Desolator: Book 2 (Stellar Conquest)

by VanDyke, David

  Chirom smiled. “I did say that, didn’t I? What better time.” He turned to look for Elder B’nur, saying, “You should take charge of the females. Prepare the surgery. Many will die this day, but fewer if our honored sisters and mothers care for us. Also harvest and wrap as much food as you can, in case we must escape rapidly.”

  B’nur, old but still with steel in her spine, nodded and clapped her paws together. “Sisters! Come to me, and I will explain what we must do.”

  ***

  “Your choice,” Ezekiel said apologetically. “You can go into the VR cocoon and share the virtuality, or you can hang out here for a couple of days. Hope you’re not claustrophobic.” He gestured at the small chamber that held three sarcophagi.

  “Nothing to worry about, Jill,” Spooky assured her. “Just like the coldsleep boxes.”

  “That’s what worries me. I might never wake up.”

  Spooky shrugged. “Life is full of risk. As for me…see you on the inside.” He stripped naked and climbed into one cocoon. Ezekiel followed suit, and soon Jill stared at two sealed bio-boxes and one open.

  “Oh, bloody hell,” she mumbled, and took off her skinsuit.

  Moments later she found herself stepping into something out of Jules Verne – Captain Nemo’s Nautilus, perhaps. Brass rails, riveted iron, and polished wood abounded. Circular flat glass portholes showed ocean views stretching impossibly far, as if the water were clear and telescopic. Sea creatures such as were never seen on Earth swam, crawled, floated and jetted through the bluish space.

  “This feels a bit unreal,” Jill remarked, “not at all like when I took a ride in a StormCrow.”

  “It’s deliberate,” Ezekiel assured her, stepping up next to her in front of the large forward porthole. He wore a high-collared outfit reminiscent of a naval uniform. “One way to fight VR confusion is to ensure the virtuality is a bit imperfect.”

  Jill checked her own body, finding herself clothed in Marine utilities. “So, how is this all generated, anyway? I mean, if your ship is this mentally capable and focused, it would be fully sentient. I understood it was nearer animal intelligence, like a dog.”

  “That’s a reasonable analogy. However, this virtuality is generated by an implanted cybernetic package only accessible when I am here. Without me linked in, nothing will work and Roger isn’t going anywhere. Meme ships are very loyal; they’re bred and designed that way.”

  “So other Meme ships can’t do this?” Jill ran her hand around the rubber seal at the edge of the glass, feeling the chill of the waters and the contrasting warmth of the wood burl next to it.

  “Older ones can sustain a virtual environment. I didn’t want to wait fifty years for him to grow up, so, like many of us, he’s cybernetically augmented.”

  Jill grunted noncommittally. Everything here appeared so different from her life – either of her lives: mother or warrior. This seemed a world of shadows and smoke, lacking substance. She’d heard of VR confusion, addiction and even psychosis, and she could understand. It made the old sci-fi concept of the secret matrixed virtuality seem less like a fantasy, more of an eventual certainty. “I’ll be happy when we’re done with it. How long will that be?”

  “Two days if there are no glitches, but you can sleep for as long as you want. Just tell me and I’ll have the system put you under and then wake you up. There are also books, movies, games, courses…and I can slow or speed up your time sense.”

  Jill wondered about the limits of his power inside the VR environment. Whether he could order her body to turn itself off, for example, or cause her to see and believe things that could not be distinguished from reality. She suppressed a shiver. “Impressive.”

  “Thanks,” he replied offhandedly, then walked over to sit down in a leather-upholstered pedestal chair in front of a control board. “Here we go.”

  Reaching for levers with polished spherical knobs on the ends, he advanced them like throttles with one hand while holding onto a half-wheel with the other. The view from the front suddenly shot toward them as they sped up, though she felt minimal acceleration. An overlay on the window, a rather anachronistic HUD, marked objects with carets and symbols that were too far away to see, giving Ezekiel plenty of time to steer. “Would you like to try?” Ezekiel asked, waving her into the chair.

  She sat, eagerly, and placed her hands on the simple controls. Soon, she had the hang of it. “This is just like flying,” Jill breathed delightedly as they swooped above the ocean floor. “Better, though, since we can’t fall.”

