suit cushioning her as she ran onwards, down corridors she could barely make out after the bright light of the previous room. The other teams breaking into the ship had found similar rooms in similar locations, suggesting that the Killers were surprisingly regular in their thinking. If the pattern held true, it suggested that the columns they’d found were more important than they seemed, perhaps part of the starship’s command network.
But we can’t break into them , she thought, as they ran into another brightly lit room. This one held nothing, but a single blocky piece of equipment that seemed to have no discernable function. She scanned it anyway, using the neutrino scanning function in her suit, and wasn't too surprised when the scan revealed that the device was almost impenetrable. It would take years of study before they broke through and worked out what the device actually was, years that she didn’t have, unless they succeeded in capturing the starship. At the moment, it seemed like an elusive goal.
“Keep down,” Chris warned, as the rearguard entered the compartment and reloaded their weapons. “They’re right behind us.”
Paula couldn’t help, but admire their professionalism. The arrow guns weren't explosive – plasma cannons would have made short work of the Killer machines, at the risk of blowing up the entire team – and they would run out of projectile weapons. The suits could normally use nanotechnology to scavenge raw materials and create new ammunition, but that might not be possible on the Killer starship. Could their nanotech dismantle the machine in the room and what would happen if they did? Would it provoke another reaction…?
Provoke a reaction , she thought, slowly. Something was dancing right at the corner of her mind, refusing to come out into the light. Something important, something she was missing; the Killers hadn’t responded until…when? They hadn’t responded to the starships until they had been attacked; they’d even let the starships zoom close and unleash enough firepower to vaporise any other kind of starship, or devastate a whole planet. They’d been secure in their invulnerability…and they had ignored two hundred armoured Footsoldiers breaking into their starship, until they had found the column. There was something important about that column then, something so important that it had provoked a reaction…
She pulled up the results from the scans and examined them as the firing started again. The scans hadn’t been that deep – whatever the column was made of was good at blocking basic scans and there hadn’t been time to use nanotech probes to break through the metal – but they had definitely picked up traces of organic components and unidentified liquids. The column might have been just a bioelectric system, but that made no sense…unless it was part of the starship’s control system. No, she realised suddenly; it was more than that. The column had held a Killer! They had been looking at one of humanity’s greatest enemies and they hadn’t even known it.
The shooting was getting closer, but she ignored it, concentrating on studying the craft. If the Killer was actually meshed into the starship, like an oversized Spacer, it explained a lot. It probably hadn’t cared about the intruders until they’d actually stumbled upon the column and – perhaps – recognised it for what it was. It had sent its mechanical minions to terminate their curiosity; hell, perhaps it had decided to open a wormhole, travel somewhere else and exterminate the intruders away from their gnat-like starships. She couldn’t quite understand it. Where would such a creature even evolve?
She looked down towards the billowing green mists and understood. The atmosphere matched that of a gas giant. The Killers might have evolved in such an atmosphere themselves and had created their starships, like
But we can’t break into them , she thought, as they ran into another brightly lit room. This one held nothing, but a single blocky piece of equipment that seemed to have no discernable function. She scanned it anyway, using the neutrino scanning function in her suit, and wasn't too surprised when the scan revealed that the device was almost impenetrable. It would take years of study before they broke through and worked out what the device actually was, years that she didn’t have, unless they succeeded in capturing the starship. At the moment, it seemed like an elusive goal.
“Keep down,” Chris warned, as the rearguard entered the compartment and reloaded their weapons. “They’re right behind us.”
Paula couldn’t help, but admire their professionalism. The arrow guns weren't explosive – plasma cannons would have made short work of the Killer machines, at the risk of blowing up the entire team – and they would run out of projectile weapons. The suits could normally use nanotechnology to scavenge raw materials and create new ammunition, but that might not be possible on the Killer starship. Could their nanotech dismantle the machine in the room and what would happen if they did? Would it provoke another reaction…?
Provoke a reaction , she thought, slowly. Something was dancing right at the corner of her mind, refusing to come out into the light. Something important, something she was missing; the Killers hadn’t responded until…when? They hadn’t responded to the starships until they had been attacked; they’d even let the starships zoom close and unleash enough firepower to vaporise any other kind of starship, or devastate a whole planet. They’d been secure in their invulnerability…and they had ignored two hundred armoured Footsoldiers breaking into their starship, until they had found the column. There was something important about that column then, something so important that it had provoked a reaction…
She pulled up the results from the scans and examined them as the firing started again. The scans hadn’t been that deep – whatever the column was made of was good at blocking basic scans and there hadn’t been time to use nanotech probes to break through the metal – but they had definitely picked up traces of organic components and unidentified liquids. The column might have been just a bioelectric system, but that made no sense…unless it was part of the starship’s control system. No, she realised suddenly; it was more than that. The column had held a Killer! They had been looking at one of humanity’s greatest enemies and they hadn’t even known it.
The shooting was getting closer, but she ignored it, concentrating on studying the craft. If the Killer was actually meshed into the starship, like an oversized Spacer, it explained a lot. It probably hadn’t cared about the intruders until they’d actually stumbled upon the column and – perhaps – recognised it for what it was. It had sent its mechanical minions to terminate their curiosity; hell, perhaps it had decided to open a wormhole, travel somewhere else and exterminate the intruders away from their gnat-like starships. She couldn’t quite understand it. Where would such a creature even evolve?
She looked down towards the billowing green mists and understood. The atmosphere matched that of a gas giant. The Killers might have evolved in such an atmosphere themselves and had created their starships, like
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