Burnt Ice (50 page)

‘Sure of it, Rick. You seriously
rattled his cage, though! And in answer to your unspoken question, once I have
sorted Fritz, which should only take a few more years, the family and I will
rejoin you.’

‘Good! I shall look forward to
it. That’s a nice little comms unit you have. My compliments to Fritz. He
really is an experiment that worked out rather well. I suppose he still thinks
he’s the only sane one of his kind?’

‘Yeah, he does. You were right
about music being the key to his existence. Lives, eats and breathes the stuff.
Now, old friend, what can you tell me about Stephine and Veg?’

‘Ah, yes. The remarkable couple.
Utterly bonded to each other and bound so that they cannot exist apart for
long. I think that the best thing that I can say to you about them is that they
are very, very good friends to all of us. But whatever you do, don’t piss them
off.’

‘Hey! So that’s all you’ll tell
me about them?’

‘Yes, Harry. Sometimes the best
things are old, secret truths. All the sweeter when such is finally revealed.’

‘Same old Rick!’

~ * ~

Four

A
disc-shaped platform slid down beside, then underneath them, with a hatchway
folding open like a large multi-petalled flower.

‘Jan, hold steady right where you
are. Veg, I have indicated in your display where the computers and AI are — or,
where their remains are, logically. It looks to me as if all those areas have
been burrowed into. Just slice away the excess,’ Rick said.

Veg used the waldos to rotate the
forty-metre-long cylindrical piece, powered up the engineering lasers and,
after checking that his firing lines were clear, spent ten minutes slicing away
anything surplus, carefully juggling the piece between the claws, until left
with a seven-metre-diameter armoured ball. Rick was right. Something had
managed to burrow into the ball, although Veg thought the invaders must have
been smaller creatures because the holes were not that big.

‘Think I’m done.’

‘Good. Just hold it out; let it
go when the recovery unit takes it.’

Veg extended the ball as far down
as the arms would allow as the disc flew further beneath them, then rose until
the ball was almost inside the hatch. The petals then grasped the ball as Veg
let it go. As the craft slid out from under them and began climbing straight up
on AG, the petals folded over the ball, pushing it down inside the craft.

‘The hawsers are here, Marko.
Hey, look at the ends! Now that is amazing.’

‘Yeah, that’s nice tech, Fritz.’

They watched the carbon nanotube
ropes slide down to the wreck, their ends splitting, then splitting again. As
the dozens of long, finger-like pieces of rope touched the target piece of the
wreck, they seemed to come alive. They twisted and groped down into the
wreckage, looking for holding points. Marko ramped up the magnification on the
visual feeds. Jan flew them closer to see how the ropes, once they had found a
solid piece, were knotting themselves onto it then locking. Within twenty
minutes the line went taut, as the whole piece of wreckage ascended skywards.

‘Boss. Is
Rick
winching it
up, or what?’

‘No, Jan. He’s just climbing
away, towing it.’

Rick spoke over the comms link. ‘OK,
people. Now that we are ascending, I want you to cut away anything not cryo
chamber, the AI, or the power sources for both. Oh, and please don’t cut
through my ropes, OK? They’ll rotate out of the way as you cut the excess.’

‘Suggest that you come alongside,
Stephine. Hold station and we’ll circle the wreckage,’ said Veg.

‘On my way. I’ve picked up
Basalt’s
original intel drone. Good unit, free of contamination and in good order, no
doubt due to the fact that its three little maintenance drones are still with
it. Should be able to upgrade its data systems and put it back to work.’

Jan flew the lifter slowly around
the large cylinder — which consisted of decks, machine spaces, generators,
spare AG units and empty fuel tanks — that was climbing into the emerging dawn.
As Marko and Fritz identified the parts they did not want, Veg and Stephine carefully
lasered them away, letting them fall back into the sea. They worked down
through the layers of unwanted decks, walls, floors and equipment, eels and
other fish-type creatures flopping out of holes and crevices. Marko dearly
wanted to have a few drones to sample the bounty of life, but was too busy to
gather any of it — much to his chagrin. By the time they had risen above the
bulk of the planet’s atmosphere all that was left was a solid piece of ice
encasing a 25-metre-wide ball of the cryo unit, the still gibbering AI and a
large, portable fusion reactor power plant.

‘I think we now have confirmation
that Fritz is right.’

Veg linked them all into an image
of a human skull, with part of its spine still encased in the ice.

‘The external acoustic meatus
appears to have been considerably enlarged. Looks like something has chewed its
way inside the head of this person.’

‘That is just nasty, Jan.’

‘Not able to confirm until I get
a close look, Veg.’

‘You could have just called it an
ear hole, Jan,’ Fritz complained.

‘Yes, Fritz, but we are here to
educate you every day!’

‘Time to dock people. Veg, you
and Stephine are cleared to dock here and undergo surface decontamination. I’m
beginning to gather everything to me.’

Marko hunted through the external
visual feeds until he located
Rick,
and the small
Basalt
beside
him. He could also see the three enormous water-processing ships slowly locking
back into
Rick’s
hull. From every direction, smaller ships were
converging, flying into the cavernous hangar decks of the giant ship, some
towing objects, while others had grasped them, and the even bigger pieces of
technology were being pushed by the tugs.

