Morkth. Swarming. With their hissing, clicking speech all round her. The air, since that terrific concussion, was streaming in in great icy wafts. At least it cut the stink of the creatures. It was also fun to see them scuttling away from it. Shael derived what satisfaction she could from it. She'd felt Keilin touch his core section. She could hardly do otherwise with the bracelet inside her bra. She was sure she'd have a scar on that nipple. He had been coming at the run, she knew . . . but now he must be thousands of miles away. She was on her own. Even Leyla had turned strange.
Shael had been angry when Cap summoned the platecraft, and she'd realized he planned to leave Keilin and the Gene-spliced to cope with the situation in FirstHive, now that he had what he wanted. But when he'd flown the craft straight to a Beta-Morkth nest . . . then she had known terror. When Shael had tried to question Leyla, the older woman had set her mouth into a thin, hard line, and refused to say more than, "Just Cap playing his games again, dear." But Cap, when she'd tried to ask him what he was doing, had gagged her.
So here she was. Sitting freezing while the black-hooded bugs surged and chittered, while Cap raged at the chief bug, "You had to do it, didn't you!? You had to fire on an ambulance plane. Defenseless. Broadcasting its identity loud and clear. Covered in red crosses. Bloody harmless. But oh, no. You had to try and blow it out of the sky. So Compcontrol shot us down even though we were broadcasting the correct recognition codes."
"SSsssilence," snapped the bug commander. "You tttold us it would be ssssafe to apppproach, as long as we broadcast thattttt ssssignal. You did nottt mention exsssepshshshions. Now getttt us in the gatttte . . . or we killll you."
"We'll have to walk," said Cap, sullenly.
Another Morkth with the bright chelicerae of rank came bustling up. He chittered and hissed out a message. His sides heaved and spiracles hissed with what seemed to be agitation. He was putting out a heavy, musky odor.
The commander chittered back, his own sides beginning to heave. The musky odor grew thicker. He turned and left abruptly.
Leyla was still cool. "What happened there?"
Cap said distractedly, "Another Morkth landing craft is approaching. It can only be the Alpha."
"Great. So now we'll be sitting ducks in the middle of a war."
"No. The Alpha claim they have a queen larva aboard . . . about to emerge."
"So? The queen is the one that breeds, isn't it? Surely the bugs can't breed fast enough to make any difference?"
"You know very little about the structure of Morkth society. The queen is the source of everything. Workers. Soldiers. Identity. Wisdom . . . inherited knowledge stretching back to the primal hive. And command. Decision will rest with her. Do they go on into Compcontrol? Do they kill us and attempt to destroy the core sections? Do they continue with the Beta-Morkth planet cobalt-bomb project? The Beta are nearly finished, you know. That's why I started this bloody core-section chase. They were getting ready to shatter this planet as if it were a rotten apple hitting a brick wall."
The Alpha ship advanced under the protection of the recognition signals Cap had provided for the Beta's and settled in the corrie next to the wrecked ship. They found themselves herded across, to the waiting airlock, and inside to the heavy humidity of an intact Morkth craft. The air was full of the musky scent, overriding the badger and lavender smell that Shael had almost grown used to. Speech was impossible. The hive craft was full of the buzzing sounds coming from every one of the assembled Morkth. And the assembled thousands' attention was focused on the gigantic off-white twitching grub shape on the podium, constantly fussed about by various attendants. The humming drone reached ear-threatening proportions, getting higher and higher all the time, as the grub shuddered violently . . . and grew.
There was a deafening crack. Terrible in its suddenness. And the Morkth were silenced. The larva case had split and now it . . . she . . . was emerging. The grub shape had been big. The creature emerging from the husk was gargantuan. Stretching. Extending. Then fluttering small vestigial wings. Stretching that long, deadly body some more. This was a predator, born of a long line of things that attacked, shredded and rended. Her origins were plainly written in the lines of her body and her vast jaws. The chitinous armor was already changing, darkening, hardening. Around her, franticly scurrying Morkth attendants placed great troughs of food, nectar. And the hive drone rose again to a crescendo.
She would speak. Soon. Soon.
Recognize her hive.
She opened her gigantic scimitar jaws, designed to slice and rip, jagged and razor-edged. The vast maw behind opened. Silence fell like a curtain across the suddenly immobile insectoid crowd.
It was terrible. Frantic. Compelling beyond reason. A feeling that transcended species to the extent that Shael bit her gag savagely.
!!!HUNGER!!!