  “Yes, it is pleasant,” said Spooky from behind them. “I’ve been going over what information I have, and I’d like to brief you when you are ready.”

  “Give it a rest, boss,” Ezekiel said good-naturedly, and for a moment Jill caught the echo of his mother Rae Denham, half of whom had been the Meme Raphael. It had defected from the Empire to Blend with a young human woman, creating a goddess of incredible wisdom.

  But the goddess had fallen in love with a man, the grim warrior Alan “Skull” Denham. He’d given his life in the fight against the Meme, but not before fathering Ezekiel and four other hybrid humans.

  “Of course. Take your time.” Spooky took a position of parade rest, staring out a side porthole, and Jill could see he wore a simple set of black clothing something like pajamas with soft-soled canvas shoes. She racked her brain for where she had seen such an ensemble before, then thought of videos of the Vietnam conflict, and the insurgent forces involved. Viet Cong. Apropos.

  “You know he’ll just stand there like a vulture until we listen to his briefing,” Ezekiel remarked quietly.

  Jill glanced sharply at Spooky, who did not appear to have heard.

  “This is my virtuality, Jill. He can’t hear if I don’t want him to.” Ezekiel raised an eyebrow with a smirk even as he kept his eyes on his piloting.

  “You’re a god inside here, eh?” she asked half-seriously.

  “We’re all gods inside our own heads, Jill. But if you’re uneasy about how much power I have right now, remember the rest of us see the other side of that every day we are near people like you.”

  “People like me?” Jill’s face showed genuine confusion.

  “Cyborgs. Any one of you Marines could kill an ordinary human being with a twitch. Anyone within arm’s reach is completely within your power, unless they are equally enhanced. We trust you. Why don’t you trust me?”

  Jill took a deep breath. “Trust isn’t an all-or-nothing thing. I can’t help feeling uncomfortable, but…point taken.”

  “Would it help if I told you that you could break out of your sarcophagus if you really wanted to? Any strong emotion, any severe shock to the system, will cause the virtuality to break down. It’s a safety measure. Does that make you feel better?”

  “Yes, actually it does.” She looked over at Spooky, who was now smoking a cigar, his elbow braced against the glass and his hand on his head, leaning. “What about food and drink…or smoking?”

  “You can have whatever you want. Just ask. Spooky has his own tricks, like that cigar. He’s spent a lot of time in VR.”

  “I’d like a beer and a double ice cream sundae, in that order. No calories, guilt-free, right?”

  “Right.”

  Chapter Nine

  “Drop your cocks and grab your socks, boys, we’re going in,” Bull transmitted to his troops over the suitcomm.

  “Bull,” Johnstone said on a private channel.

  “Yeah?” His tone was combative.

  Still pissed, I see. “Just reminding you that we are trying to make contact here. Nobody fires at anything alive unless we get fired upon. Drones and unmanned weapons emplacements are fair game.”

  “I got it. Sir.” He changed channels to address all the troops. “Just remember your training and don’t get twitchy. Shoot the machines but not the organics. We have to sort the friendlies from the hostiles on this one.”

  Launch interrupted the conversation, G forces bleeding over the minimal grav
plates and into the crash cocoons, but everything, including the Marines themselves, was built to take it – and built was an accurate word. Every trooper had full cybernetic implants with laminated bones, polymer muscle enhancers and hardwired nerves, plus supercharging combat nanobots in the blood for gross body repair. Underlying it all was the Eden Plague virus, which kept all of their merely human cells in perfect running order.

  Bull called up the pilots’ feeds on his HUD, a prerogative of his command suit. Launched from two million klicks away, the sleds seemed to crawl toward their objective, the ice moon Reta in orbit around New Jove. Approaching from the side opposite the base, in theory the bogey could not see them coming.

  He could see Conquest and sixty StormCrows shepherding the forty sleds in, and knew they would cover the landing as the Marines came in nap-of-the-earth to disembark on target. Estimated time of arrival on his HUD said two hours, five minutes.

