Mech 2 Read online

  “How would you suggest that we overcome the defenses of—of our mutual enemies?” asked the Savant, playing to the mad creature’s delusions.

  The Nicu-creature shrugged. A curious gesture, which at first made the Savant shy away, but realizing it was not meant as an attack, she glided closer again.

  “I’m not a military expert. I would expect they will send out their ships to meet yours. You must have more ships, better ships.”

  The Savant, naturally, had already made this determination. She now had enough biomass and electronic circuitry to grow and craft her own armada. She had hoped there would be an easier path. But the Nicu-creature’s open honesty made her trust it more. She had expected it to require non-lethal persuasion to be applied. She decided against such action now. Why make this strange alien categorize her as an enemy? If she had questions, they would be freely answered.

  Unlike most of her kind, she had a flexible mind. It was a requirement for a true problem-solver. She would treat this creature with care. She could reprocess its biomass and make a new killbeast out of it, but the Nicu-creature could prove much more useful in its current form.

  “You will be given a cell. You will be given sustenance. We will speak again, after the fleet has fully launched.”

  “The fleet?”

  The Savant shivered with amusement. “Did you think I waited for your advice to act? Know, Nicu-creature, that the Imperium has grown a new battlefleet of small ships. Already they orbit in squadrons around Minerva. We will launch toward the enemy as soon as our preparations are finished.”

  Nicu shrugged again. This time, the Savant didn’t shrink back.

  “Can I get into the kitchens?” asked Nicu. “I’m pretty tired of the paste my suit feeds me.”

  The Savant marveled at Nicu’s lack of concern. It cared not one whit for the destruction of its species. The creature truly considered itself a faction of one.

  “Yes, you will be taken to the kitchens under guard.”

  Seventeen

  When Droad found out about Bili and Sarah, and specifically that Bili was in the hospital, he was quite upset. Why hadn’t she called him? What was going on?

  Her answers were evasive. Something was definitely going on. Either she didn’t trust him anymore, perhaps feeling he had endangered Bili, or she was drifting away. This was nothing new for Droad. As a driven man he found that all women, eventually, drifted away from him.

  Droad promised to head back down planetside as soon as he could get away from Crom. He would come see Bili. He would also, he promised Sarah, pay a visit to Senator Fouty. He closed the connection and stood up in his cabin, fuming.

  That old bastard Fouty had told the skalds who had Fryx. Maybe they had pressured the Senator, maybe they had insisted that he give up Fryx right now. Whatever the scenario, they had not followed Fouty’s plan to hand the evil little spine-ball over publicly right before the coming election. The skalds had made their move.

  Droad frowned fiercely and paced in his steel cabin. Why did things always have to spin out of control just as he felt he was making some progress? This battleship could be ready to lift off in a few weeks and then he would be able to breathe more easily about the survival of the Kale system. But now Sarah was distant—feeling ignored, no doubt. Bili was in the hospital. Killer skalds were after Fryx, and lastly Senator Fouty, his single major ally in this system, apparently had moved against him.

  He wondered briefly about Zuna. She was the Senator’s creature. Why had he offered to send her along on this mission? Droad’s old paranoia had returned. Was he a pawn in a bigger game than he realized? Perhaps Zuna had been around, all along, to keep a certain crazy ex-governor under surveillance, and to take him out when everything in some grand scheme had aligned.

  Droad shook his head as if to clear it of evil thoughts. It was hard to believe Zuna was anything other than what she seemed. He had to know how things stood, however. He thought of Sarah and Bili, they had suffered much and couldn’t be allowed to suffer further. Sometimes, even when dealing with critical issues of state and defense, a man had to look after his own house.

  But first, he would go to Senator Yannick Fouty. He would have a talk with him and determine what was going on with the skalds. Such visits were best done by surprise, so he did not communicate first.

  He packed and went to the command deck to talk to Commodore Beauchamp. The man seemed truly glad to see him. Lieutenant Karin Minard was with him. Droad had begun to like her. She was dedicated and efficient. She was pretty too, in a severe, brown-hair and no-makeup manner.

