Burnt Ice (29 page)

‘OK,
Stephine. You have control of this circus.’

They were wearing the heavy
combat suits and had spread out, with individual lines of fire on the urchin,
in an ice cave that had been created by drones working through the night while
the crew rested. Observing closely, they saw that the urchin had sensed
something happening. It continually shredded the ice surrounding it and the
third AI datapod beneath it, to get a better view of them and the combat
drones. It suddenly twitched, swinging its attention to the open-topped
container with the exotic plasma field generator — and the tiny fragment of
antimatter — that emerged from the airlock.

The crew were armed with rotary
shotguns loaded with proximity rounds. These would vaporise into high-speed
explosive dust as soon as they hit any target. There was no question that they
fully intended using them if the urchin deviated one millimetre from the
container. As soon as the container was clear of the airlock, and was being
pushed across the ice floor of the cavern by a drone, the urchin ripped down
through the ice as if it were water and jumped into the container. Harry and
Veg, along with the rest of the crew, watched as the container they had
designed and built flashed closed over the 600-millimetre-diameter urchin.

All the sensors showed it folding
itself ground the plasma container and antimatter, seemingly completely at
peace. The drones then pushed the container to the far end of the tunnel from
the chamber, rigged all the sensors and diagnostic equipment, then sealed it
off in many metres of ice, arming a series of mines around it. Stephine was
very pleased and immediately began studies using the numerous sensors and other
investigative devices she had had installed inside the container.

Harry, with the assistance of two
of the engineering drones with attached mining augments, chewed his way up
through the ice until a small, disposable intelligence-gathering drone was able
to get in contact with the exterior jack points of the AI datapod. The screen
at the base of the little drone came alive, with the information that Harry
wanted scrolling down it.

‘Boss, there is a sub-AI present.
It appears all the information is intact; however, there is also a strong
presence of the octopoid infection. Stephine, can you inoculate it, so we can
bring it in?’

Some hours later they all got to
look at the catalogues of data that Lotus had been jealously guarding. She had
previously allowed what they all considered was limited access, and it became
apparent that she had edited even the information she allowed them to see. Each
started their own investigations into those things that interested them most.
Over the following weeks and months they learnt what an enormous threat the
octopoids held for humanity.

The first thing to become
apparent was that the octopoids had originated on Earth.

That was a shock to everyone,
although Jan sensed that Stephine and Veg weren’t all that surprised. She
thought of discussing this with the captain, but reconsidered after thinking
through the knowledge Stephine had shown them.

One of the translated short
histories spoke of a war between various groups of octopoids when they
dominated Earth tens of thousands of years earlier, culminating in a genetic
virus being introduced into the oceans of Earth. Its effect was to dramatically
speed up the life cycle of any squids, octopus or cuttlefish, and a whole
series of creatures of which the ship’s data banks had no knowledge. Instead of
living for hundreds of standard years, their longevity had been drastically
reduced to a maximum life cycle of eighteen Earth months.

The octopoid group that had
created the virus had then withdrawn hundreds of light years away to create a
stable society which, over the millennia, had come to realise that life would
be so much simpler if they allowed themselves to return to their original state
as partially sentient sea creatures. Various groups fought fiercely against
that decision, re-creating the warrior classes. Then, taking the technologies
they needed, these expanded back into the territories their ancestors had
abandoned. The original group, fearing that a great dark secret of the ancient
octopoids would be revealed, also created a new group of themselves — to hunt
down and extinguish all remnants of the breakaway groups.

‘That is huge!’ said the captain.
‘Just imagine a species choosing a systematic slowing of everything, including
all technologies. So we are in the middle of all of this. Do we choose sides?
Do we actively grab the information like the Administration has been doing?
Grab it before it’s destroyed? Or should we withdraw and just watch? Hell, this
is all a bit much to absorb at once. Stephine, you destroyed the octopoid
infections, so you have must have some knowledge of this?’

‘I’m sorry, Michael. I only have
the knowledge of what was left behind on some of the more far-flung worlds we
have visited. This has always been fragmentary. You must remember that we have
a very sophisticated computer on board our ship which is able to collate huge
amounts of information and come up with solutions. In fact, it is Veg and his
love of music, which he shares with Fritz, who created the key to destroying
the infections of the alien prion. Fritz gave Veg access to his music before
being tanked, and my darling ran it all through our computer, which found most
interesting physics, together with the music. The killer of the prion is in
fact a piece of music which is so powerful that the alien prion, on an atomic
level, so totally craves more of it that it creates a self-consuming loop,
foregoing all else, and so destroys itself with raw joy. A very dangerous tool.’

‘Are we safe from this, Stephine?’

‘Yes, of course. It’s not
tailored to you. And no, I will not allow anyone to see or hear those files.
Not even you, Michael.’

‘So this is the information that
was playing on Lotus’s mind — that there is a war happening, and we are
involved. Patrick, what is the conclusion?’

‘The knowledge all pointed to the
escaping octopoids going to Earth, which the latest intel shows is becoming
habitable again. Well the half that was not fried by the solar flare anyway.
What concerned us most of all was that they would possibly be there for many
years, before being discovered — or until our return. The other big concern is
that the Gjomvik Corporations may already have this information, and will use
it to their advantage.’

