‘You – you’re not coming?’ said Albarazi, amazed.
Still suited, Joel could carry on the conversation as he made his way quickly aft through the main cabin to the airlock.
‘We don’t know that the records were destroyed,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to check, and you need to get out of here now.’
‘
But if we leave you . . .
’
‘That’s an order!’ Joel was at the airlock, and he leapt out into space. He didn’t need to be told what would happen if he was left, but he knew what he had to do. Bloody sense of duty, he thought bitterly. And no question of where he had got it from. Why couldn’t he have swapped the inherited duty-gene for, say, eye colour?
His suit carried him swiftly away from the lifeboat and he took a final look back. Its laser turrets were in action, returning fire as good as they got. And then the main drive came on and it effortlessly slipped away from SkySpy, vanishing to a dot in a couple of seconds.
He wasn’t alone. Another suited form drifted into his vision and he almost had a heart attack.
‘What are you doing here?’ he snapped. The Rustie braked to hang in front of him.
‘None of my pride escaped to the lifeboat,’ Boon Round said in a neutral, colourless voice.
‘What’s that got to do with it?’ Joel said without thinking. Was he doomed to be plagued by this creature for ever? And then he bit his tongue because he knew the answer to his question.
‘I might be able to die with them,’ Boon Round said in the same voice.
‘Right.’ Joel swallowed. This time he had noticed the tone. Rustie translator units nowadays could convey colloquial speech and even different kinds of emotions, but there were emotions at the far end of the scale that still lay outside their programming, whereupon they would revert to this bland matter-offactness. And that was how Boon Round spoke now. A human could lose both parents and all children, siblings, aunts, uncles and grandparents in one fell swoop and still not come close to understanding how the sole survivor of a Rustie – sorry,
First Breed
– pride would feel.
‘Come on then,’ Joel muttered, and they jetted down to SkySpy.
‘It would be convenient to know your plan,’ Boon Round said as they dropped down. Still bland, still racked by sorrow far outside the scope of his translator. He wasn’t going with Joel to be helpful or out of a sense of duty; he was going with Joel because the sheer fact of association with another living being kept him sane.
Yeah, thanks for that responsibility
, Joel thought.
It’s not like I’ve got anything else to worry about
right now
.
‘We enter SkySpy, we get to the computer centre and we set off the charges,’ he said.
‘SkySpy is without power.’
‘The charges are self-powered.’
‘What if we meet any XCs?’
We’re dead
. ‘I don’t think we will,’ Joel said. He kept one wary eye on the heavens about them. ‘It must have been automated. Think about it. Transporting troops all the way out here without being noticed would be harder than . . . well . . .’
‘Sneaking up on SkySpy undetected in the first place?’ Boon Round said helpfully.
‘Look,’ Joel snapped, ‘at the first sign of any XC activity, play dead. They’ll expect to have a lot of bodies floating around.’ He winced as he said it, but it was true.
‘And then?’ Boon Round said. Joel entertained a vision of sinking a fist through the Rustie’s faceplate. Probably bad leadership.
‘We’ll try and get out in Lifeboat A,’ he said. ‘If we can get on board and boost straight out of the bay, we’ll be in with a chance.’
‘If not?’
What is your problem, you stupid Rustie?
‘There’ll be sufficient power and air reserves to last us a long time,’ Joel said with very forced patience. ‘They’ll send a ship, maybe a squadron, to investigate and pick up the pieces. I mean, they won’t be worried now about letting the XCs know about us. And they’ll pick us up.’
‘How long do you see this taking?’
‘In here,’ Joel said, determined to change the subject.
They floated towards the bottom of the empty cavern that was the lifeboat bay. Without the lifeboat it looked larger than normal, and the vacant grapples and the blunt heads of the disconnected power feeds looked somehow forlorn. They entered the dark tunnel that led to the main complex.
