Mapped Space 1: The Antaran Codex

by Stephen Renneberg

  “What do you think of the view, Izin?” I asked, delighting in his fear of heights.

  Klasson looked appreciatively out across the lava plain, over shattered stone trees to the vast petrified forest in the distance. “You can see better from over here.”

  “Here will do?” Izin replied with his back to the cliff.

  “You can’t see nothing there,” Klasson said.

  “I have acrophobia.”

  “You what?”

  Izin slung his long thin bag over his shoulder, taking a firm hold of the nearest boulder. “I’m uncomfortable with heights.”

  “He’s terrified of them,” I added helpfully.

  “No kidding?” Klasson said. “But you spend your life flying?”

  “Travelling inside a starship is not the same as hanging from a cliff,” Izin said. “My people prefer lowlands and water, not cliff tops. We’re amphibians, not birds!”

  “It’s not just him,” I said. “It’s all of them, scared to death of heights!”

  “And you would drown in a bathtub,” Izin said before turning and starting towards the top of the cliff.

  Marie and I exchanged amused looks at my engineer’s embarrassment. His people were at least as smart as the Tau Cetins and far more ruthless as warriors. It was why the major galactic powers had blockaded the Intruder Civilization for more than two thousand years and showed no sign of letting them out. Who would have thought with all their fearsome reputation, they couldn’t admit to having a weakness?

  “He hasn’t heard the last of this,” I whispered mischievously.

  “Don’t make him angry,” Marie warned.

  “What’d he mean about the bathtub?” Klasson asked.

  “Sirius can’t swim,” Marie explained.

  “Is that a fact?” Klasson said.

  “I had no need to learn.” When Marie gave me an amused look, I added defensively, “There’s no swimming in space!”

  “One’s afraid of heights and the other can’t swim,” Klasson said uncertainly. “I sure hope you fellas can fight!”

  “That’s what I’m here for,” Marie said, patting me on the cheek with mock sympathy before climbing after Izin.

  At the cliff top, we crouched behind a rocky parapet where we could observe the BBI base lying some distance from the foot of the caldera wall. It comprised a cluster of sparkling white prefab buildings containing research labs, maintenance and communications facilities, a large energy plant and accommodation for several thousand scientists, engineers and their families. Surrounding the base were sprawling green fields and terrestrial forests where genetically enhanced Earth flora was being tested prior to large scale transplantation to Deadwood. Machines worked the fields, supervised by technicians and supported by an intricate irrigation system distributing water from the deep lake in the center of the caldera. Between the fields were greenhouses containing plants being tested for both warmer and cooler latitudes and small enclosures where reengineered Earth animals had their tolerance to Deadwood’s microbial life tested. East of the base was a small, well equipped spaceport where the Soberano lay across the landing apron, almost too big to be accommodated.

  I glanced at Marie. “I guess they do have the only picometric scanner in this part of Mapped Space.”

  Klasson pointed to a lattice-like needle rising high above the crater floor. “That communications tower between the spaceport and the base has got sensors that’ll see you once you’re away from the cliff face.”

  I turned to Izin. “Can you take care of that?”

  He unsealed his long bag and pulled out a military grade SN6 sniper rifle equipped with low power optics that complemented his naturally telescoping eyes.

  When Klasson saw the rifle, his eyes bulged. Having been stuck on a backwater like Deadwood all his life, he’d never even heard of a SN6, but one look told him it was a thoroughbred. “Nice gun.”

  “It pulls to the left,” Izin said, lifting the rifle and sighting on the distant communications tower. For several minutes, he patiently studied his target in minute detail, sighting with his head tilted slightly away from the barrel so his large bulbous eye could focus accurately. “The sensors are dependent on a power conduit running up through the center of the tower,” he said eventually, sliding a twelve centimeter long round into the breach.

  “No way you can make that shot,” Klasson said. “It’s twenty two kilometers! I’ve measured it.”

