Marque of Caine Read online

  Slowing as he drifted toward the peak of the arch, the cream-white aviforms rose up higher along its arms. Each snakelike body had a pair of large, membranous wings, with smaller auxiliary flaps near its pointed nose (canards?) and a bifurcated tail (horizontal stabilizers?). They were predominantly gliders, catching updrafts rather than working their wings.

  However, Riordan could not detect any sense organs or orifices. As his feet settled carefully on what now felt and looked like a perfectly flat plane of glass, he asked Alnduul, “Those snake-gliders: how do they see? Or eat?”

  The Dornaani landed beside him with a nonchalance that suggested long years of familiarity with the grav unit. “The datafile I perused indicates that their alimentary orifices are all located on the anterior surface. Much akin to the design of your home planet’s ocean rays, if I recall correctly. Their complex eyes are located to either side of their mouth, as are their audial receptors.”

  Riordan watched one of the serpentine avians circle the arms of the arch in a nimble, twisting arabesque. A row of tan spots ran in twin tracks from its nose to the area just behind its rearmost canards. He commanded the HUD to capture the image and send it to Alnduul. “Primitive eyes, do you think? Defensive light sensors?”

  Alnduul studied it for a moment. “Quite likely. However, the datafile defines these as the largest aviforms on the planet, without predators. In the air, that is.”

  “And on the ground?”

  “They are at the mercy of many creatures, including the adult forms of their own species.”

  “They ultimately become ground-dwellers?”

  Alnduul raised an affirming finger. “When they attain breeding age, they build a cocoon. They emerge with fully developed sex organs and with legs rather than wings.”

  Riordan studied the snake-gliders. Their wings were too flexible to have a rigid bone structure. Something more akin to cartilage, probably. “It doesn’t look as though those wings could ever develop into limbs.”

  “They do not. They wither and are absorbed by the organism during its quasi-chrysalis stage. Note, however, the two pairs of prehensile manipulators they keep against their bodies as they fly. Those are the appendages that evolve into limbs.”

  Riordan waited for one of the snake-gliders to roll over and was rewarded with a glimpse of the manipulators. They were reminiscent of a shark’s claspers, except they were longer and stronger. That was also when he saw one of their mouths: a constantly active maw in which heavy shearing teeth gnawed at the air. Caine reconsidered the creatures: no longer just intriguing and beautiful, they were now a swarm of potential killers, as well. “I take it they are carnivorous.”

  “They are said to be indiscriminate hunters,” Alnduul confirmed. “If a ground animal is no larger than they are, they will attack it.”

  Okay, so not potential killers; proven killers. “And if they come after us?”

  “You employ the lasers with which you drew the ground batteries’ fire. It is unlikely the beams will kill the creatures, but the resulting wound should chase them off.”

  “Should chase them off?”

  Alnduul’s inner lid nictated lazily. “There are no certainties when it comes to the behavior of fauna, Caine Riordan.”

  Caine looked down, discerned a paved square about two kilometers to the left of their position. “Is that the port authority complex?”

  “Yes.”

  “It looks pretty overgrown.”

  “Evidently the automated tenders have failed.”

  Riordan zoomed in on the square. A low-set building dominated its far end, overgrown with vines half a meter thick. “So what’s the plan?”

  “The vegetation on the roof obstructs any possible means of ingress there. So we must use the entrance that faces the paved area. We shall descend to the far edge of the square, inspect it for automated defenses, disarm or disable them, breach the doors, and make our way to the computing core. At that point, it will either accept an update or we will have to disable the facility.”

  Riordan studied the square more carefully. “Is the square protected by an aerial defense envelope?”

  “Yes, out to its far end. However, if we are not airborne above it, we will not be attacked.”

  “And the ground defenses?”

  Alnduul’s mouth twisted slightly further. “The air and ground defenses are provided by the same units. We will not be able to avoid engaging them. Are you prepared?”