‘Hey, Rick. You didn’t encounter
any problems with the urchins?’

‘No, they were the very least of
my concerns. I simply shotgunned hundreds of packets of antimatter in all
directions. Kept the little critters very busy, Marko. Jan, I have control of
the lifter. Sit back and enjoy the ride.’

Jan visibly relaxed. She climbed
out of her flight pod, stretched, walked back, gave Marko a quick kiss, then
headed aft. Thirty minutes later she returned, looking totally refreshed, and
carrying drinks and packages of Marko’s chocolate-chip biscuits. After passing
round the drinks and cookies, she looked out at the looming bulk of
Rick.

‘Pity you guys don’t have the
time.
Rick’s
shower units are just the nicest I have used! Really, I’m
serious. We should have those over on
Basalt.’

‘They have plenty of time, Jan,’
Rick said. ‘All the time that they need, in fact. Once you are on board I shall
establish an airlock between the lifter and
Basalt.
In fact, how about
you take the Pincer with you to
Basalt
? Consider it a gift from a doting
uncle! You can just attach it to your outer hull as I see that you would not be
able to hangar it.’

‘That is an extraordinary gift,
Rick! Not sure how we could repay you.’

‘It is a gift, Michael. No
repayment of any sort required.’

‘Our thanks. We accept.’

Marko looked around the Pincer’s
cockpit and smiled and nodded, thinking that he would enjoy the craft. He
caught Jan’s eye. She winked at him.

‘Veg? You want to go check out
the shower?’

‘Don’t mind if I do. Thanks,
Marko.’

Marko was watching the recovered
cryo unit. The ropes had let it go. A group of drones flew a large, opaque envelope
over it, activated a seal, then inflated it. They pushed it up and over the
edge of
Rick.
Try as he might, Marko could not find any visual feeds to
show him what happened to it. Looking back at the ropes, he found they had
formed back into themselves as the mass clumped together, disappearing into
Rick’s
outer hull. The lifter entered a featureless cavity, with the rear camera
showing a rapidly closing door. High-pressure jets began spraying greenish
fluid over the craft, covering every part of the exposed surface. A second,
milky fluid was then sprayed over them, followed by what Marko assumed was
water. The rear door irised open and the fluid vaporised and was released into
space. The door closed again as Rick spoke.

‘Activate your UV light precautions
and totally shield your eyes and skin, people. I have no desire to build you
new ones on the journey home. I’m completing the sterilisation process.’

The crew activated their visors
to totally opaque as the lifter was bathed in intense light. Marko’s sensors
showed it as consisting of all the bands of ultraviolet. Minutes later the
lifter reconfigured: the cockpit’s shields closed around it then pulled it back
into the body of the craft; the legs and arms folded tightly into themselves
before also being lifted into the body cavity. Marko smiled, thinking that they
were all now inside an ancient Earth creature called a turtle. As he walked aft
to take a shower, he decided that one day he would get a chance to see what
other excellent machinery
Rick
carried within himself.

A sweet-smelling Veg walked past
Marko and nodded, commenting that he could see why Jan had been so impressed
with the shower unit. Marko slipped into it himself. He stripped, placed his
ship suit into a receptacle which sealed then activated, then did the same with
his helmet. He stepped into the shower’s multiple pulsing jets; these gave his
body a thorough cleansing and massage at the same time. He was smiling as he
exited to be met by a grinning Glint.

‘Jan told me that I have to try
this out. She told me that I would not need soap, so I brought a toothbrush
instead.’

Marko laughed, took his clean
ship suit and helm from the receptacles and allowed them to partially form
around him before beating a hasty retreat, not wanting to be subjected to the
dreadful sounds of Glint singing what he called opera as he showered.

They felt the lifter moving
again, followed by thuds on the outer hull as the airlock cycled, then opened,
allowing them passage to
Basalt.
Marko and Veg left the lifter with
their suit containers. Jan was arguing with Fritz about the fact that he should
take a shower. They rounded the bend in the access tube and the last they heard
of the argument was Glint offering to tow Fritz by the head, if necessary.
After dropping the suit containers off, Marko went back to retrieve his
all-important biological samples. Once he had them back in
Basalt,
he
handed them to Ernst and Topaz so they could start gleaning all the secrets for
him.

Fritz, who was watching dozens of
different visual feeds, yelled, ‘Guys, if you can get to a screen, there’s a
live feed coming from the planet.’

An enormous ship lifted over the
horizon, heading out to the nearest LP.

‘Enhance that image, Patrick, and
zoom it up. Shit! Will you look at that! That’s the artefact, but fifty times
bigger. Stephine, you watching this?’

‘Yes, Michael. It is the
artefact, now in full-blown ark mode. I believe that it has been here all this
time to save as many of the biosystems from the planet as possible. I wonder
what intelligence controls it, and where it is going?’

Rick commented, ‘Too late to
attach an intel drone to it at that acceleration. Even my gear couldn’t catch
it. What a pity I’m sure it could have taught us a great deal. However, I do
have an astronomical drone parked in each of the LPs, so we’ll get a good idea
of where it’s heading.’

~ * ~

‘Harry,
I’m receiving a most intriguing request.’