Burnt Ice (17 page)

‘Shit!’ said the captain. ‘I’d
forgotten about them. Get them back. If we have to leave before they return,
then have them attach to the artefact. Did the moon one turn up any info?’

‘A great deal of data, but no one
has the time to look at it.’

‘Of course. Lotus, do you have
any idea how long you need? We can come back, you know.’

‘I am very aware of that. Thank
you, captain. However, it would not be me returning, would it? Nor your crew.
It would be a much more senior team. At the very least, five hours more,
captain, and we will have most of the accessible data.’

Seven hours later the Lotus proxy
returned with Fritz and Sirius. Harry started the modifications to their craft
as soon as they docked. The rest of the crew woke up the ship and fired up the
main fusion engines; they were soon climbing away from the planet and towards
the closest Lagrange point, some ten hours away. All the drones swept back
towards them, to be gathered in one by one, modified with weapons and sent back
out, in close deployment, around
Basalt.

‘Captain.’ said Lotus. ‘We have
detection at the Lagrange point. Urchins. Appears to be at least eight adults.
Nil detection anywhere else, so far. We have two hours to range.’

‘Bugger, bugger, bugger! OK.
Everyone suit up. Combat protocols. Maintain atmospheric pressure only in the
hydroponics and sick bay. You get your wish, Harry. Marko, Harry, Jan, deploy
the skuas. This will be a close-run thing. Get up there and destroy them. Then
a hot RV and we jump. If you don’t get back in time, I’ll run past the LP and
pick you up. We’ll fight through, if there are any left alive. We must expect
other welcoming committees in the next LPs, as we move out of the system. The
moon fast launcher is not going to make it back in time for a pick-up. Have it dock
against the artefact. We’ll advise Admin about it for a future pick-up.’

Marko trotted down to the main
hangar, stripped and hopped into his combat suit container. The suit did its
thing and five minutes later he emerged, jogging down a few decks to where the
Zero G combat-type skuas were tucked into their deployment and recovery
cradles, which were now swung up against individual tubular airlocks. Zero G
was a bit of a misnomer. It could fly in atmosphere as well, but rather badly.
Marko made a mental note to read up on what pilots who had flown against the
octopoids thought of the experience. But pilots really liked them. A cockpit,
shielding, heavy engines, heaps of manoeuvrability, and some really gnarly
weapons all crammed into a unit eight metres long.

Marko clambered up into the
heavily armoured cockpit, closed and sealed the hatch, then woke up the little
beast, while his suit plugged itself in. The acceleration seat contoured around
him, locking him into itself. He ran through the checklists and noted that his
two crewmates were also ready to launch. The indicators showed the main bay was
a few minutes from vacuum. The tanks throughout the ship stored the atmosphere,
which was a standard Conflict protocol. It was much easier on a ship in combat
if the additional stress of pressurisation had been removed. As soon as vacuum
had been attained the outer doors irised open and the fighters were slid
forwards from the cradles onto the deployment plates.

‘We’re good to go,
Basalt,’
Harry said.

‘Roger, launch when ready.’ the
captain replied.

The locking claws under them let
go and the fighters lifted off the plates, then pulled away from
Basalt,
accelerating hard, using the fusion rockets, towards the urchins with the main
combat manoeuvring thrusters and weapons pods folding out from the mid-sections
of the little craft.
Basalt
slowed until the skuas had a few minutes’
lead.

Marko checked through his
instruments and armed all systems. He remembered he had not backed up his Soul
Saver. He had the skua uplink to
Basalt
and download all the memories,
feelings and thoughts he’d had since his last backup some days beforehand.

‘Fifteen minutes to range,
people.’ Harry’s voice came through the comms link. ‘Form up, slave to me — OK.
I’ll fly us. Jan, you take the right. Marko, the left. I have split my weapons
board, so you have control of half each of my stuff. Close all the shields and
button-up tight. This will be fun!’

Marko smiled, recalling how much
Harry enjoyed a good punch-up. And Jan, from what he knew of her, seemed to
revel in it as well. Every time he had gone up against either of them, whenever
they practised their hand-to-hand combat, he had always lost — and had the
bruises to prove it. It was not as if either of them was mean: they were simply
capable of considerably more.

His combat board was displaying
what the astro drones and
Basalt
could see of the urchins when their
camouflage was electronically removed. He could not see them directly, as the
heavy shields which slid down over the clear dome were under Harry’s control.
The HUD came up. He looked across at his friends, then forwards to the urchins.
They were beautiful — and deadly. They appeared as the most beautiful of all
flowers, fully and gloriously opened — but at the base of each petal was a
mouth, and the coatings of the petals were tough rasp-like tongues. Behind the
flower-like body a long vicious tail was covered in ripping spikes and grasping
tendrils. They could fold, tear and crush almost anything, so long as there was
protein or useable material to be had somewhere in the process. Marko had
always wanted to examine one for himself, having read that they used molecular
acids to weaken the bonds of any material they wanted to break apart or
consume.

‘Fire at will.’

Jan and Marko picked individual
urchins, firing the canister rounds which split apart before impact, the tiny
charges in each pellet of hydrogen and oxygen turning them into highspeed
vapour. As the mixed vapour almost hit the targets they were painted with laser
and plasma fire from the skuas, then from
Basalt,
which also used its
heavy lasers.