  Riordan took in the strange landscape of scattered lakes and the rust and bright green vegetation that wound among them, all of which faded into a hazy horizon. The unearthly vista was not just compelling, it might also be the last he’d ever see. If it wasn’t for alternating memories of Elena’s sleeping face, and Connor’s eager, hopeful one, he might just have told Alnduul to put him back in cold sleep until some other ship came along and used its weapons to flatten the port authority. Flying into unscouted terrain to enter an unknown structure, both of which might be populated by hostile biota and automata, was not Caine’s idea of a tactically prudent solution. But unless he wanted to lengthen an already overlong journey…

  Caine brought his chin up. “I’m ready. Let’s go.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  MARCH 2124

  SECOND-FIVE, ZHAL PRIME (BD +71 482 A)

  The descent to the square was uneventful. However, when Riordan ordered the HUD to display nearby biosignatures, the result was an unreadable litter of data. He restricted the scan to a footprint centered on the square and two times its dimensions, filtering out everything with a signature smaller than a child.

  It was still a mess. Evidently a lot of creatures dwelt in, or lurked near, the port authority. Some contacts disappeared and reappeared without warning: creatures moving through dense brush or into and out of burrows. It wasn’t quite as bad as going in blind, but it wasn’t a whole lot better.

  As Caine and Alnduul floated down through five hundred meters altitude, perimeter markers became visible. They were stelae of some kind, sigils scored into their angled surfaces. And still, despite the churning biosigns on his sensors, Riordan could not see any movement.

  That was totally unacceptable. “Orange tag life-signs moving to intercept Riordan or Alnduul. Double tag any that doubles its movement rate within any three second sampling interval.” Riordan hoped that would give them enough warning. And, while on the topic of warnings: “Show remaining power. Show average power consumption. Show power consumption per single laser discharge.”

  The resulting data was not promising. Riordan called Alnduul’s attention to the speed with which the lasers would drain their remaining power.

  Several seconds passed before the Dornaani replied. “I can fire ten times and retain a sufficient power margin to reascend to the drift-butte. Your more aggressive maneuvers have reduced you to eight safe discharges. Logically, then—”

  “—I should land first and lead the way.” Riordan grimaced, mostly because it made inarguable sense. Alnduul had more firepower left, was accomplished using weapons via the control circlet, and so could better maintain a base of fire to cover Riordan. Obversely, Riordan was the logical point man for a quick charge to the control building. Human legs were longer and cycled faster than Dornaani’s.

  Details of the square’s seamed gray surface became visible. Weathering had cracked it with crevices, most exploited by smaller versions of the vines that sat atop the port authority complex like a knotted wig. Caine pushed his hands out, slowing his approach until his feet came to rest softly on the bordering lichen. “I’m down,” he muttered.

  Alnduul was hovering five meters behind him. “I will overwatch as you cross to the facility. I have a clear field of fire and am too high to be engaged by any adversaries on the ground.”

  That sounded entirely too confident to Riordan. “Even so, keep an eye on your flanks.” He made sure his backpack’s lasers were set to fire alternately rather than together, and stepped onto the square.

  Nothi
ng happened.

  So, instead of sprinting and calling attention to myself, I think I’ll take a nice, leisurely walk. Trusting that this planet’s creatures would lack the olfactory context to correctly interpret the fight/flight scents he was emitting, Caine began strolling to the port authority building.

  The scrub on the left edge of the square rustled briefly. Riordan swiveled his left laser in that direction and discovered that the associated biosign was not charging him, but moving rapidly away. A droplet of sweat crept out of his right armpit, then sped down along his ribs, trailing cold wetness.

  Ten meters further on, his HUD’s motion detector flagged something approaching from above, and behind. “Alnduul—”

  “I have seen it. Avians. Do not stop. I shall interdict them.”

  Riordan continued to walk, heard the faint hum of Alnduul’s laser. Caine’s HUD showed two of the aviforms falling, tumbling, trying to pull up. One was able to straighten out just before it collapsed; senseless, it slammed down into the square twenty meters ahead of Caine.

  Who stopped. Checked his HUD again. All the movement at the edges of the square had come to a complete halt.

  And then went wild.

