The Mothership (51 page)

“Virus!” Vamp yelled, knowing the seekers
were about to charge though the archway.

He swallowed and plunged his hand into the
console and touched the symbol. A red and black multilayered grid appeared.
Most of the symbols were meaningless, except for an hour glass shaped swirl.
Command
functions!
He touched it, exploding the grid into another matrix. More incomprehensible
symbols appeared, then one he recognized.
Security!
He stabbed at it.
Sweat beaded on his face as a new grid of indecipherable pictograms flashed
into existence. He had a mental picture of the symbol he sought, but it wasn’t
displayed. Another symbol caught his eye. Not what he was looking for, but he
realized it would do. He touched the glyph with his finger, then the control
room door snapped shut, as did hundreds of other security doors guarding
command level interfaces throughout the ship.

From within the tortured recesses of his
mind, Virus realized the security level of this console made it difficult to
override. An eminent caste officer could have done it, but only after she’d
passed a DNA authentication scan. Even the Command Nexus could not override a
security command from that location, the inner sanctum of the ship’s rigid
hierarchy.

Virus pulled his hand from the console and
stepped back with relief, glad to put distance between it and himself. “We’re
safe. For now,”

“You cut that close,” Timer said, turning
toward him.

A blue bolt flashed across the room,
striking Timer square in the chest. It blasted through his Kevlar body armor
like paper, vaporizing his chest and melting the wall behind him. Timer
blinked, then crumpled, dead before he hit the floor.

Virus dived sideways, rolling as he brought
his gun around.

Vamp turned toward where the shot came
from. There couldn’t be another entrance, as every wall space was occupied by
view screens and consoles. She realized the shot had been fired from inside the
control room. “Stealther!” she yelled as a faint distortion to the right caught
her eye.

She switched to full auto and raked the
room with tracer, blasting consoles and screens across half the control room.
Virus saw her bullets spark against an invisible shield, and focused his fire
on the same target. When Vamp’s magazine emptied, she dropped her M16 and
pulled her Tom Thumb from its holster and started blasting super heated plasma
at it. Electric blue lines of force crackled around an egg-shaped photon field,
then it collapsed, revealing an alien in a dark suit, holding a bent,
baton-shaped weapon.

Nemza’ri knew
they could see her, but she was safe while her personal shield held. It gave
her a huge advantage, but she had to kill the hot bloods quickly and get to the
flight deck where her equipment would be waiting. The wall screens told her the
nano fabricators would have the interplanetary vehicle ready in less than
twenty minutes, while the habitat that would be erected at the bottom of the
Mariana’s Trench would be finished twelve minutes later.

 In her mind, she ‘saw’ her weapon’s
recharge indicator climb rapidly as it powered up for another shot. The
indicator was linked to her combat implants via her nervous system, making it
as much a part of her body as her hand.

The alien aimed
the baton at Vamp, but before she could fire, Bandaka threw his boomerang at
her. Its rhythmic beating of the air distracted the alien, who turned toward
it.

Virus, realizing their weapons were
useless, jumped to his feet and charged. The boomerang hit the alien’s shield
and fell harmlessly to the floor, then Virus threw his body against it. His
Kevlar body armor struck the shield as if he’d hit steel plate, but he kept
pushing and found that he slowly sank into it. His body tingled as he pushed
through the shield and caught the alien’s wrist with one hand.

Nemza’ri tried
to twist free, but the hot blood clung desperately to her. Its strength was
surprising, even if its attack was absurdly physical. By nature, her kind were
predators, but they had long ceased to practice primitive forms of combat based
on biological strength. With a shock, she realized her body, weakened by the
sterilization antidote, might actually be overpowered by this semi intelligent
animal now wrestling with her through the shield.

Virus sensed the
alien’s movements were strangely awkward, as if it didn’t know how to break his
grip. With a spark of hope, he realized the alien was not used to hand-to-hand
combat. He pushed its weapon hand away as he got his other hand to its throat
and squeezed, finding that while the suit looked like material, it had the
strength of steel.

She flashed a
cry for help through her cerebral implants to the Command Nexus. The response
was immediate. Every armed unit outside the Nexus Chamber instantly abandoned
its current mission, and raced towards the control room. She twisted her weapon
hand, trying to free it, to angle the weapon at the hot blood’s chest, but it
threw its greater weight against her, forcing her back.

Virus planted one
foot on the deck, slid his other foot behind its ankle, and knocked its legs
away. The alien tripped, falling against the console, triggering its proximity
sensor. He hesitated as a subliminal whisper instructed him to release the
exalted being before him. One of its shoulders sank slowly into the panel as
Virus glanced at Timer’s body, using the sight of his friend’s corpse to fight
his uncertainty. With renewed determination, he slid his hand toward her face,
determined to push her head into the console.

Nemza’ri felt
the command interface connect with the neurons in her shoulder. None of her
implants were configured to communicate with the interface through that part of
her nervous system. Desperately, she tried to reprogram her control implants
while she wrestled with the angry hot blood. Its hand passed over her mouth.
She curled her lips back and bit its hand, tasting blood. It was salty, and
sour, but not unpalatable. It stimulated an ancient survival instinct that
pumped a hormone many times more powerful than adrenalin through her system.
The primitiveness of it surprised her, but she felt her strength surge!

Virus felt pain
explode through his hand as razor sharp teeth sliced through his palm. He
ignored the pain, fighting desperately, telling himself they were dead if the
alien got free. He’d thought for a moment he was the stronger, but not by much,
then its strength tripled in a heartbeat. His hand to hand combat training gave
him an edge, giving him moves the amphibian lacked, but its small teeth were
deadly weapons that could easily shred his soft skin. The alien began to rise
away from the console, straining to sink its teeth into his neck.

