Fundamental Force Episode One (9 page)

Zach’s lips
parted in a smile. He unhurriedly approached the fallen enemy and
picked up the pulse gun from where it lay in the grass. There was a
bright red diode shining in the handle, slowly pulsating in
brightness. He gripped the handle firmly. The red light was
replaced by a green one, which winked and went out. The gun had
sensed the correct DNA and was ready to fire again.

Zach opened his
flies. At last. He had been on the point of wetting himself.
Relieved, he took out his tablet and made a sign to one of the
robots to relay to him the image from its cameras. A rectangular
picture appeared on the screen. It was already getting dark
outside, but the image on the tablet, amplified by large top-class
optical lenses, looked as if it had been taken in broad daylight
with the Sun lighting the area well. Even the shadows, which had
almost disappeared, were clearly distinguishable on the tablet.

He pointed up
to where the heads of those aiming at him had been. One of the
robots squatted down slightly before making a six-meter jump. From
the jets around its hips, a barely noticeable flame flared briefly,
giving him further impetus. Its metal feet came down heavily on the
sandy arch above the entrance, causing an avalanche of small
stones.

Through the
relayed image, Zach could see two off-roaders racing away along the
road at high speed, bouncing over the bumps. In their panic, they
were driving too fast for such an uneven road. When they reached
the first fork, they turned different ways and rapidly parted from
each other. The old strategy of running off in different
directions. Zach smiled wryly at such naivety. Tricks like that
wouldn’t do them any good.

He enlarged the
image, the better to see those sitting inside. There were two in
the passenger compartment of one vehicle and one in the other. The
three silhouettes remained in his memory, making it easier to look
for any others. It seemed they were all in the vehicles. They had
been waiting for him, so they must have sniffed out something about
the package inside. Such witnesses could not be left alive, and he
didn’t want to do that anyway...

“Targets on the
road,” he said softly. Bright target indicator circles appeared
around the vehicles, which were jumping about like mad on the field
road, leaving a long strip of dust behind them. The robot was
taking aim.

“Shoot to
kill!”

The deafening
whoosh of missiles being fired was heard from above. Two shining
points could be seen on the relay, soaring up in an anti-aircraft
manoeuver, then swooping down like hawks on their prey. In the
ravine, a muffled clap echoed back from the nearby hills as the
missiles blew the off-roaders into little pieces.

The entrance to
the cave led to an artificially constructed tunnel. Traces of
building machines could be seen on the stone walls, showing where
their metal drills had cut a passage of almost perfect circular
form. Embedded in the floor were two rails, covered in a layer of
rust but showing fresh scratches. Something had been carried on
these rails quite recently. Whoever had done it, their actions had
apparently attracted the attention of the gang Zach had just dealt
with.

He left one
robot to guard the entrance and sent the other one ahead. It
stepped boldly into the unknown, illuminating the tunnel with
powerful lamps. The light from the lamps ran in all directions,
mixing with the red beams of the laser scanners.

The road led
downwards. After about a hundred meters, it ended in massive gates.
Zach looked around. There were no handles on the gates, nor any
hole in which a key could be inserted, nor any visible scanners or
code locks.

“Do you not
have a key?” he asked the robot.

The robot did
not reply. Although robots were poor conversationalists, it was
definitely more pleasant crawling around this dusty hole in its
company.

Zach got out
the tablet with the holographic cube inserted in it and went right
up to the gates. Nothing changed. He slowly moved along them,
without taking his eyes off the screen. There ought to be some kind
of signal...

“Use code?” A
message suddenly came up.

“Do it.”

Something
clicked resoundingly in the gates, the metal screeched briefly and
the two halves crawled slowly sideways, creaking due to the sand in
the rails. The entrance to a dark hall opened up in front of
him.

He signaled to
the robot to take the lead. The robot moved forward at once, but as
soon as its two metal feet stepped over the threshold, a bright
light flared up inside.

