The Mothership (50 page)

Beside Slab, the others grabbed the rope,
and began hauling it in. When Tucker reached the lip of the hull breach, many
hands wrapped around his backpack’s straps and pulled him up, taking Xeno’s
weight as soon as she was within reach. Tucker rolled onto his back, sweating
and breathing heavily. He glanced sideways at Xeno, who lay face down on the
deck, a trickle of blood seeping from the tiny puncture wound in her neck. Her
face was ghostly white but she was breathing.

Markus felt for a pulse. “She’s alive.”

Tucker sat up, flexing aching shoulder
muscles, studying the hunting rifle in Slab’s hands. “Good shot.”

Slab shrugged. “Dropping a roo doing
seventy’s harder.”

Tucker nodded appreciatively.

“Where’s the rest of the army, General?”
Bill asked.

Beckman turned toward him, running a quick
eye over the five men. “We’re it. What are you doing here?”

“Trying to find a way out,” Dan said.

“They were going to dissect us,” Wal
declared.

“But we dissected them instead,” Cracker
added with a sly grin.

Bill glanced meaningfully at the ground far
below. “Get us a chopper, and we’ll get out of your way.”

Beckman shook his head. “There are no
choppers.”

“No choppers! What kind of a rescue is
this?” Wal demanded.

“It’s no rescue. We’re here to blow this
thing.” Beckman thumbed his mike. “Doc, we’re in. Which way?”

Dr McInness voice sounded in his earpiece,
“Ahead to the first junction, then left.”

“Excuse me, General,” Bill said. “You’re
going to blow this thing up, with us inside?”

Beckman nodded as he reloaded his pistol.
“That’s the idea.”

“This is a big ship,” Cracker said
doubtfully. “It’s going to take more than a few kilos of C4.”

“I know. You need to be five clicks from
here when it goes up.”

The four hunters exchanged stunned looks,
then Bill said incredulously, “You’ve got a nuke?”

“Something like that.”

“Holy crap,” Slab said slowly. “How long
have we got?”

“Thirty minutes. No promises.”

“Five kilometers from here?” Wal looked out
at the ridge far below, scratching his head. “Anyone got a parachute?”

“If there are no choppers, how are you
blokes getting out of here?” Bill asked.

Beckman turned to Tucker, ignoring the
question, and motioned to Xeno. “Can you carry her?”

Tucker nodded, then climbed to his feet,
rubbing his shoulder.

“Hey,” Slab snapped. “He asked you a
question.”

Beckman turned back to them. “We’re not
getting out. OK?”

It took them a moment to realize what he
meant, then Slab said, “Well that bloody sucks. What frigging half wit thought
that plan up?”

“I did,” Beckman snapped.

“Wait a minute?” Wal said confused,
glancing at Xeno’s unconscious body. “You rescued her, so you could nuke her?”

Beckman nodded. “Nuts, ain’t it.”

Slab shook his head, turning to his mates.
“I told you blokes we should have gone to Cable Beach, not this bloody jungle!”
He sighed, then lifted Xeno off the ground, slinging her easily over his
shoulder.

Beckman gave Slab a surprised look.

“Well I’m not getting out of here in thirty
bloody minutes, am I?” Slab said.

“He’s right,” Bill said as he retrieved
Xeno’s M16 from the top of her backpack. “One in, all in.”

Beckman watched Bill warily. “You know how
to use that thing?”

Bill checked the ammo clip, sighted
expertly along the barrel, then rested the weapon casually on his shoulder. He
nodded to Slab, holding the browning rifle in his free hand, “I’m a better shot
than him.”

“Since when?” Slab demanded.

Cracker waved for a weapon, “Give me
something.”

Beckman hesitated.

“Since we can’t get out of this shitfight,”
Bill said, “We might as well have a bit of fun.”

“This isn’t a game,” Markus said.

“That’s a pity,” Slab said, “Because we
play hard.”

Beckman saw the casual determination in
their eyes, then turned to his team. “We’ll use the specials, give them the
guns.”

They quickly passed M16s and pistols over
to the four hunters and Dan, then Beckman pointed to Nuke. “No matter what
happens, he lives. He’s carrying the package. Protect him at any cost.”

