Scattered Suns (42 page)

Chapter 87—ANTON COLICOS

After dragging themselves along for so many days, the desperate Marathan survivors seized the hope that rescue waited for them at Secda. “Follow me!” Designate Avi’h pointed toward the city. “The robots will assist us. They are expecting our arrival.”

Holding back, Anton called to his companions as they bounded toward the bustling complex that swarmed with Klikiss robots. “Be careful! We need to understand what—”

But the Ildirans grasped at any strand of hope. The Designate raced to the Secda city site, shouting and waving his arms. The burly digger Vik’k and the normally logical engineer Nur’of hurried beside him. Even Rememberer Vao’sh pulled ahead toward the familiar Klikiss robots.

Anton ran forward and grabbed his arm. “Wait a second, Vao’sh. Look at what they’re doing down there.”

The colors on the rememberer’s facial lobes flickered through a storm of uncertainty. “We’ve walked across half a continent, Rememberer Anton. I see shelter and light and protection. Why do you hesitate?”

The human historian jabbed a finger toward the numerous tunnels and openings, the mounds of geometrical structures that reminded him of a sinister wasps’ nest growing out of control. “That isn’t what Secda is supposed to look like. Something’s not right here!”

But the frightened rememberer pulled his arm free, unable to resist the call of hope. “We will gain our answers as soon as the Designate speaks to the robots. Come! We must not fall behind.” Vao’sh ran ahead, and, despite his own reservations, Anton followed.

After the terrors they had endured across the night-strangled landscape, Anton could understand that the Marathan survivors might become irrational. They were feeling loose and adrift, growing slowly mad, their minds degenerating.

Even so, Anton couldn’t let them all run into a possible trap.

He looked around, seeing Klikiss robots moving with mechanical precision. Off to one side of the city dome, he saw a hangar shelter identical to the one at Maratha Prime. He counted three Ildiran spacecraft there, available for shuttling supplies and materials.

Finally the Klikiss robots noticed the tiny group of refugees. As if reacting to a simultaneous signal, the beetlelike machines froze in their activities, swiveling angular heads and brightening their red optical sensors.

Designate Avi’h managed to pull ahead of the digger and the engineer. He continued to shout, “We are here! We have survived the journey across the nightside.” He stopped in front of the nearest black robot. “We need your help.”

Incredible numbers of the insectile robots had begun to move, closing in like a noose drawing tight. Increasingly uneasy, Anton looked to his right and left. “Where did they all come from?”

But Vao’sh, his eyes glazed, his face still flickering through its palette of colors, said, “Save your questions, Rememberer Anton. We can ask them all as soon as we are safely inside.”

The nearest machine rose up to tower over the Designate. Its articulated arms extended, each one ending in a different sharp implement. The carapace on the robot’s back cracked open as if to make the robot larger and more intimidating.

In the suddenly silent work site, Anton heard the buzzing words of the Klikiss robot like blades slicing through the air. “Ildirans have broken our long-standing agreement.”

Designate Avi’h looked up at it. “What agreement?”

The Klikiss robot swung one of its scythe-tipped arms and slashed brutally through Avi’h’s neck, severing his head. The Designate did not even have time to cry out as blood spouted from his neck stump. He toppled forward.

Vik’k and Nur’of stumbled to a halt, unable to endure any further horror, any additional betrayal. A buzzing sound echoed through the gathered robots, hundreds of giant black machines humming and sizzling as they activated their defensive systems. Moving with skittering swiftness, they closed in on the four remaining refugees.

“Run!” Anton shouted. “They mean to kill us all.”

Vao’sh simply shook his head. “This is not possible.” The old rememberer appeared ready to collapse. “The Klikiss robots have always been our allies. We unearthed them from the ice five hundred years ago. They have—”

Anton dragged his friend away, urging them both into a run, though he didn’t know where else they could go. The Secda work site was vast and complex. They could find places to hide, a barricade or a shack suitable for making a last stand. But without weapons he and Vao’sh could not resist the Klikiss robots for long. There had to be a different way.

