Roboteer (43 page)

Ira turned his attention to Rachel. ‘I want you to start looking at the engines,’ he told her. ‘That wreck may be older than the human race, but if we can run, we might last long enough to do something with it.’

Will winced. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I need her help with the robot factories first. We have to make sure we can keep the ship in one piece before we try moving it.’

Ira cocked an eyebrow. ‘My, that’s reassuring. In that case, Rachel, go ahead, you’re with him. And Will, if you don’t mind’ – the captain gave Will an exaggerated zero-gee bow – ‘I’m going to work on a defensive strategy. Forgive me for being sceptical, but I suspect we’re going to be attacked before you finish work.’

‘Fine,’ Will replied, trying not to let too much relief creep into his voice. Usurping Ira’s authority was still deeply uncomfortable for him. It’d be easier for him to do what he needed to with the captain somewhere else.

Ira clapped his hands together. ‘Right, everybody, let’s get to work. Hugo, over here. Let’s start with a review of the defences we already have.’

Ira led Hugo off to look at the
Nanshan
’s weapons desk.

Rachel floated up beside Will. ‘Can we talk privately for a moment?’ she said quietly.

Will nodded. She gestured for him to follow her out into the companionway.

‘I want to clear the air before we start work,’ she said once they were alone. ‘I think we both know you’ve been avoiding me.’ She winced and looked off to the left. ‘I just wanted to say that if you feel what happened between us was a mistake, I can deal with that. You only have to say.’

Will shook his head. ‘No, it’s not that.’

Her face relaxed immediately, though a look of anxious curiosity remained. ‘So what is it?’ she said.

Will tried to find the words. ‘I didn’t really tell you about what it was like for me in that prison back at New Angeles.’ He gritted his teeth. It was still impossibly difficult to talk about. ‘Let’s just say it was worse than that chair they found Hugo in. It was …’ Unwelcome tears sprang into his eyes again. He wanted to say something about what they’d done to him but the words steadfastly refused to come.

Rachel looked at his expression in horror. ‘Oh, Will,’ she said, and hugged him hard. ‘I’m so sorry. If you want me to back off, just say the word. I mean it.’

‘No, I don’t,’ he said. He stroked her hair and kissed it, very gently.

She smiled at him, her eyes full of earnest, desperate positivity. ‘I have faith in you and what you’re doing. What
we’re
doing. The Transcended gave you the tools. Now it’s just a matter of us working out how to use them properly.’

Will agreed, and was grateful for her tactful change of topic. But what had he really got? A head full of SAP interface and a body populated with half-sentient cells. Remarkable tools in their own right, but what use was robotic blood when you were repairing a starship?

And then he saw it. He’d always thought those transport tubes that ran through the ship were like arteries. Who was to say they should be pumping water just because that was what the Fecund had used them for? Maybe the vessel would be shielded enough for a dilute solution of his own augmented cells to flow through those pipes and survive. In a very eerie way, the ship would become an extension of him. He already knew from the puzzle dream he’d had right here in the Fecund system that the radiation levels in the outer hulls of nestships were lower than aboard Earth vessels. Otherwise the slave workers wouldn’t have lasted a minute, even with the help of suits.

Will knew it was a stretch. It was one thing to replace a few microscopic wires and quite another to patch hundreds of kilometres of tunnel lining in a frozen, radioactive starship. But he had a funny feeling it would work. The answer felt
right
, as if the Transcended had laid the ship out before him like another puzzle. The solutions to his problems would be built into it if he was smart enough to find them.

He stared intently into Rachel’s eyes. ‘You’ve just given me a crazy idea.’ He took her hand. ‘Come on, we’re going to the sick-bay.’ He pulled her down the passage, explaining on the way. As he spoke, her eyes grew wider and wider. ‘If I can get enough of the network repaired to start pumping fluid around, then the blood will be able to detect the smaller ruptures from temperature and pressure variations.’

‘You’re right,’ she said when he was finished. ‘That is a crazy idea.’

But she still followed him.

The
Nanshan
’s sick-bay was little more than a cubicle. They crowded inside and Rachel started looking through the cupboards.

Will flexed his arm. ‘I want you to transfuse about a pint,’ he said.

