The Engineer ReConditioned Part 7

PART FIVE.

Floating in an observation blister Chapra watched an aqua-landing shuttle drop out of its bay towards the blue and white glare of the planet. She watched the triangle of it grow small and dark in silhouette, then glow and trail vapour as it hit atmosphere and slid into its...o...b..tal glide. Judd piloted. The Jain crouched in a cargo bay half filled with saline heated to a nice ninety-seven degrees Celsius. In its many-fingered hand it clutched its creation device shrunk down to the size of a human fist. Chapra smiled at that. How we define things: when it was large it was a machine and small it is a device. What then was the girl now the Jain had left her, now she seemed to have some character of her own? Did individuality mean anything when thought of in connection with the Jain? Could she be an individual, or would that be like calling someone with a severed corpus callosum two separate beings, two individuals? Perhaps so. It was too easy to look at her and see a human girl when she was really a mask over something wholly alien.

"Why did it leave her, Box?" she asked.

"To watch, to learn, to gather information."

As the AI said this, Chapra felt the slight surge as the ion drive ignited. She saw the flare far to her right like a sunrise and watched as the planet, with apparent slowness, slid aside.

"She could be destroyed along with us."

"The Jain can make another whenever it wants."

And that brought it home.

"Make another what?" asked Abaron, coming into the blister and catching hold of one of the frame bars as he stepped out of the ship's artificial gravity. "We're picking up G," he observed. Both of them looked to the black macula, in the reactive gla.s.s, where the sun was.

"Girl," said Chapra.

"It's not so worrying," said Abaron. "Humans make humans all the time and are they any more responsible?"

"How very mature of you," said Chapra with a grin, then a wider grin at his irritation.

"I will be starting ramscoop drive in twenty minutes. It would be better if you were inside the ship at that time," said Box.

Abaron led the way from the blister. They stepped from it into the corridor gravity of the ship and both turned toward the control room.

"How long before we go translight?" asked Chapra.

"Three hours," the ship AI told them, and as they entered the control room it went on to say, "You may be interested to know that I have received genetic maps of the five seaweeds from Earth and compared them to the samples from the planet and the ones in the isolation chamber."

"How old?" asked Chapra.

Box went on, "Cross referencing certain structures, and taking into account mutational variables, I have a extrapolation graph that peaks at four point seven three million years. This would seem to confirm that the Jain's point of origin in the escape pod was this system and that it has been in stasis for the aforementioned time."

"d.a.m.n," said Chapra.

"What's the problem with that?" asked Abaron.

"Not that ... we just never got around to asking why it ended up in an escape pod in the first place. We know lots about what it is and what it can do, but nothing about what it was and what it did."

"I asked," said Box.

"Well?" said Chapra when Box did not go on.

"Haden is a Jain world, but not the Jain home world. Originally it was two AU from the sun. The Jain we rescued was here to Jainform it. Using its starship it towed the world to its present position and over a period I estimate to be nearly ten thousand years it seeded it with the kinds of life the Jain like. While it was seeding the world an enemy attacked and destroyed its ship. It managed to get away in the escape pod."

Chapra gave Abaron a look, then sat and tried to absorb that: a ship that could tow worlds about ... spending ten thousand years seeding a planet ... and an enemy that could destroy such a ship, defeat a Jain.

"Is there anything more about the enemy?" asked Abaron, putting his finger straight on a fear: more superior aliens.

"The enemy was another Jain."

And of course that was right. The Polity was huge and ever-expanding and humans had encountered many alien life forms, but the greatest enemy had remained the same: other humans. Chapra smiled. Not so d.a.m.ned superior after all. She flicked a couple of touch controls and summoned up views back down the length of the ship. These showed a plain of ceramal scattered with instrumentation, then the tail fading into distance. She always enjoyed watching the ramscoop engines starting: the vast orange wings of force opening out through s.p.a.ce. At that moment she could see only the white coronal glare of the ion drive shoving the Box up to scoop speeds. The ramscoop would then power the fusion engines to shove it up to a speed where the translight engines could get a grip on the very fabric of s.p.a.ce and pull the ship through into unders.p.a.ce. Chapra did not want to be watching the projection then. She glanced across as something at the edge of the projection caught her eye. There was a flickering there - spatial distortions.

