The Engineer ReConditioned Part 10

With a low droning the first Junger entered the cave as fast as its pilot dared in the confines. A burst of fire from its right turret gun jerked the shuttle fifty metres into the air and slammed it against the back of the cave. At that point a missile from a demounted launcher hit the Junger. The flash was brief and bright enough to blind. Molten metal and fragments of white hot ceramoplastics. .h.i.t the walls of the cave. The next Junger went the same way and perhaps because it managed to take out the beached gunship two more followed it in. Rapid fire hit these. Bits of them hit the walls of the cave. When no more gunships followed, the two lobster-things with turret guns mounted on their backs, retreated into the smaller caves at the back of the beach. They were well clear by the time the incendiary missiles swarmed in and converted the main cavern into a furnace. They only came out of hiding when the bombardment had finished. A hot glow from molten spots on the walls lit the way for the soldiers who flew in using AG harnesses. The lobster things made a rain of human wreckage in the steam until there were no more bullets for their guns. They kept on aiming and firing, like the mechanisms they were. Pulsed energy fire cooked them on the beach.

The first soldier to encounter the enemy in the smaller caves hesitated too long. He just found it too difficult to open fire on a naked p.u.b.escent girl. The girl raised something like a metre-long razor fish and it repeatedly spat at him. The soldier hung in the air screaming as worms bored through his environment suit and into his flesh. The next soldier shot the girl, hurling her back with her chest burst open and jetting smoke. Then it was his turn to scream when the worms leaped from his comrade and started on him.

The General's aides were both young men, and probably very inexperienced. Kellor had noticed that people who did not feel secure in positions of power tended to gather other people around them who were not too much of a threat. He, on the other hand, felt completely secure and had as his first officer and com officer, Jurens and Speck, who were both hardened mercenaries with years of experience. Kellor glanced at Jurens and gave a slight nod when Talist, the aide Jurens had chosen, went to puke in the toilet just off the bridge, then returned his attention to Conard. There would be no sound from the toilet, but there might be a bit of a mess. Jurens' preference was a knife for close work.

The young man in the hologram was trying not to cry. Blood was pouring from two circular holes in his cheek and in the background other soldiers were screaming.

"Little girls!" yelled Conard. "f.u.c.king worms!"

The whole incredible fias...o...b..ought home to Kellor that there could be only one result now. There seemed no chance of him thieving some of this Jain technology, and he still had no idea who Conard's contact was. If he judged Conard right, the man would go tactical next, and if that didn't bring the ECS ship in, Christ knows what would. He glanced aside as Jurens came out of the toilet looking annoyed. Kellor attributed this to the patch of blood on his first officer's trousers - Jurens made a mess but was normally very good on not getting it on himself.

"We'll have to use the tacticals," said Conard.

It gave Kellor no satisfaction to be right. He gave the nod to Speck, who had moved close to the other aide. Speck preferred the garrotte for close work. He was so completely casual as he opened out the shining wire and looped it over the aide's head. One quick jerk and a ballet twist and step away. The aide staggered, making horrible gobbling sounds and spewing blood everywhere. His head still remained on his shoulders by dint of the garrotte stopping at his vertebrae. Conard spun around and saw the man stumble and fall: the spastic movements, the bubbling tube of an oesophagus sticking out where it should not. He turned back and froze, staring into the hollow-mirrored cube that was the hole-making end of Kellor's favourite little plasma gun. Kellor smiled. That moment again.

"No tacticals," he said. "Tell him."

Conard glanced at the hologram. The young soldier could only see Conard, and was too far gone in shock to know something was wrong.

Conard said, "Fire all the tactical nuclear weapons into that cave."

You've killed me, thought Kellor, then lowered his weapon and incinerated Conard's groin and thighs so the man dropped screaming to the deck. Speck quickly transferred the holocamera to Kellor.

"Obey that order and you won't get out of there alive," said Kellor to the soldier. "And if you return now there'll be a good bonus in it for you." He knew he'd made a mistake right from the first word. The soldier stared at him for a moment then cut com. Kellor looked down at Conard who had stopped screaming and was now groaning. There would have been no pain at first anyway, thought Kellor, though there was pain now. He deliberately stood on Conard's thigh so the cooked skin tore away from muscle. Conard started screaming again and scrabbled at his wrist holster. Kellor stamped on his hand then removed Conard's little gun. He'd almost forgotten about that.