After seeing the Designate slaughtered, burly Vik’k didn’t need or ask for explanations. When the murderous machines hemmed them in, he balled his horny fists and began swinging. Engineer Nur’of stood at the digger’s back and grabbed a metal bar from one of the construction scrap piles. The two Ildirans stood together as the armored robots came forward, their claws clacking.

Nur’of swung his metal bar. It clanged resoundingly against the black shell of the nearest Klikiss robot, but caused no damage. He swept it back and forth like a club, smashing off one of the extended articulated arms; then he brought the metal rod up to crush the crimson optical sensors of another machine. Though the round glassy eyes shattered and went dark, the robot continued to press toward him.

Fearless, Vik’k threw himself against two of the robots. Even as their claws tore his protective garment and tough skin, the digger continued to howl and thrash. But more and more of the robots surrounded him, slashing with their cutting implements and powerful mechanical arms. Both the Ildiran digger and the engineer went down under a swarm of giant beetlelike attackers.

Anton and Vao’sh ran, hearing the clatter and screams continue behind them—and then only an ominous silence while the remaining robots focused on the two sole survivors. Anton looked around in search of any kind of shelter. He had spent his life reading about brave commanders and decisive heroes who came up with creative solutions in moments of desperation. Now he was in a position of being a
real
hero, and there was no time to learn the role.

The only remaining Ildiran on Maratha, completely isolated from the
thism,
Vao’sh looked stunned and dazed, barely able to keep moving. But Anton did not give up on his friend. “The hangars! Off to the side of the dome. I saw ships there. Maybe one of them will still function.”

The old rememberer mumbled something unintelligible, but when Anton yanked his arm and kept running, he followed without question. Adrenaline gave Anton a burst of speed, and he jumped over low piles of debris, dodging construction machinery and half-assembled structures.

Klikiss robots continued to emerge from their underground tunnels like ants boiling out of a disturbed nest. Anton wove back and forth in an erratic course so the attackers could not determine his intent. Once the Klikiss robots saw where he was going, they would surely try to intercept them at the hangar.

“We’re going to make it, Vao’sh. Right this way. Just keep going.” Now the hangar was in front of them, a straight shot. At last, the Klikiss robots anticipated his plan. “Run for all you’re worth, Vao’sh!”

They sprinted forward. Anton had never been so tired or so terrified in his life. The muscles in his legs felt like fraying strings, but he forced himself to keep going. Vao’sh stumbled on the uneven ground. Anton caught the old rememberer before he could sprawl. “Keep going! Just a little farther!”

Now he could see the Ildiran cargo ships that had been stored at the construction site. One looked half disassembled, as if a scheduled maintenance routine had been interrupted before it was finished. One craft near the rear of the hangar appeared intact and ready to go. Anton hoped the engines would work. “Do you know how to fly one of those ships, Vao’sh?”

The rememberer could barely answer, but Anton didn’t want to think about the next problem just yet. Vao’sh wasn’t in any shape to act as a pilot, but he managed to gasp as they kept going, “Standard controls...primarily automated...You can do it.”

“Looks like I’m going to have to.”

Behind them, the pursuing Klikiss robots cracked open their black carapaces and spread wide solar-panel wings. The heavy machines began to fly, swiftly closing the gap between themselves and their prey.

“That’s not fair!” Anton finally ducked under the sloping metal roof of the small hangar. “Into the ship, Vao’sh. We’ve got to get in.”

It was a relatively small craft used to shuttle personnel and supplies down from larger vessels in orbit. Anton hoped the engines and the navigation system could take them all the way back to Ildira or some other inhabited world. And he prayed the coordinates were already stored; he certainly couldn’t navigate by dead reckoning.

As the weak rememberer climbed in, Anton heard a loud clatter. Five heavy robots landed just outside the hangar door, folded their wings, and began to stride forward, all of their articulated arms extended.

Anton swung himself into the ship and scrambled to find the hatch controls. It took him much longer than he expected, and the nearest robots had crossed the floor by the time Anton got the hatch closed. “We should be safe in here for a few minutes,” he said, not actually believing it.

