The Mothership (27 page)

“You did good out there,” Beckman said,
sensing her uncertainty. “Popping that smoke grenade was smart. I wouldn’t have
thought of it.” She looked surprised. “The only way we’re going to beat these
things,” Beckman added, “is with brains, not firepower. We need you.”

She took a deep breath, gathering her
strength, and nodded. “You can count on me, sir.”

“I know I can,” Beckman said.

“We can’t stay here,” Markus said, watching
the burning ruins.

Beckman ran his eye over Hooper’s burns
anxiously, “Can you make it?”

“Yeah,” Hooper said weakly.

“All right then, let’s move,” Beckman said,
starting up the ridge to where the others waited. Soon, a dirty brown rain
began to fall, as water trapped deep in the Earth’s crust since the planet’s
creation rose as steam, condensed and returned to Earth. By the time they
reached the others, the rain had become a deluge, extinguishing the fires and
soaking the land in primordial waters.

* * * *

Timer opened his
eyes to impenetrable blackness. He tried to move, but found he was squeezed on
all sides. The smooth curve of the tunnel wall angled up to the left beneath
him, while a heavy weight pinned him to the ground. It didn’t feel like the
rough, uneven rock of a cave-in. It was more like he was cocooned inside a
smooth, cold coffin.

A hissing sound shattered the inky silence
as a flare ignited just beyond his head. Its flickering light revealed the
upper curve of the tunnel roof had folded over him like an enveloping blanket.
The molecular bonding that knitted the tunnel wall together had refused to
tear, even under the immense weight of the cave-in.

“I can hear him breathing,” Dr McInness
said uncertainly.

Vamp’s hands locked around Timer’s
shoulders, and dragged him free. “You alive?”

“If you call being buried under the Earth’s
crust alive, then yes.” He stretched, discovering his body was a patchwork of
aching muscles. “You’ll have to carry me,” he said hopefully.

“In your dreams, peewee.” She stood up and
thumbed her mike. “Vamp here, Major, do you read me?” Long seconds of silence
passed. “Beckman acknowledge. Anyone?”

“They can’t hear you,” Dr McInness said
from the shadows. “The rock’s blocking the signal.”

One look at where the tunnel roof pressed
flat against the floor, pinching off the entrance, told her he was right.
Millions of tons of rock now separated them from the surface. In the sharp
light of the flare, a twitching movement off to the left caught her eye. She
unslung her M16 and aimed it at the long silver fingers clawing at the tunnel
floor. Her eyes ran up a tubular arm, past the glassy metal sensor disk, to
where the smooth ceiling pressed against the floor. Unlike Timer, who had found
survival at the side of the tunnel, the seeker had been caught in the center
under the full weight of the sagging roof. It was pinned, with no possibility
of escape, but she fired a burst into its sensor disk just to be sure. It gave
her some satisfaction to see the seeker’s fingers spasm, then cease moving.

Timer stared at the inactive machine with
dread. “They don’t quit, do they?”

“Neither do we,” she said. “Got any more
C4?”

“No, only got a couple of grenades.” The
rest of his explosives were in his pack, which he’d left on the ridge with
Nuke. He’d also lost his rifle, but his midget special was still in its
holster.

“Ammo’s the problem,” Vamp said, knowing
they carried food and water enough for twenty-four hours.

“Ammo?” Timer laughed, abruptly stopping
when his bruised ribs complained. “What are we going to shoot down here?” The
flare sputtered and went out, returning the tunnel to absolute blackness. After
a moment, Timer asked apprehensively, “Got another?”

“One more. I’ll save it.”

“For what?”

She pulled him to his feet by his Kevlar
vest, turning him around. “See that?”

“I can’t see shit.” He said, then noticed a
pin prick of white light. The longer he focused on it, the further away it
seemed. “What is it?”

“Bug-eye central. Start walking.”

“We’re just going to stroll in there and
say, ‘Yo, aliens! What’s happening?’”

“Got a better idea?”

“We just blew their shit to hell!”

“We’ll say we’re sorry.”

“Sorry might work,” Dr McInness added
hopefully.

She released Timer, and started toward the
distant point of light.

“Man, this is really going to suck.” Timer
muttered to himself as their footsteps moved away. He sighed, and started
limping after them. “Hey, wait up!”

Nemza’ri had known
from her first breath since landing that the great ship had been holed. The
warm, humid air flooding every corridor was breathable, even if tainted by a
strangely intoxicating fragrance she did not recognize, for she’d never before
smelled eucalyptus. Her olfactory implants told her the fragrance was
biological and harmless, although its presence worried her because it told of
the extent of the damage. Nemza’ri wondered why the ship’s automated repair
drones had not already sealed the breach, and repressurized the ship. The only
explanation was that the damage was too great for them to repair quickly. It
occurred to her that the Command Nexus, with its inexplicable loss of judgment,
had failed to coordinate the repairs effectively.

Whatever the explanation, she knew her
first duty was to the safety of the ship. Using the life pod’s command
terminal, she’d located the nearest damage control center eight decks away.
With the grav lifts inoperable, she’d had to make a series of dangerous climbs
through cargo transit shafts to reach it. Most of the passageways had been
immersed in complete darkness, forcing her to navigate using only her biosonar.
She’d been trained to move through the ship on sonics alone, but she’d never
been comfortable with the way sound waves reflected off the smooth metal walls.
Even so, it didn’t take her long to find the sonic marker that identified the
access hatch. This part of the ship was unpowered, but she knew all damage
control centers had organic power for just such an emergency. Nemza’ri pinged
the sensor above the entrance anxiously, relaxing only when the bulky hatch
dilated to reveal a large rectangular chamber.

