| |
TYCE WOKE, DISORIENTED, startled by the utter blackness. There was always some equipment status light glowing, but not now. There was only perfect darkness and some sense of a person watching... waiting.
Tyce’s heart pounded faster. The Imshee had attacked. He remembered that. A thought formed—not in words but as if he had just realized it. The Imshee sensors detected the ship’s neural system becoming active, and they had rushed the line in a last desperate attempt to stop it. It. What? The joining. They knew the ship had sentience but not purpose. Humans could not be allowed to give it purpose.
Tyce knew the ship was providing the additional information, but even so, the pieces didn’t make sense. Where was he? The answer came as a vision, like a blurry hologram. He was stomach down on a thick support cord, his clothing shredded. Hundreds of wires came out of his neck, spine and head.
The memory returned, the certainty that he had to be part of the ship to save them. The ship had sent him that message. She had tried to stay quiet to avoid aggravating the Imshee. But when he called for her, she couldn’t refuse him.
If Tyce still had control of his body, he would have hid his head in his hands. His attempt to contact the ship had caused the assault that threatened to kill his people.
No. The denial and hot fury rolled through him. The Imshee would not take their people. They had tried to take the children and she had blown them into space. They would protect the people. A camera view opened inside Tyce’s mind. He saw the fight from above. Two rows of soldiers fired even as they steadily retreated from blast after blast of the Imshee energy weapons. A small Imshee body blocked part of the corridor door, but other Imshee used it as cover as they returned fire.
Behind them, Tyce had a sense of movement, almost like a breeze across his skin. When he strained to look around the bend of the corridor, his view slid along until he was seeing deep into Imshee territory.
Two small and nearly hairless Imshee were being herded along by larger ones, poked forward, even when they tried to turn around. Tyce tried to follow the side corridor out of which the Imshee were coming. He wanted to track them back to wherever they had docked their ship. However, the camera refused to move. It was as if he was locked into this one corridor.
No cameras. They didn’t spy on each other, only the others. Tyce had no idea who the others might be or what reason the ship builders might have put cameras in some places and not others. The fight was going in the Imshee’s favor and he needed to focus on the current fight .
He turned his attention back to the cluster of Imshee driving the young ones toward the battle. Imshee didn't refer to the clawed creature. The realization shocked Tyce because he had never considered the possibility that the Imshee were the hair. Nausea rolled through him as he thought about the feel of the hair between his fingers when he’d pulled it out of the creature’s back. Those had been the Imshee. The clawed creature was the horse that the Imshee rode.
A half second later he realized he was only partially right. Imshee were only sentient in clusters, and they took over the nervous system of the clawed creature because they lacked bodies of their own. In fact, one Imshee was a helpless creature, comically ridiculous. They were no threat, so to share technology with them was nothing because Imshee were nothing. But from the nothing, the neural joining had been developed.
Those bastards were driving steeds with a minimum of young Imshee “hairs” toward the human fighters. Imshee were nothing. Worse than nothing. Purpose thought them ridiculous. Purpose felt pity for them. Tyce’s head was an uncomfortable mishmash of ideas and feelings, only some of which were his, but he would have to sort that later. Right now the Imshee were less comical and more deadly. He focused on a desire to communicate, and he had a sense of a path opening. It was like seeing a beam of light, only Tyce heard it.
“John?”
“Yeah?” John sounded terse and out of breath.
Tyce’s camera view slid again, and his vision shifted to John and two others shoving a heavy gun down the corridor. The sled under the behemoth was designed for human ships with bare floors and the wheels were damn-near useless on the padded flooring. However, Tyce gave John credit for having balls. Using a projectile gun inside a ship was only slightly less dangerous than pulling out the nuclear weaponry.
The problem was that the bullets would be nearly as useless because the clawed creatures could lose half their body mass and continue moving, especially since pain couldn’t stop them. Imshee didn’t feel pain the way a complex organism would.
“You have to change tactics. Projectiles will slow it, but you’ll still be limited to targeting knees or eyes.” And if they shot the eyes, they would have to utterly destroy the creature’s brain. The Imshee only needed the brainstem to remain intact for them to control the body.
John signaled for everyone to hold position and he stood, wiping his hands on his pants. “What’s the new plan?”
“Attack the hair.”
“What?” John’s voice went up an octave.
“The hair. Those hairs are the Imshee,” Tyce explained. “They’re a collective species, like bacteria. The clawed beast is an animal the Imshee grow on.”
John frowned, and now the other soldiers who had been helping him shifted uncomfortably. “But most of the ones we’re fighting now are hairless.”
Frustration washed through Tyce, but he couldn’t afford the emotion and he didn’t have time to explain everything to John. He was too unpredictable when his feelings were involved—his inability to throw Tyce to the wolves was proof of that. If he found out Tyce had thrown himself to the wolf, he would do something stupid.
Wolf. She liked that. A predator, but a quiet one who hunted by stealth. It suited her more than what others had asked of her. It felt like a name her previous Purpose would have liked.
Tyce needed time to understand a fraction of the thoughts that scampered through his head, and he had to focus on the immediate problem right now .
“The Imshee are driving their equivalent of horses toward us. They’re animals, not teenaged cannon fodder. So treat the hairless ones like animals. Make loud noises and flash lights. Scare them back toward the Imshee, and when the real Imshee come, target the hair. Destroy enough individuals, and the remaining ones will be left directionless until they can reorganize.”
“Define ‘target the hair.’ With what?” The men and women with John looked at him oddly. From their point of view, this must be a confusing conversation.
