By Blood Alone (22 page)

He waited for the numbers, not wanting to hear them, but knowing that he must. The preliminary report was even worse than he had feared. Fully fifty percent of Assault Team Victor was KIA, WIA, or MIA.

Was Pardo at fault, for withholding the resources he needed? Or was he to blame, for attempting too much? The answer seemed obvious. The burden was heavy.

Booly left the sit room the moment the muties cleared the coast. He summoned a Trooper II, climbed onto the cyborg’s back, and strapped himself in. The helmet jack entered a panel provided for that purpose. “Take me to the LZ located near Hol Hol. Condition five—assault speed.”

The cyborg said, “Sir, yes, sir,” and started to jog. Booly could remember when the sideways, up-and-down motion had made him nauseous, but that was a long time ago, in what seemed like a different lifetime.

Fykes swore any number of colorful oaths, commandeered a scout car, and followed behind. How many muties had missed the bus? One? Ten? A hundred? Whatever the number, they were out there, and Booly, with his ass literally hanging in the breeze, made a prime target.

Hol Hol was a relatively small community located just southwest of Djibouti. Booly was struck by the random manner in which some streets had survived untouched while others were heavily damaged. Good luck, bad luck, all mixed together.

The cyborg turned to the left, circled a wrecked hover bus, and picked his way down a fire-blackened boulevard. One of the mutie fighters had crash
ed a half mile to the south, sliced through two rows of palm trees, and slammed into a trash filled fountain.

Booly could see the pilot as they passed, her helmet resting against the plane’s canopy, blood dribbling from her mouth. He requested an aid team and gave them the location.

The colonial-era buildings started to thin after that, gradually giving way to pastel monstrosities, and a row of slovenly huts.

Booly bent his knees to absorb the shock, allowed the harness to take his weight, and tallied the cost.

There were muties, dead where the airborne guns found them, lying in a ditch.

And there, in the field just beyond, a line of shell craters, ringed by smoldering grass fires, and chunks of partially cooked meat. A pair of vultures, their stomachs already full, lurched into the air.

Then came a troop transport, guns threatening the sky, flames licking the hood. The driver’s hands were on the wheel, but his head was missing. One of his? One of theirs? Booly couldn’t tell. It hardly mattered.

The radio crackled with casualty reports, requests for assistance, and ECM-related static. An aid station had been established next to a protective antiaircraft battery. POWs stood with their hands on their heads while a VTOL fly form lowered itself to the ground. It blew grit into Booly’s face as he freed himself from the harness and jumped to the ground.

Captain Hawkins appeared at his elbow. Blood oozed from the abrasion on the left side of her face. Her helmet was missing, and she looked concerned. “It’s Major Judd, sir. He took a slug through the chest.”

Booly listened as the leg officer led him into the aid station. “The major was something to see, sir. He took Delta company out of that ditch like the RMLE at Verdun! I never had much respect for him. Not till today.”

Stretchers lined both sides of the tent. Judd was third back on the right side. IVs fed both arms, but he still looked pale. Booly glanced at a medic, and she shook her head. The executive officer was alive—but just barely. Booly knelt next to the officer and spoke his name. “Major Judd?”

The legionnaire opened his eyes, struggled to focus, and coughed. Blood spilled onto his chin. The words were little more than a whisper. “Sorry, Colonel, but I don’t think I can stand.”

Booly felt a lump form in his throat. “At ease, Major ... and congratulations! You turned the tide.”

Judd looked hopeful. “I did? Really?”

“Yes,” Booly answered gently. “You won the battle.”

Judd frowned and coughed. His eyes seemed to dim, and the words were barely audible. “Don’t forget D Company, sir. They were a credit to the Legion.”

Booly swallowed, knew Judd was gone, and closed his eyelids. “Yes ... and so were you.”

The officer stood and turned to find that a naval aviator was waiting to see him. She had green eyes and a plain, straightforward face. She held a helmet under her arm. A bloodstained battle dressing marked the place where something had torn through her flight suit as the ejection blew her free of the cockpit. Sergeant Fykes handled the introduction. “This is Captain Tyspin, sir. She flew one of the Daggers... and commands
Gladiator.”

Tyspin felt awkward about having witnessed Judd’s death, but was glad that she had. Here was an officer who cared about the people under his command and deserved their respect. She could see it in his eyes.
Gray
eyes that were filled with intelligence and brightened as Fykes spoke.

“Captain Tyspin! We owe you a debt of gratitude. Hell, we owe you everything! Air support made all the difference. Medic! See to the captain’s arm.... We’d be hamburger if it weren’t for her.”

Tyspin shucked the top half of the flight suit and sat while the medic cut the old dressing away, squirted some cream into the cut, and applied a self-sealing bandage. It seemed natural to tell Booly about the infighting among her peers, the problems with Admiral Pratt, and the trouble she was in.

The legionnaire responded by laying out the strategic situation and what he saw as the almost inevitable outcome. He shrugged. “We bought some time... but that’s all. The muties will either return in force or whittle us down. There’s no way to stop them, not without help from the Navy, and more of everything.”

Tyspin was about to agree when someone cleared her throat. Both officers turned to find that Captain Winters had entered the tent. A civilian stood at her side. The man was dressed in a ball cap, plaid shirt, and khaki shorts. He could have passed for a tourist if it hadn’t been for the shoulder holster and combat boots that he wore. Booly raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”

Winters produced her usual shit-eating grin. “I’d like you to meet Dr. Mark Benton, sir. He works for a company called Chien-Chu Enterprises.”