The damage control center was lit by the
glow of two view screens facing a row of bulky heavy lift suits. She resisted
the urge to climb into the nearest heavy lift suit, choosing instead to approach
the screens. One hissed with white static, overlaid with symbols that told her
there was a ship wide failure of the command net, that complex mix of
communications, sensors and relays that controlled every aspect of the massive
vessel. The other screen displayed damage reports from all over the ship. She
was shocked to discover how many reports there were, then she saw the screen’s
time indexes. The screen had not been updated for many days, then one of the
old damage reports caught her attention, filling her with horror.

The stasis sleep system had suffered a
catastrophic malfunction!

She pinged the screen to display all
reports from the sleep chamber, but like so many other areas, she found no
updates had been received for many days. Whatever had happened, the ship’s
command net had failed when the sleep chamber had called for help. She wondered
if that was what had caused the Command Nexus to fail, its inability to protect
the sleep chamber?

Again, she felt the urge to rush to the
nearest heavy lift suit and race to the heart of the ship, but her training
held her back. Nemza’ri pinged the screen, recalling all damage reports. She
was shocked to discover there were over a hundred and seventeen thousand of
them! Her implants scanned them all in a matter of minutes, updating her
memories with information related to critical systems and ignoring the rest.
When she’d finished, the scale of the cataclysm was fully apparent to her.

Finally, Nemza’ri climbed into a heavy lift
suit with a sense of hopelessness and waited for the suit to seal around her.
When it had connected to her implants via her nervous system, it became an
extension of her body, allowing her to hold an eggshell without cracking it or
bend neutronium bulkheads like melted plastic. A large oval section of the
helmet in front of her face dissolved to translucence, then she activated the
suit’s exterior lights and headed towards the sleep chamber.

Nemza’ri forced herself to proceed calmly,
even though she was driven by a desperate desire to rescue as many as she
could. The damage reports had left her in no doubt as to the magnitude of the
disaster and the unlikely possibility of finding survivors. The knowledge
filled her with a terrible dread as she finally grasped her fate.

She was alone.

Bandaka led the
team up the rugged eastern slope of Parson’s Range in darkness and rain,
following an ancient track used by his people for tens of thousands of years.
By midnight, they reached the lip of the plateau overlooking the five glowing
calderas that were all that remained of the destroyed power plants. The gases
venting from the mine shaft had thinned to wispy threads reaching towards a
dark cloud that now filled the sky. To Beckman’s surprise, there was no sign of
activity anywhere near the mine. He’d expected at least a reconnaissance of the
area, if not a punitive strike to punish those responsible for the destruction.

“Where are they?” Xeno asked, voicing
Beckman’s thoughts.

Nuke pointed to the smoking ruin below.
“Those wimp ass aliens got the message. Now they know there are serious bad
asses on this planet!”

Markus peered thoughtfully into the
shadows. “Or they’re coming after us stealthed.”

Nuke’s eyes widened nervously, then he took
cautious step back.

“We’ll keep moving,” Beckman said,
determined not to rest until they were hidden deep within the plateau’s forest.

 With the energy dome obscuring the
moonlight, the forest was a maze of mysterious shadows and baffling sounds, yet
Bandaka always knew exactly where they were. He led them into the forest for
another hour, until Hooper could go no further. When they made camp, Xeno
washed the Sergeant’s burns with water from a nearby stream and fed him pain
killers to help him sleep. When finished, she turned to Virus, who lay on his
makeshift stretcher, unconscious and moaning incomprehensibly. She checked his
vitals and threaded an IV into his arm, hanging the saline pack from a nearby
branch.

“I’ve got enough of these to keep his
fluids up for twenty-four hours,” she informed Beckman who silently watched her
tending the two wounded men.

“That’ll be long enough,” he said, then
approached Nuke, who was fiddling with Virus’ communications gear. “Anything?”

“The short wave is dead.”

“Are they jamming us?”

Nuke shook his head uncertainly. “No,
there’s just nothing out there.” He glanced up at the sky. “Maybe that dome can
block radio waves?” He held up the recovered communicator in the Groom
customized housing. “This thing on the other hand is going nuts. Traffic is
increasing by the hour.”

“Talking about us?”

Nuke shrugged. “Whatever they’re saying,
there’s a lot more of them saying it than a day ago. And they don’t much care
that we can hear them.” He glanced at Virus’ comatose form. “I’d feel better if
he was listening to this stuff instead of me.”

“You’re doing fine. Keep me posted.”

“Affirmative.”

Beckman returned to his backpack, leaving
Nuke to channel surf the recovered communicator. He opened a dehydrated ration
pack, allowing himself to rest for the first time that day. Some of the team
had already finished eating, and were stretching out to sleep while the
aboriginal guides had vanished into the woods to forage. Tucker lay on his
back, absently scraping his fingernails with his knife, thinking about Steamer’s
death and planning for pay back, while at the edge of the camp, Cougar was on
watch, cradling his rifle as he scanned the shadows. When Xeno finished with
Virus and Hooper, she stripped and cleaned her M16, listening absently to
Markus and Laura now engaged in a lengthy conversation.

“I used to think all this UFO stuff was
some kind of a mass psychosis,” Laura said.

“That’s how we like it,” Markus said. “Most
people are afraid of something; the dark, the bogey man, creaking noises.
Imagine how they’d feel if they knew what’s really out there.”

“They’d deal with it.”

“Would they?” His tone indicated he didn’t
think so.

“Lots of people have seen them. It hasn’t
ended the world.”

“Only crackpots see UFOs,” Markus said with
a wry smile. “And while there’s no evidence, that’s how it’ll stay.”

“And you discredit the evidence that does
exist.”