Strange New Worlds Read online

  “Be careful of your targets,” Ayala said. “We don’t want to damage the ship if we can avoid it.”

  “Maybe it’s nothing,” Beth said.

  But as soon as she finished saying those words, the hatch dilated, sliding open to reveal what was in the passage beyond.

  Sixteen

  Rodriguez corrected his course for what felt like the thousandth time. ‘Arc around’ had sounded so easy when he’d said it. With any other planetary body as big as this thing, it would have been, too. But he’d forgotten to account for its low mass. There wasn’t enough gravity to slingshot around, so they had to change vector with thrusters. The fighters were nimble, but they couldn’t turn on a dime. Without a gravity well to assist their pivot, they’d have to dump far more of their velocity than he liked.

  “How are you doing over there?” Rodriguez asked.

  “Fine, champ. Following you in,” Perkins replied. “Looks like the Satori is in one piece. That’s good news, anyway.”

  Rodriguez looked down at his radar, expecting to see the ship’s signal, but there wasn’t anything. Confused, he looked toward the planetoid. There she was! Tucked in tight against some sort of giant crater. “What’s she doing down there?”

  “Exploring, most likely,” Perkins said.

  Rodriguez checked his flight path. They’d slowed down quite a lot but were still going too fast to rendezvous with the Satori. They were going to sail right by. Better try to make radio contact, at least. Maybe they were close enough to break through the jamming.

  “Satori, this is Alpha Flight from the Independence. Please respond,” Rodriguez said.

  Nothing. He tried several more times, but the jamming must be blocking them. Rodriguez cursed and slapped a palm against his radio. It might as well be a block of lead for all the good it was doing him. They simply couldn’t broadcast far enough.

  “No dice,” Rodriguez said.

  “Figured as much. Got an idea, champ. Hang tight,” Perkins said.

  Before Rodriquez could ask what his wingman was up to, Perkins accelerated a little and rolled his ship so its nose was aimed toward the planetoid. What was the man up to?

  Then his board lit up. Perkins had activated his targeting laser! He was lining his guns up for a shot at the Satori!

  “Are you crazy?” Rodriguez asked.

  “Nope. That ship has a great ECM suite. Have you met Majel? The AI running the show over there? She’s sharp as a tack. Watch this,” Perkins said.

  He proceeded to flash the targeting laser in a series of rapid patterns. Rodriguez couldn’t figure them out at first, but then he realized what Perkins was up to. “Holy shit. Is that Morse code?”

  “Got it in one,” Perkins replied.

  “Nobody uses it anymore,” Rodriguez said. He didn’t know more than the standard S.O.S. himself. “Will they be able to figure it out?”

  “The ship’s systems will show they’ve been painted and give them the laser pattern. Majel ought to be able to figure it out from there,” Perkins said. “It’d be easier if we had communication lasers on our fighters, but this should do in a pinch.”

  “What’d you say?” Rodriguez asked.

  “Couldn’t make it out?” Perkins drawled. “It’s OK. Most folks can’t. I just told them about the jamming field, and to report in to the Inde as soon as possible.”

  More flashes lit up Rodriguez’s board. At first he thought it was Perkins, using his targeting laser again, but this was different. His fighter’s ECM suite was telling him that he was being painted.

  “Um, you doing something funny out there?” Rodriguez asked.

  “Not me,” Perkins replied, his voice tight. “It’s not the Satori, either. It’s the planetoid. I think I might have made it mad when I painted it with my targeting laser.”

  “You did what?”

  “I hit the planet a bit while I was lining up the Satori. It’s a long way away and a small target. It was only on the planetoid for a few seconds,” Perkins said. “But it looks like that was enough to get more attention than we wanted.”

  Rodriguez rotated his ship so he had a better viewing angle of the planetoid. At least they weren’t being blasted to bits by death rays. Yet. It was something. But he saw what looked like movement on the surface, subtle shifts in the reflected sunlight. He zoomed in on the spot.

