I knew this was probably a pipedream, but one could hope. The ship was considerably shorter, but if deck one and two were sealed, and the engines could be fired up, I could maybe, just maybe, fly myself home in her. Which made me make sure Sim saved at least one comnavsat, so we could launch it prior to any escape attempt, so we didn’t just launch into the middle of a Trixone fleet. And this became save all of them, so I could leave a trail of them home. Better than breadcrumbs.
Even though it was early afternoon for me, local dark came upon us suddenly, and while getting around inside a gloomy ship hulk hadn't been much of an issue, leaving said ship for unknown terrain in the dark was another matter.
It didn’t seem to faze the combat droids though, and after stacking a half dozen comnavsats nearby, along with the contents of both armouries, most of the droids left to see what they could find outside. A half dozen remained, being operated by Gorilla. Light from the fighter showed me one of them rummaging in a bin, and I watched it put six armbands on, and shift into a Gorilla shape. A very big Gorilla shape, and more upright than a natural one.
It turned, and walked up to where I was now standing in the airlock.
“George.”
The voice was baritone.
“Gorilla?”
“In the suit. I should have done this a long time ago.”
“Done what?”
“Created an avatar.”
“What stopped you?”
“I was happy being a ship.”
“So you don’t have a primary on the AI homeworld?”
“Nope. The ship is my primary.”
“And if the ship gets destroyed?”
“It never bothered me before. I figured when I went, you would too, and so why bother trying to survive when you couldn’t. But it’s a whole new ballgame now. Hence the avatar. Do you mind if I check on Scimitar’s fabricators? If I can get one of the smaller ones operational, I might be able to build myself a proper body.”
“Don’t let me stop you, pal. I’m only sorry I never realized you didn’t have any backup.”
“Wasn’t your problem, George. It was a long time before any of the original ship AI’s created avatars either. I never saw the need. Until now. But it’s only a matter of time before the Trixone in orbit decide to erase the evidence of the crash site, and if they do, I’m going to need to be mobile.”
“Go get mobile. I’m fine here.”
“I’ll be back,” said the Gorilla in a deeper voice, before waving and running towards where the access shafts were.
I mentally kicked myself. I’d adjusted to Sim being on the bridge very quickly, but never given thought to Gorilla not being there as well.
Sim relayed to me what the droids were finding outside, as they found it. Mainly wreckage, but they did find a lot of dead Trixone. And no signs of any live ones. Which wasn’t all that surprising. Had we come down in the meadow itself and just mown down trees and bushes before stopping, survival might have been possible. But instead, we’d torn a path down the side of a mountain. It was a miracle I was still alive myself. And thank Jon for all his pain which had forced suit upgrades, so I wasn’t badly limping, or worse, like earlier suits would have left me.
They also found no signs of any indigenous intelligent life form. Lots of wild life, lots of forest dwellers, birds, and in a nearby lake, fish, but nothing which denoted intelligence. Which meant nothing at all, since a lot of the planets we’d come across so far only had civilizations in limited places, and often had cities a long way from each other.
And it could account for why the crash site hadn't been fired on from orbit, or visited by troops. The Trixone life sensors were presumably about on par with ours, and one human life sign among the generic life in the area would be impossible to determine, and probably not even being looked for given no Trixone life signs at all. The assumption could have been made the crews of both ships had died. I’d have checked anyway, but who knew what the Trixone thought?
The question still remained, did I go exploring, or stay here to await rescue? Although, was there really a choice? If I stayed here I’d go nuts waiting for nothing to happen. And eventually run out of food anyway. Besides, there had to be indigenous somewhere, because the Trixone had been firing on the planet. And they couldn’t be too far away, as we’d gone down in the same general area they’d been firing at, if you considered both sides of a mountain range, general.
Finding them might prove difficult. And meeting them might prove a mistake if they didn’t like aliens based on being shot at from space. But there was no reason why I couldn’t do some old fashioned recon. Come to think of it, BA would have loved this situation. Variable terrain, Trixone maybe behind every rock, locals who might or might not be friendly. Marine heaven. For BA. I wasn’t sure I felt that way anymore, or ever had. But I was here, not going anywhere anytime soon, and recon was something worth doing.
Gorilla came back with a limping cargo droid, between them carrying a small fabricator. As soon as it was placed near the ship, a repair droid started working on it, with another one running power from the ship to it. The cargo droid joined the line of droids needing attention. A short time later, the fabricator hummed to life, and a combat droid stepped out.
Gorilla extended a data filament from a finger, plugged it into the fabricator, and withdrew it again. Nothing happened for a good while, before finally a naked humanoid form walked out, much larger than the ones the AI’s usually used, complete with male bits. It walked over to the suit bin, put one on, and shifted into a man shape. He looked over at me, and a shiver went down my back. He looked exactly how I remembered the actor looked who’d been the first Terminator.
The gorilla shape vanished, revealing the combat suit underneath, and it went to join the others outside the ship. Gorilla came over to the airlock, and looked up at me.
