Mech 2 Read online

  Being far too huge for traditional propulsion systems to allow it maneuverability, the Zürich used an Orion system. Nothing else humanity had yet devised could compete with the raw power of Orion propulsion. The entire bottom “pie-plate” structure was built to allow the Orion system to work without tearing the vessel apart.

  Droad had read of such systems since grade school, of course. But he’d never seen one built. Explained simply, the ship dropped a series of small atomic weapons out the aft end. The bombs were exploded, one at a time, and the resulting force shoved the massive ship forward with wrenching power. The kilometers-wide oblation shield absorbed the thrust and distributed it over the entirety of the ship, spreading the impact so everyone aboard wasn’t instantly killed. Getting the whole thing built just right was an engineering marvel. Not killing the crew on lift off—that would be the tricky part.

  “An Orion system? Really?” marveled Droad.

  The Commodore stared at him with narrowed eyes. Clearly, he did not relish Droad’s skepticism.

  “Perhaps you, ah—governor, could suggest an alternate form of propulsion for such a vessel?”

  Droad let the jibe about his former title slide. He was used to such treatment from military people, who rarely appreciated civilian oversight of any kind.

  “No, no,” said Droad, shaking his head and grinning. “I can’t say that anything comes to mind. Nothing else will give you anything like the thrust you need to make this ship move faster than an orbital base or cargo vessel.”

  The Commodore nodded, mollified. “Glad you approve.”

  “Well, if you are going to build one of these monsters, there’s no other way to do it. Oh, and by the way, why did you build this monster?”

  The Commodore opened his mouth, then closed it again. “Let me first explain what it can do, Droad.”

  Droad nodded. If he was to judge its worth, he needed more to go on than foggy memories lectures at the Nexus University.

  The Commodore took in a deep breath. “There are two, or perhaps three basic theories of space warfare. And two basic forms of weaponry, upon which these theories are based.”

  Droad pulled up a stainless steel chair and got himself a mug of hot caf. He sensed this might be a long one.

  “The three platforms are big ships, small ships and bases anchored to some planet or moon. The two forms of weaponry, naturally, are any form of beam such as a laser, or missiles.”

  “What about ballistic weaponry such as bullets or railguns?”

  “Any type of basic dumb ballistic weaponry such as a gun is pretty useless unless the target is stationary or very close, so we don’t use them other than for point-defense systems. Bullets or railgun projectiles travel slowly and can’t adjust their trajectory, so they miss too much. That leaves us with beams and missiles. The basic problem to be solved is distance. Since two combatants in space usually have no cover to hide behind, the one with the longer range generally wins. Even firing a laser shot at the speed of light, it takes a full second to reach across 300,000 klicks, which is about the distance from Crom to the surface of Neu Schweitz.”

  Droad stirred in some cream. He nodded to indicate he was listening—which he was.

  “Beams take power,” the Commodore continued. “The greater the power, the greater the range. That’s where big ships come in. The bigger the ship is the more power it can generate, so the more range it has. This one can reach across the heavens.”

  “But by your logic, a base on Crom could outrange any battleship.”

  “Ah,” said Beauchamp, standing up in agitation. He began pacing. “Quite right, but the stationary nature of it means it can’t pursue an enemy. Also, it is vulnerable because it can’t evade fire. Everyone knows where it is and it’s a perching rook. We do have several beam bases on key moons, I might add, but they are purely defensive and somewhat easy to take out.”

  “You admit then, that your battleship is definitely an offensive weapon?”

  Beauchamp eyed him, wary again. “Defense and offense are one and the same in space. You can’t really win on defense. What if the other side throws nukes at your world? Or steers an asteroid at you? They only have to hit once and you are devastated.”

  “Are the Vlax apt to do that? I’ve seen no evidence—”

  “Then you should look harder.”

  Droad stared at the Commodore. He frowned. Was this skirmish between the Vlax and the Nexus escalating?

