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There was a long pause while neither said anything.

  "That's it," Altia whispered.

  She went over to where she had left her tools on the floor.

  "What's it?" Knave asked, his voice was excited for her, but more than a little confused.

  "It!" Altia said.

  She was picking up her tools, one by one, examining them, discarding them.

  "This one," she said triumphantly.

  Knave recognized the tool and suddenly realized what she had in mind.

  "You're going to carve something," he said.

  "Yes," she smiled at him, pleased at how quick he was, "of course."

  "But have you ever carved anything before?"

  "No. But I don't think our Buzzer friend had ever carved anything before either."

  She stood up and went over to the wall that was most covered over with Drifter symbols, densely packed on the rock of the walls and on the machinery itself.

  "This is nuts," Knave said, "What kind of input interface requires a hammer and chisel?"

  "Like I said," she lifted her tool to the wall, a small but powerful laser torch, "I don't think they used a hammer and chisel."

  "I still don't get it."

  "Don't feel bad," she turned to give him an encouraging smile, "I would probably have never worked it out either. Not without the insight of the Buzzer you talked to. But think about it for a moment. It's the perfect input method. No need to scroll through endless menus of options. Just write what you want and have it happen."

  "I don't know about perfect," Knave muttered.

  "Well, perhaps not perfect. But look at how aesthetic it is."

  She lifted her arms and did a pirouette to indicate the commands written on walls, floor and ceiling, all around them.

  "It's pretty," Knave allowed.

  "Now why don't we add our contribution."

  She returned to her spot on the wall, calibrated the laser cutter, linked it to her databank of translated symbols and started writing. The Buzzer had obviously known more than her about the underlying technology, but she was confident that she was a better linguist. Nevertheless, she chose to write something quite simple.

  "Two entities for transport down," She said, as she wrote.

  "Now all I need is an operator," she said to Knave.

  She hadn't realized how long it had taken her to write the sentence on the wall, but she saw by the expression on Knave's face that it had taken a while. To her it had taken what hardly seemed like any time at all, but to Knave it had been an eternity, watching her hunched over, carefully carving each character.

  "How long will it take to carve that?" he asked.

  "Not long," she said, ignoring the tone in his voice, and bending back to her work.

  "It's a good thing these suits have good batteries," Knave grumbled.

  Time slowly passed, until Altia eventually stood back from her work.

  "That should do it," she said.

  "It has certainly done something," Knave nodded.

  The corridor outside had gone dark and there was no sign of the Vipers, who had been there guarding them moments before. Knave drew his gun from a holster attached to the right leg of his environment suit.

  "Maybe I should have worn that fancy armor they issued me," Knave said.

  "Maybe you should have," Altia agreed.

  They both walked towards the dark corridor, side by side. Knave had a lamp slung under the barrel of the gun and he switched it on, sending a beam of illumination down the corridor. But instead of the corridor they had been expecting, there was an open space with six walls and no obvious exit. Five of the walls, as Knave shone the beam of his flashlight over them, were the usual mix of rock, technology with a bronze sheen and Drifter symbols. The far wall, however, was different. It was smooth, apart from what looked like natural striations in the surface, like in the ice of a glacier.

  "Cave in?" Knave asked.

  "Hardly," Altia murmured, "I rather think my writing worked. I think this whole room is a goods elevator. I think it brought us down to a lower level."

  "But I didn't feel any movement, and the change was instant."

  "We could simulate that effect with our own technology. Just move the room fast enough and damp the gravity in the elevator, the same way gravity is damped in a starship when it's dogfighting."

  "If you say so," Knave said, bowing to her superior understanding of engineering and science, "but even I know that the power required would be enormous. Why bother?"

  "Why bother indeed?"

  "So," Knave said, "Investigate further or go back for our escort of Vipers?"

  Altia didn't bother answering. She just walked out of the alien goods lift and into the dark, switching on a powerful little light attached to the top of her helmet. Seeing her do that made Knave wince. Wandering around with a big light strapped to your helmet was just an invitation to get shot in the head. He looked at his own, more powerful, flashlight and smiled ruefully. He was announcing himself as a target just as temptingly. There was really no way round it. They had to see, and even if he knew how to switch on the lights, he might have decided against it in case it announced their presence.

  "I wonder why this level is in darkness," Altia said, "while the levels above are all illuminated."

  "Maybe the Drifters on this level didn't pay their electricity bill," Knave said.

  Altia didn't bother to reply to his lame joke. She went right up to the unusual striated wall and put her hand against it. She read the temperature readings from the fingers of her suit gloves, transferred to a readout inside her visor.

  "This wall is cold," she said.

  "No kidding," Knave replied.

  The whole base was 160 degrees below freezing. A human wouldn't survive long without an environment suit. The mechanical Buzzers didn't seem to mind it though, and the rumor was that they even preferred the cold, though how any one would know that was beyond Knave.

  "Come and touch it," Altia said.

  Knave came over and they were both soon standing side by side, each with a hand touching the strange, striated wall.

  "Oh," Knave said, "I see what you mean. It's almost twice as cold as the rest of the complex."

