Scrambling along as low and out of sight as possible, Rlinda and BeBob hid behind mounds of piled snow and frost, wove among conduits and the wreckage of smashed huts. Sooty residue rose from burst fuel containers and combustible materials in the habitation domes. Vaporized ice and water formed a fog that was as good as a smokescreen. Even when Rlinda couldn’t see what was happening, the din was enough to set her teeth on edge.
Directed by Karla’s demonic force, hundreds of scarlet nematodes swarmed forward, like a basket of angry cobras dumped onto the ice. Their rudimentary brains weren’t sufficient for complex hunting behavior, but the creatures could sense movement and heat. Their smooth bodies hissed across the ice pack, and their round mouths emitted eerie hooting sounds. Looking at them, Rlinda could tell these creatures were not self-aware, but mere tools of the reanimated woman.
As patchy mist drifted in and out, Rlinda watched three water miners stand their ground against the worms that writhed forward like inflated bags of blood. Two men jabbed and poked with makeshift spears while the third hammered with a club.
The nearest nematode convulsed, contracted, and squirmed, but the concerted blows were too much. The skin split open, and bright red fluid splashed the ice. The miners barely managed a cheer before dozens more worms lunged at them.
Without thinking, Rlinda grabbed her shovel and barked at BeBob, “Come on!” Springing several meters with each bound—she loved low gravity!—she flew in among the chewing nematodes. With her wide shovel, she knocked aside several of the heavy, soft worms. A backstroke with the flat blade splattered another one against the ice. BeBob used his tool like a gravedigger’s spade, driving the edge down on a flaccid body and cutting it in two. He scowled as thick gelatinous blood sprayed him, but turned his attention to five more nematodes coming at him.
“I wish I knew what we did to piss that lady off,” BeBob said.
The three water miners were yelling and fighting, smashing and chopping the worms, but the numbers didn’t seem to be diminishing. Rlinda swung her shovel, each time rewarded with a hard, wet impact. Elsewhere in the wrecked base, dozens of groups clustered together to make their last stands.
Karla continued her rampage, striding into the center of the mining base. From the other side of the settlement, two men yelled something and then unleashed a gushing explosion. Wynn and Torin had hooked a wide-diameter outflow tube to an emergency valve on one of the pipes that pumped water to the surface. The twins struggled to direct the explosive stream toward the reanimated woman. The torrent swept over Karla in a storm of frigid water, but she anchored herself like a statue. A flash-frozen wall of ice rose around her, creating a shield. As the high-pressure jet continued to bombard her, the frozen shield thickened, encapsulating Karla.
The twins shouted over the roar of the flow. “We’ve trapped her!”
As if she’d heard them, Karla shattered the cementlike white shell and easily parted the spray of water. With another burst of power, she sent a shockwave that backed up through the emergency valve and burst the tree-trunk-thick pipe. Frigid water exploded everywhere at once. Wynn and Torin dove out of the way.
Closer to Rlinda, one of the miners slipped on the ice, jabbing his spear in a last attempt to save himself. More than a dozen nematodes plunged in, tiny diamond teeth fastening, then chewing. The other Roamers tried to defend their fallen friend, but another mass of worms struck them from behind. Too many.
Rlinda watched the men die, but when four nematodes reared up in front of her, she couldn’t spare any time for the horror welling up within her. She swung the shovel like a Viking wielding an axe on a battlefield. BeBob was barely holding his own, and then the handle of his shovel cracked. Time for Plan B.
“Can you run faster than a worm, BeBob?” Rlinda delivered a few blows to clear the way, and they sprinted across the uneven ice pack, dodging among half-ruined structures. When another nematode lunged, Rlinda swung one of her heavy legs, hitting the worm’s soft membrane with her thick insulated boot. The hissing creature tumbled sideways. Rlinda made a disgusted face. “Like stepping in a bag of wet, runny shit.”
“There’s a lot more of them!” BeBob pointed to a new group of nematodes that squirmed in their direction, hissing and hooting. “Thousands, I think.”
Rlinda made a snap decision. “We’ve got to make it to the lift shaft and ride our way to the surface. Unless you plan to squash them all?”
