Mech 2 Page 2

  Looking more closely, she strained her orbs and the lifepod’s pathetic passive radiation sensors to locate signs of technological activity. She was surprised to find a cacophony of transmissions. These aliens, just as the military reports had shown, threw about signals without shielding, without focusing tight beams. There was no hint of security concerns in their actions.

  The Savant felt some stress-relief as her pleasure centers produced the proper, hopeful sensations. Even though the humans must have been recently warned, they showed no signs of having altered their behavioral patterns into a more defensive posture. In fact, they showed no signs of alertness to attack at all. Ships buzzed everywhere around the system. There was a baffling lack of consistency to it all. In an Imperium system, optimal paths would have long since been established. Clearly demarked trails would be followed by one and all. Instead, in the Kale system every vessel operated like a scout. They wandered about with individual direction, almost aimlessly. One asteroid was mined while the richer one next to it orbited unmolested, ignored. If these creatures even possessed a central hive control, it must be running with the hind-brain in charge and damaged at the stem!

  She gave up wondering about her baffling prey and focused instead on finding an appropriate target. After a long internal debate, she decided to head toward the gas giant. There were ships there, but not a great number of them. There seemed to be some transportation going on between the nearest habitats and moon bases. The ships in the region traveled to the outer asteroid belts occasionally, or drank gases from their massive planet below, or even sent off haulers for ice to the Oort cloud. But only rarely did they have any direct interaction with the more thickly inhabited rocky planets of the inner system.

  Isolated and weak. That was a description that gave her a chance. She would make her move there. She would land and she would dominate—or she would die.

  Defeat was unthinkable, she chided herself. She would dominate.

  She applied what gentle thrust the lifepod was capable of and directed it into a one-way course toward the gas giant. Tiny and almost undetectable, the lifepod accelerated obediently. She used all the power she could, reserving only enough for deceleration and landing maneuvers. Even so, it would take precious months to arrive.

  Three

  The trip from Garm to Neu Schweitz was relatively uneventful. Like all such affairs since the voyage of the Mayflower, it was long, uncomfortable and tedious. The ship spent the first half of the trip accelerating to reach a top speed of around eighty percent the speed of light, before turning the engines in the opposite direction and decelerating for the second half of the trip. While the humans aboard were not in their cyro-sleep chambers, the acceleration and deceleration thrust-levels were muted to about 1.5 gees so people could move about without too much discomfort. When the humans were safely frozen in their chambers, however, the ship ran the engines at full-throttle and exerted maximum thrust continuously.

  Even with cyro-sleeping and the relativistic effects of time dilation due to travel at a velocities nearing lightspeed, the journey took the better part of a year off their lives. Each time they awakened, Sarah searched Bili’s face and body carefully, despite his protests and rolling eyes.

  “I’m fine, Mom,” Bili said. She always made a tremendous fuss every time they went to sleep or woke up. Bili thought it was embarrassing to have a mother who worried so much about him.

  “Just hold still for one second.”

  “Why do you have to do this every time?”

  “Young people don’t always do well with interstellar travel. You’re still growing. I’m just making sure that things are okay.”

  “Is that a tear? Are you crying, Mom? I can’t believe it.”

  Sarah sniffled. She forced a smile. “I think you’ve grown. You must be a centimeter taller, and I missed it.”

  Bili rolled his eyes again. “Okay, are you done? I’m fine. Let me go feed Fryx. He hasn’t had live food for at least a month.”

  “Okay. But give me one more minute,” said Sarah.

  Bili suspected she wanted to blow her nose. He was already looking toward the corridor, however. He wanted to run around and do something. He wanted to move, to get strong again. He felt like he’d overslept, like he’d dreamed strange things that were best forgotten. If he exercised hard, he figured he would be stronger than the other boys when he got to Neu Schweitz and was shoved into some new school. He would have muscles hardened by exercise in 1.5 gee, while they would be weaklings. Neu Schweitz’s gravity was only 85% of standard.

  It took a second for him to realize his mother was still going on about something. He tuned her back in.

  “—and don’t let that thing touch you with any of its spines. It’s not a pet, Bili.”

  “I know, I know. I’m not an idiot. Fryx is smarter than any fish.”

  Before she could scold or cry over him anymore, he ran out into the corridor. Running was a little harder in 1.5 gee, like running in huge, wet shoes—while wearing a backpack full of bricks. But he forced his legs to pump and not just walk, but run. He grinned as he did it. The new kid in school was going to be a legend.

  Fryx was his first stop, just as he always was. Bili breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the creature, shivering and floating in its tank. Fryx was something called a Tulk, an intelligent alien life form that lived inside of other creatures. Looking like a spiny glob of pink-gray jelly, it was hard to tell how happy Fryx was. Bili suspected he didn’t like the fish tank, but it kept him alive. No one felt like letting Fryx crawl inside their skulls, so there weren’t many options.

