Desolator: Book 2 (Stellar Conquest) (17 page)

“Let’s work together, then. You have tools?”

Trissk tapped the small-item pouch he always carried on his hip. “Some. I will ask that more be brought.”

Detaching his back-rack, Rick opened the largest utility bin on it and started pulling out those implements he carried. It would take some jerry-rigging, he was sure, but if they could get power to these combat cars, they would have something to add to their mobility and their firepower – and that of the Ryss.

The three humans crawled up out of the warm water onto the rocky shore, into the muggy night. As the environment was comfortable for Hippos, it was hot and barely tolerable for unadapted humans. Their skinsuits helped, the smart fabric wicking water and sweat to evaporate at a controlled rate, providing some cooling.

“Wait one,” Ezekiel said, and unclipped what looked like a gourd from his belt. “Pull down your face shields and hoods, and close your eyes. I’m going to cover you with a masking signature so the Sekoi won’t smell you.” A moment later, the strange living spray bottle discharged a mist onto all three from head to toe. They took a moment for it to dry from their masks.

“One more thing.” Ezekiel handed them what looked like rubber shoes. “Slip these on. As soon as you put pressure on them, they will flatten out to create a track that looks like a Hippo child, rather than a human.”

“Why didn’t you make some inflatable Hippo suits while you were at it?” Jill grumbled, putting the things on her feet.

Ezekiel chuckled, while Spooky ignored her and said, “All right. Internal chronometer set to zero on my mark: three, two, one, mark. GPS has acquired. IR glow stick is on.” He bent the plastic tube to mix its binary contents, creating an infrared glow invisible to normal Hippo or human eyesight – but not to the cybernetic optics of the two commandos.

Jill did not know whether Ezekiel could see IR wavelengths, but trusted Spooky to have thought of such elementary issues. Perhaps the small backpack he carried had goggles.

“All right, let’s go.” Spooky moved off slowly, picking his way up the rocky beach toward the island’s center.

Jill did the same, diverging slightly off to the right. Once she got above the tide line, she slipped into the scrubby forest and tuned her optics to maximum sensitivity. This allowed her to keep her distance from the fishing shacks and small freeholds that dotted the island. The Hippos kept large rat-like animals, called noiks, as humans kept dogs, and now and again she heard them call to each other with coughing squeals. Fortunately they relied more on noses than ears.

Because silence and stealth were her goals, she moved without haste, but still arrived at her target with plenty of time to spare. A long low building, it had no fence or wall. Being an island, Jill suspected there were few threats to the seafood harvest – at most, something that filled the niche of a fox or small cat. Afranan seabirds similar to gulls lined the edge of the roof, though, and she suspected the building was tightly sealed against their depredations.

She took out the two inflammatory bio-bombs
Steadfast Roger
had made for her. Like all Meme ships, he was a factory of nearly infinite flexibility when guided by a greater intelligence. Ezekiel had explained to her that he built the devices in the virtual reality, then simply downloaded their specifications to the ship and instructed him to gestate them.

With five minutes to her detonation mark, she glided forward out of the trees and up to the nearest door, at the back corner. Hippo-sized, of course, it loomed over her, and looked thick. Taking a ferrocrystal crowbar off her belt, she was about to pry open the door, but then stopped, remembering her training.
Always try the handle; you may get lucky
, Spooky’s voice from long ago echoed in her head.

It opened. Apparently there was no need to secure the building.
Who steals fish except animals?

Inside, a wall of stink hit her. She breathed through her mouth to cut down on the rotting smell, then looked around. Instead of the bins or refrigerators she expected, she saw a row of what appeared to be ceramic vats. They glowed in her IR vision, and she put a palm against one: hot, perhaps sixty degrees Celsius.

A sudden hissing sound startled her, and she looked up to see gas venting from a valve near the top of one of the vats. This increased the smell even further, if that were possible.

Fermentation vats. Some kind of fish sauce or paste. I sincerely hope it isn’t flammable
.