Meanwhile he started setting up the rest of his experiment. When they left the space station, the medical robots he’d taken had brought with them several tons of supplies. Those included forty-five litres of artificial plasma, which Will moved to a tank in a shielded area outside the habitat core. He’d use that as food. Then he descended into his new mind and told his blood what to do.

Rachel brought out a hypodermic gun and carefully decanted Will’s blood. It took a little careful replumbing of the habitat core to pump the stuff out into the tank Will had prepared, but they managed it. Ten minutes later, Will was watching his cells diffuse into the tank through the eyes of the attendant robots.

‘If we can create the conditions the cells need to multiply, the number we have to work with should increase exponentially till we run out of protein,’ he told her.

Rachel smiled at him. ‘Are you kidding? The one thing Fecund ships don’t lack is protein.’

She was right. The ship was full of corpses. In fact, the whole star system was full of corpses. Protein galore. He broke into a grin.

18:
TROUBLE ARRIVES

18.1: WILL

Ira was wrong. A full four days passed before trouble hit.

On the first day, Will and Rachel hurled themselves at the task of refitting one of the robot factories. It turned out to be a simple matter of extruding and replacing those components that time and harsh conditions had destroyed. There weren’t that many. By the time they got it running, his other machines had carried out coarse-grain repairs on dozens of kilometres of fluid-transport conduits. Will saved hours by not checking for tiny fractures his cells could repair for him.

On day two, Will set his new robots to work repairing the second factory, a task for which they were perfectly designed. Meanwhile, he and Rachel synthesised twenty gallons of smart-blood solution. It took them hours to get the conditions right for cell multiplication, and even longer to make the cells do anything useful. It became clear that the smart cells in themselves were not enough. Will was going to have to create a dedicated communication system for them, too. In the end, he solved his problem by losing another sample of blood, this one carrying new orders.

By the end of the day, he had a transmitter in the tank that had become the hub of an extraordinary network of nerves. The fact that the same kind of nerves would have to run through many kilometres of tubing was a thought that disturbed him deeply. However, he had two factories working.

On day three, Will collected hundreds of Fecund bodies and experimented with using his new blood to break down and utilise their tissues. The experiment was a success. His new cells, he learned, conveniently contained a suite of programs for exactly this kind of work.

Will also rigged heaters fed by the
Nanshan
’s fusion cores to melt the thousands of tons of ice already in the tunnels. By the end of the day, he had over a thousand litres of smart plasma and a hundred and eighty kilometres of transport tunnels repaired.

By the close of the fourth day, the ship was starting to look promising. And by that time, Will was no longer surprised at his own success. As each of his gambles paid off, it grew increasingly obvious that it wasn’t a coincidence. As he’d suspected, the ship had been made ready for someone to resurrect a long time ago. Will could feel the hand of the Transcended in everything he did. They were present in every robot that fulfilled a repair task perfectly without his supervision, and every engineering problem that turned out to have a tidy, clever solution. At times, he felt like a dog being given treats in return for performing tricks. He also found himself wondering how many other solutions to species’ problems lay floating out there in the dark.

When fate finally caught up with them, Will was deep in the bowels of the alien vessel with Rachel, overseeing the repair of some fluid heaters. Their discussion was interrupted by a call from Ira, still on self-imposed watch at the
Nanshan
’s sensor console.

‘Will, Rachel – it’s happened.’

Will stopped talking mid-sentence.

‘The far-field scans just picked up the entry flashes from six ships,’ Ira went on. ‘That means they’ll be here in minutes.’ There was a strong note of
I told you so
in his voice.

Will and Rachel exchanged nervous glances. Will felt the pit drop out of his stomach. Despite their successes, they were nowhere near ready.

‘They still have to find us,’ Will ventured optimistically.

Ira laughed. ‘That’ll take them about thirty seconds. This crate isn’t the
Ariel
. There’s no way to lock down its infrared profile. If you want to live, I recommend getting to your battle-stations right now. I’m going to fire on them as soon as they’re in range.’

‘I hear you,’ said Hugo. Hugo was out on the far reaches of the nestship’s exohull, tinkering with the vessel’s defences. ‘I’m heading for the primary habitat core. The shield should be ready to activate, but I’ll need Will’s help.’

