Eternity's Mind (28 page)

The man's watery brown eyes narrowed. “You see, I've been keeping an eye out for the same kind of research you're interested in.”

Xander had indeed made quiet inquiries on Terry's behalf, offering large rewards to anyone who could provide innovative but proven spinal-repair treatments—neurological fusions, cellular rewiring, anything that could take care of the rare, degenerative damage that made Terry unable to walk. Given the huge amount of money Maria Ulio had left him,
something
had to be available.

Omar surreptitiously pressed a datapack into Xander's hand. “This is everything I know. None of it is official, but the program shows some promise. I've wanted to test it on my grandson, but … couldn't afford it.”

Xander felt a rush of hope. “Let me look this over. If the technique works, maybe we can come to an arrangement. Tell me more.”

“There's a big drawback.” The scraggly old clan leader set his mouth in a grim line. “Some of these programs were done at Rakkem.”

The very name of Rakkem sent a chill through Xander. He had seen the horrific age-rejuvenation treatments that Rakkem had used as a scam. “I wouldn't trust any treatment they proposed.”

“The planet's shut down now, but not everything there was a fraud. This particular scientist left Rakkem long before the raid, says he was never part of any shady activities. Check it out, do the research yourself. Find out whether it's worth investigating.” Omar raised his eyebrows. “Your message said you were willing to try just about anything.”

“I am,” Xander said, though he wasn't sure if Terry was. “Thank you, I'll do my due diligence. And how much do I have to pay you for this?”

Again Omar Selise looked offended. “I'm not doing this for the money, dammit—it's for my grandson. If the procedure works, then you tell me. Maybe we can get both of them to walk again.”

The clan leader moved away with long lanky strides in the low gravity. Xander held the datapack, feeling his thoughts churn with both hope and hesitation. He couldn't dismiss the potential chance for a cure. He would have OK check it out as thoroughly as possible.

 

CHAPTER

46

GENERAL NALANI KEAH

When the shadow cloud unfolded outside of lunar orbit and disgorged thousands—hundreds of thousands—of robot battleships, General Keah raced headlong back toward the LOC in the small shuttle. The acceleration slammed her back in her seat, but she managed to keep her hands on the controls, aiming straight for her docked flagship.

She yelled into the comm system, “Battle stations! All hands to battle stations—in case you haven't noticed.”

Running lights winked on across the eighty Manta cruisers parked above the orbiting facilities and manufacturing domes in the lunar rubble. Numerous Remoras engaged in test exercises now swooped back to their home ships.

Keah's shuttle plunged like a projectile toward her Juggernaut, which was still anchored inside the gridwork of its spacedock repair facility. “
Kutuzov,
prepare to launch! Open landing bay three for me—I'll be coming in hot.”

She hoped she could decelerate fast enough to land relatively safely. She didn't care about wrecking the shuttle; she just didn't want to damage her battleship. She was obviously going to be needing it.

“But General, we're still in spacedock.” On the screen, her first officer's face appeared gray and sweaty. “Only half of the repairs are completed!”

“I can see that, Mr. Wingo, but the shadows aren't going to wait around for us to finish. Have the construction crews get to safety, then blow the connections.” She gritted her teeth, knowing that everyone could listen in on the open channel. No use being gentle—they had all seen what happened at Relleker. “This is going to be bad—very bad. I can't say whether it'd be safer for the repair crews inside the LOC or aboard the
Kutuzov.
Leave it to their discretion, but they have to make up their minds quick. Either way, we are taking my ship into battle within minutes.”

She risked a glance toward the shadow cloud, saw the hex cylinders gliding out of their nether universe like alien cattle prods. Waves and waves of identical robot ships poured out, as numerous as the stars in the sky. “Damn bugbots!”

According to her screens the first attackers would reach the LOC within ten minutes … right about the time Keah got back aboard her ship.

“Mr. Patton, activate your weapons banks and prepare to fire even before disengaging from spacedock. If you're good, you can take out a hundred bugbots on our way out the door.”

