––––––––
Admiral Dander and Shivia were deep in conversation. Shivia was present on his bridge in hologram form. Admiral Dander suddenly paused, something important occurring to him.
"By the way, Shivia,” he said, “What is your position?"
"I'm on Ice Tomb, overseeing the investigation of the site. We're finally making some progress in our study of Drifter science and culture, and this site could provide the key to unlocking a treasure trove of strategically important new advances in technology."
"Yes," the admiral nodded, "I'm aware of the vital nature of your work, but do you need to be there personally to oversee the dig?"
"I suppose not. Why?"
"We have committed a considerable force to securing the planet, and I had hoped that would be the end of the matter, but Buzzer forces are massing nearby and I and our strategy people are predicting that the Buzzers will try to retake Ice Tomb."
"We have so many ships here," Shivia said, "We've dug in so securely. Is it even possible that they could retake this site."
"Unfortunately," the admiral said, bringing up a display of the current strategic situation, "It's a distinct possibility. The system is much closer to their lines of supply and we are a trifle overextended. Unless we make some breakthroughs soon across the wider front, we aren't going to be able to keep it. We only have it now because we took them by surprise."
"I see," Shivia said.
"Ice Tomb is going to fall, and the fall will be sudden. I can't guarantee the safety of personnel on planet when the Buzzers counterattack, and that isn't a question of if, it's a question of when."
"I understand admiral," Shivia nodded, her face set, "I'll have my people map as much of the complex here in as much detail as possible, with the dig ongoing to the very end, but I'll evacuate to a more secure location immediately."
"That would be wise."
"I'll need a biological lab, a very secure one, set up at the new location."
The admiral nodded.
"Actually," he said, "There is a very secure facility at Seat of Reason."
***
After Shivia had talked to the Admiral she went to see Altia, slightly surprised to find her with the subject called Knave unconscious on an examination table. The room was in semidarkness because Altia had dimmed the lights to help Knave along into unconsciousness and hadn't turned them back up.
"What is this?" Shivia asked.
"Some very fascinating developments," Altia said, "Notice the marks across the skin of the subject's upper chest area."
"Are these Drifter symbols?" Shivia asked.
"Yes," Altia said, "And they only appear in proximity to the Drifter artifacts in this location."
"Fascinating," Shivia said, "Do you know if this was something done during his encounter with the Buzzer scientist, or is it a more general effect to do with exposure, and, if so, why hasn't it effected any of us?"
"I have no idea," Altia said, "But I will let you know as soon as it is possible to start building some kind of hypothesis."
"Excellent. I need you to keep me informed about everything that's going on here," Shivia waved a hand at Knave lying on the table, "This for example, but I also need a concerted effort made to get this place mapped, with samples taken. Even though I'm being called away to other experiments, this place will remain at the forefront of my attention. I have a feeling it will turn out to be central to our efforts to understand the Drifter culture."
"Called away?"
"Altia, I have been called back to Science Ministry HQ," Shivia said, "You will be taking control of operations on Ice Tomb. I am transferring control of this scientific facility to you. The local navy and ground forces commanders will ensure your security, and will continue to pacify remaining pockets of Buzzer resistance, but you will be in charge of all operations regarding the scientific base and the dig."
"This is a great honor, Shivia. Thank you."
"It is deserved," Shivia nodded, "After me, you have one of the best scientific minds of our culture. Just explore as much of the riches available here as possible, catalog and send it. Box up and send me anything that isn't nailed down. I'm counting on you."
"I won't let you down," Altia said.
Shivia nodded again, clapped Altia on the shoulder, turned and left. Altia watched her exit the room, and it took her a moment to empty her mind again and return to studying Knave. Shivia was soon forgotten as she studied the symbols. There was no context to them, but she could see that the Drifter symbol for home was repeated twice, once at the start of the sequence, and once at the end. She was also studying the scans of Knave provided by the most sensitive equipment she could get her hands on. She couldn't find any physical abnormalities.
"What process causes the symbols to appear?" she asked, for the benefit of the recording.
She suspected that it wouldn't make any difference what scale she studied Knave at. There would be no physical clue as to the cause or the nature of the signs. She adjusted the mix of neurochemicals she was introducing into Knave's head, but the brain patterns and mental activity she was seeing all seemed normal. She gave up in exasperation and set the machines to slowly wake Knave, then went to sit at her usual console.