Battery-powered emergency lighting gave the corridors of SkySpy a red glow. The two of them drifted slowly along the airless passages, boosted by small nudges from their thrusters. They came to a hole that crossed the corridor – a smooth, round tunnel, just wide enough for Joel to stretch out his arms. It came in from the direction of space, the top right of the corridor, and carried on towards the heart of the complex at the bottom left. Joel angled his head so that his helmet lights shone down it, towards the centre of the asteroid, and shouted in shocked surprise.
‘What is it?’
‘Guess,’ Joel muttered. He had been expecting this, it
shouldn’t
have been surprising . . .
He reached down carefully to take hold of the body under the arms and extract it from the tunnel. Chief Astronomer Annika Vogl was no doubt typical of what had happened to SkySpy. She had been in her suit, she should have been protected against loss of pressure, but the howling gale of escaping air had picked her up and dashed her against something, or something against her, and her helmet was cracked. The wind had carried her up the hole.
Vogl had been part of the station’s scientific complement. Barely two hours ago, in what Joel had suspected was a vain attempt to chat him up, not knowing that he wasn’t currently on the market, she had been sat at a console demonstrating the wonders of SkySpy’s astronomical research. It was apparently very interesting to astronomers and very boring to Joels. And here she was now.
Joel peered back down the hole. This time he had an unobstructed view to the next level.
‘This will take us straight there, almost,’ he said. He glanced back at the late Chief Astronomer. ‘There’ll be more,’ he said, and led the way.
There were more: most of SkySpy’s crew had been in the deeper levels when the attack came. Human and Rustie corpses floated in the passageways, some still jostling very slowly, their momentum not yet absorbed by the walls and the other bodies. Smaller, loose objects, not secured when the air went, floated between them. Joel led the way and applied mental blinkers: he would get to the computer centre, set the charges, get out. Then and only then would he worry about what to do next.
‘How are you, Boon Round?’ he whispered.
‘I am managing.’ Still bland.
They came round a corner and Joel abruptly retroed, stopping dead. Then he yelled as Boon Round bumped into him from behind and he flew again towards the thing.
It had come to rest at the Y-shaped junction of three corridors, big, round and metallic. It lurked, alien and intrusive, the red lighting gleaming off its hull. The two jetted slowly up to it. One end was a blunt point, like a giant snub-nosed bullet, pitted with the openings of thousands of tiny nozzles. The surface was shiny but scored, and directly behind its cylindrical body was the tunnel it had carved through the asteroid. It was these things that had destroyed the base.
‘It goes straight out to space,’ Boon Round reported from the rear end.
‘Uh-huh.’ Joel had jetted round to the other side, and discovered something more urgent. ‘Oh my God. Boon Round—’
‘Behind you!’
The XC that had emerged from a corridor wore some kind of space armour. It had four arms and two legs that bent the wrong way and it was probably just as surprised as they were. It recovered first. Joel’s muscles had frozen and he could only watch in horror, in terror, as it brought its weapon up . . .
. . . and three hundred pounds of Rustie cannoned into it, propelled by a single thrust of Boon Round’s hind legs, and smashed it against the wall. Its weapon flew away and Boon Round wrapped all four limbs around the creature. The XC could only wave its four arms and hammer futilely at the Rustie’s body as Boon Round went to work, pulling out every hose and every connector he could find. Air gushed out of the ruptured armour and the XC died.
Boon Round waited until the struggles ceased, then let go and drifted back to get a better view of the body.
His voice was conversational again. ‘I’m sorry, what were you going to say?’
‘Say?’ Joel tore his gaze away from the dead XC and the memory of the frenzied Rustie. Rusties were normally so placid . . . And XCs were on SkySpy! It was a concept he would have to work up towards grasping . . .
‘Oh, yeah, right,’ Joel said. He pointed at the open hatch he had discovered on the other side of the burrower. ‘I was going to say, this thing’s hollow, which means XCs probably came in on them.’
‘Hopefully I got it before it could communicate,’ said Boon Round. ‘It depends on whether they are on a general band or have to initiate contact each time they speak.’
