Authors: Steve Wheeler
Harry came back on the comms. ‘Not sure what that was all about. Seemed rather pointless. We have conversations occurring between
Rick
and the three Orbitals. Only one is prepared to surrender. The ground facilities have also joined in the conversations. The pacifist segments are evacuating into the surrounding jungles. Those who want to fight are moving into defence-hardened positions, not that that would make the least bit of difference to
Rick
and his firepower. If all else fails, he will just fuse the earth for kilometres around and hundreds of metres deep. Hell, if he really wanted to, he could probably punch a hole, kilometres deep, that would stay molten for months.’
In the cockpit with Marko, the upper camera segments of Jim had plugged themselves in, while the lower power systems and antigravity generators were stored in one of the small cargo bays on
Sledgehammer’s
side. Glint poked his head around the corner with the cheerful little face of Spike also looking at Marko.
Glint laughed. ‘We have a stowaway, Marko.’
Marko laughed too, and stretched out his hand, onto which Spike hopped then scuttled up his arm to perch on his shoulder.
‘Could not resist the opportunity of some excitement, eh, Spike?’
‘No, Marko, I could not. I helped wire Jim in and then I had nothing else to do so decided to stay. I hope you do not mind?’
‘Not at all. But what about when we are away from Patrick? Won’t your sentience suffer?’
‘Glint and Patrick and I talked about that,’ Spike replied. ‘Patrick transferred packets of myself over to the computer here on
Sledgehammer,
plus Glint and I loaded additional hardware into Jim, and he does not mind either. The computers that he had as part of his systems were removed and replaced by Fritz with much better ones, so the Games Board cannot control him either. We work well as a team, don’t we?’
Marko felt a great love for his created friends. ‘Yes. Yes, you guys do. I am proud of each of you.’
Glint spoke with regret. ‘I am sorry about Tux, Marko.’
Marko felt a sadness. ‘Yeah, me too, it is an extremely good suit but will remain sub-AI, I’m afraid. Stephine and Veg don’t know why he failed and no one can find a fix.’
Marko brought up the feeds of the surrounding planetary systems. The cloud-covered moon below them orbited inside a spectacular, heavily banded ring system around a deep orange-coloured gas giant, which featured dozens of storms in its upper atmosphere. The other planets were also interesting, including two almost-Earth types which orbited the local sun on opposite sides.
Looking through the astronomical data, Marko could see that they were a long way from the Sphere and closer to the Blue Snowball Nebula. He thought it was little wonder, then, that it had taken
Rick
so long to get to the system, and fervently hoped that the Haulers who had brought the Infant colonists to the moon were the ones destroyed in the latest clean-outs.
He had a sudden thought. ‘Hell, Veg, if this colony is so far off the beaten track, I wonder how many others there are?’
‘Good question, Marko. Short answer, no one knows, or if they do, they are keeping quiet. Looks like we are moving closer in.’
Looking at his data feeds, Marko could see the segment of
Rick
that they were still attached to was descending to a lower orbit, as the other segment moved to cover them. Looking across at the covering segment, he watched as enormous solar panels deployed, giving the look of a huge butterfly, or ancient sailing ship. He switched feeds to look at their segment and saw the same configuration. He also saw the huge particle-beam generators slowly coming online and as each part of the thousands of solar panels aligned themselves to the local sun, he could only imagine the enormous destructive energy they represented.
‘So this is what was hunting us?’ Marko said. ‘Poor
Basalt
would not have stood a microsecond of a chance.’
Harry growled back. ‘Shut it, Marko.’
Marko was deeply intrigued by Harry’s reaction, but only said, ‘Yeah, sorry, Harry, just commenting.’
Harry growled again. ‘Keep it to yourself, OK? Everything you say is still being recorded.’
Using his crew comms, Marko sent a mental shrug to the crew on board
Blackjack.
Jasmine responded with a personal message. ‘Don’t stress, Marko. Harry is still coming to terms with the idea that his mentor and friend would kill even him when under orders.’