Shivia's questions had been good ones. Altia sat there wondering if the signs written across Knave's chest were the doing of the room's drifter technology, of the Buzzer scientist, of some strange mixture of the two, or if she would ever know.
She was roused from her pondering by Knave, who started groaning on the table. The devices that had been monitoring him folded out of the way as he swung his legs over the side of the couch and sat up. They would still be scanning until he was a few steps away from the table, but the resolution dropped, and then dropped even more as he started to move around.
"Well, doc," he said, "Am I still human?"
"You're as close as you likely ever were. I can't find any mechanism that is making these symbols appear. All I can say is the topography of your skin is not altering, so it is some process - chemical maybe - that is taking place in the cells themselves."
Knave paused, digesting this.
"So I've been messed with at a cellular level?"
"Probably some even more basic level than that."
"Great," Knave nodded, "And was it the Buzzer who did this, or was it the Drifter technology, working all on its own."
"It's hard to say," Altia admitted her ignorance unwillingly, "It could be connected to the sign that the Buzzer wrote, to the Drifter technology reacting to the confrontation, or maybe the Buzzer set the machinery to attack you in some way and your drones saved your life, or maybe they are just stupid, blood-thirsty machines and they murdered one of the finest minds in the galaxy."
"At least you have theories," Knave said, a smile catching at the corner of his mouth, "I suppose this means we'll be seeing a lot more of each other, me being a test subject now."
Altia nodded.
"I suppose that's what it means," she said.
***
Then followed a period that Knave would remember as one of the happiest times of his life. Months went by, and a kind of normality descended on the ice moon. The attacks mounted by Buzzer forces remaining on the planet became less frequent and less intense. Tarazet forces gained control of the entire Mount Fang complex, and the complex proved much more extensive than they had suspected.
The mountain itself was studded with Drifter structures and riddled with tunnels, but the tunnel complex went deeper, much deeper. There was level after level of structure, all accessed by stairways and shafts. The shafts used gravitic effects to allow people to rise and descend, powered by gentle arm movements. They were still operational, and they were lined with symbols.
Knave loved plummeting down through the grav shafts much better than plodding down the spiral ramps, and it was possible to reach quite a speed before the shaft overrode his actions and slowed him down.
Altia explored everywhere, and, of course, Knave came with her. He became a kind of Drifter technology detector. In areas of the Mount Fang complex where Drifter technology was densest and in the best working order, the symbols on Knave's chest became more distinct, while out on the surface, or in structures of exclusively Buzzer technology, they faded to nothing. All Knave had to do was accompany Altia through her day and share all her triumphs and discoveries with her.
He started to develop a sort of sixth sense for Drifter technology. He didn't know if it was his imagination, or something real, but he would get a sensation in the area round his heart when Drifter technology was at its densest.
"Deeper," Knave said one day, "I think we need to go deeper."
They were already many levels deeper than they had ever been before. They were alone, except for drones. Altia had used her new-found authority to get hold of a team of very advanced drones. There were five of them and they were bipedal, light, slim, and very mobile. Altia wanted them to be able to go anywhere that she and Knave went, but they were also very capable. They were each armed with a short but heavy blaster slung under the right forearm. The five of them, working as a team, could easily hold of a couple of stray Buzzers, which was judged to be the likeliest threat they might encounter.
Even the drones' faces were graceful. They were about Altia's height with a female cast to their metal jaws. Their sensors were hidden away behind reflective blaster armor so they looked a little blank faced and they had no indication of a mouth at all. If they needed to vocalize, it came from a unit in their chest. They had each been given an identification number for their current mission, ranging from VIP-1 to VIP-5. Altia was the very important person and their mission was to keep her alive. Knave had quickly started calling them Viper 1 to Viper 5 and Altia had picked up the habit.
One of the five Viper's was always within earshot, and they were constantly repositioning, checking the environment for danger, making sure no stray Buzzer or other threat was anywhere near their VIP charge. They were often the first to spot a new passage, or a different way ahead, and they reported directly to both Altia and Knave.
"We can proceed forward or to the right, no threats detected," Viper-4 said.
