Ammonite Planets (Omnibus): Ammonite Galaxy #1-3 (52 page)

“Hope you have a front seat. Chocolate and sweetfruits in the intermission. You will have to talk to my agent about overseas rights.”

“I do not understand.”

“NO? Well, that IS a surprise for a class 2a species, right? Maybe you are all not so bright as you think?”

“Our intelligence cannot be doubted. We have a far greater capacity than you do.”

“Perhaps,” Diva said grimly, “you should try applying it a bit more, then.”

“I shall observe in silence from now on,” the machine informed her stiffly.

“What took you so long!” she muttered.

SIX WAS SLEEPING the sleep of the just when the proximity alert went off with a vengeance. He scurried over to the control panel, and gave a silent whistle at what he saw there. Not just one Sellite ship – but four!

He signed to Arcan as he pulled on some clothes, and wasted no time. As soon as he had been transported to the first, he marked the ship with orthogel, and hastened down to the munitions bay. He had to hurry – with four ships to mark, it would be touch and go whether his ship would be detected before he was finished.

The first two ships went well, but as soon as he set foot on the third ship he knew that something had gone wrong. An alarm was wailing over his head.

Quickly he tagged the ship with a small piece of orthogel, and broke into a run as he headed for what he hoped would be the weapons bay, the howling alarm sending shivers up and down his spine.

He skidded to a halt beside the three missiles, ducked down behind them and efficiently tagged each one in record time. Then he was pressing on the orthogel bracelet again as several operatives stormed into the cargo bay with lasers at the ready.

He didn’t know if they had seen him or not, but he knew that he had to tag the last missiles in the fourth ship. Even three of those deadly warheads would be enough to evaporate all the rebel strongholds. He visualized the control panel of the Resistance, willing Arcan to hurry.

It was the work of a second to track the current position of the last Sellite ship, and ‘see’ the weapons bay. He knew he had no time to play it safe.

Arcan transported him directly to where the last three missiles were being held, but there was a shout as he materialized. He ducked down behind the missiles, rolling one larger piece of orthogel underneath them in case he had no time for more.

The air began to hiss with lasers, and he could see the storage bay lit up by the rays. There were shouts between the Sellite crewmembers, and he had no choice but to press down on the rest of the orthogel around his ankle. Just as Arcan transported him back to the Resistance, he felt a burning sensation to the outside of his eye, and then he lost consciousness.

DIVA WAS SURROUNDED by Sellites. She had tripped just one of the many alarms and had been given only thirty seconds time after that. She had used them well, sprinting to the base of the vault, and locating the heaped crates of missiles. She at least had been able to visualize the positions of the crates, she thought.

Her fingers frantically signed to Arcan, and she was instantly surrounded by a bubble. She ‘showed’ Arcan all the positions of the missiles as soon as she saw that he could hear her.

“I have them, Diva, good job!” He told her.

“No, no!” she panted. “They know what we are doing now. We have to act straight away. You have to move all of the missiles before they have time to locate the orthogel markers in the spaceships. If we lose those spaceships again …”

“I will do so, Diva. Please relax – you are perfectly sa—”

There was a bright orange flash, the orthogel bubble disintegrated, and Diva dropped unconscious on the magmite floor of the subsurface vault.

Figures appeared through the remnants of the orange glow, and shackled the Coriolan girl to some sort of a magnetic plate.

Atheron appeared, alerted by his forces.

“So kind of you to call,” he told her with one of his false smiles. “I think you might find it rather harder to get out than you did to get in!”

The girl sagged against the tethers which constrained her. She heard nothing. Atheron smiled again. He was pleased to see that all their research had paid off. It was just a question of time, he thought to himself. Everything had a weak spot. It just took time to find it. And it looked most satisfyingly as if they had finally found the weak spot of the orthogel entity. Perhaps it would no longer try to meddle in Sell business! He walked tall. It was a good day for him.

He didn’t see the small globe as it buzzed anxiously around Diva. The machine was still transmitting to its brain counterpart. It had been unaffected by the orange burst. But it made no sound now, maintaining a discreet silence.

GRACE WAS NEARLY at the top of the 10
^th
floor of the 451st skyrise, the second place detected as a depository of nuclear weapons, when she heard the frantic buzzing of the video camera. It reached her head, raced around her once, and gave a series of urgent squawks.

“What is it? Whatever is the matter?”

“Diva has been caught. Arcan is hurt.”

“ARCAN? How?”

The machine explained about the orange glow. “… and the bubble of orthogel surrounding Diva simply collapsed,” it finished. “Arcan disappeared.”

“And Diva has been captured?” Grace’s heart gave an ominous lurch. Think, Grace, think! What has to be done? You have to finish the job in hand first. Get the markers on the rest of the missiles. That has to be a first priority. “Can you get into this skyrise?” she asked.

