Alien Enigma (29 page)

***

Clemmie waited until night had fallen and the Sinchiks were mostly ensconced in their
Welshass
'. Generally, they didn't particularly care to move about at night, although some did for reasons of their own. She certainly didn't know why. The few who were about after dark could usually be avoided easily enough, though. It was the robots that were dangerous to people when they were supposed to be in bed. They had learned from hard experience to be very careful about them. Nevertheless, after dark was the only real chance the underground had to accomplish their tasks. Before meeting Doug she had sank to the point where it all seemed purposeless, but no more! The baby growing in her once more made the activities worthwhile. She thought she had to give her future child a chance to grow up as a free being. Even if it was only an existence in the jungle, that would be better than life as a slave.

Tonight she and a member of the neighboring
Welshass
, Sachini Boyton, intended to carry their exploration of the underground tunnels a little further. Their resistance cell had been doing it for the last several nights, mapping the underground paths, machine shops and power nodes where the robots sometimes congregated. There were many other interesting features beneath the city but many of them were so foreign that their function was unclear. Nevertheless, the slow accumulation of knowledge had proved worthwhile. They had found the power center for the defensive weapons of the city, no small accomplishment should a human ship return. They had also recently discovered the warehouse of courier ships and the gravity generators that pushed them into space with no harm to the city.

What Clemmie and Sachini were searching for now was the mother lode, the place the robots were said to report to, if it existed at all: Central Command. So far all they had to go on was rumor, and vague rumors at that.

"Your turn, Clemmie," Sachini said. They were in one of the tunnels where they knew a small hiding place lay around the bend, but that was as far as they had ever gone.

Clemmie glanced at Sachini. She could picture the tall aristocratic-looking woman as a queen in prehistoric Africa. She had the command presence to go with it as well.

"Got it." She began moving forward. They took turns advancing so that if one of them were caught the other could take the data of whatever they might have discovered back to be distributed to the rest of the underground. Scouting like this was nerve-wracking but the only way to obtain information about the tunnels. It was only an accident they had been discovered at all. One day an underground member offended the social order of the city by attacking a Sinchik that had brutally beaten his lover for some imagined slight. He had been grabbed by two Sinchik, accompanied by one of the small robots, and taken away. The woman he loved, despairing of ever seeing him again, followed.

In the city, in an area where humans were discouraged from visiting or working, there were a number of buildings with spires that resembled elongated mosques. The group dragged and prodded the man to one of those edifices but did not go into one of its arched entrances. Instead, he was taken by a side lane to another entrance so well concealed no one would have known it was there. The robot extended one of its side arms to a height of almost three meters. Its clawed end hooked a handle that was built into the facade and pulled. A door opened. All except the woman went inside. The door closed behind them so quickly she had no chance of following.

She never saw her lover again but she did make it back to her
Wah
and was able to pass the information to the underground. From that episode the rebels were able to spot many more entrances to the buried part of the alien city. By trial and error they found that one person standing on top of another could work the handle that opened into an alcove that in turn led underground.

Eventually telescoping rods were devised to make the operation easier. Daring captives had been mapping the hidden part of the city ever since. Once the method was devised, it proved relatively easy and a number of discoveries had been made. No one knew whether or not the concealment of the tunnel system was deliberate or devised. Some thought it was innocuous, others were sure it was to cover something sinister.

Clemmie listened for a moment but the area was soundless. She took a deep breath, turned the corner and darted down the tunnel to an indentation in the wall. There was no apparent reason for it to be there. Its only features were a number of square depressions in the walls of the little alcove, all about five centimeters square and the same deep. As she stood inside, its use suddenly became clear to her-she'd seem alcoves across the city where robots would stop and plug into. The little indentations were nothing more than charging or communication outlets for the small robots, probably both. They simply fit the ends of their varied arms into what she now thought of as sockets to receive energy, accept commands, or pass on hi-speed data dumps via fiber optic conduits. Clemmie saw fiber optic type cables running through tunnels and knew that it was much more secure than the wireless antennas on some of the domes and spheres.

