“Talk to me, Sam,” Vaughn said.
“A hundred meters up,” she said through heavy breaths. “Nine hundred to go.”
“You’re going to lose,” he shot back.
“No damn way.”
“Probably due to your advancing years. I’ll get you a walker for your birthday.”
Sam ground her teeth. She allowed herself to forget about the teeming mass on her heels, throwing all her energy into the race. It felt like rappelling, only in reverse. Hands and feet drawn into the hull, push up hard, repeat. After a few dozen hops she chanced a look down between her feet. A feeling of vertigo swept over her. She was more than halfway now, some six hundred meters above the valley floor. Her brain wanted to see that fall in the context of Earth’s gravity, where a plummet from here would be fatal no matter how exotic her armor. The sensation required a conscious effort to quash, made possible by studying her pursuers. The scarabs were almost a hundred meters behind her, spiraling up the hull precisely as hoped. Despite her desire to beat Vaughn, she slowed her progress. Too far ahead and they might lose interest, or realize they were climbing a false version of their beloved hosts.
The top arrived so quickly she almost botched the final hop. It was only the sight of Vaughn’s head between the four elevator cords that saved her. Sam gave one final push upward and sailed a dozen meters over the nose of the Chameleon, giving her one final view of the ground now a full kilometer below. The scene made her head spin. From the ridges surrounding the ship, tens of thousands of the scarab-things had crawled from their holes. They moved like a fluid, spilled and now spiraling toward their potential hosts. Sam turned and looked up the length of the valley. The other stalks were wholly ignored by the horde of creatures converging on the Chameleon. Perhaps they looked entirely uninteresting to the scarabs in the presence of such a massive prize.
The scrambling mass below her had gained ground. Smaller examples of the animals were forcing their way over the tops of their larger companions, now just twenty meters below. Sam reached the apex of her jump. The creatures spiraled up the ship’s hull, utterly driven to reach her, mad with primal bloodlust. They saw her, exactly as Tania had hoped, as a threat to their precious organic rocket that would take them to their breeding grounds.
Sam glided between the cords of the space elevators and fell toward the circular opening Eve had created specifically for this moment. Vaughn already stood inside, looking up at her. She could see his smug “better luck next time” smile. He held out his arms to catch her. Sam waved him off. “They’re right outside! Get back!”
His smile vanished. He leapt to the sidewall as Sam landed smack in the middle of the tiny circular room. “We’re in, Eve! Close it!”
Above, the sky darkened. Six or seven scarabs foisted themselves over the edge. Sam reacted without thinking, and so did Vaughn. Together they lanced beams of white-hot energy through the animals even as they fell into the pit of the room. Sam danced back, abandoning aim and firing wildly at the circular opening above. “Eve! Fucking now!”
“My sensors show obstruction—”
“Override! Close it!”
The ceiling irised closed in the blink of an eye, cutting four of the creatures in half. Their bodies fell to the floor and bounced. Fluid spilled out of their gaping wounds. Their limbs still flailed for purchase, pointed tips scratching at the floor. Sam swept her beam across them, and the twitching limbs went still.
Movement in the shadow beside Vaughn. A whole scarab made it through the mass of smoldering corpses and jumped at her. She saw rows of needlelike teeth, and something like eyes on the ends of four stalks. Sam swung her arm down and fired. The beam tore a hole right through the animal. It jerked in midair, slammed into her, then fell aside on its back, legs twitching and clawing at the air as it died.
Across the room Vaughn stood perfectly still. Their eyes met. He glanced down, and she followed his gaze. Between his knees, a black spot on the wall sparked and smoldered.
He looked up at her. “You almost shot me in the—”
“We’re safe, Skyler,” Sam said. “The hatch is closed.”
“Any injuries?”
“Vaughn’s psyche took a hit, but other than that I think we’re okay. A few of them made it inside but we dealt with them. Going to need a cleanup crew in here.”
“I will decontaminate the room,” Eve said. “Remain still.”
“I’d prefer to leave first.”
