The Mothership (56 page)

“Busted ass alien crap!” Nuke rasped
through bloody lips.

The battloid swatted him with one of its
shield emitters, knocking the tiny weapon out his hand. The Tom Thumb skidded
across the deck toward the invisible bubble surrounding the miniature black
hole. The silver particle weapon had almost stopped when it stretched like
liquid plastic toward the black void. Beckman watched amazed as highly
localized super gravity tore the weapon apart, sucking it up like water until
it had been completely consumed. He stepped toward the dead black sphere
cautiously, his hand extended before him, until he felt the repulsive pressure
of the invisible bubble surrounding it. He didn’t know what it was, but the
destruction of the Tom Thumb gave him an idea. He turned toward the Command
Nexus, seeing his and the battloid’s splintered reflections on its faceted
crystalline surface.

Come get me
, he thought as he aimed his midget at the Command
Nexus, stepping toward its protective field. He knew he couldn’t shoot through
the field but perhaps if he was closer, he could do some damage. He felt the
hairs on his arm stand on end as he entered the field’s periphery. To his
surprise, he found he could slowly push through the field. He leaned forward
and began to sink into it.

The battloid knew if Beckman got his weapon
through the field, its high intensity particle stream could penetrate to the
Command Nexus’ fragile core, doing irreparable damage. It lurched forward,
lashing out with the long flexible arm that had thrown its cannon at Markus.
The arm sparkled as it sank into the field and began coiling like a snake
around Beckman’s chest. He struggled against the field to turn to face the
battloid as the arm tightened on his chest and began to squeeze.

The battloid’s arm momentarily touched the
containment field encasing the antimatter explosion. It tried pulling its arm
free, but the long flexible tentacle was stuck fast. A tiny sliver of metal
extruded from the arm and poured into the black sphere, then the arm itself
sank into the blackness as blue force lines rippled back along its length. The
battloid’s transport sleds went to full power as it fought vainly to prevent
its arm being pulled into the blackness. Half of the arm stretched back to the
battloid, the other half remained coiled around Beckman’s chest, while the
black emptiness pulled both ends towards it.

The battloid, unable to determine what the
blackness was, instinctively tried to protect itself. It angled its shields
toward the artificial black hole, then they too became caught in the crushing
grip of collapsing spacetime. Electric blue force lines flashed across each shield
as they collapsed, then the emitters turned to silvery water. The battloid
toppled forward onto the deck and was dragged by its arms toward the voracious
black sphere.

Beckman felt himself pulled out of the
Command Nexus’ protective field. He leaned back against the metal arm, now
rigidly locked around his chest, but his boots slid across the deck. He jerked
his midget free of the field and aimed it at the arm coils around his chest and
fired. He suppressed a scream as a swathe of skin across his chest was
instantly incinerated to the bone, then the arm coils broke apart. The arm
segment connected to the artificial black hole slid into the black void, while
the remaining coils clattered to the deck.

On the other side of the super gravity
sphere, the battloid’s torso and upper arms flowed into the lightless void. A
moment later its lower arms dissolved, then the transport sleds flashed in
bright blue explosions that were themselves sucked into the impenetrable
blackness.

Nuke coughed blood. “Ouch.”

Beckman staggered to the passage way wall,
ignoring the line of searing pain across his chest, distancing himself from the
featureless black sphere floating above the deck. He forced air into his lungs
as he turned toward the Command Nexus. The blue light streaming from the
crystal sphere began to dim and its spin rate decreased rapidly. When it came
to a complete stop, the flickering glow at the center of the sphere began to
wane.

Nuke saw it too. “What does it mean?”

“We won,” Beckman said.

“How?” Nuke asked.

Beckman shook his head slowly, then
returned his gaze to the black sphere floating a few meters away. “I don’t
know.”

“Major!” Tucker yelled through clenched
teeth.

At the end of the passageway, more than a
dozen armored warriors appeared, their camouflage fields shimmering in the
dimming electric blue light of the Command Nexus. Tucker propped his back
against the wall and slid his thumb towards Conan’s firing surface. A medical
specialist floating near the entrance aimed his device arm at Tucker and
directed a precise wave form into his brain. Tucker immediately fell into a
deep sleep, unaware that tens of thousands years of meticulous research had
revealed every secret of human anatomy, including the deepest mysteries of
brain function.

The armored warriors swept past Tucker’s
slumbering form. Beckman still had his special, but he decided there was no
point raising the weapon to fire. More than a dozen warriors gave the black
sphere a wide birth, flying between Beckman and Nuke as they glided towards the
crystal sphere. The medical specialist paused in front of Nuke, aiming his
device arm at him, quickly assessing his bullet wounds. A moment later, a soft
yellow light beamed from the device arm, temporarily sealing the wounds to
prevent him from bleeding out, then the specialist followed the others towards
the Command Nexus. The protective field provided no obstacle to them, as they
entered the narrow space between the crystal and the inner containment wall.
Some floated up to the top of the sphere, others down to its base while the
rest took up positions around its midsection.

It’s not us they want!
Beckman realized.

The armored warrior’s camouflage fields
glistened like thousands of reflected diamonds in the dim blue glow of the
dying Command Nexus, trying to self terminate before it fell under the control
of its enemies. Once they were equally spaced around the crystal sphere, their
faceted reflections wavered and vanished as they simultaneously deactivated
their stealth fields. Their white battle suits had no visors or joints yet
possessed the flexibility of silk. All were marked with a triangular insignia
over the left breast, and had featureless bulges around the shoulder areas.
Disks the size of ten cent pieces passed through the skin of their suits and
floated into the crystal sphere, sinking slowly into it. The disks shrank in
size as they moved deeper into the sphere, melding into the Command Nexus’
quantum structure. When all of the disks had dissolved, the blue light emitted
by the Command Nexus stabilized. The weak flickering at the core strengthened
to a stable illumination, a sign of the hypnotic state the Command Nexus had
fallen into.

