Crystal Venom (44 page)

‘Shit!
Rick
is taking some solid hits over this lot!’

The major, surrounded by data feeds in the lifter’s cockpit, replied. ‘Not wrong, Harry. Looking at everyone’s cameras, Ivana estimates that only three Avians were unable to get out. Fairly remarkable if you ask me. But then again I am a cynic at heart. And
Rick
will not say why the lander failed. Continue to dock, people. Come on board for a stretch and a drink. We have seventy-two minutes’ flight time and I am taking us high. That shit down there bothers me. Have just been advised that the survivors from the crashed lander will be picked up tomorrow.’

Marko was the last to dock with the lifter. Around him the small gunship recon drones were also coming into dock as they had nowhere else to go after the destruction of their mother ships. He watched as Harry, ahead of him, slid his Chrysops up against the docking grapples that had swung down under the lifter. As soon as the fighter was in contact with three of the six, they softly contracted, grasping the craft like a hand and lifting the cockpit up through the floor of the lifter. As soon as it was snug, the heavy locking cams slid into place and, seconds later, the fuel hoses and ammunition feeds locked themselves on. He keyed Glint’s private comms.

‘Hey, Glint. You want to take this one?’

‘Take what, Marko? Oh, you mean do I want to control the dock? Yes, certainly.’

‘You have control.’

Glint called out. ‘I have control. Hold on!’

As soon as Marko relinquished the controls, he regretted it. Glint poured on the power, rolled the fighter down and away to then rip up under the lifter while performing a perfect barrel roll, and seconds later neatly slotted the cockpit though the floor of the lifter with an almost imperceptible touch. He held the fighter against the lifter until the graspers figured out that they had already docked.

‘That earns you a little bonus, Glint, and probably a kick up the arse from the major!’ the producer commented.

Glint sounded indignant. ‘My thanks, Producer Ivana. But why would I get a remonstration for such an excellent manoeuvre?’

The major took that one. ‘Because, Glint, we do not put additional stress on a craft when it has just been in combat. There may be damage that you are not aware of and something could go dramatically wrong. Nice work, but don’t do it again. OK?’

A slightly contrite Glint answered, ‘Yes, Major, I understand.’

Marko’s restraints let him go and he climbed out of the cockpit. He looked at Glint as he climbed out as well, then leant down and shook him by the hand, combat tapping against Glint’s wrist: ‘Nice! Liked it!’

The ACE suddenly brightened and smiled up at him.

They made their way along the walkway between the cockpits, with the one that had once held Julie’s now destroyed Chrysops sealed off. The rest of the crew smiled at Glint, with Lilly and Jasmine arriving last, climbing down the ladders from where they had docked the Hangers above them. Moments later the monitor, Jim, after reassembling himself, also joined them to record the inevitable non-official debriefing.

The crew had a drink, then carefully checked their individual Chrysops through the lifter’s systems, with Harry finding shrapnel damage in the top engine management systems of his. Everyone moved forwards as Julie and he lifted the deck plates out of the way to get access to the top of the craft. The major brought the lifter to a hover a kilometre above the clouds while they clipped on, then activated, an automatically deployed wrap which sealed the Chrysops against the lifter. This allowed them to work on the machine while the lifter accelerated back up to speed and continued with the mission.

Minutes before they arrived in the vicinity of the next pickup points they finished testing the replaced units. As the lifter descended and slowed down, they had the onboard computer fold the wrap out of the way so they could slam and lock the access hatches back into place. They all climbed back into their cockpits with Julie flying the spare Chrysops. After dropping away from the lifter, Marko noted that there were large areas of open water below them and wondered if the big moon also supported large aquatic life. The plant life floating on the water’s surface looked extraordinary, with huge, deep blue, water-lily-like leaves which must have been at least six metres in diameter. Tucked beneath them were smaller versions of the same leaves, of different colours.

High above them, another of Rick’s dirigibles hovered, directing operations. This time there were even more gunships and, for every one of those, there were two sleek high-speed missile drones — shaped like long elegant sharks — sporting dozens of different configurations of missiles under their wings. The crew of
Basalt
had seen them in various conflicts before and knew that there was also a large warhead in the front of the drones, with drop-down ramjets which could accelerate them up to Mach 8 making them scary weapons to be on the receiving end of.

Harry thought they were overkill and wondered what
Rick
was up to. The rest of the crew were wondering if they would be able to get sufficiently far away to escape the blast if
Rick
decided to use them. They could see the blue intel drone hanging above the designated pick-up point as they started to orbit again.

‘I see no Avians waiting, Marko,’ Minh Pham said.

Marko scanned his screens. ‘Yeah, I don’t either, Minh Pham. And that piece of ground looks very smooth, don’t you think? I bet you
Rick
got this one wrong.’

An agitated-sounding
Rick
answered. ‘No, Marko, this is the point and my intel says it is OK, although I now see the Avians assembling on the other side, away from that stone. OK, no problem, I shall direct the pick-up lander to them.’

The lander slid down out of the clouds again, making a textbook pick-up, although instead of climbing out again — and with every craft escorting it at high speed — it slid down to the centre of a nearby lake and uplifted a small village of refugees from an island. As it started to lift off over the water, something resembling a huge tree slug flung itself up out of the shallow water and latched onto the underside. Two gunships immediately fired at it, but the projectiles passed straight through its writhing soft body as it clung on with its two-metre-wide sucker mouth.

Marko, being closest, rolled in and brought the rail guns to bear, firing continuously and slicing the body away a metre below the mouth. As the body dropped, the mouth segment also died and peeled away, to reveal that the hull plating had almost been eaten through. Bits of the plating were still falling away — whatever was in the creature’s saliva was still active. Marko relayed the images to
Rick. ‘Rick,
you have a problem. You seeing this?’