Nuke casually saluted the civilians.

“Right, he’s got the ball,” Slab said,
nodding at Nuke.

“Now what, General?” Bill asked.

Beckman drew his midget special. “We go
kick some ass.”

“You mean arse, mate. Arse.” Cracker said
emphatically. “That’s what we call it down here.”

Beckman allowed himself the barest hint of
a smile. “Works for me,” he said, then started down the blast tunnel toward the
Command Nexus.

* * * *

Laura stumbled
between skinny, white limbed trees clustered beneath an eroded sandstone cliff.
The trees provided cover from the air, but made finding a way to the summit
frustratingly difficult. It had been over an hour since she’d last heard
gunfire, although several times she’d seen a distant black dot traversing the
sky. From the way the striker quartered back and forth, she knew it was
searching, but for who? She wiped sweat from her face as she halted to sip from
her water bottle. It was less than a third full and would be empty long before
sunset.

An old survival mantra kept repeating
involuntarily in her mind:
Three minutes without air, three hours without
water, three days without food
. It was the outback’s recipe of death.

She was rationing her water, but the heat
and her physical efforts were bleeding water from her system at an appalling
rate. Dehydration was the greatest enemy in this land, far worse than all the
deadly creatures combined, although now she wondered with the black dot in the
sky, if something more lethal had arrived.

She screwed the cap tight on her water
bottle then checked that Timer’s remote control was still in her pocket. She
had an irrational fear that somehow she would lose it, just before she reached
the summit. No one had shown her how to use it, but it was a simple enough
device, with ‘arm’ and ‘fire’ buttons and a telescoping antennae. She looked
up, preparing to move forward again and was surprised to discover little
Mapuruma standing a short distance away, close to the cliff face. Mapuruma
raised a finger to her lips, indicating silence, then pointed at the trees.
Laura glanced anxiously back at the woods, but saw nothing.

Mapuruma waved urgently for her to follow.
Trusting the little girl’s instincts ahead of her own, she hurried towards her.
When Laura drew near, Mapuruma darted toward a fallen boulder at the foot of
the cliff face. Laura followed, uncomfortably aware of the click of her boots
on the rock compared to the soft patter of Mapuruma’s bare feet. Once past the
boulder, the little girl crawled under a low overhang, with barely a meter
separating the rock ceiling from the rough stone floor. Laura dropped to her
hands and knees and scrambled after her, trying not to think of the poisonous
creatures that made such shadowy recesses their homes.

Almost immediately the rock became cool
under her hands and the air lost its stifling heat. When they reached the rear
of the overhang, Mapuruma sat with her back to the rock wall, pulled her knees
up under her chin, and stared at the horizontal slit of light between the
overhang and rock floor. She made no attempt to speak, or even look at Laura.
If not for the whites of her eyes, her jet black skin would have made her
invisible in the darkness. Laura hunched up in the confined space beside
Mapuruma and followed the little girl’s gaze. For several minutes, they saw
nothing but the sun bleached boulders outside and the forest beyond. The only
sounds that reached them were the interminable hum of insects and the
occasional call of distant birds. Laura burned to ask Mapuruma what had spooked
her, but the intensity of the little girl’s stare told her this was not the
time to speak.

Suddenly, Mapuruma tensed.

Laura sensed the fear in the little girl,
but could neither see nor hear its cause until the chatter of metallic
footsteps on rock penetrated the darkness. Laura swallowed as the sound of her
beating heart drummed in her ears. The clatter of footsteps grew louder, then a
blur of silver metal swept past, just beyond the white boulders outside, and
was gone. Mapuruma continued sitting quietly, staring towards the edge of the
overhang, listening intently. It was what a wild animal would have done,
stalked by a dangerous predator. Laura forced herself to copy Mapuruma’s silent
intensity, determined not to speak until the little girl said she could.

After an eternity, Mapuruma whispered.
“It’s gone.”

“Where are the others?”

“Watching. They sent me away to hide.”

“Is Hooper still alive?”

“Not for long. He don’t know how to hide.”

Neither do I,
Laura thought, certain if not for Mapuruma, she would
now be dead.