“Not me—my arm’s already tired.”
Though the mist and smoke made it difficult to see, they ran. She and BeBob outdistanced the squirming nematodes, but Rlinda assumed the two of them were still being tracked.
As she had anticipated, an equipment shed stood unlocked next to the elevator, whose shaft ran parallel to one of the primary water wellheads. Always before, the Plumas workers had guarded the lift shafts to make sure the two hostages couldn’t escape. Now, though, the Roamers were rather preoccupied.
“Something’s hit the lift, Rlinda.” BeBob indicated a dark blotch next to the controls. “The access door is off track and wedged open.”
“Better jammed open than shut. Or would you rather circle the base, find another lift, and hope that one’s in better shape?”
With haunted eyes, he glanced back to see the cadre of scarlet nematodes coming closer, fixated on attacking them. The squirming worms were unbelievably single-minded. “Uh, no thanks. Let’s try this one.”
Rlinda yanked open the shed to reveal a rack of heavy-duty environment suits. She threw an average-sized one to BeBob and ransacked the garments, hoping to find one large enough to accommodate her. “Roamers are so damned lean and trim!” She went through one after another, breathing heavily, aware of how little time they had. She couldn’t drive away the image of the hapless Roamer men who had fallen to the nematodes, their skin chewed away.
Rlinda saw the approaching nematodes as serpentine shadows in the curling mist. She grabbed the largest of the available suits. “I hope this thing stretches.” She bounded to the damaged lift doors, which hung partly open like the slack mouth of a man who had died from a spacesuit rupture. “We’ll get dressed inside the chamber. Quit dawdling!”
BeBob didn’t need further encouragement. “At least the car is where it’s supposed to be.” Rlinda struggled to manhandle the damaged doors shut, but they were caught. As the nematodes squirmed forward like drunken inchworms, she decided there was no time for niceties. She pushed the controls, and after a brief, unpleasant grinding sound, the lift began to crawl upward.
“We’ll be fine now,” she said loudly enough to try to convince herself as well as BeBob. Adrenaline made time slow around her, now that she realized how close they’d come to being killed. “The nematodes won’t bother to follow us. Out of sight, out of mind.”
BeBob was fumbling to put on his suit. “Yeah, but they’re being guided by that demon woman. And she really doesn’t seem the forgetful type.”
“How can they climb up the shaft? They’re just worms.”
“Worms with very pointy teeth.” He fastened his belt, connected the air regulator. “Didn’t you see how easily they slithered up the walls in the grotto?”
“You’ve got a cheery answer for everything, don’t you?” Rlinda struggled with her too-small suit, getting both feet inside but not making much more progress than that. “I’m going to need your help with this, BeBob.”
“As soon as I figure the suit out for myself,” he answered, still fumbling with the unfamiliar garment. He pulled his arms into the sleeves, attached one of the gloves, then nodded. “Not like Hansa designs, but it’s a lot easier to don.”
“We need to be all dressed and ready to go as soon as we reach the surface.” Once they cycled through the external airlock, they could run across the ice to the waiting Curiosity. Already she imagined they were home free. “I sure hope we can take off before the ice ceiling collapses beneath us.”
She tugged on the reinforced multilayer fabric, working her way into the suit. I
t wasn’t quite stretchy enough. BeBob, who was mostly dressed except for his helmet and left glove, worked with her, massaging her into the constricting legs and sleeves.
“I was never a big fan of formfitting garments,” Rlinda said.
Beneath the lift’s floor, a bone-chilling sound grew louder . . . whispery, like wet socks being swirled in a glass bottle. BeBob looked at his feet. “They’re climbing up the shaft after us.”
“Actually, I think they got to one of the lift-stage platforms. Now they’ve crawled onto the reinforcement struts on our undercarriage.”
“In other words, they’re right under our feet.” He looked down, alarmed. She pulled his attention back to helping her with the suit. BeBob swallowed hard. “Maybe it’s only one or two of them.”
The first one struck the underside of the lift chamber with enough force to make a visible dent in the inner floor. The lift lurched, then slowed as if suddenly weighted down. “Uh, Rlinda . . .”