The little machine whirred. “I can navigate the orthotubes on my own, I think. I know the way now.”

“Then let me in here please. I will tag the remaining missiles, and then you and I will figure out a way to save Arcan. If you are allowed to intervene, that is?”

The globe sputtered, and then replied, “Aid for the orthogel entity is approved at this time.”

“Then let’s get started,” she said. “I have to assume Arcan will recover in a short time – it must only have been a local effect. So that means as soon as he recovers he will move the missiles. And the Sellites know all about us now, so he will have to transport all the missiles. Then he will be able to do something about all this. Yes, my first job is clear.”

“I agree. Your logic would appear to be surprisingly correct, given your basic parameters.”

“Then let’s get started.”

The machine clicked, and then soared up over the top of the skyrise, getting tinier and tinier until it disappeared altogether. Grace watched it leave, and then panicked as she realized that she had blocked her own mask pack by breathing too quickly. Dizziness made her bend double as she desperately tried to regulate her breathing once more.

She was still in some distress when the tiny machine opened the biolock for her.

“The alarms are all ringing,” he told her. “But the ortholifts are not working either, and so the Sellites would have to use the outside ladders to get down to this level. You have plenty of time.”

Grace hoped that the visitor was right. She herself felt a frantic need to hurry, to get to Diva and Arcan, to help them in some way. She took the corridor at a run.

The machine had been correct about one thing: there were no Sellites down on this level. She placed the markers on the final set of missiles, and then sprinted back to the terrace. She and the machine let themselves out, she adjusted the mask pack, and then lowered herself over the edge of the terrace and onto the metal rungs leading down.

Almost immediately she heard a faint shout. Looking up, she saw that the Sellites
had
dared to venture out of their protected atmospheres. She gulped, and again had trouble with her mask pack.

“They have lasers.” The machine informed her.

Grace bit her lip, and began the slow descent. She had twelve floors of steps to negotiate and then about a kilometre across the planet until she could let herself into the donor skyrise. At least, she supposed that that was the only place she could go. With no Arcan, it was a start. First she had twelve floors of metallic rungs with people shooting at her. It was really hard to breathe calmly with all that running around in her mind.

She swung around to the inside face of the ladder, to make herself less of a target, and began to half climb, half drop through the space between the floors. She needed to get a good few more floors between herself and the Sellites above, although they were obviously affected by their exophobia: their aim was thankfully far from accurate.

Grace slipped and dangled and fell and struggled down the steps, relying on the bodywrap to survive the friction burns which the desperate descent was causing. More than once she was left hanging off one hand, her body almost pulling the arm out of its socket. Still the plunge continued. The little orb tumbled effortlessly down beside her, keeping her company.

At last she reached the rexelene blocks, and was finally able to fling herself bare planet. She took off as fast as she could and raced across the sand towards her old skyrise.

Wake up, Arcan, she wished. Please wake up. We are completely lost without you. Not only was she worried sick about the orthogel entity, but if he were injured then all the work tagging the missiles would have been for nothing, and Kwaide would continue to be in imminent danger.

SIX CAME TO with a start, and then wished that he hadn’t. His head was splitting. He looked around him. He seemed to be aboard the Resistance, but he had obviously been dropped from a large height, and for some reason he was in the top galley. He scrambled painfully to his feet and reeled for a moment. He felt dizzy. He clutched at his head, and felt a severe burn right along one side. The heat of the laser had cauterized the same wound it had caused, but there was a clear cleft gouged out of his upper cheek and scalp. He shook his head in a vain attempt to clear it of befuddlement, and then set off for the control room at high speed. The Sellites! They would have pinpointed his position by now! And something had clearly gone wrong with Arcan. He pressed anxiously on the orthogel bracelet but it remained stubbornly silent.

He slithered into the control seat, just as the panel emitted a shrill and urgent warning of incoming missiles. Six jabbed at the buttons in front of him viciously. His chances of avoiding being pulverized were diminishing. Even though he knew that they wouldn’t use the nuclear weapons they were still carrying, it was four to one, and the Resistance was an obsolescent model. He tried to think clearly. He had to disappear.

He looked at the screen in front of him, which was now flashing with ever larger red letters, warning of imminent missile attack.

“Yes, yes, I know,” he muttered to the screen. “Tell me how to get out of it, will you?”

The screen flickered, and then delivered its verdict: evasion impossible.

Six kicked at the console. “Fat lot of use you are,” he told it. Then he settled himself more firmly in the chair and began to push more buttons. “Well, if you can’t do anything about it,” he said, “I shall just have to manage on my own!”

He disengaged the automatic function, and took control of the ship. Suddenly he remembered Grace’s story of the space station. Could he manage something similar? Was there anything he could jettison which would confuse the intelligent missiles? He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to visualize the plans of the ship from the manual he had been forced to study all that time ago, when he had been slowly orbiting Nomus.

