Mech 2 Page 25

  When the connection broke, Loiza felt very relieved. Her tiny armada landed on a large, pear-shaped asteroid and met with the surprised, apprehensive crew. There were no weapons discharged, they had gotten the message to comply.

  Loiza’s relief was short-lived, however. Missiles were spotted now, incoming from Minerva. They had been following them for days, possibly weeks, as they headed out to the Alpha Belt. The Imperium hadn’t forgotten about them. Each powered by a tiny engine that provided constant acceleration, the missiles were going incredibly fast. They had no need to decelerate, and had caught up with Vlax when they slowed and landed.

  Every rook was targeted, as was the base. She ordered her people out onto the surface. Everyone had to run. It was every man for himself.

  Behind her, as her breath blew in her rebreather, the explosions blossomed. They had come so far, all for this?

  She was knocked spinning out into space. The force of an explosion had caused her to reach escape velocity. She worked her attitude jets, but more explosions came. They were silent, beautiful.

  One more went off. Quite close. She didn’t have time to admire the silent beauty of it before she was engulfed in a shower of molten rock, expanding gases and bits of jagged metal that ripped their way through her suit.

  #

  Droad thumbed his way through reports on a computer scroll. The Vlax had been wiped out. He ordered a patrol vessel to go out there on a rescue mission. No, he didn’t care if it took two weeks. Yes, he would take full responsibility for reversing a Nexus ordered retreat to Neu Schweitz.

  That finished, Droad stepped into an echoing steel hallway to talk to Rem-9. He wanted to know how that investigation was going. Had he found the saboteurs yet?

  But Rem-9 didn’t answer the com link. Droad stared down the corridor, eyes unfocussed. Zuna had vanished. Rem-9 wasn’t answering. Eight mechs, all part of his personal command group, had been destroyed in their packaging.

  He felt a trickle of sweat under his arm. The aliens couldn’t be behind this. He didn’t think they knew who he was. They didn’t work this way either, to the best of his knowledge. They would have just killed him.

  The Vlax? It was possible some Vlax sympathizers were behind all this. But he had to admit to himself the most likely culprit was Commodore Beauchamp himself. He was working hard to retake his command. Droad was in the way, and had driven him to drastic action. Who else better than the Commodore would have the freedom of action to get away with such things and have them all go mysteriously unnoticed on a battleship? Perhaps, he had a death squad of loyal Fleet personnel aboard, working to make sure Droad could be taken out when the time came.

  Who could he trust aboard this vessel, besides the mechs themselves? He could only think of a few people. He contacted Aldo.

  “Droad?”

  “Listen,” Droad said, almost whispering. “I need some help.”

  There was a momentary pause. “Talk,” Aldo said.

  “I’m not sure who to trust.”

  Aldo chuckled at that.

  “This is serious,” Droad said. “Someone is taking out all the mechs onboard. I just lost contact with Rem-9.”

  “What do you need from me?”

  “Could you have a look around? I know you can handle yourself. Something very strange is going on.”

  “Okay, I’ll do it,” said Aldo.

  That was good enough for Droad. He knew Aldo was a man who meant what he said. Droad broke off the communication and summoned the two combat mechs Rem-9 had sent to the bridge. He quietly ordered them to keep him under guard. They weren’t to get out of his sight, and he wasn’t to get out of theirs.

  Stepping back onto the bridge, every head swiveled as his two new aides clanked behind him. They each carried a laser carbine and a full kit of explosives.

  “Sir?” asked the com officer, his voice cracking high.

  “Just keep firing at those rocks,” Droad said.

  “The stealth ships are getting very close, sir. They are decelerating. I—I think they mean to dock.”

  “Weaponeer? Fire a volley of missiles at the incoming ships. They are close enough now.”

  “The racks are not yet operational, sir.”

  “Secondary laser batteries?”

  “Not yet, sir. The main batteries are all we have.”

  Droad chewed his lower lip. “How close are they?”

  “About fifty thousand klicks. Sir, if we fired the main batteries at them, they are too close to dodge now. We would burn them down in one certain shot per ship.”

