Thirty-one
Einsik reported during a quiet moment. "Implant
telemetry indicates Jeremy Kael is emotionally distraught, although not
physically stressed. I take this as an indication that he is currently in
the presence of another individual, if not the Hive, then Myla Rhodes. I
do not personally approve of the deliberate murder of this innocent boy as
a means of destroying Myla Rhodes, but I do understand the necessity."
Gorlon Hague switched to an inner channel.
"Boris,
ask the Hive if they are prepared to detonate the device embedded in the
subject Jeremy Kael."
"They are prepared, General Executor."
"Detonate the device now."
"Sequence of command verification in progress."
"Give me word when detonation is confirmed,"
Gorlon said.
Fifteen thousand light-years distant, Dikki had time
to deliver a warning of impending danger. Myla would never have had time
to hear out the audible version of the warning. In the breath of a single
syllable, she reached out like a bolt of lightning and joined with Dikki's
electronic senses.
Something anomalous approached. Mass, the size of a
mountain, indeed, a small world. Size, roughly that of the nucleus of a
hydrogen atom.
A microscopic black hole.
Speed, one hundred and forty kilometers per second.
They were going to be hit.
Jeremy Kael screamed. Myla stood on the shore of the
mud dragon's watery haven. She saw a sparkling afterimage of a blue-white
streak of light on the peripheral edge of her vision. She turned in time
to see a faint blue wake of radiation stretching from the black sky to the
hut centered in the transparent dome.
In another part of the universe:
"Detonation is not
confirmed," Boris said. "Detonation is calculated as having failed."
Gorlon Hague shot to his feet in an explosion of
abject panic and shouted aloud.. "No! It was our only chance! Boris, how could it have
failed! The fools!"
Myla flung the hut's flap aside and paused, chilled
to see Jeep standing at Jeremy's side. Black smoke arose from a spot on
Jeremy's leg. Myla took note of the puncture in the body glove and the
still glowing hole in the rock beneath Jeremy's bunk.
Jeremy writhed in agony, only partially conscious in
the aftermath of both the physical and psychological trauma. "What am I
going to do?" she cried, although the solution presented itself even as
her cry echoed through the dome.
A cabinet against one wall contained medical
diagnostic and treatment equipment to care for the needs of fifty.
Working in concert with her expectations, Dikki presented her with the
instructions and knowledge needed to put the equipment to its best use.
She had only to touch an item to understand it, and within brief moments,
she understood what had to be done.
She tranquilized Jeremy using a headband that fed his
brain a soothing blend of pain-numbing and sleep-inducing frequencies.
She cut off the entire leg of the body glove, cringed at the sight of
blackened flesh and the unnatural bend in the leg warning of a shattered
femur, and decided she would need more than the crude bunk and a hand
tools to care for the wound.
She assembled the portable operating table, removed
the rest of Jeremy's body glove, and placed the naked boy upon its
surface. A small control panel above his head began a physiological
read-out. Myla paused to assimilate the next phase of her rapid-fire
education.
Jeremy's surgeon, though, was a fist-sized machine,
not Myla's own two hands. Placed alongside Jeremy's injured leg, the
machine extended feelers to the wound, then reconfigured itself to form a
seal over it. A panel upon its exterior surface showed Myla its moment by
moment progress.
"Contamination isolated,"
the machine said.
Myla puzzled over the surgeon's discovery. A side
compartment opened and a small piece of debris rolled onto the table
surface. She used a pair of forceps and put the piece of debris in a
sample dish, then removed the mechanical surgeon as instructed and
released the boy to the orthopedic corrections equipment built into the
operating table itself.
The operating table manipulated Jeremy's
broken leg beneath a transparent sanitation cover. Myla grimaced as she
watched the leg bend so that a broken end of bone protruded. A thin rod
was inserted into the bone marrow of one end and then the bone carefully
fitted together and secured. The smaller surgeon had cleaned the wound
and reattached severed nerves, veins, arteries and even capillaries. When
it sealed the outer wound and deactivated itself, Myla could see little
evidence of Jeremy's injury aside from several thin scars that would soon
heal. Gazing at the wound, she thought of her own damaged arm and how
quickly it was healing with no medical intervention at all.