“Flamethrowers, acid, hell, use a damn fan blade out of an air blower,” Tyce suggested. “Whatever will damage the hair—that’s what you need.”
John blew out a breath. “Okay. Radio the others, and I’ll get back to engineering to pick up whatever you guys can find in the way of appropriate weaponry.”
“No!” Tyce almost shouted. “Send Ama for the weapons.” She would handle Tyce’s sacrifice better. She would get all philosophical and talk about unexpected paths and the universe, but she wouldn’t grieve over him or lose focus on the battle.
“Tyce?” John drew the word out.
“The soldiers on the line need you there. Pass the word about the Imshee and send Ama back.” Tyce tried to make his voice sound as firm as possible, and he had no idea how that worked because he had the definite impression that his vocal cords were not producing sound. His body was suspended inside the neural chamber. Aging would slow. She could do more for him than her previous Purpose. She understood humans more.
The ship’s thoughts sped through his brain, taking less time than the pause before John spoke again. “Why don’t you call her? Hell, brief all the soldiers on the new tactics over radio.” John knew something was wrong.
“Please. I’ll explain later,” Tyce begged. It wasn’t like he could keep this secret for long, after all. However, he needed to make sure his people were safe before John freaked out. He remembered how John would get the last week before exams. He and stress were not buddies.
“Fine.” John snapped the word out, so the second they won this fight, he would come looking for Tyce. And Tyce hated that once again, he had left John behind. He didn’t belong to either the Command crew or the Dragon crew, but he’d been Tyce’s friend, and now he would be alone... again. Tyce was the world’s shittiest friend.
Tyce focused on the engine room, hoping that the camera view in his brain would switch, but all he got back was a general sense of confusion. They were never allowed in the engine room, so why would she have cameras there? Tyce needed to invest some time in figuring out who the hell they were, but that was a problem for another time. Instead he concentrated on a mental image of Ama, focusing on that sense of an aural beam he had used to contact John. “Ama, can you hear me?”
“We are in some difficulty,” she answered. “Can you help us out?”
“Yes, I need you to get back to engineering and pick up any weapon you could use to damage the creature's hair.”
“Excuse me?” Her voice was loud, but Tyce still had trouble hearing her over the gunfire.
“I had this argument with John, and I don't have time to argue with you.”
“Rather than a full explanation, perhaps you can provide some simple information.” That did seem to be a polite way to demand an explanation. And the only way Tyce could convince her that his idea made sense was to tell her the truth.
“I went into the alcove and physically joined with the ship.”
Apparently he had managed to accomplish something he hadn't in all his years on the Dragon: He had left her speechless. However, the sound of gunfire faded, so she must’ve been headed back toward engineering.
“I haven't told John, and I don't want to until this fight is over because he'll lose focus. The Imshee are a collective species, and each hair is an individual creature. Kill enough of the hairs, and the creatures that are left have to renegotiate a personality.”
“Oh.” That’s all. She sounded almost small.
“John should be briefing the soldiers,” Tyce said, “but you need to get back here and get acid throwers, flamethrowers, anything that can do damage to hair. If you see John, tell him you're already on your way to engineering and keep him out of here.”
She sighed. “I did warn you he was emotionally invested in you.”
“Now is not the right time.”
“It is always the right time for truth,” she said, “and I am already headed back toward your position. I have nothing to do but talk until I reach you.” She fell silent, no doubt waiting for Tyce’s nerves to loosen his tongue. In the past, silence had been his nemesis. However, he had no words. She finally asked, “Is all that yelling coming from engineering?”
“I have no idea. I have access to some cameras in the hall, but apparently the ship thinks that it would be illogical to have cameras in engineering or in any of the side passages.”
“I'm sure zir logic makes sense to zir.”
In the background, Tyce heard shouts. “Maybe, but she isn't good at communicating it.”
“Oh my.” Ama sounded horrified.
“What happened?” Even though in a very real sense, Tyce no longer had a body because he was plugged into the ship, he still had a sensation of his chest tightening in fear.
“Nothing. It's fine.” She raised her voice. “Okay, people, I need you to focus. We need weapons that will damage the Imshee's skin, that's the weakness. So what can you get for me?”
Through her radio, Tyce could hear shouting , but he couldn't distinguish individual words.
“People, we need to focus on the enemy, everything else can wait,” she shouted . Ama never shouted . Tyce was cursing the ship’s lack of cameras in logical places because he wanted to see what was going on. “If you two can't find me acid in the next ten minutes, I may throw you out an airlock, and that might not be hyperbole. You figure out a delivery system for the acid. You have to be able to rig a sprayer. You, find a delivery method for fire. I know Earth ships are stocked with propellants, and most of those are flammable. So find something that will minimize the chance of us blowing ourselves up, but if a fire-bomb suicide belt is all you can arrange, arrange that.”
“Ama!” Tyce said loudly.
“Do not use that tone. You and I know desperate times call for desperate measures. Why the hell aren't you moving?” For half a second, Tyce thought she was yelling at him, but then the engineers complained about her temper. Luckily most of them were off the Dragon. If she threatened Command staff that way, it might turn ugly.
“Ama, Tyce is stuck inside that console,” someone said in a low and desperate voice. Tyce didn’t recognize the speaker, but he appreciated the concern.
“I’m fine, tell them that,” Tyce said.
Instead Ama told them, “I know. We can worry when we don’t have aliens trying to kill us. We’ll worry about it then.” Her voice cracked, and Tyce ached with the knowledge that John was not the only person he’d let down.