Then it simply waited for a response. It would wait all day if need be. None of the Vipers were ever in any hurry. They only hurried when their human charges did, trotting, or even gracefully running, to stay ahead of them and make sure their route was secure.
"Thank you," Altia said, always polite, even to a drone, then turned her attention back to Knave, "What do you mean deeper? We have penetrated down almost as far as the liquid ocean below the ice."
"Yes," Knave said, "But I have the firm feeling that we can go even deeper."
"How?" Altia asked.
She was now always genuinely interested in any of his suggestions. He had been physically marked by the ancient Drifter culture. He was no longer some ordinary slug in her eyes.
"The grav shafts don't seem to extend below this level," she said, "Or, at least, we haven't encountered any in days."
It had been days wandering this, the lowest level yet discovered, and weeks mapping the structure above, and Knave had been thoroughly enjoying it. He had gotten used to the dark corridors and chambers, to sleeping in temporary structures, set up among the alien ruins.
"There is a way," Knave said.
He didn't know how he knew, but he knew. He could see Altia's face in the light from the readouts within her suit helmet's face plate. She simply raised an eyebrow, surprised but not in a disbelieving way.
"All right," she said, "But, we haven't found a grav shaft that goes any deeper, and without the grav shafts, it is going to be difficult to go lower."
"You know what it is?" Knave said.
"No," Altia was still being very patient with him.
"I've done a few behind the scenes jobs."
"Uh-huh."
"And you see buildings from a different perspective if you are in the kitchens washing dishes, or in the garage guarding grav transports."
"That's robot work," Altia said.
"Not on my home planet," Knave said, quietly, almost to himself.
"Go on."
"You see, in a job like that, that a structure has two faces, one that is for show, and one that is more functional. There's a big difference between the turbo-elevators in a hotel lobby and the bare grav platform at the back for goods and luggage transport. The lobby elevators are showy, obvious, but the goods platform doesn't look much different from all the other bare systems, in the back of the hotel."
"So we're looking for the goods elevator?" Altia asked.
"Sort of," Knave said, his confidence deserting him a little, "maybe."
"It's an interesting theory," Altia mused, "If you're right, it'll open up as yet unexplored parts of the structure."
Altia pulled a hologram projector out of a pouch on her utility belt and looked around for a surface to set it up on. They were in a chamber with three exits, the one they had come in through, and the two options they had to choose from to continue their mapping and exploration. There were two structures in the room that reached to human chest height, but didn't look like furniture. They looked more like computer cores, or some other hot equipment that needed numerous heat vanes around the sides. The tops, however, were flat and level. Altia placed the projector on top of one of the structures and switched it on. A couple of indicator lights sprung to life, but otherwise her hologram projector did nothing.
"Let me see schematics of the floor topography of this level," Altia told the small device.
The device lit up the room with a patchwork quilt of the floor topography that had so far been scanned. It was undoubtedly out of date, but communications were proving difficult within the complex, so she would have to wait till she got back to their central computing center before she could update it.
"Still lots of empty quadrants," Knave noticed.
"It might still be enough," Altia said over her shoulder, then turned her attention back to the projector, "Display only structure that is repeated four times or more."
A lot of the patchwork representation of the floor topography melted away. What was left was a surprisingly large number of structures that were repeated throughout this lowest level of the Drifter passages below Mount Fang.
"This is where we should probably start investigating," Altia said, "If there are any hidden elevators, they're likely to be a floor-level structure that repeats."
***
Two weeks later they were still looking for Knave's goods elevators. Altia was in the center of a likely chamber floor, a chamber that was not near the center of the complex, but was more of an outlying structure. It wasn't well connected either, with just a single door providing access. The Vipers were at the doorway, and spread down the corridor, leaving Knave and Altia to investigate the room. Knave was just standing and staring, taking in the huge wall opposite the chamber entrance. It seemed to be a mural.
"I'm no expert," Knave said, "But won't these pictures be useful in deciphering the Drifter language?"
"Decrypting," Altia said.
She was kneeling in the center of the room, looking at one of the items of repeating floor topography that had still not given up its secrets.
"What?"
"The process is called decrypting," Altia repeated, "and it's on hold at the moment because I'm trying to help you get to some secret lower level, even though there is no direct evidence for the existence of such a level, other than a feeling you had."
