Horizon Storms (64 page)

Deciding that the recently returned explorer’s pack could prove useful, containing enough supplies for a brief trip, Palawu picked it up. He adjusted the straps, shouldered the load, and prepared to set out. He intended to be back before long.

After activating the stone window, he watched the blank surface shimmer into a dusty, mysterious passage. He took a deep breath and with a confident smile, stepped through, eyes open and ready to see—

He encountered a world of uncompromising strangeness, impossibly different from the other abandoned Klikiss worlds he had visited so far. The colors, sounds, smells, were powerful and unexpected, enough to drive a person mad. The alien and unfamiliar sights assailed his consciousness with an avalanche of exotic details, incomprehensible impressions.

And then another unexpected sight: An older human female moved toward him with a curious and unreadable expression on her face. In complete shock, Palawu recognized the features of a woman he had never met but who was well known to him.

Margaret Colicos—alive! It did not surprise him that after the hundreds of missions and random explorations through the transportals, somebody would find the world where she had gone. But this was impossible, unbearable. . . .

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Suddenly he saw more—much more—and could not stop himself from screaming.

When they entered the control room the next morning in order to prepare for the day’s first group of departing colonists, the technical crew found Palawu’s records. At first they were annoyed by the risk the Chief Scientist had taken. Then, as time went by, they became concerned.

Finally, after a week of silence—far longer than his rations would have lasted—Palawu’s coordinate was marked as another black tile. The technicians submitted the Chief Scientist’s data and his computer files to another team of Hansa investigators so that the work could continue. Meanwhile, the transportal colonization initiative proceeded apace.

Howard Palawu never returned.

1095DD

Though he was trapped aboard the stolen Juggernaut, DD had to take action as Sirix and his robot marauders annihilated the Corribus settlement. His basic programming did not allow him to remain idle. He had to at least try. This was wrong.

From the Juggernaut’s weapons station, the Soldier compies mapped out and targeted all human or Klikiss structures. As the attack proceeded, they tracked each fleeing person who raced for shelter, and they could kill their victims one at a time with cool accuracy.

In the colony’s transmission tower, Jan Covitz continued to send anxious questions, pleas, demands. With two successive jazer blasts, one of the invading Mantas vaporized the communications tower and its support shack. The desperate radio signal went silent.

Sirix stood on the command bridge like some great general. All the D D

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robot’s articulated arms were extended. His flat head-plate swiveled as he absorbed information from the projection screens. “We will leave no structure standing, no trace that the arrogant humans ever established a foothold here.”

DD concluded that stopping this unprovoked assault had a higher priority than his own self-preservation. He lunged toward the nearest weapons console.

Though his mass was only half that of the Soldier compy’s, the little robot’s unexpected action was sufficient to thrust the military machine aside. As the surprised Soldier compy attempted to recover its balance, DD

slammed his alloy-and-plastic fist into the Juggernaut’s weaponry controls.

He did not have the strength of a heavy-lifting machine, but the consoles had not been designed to take such punishment. DD hammered again and again, breaking open the cover plate, obliterating the circuitry and delicate targeting systems.

In less than three seconds, the Soldier compy had righted itself and pulled DD away from the console. The little robot struggled, but could not break free. Before him, the controls smoked and sparked, and he was grat-ified to see that they were ruined.

The Soldier compy raised DD overhead, prepared to disassemble him; two other military robots lurched forward to add their metal muscle, but Sirix’s buzzing voice halted them. “Do not destroy him.” Scarlet eye sensors glowed balefully like orbs formed of hot embers. “This is an example of how slavery corrupts these competent computerized companions. No rational mind would have taken such useless action, but DD was forced to make this defiant, but ultimately pointless, gesture.”

Sirix scuttled over to where DD dangled in the air, caught in the grasp of the Soldier compy. “Observe, DD—you caused very little harm. This battleship is equipped with three redundant weapons consoles, and even without the Juggernaut we have five fully armed Manta cruisers to continue the destruction of an unarmed colony. Your struggle was for nothing.”