“Liyakindirr with him,” the little girl
added sadly as she put her chin on her knees. “If he stay, he die too.”

“Will he stay?”

“He no leave soldier alone.”

She sensed Mapuruma’s resignation that all
she loved was being swept away, but Laura knew she couldn’t stay cowering in
the cave. “Do you know how to get to the top of the ridge?”

“Yeah,” Mapuruma nodded toward deep shadows
off to the right, where a crevice carved through the rock by millions of years
of wet season deluges lay hidden. It was a path Laura would never have found
alone.

“Can you show me?”

Mapuruma released her knees and started
crawling quietly along the back of the overhang into a deeper darkness. She
glanced back at Laura. “Lili,” she said in Yolngu, ‘
this way’
.

Laura glanced back through the slit of
light, reassuring herself that the seeker had gone, then she crept after
Mapuruma into the shadows.

The sizzle of
metal boiling under the touch of cutting torches grew louder as Beckman’s team
approached the ship’s nerve center. Occasionally, a clang of metal sounded as
they crept through the darkened cave of destruction left by the passing of an
artificial nova. They passed the turn off towards where the surviving male
amphibians clung to life, then climbed through a tunnel of melted metal and
torn decks, reassured that here at least, internal sensors had been destroyed.

“Lucky this tunnel is heading the same way
we are,” Nuke muttered.

“It’s not luck,” Beckman said. “They were
shooting at the same thing we’re after.”

“Too bad they missed,” Tucker said.

After they’d climbed through three wrecked
decks, the tunnel ended in a curved black metal wall, with a ragged,
fifty-meter-wide hole in its center where a nova weapon had smashed through the
chamber’s outer armor. Parts of the damaged outer shell had been removed,
creating an enormous opening which revealed a brightly lit spherical chamber
within. Maintenance drones flew through the opening, carrying twisted metal
away to a factory deck for disassembly, or returning with newly fabricated
structures.

When Beckman neared the light, he motioned
for a halt while they studied the Nexus Chamber through the opening in the
outer sphere. The chamber was several hundred meters across, with an inner
black sphere at its center, supported by dozens of polished black pylons, each
indented with walkways and handholds for access in both positive and zero
gravity. The pylons nearest the puncture wound had melted into a variety of
contorted shapes, while more distant pylons above and below the central sphere
were undamaged, indicating a short distance had been enough to protect them
from the primordial heat and radiation effects that had wrought so much
destruction to the rest of the ship. Narrow walkways ran around the interior
wall of the chamber, parallel to the decks outside and showing increasing signs
of damage the closer they came to the outer sphere’s puncture wound. Already,
some of the damaged inner walkways had been replaced, and repairs on a few
pylons looked to be well under way.

It took a direct hit, and survived!
Beckman realized.

Normally, a defense field far more powerful
than the ship’s external shield enveloped the central sphere. Even though the
field had absorbed most of the impact, it had been unable to fully protect the
inner sphere, or prevent billions of logic patterns being disrupted by the nova
weapon’s gamma rays. Glittering electric blue light shone through openings in
the inner sphere, where a damaged maintenance door and several melted armor
plates had been removed. The radiance illuminated a swarm of maintenance drones
in the chamber, rapidly repairing pylons and polishing surfaces so the defense
field could be reactivated and the severed data links restored. Once the inner
sphere was fully functional, then repairs to the other sphere could be
completed, and the Command Nexus could be safely resealed inside its near
impregnable vault.

Beckman nodded toward the inner sphere. “That’s
where we’ll detonate.”

Markus furrowed his brow. Going into the
open with so many repair drones in sight was madness, another indicator that
Beckman’s judgment was fatally flawed. “You’ll have every robot in the ship
after you, as soon as you show yourself.”

“Only way to be sure. That armor took a
direct hit, and it’s still there.”

“But the doors are open now.”

“They might close faster than we can
destroy it. Or there could be an energy shield down there,” Beckman said. “I’ve
only got one shot, and I’m not going to waste it.”

