a much bigger sample of Garth’s blood. I took a tube full and gave it a quick gamma blast to kill the bugs and to make sure they were all still detectable. We wouldn’t want the marines coming back for a second sample, would we?”

  “So what am I looking for?”

  “This,” said Alicia, as she swiped the screen to reveal the next recording. “This morning, I decided to check on the bigger sample.”

  Some of the spider mites were clinging onto the red corpuscles. As Robert looked, one of the corpuscles ruptured. The blood cell was destroyed, but so was the spider mite, its four legs floating separately in the wreckage.

  “Are the spiders killing the leprosy parasite?” asked Robert.

  “No, I think it’s the other way round,” said Alicia. “The merozoite parasite is destroying the spider mite. There are hundred times more infected red corpuscles that there are spider mites. Now, look at this.” Alicia swiped the screen. “This is the blood sample at the moment.”

  The vid screen showed stream of red corpuscles and not a single spider mite.

  “Looks like we’ve got a cure for Colonel Garth,” said Alicia.

  “Looks like you have found a cure for everyone who’s been taken over by spiders,” said Robert.

  +++

  A week later the royal flitter set down outside the leprosy clinic at Nassau Keys. Robert and Alicia were met outside by a small team of technicians. They had been tasked with collecting as many Iberian mosquitoes they could find.

  Colonel Garth’s prized metal cylinder, his gift for Lady Thea sat in the bottom of a sealed inspection tank that contained a cloud of whining mosquitoes. A robotic grip lowered onto the chrome lid and slowly turned it anticlockwise. The grip lifted the lid off the side plate sized container to reveal a nest of spiders. There were three arachnids, 10 millimetres across, but there were thousands of tiny spider mites that could only be seen individually in the close up view on the vid screen besides the tank. For a moment, nothing happened; the spiders sat immobile while the cloud of mosquitoes hovered in the upper half of the tank. Then it was all out war; the mosquitoes dive bombed the spiders’ nest. At first, they attacked the three biggest spiders, which were trying to get out of the cylinder. A flying curtain of mosquitoes wrapped itself around on of the spiders as it fell out of the chromium tank. The spider’s eight legs twitched but its body lay still. The mosquitoes despatched the other two big arachnids while the tiny spider mites scattered across the floor of the inspection tank. The mosquitoes took to the air once more, circling above the floor like a dark mist. As one, the attacking insects settled on the ground and began feeding on the tiny spiders.

  “I told you they liked spiders,” said Alicia.

  “We need to start a breeding programme for the Iberian mosquito,” said Robert.

  Chapter 26: Shadow in the Pool

  At one end of the hall of the Pools of Light, there was moaning and wailing coming from a group of alien nuns. Their broad faces turned from side to side as they grumbled and groused. Every minute or so, one of the nuns would open her mouth and shriek before dropping her head and closing her eyes. The sisters from the Order of Creation were sat around one the pools a cylinder of what looked like water, one-meter-high and a metre-and-a-half across. From the ceiling there was a shaft of light splashing down onto the pools wave covered surface. The nuns’ faces were dappled with reflected light. There was another shriek which finished with a gurgling and a moan.

  “How long are they going to keep it up?” said Becky Bhuna. “I wish we’d never moved in here.”

  “They are trying to pin down the beast in the pool or whatever it was that attacked the two sisters,” said Lea.

  “Well, couldn’t they do it more quietly?”

  Becky and Lea Whey had set up an office at the other end of the Pool of Lights. They had found a long table and were using alien footstools as chairs. Lea, the former librarian who had discovered the true cause of the forthcoming galactic catastrophe, had installed an omniocular at one end of the table. The device used entropic reading from across the galaxy to predict the future. It looked like a dolls’ house version of one of the pools. Like the pools, the omniocular’s surface showed a pattern of waves but, unlike the pools, it displayed a variety of colours. Lea had set the machine to continuously repeat the near future, the blue and green wavelets with white breakers would dance across the surface with increasing agitation until they turned dark. There was a scattering of blue and green but mostly in was black. The omniocular would reset itself and replay the sequence.

  Lea’s pad replayed the omniocular’s last cycle. Lea made a few notes, stopped the replay, then flicked through half a dozen captured images.

  “Every time I run the omniocular, I get a subtly different result. Broadl
y, the predictions are similar but the way it comes about is chaotic.”