"If it helps," Knave said, turning to look at her in the center of the room, "I'm getting that feeling very strongly now."
"Really? Because, as far as I can tell, this latest item of repeating floor topography looks like a simple vent, or maybe a heat sink or something. It doesn't look like an elevator or a grav platform."
"No," Knave admitted, "Perhaps not."
He watched her taking readings with some sort of scanner, then unpack some tools from her utility belt. His attention wandered to the walls of the chamber again. They were absolutely covered in technology of one form or another. There were conduits, pipes, switching places, circuit boards, control panels, all in the robust bronze finish preferred by the Drifters, all carved over with symbols, and yet, beneath the mess of, what seemed to Knave, later additions, there was a mural. It looked like an abstract relief sculpture, with disjointed shapes and flat areas, but knave felt there had to be some meaning there.
"Remember when you were telling me about your idea of flow?" Knave said.
"Hmm?" Altia was distracted.
"You told me," Knave carried on, whether she was listening or not, more for himself, "that you had the idea of flow. You said that was the breakthrough. You told me that once you had decided to look at everything through this one prism, it had all started to take shape."
"This isn't a simple vent," Altia mused, not really listening to Knave, "but then again, what about Drifter technology is simple?"
"The grav shafts are simple," Knave volunteered.
"Simple to use," Altia nodded, though neither were looking at each other, she engrossed with her floor feature, he with his mural, "but far from simple to construct."
"This mural seems simple too," Knave mused, "but perhaps it hides some sort of complexity."
Altia looked up. He had succeeded in attracting her attention, but she didn't say anything. She just put her tools down on the floor of the chamber, laid her hands in her lap and observed him. Knave traced a shape within the mural with his fingers.
"See?" he said, "There are two of these. This shape here and this one here. They look different, but something about them feels the same."
"Go on," Altia said.
"This structure containing them is this room, maybe. And this area down here is a lower level."
"You seem to be reading an awful lot into an essentially abstract carving," Altia said.
"Perhaps I'm deluding myself," Knave said, "The artist who created this wall carving must have lived...how long ago?"
"Before what we think of as the first founding of our civilization," Altia said, "And it has been protected from the moon's plate tectonics across all the immense stretches of time since then."
"Exactly," Knave said, "How can any human possibly know what was going through that Drifter's head when it stood here with a hammer and chisel and did this?"
"I doubt it used a chisel," Altia said.
"Oh no?"
"No. The surfaces are too smooth for that."
"Does it look to you like the Drifters were bipeds?"
"Yes," Altia said, "Like us."
"But the perspective in the image is off somehow," Knave said, "Or they were enormous."
"These are the sort of things I would love to find out.," Altia said, "But, to focus for a moment, if this really was the way down that we've been looking for, how do we activate it?"
"Dunno," Knave said, after a pause.
"That's helpful, Knave," she said, but there was a smile on her lips.
"How much Drifter tech have we actually seen in operation?" he asked.
"Only the stuff that is always on, like the grav elevators and the automatic repair modules. Oh," Altia paused for a second, "and the machine in the room with you and the Buzzer scientist."
"Oh yeah. That machine was definitely working. But, I've been wondering. The Buzzer. Did he make that happen?" Knave asked, "And even if he did, how did he do it?"
Altia didn't answer, and Knave could see that she was thinking hard. He watched her face, he liked to watch her think. Not her whole face though. Through the environment-suit helmet all he could see was her forehead, eyes and a bit of her upper lip. A small vent in the suit's neck sent out a puff of gas into the frigid air, where it immediately froze and fell to the ground as snow, reminding Knave that he certainly didn't want to be in here without his suit on. There were reflections in the faceplate of her suit, reflections of the bronze-like metal of the room around them, and the stone of the carved walls beneath the metal. The most bronze was in the ceiling above them, Knave saw in the reflection. He looked up, to see hardly any stone, all machines, every one with a bronze sheen.
"Must be hell to polish," he said.
"That joke wasn't funny the first time," Altia groaned, craning her neck to join him in looking at the ceiling, "but there is an unusual amount of technology in here."
"Like in the room where it happened."
Altia didn't need him to explain. She knew he was talking about his encounter with the Buzzer scientist. She had seen the same thing he had, or at least a recording of it, through his suit cameras.