  "Exactly," Altia said, "And my suit is giving me some funny sensor readings."

  She peered at the wall moving her helmet closer and closer. Then she saw a shape on the other side and blurted out a short involuntary yelp, and took a step back, before she got back in control of herself.

  "It's transparent," she said, "I saw something on the other side."

  "Really?" Knave said.

  He quickly retracted his hand as well, and took a step back, just like Altia. They were both side by side again, but there was now a much more cautious gap between them and the wall. Then Knave saw it too. A shape, hard to tell how big, but definitely undulating, definitely swimming. A snake thing, or a skinny shark, or... Knave wasn't sure. It was gone before he could get a good look at it.

  "Did you see that?" Altia asked.

  "That time I saw it," Knave replied, "So we have a life form. Great. Now are we going back for the Vipers?"

  "Good idea," Altia said, keeping her voice even, though Knave thought he detected a slight flutter.

  He wondered if his own voice was betraying him in the same way. He cleared his throat.

  "Back to the elevator room, then," he said, "We need to see if you can do that same trick in reverse.”

  They went back, and Altia erased the operator character she had written, by melting and smoothing the wall, changed the sentence to say, up, and rewrote the operator character. It seemed, almost before she had finished, that the corridor had replaced the darkness in the doorway. The dark room with the striated ice wall was now below them. All five Vipers jerked to attention at their return and came running into the elevator room.

  "Are you hurt?" Viper One asked Altia.

  "I'm fine," she said.

  "I'm fine too by the way," Knave said, but he was aw
are that he was of secondary importance to them.

  "The base is under attack," Viper One said, "You must be evacuated."

  "What?" Altia yelled.

  "This facility," Viper One repeated, "is under attack. Above Ice Tomb, the battle rages for control of deep space and the atmosphere. Buzzers have already started to break through the orbital superiority units."

  Viper Four was already taking the lead, heading down the corridor.

  "This way," Viper Four shouted.

  "Follow Viper Four," Viper One said, "We will have an evacuation unit waiting at the nearest exit to the structure. It is vital that we evacuate you before the situation in orbit deteriorates any further."

  "Okay," Altia said.

  The whole group started jogging through the corridors, with Viper Four in the lead and Viper Two bringing up the rear.

  "Try and match this pace," Viper One said, "It is imperative that we exit this structure at the earliest opportunity."

  "You mean you want me to hurry up?" Knave asked.

  "Yes," Viper One said, "This structure is the objective of the entire Buzzer swarm."

  "Swarm?" Knave said, looking at Altia.

  She did her best to run and shrug her shoulders at the same time. They were soon at an aperture that had been cut into the structure by the Buzzers. It was large enough for them all to enter at once, but it was pressurized. They had to wait until the atmosphere was vented before the pyramidal Buzzer-designed door would open. It was a strange moment of calm after all the hurrying.

  "This couldn't have come at a worse time," Altia said, "It galls me to have to leave just as we make this amazing discovery. How serious is this invasion anyway. Our defenses are supposed to be formidable. Do the Buzzers really have a chance?”

  The Vipers didn't answer her. Then the door opened, allowing them to see a small landing platform outside. A small warship was waiting for them, hovering in the upper atmosphere.

  "They're sending down a shuttle," Viper One explained, "It was supposed to be here waiting with the doors open."

  "What's the spaceship's name," Altia asked.

  "The Imperturbable," Viper One said, then pointed, "Ah, that's the shuttle bay opening. Here comes our ride."

  "Shuttle Imp 3 inbound," Altia heard in her communicator, "Hold position for immediate pick up."

  The Imperturbable, hovering above them, was huge and, with numerous visible gun turrets, obviously well armed. It was shaped, like most spaceships that were capable of atmospheric insertion, like a spear point. It was aerodynamic, but with gravitic drives, there was no need to bother with lifting surfaces such as wings. The guns were located along the vessel's spine, near the gravitic virtual gyroscopes, to minimize the inertia effects when traversing. Some of the spaceship's mass drivers were so big that, otherwise, turning the turret clockwise would spin the whole spaceship counterclockwise.

  Knave noticed that one or two of the giant mass drivers were already canted almost directly vertical and were engaging targets with their characteristic screeching sound of metal leaving the barrel accompanied by a muzzle flash of ionized atmosphere. Missile door covers were also hinging out of the way along the flanks of the spaceship and handfuls of missiles were arcing up into the sky, heading for targets too far away to be seen by their eyes or even their limited environment-suit sensors.

  "This does not look good," Knave said, "How is there already action within the atmosphere?"

  "The invasion is progressing quickly," Viper One said.

  Every shot the spaceship above them fired made the thick atmosphere around them quake with a shock wave that they could feel through their environment suits. Every muzzle flash illuminated the platform like a flash of lightning, but then came a flash and a rumbling impact much larger than any of the others. Everyone looked up, but at first nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The Imperturbable was still firing, Imp 3 was still descending. But then they all saw it at once. A jet of fire and debris coming out of a jagged hole in the rear of the giant spaceship.

  "That's probably the location of the stabilizers," Altia said.