Jeremy continued to sleep peacefully, his breathing
deep and regular. Technically, he would be capable of putting weight on
the injury right away, although a day's recuperation was advised. Myla
decided to let him sleep until she had identified the object the surgeon
had removed from his leg.
The injury had been caused by a rare phenomenon, a
miniature black hole. Hopefully it had possessed enough momentum to
continue on its way. Orbiting somewhere within the core of the planet, it
would eventually suck in the entire mass of the planet and orbit the red
dwarf in its stead, maybe even to someday swallow the star as well.
Myla sensed what had happened, but how could it have
happened at all? What were the odds of it happening? She was certain Jeep had
something to do with arranging for it to have happened, but why? Myla put
the foreign object beneath a microscope and studied the magnified image
projected as a hologram above the device.
To her own eyes, it was just a broken capsule with a
few threads dangling free. Dikki identified it as Hive technology, a
miniaturized detonator used in mining operations. The MI showed her a
full-sized image of the device, a capsule the size of her finger. Dikki
identified the residue initially analyzed by the surgeon as three grams
worth of an explosive compound capable of leaving a small crater upon the
soft black rock of their lost world and obliterating all traces of its
visitors. A bomb.
Myla left the hut and stared into the dark
sky beyond the dome, outwardly calm, inwardly braced against a storm of confused emotion.
"He tried to kill me. General Hague sent Jeremy to kill me."
She looked around at Jeep again. Jeep had followed
her from the hut and stood nearby, staring up at her. "How? You saved my
life, but I can't imagine how."
"Myla, the Hive is attacking," Dikki said
mildly.
Myla sat down on bare rock to devote her full attention to the
interior universe of radar scans and the navigational references of her
fleet of thousands. She left her own defenses on full automatic,
tolerating the elevated losses to watch in passive amazement the frenzied
Hive attack. They swarmed wantonly and disregarded their losses down to
the very last attack vessel. When the battle ended, the void surrounding the red
dwarf was devoid of Hive activity, and even as she watched, the Alliance
withdrew to a more cautious perimeter. The alien craft glimmering in the
far distance in a broad arc perhaps ten light-years distant remained in
place. Myla watched until she had assured herself of the momentary
stability of the situation.
"Why are they doing this to me, Dikki? Why is Jeremy
so afraid of me? I never did anything to hurt anyone, did I?"
"No, Myla," Dikki said quietly. "You have harmed no
one."
Myla turned to Jeep. "Are you afraid of me?"
Jeep reacted in no visible manner. Myla reached out
to her tentatively. Jeep stared at her extended hand. Myla
sighed in despair and started to turn away, convinced that Jeep was far
too alien to ever communicate in any comprehensible fashion.
But Jeep stirred, and Myla held her breath. She held
her extended hand very still.
Slowly, the alien creature raised its frail arm and
extended its four slender fingers. Jeep placed her fingertips in the palm
of Myla's hand, held them in place for a time, and then turned her own
hand face up. Myla sensed the nature of the ritual and placed her own
fingertips on the hard surface of Jeep's hand, then withdrew as Jeep had
done.
Myla dropped to her knees in front of the frail
looking creature and wept quietly for a moment, thankful for the
confirmation of at least one friend and ally in her struggle for survival,
one perhaps far more capable than either Dikki or herself. "It's not just
me against the whole universe then," she murmured in what bitterness still
remained. "They're after you, too,” she said with tears in her eyes. “I
won't let them get you. I promise. They're not as stupid as I'm always
saying they are, but if they think they have reason to be afraid of me,
I'll give it to them. We never hurt anyone.”
She turned her gaze to the hut. The knot in her
throat hurt terribly. "I thought you were my friend, Jeremy Kael, but
you're as bad as the rest of them. You just don't know anything at all."
Dikki interrupted her chain of thought. "Hive forces
stir throughout the Betalinon Corridor, my Lady."
"And you're concerned that they're all headed this
way," Myla said with a heavy sigh. "They probably are. Okay, so take
away all restrictions on the mining and manufacturing equipment, Dikki.
This star and its whole planetary system is doomed now anyhow. Turn it
all into warcraft, as much as we can make before they get here. I won't
let them hurt us. I'll make them sorry they tried."