  It was writhing with..something. Hard to make out what it was at this range, but it was a lot of small objects moving around. Then he saw little blasts of energy reflect off the planetoid’s smooth surface. One, two, three, then more of the small bursts than he could count.

  That couldn’t be good.

  “I think we’re about to have company out here,” Rodriguez said. A quick check verified his assertion. The objects he’d seen moving on the surface were lifting off, blasting themselves off into space. They were on an intercept course with the flight path he and Perkins were taking.

  “Evade or fight?” Perkins asked.

  “Evade,” Rodriguez said. There were too damned many of the things to fight, and with their radar jammed, it would be like combat with one arm tied behind their backs. He plotted a new course, one which would veer them away from the projected path the objects were following. Tapping a key, Rodriguez sent the new route to Perkins and then ordered his ship to follow the path. His wingman followed a few seconds later, both of them burning hard to change their vector.

  But it rapidly became apparent that the objects weren’t giving up that easily. They, too, adjusted their flight path. When Rodriguez calculated a new course for his wing, the objects changed direction to match.

  Worse, there was now a second cluster of the things coming up from behind Alpha Wing. The objects were getting ready to catch them between two groups.

  “Looks like they aim to pick a fight anyway,” Perkins said.

  “Looks like,” Rodriguez replied. He wiped sweating palms on the legs of his flight suit.

  One fighter in five, he remembered. That was the percentage that had survived humanity’s last fighter battle in space. The odds were if anything worse this time. God damn it, this was supposed to be an easy mission! Rodriguez sucked in a deep breath, trying to slow his pounding pulse.

  More flashes from his combat computer caught Rodriguez’s eye. They were being painted by another source, now? Was it the planet-base, finally deciding to just take them out with some sort of long-range gun?

  No, he realized… That wasn’t the planet. The emission was coming from the Satori. She was lighting them up, the same way Perkins had. The reading flashed on and off, on and off, working in a now-familiar pattern.

  “Perkins, what are they saying?” Rodriguez asked. If he survived this mess, he promised himself that he’d set aside the time to learn Morse code.

  “It’s Majel,” Perkins replied. “She’s computed a new vector for us. Sending it to you now.”

  The course came over to Rodriguez’s flight computer. It was a twisting route, and it would cause them to dump most of their speed. Some insane acceleration to manage that, too. It was gonna hurt taking that many gravities. But that wasn’t the most alarming thing.

  “She wants us to fly toward the planet?” Rodriguez asked. That was the last place he wanted to be!

  “Looks like. I suggest we follow her advice,” Perkins said.

  Rodriguez thought about it another few seconds. If she was wrong, they’d be in worse trouble. But if those objects closed in and attacked, they were as good as done for anyway. If the Satori had been boarded and taken over, they were toast anyway. He looked at the projected course and swallowed hard.

  “Let’s do this,” Rodriguez said.

  He shifted course and slammed on the thrusters. The force tossed him back against his acceleration chair with so much power that it rapidly became hard to breathe. He’d been right. This was going to suck.

  Seventeen

  Charline waited impatiently for the printer to finish booting. It was a chunky machine, bigger than a desk. I
t had to be. A 3D printer could only produce objects smaller than itself.

  This one had a ton of buildable designs already in its memory, but it was taking a crazy long time to load everything. She drummed her fingers on the flat surface beside the console. Just because she was good at managing computers didn’t mean she loved everything about them. Waiting was always the worst.

  A crashing sound from the room behind her made Charline’s ears perk up. A moment later, Linda cried out with alarm. Charline was on her feet and moving in an instant, hand reaching for her sidearm. She popped open the door with her left hand while drawing the weapon with her right.

  She took in the scene quickly. Linda sat on the floor, crab-walking away from something. Shards of glittering glass were all over. Then the thing Linda was fleeing from came into view.

  It was the size of a giant beetle but looked more like a four-legged spider. The thing scurried across the floor toward Linda but halted when it saw Charline. It almost looked like it was sizing her up.

