“Look far into the darkness,” Oran Rva said.
Meta squinted. She didn’t see—wait. Her breathe escaped her. In the gloom were three glowing red dots in a small isosceles triangle. They seemed like eyes and were several meters off the deck.
“Do you see?” Oran Rva asked.
“Yes,” Meta said.
The New Man clicked on his helmet lamp. A beam speared into the darkness, falling onto a strange creature.
It had eight spindly legs like spikes that jabbed into the deck. Atop that was a wet carapace like a giant cockroach. It had five metallic spikes for arms. The spikes flowed like whips of living metal. An insect-like head regarded them. It did so with the glowing, triangle-positioned red dots. Below the eyes were clackers.
“What is that?” Meta whispered.
“It would appear to be part organic and part robot,” Oran Rva said in his maddeningly calm voice. “I would imagine the brains and bio-matter are tank-grown.”
Meta gave the New Man a horrified look. “Do you understand any of this?”
“Do not seek to question me,” the New Man said in a reproving voice.
“There are more,” Kane said dully.
Oran Rva washed his lamplight from side to side, revealing three of the creatures. They scuttled across the deck in swift, jerky movements.
“Kill them,” the New Man said. “Aim for the braincases.”
Meta tightened her jaw, sighted the first creature and pulled the trigger. A cone hissed through the alien atmosphere. The round missed, as the thing shifted its head impossibly fast.
Kane seemed to have similar bad luck.
“Three shots to judge its reactions,” Oran Rva said. “Use the fourth and fifth to kill.”
The calm voice did more than anything else could to belie the jitters. Meta shot, cataloging the way the creature dodged. How was it even possible for it to do so? Its reactions were quicker than she could blink.
She pulled the trigger in quick succession, laying down a pattern, watching, judging and finally firing in a place the head should weave into.
“Hit!” Meta shouted. To her dismay, the razor-sharp cone didn’t do anything to stop or even slow down the creature.
“They’re invulnerable to our cone rifles,” Kane said.
“No,” Oran Rva said, softly. “Keep firing. You’ll take them down.”
Meta saw that the creatures were close. Those spikes would jab her chest and end everything. She fired again, again, again until the rifle clicked empty. Frantically, she tore out the magazine and tried to slap in another. The magazine jammed, and she fumbled at it.
In her headphones, Oran Rva sighed. He lifted the silvery ball and must have pressed a stud. Blue lines of radiance flashed outward. In the New Man’s other hand was a blaster. Hot energy in a pencil-thin beam burned the first head.
Meta watched transfixed.
Oil, she swore it was oil, gushed out of the first creature’s neck trunk. The thing took several more spiky steps before it collapsed. In the meantime, the New Man burned off the other heads.
Each creature or robot collapsed onto the spongy deck. They froze in seconds as a machine would. An incredible volume of oil gushed out of them, soaking onto the spongy floor.
As Meta continued to observe, the oil began to disappear, draining somewhere. Did it go back into the ship or into oil reservoirs? Seeing this made her chest heave. She loathed this place more than ever.
“Will more…will more of the things appear?” she asked.
“Strand did not give specifics,” Oran Rva said.
Meta struggled to understand what that meant.
“It doesn’t matter,” Oran Rva said. “To the victor goes the spoils. Once I own the doomsday machine, I will dictate terms. I will unite humanity under my crown. I will find Strand and make him kneel before me, or I will kill him.”
Kane raised his head. “You did kill Strand, dominant.”
Oran Rva sighed once more. “Soon, Kane, I will return you your intellect. I slew a clone. Don’t you remember? The real Strand is still out there. He is a clever Methuselah Man, as difficult to kill as Professor Ludendorff. The two are different sides to the same coin.”
Meta wondered what that meant.
“Come,” Oran Rva said, as he raised the silver ball. I cannot wait any longer.” He shut off the helmet lamp and bypassed the three fallen machine creatures.
At last, they exited the vast chamber, coming to another corridor. This one was huge like everything else here. After three hundred meters, Meta looked into a smaller chamber. It had three torn cocoons with tubes dangling from them.
“The creatures obviously came from here,” Oran Rva said.
“Dominant,” Kane said. “Notice the other, intact cocoons. They squirm. A spike, I see a spike punching through one.”
Meta stepped back. Thirty or more black silky cocoons shivered, with more wet spikes punching through.
“Quick,” Oran Rva said. “Give me a pulse grenade. It’s time to use one.”
Kane pulled out a heavy ball from a pouch at his side.
Oran Rva flicked a button on the pulse grenade. Red numbers flashed along the side. He bowled the grenade so it rolled between shivering cocoons. Already, one of the things emerged, its three red eye-dots shining evilly.
“Run!” Oran Rva shouted. “I set the grenade for maximum blast.”
Meta clutched her cone rifle against her chest. She ran in the excess Gs. The New Man easily outdistanced the two of them. He reminded Meta of Maddox doing that.
Kane lumbered beside her. She wondered if he could go faster. Probably. Even so, he stayed with her.
A terrific explosion shook the resin-like walls.
“Down,” Kane roared.
Meta threw herself onto her stomach. Seconds later, heat billowed over her. Static burst in her headphones.
Slowly, she turned her head, peering at Kane. He looked at her as he lay on the deck. She wanted to ask him if he would serve Oran Rva willingly for the rest of his life.
“Come,” the New Man radioed. “Why are you waiting? The pulse grenade worked, and those things are dead. We have many more kilometers to go to reach the driver.”
Wearily, Meta rose. The doomsday machine seemed to be a horrible mixture of incredible technology and eerie, bio-matter robots with alien insect walls. She had begun to suspect that something dark beamed fear at them. This was unlike anything she was used to.
With sweat trickling in her eyes, Meta climbed to her feet, hurrying to catch up to Oran Rva and his stressor.
-42-
Maddox led the way through the strange corridors of the doomsday machine. A growing fear had slowed his step. The sensation was oppressive and malignant.
He’d drawn his blaster some time ago and had to work to keep from firing blindly into the darkness. Someone or something watched him. Yet no matter which way he turned, he couldn’t spy the watcher.
The captain hissed between his teeth. Did something truly watch, or did he feel an aura of death from a machine that had slain billions maybe trillions of living beings? How old was the doomsday machine? Could massed death through endless ages have soaked the ship with a feeling of doom?
Maddox silently sneered at the thought. He was a Star Watch Intelligence officer. He had a task to perform. Therefore, he needed to concentrate on that and burn away extraneous ideas or feelings of dread. This was a ship like any other. Age didn’t matter. Ambiance good or bad made not a whit of difference. He had to reach the controls before Oran Rva did. That was going to be difficult, though. The planet-killer was huge, with endless paths.
Behind him, Keith helped the sergeant. Riker stumbled from time to time, clutching the ruined bionic arm against his chest.
Maddox had felt the four shivers earlier and heard the eerie groans as if the machine was alive. Maybe Star Watch had found a way to attack the planet-killer. The process hadn’t repeated. Maybe it had been a one-time attack. If that was true, the machine yet moved against Earth and the assault had failed to stop the ancient destroyer.