Starship Tomahawk (The Hive Invasion Book 2) (16 page)

"That was good. Now we're going to try three-round bursts. A military weapon will have a mechanism to fire short bursts automatically, but we're going to do it the old-fashioned way. I want you to try squeezing the trigger three times quickly without moving the barrel. I want to see three shots, closely spaced. Ready?"

A dozen pairs of eyes were locked on Nicholson. All twelve students turned away, peering downrange and lifting their newly-minted rail guns to their shoulders.

"Fire!" Nicholson barked, and a barrage of steel pellets flew across the soccer field. The targets were broad green leaves, each as tall as a man, shoved stem-first into the ground thirty or so meters away. The leaves were a tattered mess by now. Soon it would be time for the second squad, currently keeping watch downrange to make sure no one wandered into the path of the pellets, to run out and replace the leaves.

Nicholson swept his binoc across the row of leaves. It was hard to tell exactly how the squad of colonists was doing, but what they needed right now was encouragement, not honesty. "Good," he said. "Excellent work. Try another burst." This time he kept his gaze on the students. He walked along the row of grimly concentrating colonists, telling a man to lift his elbow, reminding a woman to squeeze the trigger without jerking it.

"Okay, that's good.  Safeties on." Each student flipped a small switch that cut power from the battery to the gun's magnets. "Ground weapons." He waited while they planted the butts of the guns on the ground beside their feet. "Good. Keep them grounded." He raised his voice. "Second squad! Change the targets, if you please."

More colonists rose from behind a low ridge and hurried to knock down the tattered remains of the palm fronds. They planted new fronds and retreated behind the ridge.

"Spacecom won't always be around to protect you," he said. "You've already learned that the hard way. I wish I could promise there would always be trained military personnel on hand to deal with the Hive or anything else that comes along. We all know that's not how it works." He made a grand gesture with his arm, as if he stood in front of a vast army of elite troops instead of a rag-tag militia. "Now you don't need someone else to fly in and protect you. You're dangerous now. You can protect yourselves."

It was largely nonsense, of course. No militia was a match for a trained, professional military force. They needed confidence, though, not cold hard facts.

"Lieutenant? It looks like you have visitors."

Nicholson turned. Aimee Tanner, a colonist so tiny she hardly looked like an adult, kept one hand on the barrel of her rail gun and used her free hand to point in the direction of the spaceport. Three figures stepped onto the unkempt grass of the soccer field. A fat man led the way, his stomach straining the fabric of his red uniform shirt and spilling over the belt that held up his black trousers. His black sash curved around the stomach in question.

By contrast, the man and woman who followed him were almost ridiculously fit. At least, they gave that impression. They wore black uniforms and medium-weight body armor, which gave them both broad shoulders and deep, solid-looking chests. The armor was narrow at the waist, though, and if either of them had five kilos of fat, Nicholson couldn't see where they kept it.

"Rack the weapons," Nicholson said. He had a feeling a confrontation was coming, and he'd learned the colonists were stubborn, prickly, and courageous beyond all reason. If one of the redshirts was going to start pushing them around, Nicholson didn't want things escalating.

The squad lined up to put their rifles into a simple wooden rack beside the improvised firing range. Nicholson called softly, "Second squad. Maintain your position." Then he led the first squad a dozen or so paces from the rack and waited.

It took some time. The soccer field wasn't wide, but the redshirt wasn't moving too quickly. At last he arrived, his face almost as red as his shirt, and spent a long minute panting for breath. Nicholson looked past him at the marines, neither of whom was winded in the slightest. They wouldn't be new recruits. They were probably infantry, seasoned ground troops transferred into the brand-new Marine Corps.

"I'm Colonel McLaw," the redshirt said at last. "I'm in charge of everyone on the surface of Ariadne."

That brought a mutter of annoyance from the squad.

McLaw frowned and swept a cold eye over the colonists. Silence fell, and he returned his gaze to Nicholson. "We're here to confiscate your weapons."

"What?" A babble of voices rose from the squad, all of them talking at once, but it was Aimee whose voice rose above the others. "You can't take our guns!"

McLaw's chest expanded, and he smiled, an unpleasant grin full of self-importance. "I can and I will. The EDF will not tolerate unauthorized weapons in a civilian population."

"The what?" said Aimee. She looked angry enough to eat rail gun rounds. "What's the EDF?"