The results were spectacular. The
seventy-metre-diameter urchins vanished in the first fires they had probably
ever been exposed to. As he poured rounds into the next target and the one
after that, Marko’s designer mind was wondering why the urchins exploded so
well. The answer to him was fairly obvious. For all their power, they were
lightweight, gossamer-like. It was little wonder they could fly down through a
gas giant’s atmosphere and grab prey. Even their prey was super-lightweight.
They were incredibly tough, but also very flammable when oxygen was present.

Soon all had been killed. Harry
rolled his team up and over, accelerating again, coming up behind
Basalt
three minutes later. As each crew member came in for a hot docking, the skuas
slid up against the hull clamps, which grabbed them hard and held them tight.
Lotus controlled the skuas for this, as the reaction speed required was faster
than the humans’. The captain did not want them taking ICE. They had a long way
to go before they could jump out of the system, with no time to sleep.

They stayed in the cockpits of
the skuas while jumping to the next biggest LP. It too was full of urchins, who
puffed up to full size as soon as
Basalt
appeared from the wormhole.

The captain commanded, ‘Skuas,
hold station. This is a more concentrated group, but we can handle it. Just
keep any we miss off our backs.’

The skuas deployed again and this
time stayed out of the way of
Basalt
as the AI controlled the large
weapons. As the captain flew out of the LP, accelerating and gaining a precise
fix on the next Lagrange point, their instruments showed the few remaining
aliens regrouping, something that Jan found most interesting as they seemed to
expect
Basalt
to return. They played the same game as the first
encounter, but now the timings were extremely critical. As they docked, a small
urchin appeared and attached itself to the main hull, forwards of the
antimatter engines. They watched it as they jumped. As soon as they were
through and into the next group, Harry destroyed it with a canister.

‘So are these bloody things
stalking us?’ Harry said in amazement. ‘How come that one knew where we were
going to be and managed to be in precisely the right place and the right time
considering the speed we are travelling at? These things are either hugely
fortunate or can travel in a way we don’t know about. And you know my views
about so-called luck. Oh and captain, we are now down to thirty-five per cent
ammo and fuel.’

‘OK, Harry. We punch through this
one and head a few hundred kilometres away for a full docking and
replenishment.’

This time as they jumped, three
of the creatures made it to the hull in exactly the same place as the first.

‘Shit! These critters are smart,
all right. The first must have communicated somehow with the others, or left a
message of some sort in the seconds before it was destroyed. Kill them, Jan.’

In the seconds before the pellets
blew them into oblivion, the urchins managed to rip large chunks of armour
plating from above the antimatter generator, exposing and damaging it. They
also destroyed the two combat drones that had been attempting to engage them.
One rapidly spinning piece of hull plate hit the outer shield over Marko’s
canopy, ripping it away.

‘Fuck — that was close! Shit,
those bastards are mean! No other damage. I’m OK.’

They docked quickly on the
extended landing platforms which swung them back inside
Basalt
as the
auto refuelling hoses and ammo carriers locked onto the skuas for replenishing.
The three pilots climbed out of their cockpits, making their way down to the
main engine deck.

~ * ~

Part
Two

Blackened Ice

~ * ~

One

‘Captain,
we have a problem above the number two AM generator and containment. If they
have another go at it we’ll be toast.’ said Harry.

‘Hell, they’re quick. Got through
the armour like it was sliced cheese.’ said Marko.

‘Yeah.’ said Harry. ‘Suggest that
we take the AM containment unit and attach it to one of the drones. We fire the
drone into the Lagrange point next time around and collapse the containment.
The fuel is lost to us anyway. Once away from the main power source the
containment will decay within an hour. Might as well use it.’

‘OK. Let’s do it, Harry. Marko,
how does that leave us fuel-wise for the big jump out of system?’

‘Knife edge, boss. We would
arrive at the next jump point with very little available. If there’s a problem,
such as these bastards, or worse, we couldn’t jump out of the way We would need
to rebuild the unit and make a lot of AM. Either way, that means a chunk of
time.’

‘Harry, is there an alternative
star system in the path we came in on, one rich with comets?’

‘Nope. The best one is in the
opposite direction to home base. The astros catalogued it when we first arrived
in system. The best route is to the forward LP of the closest gas giant. We use
less AM and the mass is not much smaller than the local star anyway. Could be a
good place for the AM bomb, as well, if we’re willing to risk it.’

‘Lotus?’

‘The alternative is the best
option, captain. We only need a couple of weeks to rebuild the unit and
generate sufficient AM fuel. That particular Oort field is of sufficient size
to give us a series of Lagrange points to use — and has a great number of dirty
iceballs.’

‘OK. We’ll get some ice and fry
it up,’ said the captain. ‘We go in really hot to the jump. Lotus, you’ll have
to control the deployment of the AM container. Harry, rig a fast-cutting
explosive and put it on a twenty-second delay in the container. Also jury-rig a
missile to get it quickly away from the ship and into the middle of the LP. You’ll
have to put another three-missile unit on it as well, to act as a brake. Attach
it to the hull at one of the spare skua docks. After the bang, we’ll loop
around and jump again at our leisure, once the astros get a proper fix on that
star’s Oort cloud’s LP. That one we do not want to jump into fast. Could be
nasty. OK, get to it people.’