The Mothership (52 page)

“They’ve got it free,” Cracker whispered.

Beckman turned to see a damaged rectangular
blast door, supported by a maintenance drone at each corner, float clear of the
central black sphere. Thousands of brilliant, flickering beams of electric blue
light flooded out through the opening into the chamber. A short distance away,
the battloid glided beneath the damaged blast door on its precomputed path,
still well away from the four maintenance drones waiting with the replacement door.
The drones began to float the replacement door up toward the sphere, while the
damaged door was lowered to the deck to be cut into small pieces for nano
disassembly.

“You’re up,” Beckman said. “Good luck.”

“You don’t need luck to get killed,”
Cracker said with a grin, before darting forward. He jumped down onto the
twisted walkway and ran to the right, with his companions close behind.

They sprinted noisily along the metal
walkway to close the distance to the battloid. They had hoped it wouldn’t see
them until they were in position, but its motion and thermal detectors acquired
them the moment they stepped through the puncture wound. It immediately angled
its shields toward them and brought its weapons to bear. Every repair drone in
the chamber instantly became aware of their presence as dozens of torches
stopped cutting metal. Drones ferrying away damaged metal sheets turned toward
them while those carrying freshly formed supports immediately withdrew from the
chamber to prevent them being damaged.

“It’s seen us!” Wal yelled.

They ducked down using the walkway for
cover as the battloid fired. Five plasma streams passed over their heads,
melting the wall behind them, then the repair drones with the replacement
armored door rose up beside the walkway, momentarily blocking the battloid’s
line of fire. Behind the door, the battloid glided forward, aware of the
drone’s path and positioning itself for the perfect angle once they were out of
harm’s way.

Cracker stood, holding the dynamite in one
hand ready to throw, but the massive blast door glided obscured his view of the
battloid. There was little hope the dynamite would do more than distract the
armored machine, but if he couldn’t see it, it wouldn’t even achieve that
feeble goal.

Slab fired a burst from his borrowed M16 at
one of the maintenance drones holding the upper left corner of the blast door.
The unarmored drone sparked, lost its grip on the blast door and fell.

“It works on them!” Slab said, holding up
his M16 meaningfully.

The door’s upward movement slowed, as its
weight was now taken by only three machines. It was more a block of armor than
a door, being several meters thick, and designed to slide into place in the
central sphere like a cork in a bottle.

Bill sighted on the repair drone holding
the top right corner and fired repeatedly with Tucker’s pistol. When the drone
took a fatal hit and fell away, the armored block began to sink under the its
immense weight, overpowering the two drones balancing it from below. Other
drones, sensing the danger, immediately dived to assist.

Cracker depressed the detonator. “Get
down!”

The others looked at him confused. The
battloid was still hidden beyond the blast door.

“What are you doing?” Slab demanded.

“Improvising!”

Cracker threw the dynamite at the top of
the blast door, then they dived onto the walkway for cover. The dynamite struck
the door’s upper edge and exploded. The feeble chemical blast had no effect on
the armor, but the force pushed the door sideways, pivoting over the two lower
maintenance drones like hinges. The armored door pancaked onto the battloid’s
shields below, sinking slowly through them and driving the shield emitter arms
back. The battloid toppled over under the immense weight and was pinned to the
floor of the chamber. Slab stepped to the edge of the walkway and blasted one
of the two maintenance drones still trying to lift the blast door while Bill
destroyed the other with Tucker’s heavy caliber pistol. The base of the massive
door fell to the deck with a mighty clang, momentarily trapping the battloid
beneath it.

“Good one, mate!” Slab said approvingly.

Inside the shadows of the blast tunnel,
Beckman jumped to his feet and shouted. “Let’s go!”

He jumped out onto the walkway, ran to the
nearest support and started across the supporting pylon to the inner sphere. It
was a meter wide with no guard rails and although polished to a mirror sheen,
was not slippery. In single file, the others followed as maintenance drones
carrying damaged pieces of metal dived towards them, bombing them with their
burdens. Fragments of pylons and metal plates rained down on the narrow support
before falling to the deck below. Beckman ducked as a metal panel flew over his
head, then jumped forward, dodging a blackened cylindrical support beam which
struck where he’d been standing. Behind him, the others evaded wreckage as they
hurried across the walkway. Markus stopped to fire at a drone, turning on the
walkway as it flew past him. He finished firing facing back the way he’d come.
Nuke stood barely three meters from him. He lowered his aim quickly toward
Nuke’s throat.

Have to sever his spine
, Markus thought, so there was no
possibility of a nervous twitch to trigger the warhead.

Just as Markus fired, a drone dived past
his shoulder at Nuke. The drone took the burst squarely, flashing from
electrical systems shorting out as it spun into Nuke’s shoulder. The wrecked
machine knocked him off the walkway, but Tucker caught Nuke’s arm.

“Don’t drop me, man,” Nuke yelled, looking
wide eyed down at the chamber floor far below.

“Don’t tempt me,” Tucker said, then swung
Nuke up onto the walkway behind him.

Nuke sighed with relief. “Thanks, Tuck.”

“Markus’ shot saved you,” Tucker said as he
fired Conan, vaporizing a maintenance drone and the twisted triangular piece of
metal it carried. “Now stay out of the way.”

Markus cursed silently, when he saw Tucker
now blocked his line of sight towards Nuke, then turned and fired at another
diving bombing drone.

“Keep moving,” Beckman yelled when he saw
the others had slowed to shoot.

Once the maintenance drones had hurled what
they carried at the walkway, they dived onto the blast door pinning the
battloid and began lifting it. Slab and the others on the rim walkway raked the
drones with gunfire. Several times the blast door started to move, almost
freeing the battloid, then a drone would explode and the massive metal block
would crash back down onto the flailing battloid.