  “Droad!” said the Commodore. For a second, Droad thought the man was going to hug him. Instead he laughed and ushered him into the command area. “Look at this, man. Look at our progress.”

  Droad puzzled over the screens and instrumentation, but it was hopeless. Lieutenant Minard stepped in, clearing her throat.

  She talked Droad through the measurements. Essentially, due to the efforts of the mechs they were now weeks ahead. The Orion systems would be functional very soon.

  Droad nodded, impressed. “Just two mechs managed all this in a few days?”

  “No, no,” laughed Beauchamp, leaning forward. “I sent the ship’s entire complement of mech marines down there, an entire squad. They’ve reported no ill effects.”

  “We’ve even been able to stop the human robot shifts,” added Lieutenant Minard.

  “The what?” asked Droad.

  Beauchamp cleared his throat and stepped closer. “Don’t worry about it. We’ve had to be, broad-minded up here.”

  Droad stared at him, alarmed.

  “Never mind about that, we are on schedule and all due to your resource logistics. I had considered the mechs, but didn’t want to damage such expensive assets. But you showed me the light. I like problem-solvers, Droad, I really do. If you ever need a favor...”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” said Droad, interrupting, “but now, I’m going to have to leaving for the time being.”

  “What? Where are you headed?”

  “Politics,” said Droad, tilting his head regretfully. “I’ll come back to check on you as soon as I can. Let me know if you need any other... resources.”

  “Right. Well, are you thinking of taking those mechs with you? I was hoping that...”

  Droad opened his mouth to say yes, he was taking them, that Beauchamp would have to make do with his own squad, but then he had a thought. “Well, I think I could leave one of them. For now.”

  The Commodore beamed. “Excellent! Truly excellent!”

  When Droad asked Zuna if she would mind staying behind until the job was done, she offered no resistance. In fact, she seemed happy at the prospect. Her response, however, was an odd one for a mech.

  “I’ll stay until I drop, Droad,” she said. Then she laughed. It was a mechanical sounding laugh, but unmistakable.

  Droad stared at her for a moment. Mechs were quite capable of having personalities, but usually they were pretty formulaic ones. He didn’t quite know what to make of Zuna. She had to be one of the older, twitchier models.

  In any case, he was glad to see her staying behind. Here on the Zürich he felt sure she could do some real good. And she wouldn’t get in the way when he went down to confront her boss.

  When Droad met with Senator Fouty again, he intended to have the only mech in the vicinity standing behind him.

  #

  Droad landed at the Senator’s house, climbed out of the mech-driven flitter and waved it off. He could always call another. The things were everywhere, serving the Nexus community of Bern as taxicabs. Things had changed significantly in the last decade around Neu Schweitz. It still felt odd to him, since from his point of view he’d only been absent a little over two years.

  He signaled Rem-9 to follow him. When they tried it, the door didn’t respond. Not even Lena came to their repeated calls. No one else had seen the Senator leave his manse for a day or two, so he had to be up here. Droad made a sou
r face when Lena didn’t appear. He had rather looked forward to seeing Fouty’s consort in her strappy arrangement of towels.

  He signaled the door more urgently, waving his hand in front of the sensors and finally hammering on the portal itself. Only recordings greeted him. Droad stood there, frustrated and glaring. Had he flown 300,000 kilometers for nothing?

  Finally, he signaled Rem-9. “Open the door.”

  Rem-9 dutifully clanked forward, grasped the knob and rattled it delicately.

  “I’m sorry sir, it appears to be locked.”

  Droad rolled his eyes. “Well then, unlock it.”

  The mech swung his optics to Droad, then back to the door. His gripper still closed delicately upon the handle.

  “I don’t have a key, sir.”

  “Force it open.”

  “I don’t have the authority—” began the mech.

  “Captain Rem-9, as the military liaison for Senator Fouty, I give you permission. I’m worried about the Senator’s health. He’s not been seen for a few days, and I’m checking up on him. He’s an elderly man, you know.”