For a moment McLaw just gaped at her. He seemed utterly flabbergasted that someone was unaware of his precious organization. "The Earth Defence Force. We were formed under the direct authority of-"

"So go defend Earth," Aimee snapped. She advanced on McLaw, and although he was triple her weight, he shrank back. "We'll defend Naxos." She took another step. She was a good three paces away from him, but he stepped back, to the visible annoyance of the marines directly behind him. "With our guns," Aimee said.

She took another step. Either McLaw found some courage, or the marines behind him were pushing against his back. He stopped retreating.

"Our guns, which we'll be keeping," Aimee said. Her head barely reached his shoulder, but when she leaned forward, he leaned back. "Is that clear?"

A frozen moment passed, and McLaw seemed to realize the absurdity of his position. He straightened up, stared down at her, then gathered himself. He scowled, folded his arms across his chest, and took a deep breath. "The Statsminister himself has given the EDF authority over all affairs related to the defence of the Earth."

"This isn't Earth," Aimee snapped, her hands curling into fists.

"This is part of the war against the Hive," McLaw said ponderously.

Her arms flew up, making him flinch. "We want to use these guns to shoot the Hive aliens, you moron! Why do you want to take them away?"

"The EDF asks the questions." McLaw had his footing now. He sneered down at Aimee. "You will turn over your weapons. If you refuse, well …." He gestured over his shoulder at the marines. "These two will deal with any resistance."

Aimee's face darkened, and Nicholson saw a ripple of movement in the squad, some people moving toward Aimee, some edging toward the weapons rack. He'd been pretty much mesmerized by the confrontation, but he threw off the spell and found his voice. "Of course," he said. "The weapons are right there. Help yourself." Then, turning to Aimee, "Ms. Tanner. Take the squad to the Roadrunner. Wait there for me."

She stared at him, clearly wanting to argue. He gazed into her eyes, willing her to trust him, pleading with her silently not to turn a minor confrontation into a violent one.

It didn't work. She continued to glare up at him, not moving.

"I know that these are the only guns on the planet," he said carefully. It was completely untrue. More than two hundred rail guns had already been manufactured and were even now being assembled in the factory, and Aimee knew it. "It's all the guns you have and you won't be able to get more. But it's like I said. You'll just have to trust Spacecom to protect you."

She blinked, then turned away and said, "Squad! Come with me!" And she set off at a run.

McLaw watched, open-mouthed, as the colonists dashed across the soccer field. Nicholson watched as well, feeling the knot of tension in his stomach ease somewhat. If the second squad would just stay put this could end without an interstellar incident. He smiled at the colonel and gestured at the gun rack. "There's your weapons, Sir. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go."

"Wait!" said McLaw. "I need someone to move the weapons."

"I wish I could help," Nicholson called over his shoulder. "Duty calls, though."

He walked away, moving briskly. This kind of borderline insubordination would never have worked on an experienced officer. He knew exactly how he would shut it down if anyone tried it on him. McLaw, however, had been a civilian as recently as a month ago, and it showed.

"You there. Come over here. I need you to – Hey! Come over here and …"

By the sound of it, the second squad had come up from behind the ridge and were ignoring McLaw completely. Nicholson chuckled as he left the soccer field and reached a broad street.

A block later he came to an intersection and found Aimee and her squad waiting. She planted her hands on her hips and stood in his path. "What the hell, Lieutenant!"

He lifted his hands in a placatory gesture. "They seized a dozen rail guns, all of which can be replaced. And no one got shot by marines. I'd call that a successful outcome." He lowered his hands. "We'll need a new firing range, though."

The anger went out of Aimee, and the rest of the squad broke into a chorus of grumbling. Nicholson let them vent for a minute, then lifted his hands. When they went silent he said, "Large organizations always come with a certain percentage of stupid regulations and difficult people. There really aren't any exceptions."

Feet thumped on the street behind him and he turned to see the second squad approaching. He waited until they reached him before he continued.

"Trying to take your guns away was pretty stupid, and I wish it was the worst of it. I've been hearing some disturbing rumors from Earth."

Someone said, "What do we care about Earth?"

"Fair enough," said Nicholson. "But Earth controls Spacecom. Earth sends out people like that clown McLaw, and tells people like me that he's in charge." He paused while the colonists muttered and complained. "So here's what I need you to understand." He took a deep breath, not wanting to say what needed to be said. "You can't trust the military. You need to hide your weapons as quickly as you manufacture them. You need to train in secret. You need to keep your own counsel. And don't trust anyone in uniform."