The sounds of battle died though the screaming lasted for some time after. The Janes did not scream. They fought even with the most hideous wounds. Abaron had seen one of them stooping over a struggling soldier, choking the man with something. It was only when Abaron stepped in close and shot the man in the head that he realised the Jane had the stump of her wrist jammed in the man's mouth. That Jane had nodded her thanks and run back into the fray. Abaron retreated behind the slabs he and Chapra had chosen as their last place of defence.

"What's happening now?" he asked. "Have we won?"

"You heard what Judd said," said Chapra. She lay with the singun propped before her, staring out to where the cave was lit by luminescents spattered on the walls and floor. Suddenly she tensed, then relaxed. Judd and two Janes came quickly to join them.

"We must go deeper," said Judd.

"Oh my G.o.d," said Chapra, perhaps guessing.

The ground shifted and rock began to rain down. Abaron had time to see a wall of fire hurtling towards them before a Jane pushed him down and pressed herself over his head - protecting his precious brain. Without that protection his death might have been less protracted and painful.

"Have you got them on com yet!" yelled Kellor. He knew he was losing it. "For Chrissake try again!"

Speck kept sending, kept trying to get something.

"Shut up!" yelled Kellor and fired once, silencing Conard's crying. He turned back to the com consoles and screens. Tactical nukes, a hundred square kilometres incinerated. Thank Christ the CTDs remained aboard under ship control. He peered at the readouts on another screen. Nothing but chaff and fuzz. Well, if the ECS ship attacked he'd make a fight of it, maybe get away ... Then the Cable Hogue shut down its screens and jamming. There was an energy surge. Some kind of particle weapon. All the screens went out for a moment. When they re-established Kellor saw that the remaining gunships were now just metallic fog.

"Get us out of here!" he screamed at Jurens as he reached for the controls to the CTD launcher. Perhaps it would delay ... perhaps ...

"Oh Christ," said Speck, dull horror in his voice.

The sheer hopelessness of the situation made Kellor hesitate for a moment, a second. In that second he knew how they had felt, all those opponents, in their moment of defeat. And in that second the dreadnought wrenched the Samurai from orbit, killing most of its crew with the ma.s.sive acceleration. The flattened and distorted ship left a trail of fire across s.p.a.ce, then rode a light-speed gravity wave towards the sun, where the antimatter in the CTDs would make not a wit of difference. The nine minutes of that journey were the longest of Kellor's life as his shattered body lay hard against the deck. With the ship inside the gravity wave he did not feel any more acceleration. What held him down was a fluke of broken computers and distorted conduits that had re-established artificial gravity at six gees.

He couldn't even scream.

Diana was still boiling. Vacillation and b.l.o.o.d.y incompetence and when there came the inevitable enquiry she knew they'd manage to make the s.h.i.t stick to her. If she'd had her own way she'd have gone straight in and they wouldn't have had a chance to use nukes. She looked at the screen showing the blasted ground the shuttle overflew.

"How far?" she asked.

"Ten kilometres. We should be there in a few minutes, Captain," said the pilot, obviously a little nervous.

Diana snorted. Well perhaps they could salvage something from this mess. She glanced at Alexion, who had remained curiously reticent after witnessing the destruction of the mercenary ship. People took their first taste of war in different ways. His reaction to the ground blast had been a look of extreme pain. His precious Jain, gone.

The sh.o.r.e soon came into view and the pilot brought the shuttle down by the ATV parked there. Troops were standing by the ATV dressed in full environment and radiation suits. Diana pulled down the visor on her gear and headed for the lock. Alexion meekly followed.

"Where is it?" she asked the commander, before he had a chance to salute. The man pointed down the beach. "Okay, let's have a look." Diana walked down the ash-covered sand to the figure sat upon a rock.

"Which one are you?" she asked.

Its soft outer covering had been burned away and what remained was a seared metal skeleton containing the sealed mechanisms of its existence. It regarded her with brown lidless eyes set in its blackened skull. Its white teeth were stained, and because its lips were gone it seemed to be grinning.

"I am Judd," it rasped at her, black flakes shooting from its mouth.

"What happened to them, Judd? The other Golem, Chapra and Abaron?"

"Died. All died."

"Chapra and Abaron are dead?"

"No."

"You said they died."

"Yes."

Obviously screwed, thought Diana. They might get something from its memory.

