-20-
The next few hours were a blur of activity. The first assault ship came down bearing Gaines and Kwon, as I had requested. Gaines brought along a platoon of his best marines. They secured the LZ like the pros they were, using their suits’ shoulder repellers to keep them down on the surface.
I stood up warily and limped closer to them in short hops.
“Your suit looks banged up, sir,” Kwon observed.
“You got it in one, First Sergeant.”
I turned my attention to Gaines. “You need to know what we’re facing here on Phobos.”
I wired him the suit recordings of my up close and personal interactions with the cyborgs. Playing them on his faceplate made the experience very realistic. He watched the vid, making occasional exclamations.
“Oh shit,” he said, wincing and staggering backward.
I chuckled. “You must have reached the part where they jumped me.”
“Yes sir…that is one unpleasant hitch-hiker. I’m going to have to pass this on to the men—with your permission.”
“Granted. They’ll keep a sharp eye out if they know what might attack them.”
He dialed up a platoon-net address and transmitted the vid. He then ordered his men to watch it in squads. We enjoyed their visceral reactions.
“Can I watch too, sir?” Kwon asked. “I want to see this.”
I gave him the vid while Gaines and I walked aboard the assault ship. I needed a new suit, and the jump-ships always packed a few spares.
Kwon shouted something behind us in Korean. Gaines and I smiled. I figured if we stood around long enough we would learn a few new bad words in Kwon’s native tongue.
Inside the pressurized cabin of the assault ship, I donned a fresh suit. The suits could seal and repair leaks by themselves, but there were a lot of specialized parts that couldn’t be fixed without a machine shop.
“Sir?” Gaines asked, “about how many of those cyborgs are on Phobos?”
“Approximately? I have approximately no frigging idea. I don’t think I clocked them all, though. I’ve only been here a few hours and I’ve already encountered three living specimens. There have to be more, it’s a big ship. The way I figure it, Phobos barreled right through a section of space that was seeded by Crow with these cyborgs. They activated and attacked, as per their programming.”
“Hmm,” Gaines said, nodding. “We did get several of them aboard our larger ships, but this ship was first and it is so much larger…I would have to say a thousand times larger. That would indicate a thousand or so enemy.”
I nodded, struggling with the helmet. Helmets were always the hardest part to get right in a battle suit. Believe it or not, people do have differently shaped heads. Unlike my own suit, which had been tailored to my dimensions, this unit was generic. It was able to conform to my shape to some degree, but it would never be as good a fit as a personalized unit.
“The next question is,” I said, my voice becoming muffled as the overly-wide helmet clicked into place, “how many of those cyborgs survived Phobos’ defensive systems? Tolerance must have gotten a few of them when they landed, but not enough to protect himself.”
“We’ll do a sweep of the northern polar region and get a body count,” Gaines said. “But I’m more interested in another detail now.”
“What’s that?”
“Do you think we can fly this thing, Colonel?”
I stared at him. “That’s an interesting idea. I’d honestly not considered it until now.”
“You were probably too busy staying alive and being probed by Mr. Tolerance.”
“Yeah…but you’re right. We need Phobos. This ship was the basis of our attack plan for the Imperials. If we could get control of the drive system somehow, and get the main weapon working…” I trailed off, thinking hard. “I mean, how complicated can it be? Only one weapon with two modes. A drive system based on repellers, tech we know how to use, but on a drastically larger scale.”
I clanked over to the cockpit where a female pilot nodded to me.
“Call up fleet dispatch,” I said to her. “Tell Captain Sarin to send a full transport of marines down here. I want more personnel.”
“Isn’t that risky, sir?”
I looked at her in surprise. “Hell yeah, it is. In case you haven’t noticed, pilot, this isn’t a desk you’re flying. Get them down here.”
I walked away and tromped back out of the ship onto the surface. Gaines followed.
“I think Lieutenant Lund was just following orders, sir. Fleet is very jumpy about sending down a large portion of our forces without being certain it isn’t a trap of some kind.”
“By ‘Fleet’ I bet you mean Miklos.”
“Probably,” Gaines admitted. “She also wants to know if we’ve finished our recon mission here yet.”
“Meaning she wants us to get off this rock? Let me tell you something, Major, this mission was a trap. A trap laid for me.”
I explained briefly how Tolerance had spent his final moments enjoying what he’d hoped was my death.
“As far as I can tell,” I said, “he was bluffing to get me down here alone. He didn’t have any operating weapons left that I could detect. The cyborgs had knocked them out and let his atmosphere leak away. Any invading force would do the same.”
“That was his key weakness,” Gaines said thoughtfully. “Maybe that’s why the Blues don’t go out into space often.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Blues are essentially collections of gel, mist and gas, sir. Space has zero pressure. Any kind of leak in his ship’s pressurization system would be fatal one of his kind.”
“Yeah,” I said, thinking about it. “It wouldn’t be about suffocation. A leak, even a small one, would pull his guts out. I guess old Tolerance was brave for one of his kind—even if he was a son of bitch.”
After a bit more butt-kicking on the com system with Fleet, I got my full transport load of marines. Having several hundred boots on the ground made me feel better—or was that hooves?