  Both of Rem-9’s silvery optics stared at Droad for perhaps three seconds. Droad wondered what the mech was thinking. He was definitely a stickler for rules.

  “Very well sir, upon your authority and suspicions.”

  The mech turned the door handle and it made a grinding sound. The handle came off in his gripper. He dropped the twisted piece of metal and gently applied lateral pressure to the door near the lock. Droad smiled. It was amusing, watching Rem-9 in an effort to be gentle. He just wasn’t built for it.

  The door finally crushed open with a splitting sound. Droad winced. It sounded expensive. He moved to step past Rem-9, but the other interceded with the same gripper he had used to break down the door.

  “Excuse me, sir. I detect unusual odors inside.”

  “What odors?”

  “Cordite and various organic compounds.”

  Droad’s mouth opened. He closed it again and nodded, waving for Rem-9 to walk in first. The mech stepped cautiously forward. His grippers were slightly open and held at chest level now. He had no weapons, but as a combat mech they weren’t required.

  Droad wondered if he had been prophetic concerning the Senator’s health. He peeped around Rem-9’s legs. He thought perhaps the mech was right, he did detect an odd stink in the air. Hopefully, it was only a burnt meal. Lena didn’t seem like the type of assistant one hired for her culinary skills.

  The inside was a disaster. Fouty and Lena were both dead. Wide eyes, protruding tongues and red lesions on their faces told the story. They had been garroted, which caused the mouth and sinuses to involuntarily open. Something had then been able to crawl inside.

  “Skalds,” said Droad. He left the door open to let in some fresh air. This crime had to have been done over the last day or two.

  “Why would skalds behave so poorly?” asked Rem-9. “I was under the impression they were a peaceable people.”

  Droad thought of all the killing the mech had done, but made no comments about peaceable mechs. Sometimes mechs were like children, sometimes they spoke with the wisdom of ancients. “Well, Captain, people can be like that. They do awful things when given the wrong stimuli. Keep in mind, the skalds might be peaceful, but that doesn’t mean the Tulk riders in their heads are. I blame the Tulk. They coerced the skalds into this. See these red marks? They must have had at least one exposed Tulk. It sunk in its spines. That’s how they do interrogations, I understand. By invading the nervous system of the victim. People must then tell the truth, because they have no choice. One can’t easily lie to another part of one’s own mind.”

  Droad was careful not to touch anything. Investigators would no doubt come after him, but there was no need to give them any problems, nor any reason to come after Lucas Droad.

  “Sarah and Bili Engstrom are in possession of a Tulk creature,” said the mech.

  Droad was frowning fiercely. “I know. Let’s go. Call back that cab. We’re going to back to Bern.”

  #

  Operation Storm Assault had begun. The flight toward Neu Schweitz would take over a month, and the attack waves were launched separately over a period of weeks.

  The Savant had been very busy indeed. She had managed to convert seventy human females into breeding factories, growing all manner of creatures and polyps from their hard-working tracts. Night and day the living factories churned out new young fighters, weaponry, organic control systems for spacecraft and other, stranger things.

  Using all the biomass from the captured Minerva, plus the endless supply of gas the Tyrolia’s huge pumps sucked up in great quantities from the planet’s atmosphere, the Savant had no lack of raw materials. What she lacked was time. The longer she waited, the greater the odds the Vlax might warn the military humans of Neu Schweitz, who she had learned called themselves the Nexus. So far, there had been no transmissions monitored from the Vlax fugitives to the Nexus, but the Savant didn’t want to trust to her luck. At any time the enemy could decide that the bond of species was more important than whatever squabbles these humans had amongst themselves. It would be far too easy for the Vlax to warn the Nexus, and then all element of surprise would be lost. Accordingly, she worked at frantic speed to build her attack force.

