Burnt Ice (37 page)

‘Got one! Here are the
schematics.’

‘Right. We go through the front
door. Brace for impact!’

Glint grabbed Nail, pulling him
close, then rolled into a ball, jamming himself into the spare seat behind
Fritz.

Marko had saved the last of the
AG power for the final few seconds of flight and watched until they were about
a hundred metres above the ground, then shunted control of it across to the
major. The lander swooped down between the buildings, banked sharply, then
smashed through the doors of the main power generation for the whole facility
as the major washed off the momentum with the AG. Everyone’s seat surrounds
suddenly inflated as the computers anticipated the crash, forcing them into
optimum crash positions, cushioning each of them. It was still a very rough
landing, the tail section hitting the door supports, hard-slewing the craft
around, then pounding it onto the concrete floor as it slid up against the
first bank of power turbines. The lander came to a grinding, smoking halt and
Jan, Fritz and Marko got out, weapons drawn. Ernst was already operating on
Harry to remove the metal spike.

‘Glint, Nail. Any sign of Flint?’

‘No, Marko. He’s gone.’

‘Shit! Fritz, get our own comms
relays sorted. Nail, get out the front door and have a quick look around.
Glint, go with Nail. Any aerial units seen, regard them as hostile — you are
free to try out your toy any time you wish. Topaz, pull up everything you can
on what’s in this building.’

‘Major, I have uplinked to the
comms satellite. Only got a part-message away. We’re being blocked — Games
Board tech.’

‘Fuck!’ said the major. ‘That’s
just what we needed! High speed, look around, people. Tell me what we have to
work with. Jan, my compliments, Ernst has earned his pay today. Harry’ll be
sore but battle-mobile in a few hours. We must expect company of some sort
soon. Games Board tech? Not good.’

The crew observed as Nail spotted
five small recon units hovering thousands of metres above them and Glint shot
them down.

‘That should fuck the bastard up.
27 must be really wondering what the hell is engaging his assets — all he’ll
see is a fuzzy cat. Glint will be difficult to spot with his chameleon-ware
engaged.’

Marko imagined what Glint would
look like with his head rotated to the rear, skull distorted to give his eyes
maximum spacing, four legs braced to form the weapon platform and his spine
perfectly straight right to the very tip of his tail, with the 7mm-calibre
linear rifle down the centre of his spine.

‘Jan and Fritz, keep an eye out.
Marko, find us a couple of carriers — we need to grab as much as we can from
the lander and move as soon as we can.’

Marko located a pair of
blunt-nosed AG tugs, slaved one to the other, hooked up a pair of AG trailers
and moved them up against the wreck of the lander.

‘Marko, help Harry on board.
Topaz and Ernst, go with him, grab half the rifles and half the ammo — plus
half the stores. Everyone load into heavy suits. Might as well keep sealed up.’

Harry groaned and shot a glance
at the major.

‘Harry, yeah, I know, mate, you
too. Sorry, no more painkillers. I need you alert. No ICE yet, people. Marko,
as soon as you’re ready, go to this building here. It’s part of the main
engineering workshops. Shows a heavy assembly area. When you get there start
armouring it. You know the drill. Jan, Fritz, fall back. We move in five
minutes.’

Marko helped Harry up against his
armour container as it attached additional armour, a battle helmet and weapons,
then attached his own container. He heaved the 14mm sniper rifles in their
cases and half of the consumable stores onto the trailer. As he worked he
started making notes of anything else to be salvaged from the lander. Not much,
he decided. A few auxiliary power units, the navigation gear, two sets of side
attitude thrusters and one fusion rocket assembly were still OK. But that would
take time to disassemble. One of the medium-calibre rotary cannons was inside
its housing and its magazine was intact. He could see it would also take an
hour to remove it, as the crash had jammed all the access panels around it.

Harry was furious. ‘Scratch one
really nice lander that I spent a great deal of time teching up. Someone’ll be
paying for this bullshit, Marko.’

‘Yeah, totally with you on that,
Harry. How about we come back and grab that rotary soonest? Should give us some
serious punch.’

‘Good idea. I so want to fuck
something, or someone, up pretty badly.’

As soon as they were loaded up,
Marko stood at the controls of the AG tug and lifted off, taking them through
the covered paths to the engineering building, a few hundred metres from the
crash site. They arrived without incident, although big fat blue blowflies were
everywhere, but ignored by everyone. Marko — leaving Harry on the back of the
tug facing the door in the centre of the large open workshop space — quickly trotted
around the building, taking stock of anything useful to them.

The engineering building was
large, squat and single storey, with many skylights and all the paraphernalia
expected in a construction and maintenance workshop. Racks of tools, plasma
cutters, welders, drills, compressors and riveters lined the walls with large
racks of pipes, plate and insulation materials stored in a side room.
Everything needed to build equipment, but nothing that could be used as a
weapon ... apart from numerous blunt instruments.

By the time he got back to the
tug, the rest of the crew had arrived, closing the doors behind them.

‘Nail, Glint, start gathering
info on the area. Any sensor that you see within a hundred-metre radius is to
be destroyed. Try to isolate us, power-wise, from main control. 27 knows we’re
here, but he doesn’t need to know everything. OK, let’s secure this building as
best we can. 27 wants us alive for some reason. Harry, climb into one of those
loaders, mate. Fritz, you take the other. Plate off those access doors and side
windows. Marko, you and I are on welders. Jan, keep comms with the ACEs, learn
as much as you can. Let’s go.’