“You weren’t kidding when you said you drew heavily on the Centaurs for this mission, Gaines.”
I looked around at the marines, hands on my hips. At least three quarters of them had four legs rather than two.
“No choice, Colonel. Too many human losses.”
Something new came down out of the transport then. At first, I thought it was a tank or some other kind of heavy machinery. Then I saw the cameras on sinuous arms.
“Marvin managed to get aboard the first transport?” I asked.
“Couldn’t stop him, sir,” Gaines said. “Captain Sarin said you might want him to look over the ship’s technology.”
“All right,” I said. “Let’s move out. I’m taking company A with me. The rest of you set up camp here and cover the LZ, Gaines commanding. Send the transport back up to Fleet before Miklos loses a kidney from stress.”
That earned me a few chuckles. The Commodore’s overprotective attitude toward his ships was well known.
“Saddle up, people! It’s a long trip.”
Marvin took his position at the end of my company of flying marines. I muttered to myself about him as we glided over the surface. The robot usually managed to make people think it was their idea when he got himself assigned to a mission, and apparently he’d pulled that trick on Jasmine. Right now, as far as I was concerned, this was a combat mission. Science officers were supposed to wait until the region was secure before dropping into an unknown and hostile situation. But I had to admit, if we were going to figure out how to fly Phobos, I needed him.
I flew toward the north pole of the ship. Behind me, the marines scudded over the surface toward the big nose-weapon area. It looked like a crater from the edge. One would have thought it was a natural structure due to the size of it, but it was just too damned evenly-cut to be natural.
I led them all down into the crater and watched as they bumped over the honeycombed things behind me.
“If this thing goes off while we’re this close, I bet we shrink down to the size of dimes,” Gaines commented.
“Oh I don’t know,” I laughed, “Kwon here would probably make a half-dollar coin at least.”
“Very good, sir!” Kwon laughed obligingly.
I wondered if he laughed at my jokes for the same reasons I laughed at his. I shrugged, deciding it was as good a basis for a friendship as any.
Soon we found the spot where I’d entered before and began the dangerous journey into guts of the craft. Marvin almost couldn’t contain himself when he realized the size and scale of the find.
“This is fantastic, Colonel. Absolutely fantastic! I want to thank you for authorizing my addition to this exploration team.”
“This is a combat mission, Marvin,” I said. “And you know full well I didn’t authorize anything regarding you.”
“Really? Possibly, there was some kind of data-entry error.”
“Uh-huh.”
We pressed ahead into the tight tunnel that led through the hull to main chamber. While we were in the tunnel, I became wary. Our numbers wouldn’t help us as much in a tight space. In fact, the close quarters might even result in friendly-fire problems if the bugs hit us now.
But they didn’t. They passed on the opportunity and let us exit into the open primary chamber without incident.
Marvin took flight once he wriggled free of the snake-hole entrance. He flew overhead, looking like Santa’s sleigh as he glided his segmented body around.
“This is absolutely amazing,” he said, cruising in a rising spiral above my company. “The enclosed cubic space here is larger than anything we’ve seen—with the possible exception of the Centaur orbital habitats.”
“Yeah, it’s big. If you’re done doing a victory lap, I need you to find the control system and figure out how it works.”
“I see something this way. I’ll report back shortly.”
He left, buzzing into the mist. I watched him go, shaking my head. “That robot is the best and worst thing I’ve ever done.”
“Isn’t that what every father says about his kids?”
I chuckled. “Yeah, but most kids don’t threaten the species with Armageddon every now and then. Are the rest of those marines in defensive positions yet? I want our exit secure.”
“No sir, but they’re setting up. About that tunnel we used to enter—I think it’s part of the problem.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not natural, and it’s not part of the design. I think the cyborgs dug through the rock directly.”
I examined the hole. It was smooth and clean, as if a machine had bored it with precision. I’d assumed it was part of the ship’s structure when I’d found it, but now that I thought about it, how had the cyborgs gotten in? How had they released the pressure inside?
“They could make something that looks like this, I guess,” I said, running my gauntlets over the edges. They were rough at the seams, and there was no hatch to close over the hole. “I’d kind of assumed this was the way Tolerance loaded himself aboard. Being a cloud, he could blow right through here and dwell inside.”
“Maybe,” Gaines admitted. “But that big of an air exchange would require something on another side to vent the expelled gasses out. Anyway, I think it’s too big of a coincidence that the hole leads back to the breach in the weapons system and is just big enough for a human or a cyborg to travel through.”
While we puzzled over this, I had the marine company we’d brought inside spread out and watch the interior of the ship. It was too big, dark and hazy to see the far side. There was no way to dig a foxhole, as the hull was too dense. As a result, my marines were standing around in loose squads, playing their suit-lights over the interior and the smoky brown atmosphere inside.
It wasn’t long before I heard a chime in my helmet. Marvin was requesting a private channel. I opened the connection and listened.
“I believe I have, it sir. Really, it’s the only way.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The ship’s interface, Colonel.”
“You’ve found it? You know how it works?”
“In principle, yes.”
