Human, page 28
part #1 of Humanity Ascendant Series
“And, in so doing,” he added, “we have been remiss in our duty to our own lord, the Prince Mishak. We are long overdue at Dur and should return there with all due haste.”
He bowed. “We shall remove our offending presence, My Lady.” Straightening he turned to the engineer, who was distinctly surprised at this turn of events. “Come, Meesh. We need to get moving.”
She nearly spluttered in shock. The jumped up native was proposing to abandon her? Would he dare leave a Quailu behind to die?
She took a half step backward as she realized that these Humans had already killed hundreds of Quailu crewmen to take their ships and hundreds more in the recent fighting.
She took a full step backward, crouching slightly as she remembered the Human officer throwing her bridge crewmen to their deaths in order to lighten the scout-ship. Killing Quailu presented no barrier to these people.
The angry threats she’d been formulating died unspoken. She’d seen only opportunity in the emperor’s vulnerability. Now she was coming to realize how short-sighted her people were being.
Many Quailu had drafted natives into their house-militaries, mostly to make up numbers in their under-crewed warships. A few, like Mishak, were giving them far too much latitude, turning them loose on their own, letting them kill their betters…
These Humans should never have had the nerve to abandon her, no matter how politely they’d stated that intention. She would never have dreamed of needing to ask them for help and, yet, that help was walking away even now.
And she was being forced to admit to herself that she had no idea how she was supposed to get off this station.
It was galling. It was humiliating. And it was completely necessary to her survival.
She opened her mouth, but Eth turned just before she could speak.
“Though I’m sure your ladyship has matters well in hand,” he said respectfully, “we would, nonetheless, be honored if you decided to accompany us.”
Aside from vague curiosity, she got very little from his engineer and nothing at all from the blank-minded lieutenant, but she knew when she was being played. She could give in to anger or she could survive, which meant leaning heavily on her sense of humor.
The bastard had been toying with her, making sure she knew who was truly in charge on this moldering platform. She had to admit he’d done a decent job of it.
She allowed herself a chuckle. She could either act the petulant fool and lose their respect or show her appreciation for how well she’d just been manipulated.
No use in fighting a lost battle. “Lead on.”
They moved down the long corridor leading out from the transport zone. It opened onto a large public concourse lined with abandoned shops.
Rows of residential balconies lined the hundred-meter-high atrium, enclosing what amounted to an artificial canyon. A network of fountains and streams had once graced the vast open space but they’d long ago run dry. The water was still present, however, because it was dripping from girders, far overhead.
The light pattering of rain fed the wild growth of what had once been carefully tended green spaces. Weeds and wild grasses had found their way out onto the decking, slowly building on their own decayed ancestors as they worked toward the eventual overthrow of the orderly humanoid habitat.
The blood trail led to the main empty fountain. Two skeletons were there, a larger one propped up against the low wall surrounding the fountain and a smaller one, less than half the size, curled up next to it.
“It was a child,” Eth said, turning to look at Bau. “Probably too young to figure out where to find food.”
Bau was radiating anger and shame at the idea that Quailu could behave this way. She was not a champion of native rights by any stretch but this was beyond the pale.
She was saved from commenting because they had to keep moving.
“The industrial section is over there,” Meesh pointed. “There’ll be ramps and elevators…”
“No elevators,” Eth growled. “We’re not going to trap ourselves in a noisy box.”
“Then we’d better do this right,” the scout-ship captain said. “Half a click straight up on a ten-degree ramp; that’s nearly a full click and potentially hostile territory the whole way.”
She turned to the engineer. “Meesh, how badly is our PLC module damaged? Can it hold a secondary pattern and control our nanites if it’s not too complicated?”
“Probably.” He shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”
“Good!” She turned to Eth. “Sir, if we need to go topside for engines, we should bring along everything we can salvage from our own ship. No sense in making this trip twice.”
He nodded. “So what’s the pattern you have in mind?”
Hela cast a look sideways at Meesh and Bau could feel the captain’s uncertainty fading. “I want our grav plating flipped to make us a simple ground effect vehicle. We can angle the forward and rear plates to give thrust.
“The nanites will hold the plates together, just like in a ship, but the rest will just form a simple box with firing slits. We should be able to load everything inside and take it topside with us.”
Eth made no response that Bau could see, but she could easily feel the scout-ship captain’s pleasure at his apparent approval. Were they all empaths and we just never knew?” She discarded the idea. Surely, it would have been noticed before now.
The captain’s respect for the lieutenant, however, was unmistakable. These Humans all seemed to revere him.
“Meesh,” Eth turned to the engineer, who was mildly startled to be drawn back into the discussion, “can you do it?”
The engineer paused. Not uncertainty, but a desire to be precise. “Yes,” he finally agreed, “but we might have more nanites than the plates can carry. Those grav plates were never meant to do more than keep us stuck to the deck and hold our dinners down.”
“That’s fine,” Eth said. “Remember, there are two shuttles worth of nanites topside, minus crash damage, and we only want enough to give us our work stations, and a couple of engine mounts. Any more than that and we might not get out of this gravity well.”