“Nevertheless, I could not fail to act.”

Sirix moved heavily back to the central bridge station to oversee the conclusion of the Corribus operation.

DD amplified his voice. “It is what I want to do. I desire to stop you.”

Even without the restrictive programming the Klikiss robots scorned, he 408

would have chosen to do the same thing. He could not stand by while so many innocent colonists were slaughtered.

“You do not understand your own actions.”

In the colony below, despite DD’s best efforts, nothing remained but smoking debris and bodies. Everything had been destroyed.

“Observe closely,” Sirix said as the hijacked battleship descended toward the rubble of the canyon floor. DD didn’t want to see firsthand the results of the massacre. “This was merely a practice run for our ultimate plan, a demonstration of our new attack force. We judge the exercise an unqualified success.”

The engines hummed, then slowed as the Juggernaut came to rest against the ground like a beached whale. The Soldier compies marched in ranks from the bridge, preparing to disembark and complete the total ster-ilization of Corribus. Sirix observed with apparent satisfaction.

“Therefore, we will proceed with the full-scale plan against the rest of humanity.”

1105ORLI COVITZ

The attack went on for what seemed like hours, and Orli huddled against the wall of her cave shelter. If this alcove had remained intact for ten thousand years, unscathed even by the superweaponry that had melted the granite cliffs and exterminated the Klikiss, then she was probably safe.

But adrenaline made her heart hammer, and she crouched in the deepest corner of the chamber.

Outside, everyone else was being slaughtered . . . including her father.

And she could do nothing to help. What had they done to provoke this?

And who were the attackers?

Eventually, she heard no more of the faint screams, only the crackle of

energy blasts and the boom of distant explosions mixed with the roar of engines. With shaking knees, she crept forward, certain in her heart that every other living human on Corribus must be dead. Smoke filled the canyon, drifting upward in greasy black plumes. The whole settlement had been flattened and burned. Nothing remained whatsoever.

The communications tower and its control shack had been vaporized; she knew her father would have been inside it. Her halfhearted friends must also be dead, all the colonist families, her pet, the acquaintances she had made in their short time here.

She heard the roar of spaceship engines change pitch and decrease to muffled booms. Peeking out through the narrow cave entrance, Orli saw the six EDF vessels land under the smoky sunlight. The massacre was complete.

The Juggernaut was so huge it barely fit between the canyon walls, but the pilot had guided it down without hesitation. When the doorways opened and figures streamed down ramps to the valley floor, she recognized the insectlike forms of giant Klikiss robots. Next, Soldier-model compies built in Hansa factories filed out beside the black-shelled alien machines.

Tears streaked her dusty face. Orli couldn’t cry out, didn’t dare call attention to herself here, so high up on the cliff wall.

The robots separated into teams and combed through the wreckage.

Soldier compies used brute strength to knock down walls and crack open sealed storage containers. They found one person who had been hiding and dragged him out screaming. The man broke away and tried to flee, but the robots surrounded him and viciously dispatched him. Orli could see the splash of blood even from her distant vantage. . . .

The robotic invaders remained for hours, being particularly thorough, until they could find nothing left to destroy. As the afternoon light began to fade over Corribus, the machines filed back aboard their stolen EDF vessels. Thrusters lifted the Juggernaut and five Mantas from the ground. Like predators bloated after a large feast, they flew into the sky, lumbering back toward orbit.

Orli had waited long enough. When she realized she was as safe as she was going to be, she crept out of her shelter and began to climb back down. The alum crystals seemed slipperier now, their flat surfaces tilted.

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Each one seemed treacherous, as if the crystals themselves wanted her to slip and fall.

Before long, her arms and legs were trembling. She knew it was not just anxiety from the dangerous climb, but also the backwash of shock from what she had witnessed. She gritted her teeth and focused her thoughts. One movement at a time, one handhold or foothold, descending a body length, and then another. She had to make it back down.