"What about the Jain? We know it wasn't killed in the ship." As she said this Diana surveyed the devastation and focused on the bloated creatures floating in the shallows. The neutron bursts had almost certainly done for the alien. It was now as much part of history as the rest of its kind. Perhaps Smith could excavate it. She returned her attention to Judd as the Golem raised a hand missing three fingers and pointed with the remaining one out to sea.

"Here. Soon."

Diana stared down at the sea. Abruptly she stood. Movement out there. She glanced at her soldiers as they nervously fingered their weapons. Something was coming out of the sea.

"Let's not have any more incidents," she said loudly.

It was red, whatever it was, and huge. It broke the surface like the back of a whale and ploughed in to the sh.o.r.e. A giant red worm, thought Diana, then remembered the description of the Jain machine.

"No shooting!" She turned on Alexion. "What the h.e.l.l is that?"

It heaved up onto the beach, sending a wave of sea water that washed to Diana's boots. The mouth was three metres wide, speckled at the lips and iridescent white inside. The mouth of a long and impossible sh.e.l.l. The water drained away and Diana could see nothing deep inside but a gradual thickening of shadow.

"Christ knows," said Alexion.

Movement. Two shapes walking out - human shapes. Chapra and Abaron strode out of the Jain machine, the remains of their environment suits hanging on them in tatters, visors discarded, hoods pulled back. But were they Chapra and Abaron? How could they be alive? They were standing in temperatures that should take off their skins.

"You'd best come to the shuttle," said Diana, watching them intently.

Chapra stood before Diana. "We are human. He repaired us, rebuilt us."

Abaron said, "I guess he found it easier to alter us to survive here than to repair our suits."

Chapra turned to Alexion. "Alex, it's good to see you." She smiled and Diana saw Smith's strange look of yearning.

"It's good to see you. New body?"

A weak joke.

"I'm me," she said, that smile still there. "The Jain is very good at what it does. If anything I've been improved. So much is clear now. And this body ... "

"What have you learnt?"

"A fraction. Some figure after the point. There's so much ... I cannot explain ... "

"Try."

"It will take time. Have you a century or so free?"

Alexion stepped forward, impulsively Diana thought. She caught his shoulder and halted him. He turned to her. "I have to do this. In my research the questions always outnumber the answers. Always. You can't stop me. I'm not security."

"Come along," said Diana. "I should think you want to get home."

"No."

She released her hold. His choice. Alexion went to stand with Chapra and Abaron. Chapra grinned at him then returned her attention to Diana.

"We're staying here. There's so much to learn. You understand?"

Diana felt she might.

"Here, a gift." Chapra held out her fist to Diana.

With reluctance Diana held out the flat of her gloved hand. Chapra dropped something into it then turned back to the tunnel. Alexion followed, eagerly. As the three of them walked into the Jain machine, Diana saw through a tear in Abaron's suit a triangle at the base of his spine. She shuddered, and just stood there until they were gone. Eventually the tube filled with sea water and drew back into the sea. She opened her hand to look at the small red sh.e.l.l Chapra had given her. It was shaped like a worm cast; a small coral of convolute tubes. She'd seen recordings; she knew what it was - knew it was the future. There was not much Diana feared. She feared this.

SNAIRLS.

The other pa.s.sengers went to their cabins and cowered there like the limp city dwellers they were. The cabins were sh.e.l.l-walled dead stuff, braced by shock-absorbing muscle, and internally free of slime. Janer was no city man and there was so much more he wanted to see and experience. He had yet to walk Upper Sh.e.l.l and look from the Spire, and it was not in his nature to give up so easily. Besides, now might be his only chance before his freedom of movement was once again curtailed.

"It means a storm is coming or we are coming to a storm," the CG told him before casually stripping off his uniform and sealing it in a plastic bag. Embarra.s.sed by the man's nakedness Janer looked around the CG's cabin. The walls glistened. When he glanced back, the CG was watching him a.n.a.lytically. Janer tried to keep his eyes level with the man's. Crew were different, he had known that, but seeing one naked was ... disconcerting. On the front of the CG's body was a diamond of white flesh extending from his white genitalia to the base of his throat. It was segmented like the body of some worm, each segment a couple of inches wide, and there were other differences he tried not to observe too closely.

"You'd best do the same," said the CG, wryly noting his discomfiture. "Clothing becomes crusted and stiff if it dries, or takes on a heavy build up. Only skin sheds it well."

"As you say."