“That’s close,” the oceanographer said agreeably, “though not entirely correct. I work for the Cynthia Harmon Center for Undersea Research, which gets the majority of its
funding
from Chien-Chu Enterprises, but what the hell? We certainly listen to what they say.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Booly said, extending his hand. “What brings you to Djibouti?”

“
You
did,” the scientist answered simply. “I’ve got a nuclear sub waiting off the coast. She’s loaded with three hundred volunteers, weapons, and supplies. Where do you want them?”

 

 

Jepp peered around the corner, confirmed that the passageway was clear, and consulted his data pad, or more accurately
Parvin’s
data pad, since the seventy-year-old device still worked and the skeleton had no use for it.

Once the prospector had established a reasonably secure home, and moved Parvin’s supplies to the new location, he redirected his attention.

The vessel was big—but
how
big? Who constructed the ship, and why? Where was it headed? This was the sort of knowledge that would enable him to escape.

The first step was to create a map—and that’s where the data pad came in. By taking copious notes, and marking each intersection with a self-invented system of coordinates, the human had established a fairly good idea of the ship’s layout. He entered the latest findings and used blue spray paint to write “C-43” on the steel bulkhead.

The Sheen mother ship, if that’s what the vessel could properly be called, was shaped like a flava fruit, except that it had an enormous landing bay where the pit would have been, plus thousands of compartments instead of pulp. Jepp had counted forty-three circular corridors so far, all connected by radial passageways A through J.

Of course thousands of compartments remained locked, he’d been unable to establish communications with the robots, and he was no closer to getting off the ship than the day he arrived. But God helps those who help themselves—so the effort would continue.

The human felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise, drew the flechette thrower, and turned one hundred eighty degrees. The prospector felt as if someone or something had been watching him for days now. But t
here was no sign of anything, nor any place to hide. What did it mean? That the loneliness and isolation had affected his mind?

Or, and this was worse, that something really
had
monitored his activities, and could hide in plain sight?

Jepp closed the data pad one-handed. The feeling faded as he backed away. Because he was crazy? It seemed all too possible.

Horth watched his prey back away. There had been previous escapes, far too many of them, but such was the nature of the hunt. To press the attack was to risk the wrath of the shiny thing, which, if it was anything like the master’s, could inflict a great deal of pain. Satisfying his hunger would have to wait.

Jepp turned and walked down the corridor. Hundreds of tiny epithelial cells sloughed off his skin, floated through the air, and sank to the deck. Horth was quick to follow.

 

The Thraki robot was different from the rest of the machines on the ship. It was unique, for one thing, having been constructed for the amusement of a single sentient, and imbued with what could only be described as “needs.” Such as the need to associate itself with a biological entity.

There had been two pairings so far, one with a quadruped that starved to death, and a second with an amoebalike thermovore that refused to leave the comfort of the ship’s heat stacks. There was a
new
prospect, however, a rather promising specimen that the robot planned to find.

Though relatively small when folded into a featureless two-foot cube, the Thraki machine could assume any of 106 mostly useless configurations, and perform a variety of tasks.

That being the case, the robot transformed itself into “acrobat mode,” swung out of the cross-ship cable run, changed to “magnetic wall-walker mode,” and lowered itself to the deck.

The object of this exercise was a bulkhead-mounted data port, which, though not intended for use by Thraki machines, could be utilized by any being clever enough, or malleable enough, to create the necessary three-pronged fitting.

The Thraki machine possessed
all
the necessary capabilities and wasted no time plugging itself into the digital flood. Billions upon billions of bits of information flowed through the ship’s electronic nervous system every second.

Though safe within an eddy, the robot knew the current could carry it away, and into a filter. Or, and this would almost certainly be worse, the Hoon itself!

The trick was to stay at the periphery of the flow and sift for clues. Given that the Hoon and its servants had no interest in the kind of being the robot was looking for, they rarely mentioned them. Not unless they caused some sort of trouble.

Take the little two-legged hopper, for example. The Thraki machine happened to be on-line when the creature bounced around a comer and was crushed by a large maintenance droid.

Rather than make mention of the fact that an unauthorized and presumably alien life-form was hopping about the ship, the droid reported a sudden and unexplained “mess,” and recommended that an appropriate unit be sent to mop it up.

So, by monitoring such communications, and scanning for patterns, the unit was able to “guess” where its quarry might be. It wasn’t long before the robot intercepted reports regarding nonstandard bulkhead graphics and knew some sort of sentient was responsible for them. Was this the “companion” it was supposed to befriend? There was only one way to find out.

 

The memory module swirled with mostly meaningless activity. They were a diverse bunch, these various beings, all burdened by the beliefs, vices, and limitations of their creators. Creators who ironically enough didn’t meet the Hoon’s criteria for intelligent life, since as they were “soft” rather than “hard,” and impossible to electronically assimilate.

The landscape, which the navcomp “saw” as a sort of green desert, was flat for the most part, and bulged where the rusty red Hoon mountains pushed their way up from below. The gridwork sky was given to spectacular displays of blue-white lightning, often followed by prolonged data storms.

There was very little to do. Some of the inmates reacted to this by engaging in what seemed like endless squabbles. Others, especially the less sociable types, became morose and withdrawn. A few, Henry included, plotted and planned. Not that the activity did them much good, since the storage module was virtually escapeproof—a fact that the navcomp had verified via countless excursions, experiments, and observations.