The Mothership (39 page)

When Beckman approached, Nuke indicated a
partially open suit. It was cracked apart like a clamshell, with a vertical
split from head to foot revealing a padded interior able to mold to its
occupant’s form. The inside of the helmet lacked anything resembling controls
or view screens, just several small silver surfaces at the top and rear
enabling the suit to communicate directly with the wearer’s cerebral implants.

Markus tapped the metal, noting how it gave
off a dull sound. “Sounds like armor.”

Beckman studied the mounts at each shoulder
and the attachment brackets on the forearms. “Could be for tools, or weapons.”

“It’s nothing like the suits at Groom,”
Xeno said, remembering the silky metallic suits studied at the materials
analysis labs. She stepped around it, gauging its size. “And it’s bigger.
They’re not Zetas.”

Nuke moved slowly along the lattice work,
looking the suits over casually, eventually reaching the last one in the line.
Whereas the first two were cracked open forty-five degrees, the last was only a
few centimeters from being sealed. He put his hand on the side of the suit and
pulled. A burned body toppled out, hitting him in the chest before falling to
the deck.

Nuke jumped back startled, then wiped burnt
alien flesh from his clothes. “Oh, that’s disgusting!”

The body was humanoid, three quarters the
height of a man, fifty percent wider with an overly large head.

“Ugly son of a bitch,” Tucker said coldly.

“Unlucky more than ugly,” Markus said as he
glanced inside the suit. “It almost got it shut.”

“Xeno,” Beckman said, “do you recognize
it?”

“It’s definitely a new species,” she
replied.  “How much time do I have?”

“Two minutes.”

Xeno pushed a video camera into Nuke’s
hand, then knelt beside the body, pulling on white plastic gloves. When Nuke
had started recording, she said, “Specimen One. Apparently died from
decompression and exposure to heat.” The side of the alien that had been
closest to the suit entrance was charred, while the rest of its body was
swollen and blotched. “Skin discoloration appears to be due to tissue damage
from decompression.” She took out a tape and measured the dimensions of the
head. “Skull length, forty six centimeters. I’d need to perform a craniotomy to
assess brain to body mass.” She gave Beckman a hopeful look.

“We don’t have the time.”

She nodded, disappointed, then turned the
elongated chin to the side curiously. “Long chin, evolved to balance skull weight.
That’s an advanced evolutionary marker.” Xeno produced a slender probe and
pencil thin flashlight from her kit, then pushed back the alien’s thin lips,
revealing sharp angular teeth.

Tucker looked impressed. “Nasty little
chompers.”

“Teeth for tearing flesh, indicating it’s a
carnivore.” She ran the probe around the mouth, checking its teeth. “No sign of
cavities or cracks.”

“Hey!” Nuke declared, “They’ve got a dental
plan in outer space!”

Xeno lifted the probe to the
tennis-ball-sized eyes located towards the side of its head. “Eye placement
indicates a wider field of vision than humans, possibly . . . two hundred and
seventy degrees in the horizontal, more in the vertical.” She slid a thin
translucent layer back beneath the outer eyelid, aiming the spotlight into the
eye. “Translucent layer to protect the eye is an amphibian characteristic, to
protect the eyes underwater.” The pupil was a dark vertical slit, surrounded by
a deep blue iris flecked with green. “Multiple lenses in the eye, one segment is
floating, may work like a short zoom lens.” She shone the light on the flat
nose with two slender nostrils. “Nostrils may seal shut in water.” She traced
imaginary lines from each eye, running forward, trying to imagine what the
amphibian could see. “Note, specimen has limited stereoscopic vision for depth
perception, significantly less range than for humans.”

“Is that important?” Beckman asked.

“Our eyesight originally evolved from apes,
who needed good spatial ability to move through the trees. That eyesight
allowed our ancestors to become hunters. We’re the predators we are, partly
because of our eyesight. We hunt down and pursue like a lion. This creature
wouldn’t do that.”