  “Dangerous?” Charline asked.

  “Smashed through the container,” Linda replied, which explained the bits of glass all over.

  “Sounds like a yes to me,” Charline said. She took her pistol in a two-handed grip and squeezed off a shot at the bug.

  She missed. Or rather, the bug dodged aside, almost impossibly fast. Charline cursed and fired a second time. The bullets were frangible rounds, so they wouldn’t go through the deck. Pinging sounds as bits of bullet bounced off the lab walls were a good reminder that she couldn’t afford to expend rounds thoughtlessly, though.

  “Damn it, that thing is fast!” Charline said. She missed with the second shot as well, but at least the critter was moving away from Linda now instead of toward her. “What is it?”

  “I wish I knew. It was inside one of the armored leaf balls,” Linda replied. She was back on her feet, moving away from the creature.

  Was it some kind of native life form? The more she examined it, the less it looked like a bug. The thing’s ‘skin’ had a sheen to it which reminded Charline of metal. The way it moved looked somehow off to her as well. Less flowing and organic than her eye said it ought to be.

  “I think it’s a robot,” Charline said. She kept her pistol trained on it, but it had gone very still.

  “A robot?” Linda asked. “But who built it?”

  “I’m more worried about how we deal with it,” Charline replied, “We can look up its manufacturing record later.”

  It waggled one leg in her direction. Then all at once it rushed in, running straight toward Charline’s legs. She fired. The first round was another miss, but she was growing used to its speed. A lesser marksman might have missed again, but Charline managed to nail the thing. One leg blew off. It went skittering across the floor and pinged against a wall. The robot — if that’s what it was — staggered. It slid along the floor a few inches before it managed to right itself on the remaining three legs.

  Then it scooted under the lab table, moving almost as quickly as it had before.

  “After it!” Charline said.

  Before she could take aim again, the robot found its way to one of the lab table’s legs. Then something strange happened. The air between the little machine and the leg shimmered. Charline hesitated, unsure what she was seeing. Before she could react, a new limb was growing from the stump of the one she’d shot off.

  Then the table collapsed, tipping toward them. Charline jumped clear. Linda was behind her, so she was all right, too. But she couldn’t see the robot anymore. It was hidden by the fallen table.

  “What just happened?” Linda asked.

  “Our little robot ate part of the table leg to regrow its own,” Charline said. If she hadn’t seen it herself, she wouldn’t have believed it. “Radio for some backup.”

  “Will do,” Linda said.

  Had to be nanites. Some sort of micro-robotics which deconstructed the steel from the table and built it into a new leg for the machine. That was bad news. The little thing would be damned hard to destroy if it could just reconstruct itself from whatever materials were handy.

  She moved around the side of the table, gun raised and ready. There! As Charline rounded the edge of the lab table, she caught a glimpse of the robot spider. She fired but missed as the thing jumped through the air toward her. It landed on her pistol. A hissing sound told her its nanites were already going to work on the weapon. What would they do to her hands?

  Charline didn’t want to find out. She tossed both the gun and spider away from her. They bounced against the far wall of the lab. The bug seemed shaken by the fall. Maybe all this work was finally overtaxing it or damaging it somehow.

  Her fingers felt fine, but there could be traces of nanites on them even now, slowly eating their way through her skin. The thought made Charline’s skin feel like it was crawling.

  But her hands could be dealt with later. The robot was still a threat. She advanced on the thing, unsure how to deal with it. Hard as hell to kill. Maybe a flamethrower would work? Explosives? Impossible to contain it, too, since the nanites would eat through just about anything.

  Just about anything. The bug hadn’t been able to eat its way out of the plant’s shell, had it? Charline snatched the branch up from where it had fallen on the lab floor. Brandishing it like a club, she advanced on the robot again.

  “I hear you’ve got a bug issue?” Martelle’s voice came over her ear radio.

  “Yeah, although this one is more like a robot spider,” she replied. Linda must have reached him and let him know what was going on.