The queen shucked her larval husk. Now, she was desperately thin and stretched. And empty. She needed food. Prey. Not the dead slush she kicked aside. No!
Live prey!
With mindless ferocity she stepped forward and began to feed. Panicked stridulations came from all sides. But still the Morkth made no attempt to run.
She was mad.
Completely mindless.
But she was a Queen.
With a sudden flick Cap slashed the belt of the hypnotized Beta-Morkth commander. Taking the core-section bag as it fell, he hustled them towards the airlock they'd come in through. None of the Morkth even appeared to notice. The three humans could have been killed a thousand times over. But no Morkth paid any attention to anything except their new Queen.
The escapees stepped out into the snow.
Walked away from the black craft and down to the valley, toward the vast steel doors, with the cold biting through their foot gear.
"Well, I've got them. All 14 core sections. And a psi. We should be inside in a few minutes. And we got rid of the Morkth."
"What the hell happened back there?" Leyla asked.
Cap smiled savagely. "The Alpha succeeded in hormonally neotenizing workers and warriors to produce a queen egg. They used to have the capability, way back in their evolution, to breed, if queen dominance was removed. They managed to do it again . . . but they got themselves a queen from that part of their evolutionary history. With no recent racial memory. Just a memory of doing her own killing, mating and laying her own brood. If you think they're having it rough now, wait till she starts hunting a mate. She'll tear that landing craft apart."
"So you wanted to be rid of the Morkth all along?" Leyla said, wondering.
Cap looked at her coldly. "Naturally. I needed the core sections the Beta had. So I pretended to make a deal with them. It also got them to stop their planet-buster program and concentrate on this."
"Why? I thought you said the Morkth just wanted to destroy us all. Why do they want the core sections? Why should they want to come here?"
Cap snorted. "Our ship is still capable of interstellar flight. The surviving Morkth ships are small stuff, none of which are really capable of interplanetary flight, let alone interstellar voyages. The Morkth navigation systems are still working in their main landing craft, even if it is a hopeless wreck. They know where we are, and how to get back to Morkth space. The rest of their species don't know where we've got to. We're a dangerous breeding patch of humans. Also, this is a habitable planet, and quite a prize for them, if they can bring the rest of their forces in to capture it, instead of just trashing it. Bioviable planets aren't exactly common. So, of course, capturing our ship was first prize to both the Alpha and Beta groups. But she was just too big for a frontal attack. They might get wiped out instead, leaving us humans to breed. So, after their queen was killed they fought about how to best achieve the second prize—killing us all off."
"So this was all your plan?"
Cap shrugged. "Of course. I've had to take some radical steps, but the end justifies the means, you know. Did you think I'd betrayed my species to the enemy?"
Before them the great doors slid open.
"It's still touch and go. I'd like to be more positive, but quite frankly it's amazing he survived the trauma of those injuries, let alone getting him here. Let's just say he's stable at the moment. I'm reviving an operating team to help me deal with the internal injuries. But why didn't you bring his legs along? All the equipment for maintaining them is on board the mechamby, after all. Now, I've answered your questions about the patient. You answer mine."
Keilin paused, unsure where to begin.
The man prompted. "I know some of it. I was revived four and a half hours ago, and I finished post cryo treatment nearly two hours back. I was at the computer terminal until you came in. I know I've been frozen for 349 years, instead of the fifty we were supposed to be. I know Morningstar I General Medical, which is linked to this unit, isn't replying. I know Morningstar II central computing is functional, but in a siege status. It's not replying, except to medically delimited questions."
Much of what he said was meaningless to Keilin. But he grasped at the straws he could. "The other command center . . . in the north?"
"Well, I don't know where. But the set-down was planned to be in polar regions." He looked faintly uncomfortable. "To keep the colonists away. They had to learn to be self-sufficient."
"The Morkth destroyed it."
"But this isn't Earth. We must have made it to at least one Earth-type colony world. They couldn't have killed Captain Evie, or we wouldn't have gotten any of you passengers off the ship. Why wasn't Morningstar II activated?"
Keilin shrugged. "I don't know. I just know the transmitter core was scattered, and we've been trying to collect it to bring it here and get the starship working again. I also know somebody betrayed the crew to the Morkth. Cap . . . that is, First Mate Jacoob Ahrens, said it was Evie Lee."
The surgeon snorted. "That'll be the day. He must've got it wrong . . . Captain Evie, she was like everybody's little sister . . . or girlfriend . . . or even mum. She was as soft as marshmallow, but as true as steel. Everybody loved her. And she was also such a caring, kind person. She'd have cut her own arm off rather than hurt as much as the pinky finger of one of her crew. I saw her crying all over the unit half a dozen times. More likely this Ahrens fellow is your traitor, whoever he is."