"Where the Buzzer carved an operator," she said.
There was a long pause while neither said anything.
"That's it," Altia whispered.
She went over to where she had left her tools on the floor.
"What's it?" Knave asked, his voice was excited for her, but more than a little confused.
"It!" Altia said.
She was picking up her tools, one by one, examining them, discarding them.
"This one," she said triumphantly.
Knave recognized the tool and suddenly realized what she had in mind.
"You're going to carve something," he said.
"Yes," she smiled at him, pleased at how quick he was, "of course."
"But have you ever carved anything before?"
"No. But I don't think our Buzzer friend had ever carved anything before either."
She stood up and went over to the wall that was most covered over with Drifter symbols, densely packed on the rock of the walls and on the machinery itself.
"This is nuts," Knave said, "What kind of input interface requires a hammer and chisel?"
"Like I said," she lifted her tool to the wall, a small but powerful laser torch, "I don't think they used a hammer and chisel."
"I still don't get it."
"Don't feel bad," she turned to give him an encouraging smile, "I would probably have never worked it out either. Not without the insight of the Buzzer you talked to. But think about it for a moment. It's the perfect input method. No need to scroll through endless menus of options. Just write what you want and have it happen."
"I don't know about perfect," Knave muttered.
"Well, perhaps not perfect. But look at how aesthetic it is."
She lifted her arms and did a pirouette to indicate the commands written on walls, floor and ceiling, all around them.
"It's pretty," Knave allowed.
"Now why don't we add our contribution."
She returned to her spot on the wall, calibrated the laser cutter, linked it to her databank of translated symbols and started writing. The Buzzer had obviously known more than her about the underlying technology, but she was confident that she was a better linguist. Nevertheless, she chose to write something quite simple.
"Two entities for transport down," She said, as she wrote.
"Now all I need is an operator," she said to Knave.
She hadn't realized how long it had taken her to write the sentence on the wall, but she saw by the expression on Knave's face that it had taken a while. To her it had taken what hardly seemed like any time at all, but to Knave it had been an eternity, watching her hunched over, carefully carving each character.
"How long will it take to carve that?" he asked.
"Not long," she said, ignoring the tone in his voice, and bending back to her work.
"It's a good thing these suits have good batteries," Knave grumbled.
Time slowly passed, until Altia eventually stood back from her work.
"That should do it," she said.
"It has certainly done something," Knave nodded.
The corridor outside had gone dark and there was no sign of the Vipers, who had been there guarding them moments before. Knave drew his gun from a holster attached to the right leg of his environment suit.
"Maybe I should have worn that fancy armor they issued me," Knave said.
"Maybe you should have," Altia agreed.
They both walked towards the dark corridor, side by side. Knave had a lamp slung under the barrel of the gun and he switched it on, sending a beam of illumination down the corridor. But instead of the corridor they had been expecting, there was an open space with six walls and no obvious exit. Five of the walls, as Knave shone the beam of his flashlight over them, were the usual mix of rock, technology with a bronze sheen and Drifter symbols. The far wall, however, was different. It was smooth, apart from what looked like natural striations in the surface, like in the ice of a glacier.
"Cave in?" Knave asked.
"Hardly," Altia murmured, "I rather think my writing worked. I think this whole room is a goods elevator. I think it brought us down to a lower level."
"But I didn't feel any movement, and the change was instant."
"We could simulate that effect with our own technology. Just move the room fast enough and damp the gravity in the elevator, the same way gravity is damped in a starship when it's dogfighting."
"If you say so," Knave said, bowing to her superior understanding of engineering and science, "but even I know that the power required would be enormous. Why bother?"
"Why bother indeed?"
"So," Knave said, "Investigate further or go back for our escort of Vipers?"
Altia didn't bother answering. She just walked out of the alien goods lift and into the dark, switching on a powerful little light attached to the top of her helmet. Seeing her do that made Knave wince. Wandering around with a big light strapped to your helmet was just an invitation to get shot in the head. He looked at his own, more powerful, flashlight and smiled ruefully. He was announcing himself as a target just as temptingly. There was really no way round it. They had to see, and even if he knew how to switch on the lights, he might have decided against it in case it announced their presence.
"I wonder why this level is in darkness," Altia said, "while the levels above are all illuminated."
