The Mothership (42 page)

Cracker spotted a familiar dark shape on
the floor. He eased himself off his table and walked stiff legged to where
Bill’s Browning A-bolt hunting rifle lay. It was loaded, but in the darkness
and wreckage of the lab, there would be little hope of finding more ammunition.
With the gun in his hand, and two sticks of dynamite in his pocket, Cracker’s
spirits began to rise. He held the gun up to show the others, but Bill barely
noticed. His attention was on the faint glimmer light coming from the elevator
shaft. There was no sign of movement, but he realized Dan was right, they
didn’t have much time.

Wal staggered to where the bench had been.
Twisted metal surrounded a hole blown through the bulkhead by the dynamite. It
opened into another large room containing rows of large transparent cylinders
filled with a clear, slowly bubbling liquid. The explosion had shattered many
of the containers, spilling the liquid onto the floor. Wal didn’t recognize the
room as a medical facility, but he saw a faint illumination coming from a
corridor at the far end. He turned back to the others and pointed to the hole.

“Thaa waaay!” In spite of Wal’s rubber
lips, they understood his meaning.

Slab let go of Dan, and tried walking on
his own. His legs were weak, but this time he managed to keep his balance. He
moved from table to table, leaning on each for support as he headed for the
escape hole.

Wal tripped over the twisted metal at the
bottom of the hole and fell onto the thin layer of viscous fluid covering the
floor in the next room. He tried cursing, but the sound that came from his
mouth was unintelligible. The others clambered through, splashing him as their
boots trampled the fluid. He wiped the strange substance from his face, feeling
a tingling sensation as it reacted with his skin. He looked at the clear liquid
on his hand in amazement, then stood up and smiled at the others.

“I feel bloody fantastic!” He said with
growing amazement, his paralysis vanished and every ache in his body gone.

The others looked at him curiously, feeling
like old men, barely able to stand.

“It’s this stuff,” Wal declared
enthusiastically. “Try it!”

“Pih orf, Waa!” Slab growled.

Wal breathed in deeply. “It’s amazing! I
feel ten years younger!”

“Yuuu loo like shii,” Slab slurred.

Wal snatched the rifle from Cracker’s
hands, then used the butt to smash one of the containers. A wave of clear
liquid poured out, washing their wobbly legs out from under them and saturating
them as they splashed on the floor.

Slab sprung to his feet and stomped towards
Wal with clenched fists. Wal shrank back grinning, “You feel better, don’t
you?”

Slab raised his fist, about to let Wal have
it, when he realized he did feel better. Much better! It was as if the years
had vanished. He lowered his fist, flexing his shoulders, testing his new found
strength. “Jeez, I reckon I could go four quarters at the Gee! And kick a dozen
goals!”

The others stood up, flexing and
stretching. Not only were the after effects of the electric shock gone, but old
muscles felt young again, tired joints moved like silk. Even Dan’s weathered
face, dehydrated and starved, now glowed with renewed vigor.

Wal opened the water bottle by his side,
gulped down the last of its contents, then held the bottle under the small
waterfall of fluid draining from the container he’d smashed.

“What are you doing now?” Slab demanded.

Wal gave him a larcenous grin. “Mate, do
you know what women would pay for this stuff?”

Slab looked astonished, then exchanged
thoughtful looks with the others. Moments later, they were all gathered around
the broken vessel, filling their canteens with the miraculously curative
liquid.

Beckman stood
before a blast door the size of a four story building. The massive door could
have withstood a hydrogen blast, yet it had been shredded like paper. Slag
bubbles had solidified on the deck and jagged metal shards framed the circular
opening like serrated teeth. Stretching behind them, through the labyrinth of
empty corridors they’d followed to reach that point, was a tunnel of
destruction stretching from the outer hull all the way into the heart of the
ship.

“This is one seriously messed up hunk of
junk,” Nuke said as he ran his hand over congealed rivulets of metal.

Beckman drew his carbon steel commando
knife and dragged it across a slag bubble experimentally, unable to even
scratch it. “Whatever this stuff is, it’s tougher than steel.”

He sheathed his knife, then stepped
cautiously through the opening into a vast chamber. Its towering ceiling was
shrouded in darkness while the far walls were barely visible several kilometers
away. A few scattered sunbeams shone down through blast holes, penetrating the
darkness with columns of light. Hanging precariously from the shadowed ceiling
were twisted metal girders, monuments to the massive structure which had once
filled the chamber.

Beckman studied the nearest sunbeam,
following it to the floor where he found a matching exit wound. Whatever had
caused the damage had passed right through the chamber and kept on going.
Silver metal lay in a frozen whirlpool around the exit wound, cooled before it
could pour out into space. Spanning the floor of the great cavern were
mountains of blackened metal frameworks, rising like funeral pyres from a
frozen sea of shining slag.

Bandaka wrinkled his nose at the pungent
stench pervading the chamber. “Death walks here,” he whispered as he made a
sign.

Beckman started forward, followed warily by
the rest of the team, all of whom were strangely silent in the face of such
destruction. He hadn’t gone far when he spotted a partially buried octagonal
capsule. One of its sides had melted into the slag, while the upper transparent
surface remained intact. He peered through the view window, finding nothing but
ash and a skeletal outline of an amphibian imprinted on the inside by a
brilliant flash.

One by one, they discovered fragments of
more octagonal capsules, torn from the most remote corners of the great
chamber.  They’d been spared liquefaction by their distance from the forces
that had been unleashed on the sleep chamber, but unable to avoid the after
effects of the searing heat.

“Must have been thousands in here,” Markus
said, wondering
How can this ship be a threat to us? They’re all dead!