Marko agreed. ‘Tough call, Jasmine.’
She said with a mix of admiration and acknowledgment, ‘Yeah, they create us and they can destroy us as well.’
Marko felt startled, suddenly understanding so much about Harry. ‘So Harry was once crew on a Hauler? That I did not know. He was with Rick! That explains a chunk of things.’
Glint groaned. ‘Like I have said many times, Marko, sometimes you are not very bright.’
‘Thanks, Glint, I know I can rely on you to put me right.’ Marko said, only half joking.
Veg cut through their conversation. ‘Eyes on the job, people, tactical is coming up.’
Everyone looked at their screens as the results from Rick’s recon drones started to come online. The drones were flying below thick cloud cover, through low hills, identifying various groups, assigning identities to each, and mapping the deep sheer-sided ravines where the Avians had their colonies in the cliff tops. Above the ravines on the surrounding flatfish land, they could see the areas of human habitation surrounded by cultivated fields, with the native predominately fungal forests pushed back.
They then saw the first group of Avians with their belongings waiting at an airfield south of the human habitation.
Lilly spoke first. ‘This looks like a place ripe for so many things to go horribly wrong. The desperation of sentient beings wanting to be the authors of their own future. I wonder what is going through their minds, knowing that not that long ago they were simple birds lacking in complex thinking.’
‘I agree, Lilly: I don’t like this one little bit. And don’t forget they will know that they were created as weapons against people they have no actual knowledge of. What do you think that we should do, Stephine?’
After a long pause, a serious-sounding Stephine said, ‘Come up with some alternative plans, Veg. Remember that we are here as a punishment as far as the Administration is concerned. It is designed for us to look bad. Damn, it is happening already!’
One of the feeds showed the group of the refugee Avians being killed by missile strikes originating from the Gjomvik Corporation stations. The airbursts obliterated great numbers of them; the few survivors, after taking flight, were struck from the sky by something also coming from the Gjomvik station. A fraction of a second later the facility was hit by a giant particle-beam strike from
Rick
which vaporised the entire complex in seconds, resulting in a great explosion of superheated material. Marko thought that it would have felt like a nuke going off, although he did note that other groups of refugees, many kilometres away and within range of other stations, were left alone. He allowed himself to speed up.
‘Blackjack.
How do you think that Stephine will cope with this if it turns out to be another bloodbath?’
The ship replied. ‘An interesting thought, Marko. I think that she will be all right, strangely enough. I have wondered about her since her return. It is as if she has had a tiny amount of her essence removed. It did surprise me that she was unable to rebuild Tux to his former self, for instance. In making her more stable they have taken some part of that mercurial mix that is Stephine. Yes, she will be fine. To be blunt, Marko, we are a little concerned how you will take it, as you have become a more empathetic entity.’
Marko nodded slowly to himself, wondering the same. ‘Well, you will just have to look after me, eh.’
He slowed back down to listen to Veg. ‘Seems that an impasse of sorts has been reached. We are allowed to take those Avians who want to leave, as long as we do not take any technology Nuts! They are the technology. Then once they are away, we will negotiate a settlement with the Gjomvik Corporations. Yeah, like that is going to happen.
Rick
is sending down a special lander which will be sealed totally, then transported to a destination that no one is being told of in a long-range interstellar transporter created especially for the job.’ He paused for a second before continuing. ‘Seems that there are not that many of them who want to go anyway, so we are to escort the one lander that
Rick
is sending. OK, you know the protocols. The bird creatures themselves are the only things carrying the viruses and toxins, so as long as you don’t come in actual contact with them you will be fine. I know that we have had plenty of boosters to our biomed units, but be safe anyway. I am uploading what we now know about the life forms on the planet itself in case any of us gets clipped.’
