Strange New Worlds Read online

  It was a wild and speculative thought, more based on intuition than evidence. But Beth couldn’t shake the idea that it was the correct answer. Or at least an answer close to the right one. Which then begged the question: if the planetoid was a body, was it dead? Was the activity they saw around them just the lingering vestiges of life?

  Or were they wandering around inside something that was very much alive?

  Twenty-Three

  Majel had expected that opening fire might cause problems for the Satori. She wasn’t surprised, therefore, when the planetoid launched a new wave of fighter craft. This one was flying directly toward her.

  It was a calculated risk she’d opted to take. Saving the pilots in those two fighters had been a priority, even if it put her and the rest of the Satori’s crew at risk. Taking chances was always a factor in space exploration. That didn’t mean Majel was unprepared to defend her ship.

  “I have gunnery. Lieutenant Foster, remain at the helm,” Majel said.

  She’d long since discovered that despite her enormously fast reflexes, having a human pilot steering the ship lent a level of intuitive awareness she still had difficulty matching. Coupling machine speed with human gut feelings had gotten the Satori out of more than one scrape in the past. Majel hoped it would do so again now.

  “Keep us in as close as you can to the planetoid,” Majel said. She’d already shunted a chunk of her awareness over to the fire control systems so that she could accurately plot out the approach factors of the alien craft and calculate effective firing solutions.

  “Why close?” Lieutenant Foster asked.

  “Close enough, and they’ll have a harder time tracking us with any guns they have on the surface. Do you want to find out the hard way what sort of weapon systems a planet-sized spaceship might have?” Majel asked, answering his question with a question.

  “No, ma’am!” Lieutenant Foster replied. “Keeping the ship low as ordered.”

  Lieutenant Foster took the Satori through a series of erratic twists and turns, hoping to foil any incoming attacks. As near as Majel could tell, the enemy fighters hadn’t opened fire yet. She was sure they were fighters. Whether manned or drone craft, she couldn’t tell, nor did she know what sort of weapons they might have. Everything about this adversary was an unknown factor, making it difficult to accurately calculate the best courses of action.

  Beth needed to be informed of the new course of events. Majel opened a direct channel with her. “We saved the fighters. But we seem to have attracted some hostility toward ourselves.”

  “Is the ship in danger?” Beth asked

  “Unknown at this time. Preparing to fight the ship,” Majel replied.

  There was a pause on Beth’s end, and then she answered. “All right, we’re going to try to make our way back out. Stay in the area as long as you can, but if things get too hot, jump out.”

  “I won’t leave you behind!” Majel said.

  “You will if it’s a choice of leaving or losing the ship,” Beth said. “That’s an order. We can take care of ourselves in here for a little while. But the Satori is the only way anyone from this mission is getting home. Don’t forget that.”

  “Understood,” Majel said. “Enemy fighters almost in range. Signing off for now.”

  Majel left the channel open in case Beth needed her but brought her focus back to the ship that was her body. She was going to need all of her attention for the battle ahead. A dozen small craft streaked toward the Satori. Majel opened fire with the ship’s railguns, obliterating two of the tiny enemy vessels.

  That still left far too many of them, and they were coming in fast. The ships hadn’t fired yet, which worried Majel. Whatever weapons they had must be designed for close-in combat. It was too much to hope that might be due to technological inferiority. Besides, the evidence put the lie to that idea. Logic said the enemy was simply holding their fire until they were close enough to unleash one devastating barrage.

  “Jumping the ship,” Majel said. She always had emergency jump coordinates plotted at any given moment, ready to go. This sort of situation was precisely why. At Majel’s command, an enormous wormhole opened in space just ahead of the Satori’s nose. The ship darted into the hole, which closed immediately behind it.

  But this was no long-distance jump to another star, nor even hop between planets within the same system. Majel had learned through trial and error how to use wormholes for short-range transit with near-pinpoint accuracy. The Satori emerged from its destination wormhole the same second it left. Only now, the ship was a few hundred kilometers directly behind the alien fighters.

  “Engaging with railguns,” Majel said. “Keep the ship moving in evasive patterns. We don’t want them to get close to us.”

  “I’m on it,” Lieutenant Foster said.

  A flurry of additional fighters launched from the planetoid’s surface, rocketing toward the Satori to join the battle. Hall saw them almost as quickly as Majel. “We have another wave incoming,” he said.

  Majel made a note of them, but she had most of her processing tied up with targeting the first set of enemy ships. As powerful as she was, Majel found tracking the small, dodging fighters tasking enough that it required most of her attention. She was beginning to see why humans had such strict divisions of duty and labor. Trying to perform multiple processor-intensive activities at the same time meant none of them received the attention they really needed.

  In the same moment that Majel realized the source of her difficulty, she created a plan to deal with the problem. “Hall, I need you to take over gunnery.”

  “Why?” Hall asked. “Is everything all right?”

  That was a question only a human could ask in a moment of crisis. If Majel had a head, she would’ve shaken it with wonder. Of course, something was wrong! But she understood what he was trying to ask. Hall was inquiring about Majel, herself. She found that concern touching if misplaced at the moment.