Surviving communication specialists from the
Jeane Baptiste
mentioned that the Sinchik planet had a strange planetary electrical and magnetic field. The magnetic poles were twice as strong as Earth's; this and the stormy weather created electrical vortexes, making wireless communication spotty at best. Sending any messages through wireless was much slower because of the lower bandwidth. The robots also seemed to require a periodic system update from these nodes. Some from Clemmie's group had monitored the robot cycles, noting there was a charging cycle that was somewhat random, depending on how much energy the robot used. Others were speculated to be data only, as this was on a specific timed cycle. Maybe it was system updates, or just contact to a central system for integrity checks-no one was really sure.

The indentation turned into a small tee, with just enough room in either end of the cross for one person-and lengthy enough for a small robot. She waited, then stuck her head out just far enough for Sachini to see her. A few seconds later both were concealed-at least for the moment. They had come this way because it was the farthest exploration so far and none of the other underground pathways were angled downward. In this area, at least, they had reached the bottommost part of the city. Now they wanted to see what it held.

"I'm up now, huh? Look out, you fuckers, and don't get in my way." Sachini grinned and touched the homemade knife she carried, carved from a limb of a tree that grew in the center of the city. It bore fruit but it also had very sharp supporting limbs for the fruit. The tips of the limbs were extremely hard and very sharp when dried, while the portion which had borne the edible pods could be carved, albeit with difficulty. When an artisan was finished, it made a very serviceable weapon halfway between a knife and a sword. Unfortunately, it was virtually useless against the robots.

"Be careful, Sachini," Clemmie admonished.

"Don't worry," she returned and was off without another word.

Clemmie waited what seemed like ages for her signal. It finally came, a hand waving from around another right angle of the tunnel. She rushed out and ran to join her friend. She was standing in a simple opening that widened out into a large room. It was dimly lit with the reddish glow the robots appeared to like, but the most surprising thing about it was the number of robots present. Fortunately, they were all occupied with construction of a device, a complicated thing that rose from the deck to the ceiling, five meters overhead. There it disappeared but the appearance suggested this was only the base of a system that went on up into the city, perhaps even to the surface.

"What is it, Sachini?" Clemmie whispered.

"It's the base of a goddamned rail gun! And a fucking big one!" Sachini answered. "Come on, let's get out of here."

Silently they turned around and eased back the way they had come until the room was out of sight. Perhaps a robot caught a glimpse of their backs as they left, or perhaps they were seen and their presence was relayed to other robots. Or maybe they weren't seen at all and it was simply bad luck. Clemmie never knew. They were walking fast but going uphill was hard. It always was since they didn't do this often enough for their muscles to become accustomed to it.

The first indication of trouble was a noise like robot treads, a lot of them. They had just turned a corner into a long unblemished tunnel with no hiding places at all.

"Robots!" Clemmie said immediately.

"Yeah, and coming this way. Shake it up."

Clemmie began to run but suddenly realized Sachini was lagging. She turned around and saw her friend limping but still trying to run.

Clemmie stopped. "What's wrong?"

"An old trick knee from soccer. I started to run too quick and twisted it.
Shit!
"

The noises behind them came closer.

"Go on, Clemmie. Get out of here!"

"No! I can't leave you. Lean on me, I'll help."

A few steps proved that only slowed them down but trying it hurt Sachini's knee even worse.

"It's no good, Clemmie." She disengaged herself. "Now go! One of us needs to get this information back."

"I can't, Sachini. I just can't." The treading sounds were even closer now. She was scared and trembling but didn't see how she could leave her friend and still live with herself.

"Yes, you can! I
can't
make it but you've got a chance. Don't you understand?" She drew her knife and deliberately began limping painfully back toward the sound of robots.

