Burnt Ice (28 page)

‘She’s been screeching at you all
the time.’

‘Really? Had my comms switched
off. Hate being interrupted when I’m working. OK, Jan. Watch this lot. Park
yourself where you can’t be readily seen and wait. If she has any more back up,
it will come soon enough. Won’t be long.’

He went as quickly as possible to
where his HUD told him Harry, Fritz, Sirius and the captain were. In cryo. He
floated around each of the cryo units, checked his comrades and, with a fine
manipulator extended from his armoured fists, started the wake-up sequencing.
He left the unit, closed and welded the door shut with a small fusion welder
from his toolkit, slapped a ‘tell me’ alarm on the door, then went back to
check on Jan. Finding no changes there he had a quick word with her and made
his way to the bridge.

He re-established atmosphere in
the areas where Lotus had removed it, throttled up all the engines to
re-establish gravity, then moved down the central spiral stairway to the main
hangar deck. He arrived just in time to watch another heavily armed and
armoured proxy fire an ion beam into the hull of Stephine and Veg’s craft. He
could not tell from his viewing angle if it was effective, but he could see the
engines they had all worked to rebuild in the last few months were smoking
ruins.

He tried opening the artificial
crystal door into the hangar but it would not budge. Looking down through the
door he could see that the lock was welded shut from the inside.

As he was deciding to blow a hole
through the wall next to the door, something large, sinuous, faceless, dull
black, and with four arms exploded out of the hatchway of the craft. As it
leapt across to the proxy, glittering blades deployed from its arms and legs
and in a split second the third Lotus proxy was sliced into salami-thin pieces
that slid across the deck.

Whatever the creature was, it
stood still for a few seconds, and appeared to be looking at Marko.

Marko decided the creature was,
in theory, on his side, and tapped on the door to show the jammed access. The
creature nodded, turned and walked back, disappearing into the craft, closing
the hatch after it. Marko pounded on the door before realising that this would
cause more damage.

Frustrated, he kicked it halfheartedly.
He waited a few more minutes, then decided to climb the spiral stairwell back
to Jan on the equipment deck. As he went he relayed the images of the fight
across to her. When he arrived and looked at the sorry mess of the two AIs, he
hoped they had done the right thing. He opened a small hatch on the side of the
nearest unit and plugged in one of the specialist fingers from the suit. The AI
within was dead. He checked the other.

‘Sergeant Spitz, I presume. I am
Patrick. It would seem that our Security AI, Lotus, attempted a coup. She was
not successful, so she suicided. Most unfortunate, in every respect. It would
seem that in her paranoia and arrogance she seriously underestimated you. I
also presume that you have a 17J5AI test suite. Before she isolated and
disconnected me, my monitoring of the ship’s systems showed everything was
optimal. For your interest, you will be happy to know that the information from
the Octopoid Library is intact. Here is the location of the third database
storage unit. This is the code to enable you to access it. I am now powering
down, sergeant. My thanks to you.’

Marko went to the location
Patrick had given him: one of the smaller access hatches on the flight control
deck. Finding it sealed by the ice outside, he activated the hatch controls to
have it flash-heat its exterior then instructed two small maintenance drones to
create a cavity big enough for him to see the hull through the clear ice. When
he was finally able to stand outside he signalled the code Patrick had given
him and the storage unit appeared, locked to the hull above the hatch, under
the ice. There was also a small urchin present, holding fast to the unit
between its curved housing and the hull. He sent the images back to Jan and
hoped Stephine or Veg were receiving them. He started to work out how he could
destroy the urchin without hitting the computer unit.

‘Don’t kill it, Marko,’ chimed in
Stephine. ‘I know you really hate them, but it is a very young one and I would
like to capture it for study.’

‘I really want it very, very
dead, Stephine. That fucking bitch left this out here. Just as well she killed
herself. If she was still alive I would tear her to bloody pieces right now.
Shit, maybe she is. Maybe Patrick is not who he says he is. We will know soon
enough. Well, it’s under the ice, Stephine, so how do you want to tackle this?
How about we just leave it for a while and come back later? I’ll slap a monitor
on the bloody thing. Shit, I hate those things. And that old bitch said that
the hull was clear! Why the hell would she lie to us?’

‘Intelligence gathering, Marko,’
Jan replied. ‘Look at it from her perspective: another excellent bonus for her
to bring one in alive, and that small.’

‘Yeah, right. Fucking AIs. I’m
coming in.’

He cycled through the airlock to
meet up with Jan. A few minutes later Stephine and Veg appeared, both in sleek,
almost sensual, combat gear. Looking at the suits, Marko had no idea of the
weapons they were carrying, but he presumed they were suitably prepared.

Marko looked at his companions
then sighed. ‘Bugger! Looks like I’m in command. First, we all go to the flight
deck and secure it. If you see any other surprises, just kill them, destroy
them, make them go away. I’m tired of this, OK? Jan, you’re point. Let’s go.’

They searched the flight deck,
sealed themselves in, had the ship’s computers run standard 17J5C tests on
themselves, then, using all the available drones, searched the entire ship, a
task which took them the rest of the day.

‘So what the hell was that
construct that dealt with the proxy firing on your ship?’ Marko said. ‘Wanted
you both messed up, that Lotus. Those beautiful engine rebuilds — we’ll have to
do them all over again. Bitch. Couldn’t get through the main hull, though.
Would love to know the specs on your hull material one day. What else do you
have on board? That black creature looked like it massed both of you put
together. Do I get to meet it?’