~ * ~
Two
Basalt
dropped away from
Rick
as a lander of almost the same size as the frigate moved ahead of them. The bay that held
Blackjack
and the Games Board lander sealed itself, and moments later the hull doors opened as both craft were moved into drop position on their platforms. Minutes later they lifted above the retracting platforms, with Stephine flying
Blackjack
until it took up a position above the large lander. Marko looked over his shoulder to see two Skuas piloted by Minh Pham and Julie still docked onto the side of
Basalt
with the salvage craft, squatting like a giant insect, also hard docked, clinging onto
Basalt’s
upper portion. They all dropped straight down towards the heavy cloud cover with each powering up their antigravity to drop into the half Earth-standard-gravity-well at a stately two hundred kilometres per hour. Once they were well into the thick atmosphere Stephine ordered the Hangers to deploy and hold station at five hundred metres apart.
Marko watched as the Hanger sensed true atmosphere and its wings folded out from the fuselage to aid lift, while the ring manoeuvring unit also expanded, creating an annular wing with the individual manoeuvring thrusters also streamlining themselves.
They could see nothing but clouds, so they switched to their imaging, which showed the rolling hills and deep ravines where the fungal trees reached a hundred metres tall, interlocked with millions of symbiotic fungal plants and the odd rare leafed plant as well. Eventually, they dropped through the cloud cover and transited into level flight with the three Hangers leading, then
Blackjack,
then the lander, with the Games Board craft off to its port side, and then
Basalt
riding shotgun over them all.
Marko, as the lead aircraft, flew over the first landing site, pulling a hard right-hand climbing turn, followed by Lilly and Jasmine, providing top cover as
Blackjack
orbited left at a lower altitude. Rick’s lander slowed, then touched down, floating just above the ground. Within a few moments the refugees, carrying their few belongings, trooped on board. The lander lifted off and every ship moved to the next pick-up point. The procedure happened a dozen more times throughout the long day, as they followed the rotation of the moon in relation to the sunlight, until every Avian who wanted to leave was accounted for and every member of
Basalt
was bored with the repetition. They finally started the climb up into the atmosphere, with Marko coming in for his fifth refuelling dock with
Basalt.
‘Might as well stay where you are, Marko. All small craft, dock please. We are going straight up to RV with the refugee carrier.’
Marko saw his tanks being rapidly refilled as he reached across to open the last of his drinks and grab a bite of a fruit bar.
Just then, Harry yelled a warning. ‘Missile launch. Target is the lander!’
Marko felt
Sledgehammer
being dropped away from
Basalt
so he fed full power to the thrusters, dropping his drink and the fruit bar as he flipped the fighter onto its back and dived towards where his screen told him the missile was coming from.
‘Glint! You have the belly gun, I will look after the rest.’
The little voice of Spike asked. ‘Can I control our micromissiles, please, Marko?’
‘Help yourself, Spike!’
They flashed down into the top of the clouds with the belly guns starting to fire as the missile, which was longer than
Sledgehammer,
thundered past them only tens of metres away. Marko, in a sped-up state, trained the linear accelerators onto it, punching holes into the missile’s side as micro-missiles chewed up its rocket engines. It started to falter and Marko carried on accelerating down in order to gain distance before it blew up. Seconds later there was a huge orange flash in the thick cloud above them and chunks of the missile whistled towards them, then there were two additional explosions as missiles launched from
Basalt
also hit the falling wreckage. Marko carried on accelerating, going supersonic as they roared out through the cloud base looking for the missile’s launch point. The computer on board located it seconds later; another missile was being folded out on a launch gantry from a ravine wall that lay below them.
Marko pulled
Sledgehammer
onto the target and fired the wing-mounted accelerators directly into the missile, as Glint also started firing into the propellant tanks of the missile, producing an explosion which blew the gantry off its mounts. He then rolled
Sledgehammer
over to expose the belly guns so that as they flew past Glint could fire into the cavernous installation through its open, camouflaged doors. Small, short-range anti-aircraft missiles were launched from hidden positions to chase them, but Spike responded with more of their own knocking them down, while Harry yelled over the comms, ‘Get your arse out of there, Marko. Now!’