  Knave had no idea what she would be basing that assessment on, the distribution of visible grav thrusters or the spaceship's configuration perhaps, but he didn't doubt her. He had seen plenty of examples of how deep and varied her knowledge was, of all kinds of different areas of science over the preceding months. As if in confirmation of her guess, the spaceship started to slide sideways, unable any longer to precisely maintain its position against the tug of planetary gravity. The spaceship started climbing, even as it was slipping sideways, but there was obviously something wrong. Its nose was climbing faster than its damaged rump, then its main engines came on, with their characteristic blue glow, but the blue was fluctuating.

  "That's a real bad sign," Altia said, "Heseper fluctuations in the drive plume mean those engines are not long for this world."

  Altia grabbed Knave by the hose attaching his helmet to the environment unit on his back. It was the surest way to get anyone in an environment suit to come in the direction you wanted. She dragged him back into the big airlock as the entire mountain was shaken by a titanic explosion. Flame and debris exploded through the door, among the debris, Knave noticed over Altia's shoulder, was the torso and head of one of the Vipers, the limbs ripped away by the shock wave, then he lost consciousness.

  He came round, according to the chronometer inside his suit's faceplate, just seven minutes later. He didn't feel too bad, but he realized that was probably just shock. He looked around and saw Altia lying among the debris just a few steps away. She had taken a lot more of the impact of the shock wave than him because she had pushed him through the door and come in afterward, a fraction of a second later. The Viper had followed very shortly afterward, but that tiny delay had been enough that it was now lying, torn apart, on the ground. Altia groaned.

  "Thank the powers," Knave said out loud.

  He went over and helped her to her feat.

  "I feel like I just got stoned," she said, "but I don't think anything is broken."

  "You saved my life," Knave said.

  "Of course," she said, and tapped his chest, "You're an important subject. We have to keep you and your markings in one piece."

  Knave couldn't tell if she was joking or not, and before he could decide they were interrupted by the Viper, or what was left of it, lying on the ground.

  "This location will become unsafe very soon," it said.

  "It's already pretty unsafe," Knave said.

  Altia waved him silent with a gesture of her hand, and turned her attention to the damaged Viper.

  "Which one are you?" she asked.

  "I'm number four," it said, "but that's not important. The important thing for you now is to find a safe location, as I do not believe that another attempt will be made to evacuate you to orbit."

  "I think you are right," Altia said, "Thank you for your service."

  "You are welcome," Viper Four said, "Good luck."

  Altia turned away from the stricken robot and locked eyes with Knave.

  "Things don't look so great," she said, "I really don't have any idea what we should do next."

  "We've got to think about our immediate survival," Knave said, "Once we find somewhere even half-way secure, then we can start to make more long-term plans."

  "Somewhere secure," Altia repeated

  Chapter 15

  ––––––––

  Far away from ice Tomb, Shivia was looking at some footage with Admiral Dander. The footage was playing again and again on the bridge of the admiral's flagship, the Tempest. Shivia was present as a hologram, standing at the admiral's right shoulder as he tried to interpret what he was seeing.

  "They are a very impressive lifeform," he said, "They can take almost as much damage as a medium drone and that weapon is powerful, even if it lacks range."

  "An astute appraisal," Shivia hissed, "But there is something else, something that has very much excited us
here at the Science Ministry."

  "Are you referring to this self-organizing behavior?" the admiral asked, calling up some examples onto a monitor, "It has been seen in insects and does have undeniable military applications, as the creatures demonstrate in this encounter."

  "Yes, that too," Shivia said, "But there was something else, something easy to miss amongst all the unavoidable pyrotechnics of the encounter."

  "All right, Shivia," the admiral said, slightly exasperated, "out with it."

  "May I take remote access to this video clip?"

  "Help yourself."

  The video rewound and a small corner expanded to fill the screen, suddenly slightly pixelated at the lack of resolution.

  "Here we are," Shivia said, "The important part is a few seconds later."

  The video came to life, hostile after hostile streaming from the woods, as seen from the nose camera of a drone. The drone picked off hostile after hostile with mass driver fire. Then one of the hostiles was hit with just a glancing blow, though it was enough to tear off its arm. The hydrostatic shock killed it instantly. It toppled to the ground and the drone's cross hairs moved on to new targets. A few moments later, a hostile appeared above its fallen comrade, gathered up the arm and the main part of the body and dragged them away. The view increased in magnification again, becoming even more pixelated. The hostile was doing something to the body, something hard to make out.

  "Is the hostile stitching its comrade's arm back on?" the admiral asked.

  "That's exactly what it's doing," Shivia confirmed, "Though the process doesn't seem exactly to be stitching. We need better quality images before we'll know."

  "But why. The damn thing's dead. Is it some strange show of compassion?"

  Shivia didn't say anything. The creature finished what it was doing with the arm and bent over its comrade, their heads seemed to be in contact but it was difficult to tell through the distortion.

  Then the fallen hostile hopped to its feet and both hostiles ran back into the battle. The admiral gasped and Shivia smiled. Both hostiles were soon hit by mass driver rounds and sent tumbling to the floor again, but Shivia's point had been made. The general turned away from the screen to look fully at Shivia.