“Stop!” ordered
Zach.

He cautiously
glanced inside. In the center of the hall, reaching almost to the
ceiling, stood a dark grey spacecraft. Just a brief look was enough
to determine what sort of craft it was. A combat drone – a predator
among flying machines – patiently awaited him, its polished sides
shining.

Zach whistled
in delight. In terms of all the latest toys involved, this job was
unlike any other. His employer was obviously not short of cash. He
walked around the spacecraft, studying it from all sides and
slapping its cool dark belly. Craft like these did not need a man
to pilot them, but had several seats so that they could be used as
shuttles for short passenger flights. Intended mainly for automatic
flights, they were not renowned for comfort, but were fast and
stealthy with respect to radar, particularly civil radar...

“Not bad, not
bad at all,” he said, addressing the infantry robot waiting
patiently at the tunnel entrance. It did not seem to share in
Zach’s delight and made not the slightest sound in reply, but just
indifferently felt out the flying machine with its laser
scanner.

After
completing authorization with the crypto-key stored within the
holographic cube, the drone opened a hatch giving access to its
cabin. Zach sat in one of the seats and connected his tablet to the
onboard computer. A map appeared showing him the flight plan. It
indicated that the route was to Mercury. There were no further
details. This mission was becoming more and more mysterious...

Before he had
time to think, the drone, without any explanations, began a
countdown. Zach tried to get into the system, but the onboard
computer seemed to be carrying out a completely automatic program
and would not allow its passenger to alter it.

The hatch was
still open. Zach looked out.

“Quick march to
the cargo hold,” he ordered the robot, “and call your friend.”

The robot
obediently went towards the belly of the drone, where shutters
opened upon his arrival. It was cramped inside. There was hardly
room for a man in there, let alone a two-meter monster, but the
drone and the robot had been created to work as a team. The steel
warrior extended his manipulators, gripped special locks, and
pulled itself into the hold. It folded its legs, retracted the
projecting part of its metal body inward like a spider, and reduced
itself to the size of a large trunk. In this shape, it fitted
ideally into the cavity.

The heavy tread
of the second robot could be heard from outside. This one fitted
itself into a second compartment in the other side of the belly,
the shutters to which had already been opened by the drone.

Zach flopped
back into his seat and strapped himself in, keeping an eye on the
countdown. His work always included an element of secrecy, but he
usually had some idea of the mission from the very beginning. After
all, it was up to him to decide whether he could take on a new job,
but not this time. He knew precisely nothing about this assignment.
He had not intended to retreat from his principles and had stated
his position clearly.

“You know, it’s
really not in your interests to hire me blind. I value my
reputation,” (Zach could hardly keep a straight face as he said
this), “so I only undertake work I know I can do. If I don’t know
what the mission is, I can’t give such a guarantee. So...”

His
explanations had been interrupted by a number on the screen of the
videophone on which the conversation was taking place.

“I told you, I
have to think about it. You certainly shouldn’t be revealing any
coordinates to me until...”

“Those are not
coordinates, that’s what we’ll pay you.”

Thinking later
about what had happened, Zach could not think of a single
reasonable explanation, except that his brain had simply switched
off. With that sort of remuneration, he would no longer need his
reputation as a man who could do anything.

So Zach had
agreed and now he had to stick with it and be ready for anything.
And he was actually ready for most things, but Mercury!? Hell and
damnation, he would never have thought of Mercury!

Apart from a
number of completely automatic industrial complexes, the planet
closest to the Sun was empty. The radiation emitted by the nearby
star was so high that it was virtually impossible for people to
stay there. Massive protection against the deadly radiation was
required constantly. It was only possible to go out onto the
surface of the planet in certain latitudes, or on the night side,
and as dawn approached it was necessary to hide deep under the
surface. And although night on Mercury lasted half an Earth year,
what tasks could there possibly be in such conditions, in this
fiery desert, particularly under such secrecy?

