Crystal Venom (40 page)

Marko looked at her and wondered about what Stephine had told him weeks earlier — that he was closer to her than any other human. Did he have some of her other abilities as well? He glanced down at his right hand and envisioned a fragment of himself filled with deep yearning and desire for another woman’s touch. He stared at the glowering producer, then cocked his head to one side, smiling at her. ‘What did your biological mother and father name you, producer?’

She frowned then shrugged in dismissal. ‘If it is any business of yours, and it is not, I was named Ivana. Why the question, fool? I have no desire to get to know you or any other member of your crew. I only wish to attain the next level of my cadre, and you are all tools towards that end.’

Marko could feel a tiny movement at the end of his right forefinger and smiled at the producer again as she sneered at him. He shrugged and walked across to the silent, hovering monitors, looking at each in turn, looked at
Blackjack
then walked further to pat
Sledgehammer,
which was locked against her side, then, feeling that the time was right, walked back to the producer with each monitor watching his every move and extended his hand.

‘Well, in that case, Ivana, I concede,’ he said. ‘I shall continue to do whatever you wish. Just please do not harm the crew, or this ship, as I care for them deeply.’

The producer smiled in triumph, looking at each monitor, making sure she was being seen to be the victor. ‘Good! I shall not kill you today, and as you care for everyone so deeply I can use them against you at any time as well.’

With the left arm of her suit deploying, then powering up a medium-power pulse laser which she pressed up against the side of Marko’s head, she reached out and shook his hand vigorously. The tiny fragment of alien octopoid tech detached from Marko’s finger and unobtrusively slid into the surface of her gloved hand.

‘I shall give the orders for everyone to carry on with their training for the mission.’ she told him. ‘Return to your quarters, Sergeant Major. I’m pleased not to have to kill you quite yet, because we of the Games Board can make more money from you. You! Watch him at all times.’

Marko looked over his shoulder as the monitor who had once called himself Jim, its visor still open, followed. He smiled widely when, a few steps up the stairway, the little spider leapt down onto the carapace of the monitor once again and plugged himself in. A moment later a panel on the monitor’s side slid open and the spider climbed inside the machine. With a cheerful smile on its tiny cherubic face, a nod of the little head and another wave to Marko, it disappeared into the machine and the panel closed. He almost laughed out loud at the sheer humour of the ACE, wondering who had come up with the idea.

As soon as he was inside his cabin, the monitor floated back down onto the floor with its camera eyes still watching him. He looked at it for a few moments, then reached across to activate the main screen on the wall, amusing himself trolling through the hundreds of other recorded Games Board presentations which had been loaded onto the system when the Games Board came on board. One recording was of another ice world limited conflict, involving Gjomvik forces commanded by Baron Willie der Boltz and one of the more martial groups of humankind, the heavily augmented Scimitars.

Marko had been enjoying the records of the conflict, which had occurred a month earlier, for a couple of hours, when the monitor rose off the floor to hover at eye level. A low-power comms laser was fired directly into his eye, and he heard the words, ‘Hello, Grandfather.’

Marko frowned, then grinned, realising that he was hearing the spider. He could feel the nanote tech in his head composing a message and then firing it back out through his eye.

‘Grandfather! When did I get to be a grandfather?’ he asked in amusement.

‘Some days ago, Marko, when the other ACEs completed me specifically to take over a monitor. Seems that we should not have bothered, as Fritz and his music dealt with them all anyway. And now they are drones ... except this one. Sorry, my name is Spike and it suits me! Because of my size, to accomplish total sentience I have to be in constant communication with Patrick, but it is good being small and nimble, don’t you think?’

Marko had to bite the inside of his mouth to prevent himself from laughing. ‘Yes, and delighted to meet you, Spike. I suppose you will remain inside the monitor for the time being?’

‘Yes, Patrick and I are rebuilding its mind. It will take us some hours yet, but we are making progress and at least we can ensure that it will not harm you.’