At the end of the passage way, another two
diminutive forms appeared. Their suits were skin tight, one-piece silver
jumpsuits much less bulky than the armored battle suits of the first wave. At
first glance, they appeared to wear no helmets, but a glint of blue light
against a highly translucent surface revealed the near invisible bubble that
surrounded their heads. Slightly under one and a half meters tall, the gray
skinned pair had large black almond shaped eyes, tiny noses and slits for
mouths. Unlike the battle armor equipped infantry, the two Zetas showed an
interest in Conan, cradled in Tucker’s lap. One of them stopped in front of the
gravity well bubble and took readings from a small device mounted on his
forearm. The other stopped in front of Beckman, floating at eye height, and
looked down at the recovered weapon in his hand. The Zeta lowered its hand to a
small silver bubble seamlessly attached to its hip and produced a silver weapon
that perfectly fitted its delicate hand. The Zeta held its weapon up for
Beckman to see, then Beckman raised his, seeing they were identical.

“We have a match,” Beckman declared.

The Zeta held out its hand, palm up.

“Looks like he wants his toy back,” Nuke
wheezed.

Beckman sighed, and placed the weapon in
the Zeta’s hand. “Indian giver.”

The Zeta examined the recovered weapon with
no apparent expression, yet the tightening of skin around its eyes indicated a
response akin to surprise and curiosity. While the weapons appeared similar, to
the Zeta, Beckman’s special was an antique, as far removed from its weapon as a
flintlock was from an M16.

A hissing sound overhead caught Beckman’s
attention. He looked up to see a circular hole appear in the corridor’s
ceiling, directly above the super gravity well. There appeared to be no visible
force creating the hole, it just appeared. Daylight filtered down through the
hole, cut by one of the great ships in orbit. The Zeta monitoring the gravity
well drifted away from it, then the black sphere floated up through the shaft
cut in the ship.

“What are you going to do with that?”
Beckman asked, gazing up after the black sphere as it climbed away through the
ship.

The Zeta watched him through dead black
eyes. He found its expressionless face unnerving. He’d seen many classified
photographs, but realized he wasn’t quite prepared to meet one face to face. “I
guess you guys really screwed the pooch this time, letting those fish heads
down here. What were you thinking?”

The Zeta heard a perfect translation, but
rather than respond, it transmitted an irresistible wave form that sent Beckman
and his companions into a dreamless sleep. It was as simple as turning off a
light bulb. Earth’s gravity was counter balanced around Beckman and the others,
letting them float comfortably. Nuke even began to snore.

While the humans slept, the blue light
emitted from the crystal sphere began to increase in intensity. Dazzling white
flecks appeared again, deep within the crystal’s core, marking the forced
return to life of the Intruder mothership’s guiding intelligence. Soon, the
crystal sphere began to spin again, very slowly.

The Command Nexus had become a prisoner of
war.

Laura climbed to
the top of the rock cleft overlooking the steaming pool of black metal marking
the remains of the striker. She was alone now that Mapuruma had vanished into
the narrow cave leading to the base of the plateau to search for her parents.
Laura dreaded the prospect of reaching the summit where she expected to see a
massive crater in the distance where her husband and Beckman’s team had died.
She’d mistaken the pealing thunder of the bombardment for the detonation of the
torpedo, and had now all but given up hope of ever seeing her husband again.

She clambered onto a rocky outcrop where
she could see over the trees of the plateau to the Goyder Valley. To her
astonishment, the scarred hull of the mothership lay intact. Fear overwhelmed
her anguish as she realized they had failed. Tiny silver dots floated above the
mothership, like insects above the carcass of a great beast. Slowly, the dots
began to rise in unison, while beneath them, the great beast floated upwards,
its massive sides rising like an endless wall out of the trees. Even at that
distance, it seemed hardly possible such a massive object could glide so
effortlessly into the air. She mistakenly thought it was flying under its own
power, unaware that the ship was now under tow by its victorious enemies.

Before the mothership had cleared the
trees, a shadow passed over her. She turned sharply to see an elliptical craft
floating above her, its mirrored silver surface reflecting the forest and sky.
She gasped as she saw her image reflect off its pristine hull, then a flash
momentarily blinded her. She blinked, finding herself floating in a large
circular room, dark except for a feeble light in the ceiling. Nearby was a
group of men she didn’t recognize, Slab and his companions. They were awake,
and surprisingly comfortable with their floating confinement, then she realized
her fears had vanished, replaced by an inexplicable calm.

“Look,” Wal exclaimed, nodding toward
Laura, “Another one!”

“G’day luv,” Slab said amicably. “Welcome
to the mad house!” He glanced meaningfully down at his feet, floating a meter
above the metal floor.

“Don’t mind us,” Wal said cheerfully,
“We’re just hanging around!”

Slab tried to swipe Wal with the back of
his hand, but the smaller man leaned back, dodging the blow. The action sent
Slab turning slowly for a few moments until he came to rest facing in the
opposite direction.

“Laura!” Dan called, craning to see past
Bill.

She hadn’t seen him, masked by the other
men. “Oh my god! You’re alive!”

Slab looked at Dan curiously, who explained
with a beaming smile. “That’s my wife.”

Laura reached out toward him, but he
floated too far away. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

Bill’s eyes passed from Laura to Dan in
realization. He caught Dan’s hand and pulled him in, then once they were close,
he pushed Dan on towards Laura. Dan drifted a short distanced through the
inertial dampening field which gently brought him to a halt. Cracker, floating
closest to Laura, took her hand, and pushed her gently towards Dan, sending
himself tumbling backwards and finishing face down.