  Bili tapped the glass. At first, when he had done that, Fryx had shrunken up into a ball and stuck out his spines in every direction. No doubt he had squirted his neurotoxins to the tip of every spine, just in case someone were about to touch him. But now that Fryx had become used to Bili’s tapped greeting, he floated upward to the surface.

  “Greedy for a fresh fish, aren’t you, boy?” asked Bili, smiling. Despite what he had told his mother, he did think of Fryx as an exotic pet. He shook a live, silvery wriggle-fish into the tank’s upper portal and let the spring-loaded hinge snap back down.

  Fryx didn’t eat the fish the way a shark might. Instead, he floated close and when the fish came to investigate, he stung it with his spines. The fish spasmed and shook. It lost control of its muscles and floated gently toward the surface. Fryx, cautious as always, snuck up on the paralyzed creature and enveloped it. After a day or two, Bili knew from experience, there would be nothing left but a set of gray-white bones resting on the colorful gravel at the bottom of the tank.

  Droad had put Fryx into a tank of saline to keep him alive for the trip. They had decided not to try to freeze Fryx. No one knew if they could bring him back to life if they did. Of course, the heavy gees of acceleration might have killed him too, but everyone figured that if he just floated in the tank he would be protected from a lot of the pressure and hopefully would survive.

  Bili had an open mind when it came to aliens. He felt sorry for Fryx, even though he was disgusting and had caused that Skald guy, Garth, to go crazy. Bili thought was it rather mean of Droad to bring Fryx along, especially since no one knew if he could even survive through the gee forces. But Droad was the ex-governor and that meant he did pretty much what he wanted on Garm. Droad had said he wanted the labs back at Neu Schweitz to have a look at old Fryx. Hopefully, they wouldn’t cut him up with scalpels. All the adults had assured Bili that wouldn’t happen—but sometimes adults lied, especially to kids.

  Bili stared at Fryx, who was enjoying his small, silvery fish. He wondered if Fryx could hear his thoughts or even see what was around him. He didn’t seem to have any eyes.

  “Poor slimy bastard,” he muttered. He put his chin on the back of his folded hands and stared into the tank.

  #

  Fryx, despite all of humanity’s myths surrounding his species, was not a true telepath. When he had been inside a host creature for long
enough to learn the language of its nervous system, he could read the alien thoughts that traveled through the host’s mind. But this was merely the effects of two nervous systems being conjoined. It was no stranger than the cerebellum communicating with the frontal lobes. It was through nerve impulses that he had communicated with Garth, his skald. They had talked in much the same manner that one part of a human’s mind might verbalize and speak to the rest of it, and thus carry on an internal conversation.

  But, unless his spines were embedded into a host nervous system, he had a great deal of difficulty communicating in any useful fashion. To talk to others of his own kind, both creatures were usually immersed in a familiar host. By touching, these hosts could send electrical impulses, signals and nervous twitches, which could be felt by the other Tulk. Through this sort of Morse code methodology, two of his species could converse while they both rode host creatures.

  When Bili came to the tank for the first time after a long, painful bout of acceleration, Fryx could not help but be cheered. He was used to long periods of self-introspection, but only while securely ensconced in a warm-blooded host’s skull. To be out of that element, to be exposed and imprisoned—oh, how the mighty Fryx had fallen! Now, he was no longer a proud rider, but an ignoble slave at the mercy of any grotesque creature who happened by. It was enough to make one contemplate self-termination, if such a thought could have been seriously considered by one of his kind.

  But Fryx, despite his despondency, had plans of his own. And those thoughts did not include suicide. His species had always been weak by any physical measure. What they lacked in prowess, however, they made up for in natural cunning and patience.

  And so Fryx ate his wriggle-fish, floated in his tank, and sensed what he could of the outside world. He had even come to understand the meaning of the vibrations spoken by the bipeds as the sonic waves touched the glass and were transmitted to his fantastically sensitive spines via the saline he floated in.

  Each time Bili’s hand came and opened the tank’s lid, Fryx shivered with excitement. Here was the nearness of host. He could feel the heat of that hand, even through the bubbling waters.

  But he did not make any kind of move to touch that small, soft hand. Instead, he digested his fish. And he plotted.

  Four

  The lifepod landed badly. The Savant was no expert at piloting, not being bred for it. She was a researcher, a genetic tinkerer, not a creature of quick reflex and spatial cognition. As it was, she was glad the moon’s gravity wasn’t harsh and that there was no atmosphere to contend with.

  Less than a dozen klicks before impact, the lifepod began to rock, and then went into a slow spin. She didn’t dare use the attitude jets to correct. She must hold out until the last klick to fire her retros all in a burst. That way, even if the enemy had some kind of automated defensive grid, it would most likely not have time to track and blow her out of the airless sky.

  By the time she was almost down, the lifepod was tumbling. She let the ship’s primary brain take over, automatically firing everything it had to save them.