  “The main batteries are for the asteroids. There are still seven left. Let’s make it five or six. When these ships get close enough, open up with point-defense. You do have active point-defense, don’t you?”

  “Yes sir!”

  Droad looked around. Beauchamp was nowhere to be found. What was that man up to? He punched up a tracker on his command console. A flashing green dot moved down the corridor toward the bridge. It moved faster than a walk. What would cause Beauchamp to trot back to the bridge?

  Alarmed, Droad got up and walked toward the corridor. “Everyone stay on the bridge. I want my command staff at the ready. This is a real battle, people. Look sharp.”

  He left the bridge and his two mech bodyguards followed him, wordlessly.

  In the corridor, he met up with Beauchamp. He was indeed trotting, and grinning, too.

  “Ah, Droad, just the man I wanted to come and relieve.”

  Droad took a deep breath. Things had gone against him back at Nexus. It had just been a matter of time, he supposed.

  “Troops,” said Droad, turning to his mech guards. “Arrest this man. He is to be bound, gagged and placed in—that fire equipment closet, just off the corridor to the left.”

  Stunned, Beauchamp hardly had time to shout in alarm. The mechs moved so quickly, they had him in their unstoppable grippers in seconds. Beauchamp’s eyes bulged in rage at Droad as his mouth was clamped closed.

  “I’m sorry Commodore,” said Droad. “Your complaints will be logged and scrutinized carefully when this battle has concluded. Perhaps, we will both be lucky enough to survive it.”

  #

  Aldo, Sarah and Bili went looking for Rem-9. His last reported position was in cargo bay J. Aldo wore his sword. Sarah glanced at it, but said nothing. Aldo offered her no explanation. None was needed.

  They found Rem-9 and a pile of other bodies in the cargo hold. They immediately alerted emergency personnel. Within minutes a team of medics and armed personnel descended on the cargo bay. They took away the dead men, and told Aldo and Sarah to get out of here.

  “Are you going to mount a guard here?” asked Aldo.

  The team leader shook his head. “We are in the middle of a battle. We’re not posting anyone in an empty hold. In fact, you’d better get out. If we take a hit on those big doors, this room will depressurize and suck you right out into open space.”

  After the emergency team left, the group sadly examined Rem-9. The mech’s braincase had been cracked open. Sarah and Bili worked to close it with emergency spacer suit patches from their own kits. All of them wore spacer gear now.

  Aldo drew his sword and thumbed the kinetic field into life. It crackled and sizzled with energy. When it moved through the air, it seemed to burn it, leaving behind an odd scent.

  “The techs didn’t even try to do anything for him,” complained Bili. “Do you think he’ll live, Mom?”

  “I don’t know if he’s alive normally,” said Sarah, patching up the leak. “But Rem-9 is very tough.”

  They checked the others, but everyone else had been dead for hours. There was no hope for them. They got Rem-9’s braincase pump working again, but it gurgled and bubbled with audible popping sounds. There wasn’t really enough liquid in the encasement to cover the biomass.

  “I think this is just saline,” said Bili, “like the stuff in Fryx’s tank. I think I can get some and add in more.”

  “Oh, I don’t kno
w, Bili.”

  “Let me at least try, Mom. Rem-9 is my friend.”

  “All right. We’ll all go back together and get it.”

  Aldo stood with his blade out, eyeing their surroundings. His eyes were intense. He didn’t like this place.

  Together, the three of them left the cargo bay and headed back to their quarters. Along the way, the battle began in earnest. The entire ship shook, as a thousand guns began firing. It felt like impacts were answering. They all looked at each other as the impacts grew in frequency. Klaxons sounded. They were taking incoming fire.

  They all fastened their faceplates down, even Bili, without having to be told. They moved through the corridors as rapidly as they could in the lessening gravity. The ship was no longer accelerating, and they were beginning to float.

  When they reached their quarters, Bili bounded in the low gravity to Fryx’s tank. He grabbed it up and turned around. His mother stopped him.

  “Honey, Rem-9 will have to wait. We are in the middle of a battle now.”