Before Markus could answer, a heavily
armored battloid emerged from behind the central sphere. They all froze in the
shadows as the deadly machine glided slowly around the sphere’s mid section,
passing through the swarm of maintenance drones like a black shark through
goldfish. It glided beneath several repair drones laboring to remove a melted
armored door from the inner sphere, deviating from its patrol route just enough
to avoid a collision, then once past, the battloid slid back onto its patrol
route. They watched as it completed its circuit, passing behind the inner
sphere only to reappear on the same path as before.

When it passed out of sight a second time,
Beckman said, “There’s only one.”

“One’s enough!” Nuke said.

“As soon as you set foot out there,” Markus
said, “Those little worker bees will call for mama.”

“I know,” Beckman said, measuring the
distance across the nearest pylon walkway to the inner sphere. The battloid
would be on them before they were halfway across.

* * * *

Dr McInness’ eyes
were transfixed by an impenetrable spherical blackness floating amidst a
swirling disk of brilliant light. The blackness was an utterly featureless
expanse masking a stellar beast more than two and half million times more
massive than Earth’s sun. The super massive black hole was ringed by an
accretion disk of hot glowing gas, torn from hundreds of dying stars, and
sprinkled with the debris of countless shattered worlds, now ripped apart by
immense tidal forces. Spiraling inexorably towards the disk were more than a
dozen stars, tiny glowing spheres that had lost all hope of escaping the
graveyard of the galaxy. Slivers of hot gas snaked from the doomed stars down
into the whirlpool of light, warning that the star’s own gravity was being
overpowered by the colossus beneath them. Gone were the worlds that had once
circled these condemned stars, long since wrenched from their orbits by the
cosmic reaper’s super gravity. Closer to the event horizon of the super massive
black hole, differential gravity forces had destroyed all solids, reducing
matter to its constituent atoms, while frictional heating raised the
temperature to extreme degrees.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Vamp said
in a low voice from beside the entry. She had one ear aimed toward the passage
outside, listening to the click of approaching metallic footsteps.

“Not now,” Dr McInness replied from a
trance like state as he rotated his hand slowly, fast forwarding the recorded
imagery. The probe’s perspective dived past the doomed stars into the blinding
glare of the accretion disk, forcing them to shield their eyes, then the probe
passed into an impenetrable, featureless blackness. “We’re inside the event
horizon!”

“Incoming,” Vamp declared urgently as the
metallic clicks grew louder.

“Do you know what this means?” he asked,
eyes riveted ahead.

Timer looked around at the featureless
blackness on all sides. “A power failure?”

“They’ve explored the super massive black
hole at the center of our galaxy! How could they overcome the gravity, the time
dilation? How did they get a signal back? It’s impossible! But they’ve done
it!”

Vamp stepped toward the scientist. “Save
it, Doc, we’re out of here.”

“Just a few more minutes!” The blackness
melted into a yet deeper blackness that funneled away to a distant grayness.
“My god! It’s an Einstein-Rosen Bridge!”

“I don’t care if it’s the Brooklyn Bridge,
we’re leaving!” She lifted him out of the chair, breaking his link to the log
system. The view surfaces dissolved into featureless gray.

Dr McInness tried to resist her grip. “You
don’t understand. That was a bridge to another universe. We have to see where
it leads!”

She dragged him up onto her shoulder.
“Virus, we need a way out of here.”

Virus jumped into the chair, pulled the
schematic up and drilled in to their location. “There’s a gravity lift on this
level, fifty meters away.”

“Let’s go!” She said, starting for the
opposite exit.

Bandaka darted through the narrow archway,
searching for any sign of movement ahead. Vamp followed with Dr McInness slung
over her shoulder, still protesting. When the seekers reached the access
corridor on the far side of the log room, Virus rolled a hand grenade toward
the control chair, then he and Timer raced after the others. The grenade
exploded as the seekers entered, knocking them off their feet, buying a few
seconds.

Bandaka jogged past an alcove he didn’t
recognize, searching for an elevator.

“Bandi, back here,” Virus called as Vamp
and Dr McInness stepped onto the gravity plate and vanished.