And suddenly he had it. His fingers flashed to the screen, beginning a digital race against time. The Sellite ships carried nearly all of their fuel in two long ‘arms’, which protruded on the starboard side of the ship. He remembered reading that failsafe hatches had been placed strategically at the junction of both arms. In the case of a fire in the fuel deposit, the arms would automatically detach from the body of the spaceship, and he ought to be able to manoeuvre the spaceship to a safe distance on the contents of the smaller and individual port tank arm.

This meant that he would have to set fire to his starboard fuel deposits, risking the consequent explosion. That should create such a flaring heat source as to confuse the most intelligent of missiles.

His fingers sped over the console. If only he had time! First he had to raise the temperature in the deposit. That meant overriding all of the security failsafes in that area. He looked back at the large red figures announcing the impending disaster. He only had five minutes before impact! Whatever happened, he was going to be horribly close to an extremely large explosion.

At last! He dared to breathe again. The temperature was creeping up in the fuel tank, but it would not be enough on its own. He needed to increase the pressure, and add a mixture of oxygen. Well, he could do both at the same time if he force-fed pure oxygen into the tank. That should bring the auto-ignition point way down.There! He slapped both hands on the console as he circumvented the last failsafe, and watched the console anxiously. The pressure was rocketing, and the temperature was still slowly crawling up. He had done a quick calculation of the kindling point, but his was a rough estimate, at best. He couldn’t afford to be more than five percent out, either way.

His heart was racing, adrenaline pumping around his body. He was ready, but couldn’t fly or fight. The build-up of tension was almost unbearable. Then, with a dull ‘oomph’ the forward tank ignited, and spurts of fire billowed out, seeping through large cracks caused by the explosive mixture igniting under the already straining hull plates. Almost immediately a second dull crump announced the ignition of the second starboard tank.

There was a harsh grinding sound as the two starboard failsafe hatches closed firmly against the fire. Alarms were now sounding all over the ship.

Six waited, hardly able to breathe. Not too soon, he told himself. The two starboard tanks had to detach completely before he could pile on the speed and get himself away from the sure explosion of the fuel tanks and the possible explosion of several incoming missiles.

He exhaled shakily. It was taking an aeon to separate the fuel tanks. He glanced at the console. Less than one minute left! He would still be far too close to the explosions even if they did deviate to the new and higher heat source. Prickles of cold sweat stood out on his forehead.

There! A green light signaled complete detachment of the two burning fuel tanks. He had little more to do now than hit the enter button and pray to Sacras that he would be in time.

The little ship shot backwards from the burning tanks. There was no time to turn her around so Six limited the movement to an increasing backward velocity. It meant that he had an excellent view of the burning tanks in front of him.

They still looked awfully big. He was perilously close to them. His heart was racing, furious that the impulse to run faster was being ignored by the brain, trying futilely to spur him on. He found himself left gasping for breath.

Then he caught a glimmer of one of the missiles coming in. Its rotation had caught the distant Sacras, and had telegraphed its position by an instant’s gleam. It was coming straight for him, totally ignoring the burning tanks!

In front of him, through the rexelene visor covering all of the front part of the ship, he saw the blossoming of an explosion from the fuel tanks. A blue-white sheet of light burgeoned outwards.

He couldn’t see the turning of the missile, but almost immediately he heard another muffled crump, and another explosion flared angrily out, much larger this time, hurting his eyes. He cried out, and waited for the shock wave to reach his small and fragile vessel, still courageously trying to outrun the after effects of the chaos he had left behind.

Then there was another explosion, and another, and another. And then the small craft began to shake. Six wedged himself as best he could into the pilot’s seat, but still he was flung onto the floor as the ship was tossed lazily over and over in its race to escape.

Six waited for another siren to tell him of a hull breach. Then he began to breathe again, slowly, hardly daring to believe his luck. He pulled himself back onto the pilot’s seat, and shut down all systems. Now was not a good time to be visible to the Sellites.

The four dots on the screen continued on their way, apparently unconscious of the drama unfolding behind them. Would they assume he had been destroyed? Or would they break formation to come and investigate? His life depended on the answer.

He watched, and watched, and watched. Slowly the four dots began to draw away, all keeping formation, all heading straight for Kwaide. For now he was safe.

Six waited until they were out of proximity range, and then engaged the remaining forward thrust. The fuel would not last for very long, but he could get some momentum up before he ran out. That was all he could do. Point the ship towards Kwaide, and sit back to wait. Even with no fuel she would limp back in the right direction. He hoped his air supply would last out.

He found himself shaking. Perhaps Diva was right. Naming a ship did bring good luck to the vessel. He would never dispute that again. She could call his next ship anything she liked.