Keilin nodded. "He's the one who did that to Bey. He's got most of the core sections . . . he thinks. And he's kidnapped one of Evie Lee's descendants. That's why I have come here."
"Likewise," Wolf grated. "I have come to kill him."
The surgeon turned to a voice pick-up below a wall-mounted screen. "CompControl: Records search: Ahrens, Jacoob, First Mate, Morningstar I. Print to screen."
The screen flashed. "RECORDS DELETED"
"Why . . . something's wrong here," said the surgeon. "Let's check Medical records. Medical CompControl: Records search: Ahrens, Jacoob, First Mate; Morningstar I: All data print to screen."
Lines of print began to scroll across the screen.
"AHRENS, JACOOB MAMUD. FIRST MATE. Ph.D. ASTROPHYSICS. (ANK.) M.Sc. NANOENGINEERING. (MOSK.) BORN 23/3/2068. HEIGHT: 6'4". WEIGHT: 195 lb. SPORTS: NULL-G TENNIS: TURKISH NAT. CHAMP: 2084. 3-D CHESS. LEVEL GRANDMASTER. RELIG. AFFIL.: SUNNI MOSLEM." Then on to immunizations, illnesses, allergies, and so on, down to retinal records, fingerprints.
The surgeon bit his forefinger. "He existed. Even was treated here, three hundred and fifty years ago. Tall man . . ." Suddenly he snapped his fingers. "Tall man! Medical Compcontrol check those records against Mortuary records."
There was a long pause.
Then across the screen marched: "ERROR MESSAGE: MORTURY MATCHES TO RETINA AND FINGERPRINT RECORDS BUT CORPSE NAME NOT LISTED AS AHRENS, JACOOB MAMUD."
"Yess! I knew I'd seen two nearly identically tall men at the crew council meeting . . . and only one whom I had a name for!" said the surgeon grimly.
"Medical Compcontrol: Print name listed for corpse with retina and fingerprints of Ahrens, Jacoob Mamud."
A brief pause. "FISHER, DANE. SUB-CAPTAIN."
"That explains a lot. Compcontrol: Records search: Fisher, Dane. Sub-Captain. List records to screen."
"RECORDS DELETED."
"To prove that's no fluke, I'll do my own. Compcontrol: Records search: Edwards, James. Lieutenant-Commander. List record to screen."
Information began to scroll slowly down the screen. The surgeon pointed at it and nodded. He sighed. "Your man out there is Sub-Captain Dane Fisher. And having known the bastard, I'm hardly surprised. Wait. He covered his tracks . . . but he missed the medical records. Probably didn't realize they were separately stored. He never liked the medical side much, for all that he was supposed to be one of us. He was always more interested in pharmaceutical research than medicine. Humans were just incidental guinea pigs. Medical Compcontrol: Records search: Fisher, Dane. Sub-Captain. All data print to screen."
A pause:
Then the print began to scroll onto the screen.
"FISHER. DANE NESBIT HUENNES. SUB-CAPTAIN. Ph.D BIOCHEM. (CAPE TOWN). Ph.D. MIL.SCIENCE (CAL.) M.ChB. (LOND.) BORN: 2065. HEIGHT: 6'4" WEIGHT:192 lb. SPORTS: KARATE (FUNAKOSHI). OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALLIST SA 2080, 2084. RELIG. AFIL. AG. SURGICAL IMPLANTS. INDEX FINGER DISTAL PHALANX REPLACED WITH SINGLE PULSE MICRO-LASER UNIT, SOLAR RECHARGEABLE THROUGH FINGERNAIL . . ." but after the fingerprint and retina prints was a note: "FURTHER RECORDS> MEDICAL REQUISITIONS AUTHORIZED BY FISHER, DANE. PRINT TO SCREEN?"
"Medical Compcontrol. Print requisitions to screen."
A list began to scroll across the screen.
The surgeon shrugged. "He planned this all right. I suppose he didn't realize that all medical-supply requisitions were also downloaded to Medical Compcontrol. Look at it all! Longevity drugs—at least a lifetime supply—antibiotics, general first aid stuff, Mini robosurgery unit . . . what in hell! Was he planning to do a lot of screwing around? That's about a million doses of AmB 486. What the hell would he take that number of abortifacients with him for?"
A terrible, terrifying light began to dawn in Keilin. "Sir . . . you know about the Gene-spliced people . . ."