  Now he started getting an intel feed, which was also routed to all of the troops. A voiceover spoke as shaky video ran, showing the enormous wall of the alien ship set next to the fuel processor on the moon’s surface. “Lieutenant Fleede, from Intel here. All right, the bogey has set down on the ice, with its waist right next to the depot and these wing-like structures surrounding it on three sides. Now you see a bunch of spider drones disembarking, there, there, and over there. Now on this video you will see them enter the base and explore, then they hook up and drain the bulk tanks – liquid oxygen and hydrogen mostly, then they start dismantling the fittings, taking hoses, valves, electrical cabling, everything of value, and carting it back to their ship.”

  Shifting and bouncing, the video cut to an interior view. “Here we see them approaching the main processing controls. One of the spider drones inserts a probe into a universal data port and…that’s it.” The video went blank. “We surmise they took control of the facility with a cyber-virus. Now all we have is some long-range video from surveillance drones holding position in view of the facility. From those it looks like the bogey is dismantling the plant and taking just about everything.” The video ended.

  “Intel, this is Major ben Tauros. Have any of the organic aliens been seen?”

  “Ah, no sir, just the robot drones or telefactors, whatever they are.”

  “Did you see any weapons on those drones?”

  “Nothing except cutting lasers and other power tools, sir.”

  “Right. Thanks.” He cut the comm. “Bloody pirates,” Bull muttered.

  “It might be a matter of survival,” Johnstone interjected mildly on the private channel.

  “They could have just asked. No, this is not some friendly aliens saying a nice hello. Not after that first cyber-attack and what those Ryss guys said. There’s something very wrong going on in there.”

  “I agree. But the admiral, and General Kullorg too, agree it’s worth some of our lives to find out, and maybe acquire technologies that we haven’t even dreamed of – things that will help us or our children beat the Meme when they grow up. Remember the real enemy here.”

  Bull’s simmering anger at the situation suddenly cooled as he was reminded of his two baby boys at home. I’ve been so wrapped up I forgot the bigger picture, he realized. Pull your head out of your ass, Bull, and start acting like a Marine. Give Repeth’s husband some credit. There must be a reason she married the guy. “Understood, Commander. Me and my Marines have your back; just tell us what you need us to do.”

  “Thanks, Bull. I’ll tell you when I know myself.”

  ***

  Three hundred Ryss warriors flooded the warm-room and spilled into the corridors, milling about with tools in their hands. Some had power wrenches but most had only manual implements. Trissk wondered if that would be enough to break open the armory.

  A shudder and a thump flowed through the ship’s structure, then a long grinding, as the great vessel settled onto the ice. Several Ryss leaped into the air as gravity dropped to a fraction of normal.

  “Desolator has landed and shut off the gravitic fields,” Chirom said. “Make ready.”

  At the largest doorway a commotion called his attention. A scream and sounds of a struggle followed, then a young Ryss warrior stumbled bleeding through the entrance, followed by a crowd of youths carrying a broken maintainer bot. “We killed it!” they cried, and Chirom shook his head.

  “Too soon, my friends, but now the bird is out of the net. Clans, disperse and meet at the armory. Destroy any armed drones but remember,” he raised his voice to a shout as they started to scatter, “leave the harmless ones alone! We may need them ourselves.” His voice was drowned out in the roar of enthusiastic warriors.

  Trissk grabbed Chirom’s wrist and shook it. “Elder, we must follow. If they get weapons, the eager unblooded will start to shoot anything that moves. Perhaps each other as well.”

  “You are right. Let us go quickly.”

  The two trailed the mass of Rell through the main corridor, Trissk with just one backward glance at Klis, who was tearing their meager stock of blankets into bandages. She bobbed her head in farewell, her paws too busy to do otherwise.

  Sirens suddenly whooped in the corridors, causing the younger Ryss to look around fearfully at the unfamiliar sound. Desolator’s voice broke in and said, in its resonant tones, “Four maintenance drones have been damaged by Ryss personnel. The perpetrators must be apprehended and confined pending punishment.” Then the noise resumed.

