There, over the jostling heads and shoulders of the frantic Martians, was a small contingent of Ru’at-human cyborgs. It seemed that they were still functional, Solomon thought dismally. And in their midst, right in the middle of their murderous company, marched the clone of Augustus Tavin.
They were still tens of meters away, but the two clones locked eyes over the seething mass of panicked people.
“Move it, now!” Solomon said, raising his pistol.
“STOP THEM!” Tavin’s fine features twisted in rage as he bellowed down the corridor, raising not a gun but a finger to point at Solomon and the others.
FZT! Solomon fired. He had been a fairly decent shot even before his Outcast training on Ganymede, and now he had both military expertise and an enhanced genetic code.
Solomon’s rear leg swept back as he turned his shoulder, holding the pistol in both hands as he sighted down the ridiculously small barrel and fired.
The shot burned past the racing Martians, exploiting a fraction of a gap between them.
But Augustus Tavin was also one of the Ru’at clones. He also had an enhanced genetic structure. In split-second timing, Solomon saw the man starting to duck, and the shot that should have burned a hole right between his eyes instead only glanced along his temple and ear.
“Ach!” With a gasp of pain and a spurt of blood, Tavin was thrown sideways to the floor. Solomon had no idea whether he had killed him, and if he had any thought that the cyborgs would stop operating without Tavin or would pause to tend to their group leader, then he had been wrong.
The cyborgs were already raising their own particle-beam weapon-hands, and, unlike Solomon, they fired indiscriminately at anything between them and their target.
Martians screamed and hit the deck, either that or were thrown into the air, their fragile bodies blown apart by the cyborg’s weapons.
“Don’t hang around, boss!” Kol shouted, grabbing the lieutenant by the front of his encounter suit and dragging him into the garage as blue-white bolts of fire shot past Solomon’s shoulder.
“Why on earth did you fire on him! You idiot!” Rhossily was shouting as soon as the two men stumbled into the room.
The garage for the Ru’at colony was, for all intents and purposes, a hangar, Solomon saw, but one whose main body was given over to terrestrial vehicles. They stumbled down a set of metal stairs to where the different sizes of Martian rovers—tall, boxy cab-units suspended over six wheels with independent axle control—were kept. Solomon noted that all of them had the sword and red orb that was the insignia of the Red Planet, indicating that they must have been stolen from whatever Martian Habitat they had come from.
The entire far wall was a large airlock-gate, and it was here that Kol had already sprinted to, trying to get the door working.
“There’s no power, remember?” Solomon yelled. “We’ll have to blast our way out…” His words faltered as his gaze took in the far side of the room, where the wall was made of one entirely clear viewing plate.
And on the other side were rows and rows of Ru’at ships, and each one was lying on its side.
Huh?
“I can get the hydraulics to release, but the outer airlock won’t automatically depressurize. Once we’re in and close this door behind us…” Kol was saying. He had managed to get one of the wall units to open, exposing pipes and pistons and large, red-handled levers. He pulled this down with a heavy thunk, and the large airlock-gate started to rise on its mechanical, rather than electronic, pistons.
FZZT! FZT! Solomon flinched as lines of cyborg fire hit the door, and the sounds of shrieking outside intensified. The lieutenant was already moving toward the nearest rover—can’t be picky in times of alien invasion—but his mind was still pulling at what he had seen in the Ru’at hangar next door.
The ships were lying on their side like discarded coffee cups, Solomon thought as he jumped the short ladder to the cab above. Why? It didn’t make sense to dock them like that, so there must have been another explanation. They had looked as if they had fallen, or were lifeless—
Just like the Ru’at drone in my pocket, he thought as his hands closed around the metal orb there.
The door to the cab, thankfully, operated similarly to the mechanical hydraulics and pistons of the airlock-gate. Solomon knew from his time on Ganymede—which was a mere scattering of mechanical and engineering training compared to Kol, who had once been their technical specialist—that most vehicles on hostile-environment planets had both electrical and mechanical fail-safes. Which meant that their essential doors and ports could be operated by cranking handles and levers. Within heartbeats, he had the door open and was helping Ochrie and Mariad inside before joining them in the cramped space.