  “I’m fine,” Majel said. “But targeting the enemy ships is eating up too much of my concentration. I need to be able to focus on the big picture.”

  Then she added, for Hall’s benefit as much as anything else, “Besides, I know you can handle it.”

  “Yes, ma’am! I’m on it,” Hall said. He was already taking over where she’d left off. Sure, Majel had done some of the heavy lifting when it came to calculations, but Hall stepped in competently enough that Majel felt she’d made the right decision.

  With one task off her plate, Majel was able to more easily assess the overall tactical scenario. The two human fighters had changed course and were now making for where the Satori used to be before she jumped. Presumably they’d been trying to link up with her. The alien fighters from the first wave appeared confused, casting about for a target which had disappeared. All the better.

  Majel opened a radio link to the pair of fighters she’d rescued. This time, they were close enough that she was able to break through despite the aliens’ jamming. “Satori here. Are you able to engage that first group of fighters?”

  “Yes, ma’am! It looked like it was getting a little hot around you,” Rodriguez said. “You pulled our bacon out of the frying pan back there. We’re here to return the favor.”

  “Excellent. Sending our sensor data to coordinate targets with you now,” Majel said.

  The two fighters would help solve their short-term issue of dealing with the enemy fighters. But the underlying problem wouldn’t be so easily fixed. The planetoid had clearly identified the Satori as hostile. There was no telling how many planes it had in storage, how many waves of attack the place could send against them. The theoretical maximum was enormous, and even the most conservative estimate would be enough to overwhelm and destroy the Satori, given enough time. She needed a better plan, and soon.

  Twenty-Four

  The spider robots stood motionless as statues. How could something so small be so deadly? Any one of those things would fit in the palm of Charline’s hand. And the truth w
as, they could handle any one of them. Even any dozen. But there were a lot more than that.

  “There must be hundreds of them,” Charline said.

  “Well over a thousand, actually,” Linda said over the radio. “I’m using the shuttle sensors to collect as much data on them as I can.”

  “Good thinking,” Martelle said. “Let us know if you turn up a secret weak spot, will you?”

  “I don’t think real life works like that. But if I do, you’ll be the first to know,” Linda said.

  Watching the spiders stand there watching them back became unnerving. Charline found herself wishing something would happen, even if it was just another attack. At least then they would know what was coming next. She glanced toward the shuttles. There was enough space on board the small ships to get everyone out. The problem was if they began evacuating and the robots pressed the attack, they’d be overrun in seconds.

  “What are they waiting for?” Tessa asked, echoing Charline’s thoughts.

  More rumbling underfoot answered her question. This quake felt even more severe than the last. Of course, the previous shaking hadn’t actually been a quake. It was the effect of the robots tunneling their way toward the human camp. A new earthquake with increased intensity couldn’t be anything good.

  Charline raised her guns and targeted the nearest spiders. “Get ready. I suspect they’re about to come over and say hello again.”

  “Tessa, you had to ask!” Arjun said.

  Tessa snorted. “I’d rather be fighting than standing around waiting any day.”

  “Speak for yourself. There’s a lot to be said for standing around waiting,” Martelle said. “Some days, it means you get to live a little longer.”

  Movement in the middle of the pack of robots caught Charline’s eye. At first, it looked like the robots themselves were somehow rising. Then she realized it was the ground beneath them swelling like a massive blister.

  “Got movement over here!” Tessa said.

  “Ditto,” Arjun said. “Big dirt mound.”

  Should they wait for the attack Charline knew was coming? Or take action as quickly as they could, and hope they might do more damage by attacking before the spiders were ready? Either way was something of a gamble, but in her experience taking direct action was almost always the right call.

  “I don’t know what’s under that dirt. But I highly doubt they decided to send us all birthday presents,” Charline said. “Colonel Martelle, what are you thinking?”

  “I’m right with you. Open fire. Tear those things down!” Martelle said.

  Marines and armor alike unleashed all the firepower they had on the new targets. Sand and dirt blasted away, revealing what was hidden beneath. Flashes of light reflecting off whatever was rising from the ground told Charline it was metal. But this was no new swarm of fist-size robots. Whatever these things were, they were huge. Bigger even than her armor unit.

  “Holy shit,” Arjun said.

  Wind swept the rest of the dust away, giving Charline her first good look at what lay beneath. The new robots towered over the battlefield as they rose to their full height. In form, they looked almost identical to their smaller cousins. These were just much, much bigger. Enormous was not too strong a word to use.

  Gunfire was bouncing off the metal monstrosities, so Charline shut down her right arm and to conserve ammunition. Her left arm housed a railgun, though. The weapon took time to charge up for each shot, so the rate of fire wasn’t great. But it did a lot more damage when it hit. Charline lined up the giant spider nearest to her and sent a railgun round blazing toward it.

  The shot streaked toward her target, leaving a glowing trail behind it. The railgun round traveled with such velocity that it ionized air molecules, creating a laser-like effect. But that was nothing compared to what it did when it slammed into its target.