“Let me think a minute, BeBob.”
With another slam, several more nematodes smashed into the elevator and anchored themselves to the pipes and struts beneath the lifting chamber. Then came a chilling scraping sound as the worms, with their small diamond teeth, began to chew through the metal floor.
40
GENERAL KURT LANYAN
With each passing second, the stolen battle group got farther away.
General Lanyan leaned forward on the uncomfortable bench of the troop transport racing after the Grid 0 ships. “You sure this is our best speed, Mr. Carrera? We’ve got a tough job ahead of us.” Though the kleebs had completed plenty of simulations, he feared they weren’t ready for blood-in-the-face combat. Today, they damned well needed to be.
“Doing my best, sir.” Sweat glistened on his forehead. “But if we pull too far ahead of the others, our ship will be a vulnerable target. The Soldier compies could decide to do a little practice shooting with their jazers.”
Lanyan grumbled. “So noted. Keep everyone together, but keep hauling ass.” They’d been under heavy acceleration for an hour, and already it seemed like forever. His pulse pounded, his mind intense as he turned his full attention to the hunt.
While Ensign Carrera concentrated on flying, Lanyan activated the short-range comm and transmitted to all ships in his makeshift cavalry. “Somebody give me a full inventory. Ships and weapons. We need to make our first punch a knockout blow.” He could sense their uneasiness. “Come on, you’ve drilled this often enough! Power all jazer banks to full strength, even on approach. Make sure our shaped charges, fraks, and slammers are ready to go.”
“Is it going to be enough, General?” said the nearest kleeb, an innocent-faced redhead with a rash of freckles on his cheeks.
“Of course it is.”
Requests for immediate reinforcements had already been sent to the bases on the Moon and Mars, but the General did not intend to sit on the sidelines in the meantime and give the compies time to dig in.
“Targets detected ahead, sir,” Carrera said. “Intercept in five minutes.”
A glimmer of tiny dots looked as if someone had thrown quartz sand into a bright light. The stolen Juggernaut, Mantas, and Thunderheads were on their way out of the solar system toward whatever rendezvous the insidious compies had planned. As Lanyan’s rescue squad closed the gap, the twinkling spots resolved into angular silhouettes.
“How come I can see thrusters? God damn, are they turning about?”
“They’re slowing and pivoting, General. I think they see us coming.” Carrera ran another sensor scan. “Their weapons are preparing to fire! Railgun launchers and jazers pointed right at us.”
“Don’t give them an easy target.” Precision-controlled Soldier compies would be expert marksmen, regardless of how the response group distributed itself. Sensing the tension surge in the troop transport, Lanyan said, “Remember your training! This is exactly what you’ve been prepared to do.”
“Sir, we’ve only got small ships. None of us can withstand a direct hit.”
“Have a little faith, Mr. Carrera. Just get us closer. I need another second.”
The clusters of ships careened toward each other. Lanyan’s recruits were ready for a free-for-all. “Shall we open fire, sir? We’re in range.”
“Not yet. This is my opening salvo.” He manually switched to an elite communications band that was wired into the bridges of all EDF battleships and pushed the transmit button. “Confirm voiceprint: General Kurt Lanyan. Identification 88RI Alpha.”
His pursuit ships continued to close the gap. The hijacked vessels loomed closer and closer, weapons ports open and primed. The robot-controlled Goliath looked huge. Lanyan sat back and smiled.
Lifting his finger from the transmit button, he waited a moment until he received automatic confirmation. Then he said, “Engage guillotine protocol.”
The pilot barely squeaked out his words. “That’s . . . it?”
Suddenly the running lights on the compy-controlled ships dimmed and went out. The Grid 0 vessels froze in space. Their engines shut down, cutting all thrust. They drifted with only the momentum they retained.
“We’ve just pulled the plug on their little escape operation.” The General was amused at his stunned-silent crew. “They’re dead in space.”
Sensor technicians aboard the cavalry ships scrambled to take readings. A milky-skinned young woman looked at Lanyan from her cockpit station. “Confirmed. Their energy readings are fading to ambient, sir. Weapons systems are inactive.”