  “Ignore it!” called Chirom from the rear of the sixty or so Rell clan warriors. “Continue to the armory!” The mass stumbled forward, awkward in the low gravity, many scrambling on all fours like beasts. Some threw off their flapping warm-clothes, as nudity was of little import to a fur-clad race, though a few had donned their work coveralls or even old vacuum suits.

  The elder passed a smashed maintenance bot, evidence that his words went unheeded. When does a revolution become a mob? he wondered, and was grateful within himself that their targets were mere machines.

  Except for Desolator. Insane or not, it was more than just a device…but how much more? Chirom had not even himself decided what the morality of the situation required, only that the dictator must be overthrown. Ryss had built Desolator, and somehow Ryss had failed to ensure that it was sane and cooperative; but at some point the AI, if it truly was sentient, must take responsibility for its own crimes.

  Covering more than a thousand strides, the mass finally reached the armory. It took only a few smallspans to cut through the doors; they were never intended to do more than secure against casual appropriation.

  A large room filled with tough mesh enclosures, it contained thousands of maser carbines, neutron grenades, and hotblades, all optimized to kill Meme bio-constructs, along with pieces of standard unpowered combat armor.

  “Use your tools to open the cages,” Chirom cried, but the Rell were already doing so with enthusiasm. From other entrances to the large room poured the other clan warriors, many dragging pieces of drones as trophies.

  Chirom raised his voice. “Remember, do not destroy maintenance bots! Do not destroy machinery we may need to live!” His words were lost in the uproar as the metal barriers fell and the weapons were handed out. Some fool fired a maser, its marker flash and humming sound preceding a cry of pain as the microwave bolt bounced off a metal surface and burned a Ryss.

  Someone passed him a hotblade and he strapped its belt across his chest, but did not take it out. When withdrawn its crystalline length could be activated to heat a glowing white, the better to slice easily through enemy protoplasm. But today, the foe was not flesh and blood, but metal and ceramic and plastic.

  Trissk pushed through the mass with two carbines and two grenades, a hotblade already strapped around him. “Elder, you must give them a target or you will lose control.”

  Chirom glanced sharply at the youngling, wondering how Trissk recognized this before he himself had. “Agreed.” Unsheathing his blade with its powered function off, he raised the shining crystal a
bove his head. “Follow me to Desolator’s vault!”

  Trissk took up the cry and soon they were leading the mass toward the center of the massive vessel.

  As they reached an intersection a maintenance drone passed in front of them, a knee-high device with some sort of spare part clutched in its manipulators. From behind masers fired, their marker flashes lighting its dull surfaces. It veered to the right and slammed into a wall and with a howl a dozen Ryss jumped on it, many with naked glowing hotblades. In a moment the thing was dismembered even as Chirom and Trissk futilely pleaded with them to stop.

  When the thing was done and the mob drew back, a young warrior lay propped against the wall among the debris, staring at the stump where his arm used to be. Perfectly cauterized, the wound did not bleed, but the severed limb twitched on the floor and a sudden silence fell.

  “Now see what has happened,” said Trissk in loud reproof. “The elder said to leave the maintenance bots alone, but you disobeyed him and now you have maimed a fellow warrior.” He really did not feel much sympathy, as the amputee was one of the fools doing the hacking. “Are we Ryss warriors or are we moor-cats?”

  Those in the front hung their heads in shame.

  Taking his cue, Chirom stepped forward. “You younglings and yearsmanes, you must listen to your clan elders. Do not attack without consent of your elders, who have fought the Meme before. I say again, maintenance bots and machinery are not our enemies – only the armed drones and the AI itself. You, you,” he pointed at the two he judged most at fault, “help this fallen one back to our mothers and sisters in the warm-room, so that he may live to fight another day. The rest, follow me.”

  More calmly now, Chirom led the Ryss deeper into the ship. After another thousand strides they came to a great sealed door. “We must break this open. Desolator is inside.”

  Chapter Ten

  Screaming in at three meters above the cracked and broken ice fields, forty Marine assault sleds arrowed for their objective. Above them, looking down at five thousand meters, Vango Markis rolled his StormCrow over and sighted in on the enemy ship. Don’t care what the admiral says, as far as I’m concerned it’s hostile until someone confirms different.