“You and Vaughn must be sanitized as well.”
“Not sure I like the sound of that,” Vaughn said.
Eve ignored him. “Captain, the creatures have achieved one hundred percent hull coverage. I am initiating our climb.” A deep and persistent vibration began somewhere far below. All part of the ruse, Sam recalled. Eve would climb the elevators back to a sufficient altitude, but the scarabs needed to be utterly convinced they’d just encased one of the space clams, which launched like rockets.
“Nice work, everyone,” Skyler said. “We are under way.”
“Let’s hope our new passengers stay put,” Tania added.
A sulfur-yellow mist began to fill the room, the particles gravitating toward the dead scarabs that littered the floor. Sam watched in morbid fascination as the shell of the one closest to her began to bubble. This turned to a violent froth. The black skin began to turn gray, then boiled off into a dark blue-green smoke. She pressed herself farther into the wall as the corpses degenerated into a mixture of gooey fluid and smoke. The fog filled the room, and soon she could not see her own hand in front of her visor. Then, without warning, the smoke lurched downward. The floor, utterly solid a moment before, now sported a grid of puckered holes that sucked in all the evidence of the bodies that had been present a moment before.
In less than a minute Sam found herself standing, facing Vaughn, the adrenaline-fueled pounding of her temples finally back to normal. All of the guts and dust and fungal muck on their suits had vanished.
“Well,” Vaughn said. “That was fun.”
Sam narrowed her eyes at him. “I could have won, you know. Slowed down to make sure our little friends kept up the chase.”
He smiled at her. A few seconds passed in silence, and his smile remained.
“I could use a shower,” Sam said, grinning now, too. Invitation made. Thoughts of telling him to back off a bit now just fading memories.
Battle had a way of doing that.
The Chameleon
4.DEC.3510 (Earth Actual)
SKYLER DRIFTED IN the inky void, connected to the slumbering ship by only a silk-thin thread. Twin searchlights, mounted on his shoulders, lit the Chameleon’s hull as if she bathed in the summer Australian sun.
The ship looked like some kind of gigantic unkempt submarine, crusted from tip to tail in meter-diameter barnacles. To his eye the plan had gone off without a hitch. Well, except for Sam and Vaughn nearly being eaten. The creatures had taken to Eve’s modified outer hull as if the ship were a native to their strange world. After the unsuccessful chase of Sam and Vaughn up the sides, the animals—or whatever they were—had simply followed their evolutionary programming and settled in for the ride signaled by Eve’s deceptive vibrations. They folded their legs up under themselves and then, according to Eve, excreted some kind of gluelike fluid that secured them to the hull, leaving only their hard shells exposed to the vacuum of space. He marveled at the strangeness of their biology. What kind of bizarre past had led to the development of such an adaptation? Tania and Tim, with Eve’s help, had tracked the pods that had soared into the sky. Most made for the planet’s large moon. Many, however, missed the mark, and were slingshot out into space. Of those, almost all would fall into the red dwarf at the heart of the system, but a few would enjoy the slingshot effect once again, and be tossed out into the vast unknown. It had been one of these, thousands of years ago, that the Builders had seen slipping through the blockade that surrounded their own solar system. For whatever reason, the ships that patrolled that regio
n of space had shown no interest in the object. With any luck, they would now treat the Chameleon in the same way.
Skyler didn’t much like plans that relied on luck. But then, the plans that worked always seemed to need a little, didn’t they? He smirked, shook his head. It was a damn good plan Tania had come up with, if only because it didn’t start with “we shoot our way in,” as Sam’s had.
He cycled his visor through several view modes, as instructed. Around him, small nondescript probes flittered by. Deployed by Eve, they were tasked with analyzing the ship at the nanometer scale, making sure every last bit of surface was hidden beneath the crust of alien carapaces. In truth these little robots could perform the task far better than Skyler could ever hope to, but he’d come out, anyway. He wanted to see it for himself, an action enabled by the last-minute addition of thrust capability to their armored space suits. The success of the mission hinged on total coverage, and no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t give the okay to proceed simply based on Eve’s report.