"There has been a miscalculation," said Box.

Chapra waited. She was getting used to Box's conversational grenades. She watched, without really seeing, as a wedge of midnight entered reals.p.a.ce, opened ramscoop wings then stood on its tip on fusion fire, braking into the Haden system.

"The Separatist ship is here now," Box told them.

With a flash the projection disappeared and in the same moment the ship shuddered. Chapra clutched at her chair as she felt the gravity shift. Something was out. She could feel the surge as the ship changed direction. A sudden dragging force. An explosion.

"Shuttle in bay six is ready for launch," said Box.

Chapra clutched her chair. So, why did she need to know that?

"Come on!" Abaron yelled, grabbing her arm. Then it all hit home. They were being attacked. The Schrodinger's Box was being destroyed. She stood and ran with Abaron to bay six. The gravity kept fluctuating and the way they ran might have appeared comical at any other time, anywhere else. Great hollow booms echoed from deep in the ship, and she heard distant clangs of metal falling. Chapra felt changes in pressure. Her ears popped, which was terror for anyone who knew s.p.a.ce. Hull breach. They reached the irised hatch to bay six. It was firmly closed and would not open on command nor at the controls.

"Box!" Abaron yelled.

Chapra shook her head. This was happening, this was real, she had to accept it. She turned. In the corridor; a shape moving very fast. It was Rhys carrying the girl under his arm. The Golem jerked to an abrupt halt by them and released the girl. She reached out and grabbed Chapra's hand.

"Step away from the door," said Rhys, and raised his singun. The weapon made no sound. A fleck of black appeared in the centre of the door and the door screamed as it folded; a sheet of paper crumpled by a fist. Then the door, now a wrinkled ovoid of metal, thumped to the floor. Rhys held out the gun to Abaron. "Here," he said. Abaron shook his head. Rhys handed it to Chapra. The b.u.t.t felt slick and the gun was heavy. It was horribly real.

"Aren't you coming with us?" she asked.

The Golem grinned at her and fled away down a corridor that now seemed to be twisting, splitting. More explosions. They ran into the huge bay and gaped out through a shimmer-shield at a pa.s.sing vast shape, and the burning of h.e.l.lish fires. The shuttle crouched like an iron sparrow hiding from the raptor outside. Abaron opened the door. Inside, the girl refused Chapra's help and strapped herself in. Chapra dropped the gun into a wall pouch. Abaron stared at the controls, his hands clenching and unclenching. Chapra pushed him aside and sat in the pilot's chair. He took the one next to it. As they strapped in, something crashed and violet fire flared to one side of the bay. The shuttle began to slide down a tilted gravity field.

"Now!" screamed Abaron.

Chapra used override to knock out the shimmer-shield. The bay full of air exploded into vacuum, sucking the shuttle out into a Dante night. The acceleration slammed the three of them back into their seats and something went crashing down in the back of the shuttle. Chapra reached and grabbed the control column and using booster steering wrenched the shuttle in the opposite direction from that pa.s.sing shape. Wreckage was spewing across s.p.a.ce, fragments and molten metal, nebulous sheets of fire with no gravity to give them shape, then clear s.p.a.ce. Chapra ignited the shuttle's small but powerful ionic drive. The huge wedge and the fragmenting Box fled behind them. She adjusted their course as now there was only one place to hide. The moons in the system were too small and the only other planet was no option at all it being a gas giant. Chapra tapped controls and one half of the screen showed a reverse view. The wedge was close to the Box, enfilading it with missiles. It wasn't using lasers on the big ship, nor particle weapons. Missiles were much less wasteful of energy, and much more destructive. Chapra was immediately reminded of the PSR chopping up the sphere of ice in which the Jain had slept. This looked almost surgical - what they saw of it before the screen whited-out.

"What was that?" asked Abaron.

"Laser. Burnt out all our external coms," said Chapra. She kept the acceleration on and checked a reading from the radar, which did not have enough of its delicate parts outside to be wiped out. Two shapes were accelerating after them. She only hoped they would not have the fuel to sustain that acceleration.

"Smart missiles," said Abaron, his face white and beaded with sweat.

"Yes."