~ * ~

Six

‘Hey,
Marko.’

‘Hi, Fritz. So how’s married
life?’

Fritz grinned. ‘You have a
journey contract as well, so I should ask you the same. Been thinking. We are
now at a reasonable percentage of the speed of light. The shield is being very
slowly ablated with cosmic dust strike. I have been watching the energy trail
around us via the sensors. We don’t have very long before we shut down the
engines to conserve enough fuel for the deceleration.’

‘Yeah,’ said Marko. ‘We’ll have
to go into cryo sleep for about three years.’

‘Maybe not,’ said Fritz. ‘What if
we could harness that trailing energy? Those of us who wanted to could stay
warm and carry on with whatever we fancied, right? You with your creatures,
Stephine with her gardens, Veg with his blades and carvings, Harry with the
same, the boss with his history and astronomy, Jan with her weapons, to say
nothing of Sirius and her just living as a real person. Man, she could do with
it. She has so much to learn about the things we take for granted. She is
scary, though. I see her touching herself and examining herself in mirrors — a
lot! What do you reckon, Marko? I’d like to stay awake. Should we take it to
the crew?’

‘Hell, yes. It works for me. And
don’t worry about Sirius, mate. She hasn’t experienced having a whole body
since she was a little girl, so it’s only natural really.’ Marko hailed the captain
through his comms link. ‘Boss, you up and doing?’

‘Go ahead, Marko. What’s on your
mind?’

‘Fritz has an idea which needs
all of us to have a look at.’

‘OK. All crew, breakfast
conference, ten minutes.’

Stephine and Veg were the last to
arrive. They all sat at the mess tables, looking across at one of the main
display screens as Fritz took them through the concept. The design of the
electrical generators called for diamond rods with black carbon filaments grown
through them. These would be stacked like sets of louvres. They would then be
jacked out into the slipstream, at the ends of the observation tunnels, leading
away from the ship to the surface of the iceball. Only the very ends of them
protruded from the comet.

‘OK, looks interesting. How do
you propose to get the power back to the ship? We don’t have the necessary
amount of cable unless we start stripping the ship, and that’s a no go. Don’t
think that we have enough conductive metal in the stockpiles to make sufficient
either.’

‘Thought of that, boss. Microwave
relays. We have plenty enough raw materials to make them. We’ll drop a tiny
bit, but my estimates show that we would have any amount of power available
regardless. As the exterior ablates, we bring them slowly back towards the
ship. Eventually they will be of no further use so we’ll bring them inside, or
break them down into parts.’

‘Yeah, that’d work. Marko, how
much time have we got before we have to shut down the fusion units?’

‘Twenty-nine days, seventeen
hours standard. That gives us a twenty per cent buffer. If we go through
another dust cloud, like the last one, that would take the margin down to
seventeen per cent. Things could get tight.’

‘Harry, what are your thoughts?’

‘Go like hell until day
twenty-eight. Get as many units in place as we can to maintain a small number
of the crew. They could then complete the remaining units and the rest of us
wake up if we wish. It’s a good idea. Relatively simple engineering, as well.
We’ve got plenty of raw materials left and the diamond-making nanotes are still
in their prime. Simple bit of programming to create the units. Yeah, it’d work.
Excellent idea, Fritz.’

Fritz blessed Harry with one of
his rare genuine smiles.

‘We would very much wish to lend
a hand to this task, Michael. Every day working is better than being frozen. I
am not a great fan of cryo hibernation.’

‘Thanks, Stephine.’

Fifteen days later the first of
the units was installed, generating power from the plasma flying around them.
Every three days afterwards they got another unit installed, then up and
running. By the deadline they had just enough power available to maintain
life-support for everyone, but without AG. The decision was made to push on and
get the next ten units finished and installed. They all grumbled, but endured a
few days without gravity — which had its own interesting moments. Jan showed
Marko a whole bunch of tricks in bed that could be done when gravity was no
longer in the equation. He loved learning new things, especially when naked
with her.

~ * ~

The
months and subsequent years passed quickly. As they had attained a fair
percentage of the speed of light due to constant acceleration and were now
coasting, it did not bear thinking about time relative to what was happening in
the Sphere. If any of them got bored, they would just examine what another of
the crew was doing, then understudy that individual for as long as it took to
become totally proficient at that skill. In some cases the time needed was
years while in other cases the crew members went into hibernation for months at
a time.

The flip-over point was
approaching. Activities were fairly intense for a few months. The drones were
fitted with additional heavy armour so they could leave the ship, sent up
through the tunnels to cut through the anchor points of the huge rock cap to
the ice. They then activated the disc of material, which had been precut for
the rocket exhausts to flow through when
Basalt
turned over, and pulled
that plug of stone underneath the cap, locking it in the ice cavity that had
been prepared for it years before. The captain and Harry, with Patrick doing
the actual work, slowly flipped the ship, still encased in ice, and rotated it
while under the rock cap. Getting it wrong did not bear thinking about, so
things were taken slowly and with great deliberation. Finally,
Basalt
was anchored up against the rock cap.