The Mothership (55 page)

To Hooper, it had been no more than a vague
gesture.

The second camouflaged figure floated over
the destroyed seeker, studying it with its sensor arm. The third drifted a
short distance toward the west, aiming its device arm in the direction of the
mothership, gathering ground based intel on the progress of the bombardment.
Hooper noticed how they turned toward each other, as if they were talking. It
was not a machine like movement, but communication between living beings in
personal contact.

They’re wearing helmets!
He realized. Oversized by human standards,
but definitely helmets. None of the machines he’d encountered had needed
helmets, just sensor disks.

From the left shoulder of the humanoid
floating in front of Hooper, a blue cone of light enveloped the sergeant.
Hooper felt a cold shock drive away the haziness which had been weighing him
down, then his pain vanished. The agony of his burned right side, the sharp
tearing of his broken left arm, the draining weight of tropical infection, all
vanished in an instant.

The leader moved to the west, then turned
toward his two companions, summoning them. They were on a strict timetable and
had to be in position when the bombardment ended. The two floated toward the
leader, then all three sped off through the trees toward the mothership. The
white of their suits vanished, taking on the color and texture of their
surrounds. It was not invisibility, but camouflage so sophisticated, they could
barely be seen, even when moving. Hooper watched them go with the eye of a
professional soldier. He didn’t know who they were or where they came from, or
that he stood more than a million of years behind them, yet he knew with
complete certainty what they were.

Infantry!

* * * *

Flaming meteorites
rained down over the ship.

The Command Nexus quickly realized, they
were neither meteorites nor flaming, but highly focused energy sources that
ionized the atmosphere on contact. One such source expanded to a four meter
sphere as it struck the gun emplacement Beckman and his team had repelled from.
It left an empty hemisphere precisely cut into the ship’s outer hull, where
moments before a heavily armored particle cannon had stood. There was no trace
of heat, radiation or antimatter, although there was a mysterious spacetime
shockwave felt throughout the ship that triggered an alert the Command Nexus
had never before received.

It was being attacked by a technology it
could not identify, even in theory!

The attack had a precision and power far in
excess of the clumsy nova weapons that had crippled the ship, yet even the
attacker’s energy source was ominously obscure. The mothership’s sensors
briefly detected a disturbance in spacetime, suggesting a baffling phasing
anomaly which simply added to the confusion. The Command Nexus tried firing
defensive weapons, but inexplicably, no defense system would activate. When it
directed a maintenance drone to manually fire a point defense weapon, the drone
acknowledged the order, then promptly shut itself down.

The ship shuddered from multiple impacts
while combat drones patrolling the ship’s perimeter were annihilated. When a
seeker or battloid tried to evade, the incoming weapons changed course on the
way down, pursuing their targets and varying their destructive impact according
to the size and strength of their objective. The Command Nexus quickly realized
the focus of the attack was to destroy its weapons and external sensors, while
noncombat systems and maintenance drones simply ceased to obey its
instructions.

Following behind the meteor storm, twenty
silver elliptical craft streaked down toward the mothership. The Command Nexus
recognized the technology and design of these craft, and extrapolated a
conclusion. It had been disarmed by a far more advanced, unknown enemy, and now
that it was helpless, it was being attacked by its known enemies. The outcome
of such an uneven contest was immediately apparent. With no hull shield,
defensive weapons that refused to fire and no mobility, the mothership’s
surviving armaments and battle sensors were rapidly eliminated.

When the elliptical ships neared the
surface, they decelerated rapidly until they hovered over the mothership’s hull
and above the ridges surrounding the valley. Armored infantry passed through
the sides of the shining silver craft without any hatches or doors opening,
then the elliptical craft seemingly vanished as they shot skyward under hyper
acceleration.

The armored infantry on the surrounding
ridges swept down to secure the perimeter, while those floating above the ship
flew into hull ruptures with a speed that told of their urgency. Special
operations infantry, having flown overland toward the ship when the shield dome
had gone down, were already inside providing real time tactical intelligence to
the assault team. All force elements raced to their objectives, conscious of
the limited time they had to achieve their goal. They knew their great partner
was containing an antimatter explosion with a technology unknown to even the
most advanced members of the Alliance, and that such massive energies could not
be held in check for long. Once the matter annihilation wave passed the
artificial black hole’s event horizon, its destructive powers would be released
in full.

If that happened, a great opportunity would
be lost.

* * * *

Vamp and Virus
watched helplessly as their weapons twisted like soft plastic against the
collapsing door. The center of the door ballooned into the corridor beyond as
the walls and ceiling buckled, filling the control room with the wail of
rending metal. The bubble in the door peeled away and flew back several meters,
striking the magnetic field generator’s rectangular emitter with a clang, and
stuck fast.

Dr McInness sat in the command chair, his
broken ankle elevated, looking over his shoulder through the shattered hatch.
“They’ll have to turn it off for the machines to get in here.”

“Do I kill fishman now?” Bandaka asked,
pressing his spear tip against the alien’s throat.

Vamp glanced at the unconscious alien and
slowly shook her head. “No.” She was not about to murder a helpless life, even
if it had just killed Timer.

A white flash flooded through the wrecked
doorway into the control room. Many rapid flashes followed, coupled with the
beat of multiple shockwaves. The crushed metal caught by the magnetic field
generator clattered to the deck as the generator shorted out in a shower of
sparks, then a battered seeker torso, missing an arm and with both cannons
destroyed, bounced through the open doorway and skidded to halt in front of
them.

