Crystal Venom (12 page)

A moment later she replied. ‘Decoy away. Second launch in ten minutes. Third and fourth, five minutes after that.’

They waited and watched over the hour that the decoys took to arrive. When the first was some tens of kilometres away, the behaviour of the urchins around the Hauler changed and they moved out to intercept it. Stephine maintained control of it and swerved it out of their intercept course, taking the decoy around towards the rear of the gas giant. From what the crews could see the urchins followed. As the second one passed, more urchins appeared from under the Hauler to chase it. Stephine slowed the third and fourth decoys dramatically so they almost hit the Hauler, which caused a large group of small urchins to pour out from distorted hatchways on the surface of the Hauler. As soon as the urchins were out of sight pursuing the decoys, they all moved up until they could see the Hauler themselves.

Major van Beere, controlling
Basalt’s
heavy lasers, started to cut through the Hauler’s hull behind the nose section as the craft accelerated up towards the target together. It took them two hours to close on the Hauler, by which time the nose segment was almost severed. As soon as it came clear, everyone’s lasers were controlled by Patrick, who targeted every piece of debris floating away from the separated pieces, destroying them. The salvage crews fired grapples onto the nose section and started to move away back towards the LP.

Major van Beere then deployed three of the Busters, which flew down against the bulk of the Hauler and attached themselves at their designated points, fired their engines and started the long journey towards the local star. They would carry on accelerating until sufficient speed had been built up to deploy their own buzzard ramjets, which would be able to scoop up any available gas or dust and continue the acceleration. The plan was for fast acceleration which, within days of launch, would make the Hauler unstoppable, and even if the entire assemblage disintegrated its trajectory would take it into the local star anyway.

‘Basalt,
this is
Crystal.
The altered urchins, together with the slowing drones, will be in position in forty-five minutes. I am deploying a Compressor.’

‘Acknowledged. All craft acknowledge forty-four-minute warning.’ They all lasered in their receipt of message.

Marko had only ever seen a Compressor used a few times before and did not want to be anywhere close when it went off. Thinking about them, he knew it was science that Fritz probably understood, but he would be one of the very few. The device was a useful piece of equipment in that, when detonated, it would vaporise anything within a two-hundred-metre sphere of itself, and then suck the resulting material down into a tiny and rapidly deteriorating black hole. But they could only be deployed for relatively small targets; the Compressor’s components were too unstable for making bigger devices, as Marko knew from his own experiences. Very early in his military career he had been part of a rescue squad that went looking for survivors from one of the Gjomvik development labs that had been tasked to make a bigger Compressor device. They found a lot of exotically coloured dust, plus one very big crater, which was all that remained of a large facility that had employed hundreds of people.

Their lasers were still firing, picking off small pieces of material, as Patrick tried to make sure that the cleanup was complete. Distant flashes of magenta showed that the Compressor had done its job, expanding in its odd-coloured fireball then collapsing in seconds. The bulk of the Hauler had long since disappeared starwards when the colonel called a halt to the cleanup, just as the first of the urchins from the gas giant started to appear on the distant sensors, coming out to investigate the faint signatures of antimatter drives.

‘All ships form on
Basalt,’
the colonel ordered. ‘Salvage, are you able to locate the AI Core?’

Major van Beere answered. ‘Negative. It’s either moving around, or there is something shielding our sensors, or it is aware of us and determined to make life difficult. We have fired the wormhole jumper units against the cone’s outer hull. Control is handed across to you, Colonel.’

‘Right. Form up on your lander and jump when ready.’

Marko watched the other units jump ahead of the cone-shaped nose piece as the colonel also located her own small LP and jumped as well. He was the last one to move up against
Basalt
and as soon as Patrick felt the contact he jumped them towards the system’s Oort Field far out into interstellar space, where millions of comets formed a halo around the system. A few seconds later the view had changed considerably and they hoped that they would be able to operate on the nose segment in peace, as the colonel came back on the comms links.