Janer left the Chief Geneticist in his cabin - a cyst in the body of the Graaf - and headed down the glistening artery of a corridor, half-lit by bioluminescent globes clinging to the fleshy walls and sucking their juice. Everywhere these things. Janer had not realised they were alive until he saw one detach its tick mouth and scuttle along the wall to a new feeding spot. For a day after that the skin on his back crawled whenever he walked underneath one. But in the end one must get used to the presence of life: it was everything around him.

Soon he saw that many of the crew of the Graaf had dispensed with their clothes. Eller, naked on a hyaline strut bone, rested her chin on her knee and grinned at him. She slowly and deliberately parted her other leg to one side as he slowed to make some pa.s.sing greeting or wry comment. He found he had no words and quickened his pace, aware of the flush rising in his face. The diamond of white wormflesh on the front of her body included her hairless genitalia and ended at a narrow point by her a.n.u.s. There was something incredibly erotic about it. Behind him he heard her chuckle. d.a.m.n. He would have to do something about her. There were stories about what went on inside a snairl when the walls slimed. The creators of holofiction became quite sweaty-palmed about the subject. Janer wanted to find out. He wanted to find out a lot of things - for himself for a change.

In his dry and civilized cabin Janer stripped off his clothing and pulled on the rubber trunks of his surfsuit. He didn't want to wander about the Graaf with a permanent erection waving about in front of him. That kind of thing delimited serious conversation. Admittedly, he did intend to screw Eller at the first opportunity. Finally into his trunks and considering what else he might take out with him he turned to the sudden buzz from beside his compscreen. Jumpy today - very jumpy.

The hornet rose into the air above the antique plastic keyboard - a blur of wings suspending a severed-thumb body and dangly mosquito legs. Faceted eyes glittering. All over its body the hornet was painted with intricate designs in red and yellow-green fluorescent paint.

"I thought you were exploring," said Janer. The hivelink behind his ear buzzed for a moment before the mind replied.

"The slime could kill this unit and I only have five on the Graaf."

"Where are the others?"

"They are in Upper Sh.e.l.l, but even there the conditions are inimical."

"How come? There's no slime there."

"No, but there are rooks."

"How inconvenient."

"They require instruction."

"Are they intelligent enough to learn?"

"You were."

Janer sighed. The 'you' in this case was the human race. It wasn't having another dig at him, for a change.

It had come as one shock in many when arrogant humanity had discovered it wasn't the only sentient race on Earth. It was just the loudest and most destructive. Dolphins and whales had always been candidates because of their aesthetic appeal and stories of rescued swimmers. Research in that area had soon cleared things up. Dolphins couldn't tell the difference between a human swimmer and a sick fellow, and were substantially more stupid than the animal humans had been turning into pork on a regular basis. Whales had the intelligence of the average cow. When a hornet built its nest in a VR suit and lodged its protests on the Internet it had taken a long time for anyone to believe. They were stinging things, creepy crawlies, how could they possibly be intelligent? At ten thousand years of age the youngest hivemind showed them. People believed.

"You want to come out in the box, I take it?"

The buzzing of the hivemind seemed contemplative. Thoughts that once took the time of a hornet's flight between nests flicked at the speed of light between hivelinks. Janer held out his hand and the hornet settled on it, vibrating, its legs pressing into his skin like blunt pins. His flesh rebelled but he controlled the urge to shudder and fling the insect away from him. He was getting better at it now: his payment, his service to this mind, for killing a hornet that had tried to settle on his shoulder in a crowded ringball stadium. It had been tired that hornet; searching for somewhere to land and rest, tempted by the beaker of c.o.ke Janer had been drinking. His reaction had been instinctive; the phobic horror of insects had risen up inside him and he had knocked the hornet to the ground and stamped on it. The police had come for him the next day. Killing a hornet was not precisely murder, as each creature was just one very small part of the mind. There were stiff penalties, though.

"It would be interesting to observe the interior during the storm. Yes, the box," the mind eventually told him. The hornet launched itself from his hand and hovered above his bed. The box was there: a shaped perspex container with one skinstick surface. It landed by this and crawled inside. Janer picked the box up and pressed it against his shoulder where it stuck.

"There are no phobes on this ship," the mind observed, as if picking up on what Janer had been thinking. He wasn't the only one who had trouble with the idea of allowing huge stinging insects to fly around them unmolested. There were others whose service to a mind had to be without contact with its hornets, who became hysterical in their presence, some who just paid over a large amount of money, and some who required ... adjustments.

"Not surprising," Janer replied casually. "Spend your life inside a floating mollusc and you're sure to lose some of your aversions."