The valley was in full shadow of dusk by the time she reached the bottom. She stood shaking for a few moments, gasping to catch her breath, then horror and hope swept over her like a flood wave. She ran with clumsy footsteps toward the orange glow of still-burning fires.

As she had feared, nothing remained but rubble and blackened tim-bers from the poletrees the settlers had brought in from the open plains.

The Klikiss transportal had been demolished. Blackened human bodies—mercifully unrecognizable—lay strewn about on the ground or buried in the wreckage of collapsed buildings.

“Hello? Is anyone here?” Her voice cracked, but she did not give up.

“Is anyone else alive?”

Only a resounding silence echoed back at her as night fell. It was no use. She was all alone on Corribus, the only survivor.

1115RLINDA KETT

Without any sun in Crenna’s frozen sky, it was hard to judge the passage of days during the rescue operations. When all of the shell-shocked colonists were finally crammed aboard the two merchant ships, Rlinda was ready to go.

The Blind Faith lifted off first, rising into the dark, cold skies. BeBob signaled, “I’m awfully overloaded, Rlinda.”

“You want to tell a couple of those people they can stay behind?”

“Not a chance. I used to live here, remember? These were my neighbors.”

For the time being, the settlers didn’t mind standing elbow to elbow on a ship that would take them far from their dark and dying world. They leaned against the corridor walls or were stacked like cordwood in the few passenger compartments. But at least they were alive, and getting away.

Rlinda turned to the contented-looking spy as she activated the Curiosity’s controls to follow BeBob. “You did a good job here, Davlin. Maybe you’ll have to change your career.” She accelerated on a direct line out of the system, away from the quiet, dead globe that had once been a beautiful colony.

Davlin shrugged in the copilot’s chair. “I like these people. What else was I supposed to do?” A brief smile crossed his face. “They’re . . . my friends. And when we get to Relleker, I intend to give those bureaucratic snots a piece of my mind for not helping when we asked for assistance. I just might mention it to Chairman Wenceslas himself. . . .”

“Whoa! Look out, Rlinda!” BeBob squawked over the comm system.

“Incoming, starboard side!”

Rlinda suddenly felt as cold as if she were standing outside on Crenna.

Four hydrogue warglobes hurtled on a beeline across space directly toward them. “Oh, crap! Do these guys always need to have such bad timing?”

Davlin clenched his jaw. “What more can the drogues want here?

They’ve already killed the damned sun.”

Rlinda activated the ship’s intercom. “Everybody hold on tight. Evasive maneuvers coming up.” She rolled the Curiosity, looping down, while the Blind Faith flew in a different direction, diving back toward Crenna, as if hoping to find a place to hide there. Despite her teasing, Rlinda knew BeBob had outrun many an enemy and was an expert at getting himself out of trouble through fast flying. But local security forces were easily duped.

She didn’t know how readily fooled a hydrogue would be.

Rlinda took her own ship on a hard turn and accelerated recklessly.

“I’m going to duck behind the planet. Maybe in the shadow . . . or what would have been the shadow if there was any sun left—”

Davlin looked at her. “I don’t have any better ideas.”

As Rlinda flew a corkscrew maneuver, the rescued colonists couldn’t 412

tell the difference between the deck and the ceiling. She was strapped in and concentrated on flying, but her passengers yelled as they were thrown from side to side. Both ships converged where the planetary mass would at least block them from the warglobes’ sensors.

To their surprise, the hydrogues shot past on a determined course, intent on something else. The diamond-hulled ships ignored the Curiosity and the Faith and continued like guided missiles toward the dead ember of the sun. Orbiting the dark star, the drogues shot their weapons, pounding immense energy discharges into ruddy patches where leftover stellar heat continued to escape.

“What are they doing now?” BeBob asked. “Not that I’m complaining . . .”

A few sputtering flares flickered out from the extinguished sun, spouting in the infrared. “They’re trying to flush out the last few faeros survivors,” Davlin said. “Finishing the job.”