Plague Wars 06: Comes the Destroyer (11 page)

With little fear of such things, as
Roger
could move at least ten times as fast as any EarthFleet ship ever built, Ezekiel’s curiosity burned ever brighter, fuelled by the symbiotic feedback with his ship’s even more youthful eagerness.

In other words, the boy and the puppy couldn’t help but stick their noses in.

Had fear won out, it could have run away, fleeing along the same path as the escape drone, eventually to be picked up by the oncoming Destroyer. Even this half-familiar relative could not have caught it, as the Sentry was designed for maximum speed and stealth.

Had curiosity prevailed, it could have shown itself to the questing other, and who could predict the outcome? Perhaps it could have rejoined the fold of living Meme craft, reporting as it should and receiving the instructions that would give its rudimentary life meaning.

Instead, it tried to keep to a middle course, afraid to flee or approach, playing cosmic peekaboo from behind its chosen asteroid.

All the evidence told Ezekiel there was definitely something out there. Whatever it was kept peeking out from behind the rock, just a sliver of it. Perhaps it was showing just enough of itself to get a look every now and again.

Torn between charging in and running, like his quarry he did neither. Rather, he and
Roger
kept sniffing around, edging closer and circling even while he tried to deduce what it could be.

Fusion byproducts he detected told him it used a Meme engine for sure. That didn’t help too much, because Earth had yet to manufacture a good such motor itself. The intermittent lidar and radar returns showed very little, as if the thing had absorptive stealth coatings on it.

For the past hour Ezekiel had been working on something new, and now he was ready to try. Taking a metaphorical deep breath, he fired off his creation at right angles to the asteroid and the whatever-it-was.

Ezekiel had used the small hypervelocity missile template and added a simple wide-spectrum optical sensor and bioradio – essentially, an eyeball with a video link, a spy drone. Hoping the thing would not spook right away, he kept its engine at low power and curved it around the rock to the right even as he sidled
Roger
to the left.

With a screen in his mind’s eye, Zeke saw what the drone saw and what
Roger
saw simultaneously. In this case, what he saw first was the stern of the Sentry backing around the rock, its attention focused on the threat to its existence, the hyper. Too late, it must have realized it had shown itself, and seemed to hesitate, caught between two seemingly friendly but frighteningly strange things.

Like an animal gone to ground and too frightened to run, it froze, and
Roger
was on it in a flash. Ezekiel hardly had time to rein in the little ship before it seized the Sentry in its two forward fins. Without specifically ordering it, his craft had divined his desire and grown barbed claws, which now gripped the smaller creature tight.

Wild excitement coursed through Ezekiel and his ship, and like a boy who had hooked an enormous fish, he had no other thought in his mind than to land it and carry it home proudly as a trophy.

The Sentry lit off its engine, causing the two ships to whirl and spin crazily. Zeke told
Roger
to hang on while he did his best to counteract the bucking prize with his own engine and thrusters.

For over an hour the two struggled, but even though
Roger
was small, the Sentry was smaller, and had far less fuel in reserve. It was a housecat to a lynx, and once caught tight it was only a matter of time before it tired.

Once the gyrations ceased to little more than fearful shudders and he had control of the Sentry, Ezekiel decided to try out an idea. He commanded
Roger
to try to make direct contact with the thing’s nervous system, confident that between the two of them they could overwhelm it, or at least learn something.

His ploy succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, and it was almost his undoing.

A flood of hardwired knowledge flowed into the two of them as the Sentry vomited its mind into its attacker. In effect, it babbled hysterically, simultaneously overjoyed and frightened by the contact. Slowly Ezekiel and
Roger
managed to calm and take control of it and eventually, like a surrendered animal too tired to fight anymore, they held it tight, mind and body, and took it home.

“I want to help,” Andrew piped up.

“You always want to help with something new, until it actually comes time to help,” Leslie snarked.

“Kids, please,” Skull shushed them. “I think it might be useful.”

“Why?” Rae asked. “It’s barely alive, and the comet it’s on isn’t all that stable. Slap an engine on it and it might break apart.”

“All right,” he said reasonably, “we can find a better base body – a good solid asteroid. Zeke can keep his eyes peeled for one and let us know.”

“I still don’t understand why,” Rae replied. “We have everything we need on the ship.”

“It’s all our eggs in one basket, though, isn’t it?” Skull observed reasonably. “And that biomass is a lot easier to digest than raw rocks and comets. I could recycle some of it, make a new fresh young base, and consume the rest.”

“Ew,” Stephanie said, holding her nose. “That’s like, cannibalism or something, isn’t it, Daddy?”

“For a standard human it would be,” he replied. He found it always paid to be matter-of-fact when it came to discussing sensitive topics with adolescents.
The more you get wrapped around the axle about something, the more they focus on it and become fascinated by it. Nothing like going into the details of digestion, elimination and reproduction to demystify the process and make it not interesting and “ew.”

“But,” he went on, “Meme ships are made to consume and reprocess just about anything. They like biomass best of all. If we ever discovered plants that could grow on asteroids without atmosphere, we’d have an ideal food source. Or if we could graze on Earth.”

“Humans don’t like Meme ships,” Charles said. “The tabloids are always talking about how they could go rogue or create another plague or something.”

“
Standard
humans,” Leslie corrected him.

“You know what I mean,” he replied.

“Why don’t you say what you mean then?” she answered.

