That thought steeled Dr. Vecher's will. If breathing a quasi-intelligent, oxygenated goo was unpleasant, plunging a dull blade of error into one's own abdomen would certainly be worse. And at his rank, Vecher was assured elevation sooner or later, even if he didn't die in battle. From immortality to ignominious suicide was a long plummet.
Vecher put the tube to his lips and took a deep, unbearably slow breath. Heaviness spread through his chest; the stuff had the exothermic cool of wet clay against the skin. It felt like a cold hand clenching Vecher's heart, a sense of foreboding made solid.
He moved his tongue around in his mouth before taking another horrible breath. Bits of the goo were caught between his teeth, salty and vaguely alive like a sliver of oyster. They had even flavored the stuff; it tasted of artificial strawberries.
The cheery taste just made the experience more horrible. Were they trying to make this awful?
PILOT
The squadron looked down into the council chamber from the high vantage of an air vent. There were three craft left.
Pilot Ramones had lost her Intelligencer to automatic defenses. The Rix had installed randomly firing lasers in the hallways surrounding the council chamber, and one had gotten extremely lucky. Strong enough to kill a man, it had vaporized Ramones's craft.
Below the squadron, the forms of humans, both hostages and Rix commandos, were vague. The Intelligencers' cameras were too small to resolve large objects at this range. The squadron would have to move closer.
The air in the room was full of interceptors. They hung like a mist, pushed back from the vent by the outflow of air.
"I've got reflections all the way through the room, sir," Hendrik reported. "More than one interceptor per cubic centimeter."
Marx whistled. The Rix certainly had numbers. And these interceptors were larger than the ones his squadron had faced in the hallway. They had seven grasping arms apiece, each suspended from its own rotary wing. The relatively large brain and sensory sack hung below the outstretched arms, so that the craft looked like an inverted spider. Marx had faced this type of small craft before. Even at a tenth this density, this swarm would be tricky to get through.
"We'll fight our way across the top," Marx decided. "Then drop down blind. Try to land on the table."
Most of the hostages were seated at the long table below. The table would be sound-reflective, a good base for listening In Marx's ultrasonar its surface shone with the sharp returns of metal or polished stone.
The three small craft moved forward, clinging to the ceiling. Marx kept an eye on his fuel level. His machine was down to the dregs of its power. If it hadn't been for the brisk tailwind down the last sixty meters of the ventilation system, he doubted his Intelligencer would have made it this far.
The ceiling passed just above Marx's ship, an inverted horizon. Rix interceptors dotted his view like scalloped clouds.
"Damn! I'm hooked already, sir," Woltes announced, twenty seconds into the move.
"Go to full extension," Marx commanded. "Die fighting."
Marx and Hendrik sped forward, leaving behind the throes of Woltes's destruction. Their way seemed clear. If they could make it to the middle of the room, they might be able to make the drop undetected.
Suddenly, Marx's craft reeled to one side. To his right a claw loomed, attached to the lip of his craft. Two more of the interceptor's arms flailed toward his machine.
"Hooked," he announced. He briefly considered taking control of Hendrik's craft. If this mission failed, it would be his Error of Blood, after all.
But perhaps there was another way to make this work.
"Keep going, Hendrik," he said. "You stick to the plan. I'm going straight down."
"Good luck, sir."
Marx extended his Intelligencer's ram spar. He bore into the attacking nanomachine, fighting the strength of its arms. With the last of his battery power, he urged his craft forward. The spar plunged into the central brain sack. Instantly, the interceptor died. But its claws were frozen, still attached to his machine, and a deadman switch released prey markers in a blizzard that enveloped both craft.
"Got you, at least," Marx hissed at the dead spider impaled before him.
Now the fun began.
Marx tipped his machine over, so that the rotary wing pulled his craft and its lifeless burden downward. He furled his sensor posts to half-length, his view becoming blurry and shaky as AI tried to extrapolate his surroundings from insufficient data. The two nanocraft fell together, quickly now.
"Damn!" Hendrik shouted. "I'm hooked."
Marx switched to his second pilot's view. She was carrying two interceptors, and another was closing. He realized that his craft was the only hope.
"You're dead, Hendrik. Make some noise. I've got a new plan."
He released a counterdrone every few seconds as his small craft plummeted downward. Hopefully, they would pick off any interceptors pursuing the prey markers. In any case, his burdened Intelligencer was falling faster than his enemies could. Unpiloted, with a brain the size of a cell, they wouldn't think to turn their rotary wings upside down.
He watched the altimeter. Above him, Hendrik grunted as she fought to keep her craft alive, the sound receding into the distance as he plummeted. Fifty centimeters altitude ... forty ... thirty...
At twenty-two centimeters above the table, Marx's craft collided with another interceptor. Three of the enemy ship's rotary wings tangled in the dead arms of his captor, their thin whiskers of carbon muscle grinding to a halt. He released the remainder of his counterdrones and prayed they would kill the new interceptor before its claws reached his craft. Then he furled his sensor posts completely, and dropped in darkness.
He counted twenty seconds. If his ship had survived, it must be on the table by now. Hendrik's Intelligencer had succumbed a few moments ago, her transmission array ripped into pieces by a medusa host of hungry grapples. It was up to Marx.
A wave of panic flowed over him in the darkened canopy. What if his ship was dead? He'd lost dozens of craft before, but always in acceptable situations; his record was unblemished. But now, everything was at stake. Failure would not be tolerated. His own life was at stake, almost as if he really were down in that tiny ship, surrounded by enemies. He felt like some perversely self-aware Schr dinger's Cat, worrying its own fate before opening the box.
Marx sent the wake-up order.