Marko gave a tiny nod. ‘So what of the producer, Ivana?’

Spike replied gleefully. ‘She is currently in Sirius’s cabin and, looking at the feeds from the attendant drones, they are getting to know each other’s bodies in a most mutually satisfactory manner! Interesting that there is a trail of clothing and suit parts from the hangar deck to Sirius’s room. There is much debate about what might have finally pushed her back towards humanity. Can you enlighten us, Marko?’

Marko smiled and shrugged at the black ovoid machine and went back to watching the ice world conflict, taking note of the aircraft used.

~ * ~

Stephine was waiting for Marko in the stairway leading up to the garden deck. ‘Hello, Marko. Great to see and be able to speak with you.’

He switched to his crew comms and thanked her.

She gave him a hug then reached down to grasp and examine his right hand, then she patted it and held it between her hands. ‘Joy is a weapon full of so much potential, don’t you think, Marko? You have done well and I wonder what my creators would make of you. One day I shall send you on a journey, but not for many years yet.’

Marko felt surprised, but did not ask further, knowing that he would be told when the time was right.

‘It would seem that I am free to come and go as I please,’ he remarked.

Stephine smiled at him. ‘Yes, and it would seem that the monitor with you is curious about everything as well.’

‘You are aware of everything concerning that monitor?’

‘Yes, we have taken an entire mindmap of it and also its memories. We presume that it will not want to go back among its own, so Topaz, alongside Patrick, is creating a new chassis for it at the secret location where they built a manufacturing unit right under the noses of Sirius and the producer.’

Aloud, Stephine added: ‘I’m sure you are aware of your duties for the upcoming encounter, Marko, but I really need you to be in the simulators for the Chrysops, which are the little atmospheric fighters attached to the salvage craft.’

Marko acknowledged the order. ‘On it. So what do I do about the producer if I come across her?’

‘Just comment on how beautiful she looks!’ Stephine replied.

Marko grinned and walked down to the armoury deck where the simulators for the Chrysops were situated. He opened the locker beside them to find an armoured flight suit with a streamlined helmet and activated them, allowing the protective equipment to form around him. He climbed into the open cockpit and strapped himself into the ejection seat, first checking all the life-preserving equipment. The Chrysops flight simulator closed its covers as the simulation started with him attached to the side of the lifter as it slowly spiralled down into the heavy atmosphere of the target moon. He first set his air feeds then armed the ejection seat before starting the compact turbine unit, setting the four lift jets to vertical, powered up the antigravity unit, then signalled that he was good to fly.

A voice sounding just like the major’s gave him clearance and the little fighter was dropped away from the salvage craft. He rolled it out to the starboard side of the salvage lifter, commencing a standard air cover tight circuit around the craft. Over the next few hours the simulator took him through ever-increasing intensities of the entire gamut of emergencies from engine failures, impact damage, weapons malfunctions and missile strikes. The last simulation was the recovery of a downed pilot from the twisted nightmare of a thick alien jungle, which seemed to be made up of one huge primary fungus with tens of thousands of varieties of fungus all living on or in it, and even greater quantities of slug-like creatures everywhere.

When he finally climbed from the cockpit he felt quite angry at the producer, whose intention had been to simply throw him in at the deep end on the day of the first deployment without any practice. After showering, he felt huge pleasure at being able to make bread again, with Minh Pham delighted to have him in the kitchen. Just as the first breads were coming out of the oven, a woman, who he had difficulty recognising as Ivana, sashayed into the kitchen. She looked young, attractive and full of the joys of living. She walked up to him, grasped his head in her hands and delivered a deep kiss full on his mouth.

‘I need to thank you, Marko.’ she gushed. ‘You are an angel. I don’t know what you did or how you did it, but sex is just the best thing, and also all this beautiful food and drink you people have introduced me to as well. Should you ever want to share my bed, you would be very welcome.’

