Hardfought Read online

  The mutated shape made more soft sounds and tried to approach the transparent wall. It held up its thin arms as if beseeching. The others would have nothing to do with it; now it wished to go with him. Perhaps the biologists had partially succeeded in their attempt at transformation; perhaps it was more Senexi than human.

  Aryz quickly backed out through the port, into the cool and security of the corridor beyond.

  It was an endless orbital dance, this detection and matching of course, moving away and swinging back, deceiving and revealing, between the Mellangee and the Senexi seedship. It was inevitable that the human ship should close in; human ships were faster, knew better the higher geometries.

  Filled with her skill and knowledge, Prufrax waited, feeling like a ripe fruit about to fall from the tree. At this point in their training, just before the application, elfstates were very receptive. She was allowed to take a lover, and they were assigned small separate quarters near the outer greenroads.

  The contact was satisfactory, as far as it went. Her mate was an older glover named Kumnax, and as they lay back in the cubicle, soothed by air dance fibs, he told her stories about past battles, special tactics, how to survive.

  “Survive?” she asked, puzzled.

  “Of course.” His long brown face was intent on the view of the greenroads through the cubicle’s small window.

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “Most glovers don’t make it,” he said patiently.

  “I will.”

  He turned to her. “You’re six,” he said. “You’re very young. I’m ten.

  I’ve seen. You’re about to be applied for the first time, you’re full of confidence. But most glovers won’t make it. They breed thousands of us. We’re expendable. We’re based on the best glovers of the past, but even the best don’t survive.”

  “I will,” Prufrax repeated, her jaw set.

  “You always say that,” he murmured.

  Prufrax stared at him for a moment.

  “Last time I knew you,” he said, “you kept saying that. And here you are, fresh again.”

  “What last time?”

  “Master Kumnax,” a mechanical voice interrupted.

  He stood, looking down at her. “We glovers always have big mouths. They don’t like us knowing, but once we know, what can they do about it?”

  “You are in violation,” the voice said. “Please report to S.”

  “But now, if you last, you’ll know more than the tellman tells.”

  “I don’t understand,” Prufrax said slowly, precisely, looking him straight in the eye.

  “I’ve paid my debt,” Kumnax said. “We glovers stick. Now I’m going to go get my punishment.” He left the cubicle. Prufrax didn’t see him again before her first application.

  The seedship buried itself in a heating protostar, raising shields against the infalling ice and stone. The nebula had congealed out of a particularly rich cluster of exploded fourth and fifth generation stars, thick with planets, the detritus of which now fell on Aryz’s ship like hail.

  Aryz had never been so isolated. No other branch ind addressed him; he never even saw them now. He made his reports to the brood mind, but even there the reception was warmer and warmer, until he could barely endure to communicate. Consequently—and he realized this was part of the plan—he came closer to his charges, the human shapes. He felt more sympathy for them. He discovered that even between human and Senexi there could be a bridge of need—the need to be useful.

  The brood mind was interested in one question: how successfully could they be planted aboard a human ship? Would they be accepted until they could carry out their sabotage, or would they be detected? Already Senexi instructions were being coded into their teachings.

  “I think they will be accepted in the confusion of an engagement,” Aryz answered. He had long since guessed the general outlines of the brood mind’s plans. Communication with the human shapes was for one purpose only; to use them as decoys, insurgents. They were weapons. Knowledge of human activity and behavior was not an end in itself; seeing what was happening to him, Aryz fully understood why the brood mind wanted such study to proceed no further.

  He would lose them soon, he thought, and his work would be over. He would be much too human tainted. He would end, and his replacement would start a new existence, very little different from Aryz but, he reasoned, adjusted. The replacement would not have Aryz’s peculiarity.

  He approached his last meeting with the brood mind, preparing himself for his final work, for the ending. In the cold liquid filled chamber, the great red and white sac waited, the center of his team, his existence. He adored it. There was no way he could criticize its action.

  Yet—

  “We are being sought,” the brood mind radiated. “Are the shapes ready?”

  “Yes,” Aryz said. “The new teaching is firm. They believe they are fully human.” And, except for the new teaching, they were. “They defy sometimes.” He said nothing about the mutated shape. It would not be used. If they won this encounter, it would probably be placed with Aryz’s body in a fusion torch for complete purging.

  “Then prepare them,” the brood mind said. “They will be delivered to the vector for positioning and transfer.”

  Darkness and waiting. Prufrax nested in her delivery tube like a freshly chambered round. Through her gloves she caught distant communications murmurs that resembled voices down hollow pipes. The Mellangee was coming to full readiness.

  Huge as her ship was, Prufrax knew that it would be dwarfed by the seedship. She could recall some hazy details about the seedship’s structure, but most of that information was stored securely away from interference by her conscious mind. She wasn’t even positive what the tactic would be. In the mocks, that at least had been clear. Now such information either had not been delivered or had waited in inaccessible memory, to be brought forward by the appropriate triggers.