  Two creatures, about the size of mastiffs but built like small boars, lunged out of the drooping ferns closest to the stricken snake-glider and pounced on it. Discovering themselves to be competing for the same meal, their hides rose up into masses of writhing polyps just before they fell upon each other with warbling shrieks: incongruously high-pitched, given how heavily muscled they were.

  A mature snake-glider—now a wingless, eyeless cross between a torpedo and a Komodo dragon—burst out of a heavy tangle of vines and slither-scrambled across the plaza toward the melee. It stopped abruptly, its “head” swiveling toward Riordan. From every other point of the compass, smaller signatures were emerging as well, some fleeing, some chasing, all agitated.

  Riordan managed not to move. “Alnduul…”

  “Caine Riordan, I know that on Earth, becoming motionless often stops the attack of territorial creatures—”

  “That’s why I froze.”

  “I know. But no such behavior exists on this planet.”

  Shit. The slate and cream Komodo torpedo was starting to move again—straight at Caine. Its nose rolled up and back—how does it do that?—revealing two rows of impressive teeth in its almost round mouth. Its overground speed was even more impressive.

  Since his lasers were too weak to kill it, Riordan pushed up and forward with his arms. The grav thruster shot him over the Komodo torpedo, which coiled into an upward leap with surprising speed and agility.

  The jaws snapped behind Riordan as he stretched his legs out to land, ordering, “Target proximal creature to rear. Fire twice at the mouth”—an orange flicker warned him that the system was uncertain of success—“or closest ventral area.” Just as Caine began leaning away from the forward momentum at the end of his grav hop, he heard two-tap hums: one from the right laser, the other from the left.

  Riordan landed into the first long stride of his sprint toward the complex. Creatures approached from either side. Alnduul hit the leaders. Most of the others skittered to a halt, fighting over the soon-to-be-carcasses of the ones felled by the covering laser fire. But others swerved after Riordan.

  Too many to shoot. No time to stop, turn, and give his lasers a stable firing platform. The only alternative was…“Twenty-meter leap. Decelerate before landing.”

  He left the ground, three mastiff-boars gaping upward as he passed over them. He turned in midair, mentally tagged his three closest pursuers: “One discharge each. Target closest leg.”

  Alnduul’s uncharacteristically urgent exclamation, almost a shout, was loud in his head. “Caine, you must not leave the ground!”

  Oh, shit.

  His backpack-mounted lasers hummed. Two of the three creatures went down and were swarmed. The third persisted with a broken stride.

  If I’ve triggered the perimeter defenses…

  As Riordan rotated back around to land, the HUD painted five bright orange icons on the square: two behind him, three in front. Those parts of the plaza seemed to be unscrewing themselves upward. Each became a low, round protrusion that then unfolded into a hexapedal robot. They began turning toward him, the HUD painting them with the orange symbol that warned of an energy spike.

  Building, but not quite ready to unleash…whatever. Which meant that Riordan, for the first and probably last time in this chaotic melee, had about half a second to get a glimpse of the bigger tactical picture.

  Alnduul had landed and was making good progress. Instead of running, he was almost skating forward, fine-tuning the grav unit so that he flew mere centimeters above the ground, using his feet to change his vector and slalom around the creatures swarming toward him. Plummeting down to attack from the rear were a flock of the snake-gliders: five of them, diving fast. Some of the earthbound creatures were still fixated on Caine, but many were reacting to the crablike bots that had risen up from the plaza. For every animal that now hissed, spat, or leaped at the machines, two fled the strange smells and sounds.

  In short, the tactical picture was a tableau of utter chaos. With the exception of Alnduul and him, almost every creature was poised to happily kill any other. There was no predicting the actions of any of them. Except…

  Riordan estimated the range and speed of the diving snake-gliders, queried the circlet, “Are the defense bots known models?”

  The circlet pulsed in the affirmative.

  “Is bot targeting prioritized to engage the most dangerous or the most proximal threats?”

  Another of the Komodo torpedoes erupted from the nearest brush line. It stomped one of the polyp-covered mastiff-boars and bit a deep chunk out of its notochord before flowing like a belly-greased snake toward Riordan. Two more of mastiff-boars, pelts writhing in agitation, were bearing down on him from the other direction, fang-lined mouths agape.