Yet that wasn’t the whole story. In truth he felt uncomfortable with the idea of being inside Eve when she shut everything down. He’d kept this to himself, no need to alarm the others to a concern that bordered on the superstitious. To be in there during this test felt to him like sealing himself in his own tomb. If he was going to have to do that, he preferred it be only once.
“Looking good from out here,” he said, for the crew’s benefit as much as his own. They were all tucked deep within the ship, in the forest biome, making last-minute preparations. Watching his video feed or studying the imagery coming back from the grapefruit-sized probes. They had no way to reply, for that would go against the purpose of this task.
On first examination of the hull the previous day, what had appeared to Skyler as a perfectly camouflaged ship had in truth looked like a dazzlingly overlit Christmas tree in infrared and ultraviolet. It appeared, to Eve’s surprise, that the beetlelike creatures covering her hull had some kind of fibrous mechanism in their skin that absorbed radiation on the hull-side and emitted it back out again from their shells. A defense mechanism perhaps, or maybe just a way to ensure they didn’t overheat. Whatever the case, although visually disguised, the Chameleon still looked like a spacecraft in just about every other wavelength. The enemy would never fall for it, if Tania’s theory was right.
Unless, that is, Eve ran dark.
The only way she could completely mask her internal workings was to stop them entirely. And so, for the first time in millennia, Eve had gone to sleep. Within that entire vessel now only Skyler’s companions and their Builder armor were active, plus a few small pieces of passive monitoring equipment, all tucked within one of the biome spheres in the very center of the ship.
Skyler slowed his pace, studying the form before him. He floated about two hundred meters from the hull, trying to ignore the flotilla of dark gray orbs that traveled with him. “Nothing like yesterday,” he added. “Infrared just shows a flat gray surface. No heat escaping at all, at least to my eye.” He could only hope the probes had the same impression in the various emission bands they were scanning for, or the whole effort would be for naught. “Okay, I’m coming back in. Tania, wait twenty minutes and then wake Eve. I feel damn vulnerable with her offline before we’re fully ready for this.”
Skyler drifted back along the hull, making a slow spiral as he went. At the airlock, which had been craftily added at the back of the vessel in a deep cleft, he manually wound the door closed and, following memorized instructions, opened several valvelike contraptions that allowed atmosphere into the tiny chamber. He waited, watching readouts on the interior of his helmet and listening to the faint-but-growing hiss of air filling the room. Halfway through the process the lights came on, and he felt the familiar minute vibration of Eve’s internal systems return.
The interior door opened a minute later, and Skyler found Tania and Prumble waiting for him. Just then the ship returned to a one-g level of thrust and the three of them settled on the floor.
“Where’s Tim?” Skyler asked, trying to sound nonchalant and mostly succeeding.
Tania broke eye contact. “I asked him to check on the progress in the biomes.”
A bullshit task, which Tim no doubt knew. Smart kid, that one. Skyler could think of no good reply so he held his tongue. The fact that Tania had decided it best to avoid the awkward tension that arose lately whenever the three of them were in the same room, well, it said much that she’d reached that point.
A second later, Eve’s avatar appeared. A projection, via some technology even Tania said was beyond her grasp. The human form, painted in liquid light, was an amalgamation of everyone aboard, an attempt by the AI to create a persona they would feel comfortable around and identify with. Her voice, too, had an odd accent that somehow combined those of the human crew.
When first boarding this vessel, back at Earth, Skyler had wondered at the drab, matte-gray surfaces found throughout. It was only later, learning that the ship was run by a machine intelligence, that he understood. Aesthetics were of no concern to Eve. Two weeks into their journey, however, Prumble had discovered the ship’s ability to reshape and resurface nearly everything inside, and had appointed himself interior decorator. The hallways and rooms now resembled the luxurious Platz Station, with its red tiled floors and white paneled halls. Prumble had worked with Eve on her appearance as well, making it a bit more obviously artificial so as not to terrify anyone when she miraculously appeared.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“Absolutely,” Eve said, in answer.