Clemmie dithered another few seconds then ran the other way with her vision blurred by tears. She had barely made it around next bend and out of sight when she heard Sachini's scream and defiant cursing.

Chapter Twenty-One: Alien race relations?

The best advice I can give you is this: Next time you see a flying saucer and are awed by its obvious display of technology and gorgeous lights of pure color - RUN LIKE HELL!

-
John Lear, ex-pilot for CIA

"Gentlemen, ladies ...and of course marines." Keane smiled, trying to relieve tension he felt was high enough to reach the peak of
Mount Everest
. The meeting of the most important officers, scientists and noncoms was taking place in the largest conference room of the ship. "Let's review our situation in the light of possible future actions. Ordinarily, I wouldn't revisit decisions already made but I believe it is justified in this case.

"Analysis of the cities shows they're really not cities at all in the classical sense, but more like some large peculiar factory buildings with a purpose we're not sure of. One reason why we're not sure is because we walloped the hell out of them during the fighting. Well, not the complete cities. The first place we fought was largely unfinished, with few underground facilities, but we certainly saw signs of construction. At the second city where we fought we did a lot of damage to that portion of the city beneath the surface buildings. Because of that we were unable to examine much of what lay under it. That's regrettable because we now believe the underground is the most important part of the alien construction." He paused for a moment. His face twitched in a hint of a smile, waiting for what he knew would be an interruption by one of the civilians.

"But sir, we destroyed only the smallest bit of the underground in relation to the area of the whole city. Weren't we able to gain
any
intelligence?"

Keane shook his head. "Very little, in the larger sense of the word. The alien cities are still mostly enigmas, and by inference, Xanadu will be also. You see, when we had to destroy the weaponry that was attempting to either kill or disable
Doc Travis,
much of the most important part of the city, the tunnel system, collapsed. I know that's another enigma to add to all the others. Why didn't they shore the underground up better?" He shrugged. "We don't know. Maybe they never expected weapons of our caliber to be turned on them, although they should have after capturing the Wannstead ship we found there. Maybe they were in the process of doing so and the bracing was in a state of construction and therefore unstable. It doesn't matter now but it may soon, so let's move on.

"One thing we do know now is that the robots are not all the same. The smaller ones appear to be in charge of the larger ones. In Xanadu, there may be a higher hierarchy. It's something we'll have to watch for, particularly since it seems the robots and Worms are fighting smarter the longer the city has been in existence. So, the question arises again, and is the first question on our agenda.
Do we really want to head on to Xanadu?
"

The room was quiet as people fidgeted. Then Dunaway responded, playing Devil's advocate as a good XO should. "Sir, we already have a ton of intelligence, and we could come back a few years later with much more of an armada-but I think most of us would prefer to take this on now and settle it if we can, especially since they have a bunch of our people as hostages."

"XO, I would tend to agree except for that courier ship we spotted. I'm bothered by the fact it may give Xanadu enough data for it to change its defense plan. However, we have Captain Whittaker of the
Santa Cruz.
He can go back with our intel once we get to Xanadu and access the situation. We all know this will be extremely dangerous, and I don't want to take this on if the team here has major concerns." Keane gazed around the table, taking in all the persons he had assembled there. He saw Major Rambling frowning and nodded at him. "Major, your opinion, and please feel free to speak candidly. This may be the most important decision of our lives and I need all of your input. We could just head back and regroup, and that's also on the table."

Rambling took a deep breath, looking like he was missing a cigar. "Well, sir, frankly speaking, I say
fuck these robots and their fat ass Worms!
I lost a lot of good marines from those robots that escaped, not to mention the ones who died fighting in the cities. Speaking purely as a Marine, I think we should take the fight back to them, and if we have to, nuke Xanadu. I say this with the full knowledge of human hostages being held there. If I said this was going to be one hairy sonofabitch, I was wrong. This thing's so hairy a gorilla would look like a baby's ass in comparison now that we know more about it."