Looking around, she located a wall of neatly stacked wooden bins, perhaps what the fresh-caught fish came in before being processed. She marked them as the perfect thing to catch fire, perhaps without too much damage to the rest of the facility.

Jill walked quickly down the row toward the front of the building, where she presumed some kind of office or control center would be. Form apparently followed function, as she found a place that qualified, with oversized tables, desks, computers, and telephones. A smaller room in the back seemed to be a private office, with more ornate furnishings.

Setting the bio-bombs down and reattaching her crowbar to her belt, she took out the cloth bag and dumped them quietly out on the floor, then returned the bag to her utility pouch. Catching movement out of the corner of her eye, she turned just in time for a pair of squealing noiks to sink their teeth into her calves.

Pain shot through her, quickly damped by her cybernetic systems. In one fast motion she extended her claws, squatted, and drove her stiffened hands into the creatures’ bodies like blades. Two more quick chops and she’d severed their spines at the neck.

Cursing, she looked at the pools of blood on the floor, some of it undoubtedly hers.
Evidence,
she thought.
I was stupid not to check for noiks, or even a night watchman. Overconfidence kills. Bloody hell.

There was only one thing for it. Much as she regretted ruining the plant administration, she had to burn it.

First, she checked her wounds, making sure her nanites and Eden Plague had healed and sealed them, at least on the surface, before she moved from her place. She did not want a trail of human blood leading away from the scene of the crime.

Carefully she picked the two inflammable devices up. Then, closing the door to the smaller office, she dragged a wooden desk and several chairs over to make a pile surrounding the animal bodies, and then set the first bio-bomb on it. Squeezing it hard, she activated its one-minute timer, and then ran, leaving the door open, the better to oxygenate the flames.

Jill sprinted through the stink down the row of vats, to the back corner near her entry point. Squeezing her second incendiary, she rolled it into a wooden bin and then exited the building.

Gulls fluttered above her head at the sudden movement, then settled back down. Jill slipped across the sandy ground into the low trees, retracing her steps toward the extraction point.

Behind her the gulls abruptly took off all together, flocking and wheeling around, then spreading out in all directions. Glancing back, she could see flames showing through the tight ventilation mesh high on the wall near the front corner. The office must already be blazing.

Mechanical whooping sounded nearby in the village, and Jill cursed Hippo efficiency. The fire alarm sound would wake everyone up, turning her stealthy return route into an obstacle course. She crouched and scuttled from tree to tree, bush to bush, more concerned now about being silhouetted and remembered, an alien thing in the midst of the natives.

More squealing came from up ahead and lights began to flare in the shacks and cottages. “Spooky,” she subvocalized over her implanted comm, “my extraction may get messy. Suggest you expedite your end.”

“Understood,” came his answer. “You will reach there first. Board
Roger
and get immediately into the VR coffin. As soon as you are inside, maneuver the ship farther down the coast one kilometer, and we will meet you there.”

“Wilco.” Jill threw herself flat beneath some bushes to avoid being seen as three Hippos pounded heavily past. Behind them a noik followed, then paused, sniffing the air with its rat-like nose. The rearmost native turned to call to the animal, and it followed reluctantly, glancing behind. She waited until they got out of sight before moving, scrambling low and avoiding the light as best she could.

Almost to the last cottage, a pack of squealing noiks suddenly rounded a shack and charged toward her position.

Fight or flight?
The two Hippos that followed distantly decided for her. She turned and ran, bent over in hopes that the natives would not see, or mistake her for some other animal, or perhaps a child.

The pack turned to follow her, and the Hippos followed the pack through the humid night. Once she reached the darkness well past any artificial light, she stood up and sprinted with her full cybernetic capacity, leaving the noiks behind at seventy kilometers an hour. She only slowed when she saw the IR glow stick on the sand. Scooping it up, she waded into the sea and then submerged as soon as she could, swimming straight out, under water. Her internal oxygen reserve would hold for ten minutes.