"Sure. Like these chaps, and my patient. I should imagine half the population is by now. I did some post-grad work on the heritability of the characteristics. Every kid a coconut. It wasn't generally known, but the dominance linking was very successful."
"Then there is no reason that the Gene-spliced cannot have babies?" Keilin asked cautiously, aware of the acute attention of Wolf and his friends.
"No. None. They're perfectly normal humans, just with a few extra abilities." The doctor looked puzzled.
"They can interbreed with ordinary humans, have ordinary babies?"
"They are ordinary humans. The kids will inherit the gene splices that's all. I told you they were dominant-gene linked."
The girl called Gerda looked at him, ice in her eyes. "I've been pregnant twice. Spontaneous abortion both times. The children were both too deformed to have lived anyway. My mother aborted seventeen times. She bled to death the last time. I have one sister. She has no arms."
The doctor stared back at her, looked at the list still on the screen. His black skin turned an unhealthy shade of gray. "Low dosage AmB. I'll need a blood sample," he said quietly, taking her hand to a wall unit, and pressing it into the slot. He typed a series of letters in on the keyboard.
Wolfgang's face had set in a hard mask. "He told us . . . the human race was scared of us. Scared of us outbreeding them. So we were made nearly sterile. All the girls had to take these pills every three months . . . to promote successful ovulation. We . . . believed that he was all that was between us and extinction. Mothers used to kiss his feet. I . . . was brought up to believe it was lucky even to have his shadow fall on you. My father was a hero among our people because he served him."
The doctor looked at his hands, not wishing to look them in the face. "I was a registrar in London when he was a houseman. He was a totally self-centered son of a bitch. Thought the sun set when he sat down. Didn't give a cosmic shit for anyone else, least of all his poor blooming patients. But he was handsome, strong, clever . . . and he could talk. Anyway he wasn't going to stay in medicine. He joined the army. I thought it would suit the fathead.
"He came out of the Gersbach clash with the Morkth as a hero. He had to be. He was the only one left alive. The dead bodies weren't going to argue about what he said he'd done. I wondered about it . . . but we were losing the war. We needed a hero. And he looked good in that role. Did well in combat after that, too. It was a shoo-in that he'd command the Morningstar. That's why I chose to be part of the medical team of the backup crew, even if it meant going into the ice box. If it wasn't for the psi saying they'd be screwed if they'd take orders from him, he would have been captain too. But he couldn't have done this to Evie . . . They . . . they were sleeping together."
"I need to go after him," Keilin said coldly.
"Us too," the five Gene-spliced said in a vicious, determined and almost telepathic unison.
One of the hive girls looked into the surgeon's face. "This man . . . you mean he is the same man who betrayed the crew to the Morkth? The Morkth who enslaved us, bred us like animals, to kill our own kind?"
"It looks like it," he muttered. "Stuff the Hippocratic oath. I'm going to strangle the bastard."
Sandi stood up from the waiting-room couch. "You will have to stand at the back of a very long line," she said. The snow outside was warm compared to her voice. "I thank you for giving me something to hit him with," she said holding up her cast.
"We can discuss who gets to kill him later. If we can hear how we get from here to where he is," said Keilin, picking up his assegai.
"There is a passage from the hospital to the main operations center," James Edwards said. "But it is sealed siege-tight. I couldn't even get communication. The only other way is the front gate. Ident procedures should still be operating there. It's going to mean going out for a three-mile traipse across the snow, however. We'll need some outdoor gear."
"We?"
"I'm coming with you of course," he said calmly. "I'll be able to get you through the ident procedures at the main gate, and help with the high-tech side."
Keilin shook his head. "No. You must stay and try to keep Beywulf alive. You must also tell the Gene-spliced the truth, if we do not come back. Cap seemed to think that a psi and the core sections would get him in to the place." He reached into the pouch on his ankle. "I have ten core sections, and I am a psi." He looked at the motley assemblage of humans. "I'd prefer you all to stay. But I suppose there's no chance of that."
Dr. James Edwards looked at the assegai with a professional interest that would have done his distant baKenga ancestors more credit than it did to his present career. "Some of you don't have weapons. The best I can offer you are some portable laser scalpels. I'm going to order the entire unit revived from cryo suspension. Within three hours I promise a thousand people are coming to join you. We're all medical personnel . . . but given the circumstances we can and will fight."
Keilin smiled. "Thank you, sir. I think the Gene-spliced of the Moss have spare weapons we can understand. But clothes would be good."