  “Back to what I was saying,” said Beauchamp, pacing again. “The advantages of small ships are stealth and evasion. They have to get much closer to be effective, but you might not see them coming.”

  “And what about missiles?”

  “They are potent, but take possibly weeks to reach their targets. A beamship battle could take place at a million klicks apart or more, and missiles won’t reach the combatants until the battle is over. Think of them, however, as very small ships that blow themselves up. They have the stealth and evasion, but not the speed of attack.”

  “So, with decent intel, we can blow away the Vlax ships or missiles with the Zürich before they can do any harm.”

  “Exactly.”

  Droad sipped his hot caf. “But, Commodore Beauchamp, you never really answered my question. What are you going to do with the Zürich? What is her real mission?”

  Beauchamp stood tall and looked annoyed. “To restore order to the Kale system.”

  Droad nodded slowly. He thought that such a ship was indeed a monstrosity, a vast statement of overkill. Fleet had gotten it funded as the final solution to the separatist Vlax Romani problem, as if a few thousand rock-rats could really warrant such treatment. Droad was quietly of the opinion that if the Nexus offered to double their prices for delivered raw materials from the outer system, the entire Vlax problem would vanish at a fraction of the cost. But no one was asking him.

  “So, what will be the nature of your report to the Senate?” pressed the Commodore, breaking into Droad’s thoughts.

  Droad leaned onto the heavy steel desk between them. Everything on the Zürich seemed to be built of centimeter-thick solid steel. Why not? They had plenty of it, and when using an Orion propulsion system tonnage wasn’t a problem. Taking shocks, that was the thing to worry about. No other easily gathered construction material took those shocks as well as thick steel.

  “Commodore, I’m going to recommend you are fully funded. What’s more, I want this project sped up. I want the Zürich up and moving as soon as possible.”

  The Commodore blinked at him. Droad’s response was not the usual, expected prattle about budgets and election timing. The Commodore stared at him for several heartbeats, puzzling it out.

  “Oh. I’ve got it,” said Beauchamp at last.

  “I knew you would,” smiled Droad.

  The Commodore’s face flashed annoyance, but he maintained a friendly attitude. “You want this ship for your monster hunt. Is that it?”

  Droad nodded. He stood up. “That’s right, Commodore. We are on the same side in this matter. I want this vessel up and flying—sooner even than you do. It will excel at defense, whether we are hunting the Vlax—or other things.”

  “You really believe these creatures might turn up here? Three lightyears away from Garm?”

  Droad nodded grimly. “I turned up here, didn’t I?”

  The Commodore nodded. “Okay, then maybe you can help me. You see, we have a bit of a problem.”

  “What can I do?”

  The Commodore explained to him about the radiation leaks. Droad frowned through it all.

  “What about mechs?” Droad said as the Commodore finished.

  “Mechs? You mean to work on the Orion system? They are expensive, and many of them are built into various forms of transport.”

  “Yes, but they are also somewhat immune to radiation. I know Rem-9 is highly resistant. His braincase is in his thorax and lead-lined. They are stronger than humans and can work around the clock. One mech could do the job of fifty
men in a day, because they won’t have to be pulled out after an hour and sent to medical.”

  Commodore Beauchamp nodded, making an appreciative grunt. “I like this idea of yours. Let’s try it out with your two mechs.”

  Droad opened his mouth and snapped it closed again. Finally, he nodded. “Put up or shut up, is that it, Commodore? Very well. I’ll talk it over with them. But I think you’re right, they can serve as a test case.”

  When Droad met with his two mech companions Zuna was painfully eager to please, as usual. She insisted she was resistant to radiation as well. Rem-9 was less excited about the prospect. He didn’t want to leave his post and stop guarding Droad.

  “For a day, I relieve you. I’ll be on my own for protection. This is an experiment, and I’d like you to become my test subjects.”

