The Mothership (13 page)

Ten meters back, Steamer swung his rifle
toward the sound, whispering, “What the hell was that?”

Beside him, Tucker pulled on his night
vision goggles. A green blur appeared, revealing a dark shape through the
trees. “I can see it,” he said as animal shrieks continued to drift through the
forest.

Nuke lay a few meters beyond Tucker, his
eyes flitting apprehensively into the dark. “What’s it look like, Tuck?”

“Oh man,” Tucker said ominously. “It’s
horrible!”

“What?” Nuke demanded in a nervous whisper.

“Its fangs are huge!”

“Fangs?” Nuke repeatedly fearfully. “Aliens
don’t have fangs? Do they?”

“And its claws, man, they’re like
bayonets.”

Nuke went white. “Bayonets?”

“Oh shit! It’s coming this way! It’s coming
right for you, Lieutenant!”

Nuke stared into the trees ahead, gripping
his rifle, anticipating an alien horror charging at him out of the darkness.
“Where? I can’t see it? Where is it?”

Tucker peeled off his night vision glasses,
bursting into silent laughter.

“Screw you, man,” Nuke snapped, as his fear
turned to embarrassment.

Steamer shook his head, grinning. “Tucker,
you’re a sorry son of a bitch.”

“I know, that’s why you love me!”

A terrified wail sounded, then the thud of
a heavy carcass hitting the ground carried through the trees, followed by
silence. Beckman saw the seeker stand, holding a red mass dripping with blood
in one hand. It immediately sealed the lump of flesh inside a nano membrane,
then flicked every trace of blood from its metal skin.

Beckman glanced at Laura, who had a look of
revulsion on her face. “What is it?”

“A buffalo heart.”

The seeker dashed to the craft with
blurring speed. A circular piece of the hull vanished with perfect timing,
allowing the seeker to streak inside without pausing, then immediately sealed
shut behind it.

“Were you here when it landed?” Beckman
whispered.

“I was close,” she said, pointing to the
left.

“Major,” Vamp’s voice sounded urgently in
his earpiece. “There’s another contact moving toward you.”

No sooner had her words sounded in his
earpiece, than he heard dry leaves crunch behind him. He spun around, bringing
his M16 around. Standing at his feet was another seeker. Even though it had
three hundred and sixty degree vision, Beckman felt like it was staring
straight at him. He raised his assault rifle to cover its torso in case it
attacked, but it was too fast. One of its thin snaking arms flashed out, caught
the rifle’s barrel and ripped it from his hands before he could get his finger
to the trigger. The seeker lifted the weapon, turning it for the sensor disk to
examine. After several seconds it extended a thin metallic finger to the
trigger and pressed it experimentally. The M16 released a three shot burst,
although there was no sign of recoil, so strong was the seekers grip on the
weapon’s barrel. With growing understanding, it repositioned the weapon so
there was line of sight from the sensor disk, along the barrel. Holding the
weapon with its lower pair of arms, it fired a burst at a tree a dozen meters
away. The seeker turned slightly, ramping up its optical sensors across the
spectrum, and targeted a tree two hundred meters away. It fired another three
shot burst with perfect accuracy, severing a branch Beckman could barely see.

Damn!
Beckman thought astonished,
Great shot!

The seeker then selected a branch more than
a kilometer away and fired. Beckman didn’t see the bullets miss their target,
but the seeker did, giving it an understanding of the weapon’s limited
accuracy. The machine turned toward Beckman, aiming the M16 at his head,
curious to assess the damage the weapon could inflict upon the primitive biped
who’d carried it, then the seeker shuddered as a depleted uranium slug crashed
through its lower torso. Its arm operating the M16’s trigger twitched, letting
go, while the other arm kept hold of the barrel. There was a faint click from
the shadows as Cougar rammed home another round, then a second bullet shattered
the glassy black sensor disk. The seeker staggered drunkenly, but refused to
fall, while its two lower arms moved with uncoordinated jerkiness. The seeker’s
hand holding the M16 spasmed, buckling the rifle’s barrel. It took several
steps toward the vehicle, then a third shot struck the upper arm segment,
triggering an electric flash as a vital component shattered. The seeker went
rigid, then toppled forward still gripping the twisted rifle barrel.

The brilliant light beneath the alien craft
winked out, immersing the forest in darkness, then the air surrounding the
vehicle glowed a dull red as its propulsion field activated. The woodland
became bathed in red, then orange light as the craft powered up.

“Movement!” Vamp yelled. “Multiple
contacts. Left and right, all around us!”

From deep in the forest, Beckman heard the
underbrush being swept aside as metal objects raced toward the vehicle from all
directions. Dark shapes sped past the troops hiding among the trees so fast
they barely got a look at them. In the growing light generated by the craft’s
power up, Beckman saw shiny skinned seekers race out of the dark toward the
vehicle, some carrying nano membrane sacks full of samples.

Laura screamed beside him. He swung his
recovered weapon in her direction as a seeker shot past, scooped up its
crippled sibling with all four hands and raced towards the safety of the
vehicle. Openings appeared in the alien craft’s hull, wherever a seeker arrived,
as if any surface could become an entry point. In a matter of seconds, all of
the machines had retreated inside the vehicle, and the entry points had
seamlessly sealed shut. A moment later, the octagonal craft vanished before
Beckman’s eyes.

For a moment he was too astonished to think
clearly, then he remembered Dr McInness’ explanation of hyper acceleration. He
looked straight up, in time to glimpse a brilliant blue white point of light
streaking high into the sky toward the west.

He was right!

The blue white light faded to red as the
vehicle ceased accelerating and began to glide back to Earth, toward the west.
Though Beckman didn’t understand it, the high arc and glide trajectory was the
most energy efficient way to reach its destination.