‘It is a part-sentient defence
droid, Marko,’ said Veg. ‘I would like to show you the specs but I am afraid
that it’s seriously classified Gjomvik technology. Sorry. Simply not worth my
job, and no, it would not defend you unless you were between Stephine and me,
and I told it to.’

‘Yeah. Right then. Too many
bloody secrets wandering around this outfit. OK. Let’s stay on alert until the
guys are back with us in a day; I have programmed the wake-up and unlocked the
doors. They can relieve us. Drones on random surveillance, three of us
monitoring the drones, one resting. Let’s crack on, people.’

‘You look very tired, friend
Marko.’

‘I am, Stephine. It’s the ICE.
Great stuff at the time but a serious downer when it’s removed from the system,
as you know. I can’t afford to take time to sleep it off until the boss is up
and doing. Jan will be the same.’

‘I’m sure I can help you. Back in
a short while.’

When she returned she gave each
of them a fat black pill. They both thought it tasted strange.

‘Great meds. Feeling better,
already! What’s in them?’

‘Aniseed, Jan.’

‘That’s a spice, I think. What
else?’

Stephine just smiled.

~ * ~

‘OK.
Thanks for the briefing, Marko,’ said the captain. ‘Good work, people.’

‘Patrick checks out as well,
captain,’ said Harry. ‘I’m glad we still have an AI who can run the ship.’

The captain nodded. ‘But what to
do with this urchin? I’m not happy with it on this ship, Stephine, but you say
that you can control it. How?’

‘Antimatter, Michael,’ said
Stephine. ‘They’re attracted to antimatter.’

‘Really? And you base this
interesting little nugget of information on what?’

‘All the information from this
trip and from our own mission,’ said Veg. ‘They consistently went after the
antimatter. We have knowledge of some exotic plasma materials. I briefed Fritz
on them when he was in the tank.’

‘Yeah.’ said Fritz. ‘I went through
the information from the Octopoid Library. We’re just about ready to present it
to you.’

‘You, Michael, were privy to some
of that information.’ said Veg. ‘The materials are the equivalent of electronic
slime, and different from interstate. These ones will happily isolate
antimatter from matter. I believe that the urchins have a tiny amount of
antimatter at their core. I also believe that this may be another reason why
they exploded so effectively when we attacked them with the oxygen and hydrogen
pellets. The field maintained at their core was interrupted. They lost
containment and went bang very nicely.’

‘Ah!’ said Marko. ‘That’s why the
explosions were so big when we knocked them over.’

‘Yes.’ said Stephine. ‘I propose
to take a small amount of antimatter still in the feeder tubes to the
antimatter engines, encase it, show it to the urchin and watch what happens. I
believe that it will come down through the ice to get the antimatter. Before we
do that, we build containment from the creature around the antimatter pellet,
with the standard plasma field generator holding it at the centre. We’ll all
learn something’

‘Naturally.’ said Veg, ‘we will
have to tunnel a cavity in the ice some distance from the ship, with a rail
system or some way of sliding the containment away from the ship quickly, after
enticing the urchin down.’

‘Shit, the things I do for
science.’ Marko said. ‘OK, Stephine, give me the full files and we’ll all
eyeball them.’

‘Sirius.’ said the captain
quietly ‘I think that you are very classy, absolutely gorgeous and probably
very good at your job, but if you stick that bloody camera in my face one more
time I shall shove it down your throat. Got it? Right, back off.’

‘That’s right.’ Harry said. ‘You
might be just out of the tank, but you are now a Type S human — you don’t have
to record everything. Next we know, you’ll be recording some very noisy
lovemaking with Fritz so you can market that as well when we get back.’ Harry
caught the glance that passed between Fritz and Sirius. ‘Oh shit, look at you
both! You have been, haven’t you? Oh no! Fritz, you bloody idiot.’

‘Enough!’ the captain said. ‘I
need a meal, a shower and a good sleep. I hate cryo: it makes me grumpy for
days. Jan, Marko, a word. The rest of you, my thanks. Good work.’

When it was just the three of
them, the captain continued. ‘Just wanted to say excellent work. Impressed. My
compliments to Ernst, Jan. Tell him I’ll see him tomorrow for a further chess
tournament. And you used a monofilament diamond garrotte on the proxy, Marko?
Man, that was gnarly. Good shit. The diamond rounds worked as well. Must thank
Harry for those. Right, I need a shower. See you at dinner.’

After a meal cooked by Veg and
Stephine, Marko wandered wearily back to his cabin, stripped, had a quick shower
and collapsed into his bed. He was just drifting off when there was a gentle
knock on the door.

‘Come in — oh hello, Jan. Not
another emergency?’

‘No, Marko, just me. Look, I am
sick of sleeping on my own. How about a voyage contract? And besides, you have
a really nice butt.’

‘Brilliant, really good! Yes
please! Hop in! Last thing I expected!’

Marko was grinning like a fool,
with an instant, rock-hard erection — and all thoughts of sleep gone.

The thought flashed through Marko’s
mind, before Jan returned his embrace, that there was something radically
different from seeing your working mate in the buff climbing into her combat
suit container, and seeing a very desirable, very good friend, shyly take her
clothes off and slide into bed beside you, especially a friend with such a
delectable body

~ * ~