  “Are there any constants?” asked Becky, running her finger tips across Lea’s chest.

  “Yes, my love for you.”

  “No, in the omniocular, darling.”

  “Well, you’ll be pleased to hear that the Chimera Sector is nearly always green … which is a good sign, I think,” said Lea. “But, more worryingly, the sector that contains Fair Isles seems to alternate between black and blue. I think that means the outcome of the battle there is on a knife edge.”

  If the omniocular is so good at predicting the future, how come it keeps changing its mind?” said Becky.

  “We know the future is not set,” said Lea. “Art and Zeeann proved it can be changed. The way the machine interprets the entropic readings is chaotic. I think that’s where free will comes in. So a deed here or there here or there can dramatically affect part of the picture. Overall, however, these moments of free will tend to cancel each other out. Significant change demands a significant deed.”

  “So how do we change the future for the better?” asked Becky

  “Not us. I think it’s down to Art and the Ship, along with that beast in the pool. We need to win at Fair Isles; victory at all costs.”

  There was another shriek and a wave of wailing from the far end of the hall.

  At a pool, only metres from Lea and Becky, the thousand-year-old cosmologist, Dylan, was wrestling with cables attached to scanners and emitters. Hovering at the edge of the pool was a grey pod, one of the Ship’s intelligent minds.

  “Yes, that was definitely an echo!” shouted the cosmologist.

  “The question is: echo from where?” said the pod.

  “How are you doing, Bean, any success?” asked Becky, who’d been attracted by Dylan’s shout.

  “We are able to send and receive information using the pool, although we cannot be sure how far we can communicate.”

  “You are such a pessimist, Bean,” said Dylan, turning to Becky. “Ignore him Miss Bhuna. I am proud to say we are in a position to test our … what are we calling it, Bean?”

  “I remember you suggesting ‘Dylan Moran’s Interstellar Communicator,” said the pod in a slow voice. “I am not sure it will, how do you say, catch on.”

  “No, we didn’t. We definitely decided on ‘Star phone,” said Dylan. “Mr Bean is very cheeky.”

  “Success?” asked Lea, having followed Becky over the pool. “I thought the pools only allowed telepathic connections.”

  “Yes, and the problem with telepathy is that either it doesn’t exist or it cannot be measured,” said Becky.

  “We know telepathy of some sort exists because that’s what the Creators use,” said Lea.

  “And the noisy nuns up the other end there are definitely using telepathy to explore the region of space above Marylebone.

  There was a sudden howl of anguish.

  “Another poke from the beast on the Orion flagship,” said Becky.

  “There is a link between their pool and the gateway above Marylebone,” said Dylan. “We know the omniocular devises also have multiple links to the gateways because they record the entropic vectors all over the galaxy. The omniocular is a machine, a glorified calculator. It hasn’t got a mind so it’s not using telepathy. Hence there is a way of tapping in to the galaxy wide network of doorways.”

  “When Hari helped me set up my omniocular,” said Lea. “He told me it used tachyons to communicate with distant gateways.”

  “That’s right,” said Dylan, “But he didn’t know what sort of tachyon it was. That’s what we’ve been testing; tachyons with different energy levels, moving at different faster-than-light speeds.”

  “With a somewhat inconclusive result,” said the pod called Bean, with an almost audible sneer.

  “Well, now’s the time for make or break, Mr Bean. Set the pool for Chimera Five.”

  Chimera Five was an ordinary star but the only planet in the system was a frozen ball of dirty crushed ice and methane. Above the star in near geosynchronous orbit was a grey gateway.

  “Last week I sent a guardian ship, the Alamo, to Chimera Five with the other end of the star phone,” said Dylan. “The ship has a broadband tachyon detector. If the on-board Sentinel can hear our emissions, it’ll take just a moment to isolate the energy levels and respond.”

  The pod tipped sideways. “The signal is now being sent,” it said. “Best of luck … not!”

  “Can it, Mr Bean, and give us a visual?” ordered Dylan.

  A hologram of a string of white beads on a white line began to move across the face of the pool. There were two beads close together followed by groups of three, five and seven beads. There was a ping as each bead vibrated in turn.

  “The first four prime numbers,” said Lea, as the sequence began to repeat itself. “It’s a bit old fashioned.”

  “But very reliable,” said Dylan.

  “No reply,” said the pod as the sequence finished again. “Better luck next time.”