Lanyan threaded his thick fingers together and locked them behind his head. “Even if those Soldier compies killed our crews and took over our ships, the control computers belong to me.” The guillotine protocol had been specifically designed to stall a mutiny, to prevent anyone from stealing a ship.
The cavalry fleet glided closer to the Juggernaut, the most important target. “Now it’s time to take everything back. I want my ships!” He cracked his knuckles. “But be prepared—it might get a little messy. Every soldier will carry a sidearm. Distribute the heavy weaponry as far as it’ll go. Don’t expect these clankers to give up without a fight.”
Lanyan issued orders for his recruits to suit up in special body armor. Similar teams were getting ready aboard all the hastily called vessels. A few pilots and trainees would remain aboard the gunships as a backup measure, but most of the recruits were in for a long and sweaty day of hard combat.
In the troop transport’s cold rear compartment, the General suited up, attaching powerpacks to his alloy-reinforced garb. Finished, he stood before the breathless kleebs, and his speech was piped to all the waiting armored trainees. “Those compies took over our ships and slaughtered unarmed crews.” He smiled inside his helmet, clicked his faceplate into place, and activated the suit microphone. “Now let’s go start stomping some robot asses!”
It would have been a lot easier just to destroy the crippled ships so the compies couldn’t fly off. But Lanyan wasn’t about to give up all those armored vessels without a fight. He had an uneasy feeling that Earth might need them.
Demolitions techs were the first to emerge, drifting over to the disabled Juggernaut and planting explosive charges against the cargo bay hull. “Proceed,” Lanyan said. “Assume that everyone on board is dead.” Or expendable.
The demolitions techs jetted out of the way. As the shaped explosives ignited, the Juggernaut’s cargo bay cracked open, decompressing the lower decks. Atmosphere vomited out, sweeping dozens of Soldier compies into the cold vacuum, where they flailed and drifted. Lanyan watched them float away, knowing it wouldn’t be so easy to get rid of the rest.
His group of suited fighters adjusted their acceleration packs, checked air tanks and weapons charges, and prepared to jump across the dizzying gulf.
“Let’s get started,” Lanyan said. “We’ve got a lot of ships to take back today.”
41
ROSSIA
Though he continued to send reports through his treeling, R
ossia could see that they had lost the fight, lost the Juggernaut, and lost the whole Grid 5 battle group. The compies kept coming and coming. He hadn’t heard messages from any other EDF green priests in a long time now.
Outside the Eldorado’s bridge, blood painted the corridor walls in red abstract patterns. Though the Soldier compies could easily have yanked a few still-charged weapons from their victims, instead they used their metal- and polymer-sheathed arms as bludgeons. They were in no hurry now.
Grid 5’s Mantas had been subsumed, and the cruisers had withdrawn, waiting for the inevitable end. Soldier compies controlled all command bridges except for the Eldorado. Rossia could see it would not be long; he communicated as much through the treeling. By now the delicate gold-scale bark looked worn from his insistent touching.
Long ago, when the wyvern had snatched him from the Theron treetops, Rossia had been sure he was going to die. Now he had the same feeling.
But Admiral Eolus wasn’t done yet. He prowled the barricaded bridge, his shoulders squared, his thick arms swinging from side to side. “Come on, then,” he snarled at the compies, using his loudest voice. “Or are you afraid to get a little dented?”
The bridge defenders had put up a valiant fight, but it was a hopeless last stand. As they saw death approaching, one by one the soldiers volunteered to throw themselves against the massed Soldier compies, protecting Admiral Eolus for just a few minutes more.
Rossia squeezed his eyes shut, unable to bear seeing any more blood. He gripped his treeling. “I just received word from Nahton. Even the Palace District compy factory has turned into a battle zone. I’m the only green priest still alive in any battle group—unless the others are just separated from their treelings.” He blinked his eyes and looked around for reassurance. “Maybe that’s it. Maybe they’re still alive.”
Now only the green priest, a station officer, and the security chief remained alive alongside the gruff Admiral. As compies tossed the last of the uniformed corpses aside, Eolus apparently decided enough was enough.
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