When Beckman reached the containment
sphere, he threw his back against its armored wall, balancing on the narrow
ledge encircling it. The ledge was barely wide enough for the sole of his boot,
although like the walkway, it offered good traction. He edged sideways toward
the blast door opening, firing his special at any drone that swooped toward
them.

Markus reached the sphere and began inching
after Beckman, firing sporadically. Maintenance drones equipped with cutting
torches dived on them. The brilliant white beams reached barely ten centimeters
before dissipating, but could slice through carbon steel like paper. Beckman
and Markus knocked several torch-wielding drones down, while others scooped up
metal debris from the floor and climbed to bomb them. Out on the walkway,
Tucker fired Conan at a diving drone which vanished in a flash, except for a
metal claw arm that spun past Nuke’s face.

Nuke’s skin stung from the proximity to
Conan’s blast. “Hey man, not so close with that thing!”

“Quit complaining, Lieutenant. You’re
alive, aren’t you?”

When Tucker reached the end of the walkway,
he stopped to let Nuke squeeze past. High up on the sphere, the silver blur of
a seeker at speed caught his eye. He fired, cutting it in half, then its
separated leg and cannon sections skittered down the side of the sphere, its
cannons firing wildly.

“Runners incoming!” Tucker yelled.

Beckman edged toward the flood of sparkling
blue light pouring from the sphere’s interior, throwing thousands of
scintillations across the chamber’s polished surfaces. The entry to the passage
leading to the containment sphere was several meters below the walkway. Beckman
jumped down, rolling like a paratrooper to his feet, then squinted into the
dazzling light pouring from the interior. At the end of the corridor through the
heavily armored inner shell, a spherical multifaceted surface spun slowly on
its axis. The blue light wasn’t flickering, but poured steadily from millions
of tiny diamond-like facets, which slid past the passageway as the crystalline
sphere rotated. It was the center of a vast information network, the ship’s
nerve center, its heartbeat and its guiding intelligence.

Beckman raised his special and fired a
single shot at the glittering crystal sphere. Super heated plasma flashed down
the short passage, then burst harmlessly against a defensive field providing
the Command Nexus’ inner layer of protection.

Beckman shrugged, “Hmm. Worth a try.”

Markus jumped down into the entrance, then
immediately turned to fire at a maintenance drone swooping toward him. The
machine crashed into the sphere’s outer armor, then fell in flames to the
floor. Beckman helped Nuke down into the passageway, then Nuke set the warhead
down and checked it had suffered no damage.

“We’re in,” Beckman said into his radio.

Outside the containment sphere, Tucker
fired at the nearest maintenance drone, then ran along the ledge and jumped
into the entrance. He rolled, coming to rest with his back against the wall as
an armored seeker leapt into the passageway. Markus fired, but the seeker’s shields
easily deflected his small caliber bullets. It took a step forward into the
passage, then Conan completed its recharge and fired, blowing the seeker out of
the entrance. Tucker immediately rolled sideways, avoiding a two meter square
of blackened metal hurled at him by a diving maintenance drone.

He raised Conan, preparing for the next
attack. “It’s going to get crowded in here.”

* * * *

Vamp and Virus
backed toward the control consoles lining the control room wall, fighting
against the magnetic field tearing at the metallic items they wore. Dr McInness
gripped the sides of the command chair as he watched the security door over his
shoulder, while Bandaka kept the tip of his spear pressed firmly against the
unconscious alien’s throat. The bubble in the security door ballooned outwards
slowly until it encompassed the surrounding walls, filling the control room
with the squeal of tortured metal. The combat units outside knew they could
never hope to cut through the reinforced neutronium armor encasing the command
center. Their only hope was to tear it apart at a molecular level. The door
shuddered as a hairline crack opened along its length, revealing glimpses of
silver and black movements in the hall outside.

“Ideas anyone?” Vamp asked.

Virus turned toward the control consoles,
passing his hand over one, then another, searching for anything that would buy
them some time. The screens mounted above the consoles came to life with
various technical diagrams and readouts, while one displayed a three-dimensional
map of the Solar System. Virus glanced at it, and moved on.

Dr McInness’ eyes did not. “What’s that?”
the scientist asked, pointing to a tiny speck on the system map close to the
third planet.

Virus peered into the panel, able to
interpret only a few symbols. “Navigation. It’s useless, we’re not moving.”

“Zoom in on Earth.”

Virus returned to the console, plunged a
hand in and touched the blue and white marble third from the golden sun. The
view screen above the console flash-zoomed to Earth, while the blue marble
inside the console grew to the size of a basketball.

“Down there, bottom left of Earth,” Dr
McInness said. The tiny speck had resolved into six silver dots floating beside
several pictograms.

Virus touched the silver dots floating
close to Earth, then the wall screen flash-zoomed again. Six silver cylindrical
shapes appeared, each with the rounded ends narrower than the middle section.
They floated above northern Australia in two rows of three, holding a precisely
equidistant formation.

Dr McInness fumbled for his radio, all
thumbs, as he pressed the transmit button. “Major!” He yelled. “Can you hear
me?”

Through a sea of static, Beckman’s voice
sounded. “What is it Doc? I’m kind of busy down here.”

“There are six ships in orbit! Right above
us!”

“Friend or foe?”

“I can’t tell. I haven’t seen this design
before.”

“Give me your best guess!”

Dr McInness squinted at the screen,
watching the six highly reflective ships floating serenely against black
velvet. With no point of reference, he couldn’t gauge their dimensions. They
could have been the size of soda cans, or twice as big as Manhattan Island.
Beside each ship was the same glowing symbol.

He turned to Virus. “What does that symbol
mean?”