“Cool,” Nuke said. “It’s not a predator! So
they’re not dangerous.”

“She said it was a carnivore, Lieutenant,”
Tucker snapped.

“Oh,” Nuke said deflated.

“The specimen has good spatial perception, but
narrow stereoscopic vision, suggesting it does not hunt in the open. It may be an
ambush predator.”

“Ambush predator?” Nuke repeated
uncertainly.  “What’s that?”

“A sneak attacker!” Tucker declared.

Xeno nodded agreement. “Ambush predators wait
in hiding, then surprise their prey with a fast lethal strike.”

Beckman furrowed his brow. “So they spent
millions of years evolving how to approach their prey without being detected,
and strike without warning.”

“They’ve obviously come a long way since
then,” she said.

“You won’t see them coming,” Tucker said.

“A species evolved to deliver preemptive
attacks would allow no warning,” Beckman said. “It’s their nature. The first
time you’d know you’re under attack is when your cities are burning.”

“That would also make them highly secretive
and deceptive,” Markus said thoughtfully. “A need for good situational
awareness could mean they are masters of espionage. You’d never know they were
watching you.”

“That’s highly speculative,” Xeno said
cautiously.

“It’s evolution,” Beckman said, for the
first time wishing Dr McInness was there to provide his perspective.

She leaned over the skull examining it
carefully. “The specimen has no visible ears, suggesting it may be deficient in
hearing.”  She touched the pronounced, dome-shaped bulge on the forehead. “The
specimen has a large frontal lobe, with a firm cartilage covering.”  It
reminded her of something, but she couldn’t quite remember what. She moved to
the amphibian’s smooth hairless arm. “Muscles are firm, but not overly hard,
indicating fitness but not excessive muscle strength.”

“Damn, a dental plan and a gym membership!”
Nuke exclaimed. “They are advanced!”

“Are you getting this?” Xeno demanded of
Nuke with a trace of irritation. “The skin is quite tough,” she continued,
pressing the probe against it. “No hair. Body shape is uniformly streamlined,
but fingers are not webbed.”

“Your assessment?” Beckman asked, anxious
to move on.

“It’s highly advanced with some interesting
adaptations. The brain development alone could be way ahead of us. Possibly
millions of years, even with those teeth. We’re physically stronger, but no
contest who’s got the IQ points.”

“How does it compare to a Zeta?” Markus
asked.

Xeno stared thoughtfully at the alien’s
elongated head. “Brain to body mass ratio might be comparable, unless that
skull extension has brain mass.”

“Finished?” Beckman asked.

She nodded, then her eyes widened with
realization. “Of course! Dolphins! That’s why it has no ears! It doesn’t need
them!” She pointed to the alien’s bulging forehead. “Major, that dome could be
biological sonar. It wouldn’t need much stereoscopic vision, if it can hunt
with sonar!”

“Which means?” Beckman asked.

“It’s a super predator!”

“That makes me feel so much better,”
Beckman said, casting a wary look at the diminutive, partially charred corpse. He
had no doubts, if they were hostile, there’d be no chance of resisting. “All
done?”

“Yes sir,” she said, retrieving the camera
from Nuke and slipping it into her pack.

“Step back.”

Beckman rolled the corpse sideways with his
boot and fired a series of carefully aimed shots in a line through the
creature’s skull. Fragments of bone and a dark viscous liquid splashed onto the
deck from the wounds and pooled beneath its head, then he drove his knife into
the bullet holes and levered the skull apart. There was a wrenching sound as
the rear of its head cracked open.

Beckman wiped his knife clean on the
creature’s chest then turned to Xeno. “Well?”

She swallowed, then shone her flashlight
into its elongated skull. “There appears to be brain tissue all the way back.”

“Right,” Beckman’s jaw hardened. “Meet the
new top of the food chain, people.”

“We are so screwed,” Nuke said.

Tucker gave Nuke a fierce look. “Anything
living can be killed!”