  The Savant’s attack flotilla was launched in four waves. The first wave had already been fired off weeks earlier, as soon as she had been able to put them together. The initial wave consisted of very small pods full of killbeasts. She had considered using vacuum-functional trachs, or altering her killbeasts so they could fight in vacuum, but decided instead to use the Vlax’s ready supply of nanotech spacesuits. Since they were already equipped with rebreathers and could change shape to fit the form of a killbeast, using the spacesuits was a more efficient approach. She had grown them smaller than the usual, only two meters in height, so they could fit easily into the human equipment.

  The mission of the first wave of vacuum-capable troops was to fall upon the moons where the defensive bases were located. With luck, the invasion pods would be overlooked as tiny bits of organic matter. There was very little metal in them. They would overwhelm the base defenders and allow her flotilla of ships to get closer to the real target, Neu Schweitz. The invasion pods could not afford to brake until the final descent, however, as they had to avoid detection. They necessarily were launched first and at lower speeds, so they wouldn’t smash into their target moons.

  The second wave of the attack had also been launched days earlier. It consisted of around thirty asteroids, each one chosen to be dark in surface appearance and of relatively low metallic content. Being ten to forty meters in diameter, they were not too difficult to detect, but unless they were destroyed they would wreak great destruction. She had sent out all her captured rooks to tugboat the asteroids into new orbits. The smaller ones targeted the human laser bases, the largest targeted human cities. They would arrive at approximately the same time as the rest of her fleet, and had the advantage of not needing to worry about slowing down.

  The third wave was made up the salvaged rooks. This was the decoy wave, the one that was to gain the attention of the enemy. Hastily repaired and modified, they would show up on active sensors as metallic. With luck, the enemy would assume they were being attacked by the Vlax Romani. They would react as if under attack by a conventional force.

  The fourth wave consisted of her true combat ships, grown for the purpose. She didn’t have enough of them, but those she had managed to construct were deadly. Dark, organic shells with weaponry made with minimal metallic content, these frigate-class Imperium vessels were larger, but more difficult to detect for the known enemy alert systems. They were teardrop-shaped, with burrowing tips at the narrow end. They could be used to for planetary invasion or ship-to-ship combat.

  The Savant herself boarded one of these sleek vessels, ordering that the Nicu-creature be left behind on the Tyrolia. His usefulness as an advisor, she judged, was at an end.
She would leave it up to the Parent garrison commander she left charge of the Tyrolia to do as she wished with him. In truth, she had found him and his endless requests for personal indulgences to be a growing irritant. She would not be at all surprised to learn Nicu had been torn into strips and sucked up the young Parent’s foodtube. Who didn’t yearn for a fresh meal at this point?

  Radio transmissions had been dampened to their weakest level, allowing ship-to-ship communications but little else. She hoped the enemy didn’t know what to look for, and at the end of each command briefing she informed the flotilla concerning what frequency the next communication would use. By constantly varying frequencies and keeping the signals targeted and weak, she hoped not to alert anyone concerning their approach until it was too late. Once they reached a range of about one million kilometers, complete radio silence had been ordered until enemy contact was made.

  As her ship launched, she knew the satisfaction of great personal achievement. If she could get this flotilla past the enemy defenses, her troubles and her stint as commander would be over. The Parents would quickly create nife commanders, and she would relinquish her leadership gladly.

  A datablip tickled her senses. It was from the young Parent she had left in charge of the Tyrolia. She opened a neural pathway, receiving the signal with irritation. What part of a transmission blackout did this youngling not understand?

  She listened to the report. Her irritation melted into bafflement, and then finally concern. The Nicu-creature had vanished. No one could find him on the Tyrolia station. They suspected, in fact, he may have spaced himself, but could not be certain.

  The Savant took a huge, shuddering breath. That human was more slippery than a shrade in a waste-tube.

  Eighteen

  Droad found Bili’s room at the hospital and made his way there. He didn’t call Sarah first, he wanted to surprise her. He felt he had neglected her since his arrival, and she had clearly drifted away from him. With luck, he hoped to rekindle things by showing up quickly in her time of need. Perhaps, their relationship could be recovered. In his mind, as he traveled to the hospital, he rehearsed his apologies.