Meesh nodded and raced back to their crashed ship.
“Will something like that be able to fit through the passenger departure corridor?” Bau asked.
“Not a chance in all three hells,” Eth replied casually.
“Shouldn’t you call him back? Plan how to deal with the problem?”
Eth reached in through the neck of his suit, scratching at his shoulder for a moment while apparently considering her suggestion. “No.”
Hela watched him for a moment before turning to Bau. Mild amusement. “Initiative can’t be grown in the chambers,” she told Bau, “and it can’t be instilled from without. Each of us must develop it on our own.”
“Warrant Officer Hela chose Meesh as her engineer,” Eth added. “I trust her judgement, which means I trust Meesh to do what needs to be done.”
Bau’s crews were far more regimented and these Humans sounded chaotic by comparison. Still, the feeling of pride coming from Hela was unmistakable.
Meesh came running back and, at first, Bau thought he’d come to mention the impossibility of moving a large vehicle through the corridor, but he had a module in his hands.
Behind him trailed a swarm of nanites and he led them to the left of the corridor exit, stopping in the middle of the largest area of unencumbered floor-space. He set the module down and pressed a control.
A holographic image of the scout-ship appeared in front of him and he made a copy before stripping away the flight control systems as well as the engine mounts and workstations.
He reshaped the hull into a simple box, just large enough to carry them, with a single workstation for a driver. The sides were sloped out from top and bottom, meeting in the middle.
The non-nanite parts of the ship – gravity plating, inertial dampening emitters, life support and workstation emitters and the high-density capacitors – came flowing out atop the horde of nanites and stacked neatly next to a growing cube of the microscopic machines.
“How’s this?” Meesh asked, gesturing at the holo.
“Looks good,” Eth said, glancing at Hela, who nodded, a gesture Bau congratulated herself on noticing. These Humans were annoyingly dependent on physical cues.
“Of course, the capacitors would never fail us,” Eth nodded gravely.
Bau was mentally patting herself on the back again, seeing his emphatic stance despite her inability to read his feelings. Meesh put an end to that.
“You doubt my capacitors,” he countered his leader. “I don’t trust them any more than you do…” His face changed, teeth showing. “… At least, not until I’ve pulled them apart and reconfigured them.”
Bau bit back an angry exclamation. How had she read the officer so incorrectly?
“So these have been worked on?” Eth asked.
“Wouldn’t keep Anshar-408’s in my ship, otherwise,” Meesh insisted. “I’ve only been at this a few weeks but I know garbage when I see it.”
Strong disdain. Bau looked sharply at the engineer but kept silent. Anshar? The company was Quailu, of course, and they operated from Throne World, which meant they only hired Quailu.
And this native felt their products were garbage unless he could take them apart and fix them?
The engineer pressed a control in the display and the nanites started carrying parts into place. They held up the grav plating until a capacitor could be connected and then they released the plates and began flowing into place at the sides.
Bau knew this was how ships were grown but she’d never watched the process before. It was mesmerizing but not quite mesmerizing enough to stop her from coming back to what she’d just heard.
Did the other natives of the empire feel the same lack of respect as these ones? It would never have occurred to her before today but she’d seen more than enough in the last hours to shake her views to the core.
“Right,” Eth said, pulling her back to the present. “This is still your ship, Warrant Hela. I’d be obliged if you could get us topside.”
Hela turned to look around the small group. “Eve, take the controls. Meesh and Gleb, get out ahead and walk point for us.” She turned to Eth. “Sir, I’d appreciate if you could bring up the rear while I walk flank with Caleb.”
She seemed to take his head movement as agreement because she turned from him with a feeling of relief, looking now toward Bau. “My Lady, the safest place for you would be inside the vehicle. We didn’t come all this way just to lose you now.”
It wasn’t quite phrased as an order but her emphatic feelings were clear. Bau knew when argument was wasted and, frankly, she didn’t relish the idea of climbing a half kilometer on foot.
Using the nod she’d seen earlier, she climbed aboard the newly grown vehicle, relishing the surprise she’d generated using the Human head-gesture. She found an open-topped turret, just to the right of the driver’s position and she pulled herself up into its seat.
An assault rifle had been mounted in the front of the turret. Bau smiled. If she was going to sit in this thing for gods only knew how long she could at least be ready to fire back at any enemy.
She felt a flush of irritation and looked left to see Warrant Hela quickly looking away from her. It was all Bau could do to hold in a chuckle. She was willing to defer to their expertise, but she wasn’t going to sit meekly in this contraption when she could still contribute.
T hey’d been walking for at least two hours when Gleb suddenly exhibited a feeling of alarm. Eth actually started moving forward before the scout signaled a halt. He came to a stop next to Hela, beside the vehicle.
They looked forward to where Meesh crouched at the next turn in the ramp, some twenty meters up. He was looking forward to where Gleb crouched at the next turn but he didn’t seem to know what had spooked his colleague.
Eth, however, had been practicing – reaching out to the other team members. He’d felt the moment when Gleb heard movement.