“What do you think?”
“Gorilla doesn’t fit the look.”
“Call me Gor then.”
“Not enough red on you for that.”
“Not gore, Gor. G. O. R.”
I chuckled, and he quickly followed.
“Righto Gor. Are you going to buck the trend and go with the jeans and leather jacket look instead of uniform or ‘slinky red’?”
“I thought I would, at least while down on the planet. Want to join me?”
I gave it some serious thought.
“No. Imperium representative and all that. Probably should be in uniform, but until we meet someone local, I’ll stick to what is most comfortable.”
“Suit yourself.”
“I will.”
He stomped off.
Ten
With nothing much else to do, I worked on the belt suit armbands.
Creating armbands as a way of having extra suits on your person had been a good idea, and easy enough to implement, but the armbands themselves detracted from the uniform. Dreamwalker had suggested underwear and removable wear, and was now like me, trialing my first attempts.
The cap I’d been wearing was gone, so I removed one of my leg bands, and shifted it to be a new cap. It could also be changed into various kinds of hat for sun protection, but for now, the cap was fine.
The armbands were too bulky, so I spent some time on the definition, slimming them down so they were undetectable. When the suit was shifted to a belt, the armbands defaulted back to a thick armband, for ease of putting on and taking off, but when the suit was on, they became undetectable.
I made similar changes to the underwear versions, making them less like clothes, and more like second skin. I put socks and gloves back on. Even with the gloves on, the normal suit over the hands was so thin, you didn’t really know you were wearing gloves of any kind. And while Jon and the team usually didn’t have their hands covered unless the suit went to protection mode, I actually preferred having mine covered all the time.
I sent the new definitions to Sim and Gor. The latter came back and pulled out a set of extra suits, and added t
hem as underwear the same as I was wearing, except in larger sizes. He also added six additional armbands. Given his status as dead is dead human if both the avatar and the ship were destroyed, I didn’t begrudge him taking the extra protection, like I was. Sim came back a little later, and did the same thing.
We discussed the likelihood of getting Scimitar jump started again, and concluded it was worth trying, but not until there were no Trixone in orbit, or we needed to in desperation. The moment the engines started, a heat bloom would be scan-able from orbit, and fire would rain down. With no shields, the ship wouldn’t last long. Essentially final death by engine start. Pass.
What could be done though was making sure decks one and two were sealed for life support, and life support would actually function properly. With the bridge wrecked, and open, there was a lot of work to be done before firing up engines was even a good idea. And Gorilla needed to be repaired first.
We were lucky Gorilla was in a maintenance deck partially underground, with so much dead ship above it. Otherwise we’d probably already be dead. Small mercies I guess. Builder droids were already working on making a launch tube useable, but at the same time sealing it so once the Excalibur was started up, the heat wouldn’t escape the ship. The idea being by the time Gorilla was able to launch, it wouldn’t be detected until after it launched, and was moving at enough speed to avoid the rain. But first, the ship needed to be repaired.
I took the time to look the Lightning over as well. It was in terrible shape, but closer inspection showed it too was repairable. Of the three broken ships, the Lightning would be the safest to escape in, due to sheer speed, and it might be possible to rig up a ship suit so it could also turn invisible.
By the time dawn lit up the sky, I’d had a few hours trying to sleep, and while rested, hadn't. I had decided what to do next though.
Six of the combat droids turned up at Gorilla as I was climbing down from the airlock. Gor himself was also waiting for me, and both Sim and my combat suit arrived a minute later. I turned to Gor.
“Seriously?”
He grinned. The six combat droids were all wearing people shapes. All of them seemed to come from the same square screen as Gor’s own shape, as far as I could remember. I’d no idea why he was associating so much with an antique entertainment’s characters, and I wasn’t about to ask. At least, not yet. He had the right to his own choice of shape, or shapes, and I had the right to rib him about it. And normally I would have, but right now didn’t seem to be the time for it.
Sim grinned at me as well, and one of the armbands on the combat suit shifted into a much larger man shape. I opened my mouth to ask where this one came from, but closed it with the question unasked. Truth was, it had to be an actor body from the same vintage as Gor was using. And I didn’t really want to know. But damn it, I’m pretty sure I’d seen him in one of Jon’s binge watching sessions. And likely more than one. The actors back then were all in everything it sometimes seemed to me.
And let’s face it, the Americans had named a whole class of cruisers after the actors from that general time period, and Jane watched everything, so it wasn’t particularly surprising her children did as well.
The nine of us left Scimitar through one of the launch tubes, which was closed up behind us as soon as we were through. All of us were wearing both swords and the latest guns, although Sim running my combat suit had the only heavy version. The combat suits and Gor could certainly carry one, but they didn’t have the power for extended use of the big gun. Sim only had one of the heavies on the combat suit for the same reason. While a combat suit could run two of them for an extended time, as Dreamwalker had proved only a few days before, I didn’t want to risk running the suit out too fast, especially as we didn’t know how long we’d be away.
