“And that’s a bad thing, right?” One of the other Footsoldiers asked. “What would happen if we lost it completely?”
“We might lose the ability to power up the starship again,” Paula said. “I don’t think that we could actually manipulate the systems ourselves…”
“He means; will the starship blow up on us?” Chris injected, sardonically. “Are you sure that we’re safe here?”
“No,” Paula said. She took a measure of revenge by giving them a detailed answer. “It is possible that the power core will destabilise and explode, killing us all. It is equally possible that it will just fade away, leaving the starship completely powerless. It is — even — possible that the power core will just stabilise at a low level and remain that way until the Killers recover this ship, if they ever do. It’s a completely unknown technology.”
She looked back down towards the column and tanks that had once held the Killer. Her mind kept returning to a single point; it had been an alien being, an intelligent alien being, and she had killed it. Its race had slaughtered humanity — and countless other alien races — but she had never killed anyone in her life. She felt sick, despite the constant massaging of the suit, and had to swallow bile. She had killed a unique creature… and she wasn’t even sure how! Her nanotech had killed it — why? What had she actually done to it?
The lights played around the massive chamber, but it took her a moment to realise what was missing. The mists no longer hung in the air. The temperature was dropping rapidly — that wasn’t a problem as long as they remained in their suits — and it was possible that it had merely condensed on the walls, but perhaps it had some other explanation. It might have been part of their native atmosphere — although if she were right about them being native to gas giants, the pressure should have been much greater — but she had the odd feeling that the mists were actually much more important than they had realised. They had no time to study now, but she was already compiling a list of priority areas to research — and the mists were on the list.
“We’re moving out,” Chris decided, finally. “Paula, follow me; in fact, set your suit to automatically shadow me until I tell you differently.”
The lead Footsoldier’s lights seemed to fade away into the darkness as he took point, drifting ahead of them, back towards where a wall had swallowed up one of their teammates. It dawned on Paula, suddenly, why they’d gone back the same way; the Footsoldiers wanted to see if they could rescue their comrade. Flying through the air, using radar pulses and sonic signals to fill out their knowledge of the alien starship, they made much better time, but when they reached the man-eating wall, it was cold and silent.
“Material unknown,” her suit’s sensors said, when she examined it. Something completely unknown to human science was odd, but looking at it, she wondered if she was merely managing to misinterpret what she was seeing. It should have been impossible to produce a material that nanites couldn’t crawl through, unless perhaps they had used nanites to produce the material and then maintain it. Human starships did have some self-repair functions and there was no reason why the Killers couldn’t have something comparable, but she’d never seen anything on this scale. The thought was oddly terrifying; despite the power failure, could the starship still be maintaining or even repairing itself?
“Nothing,” Chris said, bitterly. “Can we dig into the metal?”
“I would advise against it,” Paula said, sharing his feelings. The lost Footsoldier was almost certainly dead, but they’d want to take his body for a solar burial. There seemed to be no way to recover him. “We can get some specialist tools up here and dig into the material once the starship is secured.”
She turned and froze, feeling a hot liquid trickling down her legs. She was staring right at one of the machines that had chased them down into the heart of the starship. It took her a moment to realise that it was as dead as the remainder of the ship and the position it had been caught in was just a coincidence, but she’d been certain that it was about to tear her apart. The darkness had kept it well-hidden. She hadn’t even noticed it until it was too late.
“Don’t worry,” Chris said, softly. “It’s dead.”
Paula flushed, remembering that Chris could see all of her vital signs through his suit. “I didn’t mean to panic,” she said, crossly. “I just saw it and…”
“It happens to us all,” Chris said. “Just follow us up towards the surface and you’ll be fine.”
The flight out of the starship was more leisurely than the raid into the starship, but Paula was still sweating like she’d never sweated before when she was finally helped out of the hole they’d produced in the maintenance hatch — or whatever the Killers had used it for. She felt as if she were right at the end of her tether, but she still had enough energy to look up towards the Milky Way and feel awe as she took in the galaxy from such a distance. It was impossible to make it out as anything, but a great band of light in the distance, yet it was an astonishing sight. There were no traces of the Killers — even their vast construction projects had made no mark on the galaxy that she could see — and nothing to suggest that it was anything, but safe. It was a humbling sight. On such a scale, even the massive Killer starship was less than a speck of dust.
“The starships are coming in now to pick us up and deliver the first load of researchers,” Chris said, prodding her gently. “I suggest that you get a good eight hours sleep, at least, before you think about going back into the ship, or anything else.”
“Yes, sir,” Paula said, unable to disagree. The Milky Way still captivated her. “Are you going to be sleeping as well?”
“We have to purge our systems of all of the stimulants,” Chris confirmed. “After that, we’ll have to write reports for our superiors and brief other Footsoldier combat teams on what we encountered inside the Killer ship. They’ll have to know what we found if they get sent inside other ships.”
She heard him chuckle. “At this rate, we should have all their ships captured within a few hundred years,” he added. She got the impression that he was trying to reassure her, somehow. “The war is as good as won.”
Somehow, Paula couldn’t smile. A dark shape appeared from space, rapidly turning into a landing craft settling down on the hull, unloading the first researchers who would be digging into the mysteries of the Killer starship. A day ago, Paula would have loved to be one of them, but now she had the urge to just go home and lose herself inside a MassMind fantasy program, one where the Killers didn’t exist. It would have meant abandoning the rest of the human race, but at least she wouldn’t have to worry about the Killers — until they destroyed the asteroid settlement she used as a hiding place.
“I doubt it,” she said, shaking her head. If she worked with the other scientists, she might have a chance to influence the outcome of the war. “They’re not going to let this pass without a response.”
Chapter Ten
“My God,” Matriarch Jayne breathed, as the final sections of the report faded away. “They actually did it!”
“Apparently,” President Patti Lydon agreed, sourly. “They captured a Killer starship and took it to Star’s End.”
“They did more than just that,” Administrator Arun Prabhu said. “They killed a Killer.”
Tabitha Cunningham smiled inwardly. One Killer was small compensation for the billions of humans and countless other races who had been killed by the Killers, but it was a start. It was more interesting to know that there only appeared to be one Killer on each of their starships, which suggested that their total numbers might be much lower than anyone had thought. If they could take out a few more starships, they might actually get the Killers to take notice of them. Of course, not all of the War Council thought that that was a good idea.