The Martian rover was designed just as a transport and courier vehicle, although Solomon rather thought that they must be like the Ford pickups of old Earth—able to be modified and retrofitted to almost any use. Solomon found himself sitting in one of two high piloting chairs, until the imprimatur gave a loud snort of disgust from behind him.
“Do you even know how to drive one of these things?” Rhossily asked.
“Do you?” Solomon retorted. Up ahead, the door had finally raised enough for them to drive in, and Kol was already racing to the inside of the airlock to prepare to close it behind them. No one wanted a massive blowout that would send them flying over the Martian landscape…
“Actually, yes! Now move over, Lieutenant.” Mariad was already rising from the bench of seats at the back she had shared with the ambassador to clamber into the driver’s seat. Solomon climbed into the back to lean out of the cab and point his gun back at the garage door.
With a heavy bounce and a jostle that almost set Solomon on his backside, Mariad Rhossily had the rover moving forward, its large wheels managing to screech as she threw it into a tight turn and into the airlock.
FZZT! A cyborg appeared at the door to the garage, its weapon-arm already raised.
But Solomon fired first. He had been anticipating this and despite the bouncing rover, he managed to score a hit. He had been aiming for the head and neck, but the crazy suspension of the rover jostled his arm, and instead the line of blue fire slammed into the thing’s midriff.
CRUNCH! It flung against the opposite wall, its chest now a smoking ruin.
“Holy frack!” Solomon looked at the little pistol. Was that the answer to the unstoppable cyborgs? Use their own weaponry against them?
BANG! The rover shuddered and skidded to one side, even as it crossed into the airlock, when one of its six tires blew. What? It was another cyborg at the garage door, already tracking its weapon toward them.
FZT! FZT! Solomon fired the Ru’at pistol, feathering the firing button so that it produced multiple shots like darts of glowing white plasma rather than one continuous line of light.
Most of the laser shots hit the doorjamb and the wall, leaving scorch marks and bubbling metal, but at least two hit the thing’s legs, sending it crashing to the ground.
“Kol, get in!” Solomon shouted.
“Someone needs to operate the manual de-pressure procedure!” Kol shouted back. Already the airlock gate behind the rover was sliding down under Kol’s direction. As the heavy metal eclipsed his view, Sol saw another shape emerge in the garage door. It was the stumbling, half-crouched form of none other than Augustus Tavin, one hand held to the side of his face as he screamed.
“There they are! They’re getting away!”
Solomon took aim…just as the airlock-gate slid to a halt in front of them.
“Dammit!” Solomon cursed. He didn’t know whether it would have made any difference in killing Tavin, as he was a clone and surely the Ru’at would just build another one, but the ex-thief knew that he would have felt mighty good about doing it. “Kol! Get your behind in here, now!” he shouted.
“De-pressure, sir!” Kol reminded him.
“Fool,” Solomon hissed as he swung himself out from the cab and jumped to the airlock
floor to run to where Kol was. “I’m the one wearing the encounter suit. You get in there now!” he ordered, and was surprised when Kol obeyed him.
“These levers and that wheel, sir!” Kol pointed to the exposed mechanical controls as he ran for the rover. Solomon quickly got to work, slamming the wide-handled levers down to hear the ground and walls shudder as exit valves were opened and the air started to flood out of the airlock.
Next came the wheel, a blue-gray industrial shape that looked as though no one had touched it for years. Usually, Solomon knew that airlocks were run on an automated basis—they detected the suit signals entering or leaving, and then they proceeded to perform whatever task was necessary, pumping the atmosphere out of the space or in. But, as with the Martian rover and other terrestrial vehicles in hostile environment worlds, airlocks usually had a manual option. By turning the wheel, he would crank open the filters and valves between the inside of this room and the Martian climate outside.