Aimee smirked at him and said, "Can we trust you?"

He didn't smile back. "I'm a conflicted man. If you don't trust me, I'll never be in a position where I have to choose between lying to my colleagues or betraying you."

She stopped smirking.

Several colonists glanced to the left, and some of them stiffened. Nicholson turned to follow the direction of their gaze. A man was striding toward them, coming from the direction of the spaceport. He wore a naval officer's uniform without the black armband of the crews newly arrived from Earth. He was stocky and broad-shouldered, with a flat-topped gray haircut and a bulldog's expression.

"If you want to trust someone in uniform," said Nicholson, "trust me. And trust him, too. That's Captain Hammett. He's about as easy to push around as a grizzly bear."

Hammett reached the group and stopped, raising a bushy iron-gray eyebrow. "Lieutenant?"

"Captain. This is some of the local militia. I've been teaching them to use rail guns, but a Colonel McLaw just confiscated all their weapons."

Hammett said, "All of them?"

Nicholson grinned. "Officially, yes, Sir."

"And unofficially?"

"Well, unofficially, a lot of people might leave the factory building where the fabricators are, carrying unmarked boxes and heading for undisclosed locations."

Hammett nodded. "That might be prudent." He looked around at the colonists. "That might be something you'll want to do right away."

Aimee looked at Nicholson. He nodded and said, "I guess class is dismissed for today. Come to the spaceport tomorrow morning at eight. We'll work on communications and signalling, and maneuvering in small groups."

The colonists dispersed, leaving the two officers alone in the middle of the street.

Hammett put his hands in his pockets and let his shoulders slump. "I remember during the Outer Settlements War being sickened that I had to go to war with people who were just like me. They were Navy personnel, just serving on a different Navy. That made them my enemy. It always seemed wrong." He was silent for a moment, staring down the street, staring into the past. "I thought I'd be spared that, this time around. I figured the Hive invasion put every human being alive on the same side." He turned to look at Nicholson, his eyes bleak. "We're not all on the same side, are we?"

Nicholson thought of McLaw, trying to disarm the colonists who'd been fighting the Hive. "No," he said. "No, we aren't."

"What on Earth – Sorry. What on Ariadne are you doing?"

Christine Goldfarb ignored the voice, concentrating on moving a sheet of Fourier metal longer than she was tall. Even with her assistant Tom on the other end, the sheet of metal was brutally heavy. The top was covered in a forest of filaments, each more than a meter long. It wouldn't take much of a blow to break every last filament off at the base.

She and Tom lowered the sheet into place beside a dozen similar sheets on a long table. Only then did she straighten and turn.

A middle-aged black woman stood in the entrance of Christine's workshop. She wore Earth fashions, snug trousers and a dark jacket with two buttons. It was the kind of thoroughly impractical clothing you just didn't see in the colonies. She gave Christine a rueful grin and said, "Sorry. I picked a bad time to distract you."

That was all it took to undermine Christine's rising annoyance. She smiled back and said, "Actually, I'm delighted by the interruption." She rolled her shoulders, loosening the muscles. "Those things are bloody heavy, and I could use a break." To Tom she said, "Take five minutes or so."

"I'm Sonia Renfield," the woman said. "I'm with the scientific team from Earth. Do you mind if I come in?"

"Sure." Christine eyed the woman curiously as she approached. Christine had always been something of a misfit on Ariadne, appreciated for her scientific knowledge but never really understood by her fellow colonists. She'd done most of her learning through data streams, never spending much time with anyone she would consider a peer.

The two women shook hands. "I've heard all about you," said Sonia. She gestured at the line of bristling metal sheets. "Is this Fourier metal?"

Christine nodded.

"Fascinating." Sonia moved closer to the table. "And these thin spikes are for heat dissipation, right?" She glanced at Christine. "Are these going to be hull plates?"

Christine nodded again.

"You wouldn't even need to cover the whole ship," the woman said. "So long as you had connecting strips, every plate would share heat with every other plate."

Christine nodded slowly. She hadn't really considered that possibility. It would save a lot of Fourier metal. Of course, if the heat weapon struck somewhere without any Fourier metal ….

"You'll have to tell me all about it," Sonia said. "Maybe not today, though." She gave Christine a self-deprecating grin. "Today I'm here with an ulterior motive."