Her weapons officer cut in, “General, we can't open fire while we're still in dock!”

“Prove yourself wrong, Mr. Patton. I bet you can figure out a way.”

She ignored the comm so she could concentrate on guiding her shuttle straight toward the tiny launching bay on the side of her Juggernaut.

From inside the LOC headquarters rock, Admiral Harvard blurted out on the broad-spectrum open channel, “We are under attack! All capable ships stand your ground and prepare to defend the LOC.”

Keah didn't think the military headquarters was the bugbots' prime target, though. This would be just a warm-up for Earth.

Admirals Handies and Haroun were aboard their Juggernauts, while Harvard remained inside the central headquarters. Haroun managed to get his Juggernaut moving much sooner than his counterpart did. Keah watched the
Okrun
heading in toward the LOC, flanked by several Mantas that were also rallying, while the
Rafani,
Admiral Handies's flagship, backed away from the rubble as if to get into a better strategic firing position … at least that was what she hoped Handies intended.

Trapped inside the spacedock framework, the
Kutuzov
looked like a behemoth about to outgrow a flimsy cage. All of its lights were activated; the engines glowed, building up thrust in the reactors. Lines of indicators on the spacedock support structure flared red in warning. The engine exhaust cones glowed brighter, and the big hulk began to move. Many of the umbilicals and connecting anchors had already been removed, but some stragglers tore away in showers of sparks as the battleship shook itself free.

Keah adjusted her shuttle's course, tracking the tiny open landing bay, which was her target—but now a moving target. “I'm always up for a challenge,” she muttered.

Any sensible person would decelerate and approach with caution, but right now she didn't have time to be sensible. The black robots were coming in.

The ferocious angular ships began strafing the LOC complex with so many energy beams that the vicinity became a spider web of bright blasts. Most of the beams struck dead rock, but they blasted away indiscriminately. The bugbots didn't bother to choose particular targets; they simply meant to wreck everything.

The General transmitted her Identify Friend/Foe signal, hoping some desperate yahoo wouldn't see the shuttle racing in and assume it was a threat. She braced herself, saw the Juggernaut loom large, tracked its movement as it picked up speed, and compensated so she could aim directly for the launching bay.

With a bright flare, an entire battery of the
Kutuzov
's laser cannons fired, vaporizing the remnants of the spacedock framework that held it back. More beams struck out to annihilate dozens of oncoming black vessels. At least Patton had figured that part out.

Keah hammered her controls, slammed into full deceleration in hopes she wouldn't pulp herself against the inner wall of the landing bay. The force hit her like a punch in the gut, but she gripped the controls, held on, and guided herself forward. Alarm lights flared inside the bay. Automated warnings told her to change course and abort the landing, but she flew ahead anyway, her shields up.

The shuttle slowed, tracked, then plunged into the open bay, missing the gate framework by no more than a meter. Her ship plowed along the deck, slowed, skidded, slewed in a waterfall of sparks. She ignored the cacaphony of alarms in her cockpit. The shuttle spun a full three-sixty on the deck, but the shields dampened her landing energy enough that she screeched to a halt, thumped against the far bulkhead—causing damage, but nothing serious—and finally came to rest.

Without catching her breath, Keah unclipped the crash restraints, opened the hatch, and bounded out, already heading toward the bank of lifts. She paid no attention to the smoke and lingering sparks behind her. The
Kutuzov
was moving, and she could hear the rumble of explosive impacts against the hull. She needed to be on her bridge to run this show.

Two of the lifts weren't functioning, but Keah bounded up ladders, finally found a lift on the next deck that took her directly to the bridge. When she stepped out onto the main deck, she saw that her crew was behaving admirably in a desperate situation. She expected no less. “I'm taking command! Mr. Wingo—situation update.”

As the Juggernaut headed away from the LOC complex and into the thick of the fight, the screen was filled with tumbling rocks and a flurry of ships, some evacuating, some converging in a defensive formation.

“The situation is extremely fluid, General.”

“I can see that.”