  More information would be fed to her just before the launch, but she knew the general procedure. The seedship was deep in a protostar, hiding behind the distortion of geometry and the complete hash of electromagnetic energy. The Mellangee would approach, collide if need be. Penetrate. Release. Find. Zap. Her fingers ached. Sometime before the launch she would also be fed her final moans—the tempers—and she would be primed to leave elfstate. She would be a mature glover. She would be a woman.

  If she returned

  will return

  she could become part of the breed, her receptivity would end in ecstasy rather than mild warmth, she would contribute second state, naturally born glovers. For a moment she was content with the thought. That was a high honor.

  Her fingers ached worse.

  The tempers came, moans tiding in, then the battle data. As it passed into her subconscious, she caught a flash of

  Rocks and ice, a thick cloud of dust and gas glowing red but seeming dark, no stars, no constellation guides this time. The beacon came on. That would be her only way to orient once the gloves stopped inertial and locked onto the target.

  The seedship

  was like

  a shadow within a shadow twenty two kilometers across, yet carrying only six teams

  LAUNCH She flies!

  Data: the Mellangee has buried herself in the seedship, ploughed deep into the interior like a carnivore’s muzzle looking for vitals.

  Instruction: a swarm of seeks is dashing through the seedship, looking for the brood minds, for the brood chambers, for branch inds. The glovers will follow.

  Prufrax sees herself clearly now. She is the great avenging comet, bringer of omen and doom, like a knife moving through the glass and ice and thin, cold helium as if they weren’t there, the chambered round fired and tearing at hundreds of kilometers an hour through the Senexi vessel, following the seeks.

  The seedship cannot withdraw into higher geometries now. It is pinned by the Mellangee. It is hers.

  Information floods her, pleases her immensely. She swoops
down orange and gray corridors, buffeting against the walls like a ricocheting bullet. Almost immediately she comes across a branch ind, sliding through the ammonia film against the outrushing wind, trying to reach an armored cubicle. Her first Zap is too easy, not satisfying, nothing like what she thought. In her wake the branch ind becomes scattered globules of plasma. She plunges deeper.

  Aryz delivers his human charges to the vectors that will launch them. They are equipped with simulations of the human weapons, their hands encased in the hideous gray gloves.

  The seedship is in deadly peril; the battle has almost been lost at one stroke. The seedship cannot remain whole. It must self destruct, taking the human ship with it, leaving only a fragment with as many teams as can escape.

  The vectors launch the human shapes. Aryz tries to determine which part of the ship will be elected to survive; he must not be there. His job is over, and he must die.

  The glovers fan out through the seedship’s central hollow, demolishing the great cold drive engines, bypassing the shielded fusion flare and the reprocessing plant, destroying machinery built before their Earth was formed.

  The special projects sisters take the lead. Suddenly they are confused. They have found a brood mind, but it is not heavily protected. They surround it, prepare for the Zap

  It is sacrificing itself, drawing them in to an easy kill and away from another portion of the seedship. Power is concentrating elsewhere. Sensing that, they kill quickly and move on.

  Aryz’s brood mind prepares for escape. It begins to wrap itself in flux bind as it moves through the ship toward the frozen fragment. Already three of its five branch inds are dead; it can feel other brood minds dying. Aryz’s bud replacement has been killed as well.

  Following Aryz’s training, the human shapes rush into corridors away from the main action. The special projects sisters encounter the decoy male, allow it to fly with them…until it aims its weapons. One Zap almost takes out Trice. The others fire on the shape immediately. He goes to his death weeping, confused from the very moment of his launch.

  The fragment in which the brood mind will take refuge encompasses the chamber where the humans had been nurtured, where the mandate is still stored. All the other brood minds are dead, Aryz realizes; the humans have swept down on them so quickly. What shall he do?

  Somewhere, far off, he feels the distressed pulse of another branch ind dying. He probes the remains of the seedship. He is the last. He cannot dissipate now; he must ensure the brood mind’s survival.

  Prufrax, darting through the crumbling seedship, searching for more opportunities, comes across an injured glover. She calls for a mediseek and pushes on.

  The brood mind settles into the fragment. Its support system is damaged; it is entering the time isolated state, the flux bind, more rapidly than it should. The seals of foamed electric ice cannot quite close off the fragment before Ya, Trice, and Damu slip in. They frantically call for bind cutters and preservers; they have instructions to capture the last brood mind, if possible.

  But a trap falls upon Ya, and snarling fields tear her from her gloves. She is flung down a dark disintegrating shaft, red cracks opening all around as the seedship’s integrity fails. She trails silver dust and freezes, hits a barricade, shatters.

  The ice seals continue to close. Trice is caught between them and pushes out frantically, blundering into the region of the intensifying flux bind. Her gloves break into hard bits, and she is melded into an ice wall like an insect trapped on the surface of a winter lake.

  Damu sees that the brood mind is entering the final phase of flux bind. After that they will not be able to touch it. She begins a desperate Zap

  and is too late.

  Aryz directs the subsidiary energy of the flux against her. Her Zap deflects from the bind region, she is caught in an interference pattern and vibrates until her tiniest particles stop their knotted whirlpool spins and she simply becomes

  space and searing light.

  The brood mind, however, has been damaged. It is losing information from one portion of its anatomy. Desperate for storage, it looks for places to hold the information before the flux bind’s last wave.

