Commonwealth and all the other non-Prime aliens that his, Dudley’s own, memories had told it about. And there was nothing he could do to prevent it. He couldn’t drop even the tiniest monkey wrench in the works.
Emotions were one of the more human aspects that didn’t seem to function particularly well in his stolen Prime motile brain. He knew the principle, knew what he should be feeling, without actually experiencing the feeling itself, a failure that he wrote off to a very different neurochemistry. So he watched impassively as the wormholes opened within the Commonwealth, knowing he should be weeping and screaming, clenching his quad pincers and batting his four curving one-piece arms against his chest as the destruction began. In actuality he spent the day walking along the side of a congregation lake, keeping out of the way of the troop of motiles who assisted the newly formed to walk out of the water.
Then several hours into the invasion, MorningLightMountain encountered the SI. It was a fascinating interlude, actually hearing the great artificial intelligence talking directly to its foe. For a while Dudley felt something close to cheer as the SI promised MorningLightMountain it would never succeed. Somehow the SI was blocking a herd of motiles on Elan, which was where the encounter originated. Then MorningLightMountain issued a batch of generalized attack instructions to its soldier motiles in the vicinity and the interference ended.
After that, the Commonwealth worked out how vulnerable inter-Prime communications were, and used their electronic superiority to slow and harass the inexorable advance. In among all the chaos and violence, the frantic fight of the starships, the exotic battle above Wessex, there were several more glitches on Elan, so small-scale that MorningLightMountain’s main thought routines barely registered them. Dudley, however, was very interested indeed. The SI obviously had some obscure interest there, though he couldn’t think what.
It had taken weeks of cautious travel between various settlements in the Dyson Alpha system, but he’d eventually wound up in a ship at the giant interstellar staging post, which MorningLightMountain was busy repairing after the Desperado’s relativistic attack. From there he maneuvered his way to the wormhole that led to Randtown.
Despite having access to a colossal amount of data from arrays and systems it had captured in the Commonwealth, MorningLightMountain still didn’t really comprehend the motivations and behavior of humans. Randtown was one of the small enigmas it was now presented with. There was no strategic logic behind the town, it had no mineral resources, few agricultural lands, and no manufacturing capacity. To MorningLightMountain it was virtually useless. The only possible asset was the Trine’ba, which could be readily converted into a congregation lake. Its size was excessive, even for MorningLightMountain, but the waters were exceptionally clean. After consideration, the major thought routines decided that was the best way to utilize that section of the planet.
A gateway was constructed. Appropriate equipment was sent through. Buildings were assembled that could house immotiles, and motiles were brought together to begin amalgamation. It was just before MorningLightMountain connected the wormhole to a vast refinery back in its home system that bred base cells that it discovered the fanciful aquatic life that inhabited the deep, still waters.
Dudley discovered then that MorningLightMountain hated fish. Hate itself was a new concept for the unitary Prime. Something introduced by Dudley when that set of his memories were still incarcerated within the immotile unit, one of several new interpretations on life that MorningLightMountain could not expunge. A subtle alteration in the Prime’s way of thinking that didn’t quite reach the level of contamination, but a change nonetheless.
It had taken millennia, but all non-Prime animal and insect life had been wiped from the Prime home planet. Now MorningLightMountain was faced with the notion of tiny little animals nibbling at its own base cells, in a way devouring bits of itself, its own life. Such an assault was one of the reasons it had set out to establish itself as the only life in the galaxy. All life was in competition. That was why none could be tolerated.
Motiles were immediately dispatched to extract buried arrays and memory crystals from the ruins of Randtown, accessing them for data on the life that infested the waters of the Trine’ba. MorningLightMountain learned that the fish were actually quite delicate organisms, living in a precarious harmonious balance with their unique environment. The corals that they lived off were also susceptible to microchanges in their milieu.
The fusion drive ships had already devastated vast amounts of aquatic life in the lake, but that wasn’t enough. MorningLightMountain revised its estimate of how much base cell-saturated water it would need to pump into the massive lake to insure complete obliteration of native life. Enough base cells would darken the waters, devour the nutrients that the corals and fish thrived on, and probably infect the local creatures badly enough to kill them off. Ultimately, although it would lose base cells to the voracious fish, they in turn would die and release their body compounds into the lake for the base cells to feed off.
Dudley bent one of his sensor stalks to watch the dark liquid spurting out of the gateway. The sheer volume was impressive, and it would continue to gush through for months to come. But in terms of the scale that MorningLightMountain thought and operated on it was insignificant. The sensor stalk’s eye tracked around, following the liquid as it permeated the force field and gurgled away sluggishly into the lake. That was going to infuriate the surviving humans, Dudley knew.
Since the last batch of humans had somehow vanished inside the Turquino Valley on the day of the invasion, there had been small acts of sabotage against machinery and vehicles and ordinary motiles, mostly with weak industrial explosives. MorningLightMountain’s motile soldiers had never caught the humans who committed the attacks. Dudley reckoned they had to be locals to sneak about unseen in such a fashion. If so, they’d be committed conservationists.
His three other sensor stalks swung around like biological radars, sizing up the land. They’d try to shut down the gateway, stop the sacrilegious pollution. Looking at the layout of the town and surrounding countryside, he tried to work out how humans would attempt to infiltrate the force field. Dudley wanted to meet them.