 Beckman glanced at one of the octagonal
transport cells, and tried to imagine how many could have been stored in this
space. “Not thousands. Millions!” He tried to imagine the sleep chamber as it
had been, a vast honeycomb structure laced with thousands of narrow canyon-like
aisles. Once it had been the most heavily armored section of the ship. Now, it
had been reduced to an empty tomb.

Bandaka, unnerved by so much death,
wondered how the lost spirits of the ship would find peace. He said nothing,
knowing the
balanda
soldiers would not understand, but he privately
wished Mulmulpa was there. The old man, with his dreaming vision and spiritual
insight, would have known how to put the dead to rest.

“Could it be a colony ship?” Xeno asked.

“It’s wrapped in a lot of armor to be the
Mayflower,” Tucker said doubtfully.

“It’s not a colony ship,” Virus said weakly
as he sipped from his canteen. From the recesses of his tortured mind, he
sensed the ship was designed to function in a way that suited the nature of the
species who built it. He knew they thought of it as a
mother-
ship, but
there was more to the meaning of that word than he understood. There was a
power in the mother aspect which eluded him. It was part strategy, part
technology, part biology. He shook his head slowly, frustrated that the answer
was just beyond his reach.

They moved on, fanning out either side of
Beckman, following paths of melted metal formed by chance between twisted
funeral mounds, like ants crawling over the corpse of a great beast.

“Would have died fast,” Tucker muttered as
he glanced at the flash imprint of an amphibian inside a transport cell.

“That’s how I want to go,” Nuke said,
“Blink and I’m dead. Feel nothing!”

“Be careful what you wish for, Lieutenant.”
Tucker said, nodding meaningfully at Nuke’s pack.

Nuke looked startled, having forgotten
Beckman would order the detonation if they were cornered.

When they were almost halfway through the
chamber, Xeno pointed off to the right. “Another hole over there!”

Beckman looked at the dark cavity in the sleep
chamber wall. It had been partly hidden by debris sucked into its mouth during
decompression. He ran his eye around the distant walls of the chamber, picking
out one dark hole after another, each partially camouflaged by the surrounding
shadows. Markus stopped beside him, following his gaze.

“Notice the angles?” Beckman asked
thoughtfully.

“Yeah,” Markus nodded. “This was no
accident.”

Beckman was certain, the terrible wounds
suffered by the great ship all converged on that one point. “Someone was shooting
at this chamber, trying to kill the people here.”

“They succeeded,” Markus said
apprehensively. “Everyone on board is dead. It can’t be a threat, but whoever
destroyed it is.”

“Someone’s controlling those machines,”
Beckman said. “And we don’t know why this ship was destroyed, or even what’s
going on outside our own atmosphere. Until I know the good guys from the bad
guys, I’m taking no chances.”

Beckman moved off, while Markus’ hid his
frustration and followed, wondering if he would get a chance to steal the
device Nuke was carrying; all too aware that Tucker watched the payload
specialist’s every move.

For nearly an hour, they picked their way
through the chamber, finding no sign of life. When they were nearly two thirds
of the way across, Bandaka held his spear up, signaling them to listen. Behind
the hunter, everyone went quiet, then they heard the distant scraping of loose
metal. It was the first sound they’d heard not of their making. For several
seconds, there was nothing but silence, then the crash of a heavy object
landing on crumpled metal reached them. Bandaka pointed to a mound of debris
ahead, signaling the source lay beyond it.

Beckman and Markus crept to the top of the
mound, then cautiously peered down into the valley beyond. Standing knee deep
in twisted metal was a white bipedal machine. It had thick metallic arms and
legs, a multijointed torso, and unlike the other machines they’d seen, a large
elongated metal dome for a head rather than a flat sensor disk. At the end of
each arm were four short, double jointed metal fingers that could move in any
direction.

Beckman knew at a glance the suit had the
proportions of the alien corpse Xeno had examined. “No survivors, huh?” Beckman
whispered.

“We should try to capture it, for
questioning.”

“Don’t you mean, make friendly contact?”

Markus shrugged, “That too.”

The heavy lift suit stood with its back to
Beckman, showing no sign its occupant was aware of being observed. The suit
effortlessly wrenched a blackened girder free to reveal a trapped octagonal
transport cell, then finding the cell fatally crushed, placed the dead cell on
the mound behind it. When it turned, Beckman saw a transparent face plate
revealing an elongated chin and a forward sloping forehead.

Nemza’ri
stopped
as a forward looking suit sensor detected multiple heat sources nearby. The
thermal readings were much higher than for her own kind, and in an area she’d
already searched for survivors. She turned sharply and using a thermal track
for direction, looked straight at Beckman.

For a moment, Beckman stared into large blue
green eyes framing a vertical black slit pupil. The alien’s eyes blinked
horizontally, rather than vertically, with a thin translucent inner sheath and
a thick outer layer of skin working together. Her mouth opened slightly, almost
the equivalent of a gasp of surprise as the suit warned that seven hot blooded
contacts were closing. Instinctively, she hurled the damaged transport cell at
the nearest threat. The heavy lift suit multiplied her strength many times,
turning the cell into a deadly projectile.

Beckman and Markus leapt back just before
the cell crashed into the mound they’d been standing on. Multiple clicks
sounded behind him as the team readied weapons, expecting the suited figure to
come charging at him, then they heard a distant crunching sound.

It’s running!
Beckman realized, jumping to his feet and scrambling
back to the top of the mound.

The heavy lift suit leapt into the air and made
a propulsion field assisted jump across half a kilometer of wreckage. Markus
clambered up beside Beckman as the heavy lift suit vanished behind a pile of
debris near the far wall. A moment later, a metallic clang rang through the
chamber as a small access door slammed shut.