Storming Heaven

Chapter Seven

The Armoured Combat Suit was humanity’s most advanced infantry weapon. It wrapped its wearer in armour that was impregnable to most handheld weapons and carried enough firepower to dominate an entire starship. The AI installed within the suit could act in concert with its wearer or independently, even to the point of operating the suit without a wearer or transporting a critically wounded user out of the battle zone. It could have devastated any pre-space human force without even noticing the effort.

It all fell into the proper context as the Killer starship grew closer. It had long since ceased to be a mere starship; it had rapidly become an approaching horizon, or a planet towards which the Footsoldiers were rapidly falling. The starship was vast enough to generate its own mild gravity field, reeling the Footsoldiers in without forcing them to use their own motive systems. In theory, the Killer starship was no larger — even smaller — than one of the asteroids the Footsoldiers had raided in times gone by. In practice, it was far more formidable and Captain Chris Kelsey felt as if he were wearing nothing more than paper. Indeed, some of the planners had seriously considered going without the armour and relying on speed and stealth.

It seemed impossible that the Killers were unaware of their approach, but nothing arose to bar their path, nor did any energy weapons burn them out of space. The Killer weapons somehow caused direct matter-energy conversion and utterly annihilated whatever they hit and he was grimly aware that the suits would provide no protection at all against even a glancing hit. The Killers wouldn’t even care about the possibility of damage to their own ship. The complete destruction of the armoured force wouldn’t even scratch the paint.

He prepared himself as the suits fell down towards the surface — what he had to think of as the surface, to avoid vertigo — and fought the insane urge to cut in the antigravity systems and flee. The Killer starship came closer and closer and before he knew it, he was touching down on the surface. New icons blinked up on his HUD as the suit analysed the Killer hull, but concluded that it was unable to identify any of the elements in the material. The suit could keep them attached to the surface, a lucky break in an environment where a jump could see them flying off into space beyond all hope of rescue, yet it couldn’t determine much else about the hull. Chris had once bored his way into an enemy-held asteroid by using a simple burner, but that wouldn’t be an option here.

“Link up,” he ordered, quietly. The suits went active and linked up into a single fighting force. In theory, the transmissions were so low-powered that nothing could detect them unless they were looking for them, but he had already decided to assume that the Killers would know that they were there. Human starships had hull-monitoring systems and he had to assume that the Killers were no different. “Jack, check the hull.”

One of the suits, completely indistinguishable from the others, knelt down and pushed a small device against the black hull metal. There was a brief orange glow and then the device fell off the surface of the ship, rising into the darkness of space until Jack caught it and returned it to his belt. Chris bit down a curse. He’d hoped that the molecular disintegration device would allow them to cut into the hull and hopefully avoid having to go in an entrance that the Killers knew far better than his men, but it hadn’t worked. IT had seemed a long shot, but it had had to be tried.

“The disintegration field was instantly countered, sir,” Jack said, through the communications link. “The hull just pushed the gadget away somehow.”

Chris nodded to himself, looking down at the hull. Streaks of white light were flaring under their feet, gathering around them… or so it seemed. It was as if they were standing on top of the icy surface of a lake, looking down at submarines operating under the water, with nothing visible but the lights. The energy pattern seemed to be constantly shifting and changing, suggesting that the Killers were aware of their presence, even if they hadn’t bothered to actually do anything about it. He was overwhelmed with a sense that something was watching them from just under the hull, like a mouse hidden behind the mouse hole, unable to see the cat, but knowing that he was there, waiting. His suit countered the flash of near-panic at once; it injected various stimulants into his system and kept him concentrated. Chris gathered himself quickly. Suits had been known to declare their occupants unfit for combat before and he didn’t want to retire. Not yet.

“This way,” he said, and led the Footsoldiers across the hull. At starship speeds, two kilometres was nothing; they wouldn’t even notice travelling so far. On their scale, it was nearly ten minutes before they reached their destination, passing all kinds of strange blisters and instruments on the hull. He had to urge Paula to keep up with them, despite her protests that studying the tools on the hull would advance the cause of science, and silently cursed the decision to bring her. If the Admiral hadn’t insisted…

They came across the entrance suddenly, a massive blocky hole leading into the heart of the starship, and he peered down it with the suit’s lights. The hole seemed never-ending, but he had to keep reminding himself that it might be nothing more than the barrel of a gun, or something worse. The vision of suddenly being blown to pieces by a Killer weapon firing while he was in its barrel made him smile as he extended a series of remote probes, checking that the passageway actually led somewhere important. It seemed to terminate at one side of a recognisable hatch, but without the regulation opening wheels that a human asteroid habitat would have had. He smiled at the irony — it would have been far too easy to just walk inside, even if they had recognised a Killer opening device — and led four of his men down the rabbit hull.

