The Mothership (54 page)

Before it could fire, a brilliant white
streak of light flashed down out of the sky and slamming the striker into the
crevice floor like a pile driver. There was no explosion, only the thud of
impact and a vapor cloud. Slowly, the cloud cleared, revealing a steaming black
pool of molten metal. For a moment Laura couldn’t believe her eyes, then she
looked up astonished.

There was nothing above but an empty blue
sky.

* * * *

Beckman watched
the hands on Nuke’s watch count down through the last seconds to detonation,
while the battloid floated helplessly at the end of the corridor awaiting
instructions from its master. The Command Nexus, still partially blind from the
loss of so many internal sensors, struggled to analyze the object sitting at
the threshold of its inner sanctum. It knew from the radically unstable
elements it had detected that it was an antimatter weapon, although how these
primitives came to possess such a device was a mystery. Their civilization would
be incapable of producing such technology for thousands of years, which meant
they must have been armed by its enemies. The deception plan it had suspected
all along had succeeded and now it faced annihilation. The battloid could
destroy the warhead with a single shot, but the residual blast and the release
of raw antimatter would destroy the Command Nexus as surely as if the warhead
had detonated. The Command Nexus noted its failure simply and clearly, without
recrimination or regret, for such emotive responses were unknown to it. What it
experienced was puzzlement, that it had been defeated by such an inferior
adversary.

Beckman glanced at the Command Nexus,
unaware that its massive intelligence was completely focused upon him and the
warhead now poised to annihilate it. The glittering sphere appeared to be
devoid of life, yet it was more aware of its surroundings than any man could
ever be. He resigned himself to his fate, tormented only by the knowledge that
his father would never know the truth. He’d be told his son had died
innocuously, in a car accident or a ‘training accident’, anything but in the
line of duty.

Tucker thought of Steamer. This was payback
for him. He wished Steamer could have been there at the end, so they could have
gone out together.

Nuke tensed, surprised he was going to die
this way. He wanted to take one last look around, but knew his duty was to keep
his eyes on his watch. The second hand reached twelve.

“That’s it,” he said in a low voice,
glancing up at Beckman and receiving a final confirming nod. He reached forward
to press the detonator when three heavy blows struck him between his shoulders.
He fell forward, never having heard the burst from Markus’ submachine gun.
Nuke’s movement toward the detonator caused Markus’ shots to miss his spine,
but the blood seeping into his lungs would eventually drown him.

Beckman watched Nuke’s crumpled form
coughing blood on the deck in disbelief, then he looked back up the passageway.
Markus held his MP-5 hard against his shoulder, sighting on Beckman.

“Get away from the bomb!” Markus ordered.

Beckman froze, confused. “What’re you
doing?”

“I won’t let you destroy this ship. Now
back away.”

Tucker turned toward Markus. Before he
could raise Conan, Markus yelled, “Drop it, Tucker. One false move, and
Beckman’s dead.”

Tucker hesitated, then let Conan clatter
onto the deck. Satisfied Tucker was disarmed, Markus started cautiously toward
the torpedo.

“You can’t get out of here alive,” Beckman
said. “That thing out there will stop you.”

“I’m not going anywhere. None of us are,
but this ship’s staying right where it is, in one piece, for those who’ll come
after us.”

At the entrance to the passageway, the
battloid identified the kinetic weapon in the hot blood’s hands, and computed
that its projectiles could not penetrate the protective field. It assumed the
primitive creature had shot its companion by mistake, but was puzzled why one
of the hot bloods had dropped its plasma weapon. Whatever the reason, the
battloid instantly recognized the tactical opportunity. Knowing it couldn’t
fire its energy weapon without damaging the Command Nexus, it drew back one of
its cannon arms and hurled it forward, releasing it from its mount when its arm
was fully extended. The pyramidal weapon shot through the air like an oversized
dart, spearing Markus through the back. The impact threw him against the
torpedo and its power pack. Together, they skidded along the corridor, stopping
just short of Beckman, exactly where the battloid had calculated.

