Garth sat back, thinking about what he knew of shuttle flights. They would have touched orbit on the long leg out from Bauru, but only for a few minutes before the boosters cut out and let them coast back down again on stubby wings. The drop should be steep, but not hellish.
The other passengers were becoming alarmed around him. Several shouted for the stewards, demanding to know what was happening. A child was crying somewhere.
Garth turned his attention to the window again. He examined the stubby delta wing just behind his row of seats when he saw something flash by. It was an odd dark shape, a flying thing that zoomed past the window like a hurtling rock. The shuttle shuddered from another impact, and suddenly the bulkheads separating the passenger compartment from the cockpit slammed shut with a hiss of escaping gas.
“They’ve got a breach in the nose!” shouted a tourist wearing a fur hat with blinking, holographic novelty buttons all over it.
Indeed, it seemed that they were still losing pressure. Garth felt his ears ache, then pop. Hearing became difficult.
“Someone’s throwing rocks at us,” said a voice from behind Garth’s seat. It sounded like a child.
Garth could feel Fryx in his skull now, like a lead weight embedded there, fused to the bone. There was a familiar tickling sensation.
It was a culus! What a cruel cosmos this is that I should die locked in the mind of a balking imbecile! moaned Fryx in his head.
“What’s happening?” asked Garth aloud. His fingers began uncontrollably drumming on the armrests of his seat. To his surprise, he realized he was humming quite loudly as well.
They’re bringing down this primitive thin-skinned vehicle, you fool!
Garth looked outside and saw that indeed, more of the dark hurtling shapes were hitting the wings and doubtlessly the nose of the craft. He wondered worriedly what would happen if one of them went into the air intakes for the engines.
That’s precisely their plan, Fryx interjected into his thoughts.
Even as the two considered the possibilities, there came a great sound of tearing metal from the rear of the cabin. The shuttle lurched sickeningly, then nosed toward the mountaintops at an even steeper angle.
Get away from the windows! Move to a center seat in the rear section of the cabin! commanded Fryx.
“What about the crew? Can’t they control it?”
They’re all dead, if not from the bodies of the enemy coming through their windshields then from the lack of oxygen. Now, get away from the windows before I am exposed!
Before Garth knew what he was doing, he was out of his seat and moving back up the aisle. He knew this to be the coercion of his rider, but for once he didn’t object. The shuttle was now canted at such an angle that it was as if he was climbing stairs. Ignoring the other passengers, who in their fear were also ignoring him, he found a seat in the rear of the cabin and buckled himself in.
Then the automatic braking kicked in and he was wrenched against the seatbelt. He had gotten it into place just in time.
The rest of the crash was a blur. Although it only took a few seconds, perhaps less than a minute, to Garth it seemed to go on forever.
Upon impact, he blacked out. He had the faintest impression of seeing water splashing against the windows before he lost consciousness.
He awoke a short time later to see that the shuttle had indeed struck a mountain lake, whether from sheer chance or the excellent programming of the auto-pilot, he couldn’t be sure. Designed not to sink immediately, the shuttle groaned and creaked like a sailboat in a storm. Icy water lapped at his ankles.
The emergency hatch in the roof of the cabin was the first one to be opened. Surprisingly, none of the passengers had yet managed to get to it when it swung up and outward, letting in welcome sunlight and a biting cold breeze of fresh air.
Garth’s seat was just below it so he was among the first of the humans to see the monster that peered in at them. Unlike the other passengers around him, Garth didn’t cry out in terror. He merely stared.
A killbeast! screeched Fryx in his mind. A wash of numbing horror swept over them both.
Seventeen
“Lieutenant Ferguson, main doors, are you ready?”
“Affirmative, Chief.”
“Team A, aft doors?”
“Check.”
“Auxiliary portals?”
“We’re ready, sir.”
“All right, let’s take back our hold,” said the Security Chief, moving down a steep service shaft behind a squadron of his green-suited troops. Beads of sweat matted his hair inside his helmet and made his face and neck itch intolerably. It was with great trepidation that he led his men into the hold in search of the mech platoon. His right hand, healed over with nu-skin, still pained him, but it wouldn’t keep him from pulling the trigger.
On close-range intercom, one of his sergeants tapped his shoulder and said, “I’ve got a full load of grenade-launchers right behind us, sir. The Lieutenant Ferguson’s Marine weaponeers are packing their mortars as well, just in case.”
“I hope we won’t need them.”
“So do I, Chief.”
The Chief hoped they wouldn’t have to use explosives even more than his men did. The Captain had used the direst threats in conjunction with even carrying such things near his precious cargo. The Chief had ignored his orders and brought them along. He wasn’t about to send his troops against combat mechs without everything available in their hands.
For the first hour or so, the hunt in the great hold was relatively uneventful. Except for pre-arranged, tightly-beamed communications between the teams, communications were kept to a minimum. Closing on the mechs was extremely difficult in the miles of equipment. Tracking them with sensors, the original plan, was impossible, as the mechs had immediately destroyed them all.
Crouching beneath a giant packing crate containing a construction crane, the Chief activated his phone. It was time to find out how the other teams were doing.
“Main doors? How’s it going, Lieutenant?”
“Check, we’ve moved in about a mile, nothing to report.”
“Aft doors?”
“No contact, sir. Are we sure they’re still in here?”
“Auxiliary portals?”
Silence.
“Auxiliary portals? Report your status.”
Due to the perfection of the technology, there wasn’t even the hiss of static to entice him. The Chief began to sweat profusely.
“All teams, head for the Auxiliary portals. Back-up teams head for the flitter bays. We may have a breach.”
The mech lieutenant slid his optics carefully over the corpses, looking for signs of resistance. There was none. Silently, he ordered his platoon forward. Padding past the dead men and through the auxiliary portals and into the service shafts, the mechs moved with unnatural speed. They were little more than a pack of massive gray shadows, nightmares of flesh and metal.
They didn’t head for the flitter bays, however. Instead, they ran through the dim-lit shafts of the Gladius to the engine rooms. Brushing aside the panicked engineers who fled for their lives, they took a few hostages, trained their weapons on them, and dictated their terms.
A white-faced comm officer signaled desperately, trying to get the Captain’s attention. Sitting comfortably in his quarters, the Captain ignored his efforts for several minutes. He was viewing a particularly good erotic holo and grew angrier by the second as the damned intercom kept chiming. Finally, he paused the holo and activated the intercom.
“What? What is it now, man?”
“Sir, we have an emergency.”
The Captain groaned, heaving his great bulk erect. Even the half-standard gravity, provided by centrifugal forces as the Gladius rotated, was becoming an annoyance. He would have to consider lowering it to one-third standard, and damn the health regulations.