  “Twenty two thousand, three hundred and forty one meters exactly,” Izin corrected, reading the distance off the rifle’s range finder. He took up his firing position, becoming as still as a statue. Tamphs were ambush predators, evolved to hide and wait for their prey to approach, then strike without warning. To camouflage themselves, they’d evolved the ability for absolute physical stillness, making them perhaps the most formidable snipers in the galaxy.

  Izin seemed to take forever to fire. When he did, the only sign was a slight whisper as the magnetically accelerated projectile shot from the barrel without recoil or flash. He watched as the projectile’s fins extended to stabilize its flight, keeping the low power scope sighted until he saw a spark as the cable was cut.

  “It’s done,” Izin said, lowering the rifle.

  “That’s impossible!” Klasson declared, pulling out an ancient pair of binoculars from a worn case strapped to his belt. It took him a few seconds to find the severed end of the cable, then he whistled slowly. “Damn!” He turned to Izin, with a mix of admiration and confusion. “I thought you said it pulled to the left?”

  “It does. One millimeter every twelve thousand meters. I compensated for it.”

  “Right,” Klasson said slowly, then he turned to me. “I want a hundred of them guns, and whatever ammo he’s using!” He leaned toward Izin. “Any more at home like you, son?”

  “There were twenty thousand in my spawning,” Izin replied. “All genetically identical to me.”

  Klasson blinked. “Can they all shoot like you?”

  “Exactly like me.”

  The survivalist leader imagined twenty thousand tamphs armed with SN6’s going to war. “Next time you’re home, you tell your brothers to come on out here. Tell them to bring their guns. We could use their help.”

  “They would find the coastal regions appealing, although Earth Council would be apprehensive about a large scale migration of my kind from Earth, especially if they were armed.”

  “Not to mention the rest of the galaxy,” I whispered under my breath to Marie.

  Izin turned to me. “If a maintenance team attempts to repair the damage, am I authorized to stop them?”

  “Absolutely,” I said, letting Izin off the leash. “You’re on overwatch. Don’t let them fix the sensors or get in our way, but if they run let them go.”

  “As you wish,” Izin said, sliding another round into the breach.

  I turned to Klasson. “Are you heading back now?” When we finished, Jase would do the extraction from the edge of the base, freeing Klasson to return to Refuge.

  “I might stick around a while! I want see this tamph shoot some more!”

  “My name is Izin Nilva Kren.”

  “Didn’t mean no offense . . . Izin.” It was the first time Klasson had used his name, a sure sign my tamph engineer was no longer simply an alien oddity.

  “You’re welcome to stay,” Izin said. “Would you like to test fire the weapon?”

  “Hell yeah!” Klasson said, rapidly warming to Izin’s matter of fact approach.

  “I’ll keep the channel open,” I said, then Marie and I climbed over the crest and began scrambling down into the mouth of the ancient volcano.

  * * * *

  The full extent of the super volcano’s one hundred and ten kilometer caldera could only be seen from space. The far side rim wall was hidden beyond the horizon as we scrambled down over weathered volcanic rocks into the vast cauldron. Once on the crater floor, we used broken rock formations and giant boulders to mask our approach to the base.
It was almost three hours before we came in sight of the patchwork of test lots circling the BBI research facility. Between the outer test lot and our position was an open expanse of level ground cleared to ensure anyone approaching would be seen by the communications tower’s sensors.

  Marie started to move out from behind the boulder we used for cover, but I caught her arm and pulled her back. “Wait.”

  She gave me a puzzled look. “The tower sensors are down.”

  “I know.” I said, pulling a short black tube from my pocket and placing it to my eye. I set the monoscope to visual wavelengths and swept the open area ahead, zooming in to every shadow and shape. It looked clear.

  “Satisfied?” Marie asked.

