The Abyss of Time

Chapter Forty Two

     Miller watched the last of the scout drones lift off into the air under the impulse of its four ducted fan blades. About two metres across and sporting a small forest of antennae and sensing devices, the device would detect the electronics of any cyborg or cyborg equipment, no matter how heavily shielded it was, if it passed within a hundred metres of it. Powered by its own mini fusion reactor, it carried enough deuterium to keep it going for several years and had enough intelligence to guide itself without needing instruction from the colony. There would be no need for it to give itself away by communicating with anyone. It would only break its silence if it found something.

     It was the last of twenty such devices, all of which had been sent off the moment they had been completed over the course of the past several weeks. So far, none of them had reported in. Miller thought it likely that several of them, maybe all of them, had been destroyed already by the booby traps the cyborgs had left in the jungle surrounding the colony. Simple devices of tripwires and optical curcuits needing no give-away electronics. If so, it represented a huge loss of resources for the colony, but making no attempt to locate the enemy was unthinkable. The cyborgs would not be sitting idle, hoarding their resources. They would be using everything they had in their search for the tantalum they needed, and if they found it, the colony was finished.

     Miller gave a heavy sigh and headed back to the tent in which he and his family had been living for the past month, along with the Harvesters. A nice family with two teenage children. It was cramped for seven people, but they got on which made it cosy instead of uncomfortable. It could have been a lot worse.

     As he cycled through the airlock and took off his face mask, the smell of human bodies hit him. Something he knew he'd stop noticing before long. Adrian and Cindy Harvester looked briefly up from the virtual school lesson they were attending on their tablet computers. They gave him friendly smiles, the girl tucking a lock of hair behind her ear as she did so. Then they returned to the lesson.

     Zanele was looking less friendly. She was clearly deeply unhappy, not even looking up at him as he went to sit beside her on the long, inflatable chair. "Well, that's the last one on its way," he said. She said nothing. "Hopefully the others are still out there, snooping around. If we're lucky, we should hear something from them soon."

     His wife still said nothing, just glowering silently. Miller waited for a few moments in case she decided to break her silence, but he'd seen her in this mood before. She could glower all day if she wanted to.

     "You know I have to do this," he said at last. "I have to lead the prospecting mission."

     "No you don't," she said at last, turning to fix him with her angry eyes. "You're a soldier, not a miner. Your place is here, to lead the defence if they attack."

     "When they attack, it'll be with thinking war machines. Machines as intelligent as we are. They'll send them in while the cyborgs remain safely outside, out of reach of our weapons. They'll wear us down a few at a time. They'll win. If we're going to win, if we're going to survive, we have to go out and fight them out there."

     "With a suicide chip in your head."

     "Yes. You know why I have to have one."

     Adrian and Cindy looked up from their tablets at the arguing couple, looking unhappy. If there'd been another room they could have gone into, they would have gone. All seven people who shared the tent had gotten used to the enforced intimacy, the lack of privacy when dressing and attending to their sanitary needs. It was easy when everyone was friendly about it, but this was different. Miller felt sorry for them, but he knew that asking Zanele to put on her surface suit so they could go outside would only exacerbate her anger. The two teenagers put their heads down and concentrated on their lesson, therefore, trying to ignore the scene that kept trying to intrude into their attention.