Markus looked down in confusion at the
triangular black metal point protruding from his chest, then slumped forward
over the torpedo’s activation surface as he died. There was a flash of light,
but before the shock wave had moved a single micron from the warhead’s
antimatter containment field, a dead black sphere engulfed the blast. The
sphere floated above the floor, instantly sucking Markus’ corpse into it,
leaving only a bloody smear on the deck.

Beckman stared incredulously at the black
sphere. “What the hell?”

There was no texture to it, no sense of
depth or dimension. It was nothing but a circular emptiness. He knew by now,
every cell in his body should have been converted to pure energy and a vast
crater should have formed where he stood.

Tucker furrowed his brow. “I thought it’d
be bigger!”

Beckman drew his pistol and fired into the
black void, hoping to puncture it. There was no sound of his bullet striking
the warhead’s metal casing, no ricochet, no sign of the bullet exiting the
blackness on the far side. The void just swallowed the bullet as if it had
never existed.

“Son of a bitch!” Nuke wheezed, spitting
blood and crawling away from the sphere. “I lugged that mother all the way
through the stinking jungle, and it’s broken!”

Nuke had no way of knowing the antimatter
explosion was trapped inside a supergravity sphere. If Dr McInness had seen the
black emptiness, he might have recognized it as an artificial black hole,
although he would have thought it impossible to stand so close to its event
horizon and not be torn apart by its gravitational force. He would have known
nothing could escape its grip, not a bullet, not the sound wave of a bullet
striking metal, not even the shockwave of an antimatter explosion in full
bloom. The antigravity bubble enclosing the black hole would, however, have
confounded him for he would not have understood how the pull of the black hole
and the inward push of the antigravity bubble could be so perfectly balanced as
to localize the black hole’s influence. Dr McInness would never have believed
such an effect could be artificially created, let alone projected from orbit.

To Beckman, it was simply incomprehensible.
A weapon far more powerful than a fusion bomb had just detonated in front of
him, and yet its massive destructive force had been neutralized. He couldn’t
guess how. He didn’t care. Instead, an old lesson screamed at him from memory.
It was why they’d never really had a chance. It was a lesson he’d been taught over
and over again, about how infinitely advanced technology would look like magic
to primitives. It was a lesson that had never really sunk in, until now.

And it was wrong.

It’s not like magic,
he thought bitterly.
It is magic!

Throughout the great ship, sirens sounded
as a high pitched computer generated voice announced something unintelligible
in an alien language. Beckman and his companions exchanged confused looks, then
the mothership began to shudder continuously as if struck by a series of giant
hammer blows.

An orbital bombardment had began.

* * * *

Hooper slumped to
the ground, exhausted. He dropped his .50 caliber pistol with just one round
left and wiped blood and sweat from his face. Liyakindirr crouched beside him,
aiming the fatboy special back the way they’d come, looking for the metal beast
that hunted them.

“I don’t see it,” Liyakindirr said, wiping
the trickle of blood from the side of his mouth.

Hooper gasped for air. “It’s close.”

Liyakindirr glanced at the sergeant. The
burn on Hooper’s right side was a hideous mass of blood and sweat and dirt.
Beneath the blood and grime, Hooper’s face was deathly pale. Liyakindirr had
never seen such a wound, but he knew what the tropics did to injured men and he
was sure Sergeant Hooper didn’t have long to live.

“Can you walk?” he asked gently.

Hooper sighed, feeling his strength ebb
away. “No,” he croaked, looking up at the sky, seeing clear blue firmament. It
took him a moment to realize the shield dome was gone. “She did it! Give me . .
. the radio.”

Liyakindirr slipped off the backpack,
placing it close the Hooper’s good left hand. The sergeant pulled open the
backpack with feeble fingers, then reached inside for the short wave. Off to
the right, they heard the familiar whipping of plants being smashed aside by
speeding metal, warning them the seeker was circling around for another attack.
Liyakindirr turned toward the sound, his finger hovering over the fatboy’s
firing surface. He’d learned quickly that when the seeker circled, it was too
fast for the bulky silver weapon to fire, but Hooper had told him several
times, if it came straight in, the weapon would work. Liyakindirr didn’t
believe him, although the strange power it had to push his hands to the side
proved it was alive.