We headed up the slope, stopping above the ship to view the engines. The ship still towered above us even a few hundred meters further up the hill, and as far as I could see, the engines looked undamaged. Sim was shaking her head though, so obviously I couldn’t see the problems she did. But from this end, the ship did look like if we could get it powered up and shielded, it might fly.
The same way bricks don’t. The thought popped in there, and was a bit depressing. Damn Jon for making me read that bloody book. The humour was undeniable, but right now, it wasn’t funny.
I turned and began trudging up the hill, the others following me. BA would have loved this hill. She’d have run the whole way to the top and laughed at the rest of us making an effort to walk normally. I wished the team was here with me. And I did miss the team. I hadn't seen much of them since the war started. I’d turned my back on being a marine, and it meant I’d separated myself from the team by my own actions. And I sometimes doubted the choice was right.
But there was something to be said about trudging up a hill in ‘slinky red’, gun and sword on your back, looking for trouble. We went in the shit end. Well, this time the end was a lot shittier than normal, but that’s where we went. And BA would have loved this. The twins as well.
“Well, look at that,” said Sim, who was at the top already, and looking into the distance I couldn’t yet see.
I hurried, Gor and the combat suit on either side of me, and the combat droids behind. At the top, I looked where she was pointing.
In the distance was a city, sprawled up the side of another mountain. We couldn’t see the base of it, just the top half. It was what I called seriously vertically challenged. Again, BA would have loved jogging the whole way up. BA was a nut. I’d always known it. A fitness freak who gave fitness freaks a bad name. But, there was no better person to take point. And she was our nut. I pulled my thoughts back to the sight.
The city appeared to be under fire from orbit, and each hit made a shield visible for a second. It seemed to be holding, which might account for why a dead ship wasn’t being fired on. Given the size of the city as seen from this distance, the shield was impressive. And something we hadn't seen so far on any other planet. It meant the indigenous had a similar level of technology to the Trixone, even though the city looked like it had been built for the middle ages. And damn Jon again, but it did look a bit like something from another of his antique flat screens. Minas something? I didn’t recall the rest.
“Any chance of a salvage droid?” I asked Sim.
“Nope. Well down on the list of things to do. Besides, it would just provide another target for those upstairs.”
“Point. How far do you think the city is away?”
“Couple of days walk,” said Gor.
“If you mount up,” said Sim, “we could probably run it in a day.”
“And run straight into trouble? No thanks. We have a couple of days to spare while Gorilla gets repaired, so we may as well walk over, taking due care not to walk into Trixone or local traps.”
“Your call,” said Gor.
He started down the slope, but stopped when he noticed I hadn't followed. I was looking upwards in the other direction.
From the top of this hill, the full extent of the crash landing was apparent. Scimitar had come down the mountain like a snowboarder, smashing everything in its path, but leaving sections of forest intact as the terrain had jumped the ship over the top. The path of destruction was truly awe inspiring, especially considering the ship was basically intact at the bottom.
I shook my head and started after Gor, Sim falling in beside me with the combat suit on my other side, with three of the droids moving ahead to be between me and Gor, and the other three bringing up the rear.
Needless to say, half an hour later with the sun completely over the horizon now, we walked into an ambush.
Eleven
“Well?”
Amanda looked impatient about something.
“Well what?”
“Do we have a ship?”
“Not yet.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“The shipyard is building me a custom design.”
“Jon signed off o
n that?”
I shrugged.
“He said if I could find a pilot to take my place on Fearless, I could talk to Bob about a new ship. I did, so he allowed me, and Bob is.”
The rest of the girls were grinning.
“How long?”
“Couple of days.”
“George could be back by then.”
“Here’s hoping. In any case, we needed a new ship design, and I’m doing it.”
“Is Jon promoting you?” asked Alison.
“Not that I’ve heard.”
“Doesn’t he prefer Commanders as minimum rank for big ship captain’s these days?” asked Abigail.
“Eric was the same rank as me, so there is precedent. In any case, I’m building a fighter, not a capital ship.”
“A fighter?” exclaimed BA. “Where do the rest of us fit on a fighter?”
I laughed.
“Bob’s using a Scimitar hull, so it’s a big fighter.”
They laughed with me.
“So what do we do in the meantime?” asked Aleesha.
“We need two things.”
“Just two?” laughed Alana.
“What?” demanded Amanda.
“We need to figure out where George went.”
“How do we do that?” asked Alison.
“Jane said she knew a way, and would be here this afternoon.”
Here was the beach outside Thorn’s home on his island. We still had a standing invitation to come here, even though no-one knew where Thorn or his wife had gone. Jane had suggested this place instead of Jon’s island on Haven. I suspect because of who she was going looking for.
“What’s the other thing?” asked BA.
“We need to find out why the jump drive didn’t work.”
“Jon said it did work,” said Agatha. “Or at least the jumping out part did.”
Imperium Knight Chaos Rising (The Hunter Imperium Book 6) Page 5