"Maybe the Drifters on this level didn't pay their electricity bill," Knave said.
Altia didn't bother to reply to his lame joke. She went right up to the unusual striated wall and put her hand against it. She read the temperature readings from the fingers of her suit gloves, transferred to a readout inside her visor.
"This wall is cold," she said.
"No kidding," Knave replied.
The whole base was 160 degrees below freezing. A human wouldn't survive long without an environment suit. The mechanical Buzzers didn't seem to mind it though, and the rumor was that they even preferred the cold, though how any one would know that was beyond Knave.
"Come and touch it," Altia said.
Knave came over and they were both soon standing side by side, each with a hand touching the strange, striated wall.
"Oh," Knave said, "I see what you mean. It's almost twice as cold as the rest of the complex."
"Exactly," Altia said, "And my suit is giving me some funny sensor readings."
She peered at the wall moving her helmet closer and closer. Then she saw a shape on the other side and blurted out a short involuntary yelp, and took a step back, before she got back in control of herself.
"It's transparent," she said, "I saw something on the other side."
"Really?" Knave said.
He quickly retracted his hand as well, and took a step back, just like Altia. They were both side by side again, but there was now a much more cautious gap between them and the wall. Then Knave saw it too. A shape, hard to tell how big, but definitely undulating, definitely swimming. A snake thing, or a skinny shark, or... Knave wasn't sure. It was gone before he could get a good look at it.
"Did you see that?" Altia asked.
"That time I saw it," Knave replied, "So we have a life form. Great. Now are we going back for the Vipers?"
"Good idea," Altia said, keeping her voice even, though Knave thought he detected a slight flutter.
He wondered if his own voice was betraying him in the same way. He cleared his throat.
"Back to the elevator room, then," he said, "We need to see if you can do that same trick in reverse.”
They went back, and Altia erased the operator character she had written, by melting and smoothing the wall, changed the sentence to say, up, and rewrote the operator character. It seemed, almost before she had finished, that the corridor had replaced the darkness in the doorway. The dark room with the striated ice wall was now below them. All five Vipers jerked to attention at their return and came running into the elevator room.
"Are you hurt?" Viper One asked Altia.
"I'm fine," she said.
"I'm fine too by the way," Knave said, but he was aware that he was of secondary importance to them.
"The base is under attack," Viper One said, "You must be evacuated."
"What?" Altia yelled.
"This facility," Viper One repeated, "is under attack. Above Ice Tomb, the battle rages for control of deep space and the atmosphere. Buzzers have already started to break through the orbital superiority units."
Viper Four was already taking the lead, heading down the corridor.
"This way," Viper Four shouted.
"Follow Viper Four," Viper One said, "We will have an evacuation unit waiting at the nearest exit to the structure. It is vital that we evacuate you before the situation in orbit deteriorates any further."
"Okay," Altia said.
The whole group started jogging through the corridors, with Viper Four in the lead and Viper Two bringing up the rear.
"Try and match this pace," Viper One said, "It is imperative that we exit this structure at the earliest opportunity."
"You mean you want me to hurry up?" Knave asked.
"Yes," Viper One said, "This structure is the objective of the entire Buzzer swarm."
"Swarm?" Knave said, looking at Altia.
She did her best to run and shrug her shoulders at the same time. They were soon at an aperture that had been cut into the structure by the Buzzers. It was large enough for them all to enter at once, but it was pressurized. They had to wait until the atmosphere was vented before the pyramidal Buzzer-designed door would open. It was a strange moment of calm after all the hurrying.
"This couldn't have come at a worse time," Altia said, "It galls me to have to leave just as we make this amazing discovery. How serious is this invasion anyway. Our defenses are supposed to be formidable. Do the Buzzers really have a chance?”
The Vipers didn't answer her. Then the door opened, allowing them to see a small landing platform outside. A small warship was waiting for them, hovering in the upper atmosphere.
"They're sending down a shuttle," Viper One explained, "It was supposed to be here waiting with the doors open."
"What's the spaceship's name," Altia asked.
"The Imperturbable," Viper One said, then pointed, "Ah, that's the shuttle bay opening. Here comes our ride."
"Shuttle Imp 3 inbound," Altia heard in her communicator, "Hold position for immediate pick up."
