Zach Hughes - Deep Freeze

Meanwhile, there remained only one small detail to be handled. Now that the two who had done so much damage were out of the underground complex, they could be handled easily. The power that could not be applied inside the installation, lest function be disrupted in all gravity-driven units, was now available for use again. Before silencing the last two of the trespassers, however, the Watcher would recheck through their minds and the memory of the computer aboard their ship the locations of all U.P. worlds.

Sarah de Conde seemed to exist on two levels. Inside, in quivering, agonized waves that threatened to break through and overwhelm her, was the knowledge that almost everyone she loved was dead. Her husband, her mother and her father, her two brothers and two sisters, all of them were dead at the hands of that thing back there below the ice. In that guise, as bereaved woman, she wanted only to be alone with her sorrow, to let the hot tears come; but she was another person, as well, and in that persona there was fury. She was furious that at some time in the distant past beings very much like herself—if the Watcher was to be credited—had decided that they and they alone had the answers, that in their superiority they had the right not only to exterminate billions of lives in the name of some bullshit theory about the quote "ecology" unquote, and, indirectly, although her father and mother and Joshua and the others were not, of course, known to them, to decide to kill no less than half a dozen members of the Webster family.

She spoke only in answer to direct questions from Vinn as the aircar soared upward and tucked itself into the lock of the Crimson Rose. Vinn, puzzled and alarmed by the lack of response to his calls from Kara Berol, hurried from the lock to the control room, his saffer in hand, to find Kara's body.

"I don't think you want to see this," he told Sarah as she entered thebridge.

"Oh, yes, I do," she said, kneeling beside Kara. This latest death merely fed her fury.

"But how could it reach her here?" Vinn asked.

"If it can do this at such a distance, why was it necessary to lure the others to the surface?"

"I will answer that question before you are silenced," the Watcher said through the ship's communicator. "It was necessary to establish a link between your ship and my instruments before the power could be used.

That link was made when you touched down on the surface."

Vinn felt the beginning of panic. He had a semblance of resistance to the Watcher's penetration of his mind, but he had seen what had been done to Kara and he was frightened. He knew that he was very close to death.

"Watcher," he said, "it's over. Your Creators are dead."

"My duty continues," the Watcher said. "You will activate your computer."

"Do it," Sarah said, her eyes blazing.

Vinn pushed buttons. Sarah leaned past him and wrote on a notepad.

BUSTERS.

He nodded. The computer was ready. The Watcher was there, inside.

Vinn's heart pounded as the spatial coordinates of all U.P. worlds flashed rapidly across the screen. He began to punch buttons himself, holding his breath. One by one the fail-safe barriers to arming the planet busters were negated. Sarah stood by his side, her teeth bared in tension.

"Now I have all the information I need," the Watcher said.

Three steps remained to arm the planet busters.

"Wait," Sarah said. "If you kill us, you will be killing your Creators."

"My Creators are dead."

"Not all of them died," Sarah said, her eyes watching Vinn's fingers as they flew over the keyboard. "Some of them were awakened early. Where did they go? You, yourself, said that our rise was too swift. That puzzled you. But if the Creators who were awakened early settled other planets, wouldn't that explain the fact that I can keep you out of my mind?"

There was a long period of silence as the Watcher deliberated that question. Sarah felt the dizziness indicating that the Watcher was trying to enter her mind. She rejected the effort, her anger giving her strength.

A shrill tone of warning came from the weapons system. A screen flashed. The planet busters were armed and ready. Vinn set about overcoming the firing fail-safes.

"We are your Creators," Sarah said, as she watched Vinn's fingers. "And as your Creators we order you to cease your vigil. Your duty has been done. The balance is not endangered."

"You gutted and ruined your original planet of settlement," the Watcher said.

"We have restored Terra II," Sarah said. "It is true that we used up her resources during the centuries that it took for us to rebuild a technology and to get back into space, but we have healed the scars we left."

"Millions of species perished."

"There was only vegetation on Terra II when our ancestors landed there," Sarah said.

"Only rank weeds grow on your Earth," the Watcher said.

"We saved those who remained, the New Ones, the mutated ones. They are an integrated part of our society, quite valuable, as a matter of fact.

The wrongs that our ancestors did were in the far past," Sarah replied.

"A moment in time," the Watcher said.

Sarah felt belittled by being forced to plead for her life, but it was not her life alone. She was thinking of her children.

"You think that you will persuade me to let you live," the Watcher said.

"That is a vain hope. You, Vinn, you prepare some weapon to be used against me. That too, is futile. You will be ready to fire your puny weapon with two more keystrokes, but before you push the last key you will be dead. Not that your weapon could do more than minor harm. What will you do, destroy another of the freezer units? Blast through the ice and earth in an effort to reach me?"

"Do it," Sarah said.

Vinn punched a key. Now there remained only one final keystroke, a very simple one. He held his finger poised over the key.

"I will show you weapons," the Watcher said, and on the largest screen there appeared an image of a good, blue world. A tiny streak of light slashed down from the darkness of space. For long moments nothing happened, then the planet's crust swelled outward and ruptured.

Both Vinn and Sarah had seen the old film of the destruction of Zede worlds in the last space war. This was the same. The planet fragmented.

The molten core flowed and shattered.

"Thus will I restore the balance," the Watcher said.

"You don't have the means," Vinn said, his finger poised, shaking, over the firing key.

Now the screen showed row after row of small ships. Ports opened.

"I will allow you to see the launching of the fleet before I silence you," the Watcher said.

"Now," Sarah said.

Vinn's finger plunged downward, but before it could touch his entire body went limp as the Watcher detonated power inside his skull so forcefully that the milky soup that had been his brain cracked his skull and forced itself out through the cracks, through his ears, through his nose and mouth and eyes. He sank to the floor.

Sarah screamed.

"Can you resist that?" the Watcher asked. "Can you resist that as you reject my presence?"

"I don't know, you son-of-a-bitch," Sarah said, "but we're going to find out." She moved her finger toward the keyboard. The alarm that warned of the readiness of the planet busters was loud in her ears. The firing light blinked glaring red. She steeled herself for oblivion, felt the Watcher's presence. She stabbed down with her finger and the ship shuddered as the missiles carrying the busters sped away, accelerating under power. She felt pressure inside her head, staggered. The viewscreen showed the two weapons burning a bright downward arc through the thin atmosphere of the ice planet, and then there was nothing.

The Watcher saw the two missiles leaving the orbiting ship and accelerate. Counter missiles blasted, but the oncoming weapons were past them and thundering toward the surface ice before the planet's defenses could react.