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  Knave ran sideways, rounds from the creature's weapons kicking up ice and dust at his heels while he ran. It wouldn't have taken long for the Buzzer to adjust its aim for the running target, but just then it was hit by blaster fire. One of his puppies was firing blasters at the Buzzer while its mass driver was engaging another target. It was his own outdated and under-gunned drone but to him, at that moment, in this situation it was an awesome and welcome vision.

  The blaster discharges pounded the Buzzer's armor and scarred it, distracting it, making it turn to gauge its new assailant. Knave spun round, dropped to one knee in the snow and snatched at the trigger of his mass driver. It started juddering and whining, and lightning reached out for the Buzzer and enveloped it. Limbs were sent flying and the robotic torso of the creature was ripped open. It slipped to the ice, its weapons dropped and discarded in the snow. It was still twitching and Knave had a compulsion to go take a closer look.

  He trudged forward through the snow, toward the Buzzer. He wanted to be there, though how watching the robot killing machine gasp its last breath would tell him anything, he wasn't sure. As he approached, the interference in the communications got louder, the usual whispering turning into a murmuring. He thought he could pick out words from the incoherent mess, he thought he heard something at least.

  "Tomb....grave....sepulcher...."

  He looked over at the drone which had helped him out. It had taken a few steps closer to the Buzzer too. Its video sensors, it had eight, like a spider, were divided between monitoring him and monitoring the dying Buzzer.

  "I'm imagining these words right," Knave said to his drone, "The Buzzer isn't speaking, is it?"

  He'd been warned not to talk to the drones, or to anthropomorphize them. Just give them orders and evaluate their reports, but they responded to language and it was all too easy to ascribe them the emotions and intelligence that he was told simply wasn't there. But then again, slugs were routinely lied to, so the drone could easily be piloted by the most sophisticated AIs ever designed, or some less scandalous truth somewhere in between, for all he knew. Whatever the reality, Knave had long ago decided it was best to play it safe and be nice to them.

  The drone sent a message via communications laser. The message unpacked itself in a corner of his visor.

  "I hear nothing," the message said.

  "Okay," Knave nodded, "Have we got em all?"

  The drone's communications laser was flashing again.

  "All accounted for," the message said.

  The drone left one of its eight eyes pointing in his direction, while the others trained on the Buzzer. It now looked totally inert, and from up close, the fact that it was pure technology without much in the way of organic components was impossible to deny. It seemed to resemble the drone far more than it resembled Knave, which was an unsettling thought.

  On an impulse, Knave reached into the technology spilling from the belly of the beast. It was a more and more uncomfortable feeling with the drone watching, though Knave could only guess whether the drone felt the same discomfort, whether it felt anything at all while watching an animal reach into the guts of a mechanical lifeform it had just killed.

  Then the moment was broken. There was an intensification of the fireworks display in the sky, and activity on the mountain above them. Knave used his visor's range finding feature to increase the magnification of what he was seeing. The very top of the mountain came into sharply magnified focus. The Buzzer structures at the top of the mountain were erupting into explosions and showers of debris. The structures took wave after wave of attacks, the attacking atmospheric units moving so quickly that Knave only caught glimpses of them. The attack went on and on, but then each successive wave started to produce less damage, with fewer and fewer ships involved in each strafing run. The Buzzers were taking a toll on their attackers. Buzzer dropships, Knave saw, were now intermixed with Tarazet Navy dropships, both sides reinforcing their positions.

  "This damn battle's never going to end," Knave said, to the drone, to the AI inside Fortress, to himself, he wasn't sure who he was talking to, "If both sides keep feeding units into this meat grinder."

  It was the ship's AI that answered.

  "It's termed a war of attrition. Get back in here, you and your drones. You're not needed out there at the moment. The Buzzers threatening this spaceship have drawn back. They're probably going to join in that mess up there at the top of the mountain."

  Chapter 8

  ––––––––

  Altia had been invited to dine with Shivia again. They were sitting at Shivia's large table while an attractively designed droid, its surfaces a subtle ceramic blue, brought them food and kept their glasses topped up. Shivia was running a hologram in pride of place against the wall opposite her window.

  Altia glanced at it and saw what she at first had thought was abstract, was in fact some kind of tactical display of units. She realized it must represent the Tarazet forces converging on Ice Tomb. The Tarazet invaders were colored green, while the Buzzer defenders of the planet were colored red. They were very much in the minority, and for every red Buzzer icon, there were at least two Tarazet Navy dance partners. Shivia saw where Altia was looking.

  "Wonderful isn't it," Shivia said, "The battle for the planet is pretty much over. We have units all through the structure, and, between skirmishes, they have been sending back some very interesting information."

  "Such as?" Altia prompted.

  Altia was at least as intrigued by the alien structure as Shivia was. She would have preferred that it wasn't at the center of ongoing military operations, but even the threat of surrounding battle couldn't entirely dim her appetite for the fresh knowledge to be discovered.

  "Is it really a Drifter artifact?" Altia added.