At his weapons station, Dylan Patton was directing the fire patterns. Laser-cannon batteries shot out fire hoses of light, blasting countless robot ships. “It's a target-rich environment, General. We can't keep up with it all.”

“Clear away about fifty thousand of those bugbots, and you'll be able to see better,” she said. “Proceed.”

“Doing my best, General.”

The tendons stood out on Wingo's neck. “But where did all the robots come from? We must have tanked a hundred thousand of them already at Relleker with our sun bombs. There seem to be more than ever.”

From his command-and-control center deep inside the main LOC rock, Admiral Harvard transmitted, “Awaiting your orders, General Keah.”

“Admiral, launch all CDF ships—and I mean
all
of them. Even a janitor scow with a jazer might help out in a pinch. If a ship can fly, even at partial strength, it's an asset. On the other hand, any vessel stuck in spacedock is a target.”

Keah looked at the tactical screens that showed the sheer number of black robots coming in for the attack, and she worked very hard to keep her expression neutral even though her heart stuttered with dismay. It did not seem possible to get out of this. Simply. Not. Possible.

Seventeen Mantas from the LOC converged and put themselves in front of the oncoming bugbot warships like cannon fodder. With uncoordinated but enthusiastic fire, they blasted the robots using laser cannons augmented with traditional jazers. Even though the barrage damaged hundreds of robot ships, the enemy was willing to sacrifice a thousand of their vessels to obliterate the handful of Mantas standing in their way—and they did exactly that. The bugbots absorbed and ignored their casualties, and kept coming. They destroyed the Mantas and plowed right through the wreckage of the CDF ships.

Remoras zipped in, individually engaging one robot ship after another, but the fighter craft were no match for the enemy battleships. They barely even caused a delay in the onslaught.

The rubble of the Lunar Orbital Complex provided plentiful options for shelter and diversion, and the defending Confederation ships led the bugbots in obstacle-course chases. But that wasn't good enough. Keah needed some elbow room to deploy her big guns.

“We can't launch sun bombs in the middle of the LOC. Let's move away from lunar orbit.”

Admiral Haroun brought the
Okrun
up next to the
Kutuzov,
and twelve more Mantas followed. One large cruiser began to move, still struggling to disentangle itself from its repair dock, but the black robot ships wiped it out before the vessel could get under way.

“We're being massacred, General!” Admiral Handies called from the
Rafani.

She bit back a sarcastic comment about his astute observation. “We have to make a stand. We have to fight. Your choice is to die today or, even if you get away and we lose here, then you'll die later. But I prefer option three—let's hurt them and make them think twice before they do this again.”

Admiral Haroun appeared on the comm, his face hard and grim. “The LOC is our central military complex, General—the heart of the CDF. If we can't stop them here—”

Keah said, “They don't seem to be intimidated by our military presence.”

The shadow cloud continued to expand, rolling closer until its dark fringes touched outer stations in the LOC. Flying as vanguards, the robot battleships began pounding the habitation domes, storage depots, and any ships still in spacedock. Inside the CDF headquarters rock, Admiral Harvard cried out for rescue, demanding a defensive line, but the responding Mantas managed to delay the bugbots by no more than a few minutes.

Black ships swarmed in and pummeled the headquarters, targeting the source of Harvard's desperate transmissions. Trapped inside, the Admiral called out one last time, his voice rising to a panicked squawk before the comm filled with a wash of static.

Keah swallowed hard, guessing that it wouldn't be the last tragedy for today. Even though Harvard had never been much good as a military commander, his death was a severe blow to morale.

Unable to wait any longer, she prayed that her Juggernaut had moved far enough out. “Mr. Patton, prepare the first volley of sun bombs. Admiral Haroun, do likewise.” She sent out a wider broadcast. “Any CDF ship equipped with sun bombs, go ahead and let them loose. It's going to be a bright and deadly day in the LOC. That means you too, Admiral Handies.”

Unexpectedly, the
Rafani
changed course and accelerated away from them. The other Juggernaut had fallen into communication silence. Seeing them move away, Keah hit the comm. “Handies, where the hell are you going?”