  The circlet answered in his head and on the HUD. “Threat robot prioritizes proximity targets—”

  Riordan shouted as well as thought: “Vertical! Maximum speed!”

  Riordan shot upward like a rocket, felt his liver and stomach mash down into his intestines, heard jaws snap shut where his body had been a fraction of a second before, waited until he reached two hundred meters, then thought, “Gradual stop.”

  Alnduul, who continued to skate around threats, shooting only when necessary, sounded dismayed. “Caine Riordan! At that altitude—”

  “I’m safe. For the moment. Get up here. Now.”

  “But—”

  “Just do it!”

  Alnduul complied, expertly accelerating into a smooth, steepening parabola. The snake-gliders screamed frustration as he went up through their formation, swooped around, tried to gain altitude for pursuit, flapped their wings strenuously.

  One of them exploded in midair.

  “What—?” started Alnduul.

  “The bots identify them as airborne threats. And now that we’re above them, they’re more proximal than we are,” Caine explained. Another of the avians blew apart, raining chunks down upon the plaza. The rearmost of them was taken through the wing by a rocket, which exploded just a meter further on. Whether by virtue of concussion or fragments, the snake-glider flapped backward, went limp, tumbled down, and was immediately set upon.

  As the defense bots continued to demonstrate their lethality, the various creatures that had streamed on to the plaza—either to scavenge from bodies or bring down new ones—fled back into the bush with even greater alacrity. Oblivious, the bots targeted the last of the avians.

  Alnduul dove straight down. “Do as I do,” he instructed, sending the feed from his HUD to Riordan’s. “We can degrade the robots while they are focused on the remaining avians.”

  Alnduul pulled out of his dive at only two meters altitude, rushing straight at the rearmost bot. Staying just ahead of its attempt to switch targeting to him, Alnduul swept around
the machine on a flat but low course. Too predictable, so far as Caine was concerned.

  But in a moment, the reason for Alnduul’s maneuver became apparent. Just before he swept all the way around to the front of the bot, one of his lasers pulsed. Sparks showered from a top-mounted cluster nestled under an armored disk: the bot’s sensors. The machine moved erratically, then steadied, but its new movements were less fluid.

  Riordan dove to follow Alnduul’s example, deciphered what he’d seen as the ground rushed up at him. The bot had been blinded by the laser, but had quickly patched into its mates’ sensor feed in order to keep moving and attacking. As Caine reached the end of his own dive, he leveled off, shot low and fast toward a new bot, instructing his circlet, “Target sensor cluster.” A yellow warning light signaled the circlet’s inability to comply. It went out the moment Riordan ordered: “Execute autonomous approach and attack.”

  The circlet took over. Suddenly, Riordan was being steered around the bot in a tight, hard loop. His laser pulsed. The bot staggered as if drunk.

  The other bots still categorized the flying predators as priority targets and fired rockets as the last two dove after Riordan and Alnduul. The warheads exploded in a long, rippling volley; Caine’s HUD was suddenly free of flying threats. But now he and Alnduul were the only objects not rooted to the ground, and that, along with their proximity, made them the new primary targets.

  Riordan and Alnduul stayed low and sped for the port authority complex. They swept around the corner of the squat building just before the bots fired again. With the predictable determination of automatons operating without the guidance of a more sophisticated computer, they stolidly followed the path of their prey’s retreat At the edge of the square, they began picking and stumbling their way into the tangle of vines, creepers, brush, and ferns separating them from their two targets.

  By that time, Alnduul had ordered Irzhresht to fetch, properly position, and activate Olsloov’s largest portable sensor. Although individual biosigns had proven too faint to detect at that range, the Dornaani array easily locked on to the remaining bots’ emissions and tracked their stiff movements. Increasingly isolated from each other and unable to anticipate the dead ends ahead of them, they proved particularly susceptible to two time-honored military axioms. First, divide to conquer. Then, defeat in detail.