Alien Enigma (39 page)

***

The fighting was very close now. Doug listened closely. It sounded as if it was mostly coming from the tunnels on the other side of the room housing the central node-which meant Company A had made it to there. He looked around him and behind. They had fought their way through the blocking force of robots and Worms, utterly destroying them but taking heavy casualties in the process. There couldn't be much more than a couple of squads of marines left from the two platoons he was with. He doubted there were many more left from the other two platoons that had fought their way to this point in the adjoining tunnels. But he believed there was an upside.

"Sergeant, I think most of the node defenses are aligned against Company A now. That leaves our side of the room relatively undefended. We're in contact with our other platoons, aren't we?"

"Such as they are. What's on your mind? Hurry it up."

"If we charged and used my rebels to augment your forces, I believe we could take out a lot of the defenses since they're pointed toward the opposite tunnels. If Company A waited until we killed as many we could, then burst in, I believe we could finally take the whole node."

Sergeant Marilyn Terrance, who had taken Gonzalez's place when he was severely wounded, thought rapidly then spoke to the sergeant commanding the remnants of the other two platoons of B Company. She commed Company A and explained what Doug had recommended. A bit of welcome news was that marines were now ready to fight from all four tunnels on the opposite side of the big room. She dropped the bug into a fatigue pocket.

"All right, we're going to do it. They've got troops into the last tunnel now so all four of them will be occupied. We also have troops in our four even if there are damn few of us. Alright, Trevanne, marines will go first since your rebels don't have any armor. If we all buy the farm, you're in charge. Got it?"

"Got it," Doug said.
God, were there that few marines left?

"Go!" Terrance shouted and the thin line of brave young men and women charged to their death, theirs and the Worms and robots defending the node. Doug and his group were right behind. They burst into a melee of almost incomprehensible proportions. Rifle bullets and energy beams crisscrossed the room, shattering bones and metal, burning armor and flesh and sparking electrical fires. He shot off the com node of a robot, killed a Worm with his rifle and dodged another confused robot that was turning in circles, sometimes firing on its own kind. The sound was deafening and the smoke was an acrid combination of residue from burning Worms, scorched human flesh and shorted out robot circuits. He could hardly see but he kept moving toward the Central Node, large enough to be visible even through the carnage. His rifle clicked as he pulled the trigger. He expelled the empty magazine and inserted another, fumbling because of his blurred vision.

His eyes burned and he could barely hear but he caught the shouts of
Cease fire! Cease fire!
A few more rifle shots rang out and several Barretts thundered as the few remaining functional defenders were finished off. As the smoke gradually cleared, Doug found himself standing beside the Central Node with a ring of marines circling it. Some of them were wounded. Bodies lay on the deck of the enclosure. Medics were working over others.

He gazed to both sides and over the surface of the dome. He saw only two intact com nodes but that ought to suffice. Somehow, their techs would learn to use those nodes to communicate with the intelligence that had directed the city's defenses and caused so much death and destruction, so much misery, not only its human captives but its Worm workers as well. But it was over. Somehow, they would learn how the Node operated and what drove it and figure out what to do next. But for now all he wanted to do was be relieved and get back to Clemmie. And then to Earth.

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Central Intelligence Node

To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.

~
Farmer's Almanac
, 1978

The
Doc Travis
had grounded to make it easier to board the remaining marines and former captives. Rambling had participated himself in that final confused fight for the Central Intelligence Node, the CIN as they were calling it now. His left arm was in a sling and his mind was numb, but not so dazed that he didn't feel a burning rage at the loss of so many of his troops. The shuttle he was on was filled with wounded and medical attendants, the last load.
I'm going to tell Keane what a bastard he is for ordering no retreat and ordering assaults no matter what the casualties. I'm going to curse him to hell and back. Goddamn him, there must have been an easier way.

He passed through the open hatch of the shuttle and stumbled down the ramp to the earth before he looked up. All thoughts of berating Captain Keane vanished from his mind.
"Oh my God!"
he said aloud. The once proud lines of
Doc Travis
were battered and broken. Its armor was seared and melted. In some places, he could actually see
light
all the way through the ship! He had no idea how the starship had even made it down without crashing. It was so beaten up that it looked ready for the scrap heap. He didn't even think it could make it out of the Xanadu system now, much less back to Earth! And the loss of life! It must have been every bit as bad as the horrific number of killed and wounded his marines had suffered.

He crossed the fifty yards from the shuttle to the loading ramp of the ship and began trudging up its gentle slope. He paused to give a hand to a young female marine leaning heavily against a medic who was himself bandaged around the head and shoulder. Just inside the hatch leading on into the ship stood Captain Keane. He wore the same sweat-stained uniform he'd had on throughout the fighting, from beginning to end. As each marine passed, he raised his hand in a salute. For those who were able to pause, he shook their hand and said a few words. All the time tears were trickling down his face while his lips trembled. It was obvious how ravaged his soul must feel at all the death that had come about directly from his orders.

Rambling paused. Keane eyed him a moment, then instead of shaking hands he embraced the marine commander, being careful of his injured arm.

"Thank you, Steel. Thank you and your magnificent bunch of marines. Every one of us, the whole human species, owes them a debt of gratitude and I'll make certain the President knows it. Believe me, I will." He released his hold on Rambling and stepped back.

"I think they may owe a debt to the crew of
Doc Travis
as well, Captain. God bless your crew. We couldn't have succeeded without them. And God only knows how they held the ship together while they were at it." He shook his head in wonder, visualizing the horrendous amount of damage the ship had taken yet kept on fighting.
It must have been a very close thing
, he thought, then went on into the ship to make way for the wounded marines with him.