“Rargh!” Solomon heaved at the wheel, and it started to slowly move a centimeter, and then a little more. What the man didn’t know was only his enhanced genetics had allowed him to even get this far. His Ru’at DNA activated and sent adrenaline through his system, as well as a much more efficient synthesis of nutrients and proteins.
Thud-thud-thud. The inner door started to shake with muffled explosions, and Solomon guessed it had to be the cyborgs on the far side trying to get at them. Even as he watched, he saw several small patches of the inner airlock gate start to lighten in color, turning from dark blue-gray to a lighter blue, then silver, and then warm to a super-heated red.
“They’re burning through!” Solomon shouted, forgetting that he didn’t have the others on his more familiar Gold Channel. He hoped that they could hear him anyway as he threw himself at the wheel and pulled. He could feel all the muscles in his back tightening and stretching, before suddenly the airlock filled with steam and condensation as Solomon broke the seal and the outer airlock door started to rise.
Got it! The lieutenant couldn’t see how close the cyborgs were to burning their way through the airlock, but they would be in for a surprise when they did, as they would effectively perforate the Ru’at colony! Solomon ran for the cab as the rear engines roared and the cab bounced, starting to roll forward.
“Get in, get in!” he heard the dim, muffled shout of Kol, leaning out of the cab and holding out a hand as Solomon vaulted up, to be grabbed by the traitor to the Outcast marines and dragged inside, the cab door slamming and auto-locking behind them.
“Buckle up if you can, ladies and gentlemen. This isn’t going to be scenic,” the Imprimatur of Proxima growled as she kicked down on the foot pedals and the Mars rover surged forward, scraping the roof of its cab across the bottom of the rising door as it bounced into the burnt landscape of the Red Planet outside.
We did it. We escaped. We survived. Solomon braced himself against the door and one of the pilot’s chairs as Kol took his seat beside Mariad up front. He had once been a technical specialist, so Solomon didn’t begrudge having all the expertise up front.
But how far can we run? Solomon’s command-strategy mind was already calculating. And how long can we survive?
7
Master Command Function
“Where am I heading?” Mariad shouted over the chug and whine of the rover.
These things are about as comfortable as if we had chosen a catapult for a mode of transport, Solomon groaned inwardly. No, in fact, a catapult would have been more comfortable. He had no comprehension how Kol could look so calm in his seat, gazing out of the viewing windows in front and to the side as he jostled and jumped, narrowly missing banging his head on the metal ceiling.
Bleeding Martians, First Lieutenant Cready was inclined to say, but he didn’t. He rather thought that they would all need some of that Martian grit before they were free.
“Wait up, wait up, let me see…” Kol was looking out the windows. “We came down in the northern hemisphere, just past Syrtis Planitia…”
Meanwhile, Solomon craned his neck to look through the viewing porthole. Outside, the landscape of Mars wasn’t red, but it was hellish. It was a mixture of ochre oranges, yellows, and browns with black rocks scattered everywhere.
And craters… Solomon was suddenly thrown into the air as Mariad forced the rover across the edge of a not very large one, but with only five of its six ‘legged’ wheels available, it bounced.
“Ach!” Solomon hit the floor heavily, smacking his knees.
“Sorry! No time for safe driving!” Rhossily called out from the front, earning another disgruntled growl from the lieutenant behind. The imprimatur had to turn the vehicle to avoid the next crater, and as she did, the sight of the Ru’at colony came into view.
It was a gleaming silver edifice that rose higher and higher to a silver-steel spike right in its heart. It spread out across the Martian surface like some sort of sea creature, with long, shining steel arms punctured by the dark shapes of airlocks.
It may have looked beautiful, but for Solomon, it made him sick. But he had no time for such worries as his mind churned over what he had seen. The fallen Ru’at jump-ships. Like they were discarded, useless, broken.
Solomon drew out the Ru’at orb from his pocket, finding it just as lifeless as the ships.
“It lost power when the EMP struck,” Solomon muttered. “But this thing wasn’t plugged into any power source…” He had thought that they must run on their own internal power source—and maybe they did—but somehow, the wave of electrons fired from the EMP—and whoever fired it, he thought—had caused it to lose all function.