The two of them walked outside and into the sunshine. Christine arched her back, easing the kinks, and gazed up at the crater walls. She'd been doing close work for hours, squinting at things in her poorly-lit workshop. She stared into the distance, resting her eyes, then reluctantly shifted her gaze to Sonia.

"It's that alien tower," Sonia said. "It's given us some huge breakthroughs. It's only a week since we've landed, and our understanding of alien technology has exploded." She mimed an explosion with her hands. "We still don't know what makes the gun fire, though. We're stumped."

Christine spread her hands. "But I don't know anything about it! I've barely looked at the tower from the outside. I don't know anything about how Hive technology works."

"Exactly!" Sonia's hands made excited gestures in the air. "We need a fresh perspective. We've all been hearing each other's theories for so long, it's all we can think of. We need fresh eyes." When Christine gave her a dubious look, Sonia said, "You're exactly what we need. You're a generalist. You haven't spent twenty years specializing in one tiny area. You're multi-disciplinary. You're bound to see something we've missed."

It was the direct appeal to her ego that did it. Even realizing that fact didn't keep it from working. Christine walked to the doorway and said, "Tom? I'm going to be away for a little bit. Are you good to keep fabricating filaments for a while?"

"Of course," he said. "You go ahead. Oh, and if they have any zinc, bring it back, would you?"

"I'll see what I can do."

She enjoyed the short walk to Garibaldi Plaza. She'd been spending too much time indoors. Since the workshop had power and her apartment still didn't, she'd been spending her nights on a cot at the back. It was all too easy to let a full day go by without stepping outside.

The city was changing, she saw. Laundry hung from improvised clotheslines, symptoms of the power restriction. Two thirds of the homes she passed were occupied, either by the original inhabitants or by Navy personnel. Occupancy was probably lower in districts that still lacked power.

A marine stood on a street corner, a rifle in his hands, frowning at passers-by. Christine knew from Tom that the colonists didn't know quite what to make of the military presence in the city. The sailors from the
Achilles
and
Tomahawk
were one thing. They had fought courageously to drive the Hive ships out of the system. Some of them, like Nicholson, had fought the Hive here in the crater. Now their ships were disabled, and it was unthinkable that the people of Harlequin wouldn't take them in.

The marines, though, were another matter. They had arrived only after the aliens left. The optimists among the colonists assumed the marine patrols were there to protect them. After all, the aliens might return. There might even be pockets of hostile Hive troops hiding in some wild corner of the crater.

Cynics said the Marine Corps was on Ariadne to make sure the civilian population did as they were told. They pointed to the almost unbelievable reports trickling in from Earth, where the EDF was enforcing something close to martial law.

Christine, not knowing quite what to think, gave the marine a neutral nod in passing and continued on her way to the plaza.

The tower made her hackles rise. It bothered her on a fundamental level. It was … alien. No human being would have designed something so lumpy, so strange. It didn't belong in the heart of her city. It didn't belong anywhere where human beings lived.

Two men and two women stood near the base of the tower, engaged in an animated discussion. They wore civilian clothing in Earth styles, and Christine was not surprised to learn they were the rest of the scientific team. Sonia introduced them, a couple of professors and a couple of doctors, all of them associated with universities back on Earth. Christine began to feel like a country bumpkin, the self-taught yokel who had never even set foot in an institution of higher learning.

Then Sonia led her to the tower, and she forgot all about the other scientists.

A cavity gaped in the base of the structure. The science team had pulled away great chunks of the tower and laid them out on sheets all around the fountain. Christine knelt and examined some of the components on display, then stepped into the cavity and peered at the guts of the tower.

At first all she saw was chaos, a jumble of lumpy shapes that reminded her of a junk heap more than anything else. Finally she realized that the strangest sight of all was the fact she could see anything. Sunlight penetrated the tower, and her gaze tracked upward, looking for the source.

A central shaft rose through the heart of the tower, a space as big around as her skull, extending upward as far as she could see. It glittered with sunlight. Clearly the top was open to the sky.
If that's the barrel of the weapon, then it projects energy upward somehow. What's the source?

She stared at the machinery that surrounded her until an ache in her back and neck became impossible to ignore. She was stooped over to fit in the cavity, with her head twisted to one side and angled back so she could look up. She backed out and straightened up, groaning as her neck protested.

"It's a little cramped in there," said Sonia. "We didn't want to pull out any more pieces. We were scared the whole tower would come down."