“Material unclassified, but apparently class-four density,” the suit’s AI said, when he pushed his hand and its sensors up against the hatch. Chris allowed himself another smile. Class-four density was normally sufficient to keep out an unarmoured human, but the suits could probably smash their way right through it. He lifted one armoured gauntlet, made a fist, and smashed it home against the hatch. The metal dented under his blow, allowing the AI to continue its analysis. “Confirmed; class-four density.”

“Keep thumping it, in other words,” Chris said, as the other Footsoldiers joined him. The hatch rapidly collapsed under their blows. The Killers might have had counter-systems for the more advanced cutting tools, but they hadn’t thought of raw physical force. A rush of green mist washed past him as the hatch finally shattered, streaming out towards the darkness of space before cutting off abruptly. Chris didn’t hesitate; he launched a stream of remote drones forward into the mists, before following them into the alien starship. The gravity field caught him at once and sent the suit crashing to the deck, although it was able to cushion him from the shock.

“Two standard gravities,” the suit AI said, passing the information up the chain to the remainder of the Footsoldiers and the waiting starships. “I am detecting the presence of a class-two force field four meters ahead and a second ten meters behind.”

Chris said nothing. He was too busy examining the alien interior. He was, oddly, rather disappointed. His imagination had suggested everything from the interior of a giant biological starship, even though humanity had never even come close to inventing a biological starship that might actually work, to a completely alien structure. Instead, they were inside a corridor that looked almost exactly like a human starship’s interior, except on a larger scale. The creatures who lived on the starship, he hazarded a guess, were actually at least twice the size of an average human; they would have no difficulty manoeuvring through the corridors in their suits.

“Team one, with me,” he ordered, quietly. He had to assume that the Killers were already dispatching counter-boarding forces to their location. They had to have noticed the hull breach and the loss of some of their atmosphere. “Team two, take the other passageway. Team three; secure this location and blast anyone who isn’t us.”

A class-two force field wasn’t designed to prevent someone from breaking in so much as it was designed to prevent the atmosphere from leaking out. Chris walked up to the force field, paused long enough to allow the suit’s AI to confirm its first readings, and then pushed himself against the force field. Without his armour, it would have tingled, but he didn’t feel anything as he forced his way through the field. It sparkled around the suit, but that was all, leaving him standing alone in the midst of the green mists.

“Analyse,” he ordered. Everyone had assumed that the Killers breathed the same mix as humans did — they’d wiped out hundreds of races that breathed oxygen, as far as humanity could tell — but the mists suggested otherwise. “What’s in that muck?”

“Local environmental conditions; unsafe,” the AI said, pedantically. “The local atmosphere consists of hydrogen, helium, nitrogen, methane, ammonia, water vapour and unidentifiable organic chemicals. The atmosphere is utterly impossible to breathe; do not attempt to crack your suit.”

Chris rolled his eyes. The problem with the suit AIs was that they seemed to assume that they were there to look after the humans — which they were — and that the humans were incapable of looking after themselves. Every warning had to be repeated, every danger had to be pointed out and the humans, in effect, had to be coddled. It irritated almost everyone who had to deal with them, but it was the price for developing AIs that were capable of handling the requirements of the task without getting bored.

“Temperature is around 50C,” the AI continued. “Lighting is over 50% ultraviolet and appears to be changing brightness slowly on an apparently random basis. These conditions match no known world.”

“Thanks,” Chris said, sourly. He launched another flight of remote drones — small enough to be unnoticeable and completely expendable — and watched as they flew off into the heart of the Killer starship. “Are you detecting any life signs?”

“Negative,” the AI said. “No life signs detected.”

An icon flashed up on his HUD, warning him that Paula wanted to talk to him. “Allow call,” he ordered. At least he didn’t have to be civil in the midst of a war situation. “What is it?”

“No life form that we are familiar with can survive in such an atmosphere,” Paula said, stating the obvious. At least she didn’t sound as if she were panicking. “It’s possible that the Killer crew of this ship are beyond our ability to perceive them, or to recognise them as forms of life. They could be all around us now.”

Chris looked up towards the green mists billowing around the team and shivered. Could the green mists be the Killers? The AI had picked up unidentifiable organic chemicals in the atmosphere and all life was chemicals, at least at the start. He levelled his plasma cannon towards the mists, and then realised the futility of that action. Shooting plasma bolts through the mists would accomplish nothing.

“Warning,” the AI said, suddenly. “Firing plasma weapons in this environment may cause explosions.”

“Disengage the plasma weapons,” Chris ordered, sharply. The Killers had, accidentally or otherwise, prevented them from using half of their weapons. It was possible that an explosion wouldn’t harm the team — their suits should be able to handle it — but there was no point in taking chances. “Deploy the arrow guns.”