The Imperturbable, hovering above them, was huge and, with numerous visible gun turrets, obviously well armed. It was shaped, like most spaceships that were capable of atmospheric insertion, like a spear point. It was aerodynamic, but with gravitic drives, there was no need to bother with lifting surfaces such as wings. The guns were located along the vessel's spine, near the gravitic virtual gyroscopes, to minimize the inertia effects when traversing. Some of the spaceship's mass drivers were so big that, otherwise, turning the turret clockwise would spin the whole spaceship counterclockwise.
Knave noticed that one or two of the giant mass drivers were already canted almost directly vertical and were engaging targets with their characteristic screeching sound of metal leaving the barrel accompanied by a muzzle flash of ionized atmosphere. Missile door covers were also hinging out of the way along the flanks of the spaceship and handfuls of missiles were arcing up into the sky, heading for targets too far away to be seen by their eyes or even their limited environment-suit sensors.
"This does not look good," Knave said, "How is there already action within the atmosphere?"
"The invasion is progressing quickly," Viper One said.
Every shot the spaceship above them fired made the thick atmosphere around them quake with a shock wave that they could feel through their environment suits. Every muzzle flash illuminated the platform like a flash of lightning, but then came a flash and a rumbling impact much larger than any of the others. Everyone looked up, but at first nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The Imperturbable was still firing, Imp 3 was still descending. But then they all saw it at once. A jet of fire and debris coming out of a jagged hole in the rear of the giant spaceship.
"That's probably the location of the stabilizers," Altia said.
Knave had no idea what she would be basing that assessment on, the distribution of visible grav thrusters or the spaceship's configuration perhaps, but he didn't doubt her. He had seen plenty of examples of how deep and varied her knowledge was, of all kinds of different areas of science over the preceding months. As if in confirmation of her guess, the spaceship started to slide sideways, unable any longer to precisely maintain its position against the tug of planetary gravity. The spaceship started climbing, even as it was slipping sideways, but there was obviously something wrong. Its nose was climbing faster than its damaged rump, then its main engines came on, with their characteristic blue glow, but the blue was fluctuating.
"That's a real bad sign," Altia said, "Heseper fluctuations in the drive plume mean those engines are not long for this world."
Altia grabbed Knave by the hose attaching his helmet to the environment unit on his back. It was the surest way to get anyone in an environment suit to come in the direction you wanted. She dragged him back into the big airlock as the entire mountain was shaken by a titanic explosion. Flame and debris exploded through the door, among the debris, Knave noticed over Altia's shoulder, was the torso and head of one of the Vipers, the limbs ripped away by the shock wave, then he lost consciousness.
He came round, according to the chronometer inside his suit's faceplate, just seven minutes later. He didn't feel too bad, but he realized that was probably just shock. He looked around and saw Altia lying among the debris just a few steps away. She had taken a lot more of the impact of the shock wave than him because she had pushed him through the door and come in afterward, a fraction of a second later. The Viper had followed very shortly afterward, but that tiny delay had been enough that it was now lying, torn apart, on the ground. Altia groaned.
"Thank the powers," Knave said out loud.
He went over and helped her to her feat.
"I feel like I just got stoned," she said, "but I don't think anything is broken."
"You saved my life," Knave said.
"Of course," she said, and tapped his chest, "You're an important subject. We have to keep you and your markings in one piece."
Knave couldn't tell if she was joking or not, and before he could decide they were interrupted by the Viper, or what was left of it, lying on the ground.
"This location will become unsafe very soon," it said.
"It's already pretty unsafe," Knave said.
Altia waved him silent with a gesture of her hand, and turned her attention to the damaged Viper.
"Which one are you?" she asked.
"I'm number four," it said, "but that's not important. The important thing for you now is to find a safe location, as I do not believe that another attempt will be made to evacuate you to orbit."
"I think you are right," Altia said, "Thank you for your service."
"You are welcome," Viper Four said, "Good luck."
Altia turned away from the stricken robot and locked eyes with Knave.
"Things don't look so great," she said, "I really don't have any idea what we should do next."
"We've got to think about our immediate survival," Knave said, "Once we find somewhere even half-way secure, then we can start to make more long-term plans."
"Somewhere secure," Altia repeated