‘Good work so far, people. Has anyone been able to learn anything from the Hauler core?’

Fritz replied: ‘No, Colonel, there is just a stream of gibberish coming from it on all frequencies. There is a subroutine which is heavily encoded that I am trying to decipher. Do we know when the representative Hauler will arrive? It may be able to assist.’

Patrick answered the AI. ‘ETA is approximately eighteen hours away.’

The colonel acknowledged then made some suggestions. ‘Crew, rotate for a meal and a freshen-up. We start looking for the core in earnest in two hours’ time.’

~ * ~

They were all back in their craft waiting for orders when Major Longbow laid out the problem. ‘OK, the core is an armoured sphere ten metres in diameter. It is normally fixed in position inside another heavy armoured shield. From what we can see with the gravity sensors and the listening sensors against the outer hull, there is something moving it around on the inside of the nose segment in a random pattern. Every time we slice a piece of the exterior away it creates a greater risk of contamination. We have done well so far, but the odds are now stacking up against us. Every Intel drone sent into the segment is compromised and destroyed within minutes by something we do not understand.’

He paused, looking at a screen, before continuing. ‘It is almost as if the segment is alive and actively challenging us. We now have thirteen hours before the Hauler
Chrysanthemum
arrives. I do not want to disappoint him as he is a member of the inner sanctum of the Haulers’ Collective. The only really good news is that the main body of the Hauler has now reached such velocity that its fate is inevitable, so at least we do not have to worry about it being intercepted by friend or foe. Anyone have any bright ideas?’

‘We could employ the urchins, Major.’

‘How so, Stephine?’

‘The altered ones are destroyed, but it would not take a great deal of effort to transport a few from the gas giant to here using the same method as when we captured the first one. I believe that we could then fire small encapsulated amounts of antimatter onto the segment and allow the urchin to chase them. If nothing else, we would see what happens. We could take our ship and go get them if you wish.’

They all waited for his reply. ‘Interesting. OK. Do it.’

Harry added: ‘While we are waiting for the captain to return we could use some of our anti-urchin tech and peel back a few layers of whatever it is that is now exposed where we have removed the outer hull. It appears organic.’

Colonel White came in and answered Harry. ‘Right. We shall do that as well, Sergeant Major. Major van Beere, any thoughts?’

After a long pause van Beere answered. ‘I must admit to being completely baffled, ma’am. We are out of our depth here. I’m sorry that I have no suggestions. I would prefer that we destroy everything and fly away. It is the only way we can be sure of containing this threat.’

The colonel nodded. ‘Agreed, but unfortunately, we must endeavour to assist the Haulers in answering their questions.’

~ * ~

On the control deck of
Basalt
Major Michael Longbow looked at his screens and zoomed in on the Albatross lander. ‘OK, everyone, ease back five hundred metres. Harry, you have control.’

Harry nodded and started tapping his screens. ‘Firing.’

A steady stream of oxygen and hydrogen projectiles started to explode against one of the exposed areas of the sixty-metre-long cone shape which was the detached nose segment. Harry steadily walked the rounds about a central point, slowly excavating a sizable crater in the material. Suddenly, a huge tendril of rapidly accelerating material ripped out through the side of the sphere and reached across to the lander. Everyone in range reacted with everything they had to fire at the tendril and it stopped only metres from reaching the Albatross. It snapped back into the sphere, obviously damaged, but still alive.

Major Longbow yelled out, ‘Cease fire! Shit! What the fuck are we dealing with here?’

‘Major Longbow. This is
Crystal.
It would appear that during the lengthy time the
Cactus 3
was in isolation something grew and evolved, possibly combining the best and worst of the biological weapons together with the urchins. What we just saw was an extremely large feeding tendril from an urchin. We wounded it, but have really just annoyed it considerably. Unfortunately, it is now even more imperative that the records held in the Hauler core be accessed. This is a major development.’

‘I hate those fucking things,’ the major said. ‘OK, everyone hold position until Stephine and Veg get back.’