Bandaka jumped up onto the console chair
behind him and slid his spear over Virus’ shoulder, into the shield. He drove
its deadly point down toward the alien’s head, pushing his spear toward its
bulging eyes.

Nemza’ri bared
her teeth, ready to tear the hot blood’s vulnerable throat open when the crude
wooden weapon jabbed towards her eyes. Instinctively, she recoiled, incredulous
that her life could be threatened by a sharpened stick! She recoiled,
instinctively pushing her head away from the spear point. The back of her head
touched the console interface, allowing its quantum electric field to short out
the implants in her cerebellum. Vast sections of her data net vanished, and the
reprogramming of her interface implants ended abruptly.

She tried to ping the console, to shut it
down, but her sonar lobe was facing away from the consoles sonic sensor. The
spear point continued pushing toward her eyes, forcing her head back into the
console. She knew what was about to happen to her brain and the implants
embedded within it. The Command Nexus, seeing it all through her eyes, had
started to power down the console, but the shut down procedure was too slow.
They both knew there wasn’t time to save her. She had no choice but to shut
down all her implants but one.

The last implant, she used to trigger
unconsciousness, to save her mind from being overloaded by the console’s
interface.

The amphibian’s
hand relaxed, letting its weapon slide onto the deck. Virus tightened his grip
as anger and confusion raged within him. He forced its oversized head inside
the console’s swirling colors and symbols long after it had ceased resisting,
long after Bandaka had retracted his spear.

Vamp put a hand on his shoulder, and tried
to pull him off. “Virus, you’ve won.”

“It’s not dead!” His eyes were wild with
vengeance as the alien lay helpless, its eyes closed, its small mouth limp and
open.

Vamp pulled harder on his shoulder. “Virus,
it’s had enough.”

“It killed Timer!”
It’s in my head!

“Yes, and now it’s our prisoner. Or do you
want to start murdering prisoners?”

Virus hesitated as the rage consuming him
faltered.

“It might be a useful hostage,” Dr McInness
suggested. “Dead, it’s just another corpse. I think there’s enough of those in
this ship already, don’t you?”

Virus released his grip and stepped back.
The unconscious alien slid to the deck, its defense shield still shimmering
around it. He stared at it confused, then as his anger subsided, a thought
shook him to the core,
What have I done?

Dr McInness hopped toward the unconscious
alien, studying it curiously. He longed to speak with the amphibian, to examine
it, but with no instruments all he could do was stare and wonder.

“Take its weapon,” Vamp commanded. “It
might come to.”

“I was out for over a day,” Virus said.

“Yes, but it’s a lot smarter than you,” Dr
McInness explained. “No offence.”

“None taken,” Virus replied as his
obedience training whispered that the amphibian was indeed superior to him in
every way.

Bandaka slipped his spear through the
shield and angled its fire hardened point at the exposed flesh beneath the
alien’s angular chin. “Fishman be no trouble, when he wake up.”

Virus picked up the alien’s weapon and
tested its weight in his hand.

“If it so much as twitches,” Vamp said to
Bandaka, “Spear its ass.”

“Throat easier,” Bandaka said, not certain
his spear could penetrate the flexible, yet steel like clothing the alien wore.

A squeal of tortured metal sounded from the
locked security hatch. They all turned to see the door bend slowly outwards.
Timer’s special slid across the floor and clanged against the door, then it
crawled slowly up toward the door’s center. After a moment, the special began
to bend with the hatch.

“Now what?” Virus asked anxiously.

Dr McInness studied the door warily,
backing away. “It’s some kind of magnetic field.”

The metal hatch groaned again as a concave
bubble formed at its center, while outside, the Command Nexus gathered an army
to rescue its only hope of victory.

* * * *

The battloid
robotically followed the same orbit around the Nexus Chamber’s shiny inner
sphere, always approaching to within five meters of the walkway below the lip
of the puncture wound in the outer armored shell. Oblivious to their guardian,
small maintenance drones labored tirelessly to remove damaged supports and
install gleaming new structures with a purpose born of desperation. The
movements of battloid and drones were perfectly synchronized, ensuring neither
obstructed the other as they strove to restore the Command Nexus to full
functioning.

Slab craned his neck to get a look at the
battloid. “It doesn’t look so tough.”

Markus nodded to the borrowed M16 in Slab’s
hand. “Those weapons will be useless against it.” He was certain the untrained
civilians would be quickly massacred by the battloid, which would then turn on
Beckman’s team. It might be enough to prevent the destruction of the ship, but
if not, he would ensure their payload was never detonated.

“Then we’ll just make a lot of bloody
noise!” Slab said with a grin.

“Right before it smashes our faces in,” Wal
added pessimistically, more nervous than the others because he had no weapon.
He’d grab the first weapon to become available, if anyone went down.

“We’ll get you a couple of minutes,
General,” Bill said to Beckman. “But don’t stuff around. Whatever you’re going
to do, do it fast.”

“We will, thanks,” Beckman said, glancing
back to where the last of his team hid in the shadows, waiting to move. He’d
initially planned to take the payload in alone, but it was clear now that was
impossible. There had been no vote, no discussion, just an unspoken agreement
that they would do this together.

Nuke held the torpedo’s silver metal
housing in one hand and the stealth power pack in the other, a short black
power cable from one of the stealth rigs joining the two. He used his fingers
to grip one of the housing’s silver support struts while his thumb hovered over
the control surface. Tucker knelt beside Nuke, responsible for his protection,
while Xeno lay unconscious in the corridor beside Nuke’s empty backpack. They
would have to leave her there, as she showed no sign of recovering from the
tranquillizer.