I wonder… Solomon frowned deeply. “Kol? You’re the technical expert. When you cut off the signal to a wireless-controlled drone, it goes dead, right?” he asked.
“What? Yes, of course. What sort of question is that?” Kol said as he pointed out features to Rhossily in order to try and get a better bearing.
“But what if the wireless drone had an internal power unit?” Solomon asked.
“Then it would work, wouldn’t it?” the treacherous Outcast Marine snapped. “Unless, of course, the wireless signal has a master command function.”
“Who-what-now?”
“Master command. Superior override. The wireless channel is given the priority over every other executive function, meaning that the drone has to get the operational green light from the wireless signal before it activates its internal batteries,” Kol said condescendingly, as if this was a thing that even children should know.
Maybe it is, Solomon thought. He knew how to hotwire a spaceship and break electronic locks, and that was about the extent of his engineering proficiency. But what Kol had said had proved his theory, all the same.
“That EMP knocked out the Ru’at,” he said aloud.
“You don’t say.” Kol wasn’t impressed.
“No! You don’t understand,” Solomon said excitedly. “It’s not just that the EMP disrupted their communications or whatever, it’s…”
‘When the Ru’at first began their salvation of the galaxy, they soon encountered a problem: that of distance.’ Wasn’t that what the hologram-not-hologram human had said? Solomon connected the dots.
“—it’s the fact that the Ru’at aren’t even here!” he exclaimed.
“What?” Mariad shook her head.
“Uh, boss, have you seen everything that we’ve seen these last few days?” Kol didn’t sound convinced.
Solomon almost tripped over his words, he was so excited. “When I was being operated on, they lectured me, telling me that the Ru’at send these little seed-drone things—” he shook the silent orb in his hand, “—out across space, transmitting their Message, and hoping that some intelligent civilization like the Confederacy was dumb enough to take the bait!”
It all made so much sense to Cready now, as he explained it to the others.
“The Ru’at aren’t here. They get the to-be-conquered civilization to do all the legwork
for them, to change their societies and cultures and develop cyborg technology and goodness knows what else, so that the actual Ru’at themselves don’t even have to arrive!”
“You’re forgetting, Lieutenant,” the Imprimatur of Proxima said, “that the Ru’at mothership firebombed my planet!”
“Yes, they did, but I don’t think there was even any living and breathing Ru’at on board.” Solomon remembered what the ship in question had looked like—its complicated arrays of mechanical parts, juddering and turning and moving ceaselessly. It had been grotesque in a way, making the lieutenant think that this was what it must be like if you stripped all the skin from a creature and could still see its organs moving.
“And it apparently had no hull, no life support, no need for internal atmospheres or graviton-production… No biological life!” Solomon said.
“And…what’s your point, Lieutenant?” Rhossily asked. The Outcast could tell from her tone that she didn’t care if there were actual little green men inside those ships pressing the firing buttons, or a computer program. The result was still the same: death and mayhem.
“It means that what we’re facing is a robot fleet, a drone fleet, and that they must have some kind of wireless master function or whatever that thing was that Kol said, something that knits all of the ships and the orbs together, and something an EMP can disrupt!”
“So?” Mariad snapped as she turned the wheel angrily.
“Ha!” But Kol got the idea perfectly. “That means all we need to do is to find the central transmitter, the one that sends the original message, and knock it out, and all the Ru’at get shut down.” He howled in glee. “Oorah, sir!” Kol congratulated his old officer.
“Exactly!” Solomon joined in. “And you know what? I bet that master transmitter is on the mothership.”
“But wait! What you are saying is impossible. It takes our wireless signals hours, days, weeks to travel from one end of the system to another,” the imprimatur countered. “Are you telling me that the Ru’at—wherever they really are—are so far advanced that they can defy the laws of spacetime and make a wireless signal travel instantaneously across space? Across distances that we can’t even imagine?”
Conquest of Earth Page 5