They sat in silence watching the trace from the missiles grow stronger, then strong enough for them to see the shape and smooth beauty of these clever weapons. They were close. Chapra was white-knuckling the throttle for the ion drive. There was no way to get anything more out of it. Five wracked-out minutes pa.s.sed before they realised the missiles were getting no closer.

"How long can we keep this up?" asked Abaron.

"Not much longer. We have to decelerate for the planet."

"If we do that they'll get us."

Chapra nodded and from the instrument readings did a high-speed calculation in her head. In twenty minutes they must begin to decelerate or they would not be able to go into orbit. Not landing was out of the question because there just was not enough fuel for them to keep on running until the Cable Hogue arrived. She realised she had no answers. Unless the missiles ran out of fuel they were dead.

"What do we do?" asked Abaron, obviously willing to defer to her authority. Chapra was about to tell him she did not know, but suddenly she did.

"This shuttle and the missiles are both at maximum acceleration," she said. She looked at him. "Do you think you can handle the controls. Delicately?"

"What do you want?" he asked.

"On my signal I want you to reduce our acceleration and bring the missiles in as close as you can. Fifty metres. Less if you think you can do it."

"What are you going to do?"

"Those missiles are probably the same as are being fired at the Box - hull piercers. Detonating them that close to us shouldn't do us any harm."

"How do you know that?" he asked dully.

"I'm old. I did other jobs before I studied xenology," she said.

"How are you going to detonate them?"

Chapra smiled at him, a little crazily, she thought, as she clamped down on that smile. "I'm going to shoot them with the singun."

Chapra got out of the pilot's chair and Abaron took over the controls. She went back into the main cabin where the girl watched her intently as she donned a s.p.a.cesuit. The singun was heavy and she set its controls to the maximum. The singularity would last a full three seconds with each shot. She stepped into the airlock, attached a safety line, then over the suit com said, "I'm going out there now. Start reducing acceleration - gently - in about a minute."

Out of the artificial gravity of the shuttle Chapra felt the tug of acceleration. It felt to her as if she was leaning out the window of a tower and looking down into fire and darkness. Holding tightly to the singun she rested her arms down the hull and aimed beyond the ionic glare of the shuttle's engines. Acceleration dropped, then dropped again. Two silvery nubs rose up out of the darkness. She aimed at them and saw the range-finder on the gun going crazy as the ionic halo confused it. She fired and fired again, black bars cut through the glare. She swore, aimed carefully, fired a third time. Her visor polarised. One missile disappeared in a brief flash and the other missile tumbled away. Chapra quickly pulled herself back inside. Her arms and face were burning and she wondered just how many rads she had taken. Inside the shuttle and out of the suit, Chapra rubbed emollient cream on her face. Her arms had been heated inside the suit, but had not burned. She reckoned her face would peel, though funnily enough, the skin under her caste mark was unburned.

"You got them," said the girl. "We're safe now."

"I wish I could agree with you," said Chapra, stepping up into the control c.o.c.kpit. She grinned at Abaron, but saw he did not look happy. "What is it?" she asked. He was studying the radar display.

"We're ahead of it at the moment, but there's a craft coming after us."

"Not missiles?"

"No."

Chapra sat down and began using the onboard computer. "We'll be able to get into orbit and land before it catches us. We'll be a couple of hours ahead of it."

"Will that help?"

"Of course it will."

Chapra's smile was set. She thought about infrared tracking and scanning, about the weapons that craft might have. She checked the time piece under her fingernail. They had roughly fifty hours until the Cable Hogue arrived. They just had to survive that long.

In high definition hologram Schrodinger's Box died. It drifted in s.p.a.ce surrounded by a swarm of smart missiles and a spreading halo of dispersing air and water crystals. Occasionally a missile or two would detach from the swarm, dart in through the laser defence to pierce the hull and detonate far inside. The long tail of the ship had broken away as had many of the external sensors and probe ports. There were gaping holes in the hull rimmed with skeletal members black over red internal fires.

"There's a com laser in the nose section," said Speck, his hands moving in a caress across the weapons console. A smart missile moved in close, flashing red in coms laser fire. Another went in underneath it like a pack dog going for the underbelly. It flashed and, trailed vapour, detonated above the science vessel's skin. That area of the hologram went black for a moment, then cleared to reveal a warped and glowing area of hull. "It's down. Couple more like that to deal with and we can send one of the General's gunships across."