Skyler nodded. “Um, if we could have some privacy…”
The AI nodded and, an instant later, vanished. He’d have to take her at her word that she wasn’t listening. Skyler glanced at Prumble.
“She’s right. All systems go,” Prumble said. The big New Zealander wore his customary smuggler’s grin, so bright not even his newly grown beard could hide it. He carried himself like a Shakespearean actor, his life being the stage.
Tania nodded. “Eve is satisfied with everything.”
“Good. I guess it’s decision time, then.”
The pair of them stared at him, eyebrows raised. Prumble spoke. “Er…what’s to decide, Sky? There is no other plan.”
Skyler shrugged. “Doesn’t mean we have to go through with it.” He began to walk, and his friends fell in to either side. Friends. Skyler winced at his return to old habits. It was Prumble who had advised him, years ago, and again just a day ago, to stop treating his crew as friends and instead order them around like soldiers under his command. And the big man had been right. But some things, certain decisions, were just too important to make without consulting those who’d followed him on this crazy journey.
“Skyler,” Prumble said under his breath, as if Tania were not standing a meter away. “Don’t waffle now. Trust me.”
Skyler clapped his friend on the shoulder. “You could always be bad cop to my good cop.”
“Hah! I think you’ve got that switched around.”
“Prumble’s right,” Tania said. “Not about the good and bad thing—okay maybe that, too—but Skyler, really, this is not the time to take a vote. We’ve come this far. We have to see it through, and this is the path we’ve chosen.”
“Relax, both of you. I just want to make sure we’re not forgetting something, that’s all.”
Tania gripped his elbow, turning him to face her. “We’ve done everything we can.”
He stared at her. “Not everything.”
“No?”
Skyler considered his words carefully, feeling on the brink of opening Pandora’s box. It was one thing to harbor mistrust, especially of one so integral to their survival. But to voice it, that changed things. The idea would fester, and that could cause far more problems than it solved. At least for the moment only Tania and Prumble would hear his concern. “Eve’s been holding back on us. You know I’m right. She’s vague. She leaves out details. Worse, we still don�
��t even really know what we’re going to find out there.”
Tania gave a little shake of her head. “It’s been thousands of years since she was last at her world. Who knows what might have changed? Certainly not Eve—”
“Yes, but—”
“I’m not finished.” She brushed a lock of her raven hair behind one ear and sighed. “As to her being vague, I…I’ve already talked to her about that.”
He raised an eyebrow, and waited. He could still feel the lingering touch of her hand on his arm, and fought to keep the feelings that brief contact had conjured from his mind. This was not the time or place for it. He’d been with Ana, right up until the fiery woman had decided to stay behind on Earth, hoping he would join her. He did not stay, though. He had to see the mission through, and that had ended things for them. She was long gone now, and Tania was here. But Tania had her own strained relationship with Tim to navigate, and so once again circumstances kept her and Skyler apart. He was starting to doubt the universe would ever give them a chance, or, for that matter, if Tania even wanted it to.
She went on. “What happened back on Earth, their tests, were designed to find out whether or not we had a certain skill set necessary to help free Eve’s Creators. But in particular it is our creativity they need. As you said, we don’t know what we’re going to find there. Eve doesn’t, either. She feels that to fill our heads with her analysis would sway our thinking, and not in a good way. Much like camouflaging this ship, which she’s said she never would have thought of on her own, our solutions need to be ours and ours alone. Because everything they’ve tried hasn’t worked.”
“I get that, honestly I do, but that’s not what I mean. To camouflage the ship, that required research. Information. If we’re going to be arriving at this system—which I remind you is surrounded by millions of ships whose sole purpose is to prevent anyone else from doing just that—with her completely switched off, this may be our last chance to get intel. Maybe she’s right, maybe it’s all irrelevant or will cloud our amazing human powers of cunning and judgment—”
Injection Burn Page 8