  The three humans and one machine intelligence looked on in silence as the sequence of four numbers repeated for a third time. Suddenly a red line appeared crossing the pool at right angles. A string of red beads appeared, vibrating as they came into view with an accompanying sound like a bicycle bell: they rang one after the other, thirteen times. There was a pause and another peal from red beads began to ring out.

  “Thirteen and that’ll be seventeen to come. The star phone has well and truly been picked up at Chimera Five.”

  “Congatulations,” said the pod, begrudgingly. Then the mechanical intelligence almost hesitated. “Digit … digital data incoming at increasing rate. Analysing … decrypting voice patterns …. Playback.

  The holographic red line began to vibrate with complex standing waves.

  “Whoee, we’s a hearin’ you’s all, loud and clear. Is you a geddin’ this comms?” said a voice with an American accent.

  “That’s Tex, the captain,” said Dylan to the others. “He’s never been anywhere near Texas Nova but he likes the boots and the hats. Mr Bean, can we return voice messages?”

  “We can send multimedia data and the bandwidth seems to be unlimited.”

  “Impressively done, Dylan,” said Lea. “We can now talk to the galaxy.”

  Chapter 27: Super Novae

  “Do you not hear them? The witches are screeching,” said the decapitated head hanging below the arachnid’s bloated stomach.

  The Emperor shook his head.

  The Brood King squatted in his nest near the space doors of loading bay 7. Three smaller spiders, each the size of a football, quivered in front of their master. They all stood on a long, green slime covered sensor board cabled into the Sentinel. One of the three began to shudder and collapsed. The Brood King swept the smaller spider’s body off the board and another football sized spider stepped on.

  “Are you deaf as well as blind, you king of imbeciles? I am under attack and would be harmed were it not for my faithful children. This litter have all my, shall we say, aggressive tendencies and misanthropic spitefulness. They stand between me and the enemy.”

  “How are they attacking you, my lord?” said the Emperor, not quite believing the Brood Kings tale of invisible telepaths. “Where are they so we can root them out?”

  Another of the smaller spiders collapsed, it’s legs in spasm. The Brood King batted it across the loading bay with the sweep of one of his own legs. The quivering body hit the bay door force screen and slid down to the floor.

  “They are not here, you fool. They are using the network of gateways. Their emanations come from the doorway there,” said the arachnid pointing two of his longer legs at the grey oval floating in space just 100 metres from the loading bay door.

  “My liege, just say the word and we will move Orion away from the gateway.”

  “No, no, you dolt. I need them to attack me so I can find out where the cowards are hiding.”

  Another football sized
spider stepped onto the vacant slime covered plate. The Brook King brushed a thin leg over the spider’s head.

  “This child of mine will find them out or …. or die in the attempt.”

  +++

  The next morning, ship’s time, the Emperor was back in attendance at loading bay 7. The Brood King was thrashing his legs in anger. There was a pile of spider corpses beside the long detector plate. The decapitated head propped up on the Brood King’s stomach coughed up some blue liquid and spoke between wheezing gurgles.

  “They ran away, the harpies. They were weak; women with eyes too far apart to be Human. But just like you and your kind they were devious and scheming. They screamed and moaned, then stabbed at my children with knitting needles and vegetable paring knives.”

  The Brood King patted the bodies on the top of the pile.

  “When they killed the last of my protectors, I joined the fight in red hot anger. I went after them with my halberd and scythe. The shrieking girls ran away through the network of doorways leading me hither and thither until I was lost and alone.”

  “Have you no idea where they came from, my liege?”

  “Chimera! The Chimera Sector. Always the Chimera Sector.”

  The arachnid ruler gathered several of his ungainly legs under his protruding stomach and lifted his weight up and towards the Sentinel.

  “Peter, Peter! prepare the emitter. Hook up the virteron cables and the antibaryon sequencer. We’ll smash all the stars in the Chimera Sector once and for all.”

  The dishevelled figure of Peter Berlinski, the guardian lieutenant who had betrayed his shipmates, crawled out from behind the Sentinel and passed his hand over his bowed head before the Brood King. The Emperor placed himself between the two.

  “But, my liege, half the Royal Fleet is at Chimera One and would be most unprepared for …”

  “Why do you always bring me problems, never answers?” bellowed the Brood King at the Emperor. “Let us turn all the Chimera stars super nova except for Chimera One where your useless fleet still lingers.”