I frowned, not liking that qualifier. But I was happy he’d found anything at all so quickly. I told him to stay where he was working on the problem, located his signal and triangulated my way over to his position.
The flight crossing the central chamber took a good four minutes. This place was huge. I arrived and immediately checked my power supply: it was already down to eighty-three percent.
“We’re going to have to build some kind of power station network in here,” I said, looking over Marvin’s find.
I was under-impressed. I’d expected some kind of sophisticated control system. Instead, what I found was a patchwork of hexagons like the honeycomb structure I’d found on the surface. The only difference here was the variable depth of the hexagons. Some were deep holes while others were shallow, and a few poked outward, like a block sticking up from kid’s toy. Each of the hexes was about six feet across.
“What have you got here, Marvin?” I asked.
He was cruising around about twenty feet up, poking at one of the hexes. It shifted a little under pressure from his tentacles, sinking inward.
I frowned in concern. “What is that, some kind of button? Don’t fool with it if you don’t know what it does.”
My statement finally gained the attention of a few of Marvin’s drifting squad of cameras. A spotlight splashed over me, but he didn’t fly down to my level.
“How else will I figure out how to operate the ship?”
I ran my eyes over the scene again. Slowly, I was beginning to get it.
“Are you telling me this is it? A control panel built on a fantastic scale?”
“Blues are large beings. Especially in a low-pressure environment.”
“Yeah…but none of these buttons are even labeled. How could he tell which one was which?”
“I suspect they are differentiated by the proximity and pressure required to move a given button—I’m not sure as to the details yet. But yes, I am sure this is the control panel. There are few features in this entire vast chamber. As to the lack of labels, well, Blues have no eyes.”
The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. How could a massive gaseous being interact with a ship’s control panel? He couldn’t see it, he couldn’t flick a tiny switch—the physical interface had to be simple in structure. It had to be made up of something that could be moved with puffs of air.
I imagined Tolerance hovering here, looking like a slightly darker haze. He could blow into these hexagonal holes—or maybe apply suction. He could push and pull the soft interior material around in each of the hexes, thus controlling the ship.
That was cool, sort of like playing a giant harmonica. But it seemed impossible for a human to operate. You would have to have a dozen people all climbing around tapping on things. What a nightmare. Not to mention we hadn’t the slightest clue what any of the controls did.
“Hmm,” I said, daunted by the task Tolerance had left us. “Figuring this out is going to be difficult. There must be a hundred buttons here.”
“Two hundred and sixteen, to be exact. There are also two other smaller panels higher up.”
“Two hundred and…that’s going to take months of experimentation to figure out!”
“I hope not,” Marvin said, tapping lightly on a protruding hexagonal button.
I saw it move a fraction, and ducked my head instinctively. For all I knew, he was warming up the big weapon to fire.
“You hope not? Why’s that? Are we going to plow through the ring to Earth soon? I thought we were on a stable orbital path across the system.”
I sensed doom in the midst of triumph. If we rode this monster into the Solar System, that was all well and good, but not if we couldn’t control it. We might as well find an asteroid and throw it at the ring. At least an asteroid wouldn’t be hollow.
“The ring?” asked Marvin distractedly. “No, we aren’t headed that way. Not at all. Hasn’t anyone informed you of our new course, Colonel?”
I shook my head.
“Tolerance wanted to be sure, I guess—certain of your death. He set the ship into a death spiral. We’ll impact with Centauri B in six days—but the temperature and radiation will kill everyone aboard before that.”
I stared up at him.
“Marvin,” I said. “We need this ship. We need to ride it like a battering ram all the way to Earth. It can’t be that complex. Just figure out the basics. How to engage the gravity drive, how to steer—oh, and how to aim and fire that big weapon on the nose.”
I heard a funny noise out of Marvin, one I’d never heard before. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought it was a snort.
“Is that all, Colonel Riggs?”
“No. There’s one more thing. I want control of this ship within five days. If you manage that, I’ll let you fly again, Marvin. I’ll strap your engines back on myself, if I have to.”
Seven, eight—fully ten cameras panned and zoomed in my direction.
“Is that some kind of joke, sir?”
“No, it’s not. I mean it.”
“In that case, I will begin my experiments immediately. I’ll need a large amount of cooperation.”
“Good, what’s first?”
“I would like you to dig a new tunnel to the surface in a safe location.”
“And second?”
“Get everyone away from the forward weapon. I’m going to try to fire it after repairing the wiring.”
“You’ve got it, Marvin. You’ve got it. But what about the drive system?”
“Can I please be allowed to carry out my experiments without interference?”
I frowned inside my helmet but agreed readily enough. Marvin was my only hope of grabbing control of the biggest, baddest ship in the known galaxy.
“You’ve got it. But can you tell me why?”
“I’m under the impression that one of the smaller, simpler panels controls the weaponry. This large one does something else—either operates the sensors or the drive. If I can learn the simpler interface, I can then apply that knowledge to the larger.”
“Right!” I said, slapping my gauntlets together with a loud crack. “Right you are. I’ll have the northern region abandoned immediately.”
I turned and started flying away across the chamber, shouting for my officers. We were going to have five very, very busy days.