She took Christine on a tour of the components they'd already removed. "It's modular," Sonia said. "That was our first breakthrough. Every piece of alien technology seems to be modular on several different scales."

Christine examined the hardware on the sheets and quickly saw what the other woman meant. A component the size of a human torso broke apart into knobby pieces as big as her two fists together. Each knobby piece was almost identical to the others. She saw where one of the knobby components had been broken apart into thumb -sized chunks. The outside surface of each thumb-sized piece was covered in bumps and indentations. They could be locked together, one to another, in almost any configuration.

"Look at this one," said Sonia, and led her to a little thumb-sized piece sitting by itself on a sheet of paper. "This came from a spaceship destroyed in the Battle of Earth."

The component was indistinguishable from all the others.

"There are wires inside," said Sonia, "each with multiple contacts. There are tubes as well. Three tubes, each one a different size, run through each micro-block." She pointed at one of the thumb -sized components. "That's our unofficial name. These are micro-blocks." She indicated one of the composite components. "We call the grapefruit-sized ones 'building blocks'."

"It's so … modular," Christine said. What did it say about the psychology of the aliens? The lack of specialization was very inefficient. Every structure and device would be full of tubes and wires that served no function. But spare parts would be a breeze. If you had a bucket of micro-blocks you were ready for just about anything. In an emergency, you could disassemble anything and turn it into something else.

"It's odd," Sonia agreed. "On the other hand, it's hard to hit a critical spot. If you break a wire or a tube, there's always other tubes." She swept a hand up, pointing from the base of the tower to the peak. "There must be two hundred tubes bringing water up."

"Water?" Christine said.

Sonia beamed. "That's one of the things we did manage to figure out. They power this thing with hydrogen. Water comes up from the bottom, they separate out the oxygen, and they process the hydrogen in a gizmo up there." She pointed at a lump on the side of the tower maybe three meters up.

"Huh." Christine scratched her head. "I was wondering why they built inside the city. They probably picked their spot as soon as they spotted the fountains."

Several hours sped by without Christine really noticing. The others had had more time to study the tower and other Hive technology back on Earth, but when it came time to test theories, Christine discovered she had a better knack for practical issues. She also knew the resources available in Harlequin. At her suggestion they turned their attention to the alien power boxes. These proved to be remarkably compact hydrogen fusion plants, each one powerful enough to run the entire crater with energy left over.

Once they had a power box running, connected to the tower with a repaired cable, they started running electricity through different sections of the tower. They formed dozens of theories, tested them one at a time, and slowly expanded their understanding of the alien hardware.

When the sun was low in the sky Sonia said, "I think we could try firing this thing."

The six of them exchanged uncertain glances.

"What could possibly go wrong?" Sonia said. "I'm not being glib. That's a serious question."

They brainstormed disaster scenarios, from accidentally destroying a Navy ship in orbit to triggering a massive explosion.

"I don't think it's capable of exploding," Christine said. "Everything about the design channels excess energy into that central shaft. It all gets expelled straight up into the air. I think the worst we can do is accidentally melt the whole thing into slag."

"That would be a shame," said Sonia. "Still, I can live with that."

"Me too." A sudden rush of excitement spread through Christine's stomach and tingled across her skin. "Let's do it!"

Ultimately they made a tour of every building that bordered on the plaza. Mostly it was restaurants and stores that hadn't reopened since the invasion. They found a couple of apartments containing half a dozen sailors from the
Achilles
and got them to take up posts in every street that led to the plaza. Then, when they were sure the plaza was clear and every nearby building was empty, they retreated behind the base of a statue.

Sonia hit a remote control switch connected to what they were almost certain was the tower's trigger mechanism. A data pad close to the tower recorded everything, and the scientists watched on their implants. The top of the tower glowed red, then flashed white. Then it went dark.

"I guess it worked," said Sonia, her voice strangely hushed. "Of course, it still might blow up."

They exchanged glances.

Sonia said, "How long do you think we should wait?"

"I don't know," Christine said.

They sat, fidgeting, for the better part of two minutes. Nothing exploded. The tower just sat there, inert. When they couldn't stand it anymore they rose and returned to the tower.

"Well," Christine said, "we have a working space gun. I can see how that might come in handy." She grinned at the other scientists. "Tomorrow's challenge is figuring out how to aim it."

Sonia looked startled. "Aim it? Now that we've tested it, we should take the whole thing apart."

Christine shook her head. "No way. The Hive is going to come back. We're going to need that gun."