They stared, surprised, at the smoking
wreckage as the flashes and shockwaves ended. Vamp took a cautious step toward
the doorway, glimpsing dismembered seeker and battloid parts littering the deck
outside. A moment later, a squat bipedal form whose camouflaged surfaces made
it appear to melt into the metal walls, floated into view.

It glided past the magnetic field
generator, into the control room, scanning them with its sensor arm. Without
stopping, it approached the unconscious alien lying on the floor. The
amphibian’s personal defense shield still distorted the air and Bandaka
resolutely held his spear’s point to its throat. The armored warrior turned
slightly to Bandaka, aiming its device arm at him. The aboriginal hunter “listened”
briefly, then stepped back, completely at ease, yet absently wondering what had
possessed him to move.

A golden sliver of metal barely a
millimeter thick emerged from the warrior’s armored suit and floated toward the
unconscious amphibian. There was a hint of electrical distortion as the tiny
golden needle passed through her shield, then glided down toward her forehead.
It penetrated her streamlined skin, then slid effortlessly through thick bone
into her brain. There was no sign of a puncture wound, for the sliver had
simply passed between the cells of her body without touching them. It quickly
took control of her implants, ending her self-induced coma.

Nemza’ri awoke,
relaxed and unafraid. An irresistible thought appeared in her mind, which she
immediately obeyed by switching off her personal shield. She stood up with an
overwhelming sense of well being and a desire to obey any request. An eagerness
to hear the next instruction and a certainty of the immense pleasure she would
feel with every act of obedience filled her consciousness. Absently, she knew
she was under the control of a capture technology, but it made no difference.
Nothing mattered, but the intoxicating joy of obedience.

To Vamp, the alien
appeared to stand docilely before the armored warrior. Its arms hung limply by
its side and its deep blue eyes stared blankly ahead as it listened to a voice
no-one else could hear. The alien’s demeanor had changed dramatically, from
frenzied fighter to passive observer. After a moment, the alien walked out of
the control room unescorted, for no guard was needed.

“What’s going on, Doc?” Virus asked warily,
careful to make no sudden movements.

Dr McInness watched the alien walk past the
gravity field generator and head off down a corridor before replying. “Our
amphibian friend was just taken prisoner.”

“Fishface didn’t put up much of a fight,”
Vamp said, surprised at how submissive their former adversary had become.

“From the size of his suit, he’s clearly a
different species.” Dr McInness raised his hand, trying to attract the armored
warrior’s attention. “Excuse me, could you tell us what’s going on?”

The armored warrior floated along the line
of consoles until it reached where Vamp and Virus stood. When it turned toward
them, they felt compelled to step aside.

After Vamp had moved, she blinked,
regaining her self control. “What was that?”

“Hypnosis?” Virus suggested, then he
brightened in surprise. “Hey, the pounding in my head is . . . gone!”

The armored warrior continued moving along
beside the control consoles, its camouflage effect rippling with the colors of
the active screens it passed. It stopped at the fifth console and extended its
device arm.

“That’s ship status,” Virus said, peering
at the symbols. Now that the headaches had vanished, the forced memories were
now easily within reach. “My god, I can read it.” He looked from one console to
the next, eyes wide with astonishment. “I can read them all!”

The console and the wall mounted screen in
front of the armored warrior came to life with symbols and characters. They
changed so fast, they blurred into each other. Dr McInness sat up, straining to
see. He gasped when he realized the flow of information would have overwhelmed
a super computer, yet the armored warrior had no trouble absorbing everything
it was seeing, even as it fed in instructions.

“That’s how it’s supposed to work!” Dr
McInness exclaimed, shocked at how rapidly machine and alien mind could
interact.

Vamp fought to shake off her artificial
sense of well being. “Hey, space monkey,” she called, stepping assertively
toward the armored warrior. “You want to tell us what the hell is going on
here?”

The armored warrior continued what it was
doing, seemingly unaware of her existence.

Vamp rapped on the arm of the warrior’s
suit as if she was knocking on a door. It made a dull thudding sound, revealing
the extreme density of the armor. “Hey, Michelin man! I’m talking to you.”

She moved to step in front of the armored
warrior, but before she could get another word out, she fell into a deep and
peaceful sleep, floating gently to the floor.

They all did.

* * * *

The battloid
surged forward. The passage through the containment sphere was just high enough
to allow it to enter and wide enough to efficiently deploy its weapons and
shields. Tucker scooped Conan off the floor and rolled to the left wall, coming
up on one knee. He fired at the battloid’s anti-g sleds, but one of its shield
arms dropped down to absorb the blast. Tucker braced, expecting to receive
withering return fire but the battloid surged past, slamming him into the wall
with one of its shield arms. He crumpled to the deck, still holding Conan in
spite of several broken ribs.

It doesn’t want to risk hitting the crystal
sphere!
Beckman realized.

The battloid arrayed half its shields
behind it, creating a defensive wall to protect the Command Nexus from Tucker,
while it angled the rest forward. Once past Tucker, it could fire at him
without fear of hitting the Command Nexus. It swung a weapon arm up high,
targeting Tucker through a gap in the overlapping shields. Tucker fired first
from the deck, smashing the exposed weapon and catching the upper edge of one
of its shields. The battloid immediately rotated the depleted shield but
refrained from firing again, choosing to keep its remaining weapons safely
behind its shields in readiness for the final attack.

Beckman fired pencil-thin slivers of super
heated plasma from his midget, only to see them spark harmlessly against the
battloid’s reinforced shields. Nuke crawled towards the wall, trying to get out
of the battloid’s path, as he fired his Tom Thumb, but its feeble particle
stream was even less effective than Beckman’s weapon.