  “Who do you think is going to save us if those aliens get in here, Mom? We need Rem-9.”

  Aldo and Sarah looked at one another. Aldo shrugged. To him, it was better to do something rather than nothing. Sitting in a steel room waiting for enemies to come was harder on the mind than engaging in a rescue mission, useless or not.

  So they began the trip back. People occasionally rushed past them. Aldo contacted Droad and told him what had happened to Rem-9.

  “Thanks for helping out with the mech,” Droad told him. “He might be ninety percent machine, but he’s a better man than most of the Nexus Fleet.”

  Aldo snorted. “I can agree with you on that point.”

  When they reached the cargo bay, Aldo was still nervous. He didn’t like this place. He sensed, with the finely tuned senses of a man who had faced death on a regular basis that it was not a good place to be.

  Sarah and Bili worked to pump saline directly from Fryx’s tank into the mech’s braincase. They hooked a tube from the fish tank to the carefully resealed braincase and used a small, automated pump. Spacers always had pumps handy. In order to move about liquids in low or null gravity environments, you had to have them. You couldn’t “pour” a weightless liquid. It just went everywhere.

  Fryx swam away from the plastic tube that invaded his tank. His spines fluttered. Aldo wondered if the little monster was angry.

  When they’d finished, they left the cargo bay together and headed back to their quarters. Then the battle really got going. Sarah and Aldo had a quiet talk while Bili talked to Fryx, apologizing for pumping half his saline out.

  “We can’t just sit in here,” said Sarah, “but I don’t want to leave Bili, either.”

  The ship shuddered again. It was the new kind of shudder, one that indicated they had taken a hit of some kind. Laserfire was incoming, that or missiles were making it through. Fortunately, they were not nuclear-tipped so far. They were only kinetic missiles, striking with the tremendous force of an object traveling at extreme speeds. Each hit indicated a new rip in the upper steel shielding. There were sheets of rock up there, too, layered in-between the steel. Aldo wondered how long that armor would last.

  “You stay with the boy.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “We need supplies, if we are going to ride things out here, in this room. If things will get as bad as you say, we need food, water—a medical kit.”

  “What about weapons?”

  “In these corridors and rooms? All I need is my blade.”

  “All right,” said Sarah. He could tell that she wanted to be doing something. “I’ll go by the armory anyway. Bili and I could use weapons. I’m not going to face these things unarmed again.”

  “Bili?” asked Aldo.

  “Yes. He’s going to have a weapon too.”

  #

  The invasion pods were only a few thousand klicks out now. Each one resembled a raindrop in shape. They approached point-first so the sharp, conical tips of exceedingly hard horn-like material aimed toward the Zürich.

  Thousands of depleted uranium projectiles sprayed out in computer-controlled bursts at the incoming invasion pods. In a planetary atmosphere, the railguns would never reach so far, but in space they could be effective if the cone of fire and the angle of incoming attack was narrow enough. The enemy ships used side-thrusters, firing jets of gas to dodge, but with a massive cloud of pellets to run into, they could not all avoid the hailstorm.

  “They are stacking up, sir,” said the defensive weaponeer.

  “Stacking up?” asked Droad.

  “They are each pairing up, one behind another. The ship in front will absorb the damage letting the second one through.”

  “Keep firing,” said Droad. “I want every centimeter of vacuum full of flying metal. And order everyone aboard to prepare to repel invaders.”

  “Invaders, sir? Are we sure they won’t just blow up when they get close enough?”

  “Arm everyone. I mean everyone. Even the cooks.”

  The com officer relayed the appropriate orders.

  “They are almost here, sir,” said the weapons officer, speaking up with a shaking voice. “We’ve destroyed twenty-one percent of them. If we employed the main batteries now, with a wide-dispersion beam, we could take out two or three enemy ships with each shot.”

  “We’ve only got time for one shot, and retargeting back on an asteroid would take longer. Keep firing on the asteroids. Each rock we take out saves an entire city.”

  “Yes sir.”