  They fell behind a spire of rock, hidden from enemy sensors. On the far side of that dark finger of glassy stone stood an alien base. From space, the enemy nest resembled a cluster of domes, each with a thousand facets like insectile eyes. She had been intrigued by the architecture, spying on it with instrumentation on the way down. These aliens were certainly a puzzle. They were capable of such organized structures, but then they behaved in a seemingly random fashion. Her species was quite the opposite. The nesting structures of the Skaintz Imperium were grown and randomly organic. It was their behavior patterns, rather than their architecture, that were highly organized and predictable.

  She had no more time to think as crushing thrust was applied. The lifepod released alarm pheromones into the air supply, which seemed completely unnecessary to the Savant. She was already painfully aware of the situation. Her breathing became shallow and stressed.

  She braced her tentacles for impact, but when it came, the violence of it still shocked her. The lifepod thumped, bounced, and then rolled. Inside, the Savant gurgled in dismay. Had she ended her mission so ignobly, by crashing her tiny ship as a result of her opening gambit?

  The hull ruptured then, and cold vacuum stole into the interior. She frantically worked nubs and tips, stimulating the dying lifepod’s nervous system to seal the damage. After the craft rocked from side to side and finally came to a full halt, the ship managed to grow a rubbery membrane over the breach.

  Shaken, the Savant allowed herself to indulge in stress-relieving chemicals. When she could cogitate again clearly, she ordered the lifepod to revive the second member of the crew. Her only subservient life form, a trach, had been left dormant until now. Not being a dexterous or especially intelligent creature, she had calculated that it would have been a waste her limited supplies if she had awakened it before now. The trach genus was of the worker class, but had one redeeming quality in her situation: its staunch functionality in vacuum. She needed that singular ability now that she was stuck on this cold, rocky moon.

  She waited for the ship to respond to her instructions to revive the trach. She soon became alarmed when the lifepod did nothing. She tried various tips and nubs. She poked and prodded, even slipping a pseudo pod into the jelly that cushioned the hind-brain to give it a nudge. Except for a few quivering, autonomic responses to her stimuli, she got no answers from the lifepod.

  With slow certainty, her horror grew. The ship had died. The crash and the split hull had killed it. Working hard not to panic, she set about reviving the trach manually. She could barely recall the procedures. She had been taught such emergency skills while in vitro, via bio-nervous transference. Without revival, and soon, the trach would die. Its bio-system was tied to the ship. All nutrients and waste were processed by the ship—or they had been.

  The Savant’s single lung hitched and gasped. She had to keep control of herself. She could not fail. Tubes were pulled out. Liquids spurted and pooled between the ship’s flaccid veins. One of the Savant tentacles fluttered over the injectibles, feeling for the right nozzle. The trach had to be disconnected from the lifepod immediately, or the two would die together.

  Then the Savant would be all alone, and as good as dead herself.

  #

  “Nicu?” called Boldo. His heavy boots clanged on the steel modular flooring. The man never removed his vacuum boots, and he seemed to like keeping the magnetics on just for the extra noise they made.

  Nicu’s nose twitched, but he made no sound.

  “Nicu, you rat-bastard. Where are you?”

  Nicu and Boldo were stationed on one of the many moons that swung silently around Minerva, the sole gas giant in the Kale system. Gamma Base was the only base on the biggest moon. This by no means meant Gamma was an interesting or important place. It was an automated mining base and refinery, one of many in the far reaches of the Kale star system. They produced the metals the rest of the Vlax needed. Gamma’s population was less than fifty souls, and there was little to keep even such a small group busy. The silent, sterile world possessed a cold beauty, but it tended to dampen the human spirit over time.

  Nicu and Boldo lived in the same system as the people of Neu Schweitz, but they were a very different breed from those who dwelt on that planet of lush green grasses and ice-blue spires. These men were Vlax Romani, a people apart from the rest who lived in this system. Where they loved wine, song and dancing, most of the people who lived by the light of the star Kale preferred orderliness, quiet and stability. Before the original colonists had fled the encroachment of the Cognitive Collectivists, history told of the Vlax and their nomadic lifestyle and mercurial personalities. When the time came to flee the Collectivist oppression, they had been among the brave few to sign up immediately for a one-way ticket into the unknown.

  They were, however, a people at odds with their environment everywhere they went. That part of their nature had continued to trouble them on Neu
Schweitz. Being naturally boisterous and moody, they did not fit well with the stern attitudes of most Swiss colonists. They were famously quick to laugh and equally quick to anger. The light in their dark eyes often changed from a sparkle of humor to a glitter of rage in a fraction of a second.

  Nicu feared he was about to witness in Boldo an example of his people’s infamous temperament.

  More clanking. Boldo was close. The clanking stopped, and Nicu knew Boldo was listening for him. Nicu opened his mouth and breathed through it. He didn’t want to take the chance that his nostrils might whistle and give him away.

  Nicu desperately wanted to scratch his nose, which itched abominably, but that was out of the question. He was huddled into a ball inside a locker. Through the vents, he could see Boldo’s boots now, crusted with melting methane and grayish crater dust. Boldo had spent over an hour out there, no doubt looking for Nicu, who was supposed to be out circling the crest of the crater, hauling methane and cleaning the dust off the haulers afterward so they wouldn’t corrode.