The Rick proxy that appeared on his screen seemed very angry. ‘Fuck! What a shit of a place. Another expensive lander stuffed. OK, will have to transfer the refugees onto the dirigible. Proceed to the next pick-up. I wonder what horror awaits us there!’

Spike spoke through the crew comms. ‘I think the very big, very powerful
Rick
does not like his assets being beaten up on by mere biologicals, Marko.’

Marko laughed. ‘I think that you’re right, Spike. Did he talk with you when you saw him in the mess?’

Spike made a rude little sound, much to Marko’s amusement. ‘No, he only lowers himself sufficiently to speak with Glint. He even ignores our friend Nail now.’

Marko frowned. ‘Interesting. I wonder why. Think that I might delay making his ACE a little longer yet.’

‘Two more to go today,’ Harry commented, ‘and then time for us to climb back up to the dirigible as this is now effectively mid-afternoon and I’m told that the really scary critters come out to play during the night.’

Glint replied. ‘Well, I know that I’m not speaking for Marko, but I think that the rest of us have had enough surprises for one day.’

Marko laughed. ‘Harry and Glint, sometimes you guys have no imagination!’

Flint broke into the conversation in his little high-pitched voice. ‘That’s true, Marko. He gave it all to me.’

‘Sometimes you talk too much, Flint!’ Harry said.

Half an hour later they were orbiting another of the cliff-dwelling groups of the Avians. Their lifter was once again hovering over what appeared to be a flat rock plate on top of the ridge line, hundreds of metres away from the settlement. Marko orbited the landing site and looked at it carefully — he had a feeling that something was wrong. He swung the Chrysops until he could see directly into the cockpit of the lifter, then activated his crew comms. He, along with everyone else, could also see the settlement of refugees hundreds of metres in the opposite direction.

‘Boss?’

The major replied by the line-of-sight crew comms. ‘Yeah, mate?’

‘Who makes the decisions over the pick-up points?’

Michael Longbow shrugged.
‘Rick.
Why?’

‘Reckon there is something dodgy about that rock plate — the one that looks as if it is a stone disc, rather than a natural rock formation. What’s the bet there is something living and nasty under it?’

A moment later the major replied. ‘Hold on, I’ll check. Nope,
Rick
is getting agitated; methinks this is turning out to be far more of a bad publicity deal for him than us. He says that that is where the lander is going and the refugees can go shaft themselves if they don’t board it there.’

Marko swore silently then said, ‘In that case, I think we had better step well to one side. If there is something under that plate, it is going to be awfully hard to shoot at it with a lander a metre above it.’

The major lifted both hands up for Marko to see. ‘We will do whatever we have to, Marko.’

Marko, with Julie flying as his wingman, orbited in a pattern, looking for evidence that it was something other than just another outcropping of rock. As they searched further out, they started to find other similar, but smaller, rocks spread out for a hundred metres around.

‘Harry, Minh Pham. Slave to what my video is seeing. I think that it is an organism of some sort. Can you have a quick look around the area where the habitation is, and where the refugees are assembled?’

Harry replied as he and Minh Pham swung their fliers in for a closer look. ‘On it. Don’t have much time though. The lander will be here in five minutes.’

Fritz commented. ‘Wish we could ask the refugees. They have been on this moon for at least thirty-five standard years, so we are told.
Rick
can communicate with them, so I’m sure we could as well. After all, the languages are loaded into our helmet software.’

‘Yeah, you’re right, Fritz. Bit odd,’ Julie said.

Before anyone else could comment, an angry
Rick
blasted into the conversation, almost yelling at them. ‘All biological crew! Just to remind you that I am in charge of this operation. Stick to the plan, my plan, and we will get along just fine. I know that you are using your crew comms which I cannot hear and that is starting to really piss me off.
Rick
out.’

There was silence as they watched the lander slide down through the clouds to flare out, then hover directly over the centre of the ten-metre stone disc as its large hatchways opened to touch the ground. Marko waited for the refugees to move, but none did so. Flashing red lights started around the leading edges of the craft and the lander sounded its klaxons so loudly that each of the
Basalt
crew in their separate flying craft could plainly hear them.

An instant later the ground around the lander moved as huge starfish-like arms rose over the top of the lander. It tried to lift off, but a separate smaller and faster tendril flashed out of the side of one of the starfish arms and neatly speared the blue intel unit as it tried to escape, pulling it down into the closing arms. The arms pushed down onto the lander’s top as what
Rick
had assumed was a rock surface split open. In the instant before Marko lost sight of the lander, spears of material were thrust into it with the whole mass becoming a ball, and great streams of rocket exhaust vented through the rapidly overlocking arms while the lander continued trying to break away.

Julie, looking out one side of the Chrysops, recorded with dread fascination seeing other tendrils ripping the fuel feeds away from the lander’s engines, tearing them apart and pulling the pieces down into itself. As soon as the lander was completely enveloped, a foot-like appendage shot out from the base of the starfish-like creature, which was used to push-start the whole mass rolling down the ridge. The fifty-metre ball of creature and lander bounced off the side of the ridge to smash and tumble its way through the fungal masses. The gunships and missile carriers rolled and fired into it, having little effect, as the projectiles appeared to flash through the creature to detonate inside the already badly damaged lander. Eventually, the grey and black ball bounced off the shoreline of the nearest lake to impact with a huge splash and quickly sink from sight, taking numerous giant lily pads with it.

Harry roared loudly.
‘Rick,
you are a fuckwit sometimes! All that power and muscle has gone to your head!’

Rick
spat back at him from his dirigible. ‘Shut the hell up, Harry!’

There was a silence for five minutes as they all continued to fly their patrols. The refugees had started to move back up the ridgeline to where the giant creature had been and were now waiting again.