Shaken and disoriented, Vao’sh collapsed inside the cockpit, gripping the copilot’s chair with trembling hands. Anton looked at the confusing array of controls and suddenly his mind went blank. All the Ildiran letters and words, the language he had studied so carefully, now left him. He couldn’t read any of it. The symbols were incomprehensible! He squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath. When he opened them again, he could focus once more.

The robots clanged against the outer door of the shuttle. Four more had appeared in front of the hangar and scuttled forward.

Anton knew that if he didn’t launch the vessel soon, the Klikiss machines would simply overwhelm them with their numbers and batter away until they shredded the hull, one armored plate at a time.

Vao’sh did his best to gather his wits. He leaned over to the controls as if it required an enormous effort, then gestured to one small grouping. “There...that is the one.”

Anton understood the mechanism for activating the engines, and hammered at the button sequence. The robots converged behind the ship as well; when the exhaust blasted from the rear cones of the shuttle, one of the machines was thrown backward, scorched.

“Good! That’s one down,” Anton said. “Only a couple hundred more to go.”

He looked at the gauges, where lights and graphs played across the screens. When it looked as if the chambers had heated up properly, he activated the next sequence. Outside, the Klikiss robots grasped the landing gear and began to bend and tear out the struts. The ship lurched, unbalanced.

The clanging continued. More and more machines closed in.

“Here goes nothing.” Anton punched the launch controls, and the ship shuddered. The engines roared, and finally the whole craft rose and accelerated, horizontal to the ground. Gathering speed, it burst across the floor like a massive projectile, mowing down six Klikiss robots that stood blocking the hangar opening and the freedom of the Marathan sky.

One robot remained clamped to a torn section of landing gear. Anton flew out of the structure and pulled the ship into a gradual ascent, with the robot still dangling behind them. Rough turbulence from the shifting temperatures of Maratha’s dayside made for a bumpy ride that rattled and shook the vessel. As they continued to ascend, the lone robot could no longer hold on. Its articulated arm broke off, and the beetlelike shape tumbled in the air until it shattered into glossy black pieces far below.

Exhausted and feeling an avalanche of terror sweep over him, Anton leaned back in the pilot’s chair and let out an insane whoop of victory. “We’re out of here, Vao’sh! We made it! We got away from those bastards.”

They shot up into the bright day sky, straining to reach the edges of the atmosphere and the open vastness of starlit space. He hoped he could figure out the navigation systems and the controls. He couldn’t tell how much fuel their engines held or how far this craft could take them.
One problem at a time.

He looked over at Vao’sh in the second seat, but the rememberer did not seem exhilarated. The colored lobes on his face had turned a cadaverous gray. Waves of trembling wracked his entire body, as if he could barely control the sobs.

“We have escaped,” Vao’sh said in a weak, croaking voice. “But I am alone. Completely
alone
. No Ildiran has faced such solitude and survived.” He slumped backward and closed his large, expressive eyes. “I do not know how much longer I can endure.”

Chapter 88—NIKKO CHAN TYLAR

Once Jess Tamblyn gave him the task, it took Nikko only five days to track down where Speaker Peroni had gone to ground. She had sent out messengers from Jonah 12, and the Roamer system of rumors and messages passed the word.

The second trader whom Nikko encountered on his random stops told him where the Speaker might be found. In exchange, he asked the trader to spread the news that Roamers could again bring skymines to Golgen, which the wentals had purged of all hydrogues. Nikko wouldn’t be surprised if one or two facilities had already been launched for the gas giant.

Now, as the
Aquarius
passed the dark outskirts of the Jonah system, he sent out a call to the miners at the settlement, but received no response. “Hello down there? Is anybody hearing me? Is Speaker Peroni there?”

Puzzled, Nikko detected anomalous heat and energy signatures where the base should have been. Strange modulated bursts came across the comm spectrum, but over frequency windows the Roamers rarely used. He swallowed hard. What if another raiding party of Eddies had discovered Jonah 12?