The countdown
reached zero. The drone rocked, and the platform on which its feet,
like the claws of a bird of prey, were resting, rolled out on the
rails. Zach touched the sensor on the pulse gun display to check
how full the magazine was. It was full to its total capacity. The
more that was paid for a job, the less you could afford to relax
your vigilance. He laid the gun across his knees, keeping his
finger near the trigger.

He was almost
shocked to find that no surprises were waiting for him outside. The
drone unhurriedly left the cave, stopped and closed the hatch. It
then initiated the brief starting sequence. Such machines were not
accustomed to having fragile flesh-and-blood creatures inside them
that could barely withstand even 10 g, but knowing about the
passenger, the computer brain decided to keep the acceleration down
for a smooth start.

It was only
relatively smooth, of course. Zach’s eyes went dark and he could
hardly keep his mind from jumping out of his body as the drone
picked up speed, a grey dot moving up into the sky. At such
overloads, the drone only had to get beyond the atmosphere and
reach escape velocity, then it would switch off the engines and the
flight would proceed smoothly thereafter. Being virtually unable to
see anything, Zach began counting out loud the seconds of flight
remaining until they had enough kinetic energy to escape the
embrace of Earth’s gravity.

The sky outside
the thick glass quickly became black. The atmosphere had been left
behind, but the drone, controlled by its installed program, had no
intention of slackening off. The speed continued to increase
rapidly, but as if that were not enough, it decided it was time for
maneuvers. It began to transform its flight trajectory into an arc
of ever-decreasing radius.

“What the
hell?”

Zach’s shout of
desperation came out only as a suppressed croak. With the last of
his strength, he began tensing his stomach muscles. Once tensed up,
his sight cleared for a second, but he only had to slacken the
pressure for his field of vision to fill with darkness again, as if
ink were being poured into his eyes. At the same time, he was
slowly but surely losing consciousness.

He gritted his
teeth and exerted all his force. His clothes were as soaking wet as
if he had been out in torrential rain. His ability to see details
returned for an instant and he immediately turned his eyes to the
radar display. There was a bright spot on the broken line of the
trajectory. Or was he seeing spots before his eyes?

He was
beginning to lose it again. The image became blurred and Zach made
an effort to fill his lungs with oxygen and give the muscles
forcing blood to his brain a short rest. Then he clenched his fists
and repeated the effort.

Meanwhile, the
spot on the screen had grown noticeably. It was the radar echo of a
big passenger liner! It appeared to have lifted off from the nearby
spaceport and was now heading towards the orbital station for
transfers and refueling. Zach had no strength left. He slackened
his stomach and was now completely blind. The sounds gradually died
away. He had almost lost consciousness...

It returned,
along with violet flames flaring from the front jets, easily
visible from the pilot’s seat. The drone reduced its overload and
was now steadily slowing down. Its nose was pointing directly
towards the spot of light.

They were
rushing towards each other. Were they going to ram it? What was
this, a terrorist act? That would explain the sky-high reward. It
made no difference how much you promised if you wouldn’t have to
pay anyway...

But the drone
had no intention of ending its existence as a kamikaze. It
continued to reduce speed and as it reached the rendezvous point,
it was almost synchronized with the liner. Approaching tail first,
it was now pressing itself very carefully to the liner’s belly, the
fire of the giant ship’s terawatt engines just a few meters away.
Against the huge passenger liner, the drone looked tiny, like a
pilot fish next to the tail of a gigantic shark.

Consciousness
returned and Zach’s head began to return to normal, as if after a
tough fight. It was clear now what was going on. The drone was
hiding in the radio shadow of the liner. When leaving the
atmosphere and until leaving near-Earth space, civil radars
thoroughly searched every cubic meter of space, in which there was
a great deal of traffic of various kinds. But under the belly of a
big passenger liner, there was a good chance of leaving Earth
unnoticed. Only military spacecraft could perform such tricks, and
not even all of them.