  Aryz directs an interface onto the brood mind’s surface. The silvery pools of time binding flicker around them both. The brood mind’s damaged sections transfer their data into the last available storage device—the human mandate.

  Now it contains both human and Senexi information.

  The silvery pools unite, and Aryz backs away. No longer can he sense the brood mind. It is out of reach but not yet safe. He must propel the fragment from the remains of the seedship. Then he must wrap the fragment in its own flux bind, cocoon it in physics to protect it from the last ravages of the humans.

  Aryz carefully navigates his way through the few remaining corridors. The helium atmosphere has almost completely dissipated, even there. He strains to remember all the procedures. Soon the seedship will explode, destroying the human ship. By then they must be gone.

  Angry red, Prufrax follows his barely sensed form, watching him behind barricades of ice, approaching the moment of a most satisfying Zap. She gives her gloves their way

  and finds a shape behind her, wearing gloves that are not gloves, not like her own, but capable of grasping her in tensed fields, blocking the Zap, dragging them together. The fragment separates, heat pours in from the protostar cloud. They are swirled in their vortex of power, twin locked comets—one red, one sullen gray.

  “Who are you?” Prufrax screams as they close in on each other in the fields. Their environments meld. They grapple. In the confusion, the darkening, they are drawn out of the cloud with the fragment, and she sees the other’s face.

  Her own.

  The seedship self-destructs. The fragment is propelled from the protostar, above the plane of what will become planets in their orbits, away from the crippled and dying Mellangee.

  Desperate, Prufrax uses all her strength to drill into the fragment. Helium blows past them, and bits of dead branch inds.

  Aryz catches the pair immediately in the shapes chamber, rearranging the fragment’s structure to enclose them with the mutant shape and mandate. For the moment he has time enough to concentrate on them. They are dangerous. They are almost equal to each other, but his shape is weakening faster than the true glover. They float, bouncing from wall to wall in the chamber, forcing the mutant to crawl into a corner and howl with fear.

  There may be value in saving the one and capturing the other. Involved as they are, the two can be carefully dissected from their fields and induced into a crude kind of sleep before the glover has a chance to free her weapons. He can dispose of the gloves fake and real and hook them both to the Mam, reattach the mutant shape as well. Perhaps something can be learned from the failure of the experiment.

  The dissection and capture occur faster than the planning. His movement slows under the spreading flux bind. His last action, after attaching the humans to the Mam, is to make sure the brood mind’s flux bind is properly nested within that of the ship.

  The fragment drops into simpler geometries.

  It is as if they never existed.

  The battle was over. There were no victors. Aryz became aware of the passage of time, shook away the sluggishness, and crawled through painfully dry corridors to set the environmental equipment going again. Throughout the fragment, machines struggled back to activity.

  How many generations? The constellations were unrecognizable. He made star traces and found familiar spectra and types, but advanced in age. There had been a malfunction in the overall flux bind. He couldn’t find the nebula where the battle had occurred. In its place were comfortably middle aged stars surrounded by young planets.

  Aryz came down from the makeshift observatory. He slid through the fragment, established the limits of his new home, and found the solid mirror surface of the brood mind’s cocoon. It was still locked in flux bind, and he knew of no way to free it. In time the bind would probably wear o
ff—but that might require life spans. The seedship was gone. They had lost the brood chamber, and with it the stock.

  He was the last branch ind of his team. Not that it mattered now; there was nothing he could initiate without a brood mind. If the flux bind was permanent as sometimes happened during malfunction then he might as well be dead.

  He closed his thoughts around him and was almost completely submerged when he sensed an alarm from the shapes chamber. The interface with the mandate had turned itself off; the new version of the Mam was malfunctioning. He tried to repair the equipment, but without the engineer’s wall he was almost helpless. The best he could do was rig a temporary nutrition supply through the old human form Mam. When he was done, he looked at the captive and the two shapes, then at the legless, armless Mam that served as their link to the interface and life itself.

  She had spent her whole life in a room barely eight by ten meters, and not much taller than her own height. With her had been Grayd and the silent round creature whose name—if it had any—they had never learned. For a time there had been Mam, then another kind of Mam not nearly as satisfactory. She was hardly aware that her entire existence had been miserable, cramped, in one way or another incomplete.

  Separated from them by a transparent partition, another round shape had periodically made itself known by voice or gesture.

  Grayd had kept her sane. They had engaged in conspiracy. Removing themselves from the interface what she called “eyes shut”—they had held on to each other, tried to make sense out of what they knew instinctively, what was fed them through the interface, and what the being beyond the partition told them.

  First they knew their names, and they knew that they were glovers. They knew that glovers were fighters. When Aryz passed instruction through the interface on how to fight, they had accepted it eagerly but uneasily. It didn’t seem to jibe with instructions locked deep within their instincts.

  Five years under such conditions had made her introspective. She expected nothing, sought little beyond experience in the eyes shut. Eyes open with Grayd seemed scarcely more than a dream. They usually managed to ignore the peculiar round creature in the chamber with them; it spent nearly all its time hooked to the mandate and the Mam.