It was a fast and furious few
hours. The two engineering walkers picked up steel plate, pushing it against
the accesses as whoever was closest welded them into place. It was not pretty,
and maybe it was futile — they did not know what 27 was planning — however it
gave them a sense of security. The final jobs were bashing together an armoured
door inside the one entrance that they kept useable. Then they assembled a
bunker of sorts around the smoko room, making themselves as comfortable as
possible, then called the ACEs inside.

These bloody flies are awful.
There are thousands of them. It’s like they’re waiting for us to open our
visors or something. Here, watch this. I’ll make out I’m opening the visor.’

Jan folded her heavy helmet back.
As she touched the faceplate of her primary armour, twenty or more flies
immediately landed on the joints.

‘Boss, we may have a real problem
here.’

‘What, Harry?’

‘I don’t think these flies are
real, well not entirely anyway. I note that they have no interest in the AIs or
the ACEs either. Topaz, I’m going to make as if I am removing my glove. I’ll do
so over your sensor suite. Grab one and analyse it.’

Harry made to unlock his glove
and more flies alighted on the mechanism. Topaz promptly sucked a few into her
sensors, as the major watched closely, before saying, ‘Right. Now, that is just
not nice. I hate insects. Everyone stay sealed until we know what we’re dealing
with.’

Topaz, a few moments later,
unfolded one of her larger viewing screens, showing a detailed view of what she
could see in the insects.

‘Harry is correct,’ said Topaz.
They are essentially flies, but are controlled by nanotes that are hardwired
into their brains. The tech used is not familiar to me. If they are in the
control of 27 then we are in trouble.’

‘Bloody hell! We need fly spray.
Jan, Fritz, take a tug, get back to the lander and gather all the environmental
purgers. If you see anything you don’t like, punch them, but don’t engage
solidly. Just get back here soonest. Fight and run, got it?’

‘Will do, boss.’

Thirty minutes later they were
back, having, seen nothing but more flies. They sealed up the door as best they
could and set off one of the bug bombs all Administration ships carried when
travelling between worlds. Within fifteen minutes all the flies were dead.
Topaz trundled around gathering hundreds of them to carry out further analysis.
The others started pulling benches away from the walls, looking for other
insects, but found only dead cockroach-type critters, which Ernst declared
ordinary. It was curious that there were very few insects and no spiders or
beetles of any kind. Nor did they find that other most common of interplanetary
hitchhikers: rodents.

‘No other bugs, boss. It’s
strange. I thought this place would be crawling — Gjomvik and Administration
both dumped all sorts of nasties here so they could maintain a gene pool, which
begs the question — why the hell would anyone bother?’

‘Don’t know, Fritz, don’t know.
Maybe we’ll learn something yet.’

‘I’ve completed the analysis,’
Topaz announced. ‘There are two types of flies present. One is based on a
carrion fly and the other is a parasitising fly Both carry a host of nasties,
as far as you biologicals are concerned. Do not open your suits under any
circumstances. It would appear that the carrion flies are programmed to gain
access to your skin, bite you and incapacitate you with a virulent neural
toxin. The parasitising fly then will lay larvae, which in time take over your
brain, allowing whoever is controlling them to control you. Whoever is
controlling them is not in the least interested in us artificial entities. It
may be that whoever is controlling this environment has something else in store
for us.’

‘You mean something other than 27
is controlling these bugs, Topaz? Why not 27?’

‘Patrick, Ernst and myself
carried out an in-depth investigation into 27’s capabilities before we left the
station. He does not have the means or the facilities. No previous log mention
pertaining to this facility has ever mentioned invasive insects of any kind.
This system and this planet were irradiated by the same gamma ray burst that
fried the Octopoid Library world. The only life existing here is what humans
and AIs have brought. What are these flies living on? They need nutrients and
there is nothing naturally here either, apart from reptiles and the like. It is
logical that they were brought here for an as yet unspecified purpose, although
I believe that their purpose is to attack humans.’

Fritz grimaced. ‘Insects! Yuck. I
hate insects.’

Topaz continued. ‘The average
lifespan of these types is only thirty standard days in optimum conditions. The
stored food for maintenance engineers is all processed, only enough to sustain
a standard crew for fourteen days. I would estimate that the biomass required
to breed and maintain these flies is enough only to sustain about a million
flies. I also believe that these flies are mid-life cycle.’

‘Yeah, I would agree.’ said
Harry. ‘I used to collect flies as a kid. These are as big as they get.’

‘Therefore.’ Topaz carried on, ‘it
is logical to consider that we have at most fifteen days before this hatching
is all dead. However, whoever bred these up may also be breeding more. The food
and drink that we brought must be tested for contamination as insect material
is probably on the clip-on seals of the packs.’

‘Shit. This gets more interesting
by the minute. Yes, test the food and drink packages, then test the suit ports.
Everyone rotate past Ernst and Topaz for testing. OK, we have a problem: how to
kill lots of bugs in a hurry.’

‘Flame-throwers, boss,’ Harry
said. ‘Bullets are no good, neither are explosives. We have to burn them. OK,
here’s the facility schematics. Emergency power systems are good,
old-fashioned, tough-as-hell, steam boilers, set up to run the turbine-driven
generators if the geothermals malfunction. Spares room is there. We need to
carry out a raid to grab the burner units, and lug as much fuel as we can. We
then build up these AG tugs, and a couple of the loaders, with armour and the
flame-throwers.’