While they waited, the salvage crews targeted all the floating debris and vaporised the small pieces, or, as with the bigger pieces, nudged them together by deploying small explosive charges and then laser welded them into a slowly growing ball.

Stephine’s very beautiful craft popped into existence beside
Basalt.
Caught in the starlight, the flattened teardrop’s sleek and almost sensuous bulges shone slightly in the afterglow of the jump energies as Stephine opened comms. ‘We have two small urchins. I note that you had a little excitement! Yes, I agree with
Crystal.
The creature or creatures residing in the segment appear to be evolved urchins. Let’s see what it makes of real ones. I have sampled the skins of these and they are much closer to the others that we have encountered. They are in fact another racial type, but are still ninety-nine point nine per cent identical. They are also free from any contamination. With your permission, I am about to launch an encapsulated fragment of antimatter at the segment. I shall release one of the urchins a few moments later.’

The colonel gave Stephine the go ahead. As they watched on their individual screens, they could see the small package of antimatter move relatively quickly towards the segment. A few moments later an urchin burst out of its containment on the side of Stephine’s craft and actually jumped across the five hundred metres in a fraction of a second to be between the antimatter and the segment. As it enfolded the antimatter into itself, a huge tendril shot out from the segment and speared the urchin, dragging the thrashing, convulsing creature back into the cone.

‘Stephine, repeat that, please,’ the colonel requested. ‘This time allow the antimatter to make contact with the segment before releasing the urchin. Oh, and make the antimatter package one hundred per cent bigger.’

‘Acknowledged. On the way.’

As the antimatter package arrived, the area of the nose segment where the hull plate was nonexistent actually opened up like a mouth and then folded the energy package into itself. The urchin arrived on the surface a few moments later and violently attacked the writhing mass of tendril material, trying to get at the antimatter. An explosive fight ensued with the urchin tearing chunks away from the segment before it was seized and apparently consumed. Patrick once again took control of everyone’s lasers and burnt the debris.

Major van Beere commented thoughtfully. ‘Interesting. Fritz, can we speed up the decay of the energy packets surrounding the antimatter?’

Fritz took a few minutes to reply. ‘Yes, dangerous, but it can be done. We would have to get in a lot closer. What do you have in mind, Major?’

‘I want to peel off a strip of the hull plate around the entire circumference of the segment. Then launch multiple packets of encapsulated antimatter and see if we can create a reaction and split this whole thing in half. Obviously, antimatter is still attractive to the altered urchin.’

The high-pitched voice of Fritz posited another problem. ‘Interesting idea, Major, but consider what would happen if this thing accumulated enough antimatter to jump by itself.’

‘OK, good point, Fritz,’ the major acknowledged. ‘Let’s tease it. How long to set up the energy packets for rapid decay?’

After a few long seconds, Fritz said, ‘Couple of hours, tops.’

‘OK. Everyone, just concentrate on chewing as much off the surface of the nose cone as possible. Let’s arrange ourselves so that all craft can see everyone else’s lines of fire.’

So again everyone just watched and waited carefully lasered off as many chunks as possible when the gravity sensors showed them that the AI Core was out of the danger area, and played ‘dodge-ems’ with the tendrils when they came raging out.

The major gave another order. ‘As soon as we see another of those big tendrils, I want everyone to concentrate their fire on its base. Let’s try and cut it off.’

Moments later the opportunity presented itself but all that occurred was as soon as the lasers started to cut, other smaller tendrils came to the aid of the larger, pulling it back inside.

‘Michael,’ Stephine said. ‘I believe that there are some five or six individual urchin-type creatures inside the segment. The data that I have managed to collate shows that the biological weapons have been incorporated into the makeup of the urchin. The frightening thing is that there is also human DNA in the makeup together with that of various Avian creatures; as you’ll remember, the delivery system for the biological weapons were specially bred Avians. My conclusion is that these larger types of urchins are constructs, as there has, quite simply, not been enough time for them to evolve naturally.