  “Spider, bug, all the same to me,” Martelle said. “I’ve got a squad of Marines on their way to you. Sit tight.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Charline said. He wasn’t stuck in the lab with a killer machine on the loose. She continued closing on the robot, watching it carefully.

  It observed her in turn. As Charline circled around it, the robot pivoted in place, little legs beating a staccato rhythm on the floor. Smart little bug. Incredibly well-designed, too. She couldn’t help but feel admiration for whoever had created this thing. It was potentially deadly, sure. But it was also infinitely versatile. Those nanites would allow the robot to perform all sorts of functions.

  “We could use tech like this,” Charline said.

  “If it doesn’t kill us, first,” Linda said.

  “Now you sound just like Beth,” Charline chuckled, careful to never take her eyes from the robot. Her friend’s distaste for medical nanites was legendary, even though using them had saved her life on more than one occasion.

  “Well, maybe she has a point,” Linda said.

  Maybe she did. Nanites under their direct control were one thing, but this robot was a perfect example of how deadly they could be if they were weaponized. Charline took one step closer to the bug.

  Without warning, it sprang through the air toward her again. She swung the branch more out of instinct than anything else. Wood connected with robot. Like she was swinging for a home run, Charline’s club hammered the bug out of the air. It rebounded, smashing against the far wall of the lab.

  “That’ll teach you,” Charline snarled.

  The robot staggered back to its legs. Part of its side was crushed in. It was no longer steady on its feet. She’d hurt it! Time to finish the job. Charline closed with it, taking several quick steps.

  But before she could get in range to swing again, Charline saw the same sparkling mist she’d spotted before surrounding the robot. She stopped in her tracks, not wanting to get too close to the nanite cloud. It wasn’t after her, though. The cloud sank against the lab floor. In seconds it had bored a hole the size of her head through the reinforced steel. Air hissed through as the pressure equalized from the lab to the world outside. The lab was elevated, and now it was exposed to the planet’s air.

  “Hull breach!” Charline said. So much for all their careful isolation precautions!

  The robot paused at the edge of the hole like it w
as looking up at her. Then without another sound, it jumped down, scuttling away.

  Eighteen

  Martelle’s boots crunched on the gravel as he double-timed his way back to the lab, a squad of men in tow behind him. Sure, he could have just sent the soldiers. But if Foster was calling for backup, he felt confident it was a dangerous enough situation to warrant his personal attention.

  “It’s broken out of the lab. Target is outside, on the ground,” Charline said over the radio.

  “What is it?” Martelle asked. He slowed his pace as he approached the lab, unsure just what he and his men were up against.

  “Looks like a spider about twenty centimeters across. I think it’s some kind of robot,” Charline replied. “Colonel, be careful. It’s hard to hit, and it bleeds nanites capable of deconstructing matter. It ate my pistol and burned its way through the floor of the lab.”

  “Got it,” Martelle said. Of course, there were deadly space-bugs on the planet. He rolled his eyes. Nothing was ever easy.

  “Contact!” Corporal Harris said.

  Before Martelle could respond, the corporal fired a burst from his rifle at something under the lab. That was when Martelle got his first look at the robot as it scuttled out from under the laboratory and then burst into motion, flying at Harris’ face. The corporal screamed as the spider connected with his faceplate. Martelle saw a shimmer in the air around the bug. That had to be the nanites Foster was talking about. They were burning through Harris’ faceplate.

  There was no time to waste. On instinct as much as thought, Martelle raised his rifle to his shoulder and took careful aim. If he were even a few inches off, he’d kill Harris as surely as the bug would. Martelle stroked the trigger, sending a single round down the barrel of his rifle. It slammed into the robot’s side. The force of the impact sent it flying.

  “Harris! You all right?” Martelle asked.

  “Yes, sir. Shaken, but alive. It was cutting through my helmet!”

  “Did it breach?” Martelle asked as he stalked after the robot-bug. He fired another round into it.