Virus joined them, feeling his strength
returning. Deep within his tortured mind, he remembered what the amphibians
called themselves, but it was unpronounceable. Another word appeared in his
mind, a word used by too many languages to count.

“They’re called . . . Intruders.” Virus
winced as he fought to clarify his thoughts. “It’s not what they call
themselves. It’s what others call them. Other civilizations.”

“Why?” Beckman asked.

Virus stared at the charred corpse, the
mere sight of which triggered deeply implanted attitudes. He felt disturbed to
see the amphibian was dead. Even mistreating its corpse seemed wrong. It was an
instinctive, automatic response forced into his mind as part of his obedience
training. Even though he’d been unable to absorb the technical information
forced into his brain, he remembered them with a hint of devotion. “They go . .
. where they’re not wanted.”

Beckman watched the mutilated corpse leak
blood onto the deck with growing trepidation. “I never did like uninvited
guests,” he said.  “Let’s go.”

* * * *

Vamp held onto a
twisted bulkhead and leant out into a hull breach that stretched for more than
a kilometer and cut vertically through over a hundred decks. High above, the
sky was a mere pinpoint of light while the ten decks below were a well of
darkness. The sound of water swirling against ragged metal drifted up to them,
but this time there were no shrieks from starving myrnods. Jagged metal
protruded from every level, yet not a single maintenance drone was visible. The
only sign of life was a tiny finch several levels above. It fluttered across
the shaft and landed on a jagged strip of metal, where it commenced preening
its feathers.

She pulled herself back in to where Timer
and Dr McInness waited. “Whatever hit this thing cut through it like butter.” 

They’d worked their way up from the
shattered levels below.  The vast cargo decks with passageways as wide as six
lane highways had been left behind. Now they moved through smaller more
specialized compartments, sometimes triggering proximity sensors that caused
archways to appear in walls revealing more nano production facilities,
dormitory style sleeping quarters, medical facilities, locker rooms full of
diminutive space suits, and a vast array of laboratories and equipment rooms
whose purposes they could only guess at. Occasionally, they spotted repair
drones futilely cutting damaged bulkheads, but they encountered no more crewmen
or starving myrnods.

They headed towards a partially closed
blast door framed by soft yellow-orange light. A tangle of wrecked machinery
lay on the deck in front of the door and a thick metal arm reached from the
wreckage to the blast door. At the end of the arm, powerful metal fingers had
clamped so tightly, they’d left impressions in the door’s surface. Pinned
beneath the machinery was a squat, four-legged robot with a torso heavily
dented from being struck multiple times during decompression.

“The power must have failed as the door was
closing,” Dr McInness said as he stepped forward, eager to take a closer look
at the machine.

Timer held up his arm, barring the
scientist’s way. “You don’t want to mess with that, Doc.”

“It’s clearly deactivated.”

Vamp glanced at the battered robot and shrugged.
Timer lowered his arm, allowing Dr McInness to approach for a closer look. The
robot’s lower half was seared black and two of its legs were partially melted
from the intense heat source that had cut through the deck a short distance
away.

“It’s some kind of cargo handler, judging
by the size of those arms,” Dr McInness said. “I guess it was trying not to be
sucked out.”

“I’d be hanging on too,” Timer said.

“Exactly!” Dr McInness exclaimed as he studied
the robot. “Even their lowliest cargo machines have enough intelligence, enough
awareness, to try to save themselves. That’s not programming, it’s self
preservation.”

Suddenly, the cargo handler’s left arm
rotated around its spherical elbow joint and clamped onto Dr McInness’ ankle. The
scientist groaned and fell to the deck as his bones snapped like twigs.

Timer jumped back startled, while Vamp
stepped past Dr McInness, switched her M16 to full auto and aimed at the
spherical elbow joint.

“No! No!” the scientist wheezed in agony.
“Ricochets!”

She hesitated, then turned to Timer. “Hit
the elbow with your special.” She glanced down at Dr McInness. “Ok?”