Hooper pulled the radio’s aerial to full
length, checked the frequency, then spoke into the mike. “This is Charlie Tango
Alpha. Enact citadel, repeat, enact citadel. Acknowledge.”

A flash of super heated, relativistic
particles tore through the foliage and struck the radio, blasting it away
through the trees and tearing the mike from Hooper’ hand.

Liyakindirr sighted back along the shot’s
flight path and touched the surface. The weapon pulled to the left, but refused
to fire as the seeker swerved away at high speed. “Did they hear?”

“Don’t know,” Hooper said, glancing at the
melted wreckage of the radio. In the few seconds he’d been listening, the radio
had been strangely silent. No static, no jamming. as if nothing was getting
through.
How could that be, with the shield down?

The armored seeker swept out of the forest
at an oblique angle. It closed on Liyakindirr with dazzling speed while he
pressed down hard on the special’s firing surface. The weapon stubbornly refused
to fire, as the seeker had precisely computed the angles and velocity needed to
confuse the weapon. Liyakindirr, seeing its twin cannons spin toward him, leapt
sideways as it fired. The twin blasts felled a tree behind him with a crack,
sending branches and birds flying. Liyakindirr ran, lifting the fatboy over his
shoulder like a club as the seeker swerved toward him. He jumped sideways as it
fired, swinging the fatboy down as if it were a nulla nulla, but the seeker
anticipated his move. One of its shield arms deflected the blow, while the
other one sent him crashing against a tree. Liyakindirr crumpled as his body
slid limply to the ground, unconscious.

Hooper reached weakly for his hand gun, but
the seeker was on him fast. It planted a metallic foot on his forearm, crushing
bone, pinning his hand to the ground. He groaned with pain, as the seeker
magnetized one of its circular shield emitters to its torso, freeing its hand,
and tore the pistol from Hooper’ feeble fingers. It held the pistol in front of
its sensor disk for analysis, its artificial intelligence curious how such a
crude weapon could be so effective. Hooper looked up at the seeker as it
examined his gun, glimpsing the azure blue sky through the canopy above, and
the fiery meteors streaking toward the earth. Distant thunder began to roll
over the land and the earth trembled with each impact.

Something’s attacking the ship?

The seeker dropped the .50 caliber pistol,
turning its attention on him. Hooper relaxed as he stared at the cannon aimed
at his head.

“Fuck you, tin head,” he growled defiantly.

Three white hot blasts flashed through the
trees from the left, tearing the seeker apart and sending its twisted remains
flying. Hooper blinked, confused, then turned toward the source of the attack.
Floating ten meters away were three diminutive bipedal forms, each two thirds
the height of a man. They floated effortlessly through the trees toward him in
white deep diving suits. Plants in their way swayed aside as they approached,
never coming in contact with their suits, yet no branches were broken, ensuring
they left no trace of their passing.

More machines?
He wondered apprehensively, his fear tempered by the
knowledge that they’d just destroyed the seeker. He glanced up at the meteor
storm, pounding the grounded mothership to the west, then realized the three
were coming from the east.
They were waiting outside the shield? Waiting for
it to go down!

The three forms had arms, but no hands.
Where the left hand should have been was a weapon mount, while the right hand
had a device the purpose of which Hooper could not guess. When they floated
past him, only one turned towards him. It aimed its device arm at him,
obtaining a full analysis of his physical condition and equipment. The data was
immediately sent to the orbiting fleet, which instantly relayed it to a command
center six thousand light years away. It was just one of trillions of pieces of
information the center received every second from forces scattered through
thousands of systems covering a third of the galaxy. By the time Hooper’s heart
had beaten ten times, the information had been fully analyzed and integrated
into the theatre view, translated into dozens of languages and dispersed to
allied civilizations up to thirty five thousand light years away.