They were led to a walk-in locker full of cold-weather gear. "Just remember that laser unit in his finger," said the surgeon, as he helped them to find boots and thermoquilted overalls.
"What is it? How does it work?" asked Keilin, shrugging into the overall sleeves.
The surgeon struggled for simple terms. Finally he settled for, "It shoots out a bright beam that will cut through anything. But it will take a long time to recharge. Good luck."
The stone of the corridor outside the heavy steel door of the pedestrian exit to the surface had been cut to a polished smoothness. The surgeon, seeing them out, pointed to the walls. "Laser cut," he said. "I hope you're not being expected."
Cap's first act on getting through the great doors was to step across to the right wall. He spoke a rapid series of numbers into the small grille there. A slot opened below. He inserted an almost cubical block into it. Satisfaction beamed all over his face. "There. That's done away with all of Evie Lee's trash. It took me nearly thirty years to craft that data-instruction dump, especially as I didn't know what rubbish she'd fed in, in the first place. Now we're as secure as the best-armed fortress on the planet can make us."
He looked at Shael's face. "So you were still expecting that brat boyfriend of yours." He snorted. "I dare say he's trying, but it's a long way from FirstHive to here, my girl. If he had the least idea where we were going, which I don't put beyond the boy, he could never get here. It's a hundred and fifty miles across the sheet ice from the sea to here. Besides, with imprinting the colonists at the self-sustainable technology level, people started low. They haven't yet learned how to make a ship that could get him here. If he could find a flying device in the Morkth hive, and manage to operate it he still wouldn't get more than two hundred miles off before Morningstar II's defenses kick in. He'd be flying a fireball before he could do anything about it. And the gate," he said, with a cruel smile, "I left on Evie's settings. A psi with the core sections. I've got all of the core sections. I must admit I was surprised when the gate opened." He chuckled. "I thought it would have to be core sections in physical contact with a psi. I thought I'd have to hand you my whole bagful. You could just have stepped through and left me to freeze my balls off outside."
Shael was left with the grim knowledge that the hidden bracelet cold against her skin had allowed Cap to attain his goal. She pointed at the gag.
"I suppose I may as well," said Cap, magnanimous in his triumph, cutting it.
Shael moved her bruised and stretched mouth. There was no one to help her. Well, she'd just have to help herself. First to find out what he was planning for her in this alien place of white starkness. "What are you going to do now?"
"Assume my rightful position as captain. Save humanity from the Morkth hives," he said, putting his chin back, assuming a heroic stance.
He actually believes himself to be a hero, thought Shael. Maybe I can use that. "Are there any Morkth left to save us from?" she asked. "Aren't they all sitting outside in the snow?"
"Probably. Stupid bugs." He shrugged. "It doesn't matter. The visible signs are still there. When I pay my visit to the ship, I'll give the terraforming tools a tryout. There's some amazing equipment stored up there. This planet was prepared for humans, but we'd have to have gone a-hunting for the next one. So, we've got some really massive destructive potential up there. We kept that sort of stuff on the ship for safety, see, to keep it away from any ambitious colonist would-be dictator. I'll turn each hive into a nice glowing crater. That's what the colonists need. A clear sign that the crew is back in control."
Leyla looked at him with a curious lack of expression. "And the Morkth-men?"
"You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, you know. Anyway bug-slaves would be pretty worthless to the human race. Don't waste your pity on them. You and I have a glorious future ahead of us. I'll sort out your little city. In fact I'll make you a present of it. We can fry it at the same time as we do the Morkth hives. A good signal to the rest of the colonists that we won't take any more uppity shit from them. Reestablish a decent respect for the crew. We might have to knock out a few other would-be empire builders. They were intended to live in city-states, and they'll damn well stick to that. You'll be first lady of the world, eh." He was tapping keys on the keyboard at the time, chicken-pecking orders. He didn't see Leyla's expression. Shael began to feel that she might have an ally after all.
"And me?" asked Shael.
He looked up from the keyboard. At the screen. Then at her, "Transportation should be here in a minute. Then decent quarters, clean clothes, and a good meal. And you, my dear Evie-descendent, can rest assured that all that I need of you, is your duty. You'll be helping the ship up there to fulfill its great purpose. Man can move on through the depths of space to the next suitable G0 star with a planet we can terraform and colonize. A world for my children to rule, before we go on to other stars."
A gleaming white capsule arrived with a whoosh of displaced air. After she had been pushed aboard, Shael had time to think. She thought back to Cap's statement on the night he'd captured them. Something about Evie Lee's duty being to die, so that a hundred million people could live.