“Someone’s coming our way,” he whispered to Hela.
When Meesh looked back, Eth gave him the rally signal with two fingers extended, telling him to pull back and to bring Gleb along with him.
He looked around, confirming that this section of ramp didn’t differ from the dozens he’d already seen over the last few hours. The same side corridor still branched off from the middle of each level and another connected at the switch-back where the ramp turned back on itself.
“Get the vehicle back to the last turn,” he told Hela, pointing at the last switch-back they’d taken. “I’ll take one man and hide up there where the corridor branches off from the next switch-back. You’ll take the rest into this side branch,” he said, chopping a hand at the corridor that led away from the middle of the ramp.
“Let ‘em come around that corner up there and, when they’ve gone about five or ten meters past it, you start firing on them.” He turned as Meesh and Gleb came to crouch next to them. “Once you’ve made them commit to your attack, Gleb and I will hit them from behind.”
He nearly shuddered at the vicious glee coming from the young specialist. He’d already suspected that Gleb’s nearly angelic face concealed something dark, but this was far more than Eth had imagined.
Still, they were here to kill their master’s enemies, not to sell them insurance. He had no regrets about choosing the vicious little bastard.
Hela began moving her people into place while Eth led Gleb back up the ramp. They went right at the switchback, finding what appeared to be a traffic monitoring station at the back of the wide, curving turn. Eth was first in and he saw, to his surprise, that what he’d taken for a blank section of wall from the outside was, in fact, a one-way mirror.
The mirror would have given officials inside a perfect view of ramp traffic and, because it could only be seen through from the inside, those using the ramp would consider themselves under observation whether the room was staffed or not.
He gave serious thought to running down a level and finding out, if there was a similar room there, whether the viewport was breakable. He’d hate to count on firing through this one only to find out it was unbreakable. It would waste the element of surprise.
He’d just have to come out of the room when the time came to fire. It was still a solid vantage point as Gleb’s pleased grunt confirmed.
“Can we shoot through it, d’ya think, sir?”
“Can’t count on it.”
Gleb nodded thoughtfully. “I’d armor it,” he mused. “If I was putting enforcement staff in here, I’d definitely expect them to take a bit of light-hearted gunfire from time to time.”
Eth was about to point out the lack of similar armor concerns on Kish but the first shadows started wavering across the wall opposite the next switchback.
“Here they come,” Gleb muttered, clearly radiating his eagerness to start shooting.
The first to turn the corner and start down the ramp in front of them were a pair of Durian natives. That marked them as crew from one of Uktannu’s ships. They were followed by three Quailu who didn’t seem particularly concerned about their surroundings. They were talking heatedly, only occasionally glancing at their lackadaisical native scouts.
They were perhaps four meters behind the two Durians and seemed to be following their scouts blindly. It was shaping up to be a fairly simple massacre until a second, larger group came into view at the switch-back.
“Shit!” Gleb said softly.
Eth agreed. That second group wouldn’t be caught up in the same ambush. To complicate matters, they’d be on Eth’s flank if he tried to come out and hit the first group from the rear, as planned.
Even worse, they’d be able to fire down into Hela’s side corridor from the middle of the upper ramp, turning the ambush on the ambushers.
Even as he thought this, the first group triggered Hela’s ambush and the two Durians went down in the opening seconds. The Quailu, surprisingly fast for their species, dropped behind their dead scouts and laid down suppressing fire on Hela’s position.
It would have been so easy to step out of the room and shoot the three in the back, but the second group was arming their weapons and advancing to the edge of the ramp. One of them was reaching for the grenade dispenser on his chest.
Eth caught Gleb by the elbow. “Not yet,” he hissed.
He concentrated on the Quailu with the grenade disc in his hand. He could feel his enemy’s anticipation, understand his desire to wreak maximum havoc on his opponents. He stilled the Quailu’s hand, the six-second fuse just activated.
How exactly could he make him open his fingers? Could he then keep him from simply kicking the grenade over the edge? His body was growing cold.
Then he found the Quailu’s primary cranial artery. He pinched it. He wasn’t sure how, but he was constricting the flow of blood.
It took far more than interrupting an electrical impulse in the brain. He was actually moving physical matter and he was feeling the cost. His core temperature was dropping more quickly, just like when he’d lifted that coin.
He watched his target intently, sensing the moment when he lost consciousness. He let go of the artery as the Quailu began to fall, the grenade slipping from his fingers.
Those around him noticed him falling but they failed to notice the small disc on the ramp next to him.
Until six seconds had elapsed.
The blast sent out a cloud of tiny dense shards that killed or incapacitated two thirds of them. The rest were stunned and bleeding.
Eth let go of Gleb’s arm. “We finish the advance group first, then we hit the guys up the ramp.”
They burst out into the corridor, moving forward enough to finish off the three prone Quailu who were now more concerned with what was happening up-ramp than with the enemy to their front.
After putting several body-shots into each target, they turned their attention to the larger group, putting down three of the four standing enemy before the last one managed to try aiming back.