  Armor plates buckled and shattered in a nanosecond as the iron pellet begin converting its mass into energy. Charline’s shot kept moving, burning a path through the robot in less time than it took to blink. The remaining energy blasted through the far side of the machine, lighting up the evening in a fiery explosion.

  “Yes!” Charline said. Her target teetered like it was about to fall.

  But before it could, streams of the smaller spiders went running up its legs, then scampered along its carapace toward the damaged area. One by one, they poured into the hole her blast made. Charline checked the charge on her railgun. It wasn’t ready yet, and it looked to her like the small robots were repairing their bigger brethren. It was healing before her eyes, all the damage being undone.

  “The little ones are fixing the big ones, Colonel,” Martelle said. “I hope you have some ideas. This one is out of my bailiwick.”

  “What, they didn’t teach you how to deal with self-repairing giant killer spider robots at Parris Island?” Charline asked.

  “I think that one would have to be filed under the general orders to blow up whatever the enemy is throwing at us,” Martelle replied.

  “Works for me,” Charline said. “We’re going to need to focus fire on one of the behemoths at a time. If we do enough damage all at once, maybe we can take one down.”

  “Maybe?” Martelle asked.

  “It’s all I’ve got. Unless you have a better idea?” Charline asked.

  The monstrous robot trundled toward her. Charline could barely see the spot where she’d damaged it. The repairs were so fast! Even with coordinated fire, how were they going to take these things down?

  “All right. Marines, cover the North and South. Try to slow those big ones down,” Martelle said. “Armor units, form up on the east and west sides of the camp. Focus fire on one target at a time. Let’s knock a couple of these beasts on their tails!”

  Their troops begin moving, but so did the giant spiders. They weren’t as fast as the smaller robots, thank goodness. But they were still closing on the defensive line more rapidly than Charline would’ve liked.

  Tessa and Lieutenant Arnold, one of their newer pilots, came up alongside Charline and added their fire to her own. All three of them hit the giant spider robot with everything they had, but it kept staggering forward despite the onslaught. Worse, the smaller ones were advancing now as well!

  “Ready with my railgun,” Tessa said.

  Charline checked the charge on her weapon. “I’m green here, too.”

  “Ready, ma’am,” Arnold said.

  Charline dropped your crosshairs directly onto the center of the monstrous robot bearing down on her. “Target its center of mass and fire!”

  All three projectiles spat from their muscles a fraction of the second part. The brilliant beans left behind by the passage illuminated the battlefield almost as bright as daylight. The railgun rounds tore through the robot’s armor like it was paper, ripping huge chunks of metal away from its frame. Secondary explosions lit up as something inside the spider, damaged by their attack, detonated in a furious blaze of heat. Chunks of metal rained down a dozen meters in every direction.

  Despite all the catastrophic damage, the robot still managed to stagger forward one more step. Then a second step. Smaller spider robots swarmed over it, desperately trying to repair critically damaged systems. But this time, Charline was ready for that trick. She and the other armor pilots opened fire with heavy machine guns, blasting the smaller robots away before they could affect repairs. Without their help, the mortally wounded giant spider staggered one more step and then collapsed.

  “We got one!” Tessa said.

  Charline put another railgun round into the robot’s shattered frame. “Just to be sure.”

  “Good idea,” Arnold said. He fired another shot as well, blasting the robot’s burned-out shell.

  Martelle’s voice came over the radio. “Glad you got one of them! But we could use some help over here. There’s two more advancing on the north line, and nothing we’ve got is even slowing them down.”

  He was right. One down still meant there were five more
to deal with. Charline turned her armor toward the north. “Arnold, stay here on guard. Tessa, with me. We’ve got some more spiders to burn.”

  Twenty-Five

  Majel had wondered what sort of weapon systems the tiny fighters could possibly house. They were incredibly small craft, nimble and fast. But the same diminutive size that made them a complex target to hit with the Satori’s weaponry meant they couldn’t possibly be carrying all that much in the way weaponry. That was the AI’s theory, anyway.

  Her guess had been proven accurate, after a fashion. Each of the alien fighters appeared to have but a single weapon: one relatively short-range laser. The good news was that the Satori’s railguns had far more range. All they had to do was keep jumping the ship far enough away that the alien fighters couldn’t fire on them effectively.

  The bad news was, that was easier said than done.

  “Power level down to twenty-five percent,” Foster said.

  Majel detected strong elements of stress in his voice. Her humans didn’t handle danger the same way she did. The AI felt fear, at times, but it was a sense of concern over failure, loss of her own being, or the lives of others she cared for. It was worry over discontinuation, much the same as she guessed a human might feel.

  Where the difference lay was in her ability to prevent that fear from interfering with her processes. Her ability to calculate probabilities and come up with solutions was unimpacted. Humans, on the other hand, reacted in variable manners to the same sorts of stressors. One human might freeze in a crisis while another performed at above-normal levels in response to the same event. Nor was it merely that some humans reacted one way and others a different manner. Sometimes the same human might freeze in one emergency and plow through the next.

  It was one of the many things Majel failed to understand completely about human beings. They were endlessly fascinating for her, and she hoped to be able to study them for many years to come.