Bandaka came back, giving the alcove a wary
look. Timer pushed the hunter onto the gravity plate as two weaponized seekers
appeared at the log room exit carrying shields and cannons. He spotted other
armed seekers entering the log room behind them, then fired his special,
forcing them to raise shields. Virus and Timer jumped onto the elevator
together as the seekers returned fired. In an instant, they found themselves in
a long rectangular hall lined with alcoves. It was the meeting point of dozens
of grav lifts from all over the ship. Bandaka and Vamp ran through a large
archway at the end of the hall, the only exit from the transport hub.

“Wait!” Virus called, motioning to the
other gravity lifts, but it was too late. They’d already vanished through the
arch.

Timer and Virus hurried after them into a
large circular room. Every wall was lined with view screens and control
consoles while in the center were two command consoles placed side by side.
Wide bodied chairs stood vacant before each console, indicating that when in
use, the control room was manned by more than twenty officers. Two view screens
on the left side were active. One displayed a sleek triangular vehicle capable
of interplanetary flight, the other a smooth walled octagonal structure with
vertical slit windows that could withstand the pressure of thousands of
atmospheres. Both images were surrounded by fluidic characters that detailed
the technical specifications of each. No one wondered why the screens and their
terminals were active, or noticed a slight blurring movement pass in front of
them.

Vamp turned slowly looking for an exit.
“Anyone see a way out?”

“You mean, apart from the dozen elevators
out there?” Timer asked, glancing back through the archway. A body armor clad
seeker appeared in the elevator alcove. “Which, now we can’t use!”

Timer fired his special while Virus opened
up with controlled bursts from his M16. They struck the seeker’s two small
shields harmlessly, then Virus lowered his aim, shattering its knee joint. The
seeker’s leg locked at an awkward angle as it staggered out of the alcove and
fired. A blue bolt shot toward them, shaving Timer’s Kevlar helmet, dissolving
one side of it like butter. He dived backwards, ripping his helmet off, staring
wide-eyed at the tear along its side, and feeling the singed hair on the side
of his head.

“Close the door!” Vamp yelled, lowering Dr
McInness onto his good foot.

Virus stepped out of the line of sight of
the approaching seeker, searching for a way to close the door, straining to
recall an implanted memory that might help. There were no wall controls, he was
certain of that. Through the fog of implanted memories, a muddled thought
drifted through his mind. It told him they used low frequency sound waves to
communicate with the ship, and that it meant there were no door controls.

Another implanted thought surfaced in his
splintering mind:
Access is a command function
. It was a simple rule,
something even lessers could be trained to understand.

Virus approached the command consoles in
the center while Timer fired short bursts through the archway from behind
cover. He remembered that the aliens were hierarchical, much more socially
stratified than man. Some were born to command, others to obey and hunt. The
memory seemed important as he studied the consoles. They were made of the same
glassy black surfaces he’d seen in the beetle. The mere sight of them made him
nauseous and started his head pounding anew, but he forced himself to focus. He
passed his hand over the nearest console, then watched as a series of swirling
interconnected hoops formed. The symbols were vaguely familiar, yet their
meanings remained elusive.

Behind him, the crippled seeker hobbled
sideways as Timer raked its legs again, and Vamp knelt and fired through the
doorway. A second seeker appeared in the alcove, then darted across the hall
before they could target it, a sure sign they were sharing tactical
information. The two seekers moved to opposite sides and approached outside
their line of fire as a third appeared in a different alcove with shields
raised directly toward them, ready to deflect their gunfire.

“They’re networked!” Vamp said.

Timer stuck his weapon into the doorway and
fired. “I noticed,”

“Virus, if you’re going to do something,”
Vamp called, “Now would be good!”

“I’m trying,” Virus said as he gave up on
the first panel. Whatever he was looking for, it wasn’t there. He activated the
second command console and watched as a series of diamond shapes rotated around
each other, glowing white and yellow. Suddenly one of the symbols caught his
eye.

Command matrix?
The thought appeared in his head, even as he realized
he didn’t really know what a command matrix was. Fear washed over him as he
knew the time had come to put his hand into the console. He moved his hand towards
the console, then hesitated as three more seekers appeared in different
alcoves. They sped across the hall to join up, forming a wall of shields.