  The two mechs started that night. A pale, human robot with red-rimmed eyes showed them what to do. Soon, they were scooping shovelfuls of loose stone and ash from beneath the Zürich’s belly. Droad watched on the monitors apprehensively. Occasionally, blue shimmers ghosted across the video pickups. White flashes appeared here and there, like sparks or half-seen fireflies. What had they spilled down there? Droad shuddered just to think about it.

  But the mechs operated smoothly. After everything had gone flawlessly for over an hour, Droad finally took a break from his vigil. He smiled and went to his cabin, making a call to Sarah. How long had it been since he’d communicated with her? He frowned, had it really been weeks?

  #

  Zuna and Rem-9 worked non-stop for over forty hours. After that, they both needed recharging and refueling. To everyone who asked, Zuna told them she felt fine, that the radiation had not affected her in any way. It made her happy to see how pleased the humans were. They were not strong in this sort of dirty environment. She felt as though she could operate forever down there in the slag heaps.

  But she did not feel perfectly normal. Right there, she was faced with an anomaly. She knew that she wasn’t feeling quite right, and yet she had told everyone she was fine. She had—lied. That was just the sort of thing she sensed was wrong. She didn’t feel sick, far from it. In some ways, she felt invigorated. The radiation made her fluids run hotly, with a higher viscosity.

  The fact remained, however. She had not been truthful. She did not feel the same, and yet had kept that to herself. Why had she done that? As a general rule, mechs weren’t capable of deception. They always told the truth whether the listeners wanted to hear it or not. It was one of their personality traits the mind-cleansing efforts of mech designers always built in. Nobody wanted a seven hundred kilo liar stomping about.

  Mechs were essentially robots with a few critical, biological components. Rather than building a super computer into each robot, a chunk of human brain tissue was always used. This made a mech much cheaper, because a few pounds of human brain was essentially valueless once its owner no longer had a need for it.

  Zuna had always been told humans volunteered for the honor of becoming a mech, perhaps because they were terminally ill. They lost their old personalities during the mind-cleanse, and afterward they were always dedicated and cooperative.

  She had occasionally wondered about the person she had been before the transformation, before she had been turned into a mech. What had the mind-cleanse—cleansed?

  For the first time in her memory, this very day while she cleaned the glittering motes of plutonium dust from the beneath the great battleship, she had found the first clue to her old personality. She had been a person who lied. Just as she lied now to anyone who asked about the effects of the radiation. She had been a person, she thought, who had lied a lot.

  She felt strange for a moment and froze. A bucket full of dust swung in her motionless gripper. Tiny bursts of light popped around her like infinitesimal flashbulbs. Subatomic particles beamed through her superstructure, a few even penetrating her biomass every once in a while. She felt as if she could almost remember...

  But no... The feeling was gone.

  Sixteen

  The Savant had spent weeks studying the Nicu creature in her spare time, of which there was little. She had ordered the creature captured, rather than killed or processed, so she could figure out what was different about it. The creature had been given sustenance and oxygen through its survival suit, which was kept charged and supplied.

  This single creature had done more to thwart her plans than any of his comrades. It had also saved her campaign more than once. More intriguing, it did not seem to operate within the directives of its superiors. It worked as an individual. In some ways, it was the most dangerous of the enemy, in other ways, it had been a great help to her. As a scientist, she naturally wanted to probe it, to understand its unusual nature.

  The warbling and seemingly random squeaks of the human language meant nothing to her. She normally didn’t used sonic vibrations for communications purposes. Making matters worse, often the aliens seemed to use their guttural, noise-production organs for creating random cries of warning, anger or pain that had no direct purpose and did not translate into anything other than linguistic nonsense.