  The ship shuddered again. Another impact. Missiles from the invasion pods, hammering at the point-defense railguns, were coming through in swarms now. Along with the missiles was small, cutting laser fire. Craters had been torn through in the Zürich’s armor, but none yet had penetrated the inner hull. Droad studied the enemy vessels. They had cone-shaped tips. They would ram into the hull in weakened spots. They would break the skin, and like an infection, the aliens would spread inside the battleship.

  Droad didn’t think like to think about their chances after that. He’d seen the aliens in close combat too many times. His crew was professional, but green. Their war with the Vlax had always been at long distance. Most of them had never had to face another human in a death fight. None of them had ever had to face anything like a killbeast.

  #

  “Things are going bad here, Fryx. My family never seems to get a break.”

  The ship was moving again, and there was at least a fraction of gravity. Bili took the opportunity to feed Fryx. He felt sorry for his pet, who had been caught up in these events due to no fault of his own. They’d even stolen half his saline out of his tank. Poor Fryx.

  Bili opened the top hatch on Fryx’s sloshing tank and tried to shake a fish out the bag, but it wasn’t cooperating. This fish had prickly things on it, and was blue in color. It had gotten caught up in the bag. The pet people on the net whom he had ordered the fish from had assured Bili this species was the standard feeder fish on Neu Schweitz. Bili wasn’t happy with it, but they’d run out of the stock of wriggle-fish they’d brought from Garm.

  “I hope this doesn’t give you indigestion, boy,” Bili said to Fryx. “It’s the best I can do. I hope it tastes good.”

  Growing frustrated with the reluctant fish, which now flipped around in the waterless bag, he pushed the torn end of the bag into the open hatch of the tank. Fryx floated inside, waiting.

  Bili turned the bag inside out. It was like pulling a sock off that didn’t want to let go. He shook the bag, frowning.

  Suddenly, he yelped. He had felt something. A stabbing sensation. Had that blue fish stung him somehow? He dropped the fish into the tank, still in its bag. The fish swam free in the tank and the bag floated to the top.

  “Damn,” said Bili, looking at his finger. A single, tiny droplet of blood welled up from the tip.

  Suddenly, Bili felt a little sick. His vision dimmed, and his hand went numb.

&nbs
p; He turned, took one step toward the door, then his legs went dead and he slid down onto the floor soundlessly. His eyes were still open, staring up at the fish tank.

  He was able to watch, but not move a muscle, as Fryx climbed slowly out of the open hatch and plopped on the floor in front of his face. In the light gravity, the Tulk was able to walk. Laboriously working his spines like tiny, thin legs, Fryx crawled his way toward Bili’s face.

  Bili knew the truth then. Fryx had stung him, not the feeder fish. No one sold feeder fish that poisoned people.

  Utterly helpless, Bili watched as his pet betrayed him.

  Twenty-Six

  Bili’s eyes snapped closed then opened again. This process repeated several times, as his young brain was reconfigured and rebooted. His mouth sagged wide, and a long hoarse scream came out. The sound was continuous, raspy. When his lungs were empty, his mouth still hung open. His throat rattled dryly, still trying to scream, but there was nothing left to exhale.

  Fryx mounted the back of Bili’s neck. His spines dug in and extruded white tendrils, nerve receptors. They sank into the spinal cord. From the back of the neck the bundled nerves were close to the surface and easily accessible. Fryx had considered entering the child’s mouth, and digging his way up into the sinuses, the only available cavity. But the skull was simply too small. He didn’t even bother to try it. He would have to cling to the back of the neck. He hated being exposed, but at least he had escaped his humiliating glass prison.

  He calculated that the mother of this young beast would destroy him if she caught him, so this was a one-way trip. There was no retreat possible now, no possibility of continuing to act the part of a docile pet. It was the nearness of the Skaintz had driven Fryx to such drastic action. He hated exposure, danger—risk of personal injury of any kind. But the Imperium forces were coming, and he was the only Tulk aboard. He would be captured and exquisitely tortured by the ancient enemy of his people. These foolish humans could not protect him, and he would not stand by and allow himself to be taken by his greatest enemy while floating in a tank like a goldfish. He had made his move, and there was no turning back now.