The shield had occupied all of Hugo’s attention since Will had given him the archive files on it on their first day of repairs. If it worked the way Hugo hoped, it would buy them enough time to finish fixing the ship. If it didn’t, they stood a good chance of vaporising all the nestship’s outer defences at a single stroke.

‘I warn you, though,’ said Hugo, ‘I haven’t run any tests yet.’

‘There’s no time like the present,’ Ira retorted.

‘I’ll see you there,’ said Will.

He broadcast instructions to his robots to report to their action stations. He hadn’t finished clearing tunnels but it was too late to worry about that now. It was time to put the ship’s arteries to work.

‘Ready?’ said Rachel.

Will nodded.

Together they clipped their suits to the heavy-duty waldobot they’d been using for transport and sped off towards the nestship’s core.

18.2: IRA

Ira strapped himself down in front of his improvised weapons array and cracked his knuckles. It was years since he’d run an assault position. He hoped he hadn’t lost his touch.

On the screen before him were the marker icons for the six incoming ships. Four of them were clearly the light cruisers that had chased them from New Angeles. The other two looked unpleasantly like troop transporters.

Only Earth bothered to train zero-gee troops. Everyone else in the war had used robots. But then, only Earth had a steady supply of suicidal young men angry or vicious enough to sign up for such dangerous work. Earther space troops had a reputation for erratic, senseless violence that made their tactics very difficult to predict. Everything they touched turned into a bloodbath. On no account could Ira afford to let those ships get close. Unfortunately, all of them were heading directly for the
Nanshan
.

Ira shook his head. Just as he’d suspected, it hadn’t taken the Earthers long to locate their target. They were being drawn to the
Nanshan
like flies to the dead.

Ira wished that Will had given in to his request to move the stolen ship to another part of the debris field. Will had refused on the grounds that they were still using it to power and coordinate the repairs. Thus, the two ships were still bound together by a hundred different kinds of struts and cables.

The good news was that, thanks to Hugo, Ira had three working suntap g-rays positioned in the debris field nearby. He’d powered and primed them the moment he saw the first flash. With luck, it was just a matter of waiting for the perfect shot.

After an initial surge of speed, the Earthers crept towards their target. Ira could understand their reticence. The enemy crews were certain to be experiencing awe and fear as they neared the ruins. Ira was counting on that to keep them distracted. Little by little, ships drifted into perfect positions. Ira waited with his heart in his mouth for a targeting lock. The computer chimed as his best-placed weapon zeroed in.

He fired. The suntap cannon channelled a torrent of radiation at the lead cruiser. It died instantly. A split-second later, the other ships were scattering into the cover of the ruins.

Ira cursed them as he struggled for another targeting lock. These guys were quick off the mark. He grazed a second ship before it could put a tumbling alien habitat between itself and his death ray.

He scowled into his monitor. That hadn’t gone the way he’d hoped. He didn’t dare fire again till he got a clean shot, otherwise the Earthers would be able to pinpoint his closest g-ray and take it out. Time to roll out the conventional defences.

He fired the
Nanshan
’s drones. With luck, a heavy enough assault would drive the Earthers into exposing themselves. However, the answering release of munitions that came from the Earther ships was startling. There were hundreds of them – far more than vessels that size would normally carry. With a grim, sinking feeling, Ira realised why the Earthers had taken an extra day to arrive. It wasn’t that they couldn’t follow his manoeuvres. They’d been preparing.

The enemy drones converged on his own. All of them mutually annihilated with alarming speed. Ira keyed in the new tactical program codes Will had given him as fast as he could. They slowed the attrition rate, but even so it was guaranteed to be a losing battle. He was barely going to touch the Earthers, let alone drive them out.

There had to be at least a dozen men commanding the enemy machines, and all of them more familiar with the equipment than he was. It didn’t help that half of the fight was happening behind debris, where he could only see the action through slow relayed images. There was nothing to do but issue his fleet broad commands and hope.

His drones were rapidly overwhelmed. With a snort of disgust, Ira realised he had no choice but to pile on the power. He started firing again with his closest suntap-ray, taking every free shot he could. Two enemy ships received glancing hits and Ira had the satisfaction of watching their inducers flare and die.

This time, though, the Earthers retaliated and their sporadic shield of covering fire quickly became focused. Ira’s best-placed suntap died in a flash of radiation. He roared his displeasure and slammed his fist on the arm of the couch.