  "I think there is little doubt," Shivia said, "And it is even more extensive than we dared hope. Even the Buzzer technology that has been overlaid on the Drifter artifact’s upper layers is interesting. It is more advanced than the technology issued to combat units. We may have underestimated our Buzzer friends, if this technology is anything to go by."

  "I can't wait to see it," Altia said, taking a forkful of her food, but pausing before putting it into her mouth.

  "But?" Shivia prompted.

  "But the circumstances," Altia mumbled.

  Shivia could see that Altia was a little unnerved by the fighting that was still ongoing. She decided it might be a good idea to try and calm her nerves, if she was going to get the best work out of her.

  "We are going in directly behind the invading forces," Shivia said.

  Altia could tell from Shivia's tone of voice that even the slightest trepidation about going to a war zone, especially one where victory was assured, was seen by her as some kind of weakness. Altia felt she had to explain.

  "I've never been this close to a war zone," Altia admitted.

  "There's no cause for alarm. We have overwhelming force on our side."

  Shivia walked over to the transparent section of the wall in her quarters. The star they were heading towards could now be easily picked out with the naked eye. It was about ten times brighter than the surrounding star field.

  Shivia placed her hand on the surface of the glass, her fingers were bunched together like the beak of a raptor. She then extended her fingers till they were fully splayed out. In response, the room computer overlaid a two-dimensional projection onto the window. Where the pinprick star had been, was now an image of an ice moon. They wouldn't have to penetrate far into the system. The moon was well beyond the star's frost line. According to the text box beneath it, it was a typical ice moon, with a subsurface ocean and a core of rock and silicate. It didn't have much atmosphere to speak of, mostly nitrogen that had evaporated from its icy surface, but there was enough atmosphere for some nitrogen cloud cover. And the atmosphere was so cold that what there was of it hung like a thick blanket, even though it didn't extend more than a half a kilometer above the surface.

  T
here were ghostly arrows pointing towards the moon, each one with a group of spaceship icons attached.

  "Look," Shivia said, "Here we have the Fourth Fleet, the Tenaxar Exploratory Squadron, numerous elements of the Deep Space Fleet here and here, and here, at the apex of the attack, is the mighty Emperor's Claw Planetary Assault Group. The Buzzer forces on the planet and the units flitting about within the system will be crushed before we even get there."

  "I guess that's reassuring," Altia murmured.

  Altia took a sip from the delicate glass she held in her hand, a sparkling and lightly intoxicating drink that Shivia often served.

  "Look here, Shivia said, this is one of the biggest Buzzer forces in the local arena. It's surrounded by two, no wait, three space superiority fighter groups."

  As they watched, the vessels counter displayed below the Buzzer group counted down from 257 to 256.

  "What did I tell you," Shivia said, "All resistance will be crushed by the time we get there."

  And it did seem that she was right. They were aboard one of the most advanced warships in Tarazet's arsenal, but as they approached the planet they were hardly required to fire a shot, loose off a missile or any of the other myriad of offensive actions the spaceship was capable of. They were surrounded by vessels, but they were all friendlies.

  ***

  Shivia's spaceship slid into orbit and a shuttle almost immediately detached, taking Shivia, Altia and an assortment of other personnel down to the surface. Altia didn't fail to notice, however, that the shuttle was a military design with two weapons turrets slung beneath its belly, even though there were thin-skinned and unarmed civilian shuttles in the bay. The surface and atmosphere might not be entirely under their control it seemed.

  The view from the shuttle was breathtaking. Altia was used to arriving at densely populated planets, with surfaces encrusted by structures. This ice moon was featureless and wild. Well, not entirely featureless, she noticed. There was a huge crater, taking up a good portion of the entire light side of the moon. At the center was a high mountain, as was often the case, she knew, with such huge craters, and a nearby cryovolcano spewing snow and ice into the gigantic feature to be blown about by the winds of its local weather conditions.

  "Where are we touching down?" Shivia asked the pilot.

  The pilot pointed through the forward view plate, at the mountain.

  "We'll be setting down there," the pilot said, highlighting a landing pad on a secondary Buzzer structure, near the Buzzer structure on the mountain top, with a blue glowing square.

  "I see," Altia nodded, "Thanks."

  Her voice sounded nervous even in her own ears. She lowered her eyes embarrassed, and watched the surface of the moon scrolling by silently underneath them through one of the lower windows in the cockpit.

  The surface of the moon, Ice Tomb, was chiaroscuro, some areas in blinding light, some in impenetrable shade. Altia saw flashes amongst the shadows. The pilot caught where her eyes were focused.

  "Combat," he said.

  "But I thought resistance had been crushed," Altia said, "That's what they told me."

  "It's a statistical thing," the pilot said, "Resistance is considered crushed when combat falls below a certain threshold. It can take years more for actual combat to cease."

  "Great," Altia said.

  They were obviously descending towards the crater with its central mountain, and the flashes of combat were most frequent in the shadows of the mountain's slope, and almost incessant at the apex.

