The Mothership (33 page)

When she reached the sliver of light
bordered by the jagged edge of the fallen deck, she paused cautiously. A large
condensation droplet splashed down near her boot, drawing her gaze upwards to a
vast tunnel of destruction blasted through dozens of decks above. The wrecked
decks were blacked out, except for a few flickering lights and sparks from
short circuiting power conduits. The edges of the decks were charred and ringed
with silver stalactites formed from molten metal which had run like water down
shredded bulkheads before cooling. Crowning the carnage was the exit hole high
above. Sunlight filtered by the shield dome poured through the hole,
illuminating a tiny maintenance drone feebly attempting to make repairs. The
drone had a pole-like body topped by a conical coolie hat and four tentacled
arms located a third of the way down the pole. The brim of the coolie hat
glowed from the propulsion field that kept the machine aloft. Its slender shape
allowed it access to any space in the ship while its flexible arms could
operate a vast array of machines. Two of the drone’s arms held cutting torches
whose tips burned a dazzling white, while the other arms secured the twisted
metal it worked on. As the torches sliced through ruined decking, streams of
white sparks rained down onto the shattered decks below.

Just one repair unit?
Vamp wondered, shocked by the scale of the
disaster and the pitifully small repair effort. To have any chance of dealing
with so much damage, swarms of repair drones would be needed.

Vamp moved towards the sliver of light,
about to step out from behind the fallen deck when a high pitched amphibian
screech sounded close by. She froze as a frenzy of shrieks erupted in reply,
then she threw a look back at Timer and Dr McInness, commanding silence. When
the bout of screeching died down, she inched forward for a better look, being
careful not to reveal herself.

A wisp of fresh air washed over her face as
she caught a glimpse of a yawning chasm beyond the fallen bulkhead. Just a step
away, the deck ended above a jagged hole in the triple armored hull. Sitting on
the far side of the hole were five of the amphibian predators. Vamp leaned
forward until she could see down into the hole. It was filled with gray,
ash-choked water that slowly swirled in a vast whirlpool fed by the river
outside. Metal shards speared into the gray waters while on the far side, a
charred tree trunk lay pinned against tangled metal. Many more amphibians swam
in the pool, some diving into the depths, others splashing on the surface.
Occasionally, one creature would pass too close to another and be greeted with
an angry screech of warning. If the warning was ignored, the threatened
creature would surge up out of the water and swipe one of its clawed forelegs
at the other, forcing it to dart out of reach or fight for its life. The
warning shriek would start the others screaming briefly, then after a while,
the ruckus would die down.

One of the creatures surfaced with the
rotting corpse of a crocodile in its mouth. It sped across the water to the
fallen bulkhead Vamp cowered behind, surged out of the water and began tearing
at the crocodile’s stomach. Immediately, other creatures swarmed toward the
carcass, knocking each other aside to get at the rotting meat. One of the
creatures was clawed in the scramble, and once bleeding, was set upon by the
others, now in the grip of a wild feeding frenzy. In moments, the rotting
crocodile and the bleeding creature were stripped to the bone.

Vamp crept back behind the bulkhead and
whispered to her two companions, “There’s a hole in the ship. It’s full of
water and dozens of those creatures. All starving!”

Timer gulped. “Can we get through?”

She shook her head. “There’s too many to
fight. They’re so hungry, they’re eating each other. If they saw us, we’d be
dead.” She pointed to the fallen bulkhead they hid behind. “They’re using this
deck like a ladder into the pool.”

“That explains why the cargo hold is
empty.” Dr McInness whispered “Explosive decompression. The air tight doors
closed when the hull was breached.”

“We’ll have to go back,” Vamp said.

Timer looked incredulous. “Are you crazy?
At least there’s light out here. Who knows how many of those things are back
there in the dark.”

“Can’t be as many out there as in the
pool.”

“Let me see.” Timer squeezed past her, then
crept to the edge of the fallen bulkhead where he peeked through the jagged
metal protruding from its sides.

Several of the amphibians prowled along the
edge of the hole on their mighty forelegs, while the rest swam in the ashen
waters. Timer realized Vamp was right. If they tried to fight them, they’d be
over run. He was about to step back when he noticed one of the creatures
sitting on the far side look up and shriek. The others near it looked up too,
then a white blur streaked down from above and splashed into the pool, sending
a plume of water high into the air.

Timer edged forward until he could see down
into the artificial lake. The creatures screamed furiously as they dived in,
and swam after their hapless prey. They were all determined to tear it to
pieces, to get more of the food than the others, to fight and kill to survive.
When they reached the spot where their prey had fallen into their makeshift
habitat, they dived below the surface.

Timer turned to them. “Something’s in the
water!

Vamp squeezed in beside him. “What is it?”

“Don’t know. It fell from above. Now
they’re all after it.”

For a moment, the pool grew quiet, as all
the creatures swam down after their prey, then white flashes deep below the
surface illuminated the gray waters. One of the creatures surged up from the
deep, was airborne long enough to breath, then dived down to renew the
struggle.

One look told Vamp this was their chance.
“Let’s go.”

“Go where?” Timer asked.

“While they’re distracted,” she said as she
caught the fallen deck and pulled herself up.

The collapsed bulkhead was a rectangular
slab that formed both the ceiling of the cargo deck and the floor of the deck
above. A curved section had been blasted away from the end now lying in the
water, while flying debris had partially melted and holed it in many places,
creating a natural ladder. At the top of the slope, a hint of light reflected
off the charred ceiling of the deck above.