“No bickering at dinner,” Rae said, her voice rising a bit. “You know the rules.” The two subsided with mutual glares. “All right, I can see your point,” she said to Skull again. “It might be useful to have a mobile base for ourselves.”

“A secret base?” Andrew asked, playing with his spaghetti.

The rest of the family stared at him for a moment before Skull replied, “That’s a damned fine point, Andrew. Yes, a secret base. Why not? We can always tell them if we need to.”

Everyone knew who “them” were. Standard humans. No matter how often they reminded each other they also were human, everyone knew they were very, very different.

“All right, I guess,” Rae conceded. “We’ll see what Ezekiel comes up with.”

“Hmm-hmm,” Skull replied, his mouth full of meatball. “Good spaghetti, hon.”

Rae smiled. “Grandma’s recipe’s still the best.”

The next ship day Skull presented Rae with three choices of asteroid.

“These all look suspiciously well selected,” she said.

“I had Zeke looking already,” Skull admitted. “I didn’t see you saying no.”

“All right. Then let’s get to work. When will we get there?”

“We have to go eat the old base first. I’ll ask Zeke to meet us there to help.”

“Good,” Rae exclaimed. “Always nice to see our firstborn.” Her eyes took on that faraway quality known to mothers everywhere when contemplating their offspring.

Skull couldn’t understand it, but he’d gotten used to it. He put his head close to hers and tightened up the room’s seal. Their children’s’ hearing was preternaturally keen. “Frankly, I miss him. He was such a good kid. People say an ordinary childhood goes by fast…try a Blend.”

“He’s almost grown up now,” Rae replied, still with that look. “Tall and handsome just like you were. Are, I mean. Oh…” Her expression fell. “Sorry.”

“It’s all right. You forget sometimes, and so do I.”

That I’m not really me, but just a cheap-ass copy.

“That’s why I call you Alan,” Rae went on lamely.

“Because I’m not him. I know.”

“Because you’re better,” she insisted. “You’ve grown…outgrown your old weaknesses. And you have a family now. Fatherhood suits you.”

“It does.”
For now. I’m actually glad that they grow so fast. Less guilt when they’re grown
. He wished he could really talk to his wife, but how could he fully trust someone who once reached inside his mind and tinkered with it like a Harley mechanic?

That’s what we lost when I died. Full trust. Or at least the chance at it. Once that trust shattered into a thousand pieces, it’s damn hard to glue it back together.

Skull shoved that out of his mind as he did every time his brooding thoughts threatened to overwhelm him. He put on a smile and changed the subject. “So let’s go build us a new base.”

On the trip, he’d learned a lot of new stuff about the Meme, and the Empire, perhaps more than he wanted to know. That store of knowledge made it all the more important that he get his prize to Dad…and, he had to admit, to the quads. They would suck its mind dry for sure, just like everything they got near.

When he finally arrived, he was tired, but not unduly so. He hadn’t hurried. The
Denham
was already there, settled in against the old comet and apparently resting on top of the base. In reality, it looked like Dad was eating it, through some new mouths he had created on his underside.

“Hi, Mom,” he said when the link came up. “Look what I found. Can I keep it?”

“Oh, my,” she replied, immediately joined by his dad’s avatar. “That looks like a Sentry!”

“Yeah, I guess that’s how you’d say it in English. It knows a lot of stuff. I thought you guys would want it for intel exploitation.” That was the word for investigating captured things, if he remembered right.

“Yes we certainly would,” Rae breathed, amazed. “Bring it up to the side and pass it to your dad. Then you can set
Roger
out to pasture and come eat dinner with us. He looks tired, and I bet you are too.”

“Okay.” While reluctant to give up his new pet, he really could use a rest, and so could his ship. “Coming alongside now.”

Once the Sentry was firmly in the
Denham
’s grip, Zeke climbed aboard the bigger ship and immediately headed for his room. Even though a VR sarcophagus was supposed to take care of all of his human needs, he still felt grungy and smelled bad after days inside of it. One long hot shower later, he sat down to dinner with his family after hugs all around.

“That’s an absolutely amazing thing you did, son,” Alan said through his avatar. Zeke figured his dad was already exploiting the Sentry, as he had that distracted look in his eyes he got when he was splitting his attention.

“Thanks, Dad. Once you get all the data, can I have him back?”

“Let’s wait and see, all right?” Rae replied.

The quads all smirked in different ways, united in nothing except
schadenfreude
at any discomfiture of their older brother.

That’s what parents always say: let’s wait and see
, Zeke thought in irritation, but held his peace. The thought of getting the Sentry as his personal pet was enough to put up with almost anything, so he kept his expression bland and refused to be baited. Instead he reached over and helped himself to some shepherd’s pie, one of Mom’s better dishes. Given that all the ingredients except a few spices were manufactured by Dad’s ship-body, mishmash things like casseroles, pizza or medleys tended to hide any discrepancies in taste.

Besides, he was used to it. Dad took on as much standard food as he could whenever he got in to one of the human bases, but he always ran out too quickly.

When dinner ended, the avatar led them all into a cargo bay, where they found the Sentry lying quiescent, an umbilical leading from the ceiling to a port in its side. “I’m keeping it unconscious, but I’ve already downloaded its whole knowledge store. Zeke, you can stay and join in or go get some sleep. Kids, I want you to link in and I’ll show you around this thing’s mind.”

Ezekiel was happy to go rest. Staying in the biological mind-link with
Roger
was exhilarating but tiring. He knew that Meme could do it for long periods of time without resting, but his body was human, mostly. It needed a break, and his brain needed sleep.