***

The first conference after capturing the Central Intelligence Node, the CIN, was simply a short gathering of key officers and enlisted specialists for the sole purpose of assessing the condition of the ship, the number of casualties, how the burial details were going and other such mundane matters. But it was also a time for Keane to hand out assignments designed to get the ship functioning again, loading up as much advanced technology in as short a time as possible, and most importantly, directing the senior scientists whose specialties would be most useful to take apart the CIN down to a molecular level if necessary, to learn as much about it, the Worms, and the robotic hierarchy before having to depart. Already he was feeling the pressure of not knowing whether an impending counterattack from outside the Bolt cluster was on the way or not. As quickly as feasible, he needed to get
Doc Travis
on its way back to Earth.

Keane's days were filled with innumerable talks on a one to one basis, reading reports of what was being done, and the inevitable debriefing after such a major battle. He was also making decisions and ordering other jobs to begin based on the data pouring into his office, something that he couldn't have possibly handled without CPO Mura's help. In the meantime, his XO took care of all the fine details and only bothered him when major decisions had to be made, such as which POs to brevet to Ensign where too many officers in a department had died.

He fell into bed after eighteen-hour work days, and even so felt guilty for stealing the sleep. But finally, days later, he thought he and the crew had a handle on the overall situation. He declared a twelve-hour holiday for all but the most essential personnel. He had one more thing to do and after that, the next thing on his own agenda was a long hot shower. Up until then a quick sluicing off had been all the time he took away from his duties. Not now, though!

***

"Hi, lover. Just in time for the unveiling, I see," Barbara Zembra said. She was visiting Bullet in sick bay where a corpsman was removing Bullet's last bandages, the ones that had been covering his whole left hand. As the last of the quick-heal strips came away Bullet flexed his fingers, the three he had left. His ring finger was missing. He examined his hand as if it were a new gadget he'd have to learn to operate.

"Oh no you don't!" Barbara said.

"Don't what?" he asked, puzzled.

"You're not getting out of marrying me just because you lost the finger your ring was supposed to go on!" She smiled beatifically, as if she had a secret.

Bullet grinned back mischievously. "Hmm. Hard to get married when there's no place to put the ring."

"We'll manage," Captain Keane said as he entered the sick bay. He wore the same expression as Barbara, one of a conspiracy against Bullet, poor man.

Before he quite knew what was happening Barbara was sporting a wedding ring, just as he was. Commander Dunaway, acting as the impromptu best man, had brought along Bullet's ring. He spread it apart and inserted the padded end into each nostril of Bullet's nose, then tied a string to it and handed the other end to Bullet's new wife.

"That's probably the most appropriate place for your ring, anyway, Sergeant Bullet," said Keane. "And since Sergeant Zembra's warrant for sergeant reached my desk an hour before yours did, that makes her your superior in the marines as well as domestically. Congratulations, and be sure to obey orders from your new supervisor!"

"Thank you, sir," Bullet said. He had to laugh, even knowing he was the butt of a joke that would make the rounds of the ship's crew at only a shade less than light speed. He suspected the whole thing had been set up as a morale booster for the crew once the decision had been made to take the time to get the two of them married. Not that he was about to complain, and not that he could at the moment anyway, not with Barbara's lips locked firmly to his!

***

Harriette looked at the underground CIN with awe and agitated anticipation. This was the center of the beast-and it looked like one, being a twenty feet tall circular dome, with a base over forty feet in diameter. The CIN had a small glowing dome directly on top, with lights flickering like neurons in a brain. The outer casing was a shiny material which looked gold-plated, with the ruins of com nodes here and there on its surface. Along the base ran transparent tubes a foot in diameter, each filled with cables that emanated a flamboyant light show. Three were lit, one line looked dead. All descended into the floor of the room after only a foot or so. Harriette suspected they were communication lines to every area of the city where the com nodes couldn't reach. Once Harriette started sampling the CIN innards she discovered that like the robots, the CIN system was a ternary data system, or three bits, versus the normal Earth computing system of two bit processing. That required a data converter attached to the two functional com nodes so that
Eve
could run an analysis in the two bit world. The converter wasn't complicated, but it greatly increased the amount of storage required since two bit processing was less efficient. The CIN Server, as Harriette called it, had various data formats (one symbolic, and two robotic). The symbolic was just plain Worm language, or as Doug called it,
Sinchik
. It wasn't coded in the true data security sense. But it may as well have been, since the
Sinchik
language was symbolic and very few could read the damn symbols-even the hostages. Harriette poured through some of that symbolic code projected to a screen with Doug and Clemmie looking over her shoulder.

"Doug, Clemmie, these repeating symbols over here, and here ...do either of you have any idea of what they mean?" asked Harriette looking at the readout on a lighted table.

Doug spoke: "Yes, I think that's the symbol for 'home', we have that symbol in our
Welshass
, which also means 'family'."

Clemmie shook her head. "Yeah, but we don't have that other symbol in front-I've only seen it at a
Sinchik
disposal ceremony, when they were dumping dead Sinchik bodies into their recycling tanks."

"I think I got it," said Harriette tapping on her TekPad. "Those two symbols are centered on what I think is a map. There are other symbols that I know are CIN symbols. See here." Harriette spread out a star chart of the Bolt Star system.

"Yeah," added Doug. "But you don't have the home world icon on this map, so if that's true, Xanadu is not the home world, just a normal CIN."

"Which is what I expected. When I look at this other map it seems to show the CIN home world to be in a section of the Galaxy I'm not familiar with, although I suspect one of our astronomers can figure it out. The exact location of that world appears to be embedded in a higher level robot language. I think it's used by older robots. I'll need to work with
Eve
on an algorithm to crack the next level. If you two can give me the best definitions you can on the symbols here, or even a guess, it'll help with the dictionary for our language interpretation."