Vamp scrambled up the steep face of the
fallen bulkhead quickly, while Timer helped Dr McInness onto it. She glanced
down once, seeing the milky flashes continue, then turned as the sound of
scratching footsteps came charging towards her. She dragged her M16 up just as
a dark red jaw and yellow teeth came speeding over the lip of the deck. It was
too fast for her to get a shot away, but the creature’s jaw swallowed the
barrel of her rifle. The force of the impact drove the gun backwards until the
butt wedged into one of the holes, then the creature cartwheeled over her,
pivoting on the rifle. It hit the deck beside her with a thud, but refused to
release the barrel. She fired a burst as she struggled to hold onto the M16,
blowing the back of its bony head off. The creature slumped to the deck and
slid down the ramp, leaving a trail of dark blood behind. When it splashed into
the water, its blood sent the creatures fighting beneath the surface into a
crazed fury of cannibalism.

Vamp quickly started climbing again, with
Timer and Dr McInness scrambling to keep up. When she reached the jagged rim of
the next level, she sighted along her M16’s barrel as she peeked into the
partially lit deck. Finding no creatures in sight, she rolled onto the deck and
lay watching the pool below. Timer and Dr McInness climbed up beside her,
although Timer kept watch on the space behind them.

In the pool below, the white flashes
stopped, then the surface erupted as a white bipedal form leapt out of the
water. Vamp knew at once it was not a machine, but a metallic suit. The heavy
lift suit was shorter and wider than a man, with an overly large helmet. Its
back was angled towards them, concealing the helmet’s translucent face plate,
while five creatures clawed vainly at the suit’s metal exterior. The left hand
held a white nano net, encasing two unconscious creatures, while its right hand
held a silver bar which flashed each time it jabbed one of the creatures. The
stun device stabbed at the amphibians, forcing them to release the suit and stumble
away, shaking their snouts to clear their heads. After a moment, they screamed
with rage and charged again, only to be stunned, or swept aside by a powerful
metal arm. When the heavy lift suit had thrown off all of the creatures, it
made a propulsion field assisted jump straight up six levels, then glided
effortlessly over the ragged edge onto the deck high above. Without looking
back, the white metal suit walked off into the darkened interior, while below
in the pool, the creatures swarmed over one of their number floating facedown
in the water, and began to devour it.

“That was one of them,” Dr McInness
whispered excitedly from their vantage point overlooking the pool.

“Yeah. Too bad we didn’t get a look at its
face,” Vamp said.

“What do you think it wanted with those
mutts?” Timer asked.

“Don’t know. But those space dogs aren’t an
alien’s best friend,” she said, then nodded for them to crawl back away from
the edge.

When they were well out of sight of the
pool, they stood and crept through the darkened deck towards flickering
emergency lights. The deck was of similar proportions to the cavernous cargo
hold below, and covered with the same smooth polished surfaces. Decompression
had also sucked this deck clean, leaving no clue as to what had been stored
there.

Eager to put distance between themselves
and the amphibian pack, they hurried on past the flickering lights to a
relatively undamaged section, where the emergency lights glowed continuously.
They stayed close to the bulkhead until an enormous archway appeared, opened by
their proximity. The arch was flush to the wall, with no nearby controls or
markings, and was large enough that the black ‘tank’ trapped between the blast
doors below could have driven through it.

“Damn, we can’t see their doors!” Timer
declared.

Dr McInness stared thoughtfully at the edge
of the arch. “There must be something different about their vision.” He glanced
at the orange tinted wall lights thoughtfully. “Our eyes evolved to see the
hotter yellow light our sun emits, but all their lights are tinted with
orange.”

Vamp glanced at the orange lights. “So?”

“Their eyes may have evolved under a cooler
star than our G type sun, possibly a K type. They might be more sensitive to
the infrared end of the spectrum, which we can’t see.”

“Well, if we don’t figure out how to spot
their doors,” Vamp said, “how are we going to find the exit?”

“Stick close to the walls,” Timer said.

Dr McInness stepped into the archway,
studying it, finding no trace of the door retracting into the walls. “It’s like
it vanished. There must be something very weird happening on a quantum level.”

Timer gave him an impatient look. “What we
need is something weird happening on a ‘let’s get the hell out of this rat
trap’ level.”

Vamp stepped past Dr McInness into the next
compartment. It was a rectangular chamber hundreds of meters across with only a
few scattered yellow-orange lights high up on the walls to soften the shadows.
Filling the chamber were row after row of raised circular silver platforms,
each with a matching silver disk floating above it. The larger the platform,
the higher the disk floated, while beside each platform was a shallow metal
saucer half its size. Most of the platforms were empty, except for a cluster near
the entrance, where each platform supported a column of white light joining the
base to its floating upper disk. When Dr McInness spotted the active devices,
he started toward them with unbridled enthusiasm. Vamp caught his arm,
restraining him while she looked for any sign of movement.

Timer stepped through the arch, then moved
away to the left, studying the chamber warily. “Looks clear.”

“OK.” Vamp released her grip, then together
they headed towards the illuminated platforms. When they had moved a few meters
from the arch, the wall materialized seamlessly behind them, causing the
archway to vanish. Vamp halted, then took a few cautious steps back to the
wall, triggering a proximity sensor that caused the archway to open again. She
nodded to herself, satisfied, then followed Dr McInness to the platforms.

Each active platform contained a partially
formed machine. Most were mere skeletons awaiting further equipment, while some
were almost complete except for their outer bodywork. Five of the largest
skeletons were battloids, sitting on sled housings that had not yet been
equipped with anti-g field generators. The embryonic battloids lacked armor,
weapons, and shields, but the central housing, power plant and most of its
internal systems were finished.

“Big mothers,” Timer said.

“Probably some kind of heavy engineering
machine,” Dr McInness suggested as he paced between the platforms. Partially
assembled repair drones stood on several platforms, most no more than skeletal
poles with some internal equipment installed. In all, nearly two dozen
platforms were occupied by an assortment of machines at various stages of
completion.