A hundred meters later, she saw Steadfast Roger’s IR running lights, and she hurried toward him. Running her hands along his top surface, she found a hole opening beneath her, and she slipped inside. The water-filled chamber lit around her, a bluish otherworldly glow that allowed her to see the iris above her closing. A moment later the water drained out with a sucking sound, to be replaced by air.

Jill breathed deep, then hurried to the cocoon chamber, stripping off her skinsuit and accoutrements as she walked, leaving a trail of articles in her wake. Slipping naked into her sarcophagus, she closed her eyes and tried not to flinch as the fleshy walls sucked themselves close to her skin. Induction fields reached for her brainwaves and she took deep breaths, relaxing, not fighting the transition to VR space.

As soon as she found herself within the virtual cockpit, Jill placed her hands on the half-wheel and gingerly turned it, pushing the throttle gently forward. Ezekiel had showed her the basics of the setup, but she was acutely aware of how much could go wrong. She desperately hoped that Roger could interpret her intent as well as her specific inputs, and save her from any serious mistake.

Just minutes later she arrived at what she believed the correct position should be. Absent a GPS fix, she had just estimated, using visual cues and staying in sight of the ocean’s edge. Now she wished she knew how to tell the ship to put up a periscope.

A screen blinked and came on obligingly, showing a dim view just above the waves.
He understood me!
she exulted, and for the first time felt what it must be like to have this amazing animal, this biological machine, under her command.
I wonder what else he will understand, or how complex my commands can be?

Fiddling with the control under the screen, she got it turned toward the shoreline, sweeping it left and right to look for the other two. “Roger,” she said aloud, “can you put a dim infrared glow on top of the periscope please?”

The screen blinked twice, then steadied, and a red lamp next to it came on steady. “Hope that means yes,” she mumbled, and the screen blinked twice again. “Wow, you understand spoken language?”

Two more flashes.

“Can you talk back? In English?”

Of course, Jill Repeth
, came a ghostly reply.

“Oh. My. Lord.”

No, it is I, Steadfast Roger.

Jill took another look at the periscope screen, now selfishly hoping her comrades took their time rejoining the ship. Somehow she suspected she was not supposed to find out how bright Roger really was. What had she heard Ezekiel say? As smart as a dog? He’d misled her. She wondered why.

She also wondered if Spooky knew.

This suddenly drove home to her how much she did not know. Had she been wasting the last three years, staying out of the game? She refused to believe that: bearing two children was important, and so were her regular duties as a Marine. Still, a niggling voice whispered somewhere deep inside her. It sounded like Spooky’s, reminding her how much she had missed – about their adopted world, their allies, and all the complexity she had tried to keep at bay.

“Roger, will you do me a favor?”

I will.

“Please do not tell Ezekiel that I know how smart you are.”

That is impossible. As soon as we link, he and I share all knowledge. Besides, that would be dishonest.

Jill chewed her lower lip, thinking. “How about this, then: don’t tell Spooky, and ask Ezekiel not to tell him. I’ll keep his secret.”

I will be happy to pass on your message.

“Thank you.”

They come.

Jill looked at the periscope screen, seeing two figures against the shoreline as they plunged into the surf. She fidgeted, looking around with the periscope, as they entered the ship and, presumably, got into their cocoons. After what seemed an inordinately long time, they popped into VR existence.

“How did it go?” Jill and Spooky said simultaneously. “You first,” she continued as she stood up to make room for Ezekiel to take over the pilot’s seat. He gave her a speculative look as he slipped in front of her.

“Perfectly. We got in, downloaded their entire database, and got out without a hitch.”

“I got…” Jill looked down at her calves, thinking the wounds would not show in VR. Surprisingly, though, they did, and she felt the dull pain. “I got bit by some watch-noiks I was too stupid to notice. Almost bollixed up the whole thing. Sorry, you were right. I am out of practice. Thanks for taking me on this mission, Spooky.”

“Oh, you’re welcome, Jill.”

“Do you ever get tired of being smugly superior?”

“Never,” he responded with a wink, and she sighed in disgust. Spooky lit up a cigar. “Well done, everyone. Now let’s head for home.”