‘Uh huh . . .’ Joel leaned closer to study the dead XC’s suit. The visor had misted up with a vapour he didn’t want to think about. Some of the gear on the armour was completely beyond him, some he could hazard a guess at; and the glass-tipped tube, the size and length of a small cigar, that was mounted on the XC’s shoulder was obvious. In fact, taken as part of the day he was having, it was entirely consistent.
‘They’re linked by video,’ he said. ‘Come on, quick.’
XCs were on SkySpy! Joel’s neat little rationale about the impossibility of sneaking shocktroops out here unobserved had collapsed, but that tiny and irritatingly vocal part of his mind that insisted on being analytical regardless wouldn’t shut up as they raced to their destination.
So, the XCs were here. What did they want?
Down one final level
. . .
Well, a clean-up operation was one option. The XCs had got their name when a horrified discovery mission led by the Rusties’ former masters had witnessed their extermination of their nearest planetary neighbours. So, there was plenty of reason to believe the XCs would strongly contest the sanctity of life of alien beings from beyond their own solar system. Once they detected SkySpy – somehow – then of course they would make sure they achieved total extermination.
Quickly down the corridor, past the canteen, through the
gym . . .
But they would want the
knowledge
of those aliens. They would send in the troops to do what machines couldn’t: retrieve that knowledge, intact.
Turn right after the living quarters . . .
In other words, the XCs were heading for exactly the same place as Boon Round and Joel. The only difference was their intent when they got there, and the fact that they didn’t know which of SkySpy’s many chambers or rooms it was in.
Fourth on the left . . .
Joel and Boon Round paused for a moment at the entrance to the computer centre, savouring the sight of the intact crystal storage banks and the absence of XCs. Then a group of five aliens appeared at the end of the corridor.
Boon Round jetted at full thrust down the corridor, spinning furiously and legs flailing, and just had to time to say ‘take the banks’ before he pounded into the XCs, sending them flying like skittles in micro-gee. Joel took one last look as they closed in on the Rustie, then jetted into the computer centre and shut and locked the hatch behind him.
The general band was still open and Boon Round’s translator unit had finally given up on interpreting what its owner was saying: all Joel could hear was a single, monotone ‘
Ahhh-hhh . . .
’ He switched it off and searched feverishly for the charge control.
Got it: a black-and-yellow striped plate the size of his hand, set into one wall. He pressed it and it slid aside. Within were three switches, each under its own guard. Joel flipped each guard up in turn, then positioned a finger over each switch and pressed the three down together. He turned to look at the results of his handiwork.
Nothing: the banks were as intact as ever. Joel bellowed in fury and frustration. The central control had been broken or disconnected in the attack.
A red, glowing spot appeared on the locked hatch and Joel went back to work.
‘
Caution. Biometrics show imminent danger of
hyperventilation
,’ said his suit, but he ignored it as he studied the banks. The charges were small black boxes, the front ends of dark rods that extended into the crystal, and a single light shone on each one to show that it was running off its internal batteries. Each box had a duplicate of the controls on the central switch: a cover for the three switches, a guard for each switch under that.
‘Increasing CO
2
content to compensate for over-
dependence on oxygen
,’ said his suit. The red glow covered half the hatch and was turning to white.
‘Yeah, do that,’ Joel muttered as he got to the first bank. Flip one; flip two; flip three; altogether now –
flip
.
The rod began to glow and the crystals shimmered as the heat distorted them, then frosted like shattered glass as their molecular structures distorted beyond recognition and their memory content was wiped for ever.
‘
Yes
!’ Joel shouted and went on to the next one. Flip one . . .
And another bank, and another. The hatch was almost incandescent.
The last two . . .
The hatch exploded into the room and XCs poured in.
The last one . . .
The XCs grabbed hold of Joel in their unbreakable four-handed grips and he didn’t even try to resist, letting the force of their charge carry them away from the bank and across the room. All the better, because it gave Joel a proud view of his beautiful handiwork: a row of cracked, wiped, useless memory banks, their information gone for ever.
He glanced round at his captors. He could see through their visors: the maned heads and flat faces; the small, dark eyes, wide apart and perfect for triangulating on prey; the mouths with their bared shark’s teeth.