With that she picked up four long bread rolls, a container of butter, a pot of raspberry jam, a butter knife, then winked at him and left, heading back up the spiral staircase. Veg came up behind Marko, clapped him on the shoulder, then shook him cheerfully by the hand.

‘Excellent work as always, Marko. You should take up sex therapy when you leave the service. You would make a fortune!’

Marko roared with laughter and before he could reply Jasmine interrupted. ‘Not going to happen, Veg. He is going to be with us instead!’

Marko spun around into her outstretched arms. ‘Hey, beautiful woman! You I have missed. Hello, Lilly. Lovely to see you too.’

Lilly patted the top casing of the monitor, Jim, then looked into the crew comms interface that Spike had installed, which blended perfectly into Jim’s surface. ‘Hello, Jim, so your sentience is returned?’

He unfolded his arms from his carapace and shook her solemnly by the hand. ‘Yes, Lilly, my profound thanks to everyone. I just regret that my colleagues did not get the same chance as I did. Fortunately, the producer seems to have forgotten me, so, as long as the feeds of Marko keep going to her boards, I should remain safe, and probably do not need the new chassis you have built for me.’

~ * ~

They heard Rick broadcast his instructions. ‘All craft prepare to deploy. This is a look-see only. We are watching six Gjomvik Corporation Orbitals. Three have declared themselves non-hostile. The others are demanding that we leave as the Administration has no jurisdiction here. A demonstration of force, to appease their honour, is expected.’

Watching his feeds from the cockpit of
Sledgehammer,
Marko could see
Basalt
being held on the launch ramp. The huge ship ponderously split into three primary parts as well, with dozens of smaller drone gunships dropping away from each segment to take up station around the small fleet. Each Orbital gunship was the size of
Basalt,
of simple spherical shape, with powerful engines, ring manoeuvring systems and, from what the
Basalt
crew could see, heavy firepower of linear accelerators, particle-beam generators, lasers, and kinetic weapon pods that folded up out of the armoured surfaces and then drew away from the hull on multi-jointed arms. As they watched, more weapons systems were deployed from the segments of
Rick
as they moved away from each other, creating three distinct battle groups with one moving into higher orbit and the other two spacing themselves fifty kilometres apart high above the moon then inserting themselves into orbit.

They then saw fifty or more high-speed recon drones drop away from pods on the side of their segment and race down towards the moon. Each group had layers of defensive and offensive weapon carriers deployed in a great spearhead formation, with the gunships on the outer and the large missile phalanxes and smaller self-propelled multi-barrelled linear accelerators at the centre.

As the crew watched and marvelled at the sheer power that
Rick
as a single unit possessed, they wondered why they were needed. The producer, Ivana, with Sirius at her side, was in a large lander which Marko could see into from his vantage point in the cockpit of
Sledgehammer.
Hundreds of feeds from weapons cameras throughout the fleet were feeding into the boards on the lander, with the Games Board computers and semi-AI systems processing it all into what Marko thought would probably be tens of different program formats. When they did get back to the Sphere this would be the month’s highlights, as many had believed that
Rick
was a myth.

Marko keyed his comms. ‘Stephine, this is a show of force, is it not?’ He put on a deep sombre voice to sound like a media hack. ‘Somewhere beyond the Sphere is an instrument of the Administration protecting all you folks at home.’

Stephine laughed as Veg grunted. ‘Yeah, Marko, that’d sound right, and we are along for the ride as in the human interest stories. This lot will be for the tech freaks and the weapon porn markets.’

Harry suddenly made an announcement. ‘We have multiple missile launch from three Orbitals.’

Instantly, particle beams flashed out from the closest of
Rick’s
crafts, carving the missiles and their launchers into small pieces of junk. Every time a weapon was fired against them the response was immediate, but measured, with the small Orbitals themselves not being targeted. An hour later hostile fire ceased.