  Patience always paid off for a diligent scientist, however. The Savant’s answer to this problem was a familiar one: she specially designed an organism to perform the task of translation. She had grown a polyp in order to communicate with the alien. The polyp could suck in gas and release it in controlled, modulated fashion to generate audible speech. It also had an ear and a rudimentary brain. With its neural net learning-rate set to high, the polyp was given the task of sifting through the primitive grunts and hootings that served these humans as a language. Some of this data was available in deep memory from the transmitted reports from Garm. After several days of exposure to recorded alien speech, the translating polyp was deemed operable and brought into the presence of Nicu and the Savant.

  “Slave creature,” the polyp translated the Savant’s transmissions. “Respond.”

  Nicu lay supine in his spacesuit. He had been restrained and could only operate his suit via his limited helmet selection system.

  “Is that Boldo?” Nicu asked in a hissing whisper.

  “You comprehend this speech?”

  “Boldo?”

  “What is the meaning of ‘Boldo’?”

  Nicu was silent for a time. “You are that alien thing, aren’t you?” he asked at last.

  “You are speaking to the Savant. You will answer all questions.”

  “Of course I will. I will tell you everything, and I will be very truthful.”

  The Savant found this response to be unexpected. Could this alien truly be on her side? She understood, to some degree, that the enemy genetics were very individualistic. They were all ‘wild’ in the sense that they lacked cohesion as a group. According to the reports of human behavior from Garm, these creatures were often at cross-purposes. They were even capable of splitting into factions and killing one another. Baffling. How could a species survive that would seek to destroy others members of the same genetic stock over a disagreement?

  Even as a hive-creature, the Savant was accustomed to disagreement and discord. Leaders did not always agree on the best course of action. But there was always a chain of command and it was always respected. Arguments never rose to the unthinkable level of taking action against your superiors, no matter how wrong you might think they were. To do so was—madness. Like a scorpion stinging itself out of spite.

  Could this thing called Nicu be an aberration? Could it be a creature that was non-human, in the sense it was apart from the others, not a member of the same faction? Such a possibility was intriguing. Perhaps, it truly would turn against its own species, seeing them as the enemy. The concept was monstrous, but could be useful. She felt a rising level of disgust to be associating with the Nicu-creature at all, but pushed on with the interrogation.

  “Where have the other humans gone?”

  “To the inner planets,” Nicu responded promptly.

  “Why did they l
eave you behind?”

  “I am their enemy. Or rather, I’m not on their side.”

  “Whose side are you on?”

  “I am Nicu. I am on my own side.”

  The Savant thought about the creature’s response. It was as she had suspected. This attitude matched up with every behavior the animal had taken. The thing was a rogue. She shivered and scooted away from Nicu. Somehow, the other humans seemed wholesome in comparison. They fought and they died for their families. This one—it was almost unspeakable.

  “May I ask a question, master?” Nicu asked.

  The Savant ruffled her tentacles. “My proper title is Savant.”

  “Ah yes, I apologize. My Savant, when I disabled the explosives on the reactor core, did that save your people?”

  “It was extremely helpful, yes.”

  “Good, excellent.”

  “Why do you say that? Why are you pleased?”

  “Because your enemies are my enemies. Since you have killed my enemies, I wish you to live.”

  The Savant slid her body around into a new arrangement. Her brain lobes now rested upon her massed tentacles. She made popping sounds as she bubbled thoughtfully. The argument made sense, in a twisted way.

  “We will accept your further help,” said the Savant. “What do we face? What enemy defenses circle the third planet?”

  “You mean Neu Schweitz? They are fairly strong. They have many small ships like our rooks. They have a thousand times more population. They have defensive bases on many of their moons with large lasers.”

  The Savant knew these things, but still had a hard time believing the confirming information was offered up so easily.

  “What will be their response if they see incoming ships from Minerva?”

  “They will probably assume it is an attack from the Vlax Romani—from the people who owned this base.”

  The Savant noted that Nicu had not said from his people. He truly was not identifying himself as a human from the same group. Could humans be so aberrant that their minds allowed for a faction of a single individual? It was fascinating and disgusting at the same time.