  "The most interesting structures left by the Drifters are likely to be found at the summit," Shivia said, "But the situation up there is still a little too hot. The Buzzers have gotten themselves well dug in and we can't just reduce the site to rubble with heavy bombardment because of the possible repercussions for the important artifacts that might be present. It's most perplexing."

  "Starting final approach," the pilot said.

  "We can, however," Shivia continued, "at least examine that ancillary structure. The one we saw in the video."

  "The one where the drones killed the alien scientist."

  "Exactly," Shivia said, "Most regrettable. But at least that infantryman had the presence of mind to interrogate the alien before the incident that resulted in its death."

  Altia watched over the pilot's shoulder as they approached the landing pad, still outlined in blue in their forward view. The pad was ringed by drones and there were troopers too, slugs she had heard them called, wearing huge suits of power armor. The drones and troopers had their backs to the pad, their faces, and their weapons, pointing outward. Scramjets screeched incessantly overhead.

  To Altia, the drones forming the protective ring at the edge of the landing pad looked like some unclean cross-pollination between a flightless bird and an insect. The entire ugly form was covered in armored plates and two huge claws projected forward from the machines, except they weren't claws, they were guns. As if to underline that fact, one of the drones twitched to attention, realigning the gun claws and fired four or five shots at a target that Altia couldn't see. Then two other drones joined in, followed by one of the troopers, then there was a moment of tense attention before they went back to waiting, being on the look out.

  The troopers in their armor, Altia thought, were, if anything, worse looking than the drones. They looked like devils. The two giant legs, projecting much further than the human pilot's legs, which, Altia judged, were most likely encased within the armor's thighs. The legs ended in some kind of mechanical foot with two toes. It looked like an efficient design, allowing the foot to change configuration of the lower surface based on the type of terrain it encountered, but, almost unavoidably, it also looked like a cloven hoof. The torso of the armor was, more or less, the same dimensions of those of the human pilot, but they weren't form fitting enough to tell if the pilot was male or female. The arms however were oversize, with giant mechanical actuators, covered in sturdy armor, giving a lean muscular look. Each trooper had a kind of oversize gun, requiring both arms to control, one hand near the trigger, one hand out towards the muzzle. From the configuration, Altia guessed it used a gravitic track to accelerate mass to relativistic speed and spew it towards an enemy, horribly crude, but probably quite effective she guessed.

  The helmets were the worst thing. They were mostly featureless, apart from armor seams where the armor plates forming the helmet met, and the stubby bumps of communications antennas at the back of the head, which meant the only real feature was a single dark slash across the front. Transparent armor, Altia guessed, useful to give the wearer visuals if their display systems failed.

  "So that is what our troopers and drones look like?" Altia said.

  "Yes," Shivia said, "What of it?"

  "Our Buzzer scientist was confronted by a trooper, flanked by two of those drones. It is little wonder the poor creature was so frightened. So worried that they would stomp his delicate experiments."

  "Which they did," Shivia observed, "In the end."

  The shuttle carried on down towards the landing pad, despite the occasional exchanges of fire between its defenders and unseen attackers. Altia put on her environment suit helmet as the shuttle landed among the armored figures, who parted to allow them, once they had exited the shuttle, to walk over to an airlock and enter the building.

  Altia took off her helmet after transitioning through the airlock. They were within the walls of the Drifters, she recognized them immediately. Shivia, Altia saw, already had her helmet off and was breathing deeply. Altia followed suit and took a deep breath, only to find that the air was the dry, nasty output of a temporary human life-support system.

  "Where is the trooper?" Altia asked, "The soldier in the video."

  "I'll arrange to have him attached to your staff," Shivia said, "But, for now, go get as much good science done as possible, before the rest of the ministry turns up to stifle our efforts with all their red tape and stupid rules."

  "But you're the head of the Science
Ministry," Altia said.

  "And I could get rid of all the paperwork and bureaucracy if I wanted?" Shivia smiled, "I think you overestimate my power."

  Altia looked round to see who might be able to overhear their scandalous conversation. Just she and Shivia were in the airlock chamber. Their privacy was secure.

  "So," Altia said, "What is the first order of business?"

  "Keep an open mind," Shivia said, "I just want you to go take a look around. See what catches your eye. See what science you want to do. Talk to the slug-"

  "Knave," Altia interrupted, "His name is Knave. I think."

  "Talk to him. See if he can shed any light on this amazing technological treasure trove. I have to go deal with some bureaucracy."

  Shivia walked purposefully off, tucking her helmet under her arm. She had never been in the complex before but seemed to know where she was going. She stopped as she was about to disappear down a corridor.

  "In some ways," she said, "I envy you, Altia, in your lowly position you have so much more time to do science."

  And then she was gone. Altia tucked her helmet under her arm, then picked up a data pad, one of many hanging from a series of hooks that had recently been glued to the wall.

  She called up a map of the complex, choosing 2D when the pad offered the choice of having the information displayed on the pad's screen or projecting it in the air above the pad as a hologram.

  There was a nice, helpful you-are-here icon displayed in the middle of the screen. Emboldened by the simplicity of the map, she went off to explore.