“Deployed, sir,” they said, one by one.

“Follow me,” Chris ordered. “Come on.”

The internal map of the starship built up in front of him as the various teams advanced into the heart of the Killer starship. The remote drones sped ahead of them, charting out the interior and watching for threats, although none seemed to materialise. The links back to the starships didn’t break, but random bursts of static and confusion seemed to overwhelm the datalinks for heart-stopping seconds. The starship seemed to be making random internal RF transmissions, for no apparent reason. They passed out of the corridors into a brightly-lit room filled with strange alien machinery, but it was beyond their ability to understand immediately. Chris took one look at a device that seemed to have more angles than he would have thought possible, and then dismissed it out of his mind. The scientists at Star’s End would have to work on the captured ship — if they captured it — and work out how it all went together. He couldn’t even begin to understand it.

He looked up as the green mists pressed closer again, despite the brighter light, and he shivered. No one seemed to be able to touch the mists; they just fell back from grasping hands or fast motions. The suit’s sensors couldn’t tell him much about the mists, apart from the fact they seemed to be composed of the same components as the remainder of the alien atmosphere. It struck him as odd that any race would have mists on its starships — a human starship had to remain as clean as possible, for fear of damaging components — but perhaps it made sense to the Killers, or perhaps they needed it for their bodies, just as humans needed something akin to sunlight.

“We should have let the Spacers do this,” Lieutenant Grame Wheelock muttered, as they passed yet another piece of impossible machinery. “They’d be able to live in this muck.”

“Maybe not,” Chris said, absently. “The radiation levels in this ship are quite high.”

“They might be trying to induce mutation,” Paula said, from her position at the rear. Chris felt another flicker of resentment; five of his men were guarding her, rather than allowing her to live or die as another Footsoldier. “There were old theories that suggested that we could use radiation to push forward evolution. They never worked for humanity, but it might work for the Killers. We know nothing about their biology.”

“Perhaps,” Chris said, unwilling to dismiss it out of hand, but knowing nothing about the background. “Look at this.”

He stopped outside a lighted column that seemed to rise into the endless green mists. At first, he could see nothing inside the column, but as he peered into the light, he started to see shapes within, strange crystalline shapes that danced just on the edge of perception. He pushed the suit’s sensors against the column, convinced somehow that it was important and frowned. The column was made out of a transparent metal that was stronger than anything humans knew. There was no way they could break into the light to find out what it was.

“I’m getting only a low-powered reading from it,” Paula said, as she joined him. “Whatever it is, it isn’t part of the starship’s power supply. It reads out as almost organic.”

“Almost organic?” Chris asked. “Some kind of bioelectric system?”

“Could be,” Paula said. “Whatever it is, its emitting low-level transmissions as well as odder signals my systems cannot identify. We can barely pick them up. I’m recording everything and transmitting them back to the starships for the MassMind to analyse, but I fear it could take years before we unlock them, if we ever do.”

“I thought that codes could be broken instantly in the MassMind,” Jock said, as he came up to the hauntingly beautiful column. “Can’t you just crack it that quickly?”

“This is alien,” Paula said. “Even with the resources of the MassMind, it took years to decrypt the written languages on each of the dead worlds and they were apparently very close to humanity; they breathed the same air, ate the same foods… if the Killers hadn’t existed, we might have been competing with them for worlds and resources. The Killers are apparently more alien than anything else we know about, yet…”

She frowned as she leaned closer. “Yet I think I’m starting to build up a picture of how this starship distributes power,” she added. “I think some things are starting to make sense.”

Chris nodded impatiently. “Are you sure we’re heading in the right direction?”

“The power core of this ship is easy to detect now,” Paula assured him, seriously. The confidence in her voice surprised him. “We knew that much before we launched. I think, however, that the nerve centre of the ship is much closer to us.”

Chris frowned. “How can you be sure?”

“Because the alien power relays are very precise,” Paula said. “I don’t know for sure, but I’m betting that the core of the alien system is here” — she transmitted a location to his HUD — “because they all seem to spring from there. The other teams have located similar columns and all of them lead down there…”

“It’ll have to wait,” Jock snapped suddenly, as new shapes appeared at the edge of the room. The remote drones hadn’t even noticed their presence. Chris felt a chill run down his spine. Paula had speculated that the Killers might not even register as a form of life to the sensors. Had they been missed completely? “We’ve got company!”

“Ready weapons,” Chris snapped, sharply. The Killers had finally responded to their presence. The shapes might still be obscured within the mists, but they were definitely there and almost certainly hostile. He peered at them through the suit’s sensors, yet no signs of life revealed themselves, suggesting that they were robots. The mists cleared suddenly, revealing Octopus-like machines staring at the humans. “Stand by…”

A moment later, the machines lunged forward. “Open fire!”