“Clear,” Beckman called into his radio as
he climbed to his feet, then helped Laura up. “I take it you’re from the
research station?”

She dusted herself off. “Laura McKay. Who
you are?”

“Robert Beckman, US Army.”

“A little late, aren’t you?”

“Late?” Beckman said puzzled.

“That thing crashed two days ago, and now
it’s destroyed my home and kidnapped my husband. I’d call that late.” Before
Beckman could reply, she strode off into the clearing made by the vehicle.

Beckman watched her, bemused, as Dr
McInness stormed toward him with flushed cheeks and eyes popping.

“Are you out of your mind!” the scientist
exploded.

Beckman gave him a distracted look. “What?”

“Your people fired on them! Now they think
we’re hostile!”

“It was going to shoot me in the head!”
Beckman glanced at Cougar and gave him an appreciative nod. “I’d call that
sufficient justification.”

“You shouldn’t have gone in there with any
weapons!” Dr McInness declared. “This should never have been a military
operation! I warned them! Trigger happy Rambos!”

Beckman ignored the scientist, and followed
Laura to the landing site. The vegetation under foot had been crushed in the
same circular pattern as the previous landing site, and another borehole had
been drilled in the middle of the clearing. Laura hurried across to where a
water buffalo lay dead beside a stringybark tree. She examined it with a mix of
empathy and scientific curiosity. Beckman stopped a short distance from the
dead animal, noting that neat circular holes had been cut through its chest and
skull where its heart and brain had been removed.

“This is weird,” she murmured. “There’s no
blood around either wound. The incision was sealed as soon as it was made.”

Markus emerged from the trees, while
further out, the shadowy forms of the rest of the team could be seen moving
toward the landing sight.

“How many of you are there?” Laura asked

“Twelve,” Beckman replied, “Including two
civilians.”

“Is that all?” Laura asked incredulously.

“We’re a reconnaissance unit.”

She stood up, then nodded suspiciously at
the small silver special at his hip. “What’s that?”

“An experimental weapon. Top secret.”

“Of course it is.”

Markus cut in, eager to deflect her
attention away from the recovered weapon. “Why don’t you tell us what’s going
on here?”

Laura hesitated, breathing deeply as she
fought to control her emotions. “I don’t know. They took my husband … destroyed
everything. I don’t know what they want.”

While she told her story, Dr McInness
examined the borehole. He studied the compression patterns in the grass then
wandered over to observe the mutilated water buffalo.

“Major, your knife please,” Dr McInness
said when Laura had finished. Beckman passed his knife to the scientist, who
used it to probe the hole in the buffalo’s chest. After a moment, he cut
through the fused flesh and blood began seeping out. “The technology sealing
the borehole wall and this incision are the same.” He wiped the knife clean on
the animal’s hide and returned it to Beckman. “You know what that means?”

“They’re the galaxy’s greatest hole
diggers?” Beckman suggested.

“Both the borehole and the animal’s flesh
have been fused, without heat.”

“So?” Beckman asked, unimpressed.

Dr McInness stared intently into space,
deep in thought. “It means they can transfer energy at a quantum level without
thermal effects.”

Beckman arched his eyebrows impatiently.
“So?”

“It’s a whole new approach to quantum
mechanics, something we haven’t even thought of in theory. And they use to dig
holes in the ground!”

Laura looked curiously at Beckman. “Is he
always like this?”

“Pretty much.”

“Why is that important, Doctor?” Markus
asked.

“To use such advanced science in such a
mundane way means they’ve had it a long time. What is completely unknown to us
is trivial to them.”

“We know something else too, Doc,” Cougar
said. They all turned toward the sniper, curiously. “We know we can kill them.”

“Yo Coug! You da man!” Timer yelled
appreciatively, high fiving him.

“You shot an unarmed machine in the back!”
Laura said.

“It was armed,” Nuke said, “It had an M16
with a forty millimeter grenade launcher!”

“She’s right,” Beckman said soberly. “They
weren’t looking for a fight.”

“Weren’t they?” Markus said skeptically.
“It took your weapon before you could get a shot away.”

Beckman suppressed his irritation at the
comment, while the demeanor of the troops sobered. They knew in a normal
situation, the only way Beckman would surrender his weapon was if he were dead.

“So you’re going to the Goyder?” Laura
asked.

Beckman nodded. “That’s the plan.”

“Will you rescue my husband?”

Beckman hesitated. “I can’t promise that.”

Her eyes clouded. “Do you think he’s dead?”

Better for him if he were
. Beckman dreaded the thought of being
treated like a specimen. “I don’t know.”

“Where are you headed?” Markus asked.

“There’s a landing strip the other side of
Bath Range. I was hoping someone would land there, before I ran out of food and
water.”

“There’s no aircraft flying for a thousand
of kilometers in any direction,” Beckman said.

Laura looked confused. “Why?”

“Because,” Markus answered, “They shoot
down every damn thing we send up.”

Dr McInness rounded on Markus abruptly. “We
don’t know that. Their technology may be causing electrical failures in our
aircraft. There’s bound to be a logical explanation for it.”

“There is,” Virus said, “Their air defenses
kick ass!”

“So, I have no hope of rescue?” Laura
asked.

“None,” Beckman replied.

Laura looked thoughtful, “Then I guess I’ll
have to go with you.”

“That’s impossible.”

 “Would you rather I die out here by
myself?” She glanced at the members of his group, realizing none were local
people. “I take it none of you know this country?”

“None of us knew Arnhem Land even existed
forty-eight hours ago,” Beckman said.

“I’ve been to the Goyder three times in the
last two years. I know the local people, and there’s no one who knows this land
like the aborigines. They’ve lived here for sixty thousand years and they don’t
trust outsiders, which means you’ll never see them.” She folded her arms. “Unless
I’m with you.”