When he circled in and flew low, geometric lights spread around the site of the Roamer base. He adjusted the magnifiers, focusing in to make sure his eyes weren’t deceiving him. He had never been here before, but obviously this wasn’t right.

As the
Aquarius
cruised over the complex, caution made him keep radio silence. The base showed furious activity, but he couldn’t fathom what was going on. Switching scanner bands, Nikko discovered that the visible spangle of lights marked only the tip of the iceberg; in the infrared, emanations were pouring out like a blaze. Plumes of evaporated gases rose into the sky. The small-pile power reactor, a standard Roamer design for isolated outposts, had been enhanced for an enormous energy output.

The cluster of Roamer domes, rail launchers, and transmitting towers had all been torn apart and reassembled into strange patterns. He even spotted the remnants of what had been a few Roamer cargo ships. Their engines had been torn out and implanted in larger, angular skeletons of sharp structures.
Alien
structures. Five huge ships, shaped like bones and beetle shells.

He saw dark figures in armored suits that reflected very little light. Had Roamer engineers developed a body casing that allowed people to maneuver for long periods in the extreme cold? He descended and increased magnification, and the shapes suddenly came into focus. Black insectile automatons.
Everywhere
.

Nikko had never seen a Klikiss robot himself, but was certainly familiar with what they looked like. What were the alien machines doing on Jonah 12? And what had they done to the Roamer mining base? It looked like an invasion! He saw no humans at all. The habitation and headquarters domes had been breached, the walls torn down, the atmosphere released into the frozen vacuum.

These Klikiss robots had destroyed the station! And now they were culling every scrap to assemble spacecraft of some sort. The vessels looked nearly complete.

Some of the black machines swiveled geometrical heads toward the sky, detected his ship moving above them. On the magnified screen, he saw the glint of red optical sensors and felt a deep cold in his heart.

He had no idea if the robots could shoot him down. He accelerated the
Aquarius,
ducking behind the close horizon. There, he was in transmission shadow from any ambush the Klikiss robots might set. The clicking machine-coded transmissions on his speakers grew quiet as he passed out of range.

No one knew what had happened here. Nikko was the only one who could carry a warning to the other clans.

Suddenly his comm line pinged: a small, weak signal coming from far beyond the base camp. “Hello, ship! Please respond—and please be piloted by a human being.” It was a woman’s voice. Nikko thought he recognized it.

He boosted his own signal to compensate for the obvious weakness of the sender’s transmitter. “This is Nikko Chan Tylar. What the hell is going on down there?”

He heard a yelp of exultation. “This is Speaker Peroni. Thank you, Nikko!” Her voice sounded heavy, as if every breath was a labor. Her teeth were chattering. “Follow these coordinates and land. I hope you can take two passengers. We’ve been stranded out here for days.”

The man’s voice added, “And we probably have less than an hour till either our air runs out or we freeze. It’s a toss-up which will happen first.”

“Hang on! I’ll be there in a minute.”

He raced low over the frozen terrain until he came upon a rise where one of the hemispherical grazers had broken down. The
Aquarius
landed on the rough ice, and stabilizers locked down to level the ship. Steam rose from residual thermal energy radiating out of the heat vents.

After cycling through his airlock, Nikko crunched across to the silent, damaged grazer. The rear of the vehicle had been mangled, and jagged scratches were torn along the plated hull. An insulation cowling had been shredded, components ripped free. He ran his gaze along the flattened path where the grazer had lumbered along, amazed the small vehicle had made it so far.

Wearing environment suits, Speaker Peroni and another person tumbled out of the stranded vessel’s hatch. They moved stiffly, sluggishly, as if neither of them had any energy left. Their thermal batteries must be low, their suit air tanks nearly empty.

Nikko grabbed Speaker Peroni’s slick, suited arm and guided her to the
Aquarius
. She and her companion, whom she introduced as Purcell Wan, gasped out a brief story of how the robots had been discovered under the ice and awakened.

While the two crowded into the small water-bearing ship’s airlock, Nikko waited outside, alone in the cold and intense silence. Every jagged black shadow on the terrain seemed to hide an insectile mechanical killer.