  “Almost.” I switched the monoscope to infra-red with radiant surface heat suppressed and repeated the search. This time I noticed tiny heat points circling each other to our left. Below the heat points was a larger, faint thermal source a few degrees above ambient temperature. I switched back to visual to discover the point sources were insects circling low to the ground. They were the first indigenous life forms I’d seen since landing. Lying in the dirt below the swarming insects was a dog-sized animal with a dappled, gray hide and two short curved teeth pointing down from its jaw. The saberwolf’s side was torn open, exposing purple flesh and dark blood that still glistened in the sunlight. The insects swarmed around the animal’s intestines, while its hide bordering the wound still smoldered.

  I handed the monoscope to Marie and pointed. “Over there.”

  “Izin, you watching?” I asked over the open channel.

  “Yes, Captain.”

  I picked up a small rock and hurled it over the cleared ground towards the dead saberwolf. A cylindrical autoturret mounting a short barreled cannon popped up and blasted the rock. Before the fragments hit the ground, the autoturret had vanished back into its bunker.

  “I thought Izin took out the sensors?” Marie said.

  “It must have local targeting.”

  “It came from a circular metal plate to your left,” Izin said. “There’s another to your right, further away. They’re close enough for their fields of fire to overlap.”

  “OK. The left one first.” I picked up another rock. “Call it.”

  There was a moment’s silence while Izin readied himself. “Throw.”

  I hurled the rock, then the autoturret immediately popped up and obliterated it, before vanishing back into its armor plated hideout. A moment later, Izin’s slug flashed past and struck the ground a dozen meters beyond.

  “He missed!” Marie said surprised.

  “He’s getting his timing right,” I said, picking up another rock. “Ready.”

  Up on the ridge top, Izin slid another slug into the SN6’s breach, adjusted his position and recalculated the travel time of his projectile to the autoturret. “Throw,” he said, firing before the rock left my hand.

  The autoturret popped up when Izin’s projectile was already in flight. It destroyed the rock, then exploded as Izin’s smart slug detonated inside its metal housing. Electrical short circuits flashed from the turret as the barrel shuddered and skewed towards the ground at an awkward angle.

  “Now the other one,” I said.

  “Throw as far as you can,” Izin said, “forty five degrees to your right. I will not fire the first time.”

  I tossed a rock as directed, then some distance away another autoturret appeared and fired. When Izin had readied himself, I hurled another decoy. The second autoturret popped up and was immediately torn apart by Izin’s micro-munitions.

  “One of those things failing is a malfunction, two is sabotage” I said. “Izin, is anyone coming out?”

  We waited while Izin studied the base. “There’s no visible activity.”

  Considering the ever-present threat of Klasson’s survivalists, I knew security couldn’t be sleeping, so where were they? I waited a little longer, then said, “We’re moving.”

  Marie and I stepped out from behind our boulder and jogged across open ground towards the first test lot. We were halfway across when Izin’s voice sounded in our earpieces.

  “An aircraft is lifting off from the center of the base. It’s heading towards you.”

  We were in the open with no cover and no time to reach the nearest test lot. I drew my P-50, replaced the anti-personnel magazine with armor piercing slugs, and went down on one knee hoping the aircraft wasn’t armed. Marie moved away a short distance and drew both her needle guns. They would do little damage against a large vehicle, but their flash might distract the pilot while I tried to bring the aircraft down. Once we had it on the ground, Izin could help us, but he was too far away to do anything while it was airborne.

  My P-50 was still charging when a dull gray cargo lifter appeared above the base and flew towards us. It was rectangular, with four large tilt thrusters slowly vectoring from vertical to horizontal flight as it picked up speed and altitude. I followed it in my sights as it headed straight for us, then realized it was continuing to climb and pick up speed. The pilot looked down at me as he passed on our right, then the lifter raced away towards the crater wall, narrowly clearing the rim, before diving down the other side.

  “It’s moving away fast,” Izin said, “at low altitude.”

  Marie and I ran towards the first test lot, assuming the pilot had reported our presence and expecting a welcoming committee to come charging out to greet us.

  “There’s another aircraft taking off,” Izin said.