***
Adam knew he was getting paranoid. The team back in Lemule’s Max Transit office was running electronic observation on him. Young Kieran McSobel sat on the chair opposite, casually vigilant and armed to the teeth. He never used to take such precautions, not for a simple train ride to another planet. But that was before the Guardians’ current run of bad luck. Besides, a little healthy paranoia never hurt.
The express from LA Galactic to Kyushu in phase one space took less than thirty minutes. They took a taxi to the Baraki Heavy Engineering works, which was on the other side of the extensive CST planetary station. Mr. Hoyto, the manager, greeted them in the firm’s elaborate marbled reception hall, and they were ushered up to his fifth-story office for the contract signing. The office didn’t have a view outside; instead the windows looked out into the long engineering shops, where train engines were surrounded by scaffolding and bots under yellow-tinged lighting. An impressive amount of work was being conducted, with some of the engines half dismantled, their components being replaced or serviced by specialist teams. Baraki didn’t manufacture engines themselves, but they held the CST maintenance contract for Kyushu, and were expanding their market for the smaller train operators. They were even licensed to handle the fission micropiles for atomic-powered engines.
“Yours,” Mr. Hoyto said, and gestured proudly.
A big Ables ND47 nuclear engine had just been rolled into a service bay. It was over thirty years old, a giant workhorse designed for hauling heavyweight wagons across continents. Adam had started up yet another LA Galactic company, Foster Transport, to operate the aging colossus, supposedly to collect ore from a dozen stage two worlds and deliver it to the smelting refineries on Bidar. Baraki had won the refurbishment and stage one maintenance contract from Foster; they’d even arranged a good credit line to help the fledgling company finance their first train.
Adam and Kieran acted surprised when Mr. Hoyto’s secretary brought in a bottle of champagne. The cork was popped as Adam authorized the contract, and transferred Foster Transport’s first payment into Baraki’s account. They all drank a toast to the future of ore shipping.
Baraki was going to give the Ables ND47 a complete overhaul, which was scheduled to take no more than a month, Mr. Hoyto promised. After that, it would be rolled down into the paint chamber at the other end of the facility, and emerge shining in Foster Transport’s blue and gold colors, as good as new. The company’s nuclear division had already inspected the micropile, and agreed that it had at least another seven years’ useful life left.
Adam smiled grimly at that. Not only a train owner now, using CST’s tracks, but he’d also bought himself a fission reactor. His other pet hate. Fission should have been abandoned back in the twenty-first century when fusion stations finally came on-line. But, oh no, the capitalist market wanted cheaper energy, no matter the cost in radioactive waste.
He and Kieran took up Mr. Hoyto’s invitation to inspect their new purchase before the bots and engineers began the refurbishment project. They walked out into the harsh yellow glare of the hot lights, blinking against the welding flares and smelling the oil being drained from hundreds of mechanical systems.
Kieran put on his hard hat. “Is this safe?” he asked. “It’s very similar to what we did with the Alamo Avengers.”
“It’s nothing like the same,” Adam countered. He stood at the base of the ND47’s forward coolant intake grille, and looked up. The front of the vehicle was as tall as a two-story house, and equally blunt; its original chrome finish was now almost invisible beneath a scabby coat of rust flakes. “They were weapons systems. We took a risk refurbishing them to operational standard, and navy intelligence will no doubt be keeping a watch for any similar scenario. But this is a straightforward commercial project.”
“All right then,” Kieran said. “I’m making good progress on acquiring the kind of standard defense systems we’ll equip it with. Buying armaments these days is a lot easier. Everyone wants some personal protection from the next Prime attack.”
“I know, that’s why the cost of military hardware has gone through the roof, bloody profiteering companies.”
Kieran slapped one of the engine’s massive steel wheels. “I’m not even sure we need a force field on this. A tactical nuke would probably only slow it down a little.”
“Don’t you believe it. One shot in the right place and we come to a very sudden and badly radioactive halt. We have to protect the track ahead of us; that means a decent amount of firepower. That’s all got to be installed and tested before we can even think about running the Boongate wormhole.”
“I thought I’d get the wagon conversion done on Wuyam. There’s a couple of promising supply companies I’ve contacted, and it has a bunch of empty warehouses around the CST station we can use for assembly. I’m looking into hiring one.”
“Good enough.” Adam started to walk down the length of the ND47. The bodywork with its old E&W paintwork was bleached to a pale sulphur and plum- purple; various exhaust vents were picked out by vertical sprays of black soot engrained into the pitted composite surface. Halfway down, the micropile access hatch looked like the kind of circular door a bank vault would employ.
“Do you think we’ll be ready in time?”
“What time is that?” Adam was surprised by the note of uncertainty in the younger man’s voice. The Guardians Johansson normally supplied were full of a disturbing confidence.
Kieran smiled nervously. “Who knows. Dreaming heavens, if the Primes attack again tomorrow we’ll be screwed.”
“So we work on the assumption that we’ll be ready before they do attack. There’s nothing else we can do. A lot of the planet’s revenge components are ready to be crated up.”
“Apart from the data Kazimir was carrying,” Kieran said bitterly.
“Well now, we might have a new angle on that. Someone has been in touch with me who has a possible connection to Paula Myo. She might be able to find out where the data is.”
“Who?”