The Earthers followed up their attack with another sudden burst of fire, this time aimed directly at the
Nanshan
. Ira scrambled madly to defend the ship as the buffers around him crackled under the onslaught. Clouds of countermeasures sprayed out from the
Nanshan
’s hull. But as his hands flew madly over the keyboard, three dark shapes slunk out across the debris field towards him.

Troop shuttles. They were headed for the
Nanshan
and using the floating wrecks as shields. Ira watched the little ships close on him with horrified fascination. They were flying insanely fast for such dangerous territory, but Earthers had always been good at risking lives. He tried desperately to block their advance using the
Nanshan
’s own underpowered g-rays but was hard pressed enough just keeping his buffers alive. The shuttles disappeared behind the curve of the nestship’s hull, hugging close to protect their final approach.

Ira bellowed obscenities at them. There was no way he could get a lock on them now. They’d converge on his location in a matter of seconds, and in no time at all the nestship would be crawling with Earthers. There was only one thing to do: tell the others and hope they could pull some kind of alien rabbit out of the hat before it was too late.

He hit the intercom button but nothing happened. A warning message popped up across his monitors –
comms systems down
. The Earthers’ tidy firing pattern had knocked out his primary and secondary antenna arrays.

‘Fuck!’ yelled Ira.

There was only one way to raise the alarm now. He’d have to chance it that the Earthers wouldn’t use g-rays with their troop shuttles in the line of fire and go in person. He grabbed his suit, threw himself down the corridor and piled into the docking pod as fast as he could. He watched the action on the monitor screen as the pod sealed and proceeded with painful slowness up to the exohull. The shuttles were slithering over the side of the nestship’s hull like vipers towards the
Nanshan
’s helpless bulk.

‘Come on!’ Ira boomed, bashing the docking pod wall with the flat of his hand. ‘Can’t you go any faster, you fucking machine?’

The pod reached space at last and trundled unhurriedly along the docking proboscis. Ira immediately hit his suit intercom and started broadcasting.

‘
Ariel
crew, listen up. Earther arrival in the nestship interior is imminent. I repeat,
imminent
.’

The first shuttle swept into view around the curve of the hull below him. A tactical laser lanced out from its nose, severing the rail ahead of him, and Ira’s pod ground to a juddering halt.

‘It’s just not my day,’ he muttered as he slammed on his helmet and yanked the lever on the pod’s emergency door release. He gripped the handle hard as air flooded out of the chamber. Then he held his breath and hurled himself into the half-kilometre gulf that still lay between him and the great rent in the nestship’s side.

Ira turned lazily end over end as he soared across the void, struggling to stabilise himself with the suit’s feeble thrusters. As he did so, he caught sight of a line of Earther soldiers in dogfight harnesses being spat out of the nearest shuttle’s hull like peas from a child’s mouth, and they were accelerating towards him.

Ira contemplated firing the small vacuum automatic clipped to the suit’s leg, but the distance was too great. Truthfully, he wasn’t equipped for zero-gee combat. They’d catch up with him in no time. He used what was left of the juice in his thrusters to propel him towards the jagged edge of the hole below.

Despite being wafer-thin in starship terms, the exohull was still several metres thick and not easy to grab hold of. There was a dreadful moment when Ira bounced at the lip of the rent and started to drift clear. He was almost out of reach before his hand lashed out to seize a nearby spar of tortured iron. He hung there, clinging to the ship with nothing but a single slippery hand. The laser sighting dots of Earther space-combat rifles wobbled briefly across his legs.

With a grunt of effort, Ira pulled his body back towards the wall of the ship. He half-flew, half-climbed hand over hand into the nestship and along the inner wall away from the hole. The chamber he found himself in was a huge, mottled polygonal space like a bubble in some titanic metallic foam. It looked very different in reality from its image on a monitor wall. The scale was humbling, and without robots’ light-enhancement filters to illuminate the space it was oppressively gloomy.

Ira glanced around for ways to escape. There were openings to access tunnels on the other side of the chamber but they were dozens of metres away across open space. The rail that Will’s machines had constructed ran across to them but following it would leave him totally exposed. So he pulled himself hand over hand along the strangely pocked and bubbled exohull interior towards the one piece of cover available – Hugo’s project.