  A white intercontinental research glider rose above the base, extended a pair of long gossamer-thin wings and moved off slowly to the south. When it passed over open ground, an autoturret popped up beneath it and fired, cutting the vehicle in half. The autoturret continued firing until the glider’s single thruster hit the ground and burst into flames.

  I holstered my P-50, exchanging puzzled looks with Marie. “Looks like they have more to worry about than us!”

  Keeping watch on the base ahead, we crept into the first test lot filled with date palms and rubber trees. A silver and white column-shaped machine, twice the height of a man, stood in the center gathering data on each species’ suitability to the climate and susceptibility to indigenous organisms, while also controlling the test lot’s irrigation and nutrient dispersal system. Nearby test lots had similar monitoring systems, feeding data to the base’s biolab.

  Two small cropbots riding on metal treads, and equipped with flexible arms, tended the plants and ensured the equipment functioned perfectly. From the rim of the caldera, we’d seen white coated technicians in the fields as well, but now they had vanished.

  We slipped across a dirt road into a corn field, turning into one of the narrow tracks that criss-crossed the test lot. A spherical machine with a circular red glowing eye-like sensor emerged from the corn and floated towards us. It stopped a meter from us as a thin red laser light flashed out from its eye, probing us.

  Izin’s voice sounded in my ear. “One step to the left please, Captain.”

  I did as instructed, then the sentry bot’s eye shattered as Izin’s slug drilled it perfectly. A small internal explosion shook the machine, sending it crashing to the ground.

  “Cutting it a little close weren’t you, Izin?” I said, glancing back up to the crest of the crater wall where my tamph engineer was perched.

  “I could have shot sooner, Captain, but you might have lost an ear.”

  Thankful I still had two ears, I said, “That’s three of their watch dogs dead. Any guards coming out for a look?”

  “No activity, Captain.”

  “What does Klasson think?”

  We waited while Izin discussed the lack of security with the survivalist leader. “He believes the guards should have come out to investigate by now.”

  Increasingly apprehensive about why we were being ignored, we hurried through the corn field towards a long white, three story prefab building. As we reached it, a siren began wailing.

  “Izin, what�
�s happening?”

  “People are running towards the eastern side of the base,” he replied. “No one is approaching your position.”

  Whatever had triggered the siren, it wasn’t us! We hurried to the corner and looked around the side. The prefab was a cropbot storage and repair facility. A paved road ran past it to other large white structures, all of which were open and deserted.

  “Looks like we missed the party,” I said, watching several men in the distance running away, oblivious to our presence. They ran hard, like their very lives depended on it. One tripped and fell. His companion abandoned him without even a look back.

  “They’re scared!” Marie said as the man who’d fallen jumped to his feet and started running again.

  “Yeah, but of what?”

  Beyond the warehouses were the accommodation blocks, laboratories and the energy plant. The spaceport’s control tower rose in the distance, not far from the enormous upper works of the Soberano which were visible above the base’s buildings.

  “Izin, which way?” I asked

  “Mr Klasson says the biolab is ahead of your position and to the right.”

  Marie and I hurried across the road, increasingly certain no guards were going to stop us as we ran past a row of abandoned buildings. Three blocks along, an open topped six wheeled all terrain vehicle with a flatbed tray at the rear, sped past with two uniformed guards sitting in front. They paid us no attention as the ATV turned onto the main road out of the base and headed away at high speed.

  “Even the guards don’t care we’re here!” I said.

  “The base appears to be deserted, Captain,” Izin reported.

  Marie gave me a concerned look. “I’m getting the feeling coming here wasn’t such a good idea.”

  “Me too,” I said as we started running again.

  At the next cross street, Marie pointed to a white four story prefab with darkly tinted windows and a sign depicting an atom over the main entrance. “That must be it!”

  We ran to the entrance as a long silver arrowhead flew in over our heads from the direction of the spaceport. The sleek executive transport came in fast and quickly landed on top of the biolab, indicating whoever was on board was in a big hurry.