Kellor glanced at Conard then returned his attention to the hologram. It wasn't enough that the ship was gutted: Conard wanted no less than total annihilation, which on a ship of that size was a demolition job rather than an attack.

"There won't be anyone alive over there," Kellor said, just for the h.e.l.l of it. "They're away in that shuttle."

"That will soon be remedied. I have some of my best men on it," said Conard tersely.

Kellor smiled to himself. He had met the soldier Beredec and immediately recognised a career mercenary. Conard's best men were not the usual Confederation grunts. Conard went on, "There is no-one alive over there, but there are AIs. I want them all." He turned to one of his aides. "Take four men over with you. Let Davis carry the CTD."

The aide grinned nastily and turned on his heel. Kellor looked at Jurens, who pressed a thumb against his chest then tapped the knife at his belt. Kellor gave a slight nod and Jurens grinned, exposing artificially white teeth in his bearded face. He had lost his original set to an officer just like that aide.

Atmosphere thundered against the ceramic undersides of the shuttle's stubby wings and wide body. Haden was an orange and white arc cutting the screen in two. Around the edges of the screen was a red glow from the heating hull. They had managed to dump velocity with ion engine braking but were still entering atmosphere at design limits. The shuttle gravity was sluggish to compensate for this kind of treatment and they were not completely cushioned from the violence of entry into atmosphere.

"It's going to have to be the sea," said Chapra. "We won't be able to get the speed down enough for a vertical landing. Take too long. I suggest we all get into full environment suits." She did not comment on their chances of surviving in a sea of boiling water if the shuttle broke up. Perhaps it would be better not to wear a suit at all then death would be quicker.

"Can't you use the AG units to slow us?" asked Abaron.

"A little, if I tilt them. We don't want to end up skating across the gravity field else we'll take as long to slow as if we'd stayed airborne."

Abaron nodded then went back into the pa.s.senger compartment. He was gone for a little while before he returned wearing an environment suit with the visor flipped up and carrying another suit for Chapra.

"I almost forget," he said.

"What?"

He gestured with a thumb into the pa.s.senger compartment. "She doesn't need one."

Chapra nodded, then handed the controls over to him while she pulled on her suit. In a short time the view through the screen was of the crinkles of mountains, red flat deserts and jungles of light green vegetation. The sun was bright orange, oblate, and its corona filled half the sky with concentric bands of its refracted spectrum. The rest of the sky was a red ochre that reminded of African earth.

"Are you well-strapped in back there?" Chapra asked.

"I am," replied the girl.

"Okay, be ready to be thrown about a bit. We're landing on the ocean and internal gravity is unlikely to be able to compensate quickly enough. Could be b.u.mpy."

"I am prepared," said the girl, which was not really a little girl sort of thing to say.

The edge of the land ma.s.s came into view. An orange sea foamed against slabs of rock and wide sandy beaches. Out beyond this they lost sight of the sea as Chapra turned the shuttle to its optimum braking att.i.tude. The constant roar increased in pitch and hot sparks of something skated across the screens.

"I'm using braking thrusters!" she shouted over the noise. The braking thrusters added to the roar and the labouring AG units, normally only used for gentle manoeuvring, made a deep thrumming sound. There was no perceptible change of velocity.

"Going in!"

The noise was terrible. They were jerked forward against their straps, flung back. Spray and volatile water foamed across the screen. Then the nose abruptly dipped and ploughed into the sea. A hand of force flung them forwards again and held them against their straps. Chapra could not get her breath. The pressure was huge, and this was with the shuttle gravity compensating, unless it was out. How was the shuttle holding together? The roar went on and on then slowly started to diminish. The pressure came off, and as it did so, Chapra turned off the AG. She looked up. Spray quickly slewed from the screen's frictionless surface. The braking thrusters were slowly bringing them to a halt. Outside was a rolling sea. A quarter kilometre ahead of them was one of a wide scattering of jungle-covered atolls. Chapra checked the radar and shivered when she saw how many of them they had missed.

"We've got a couple of leaks," said Abaron. "Automatics are dealing with them."