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  ONYX JAVELIN

  A FURY OF ACES 3

  Steve Wheeler

  Dedication

  This story is for those who work with their hands and their souls: those who make, those who create, those who quietly bring into existence that which did not exist before

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Ayana: Haulers Territory on Storfisk

  Harold: Human Settlement on Storfisk

  Games Board: Human Settlement on Storfisk

  Harold: Human Settlement on Storfisk

  Games Board: Human Settlement on Storfisk

  Harold: Human Settlement on Storfisk

  Ayana: Haulers Territory on Storfisk

  Basalt: Urchin Star System

  Ayana: Haulers Territory on Storfisk

  Gjomvik Carrier Haast: Human Settlement on Storfisk

  Harold: Human Settlement on Storfisk

  Basalt: Urchin Star System

  Ayana: Haulers Territory on Storfisk

  Haast: Storfisk System, Gas Giant Moon

  Harold: Human Settlement on Storfisk

  Basalt: Urchin Star System

  Haast: Above Gas Giant Moon

  Ayana: Haulers Territory on Storfisk

  Basalt: Urchin Star System

  Hauler Rose Foxtrot Nineteen: Interstellar Space

  Basalt: Urchin Star System

  Haast: Gas Giant Moon

  Thorn/Basalt: Interstellar Space

  Thorn: Approaching Storfisk System

  Haast: Storfisk

  Rose Foxtrot Nineteen: Storfisk

  Basalt: Above Storfisk

  Senior Hauler Chrysanthemum: Cygnus 5

  Appendix One

  Appendix Two

  Appendix Three

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Ayana

  Haulers Territory on Storfisk

  The snow tigress ACE sat high on the rocky prominence overlooking the vast bowl-shaped territory, which the Haulers' Collective - hund reds of years ago - had put under her stewardship.

  She watched over the tussocky land with its vast areas of Earth-type grasses, low bush and scrubby broom-like native shrubs that was liberally dotted with modified trees from distant Earth. Each tree was a foodstuff of some sort for the animals Haulers had introduced to this area, from bioengineered Earth stock.

  No normal standard human was allowed to visit the great northern continent. She, and thousands of other ACEs, looked af ter this enormous biosphere populated by some of Earth's extinct species.

  She knew it was a great joy for the Haulers to be able to recreate a type of normality for the animals. The planet had only ever had insect life, none of the higher orders of life having ever evolved. Sometimes, she personally thought that the insects, in all their forms and huge sizes, were little more than a necessary evil in that they were an excellent food source for many of the bioengineered animals of Old Earth.

  She took a deep breath, holding it for a few moments as her own systems carried out an analysis of the air's chemistry, noting that the oxygen levels had decreased once again by the tiniest of percentages from her measu rements the week before. She also saw that the ash levels from the latest volcanic eruption thousands of kilometres to the east were dropping. With a little sadness she shook her head and opened a link to one of her closest friends, a magnificent ACE panther, whose area of control was fifty kilometres to her west.

  'Morning, Sven. The ash levels are falling. No more magnificent sunrises or sunsets soon. I shall miss them.'

  Sven's deep voice rang inside her head and, even after all these years, it still made her smile as she knew that he had altered it from its original higher tone.

  'Ayana! My love. Yes, it is true. But maybe you will not have to wait longer than a few more years, as another in that chain will erupt soon enough. A few of them appear to be coming back to life. My greetings to you. My charges are well, although I shall have to formally request an extension to the foraging area further north as the herds are growing quickly. My predator groups are not keeping them in check. How about you?'

  Ayana nodded and quickly brought up the live births to kill ratio for her own area in her head. She smiled to herself, knowing that Sven was a little bit soft and would shelter some of the older animals, when he should allow the predators to kill them off.

  'Mine are well within acceptable limits, Sven. You grow soft, my beautiful friend!'

  There were a few seconds before the reply came. He softly said, 'Yes, it is true. Ever wondered what it would be like to walk amongst humanity again, Ayana?'

  A little pang of longing shot through her as she let out a long sigh. 'I do dream of sipping vodka martinis from a tall, stemmed glass and eating a meal with a knife and fork. But this life as a guardian is a sacred one ... it has its moments. And, one day, I want to ply the stars as a Hauler, so I am happy to do this until I get the call-up.'

  Ayana imagined her friend nodding, considering his reply before he said, 'A long draught of chilled ruby beer in a pewter tankard would do it for me. And a celery and walnut salad with real mayonnaise. The olives do not grow that well here and, besides, it would be against the Haulers' protocols to start making my own olive oil! Just imagine what the Games Board nature program monitors would make of it if they found a panther crushing olive oil in a home-made press!'

  Ayana giggled at the image in her mind. 'Might almost be worthwhile doing it, Sven! Wonder how they would explain it?'

  Sven's laughter boomed inside her head as he replied. 'I actually spoke with ACE Jaff ray about getting some furniture made by the chimpanzees for me. I fancied a woven lounger. He really liked my ideas but wondered if it would interfere with their natural evolution. Said that they are a tricky enough bunch to control at the best of times, especially when any of the stone fruits are ripe. Says the latest is a group who gather the fruit and crush it into the tree hollows, wait a few days, guarding it, and then get pissed on the fermenting brew.'

  Ayana barked out a short laugh. 'That's good! Pleased that no-one has showed them how to build a still!'

  Sven growled with laughter, adding, 'Just as well the Basalt ACEs have gone. Having spent time with Glint and Nail, they would think it so funny that they'd insist it should be done!'

  Ayana nodded, feeling the joy that the Basalt ACEs had brought, and grinned, thinking of how they had smuggled the genius Fritz down with them so he could listen to the songbirds for himself. She sighed, suddenly missing them and their uncontrolled humour and their need to know everything quickly.

  She stood up and stretched then silently padded the thirty or more metres down the rocky outcrop and into her home inside the tree. Looking at the screens which showed her a random selection of vistas across the vast area that was her domain, a slowly flashing icon caught her eye. She frowned, looking at the message from a flock of her swallows that some of the local bison herd had eye infections again. She placed a paw up against one of the consoles. The hard interfaces locked together and seconds later the biological computer, that made up part of the tree, directly linked the little swooping birds to her conscious mind. Noting the flock numbers were low, meaning its collective mind would not be fully sentient,. she gently wished for the birds to have a closer look at the eye infections.

  She used the few minutes it took for the flock to return to the bison to go through the various infections which had occurred in the previous fifteen years, wondering which one it would be. One of the birds deftly landed on the head of one of the huge herbivores and looked down at the runny eye. It sniffed the air around the eye and the information came back to Ayana, who processed it herself, seeing what the bacteria was. Sighing with th
e knowledge that it was one of the more difficult to treat bacteria, she quietly told the whole flock that their favourite food was flying above her tree. A quick calculation showed her that the flight time would be eleven minutes so she recalled the other two closer flocks as well, giving them the same gentle suggestion.

  While she waited she brought hundreds of modified cattle ticks up to room temperature and flooded their enclosures with the medical nanotes which had been successful against the eye infections in other herds. The nanotes swarmed over the ticks, coating them and also forcing their way inside the parasitic insects. The first thing that they did was change the feeding preference in the insects from blood to the highly infectious discharge from the bison's eyes. The next modification was to change the tissue-dissolving fluid that the ticks would normally inject into the host animal to one of the many powerf ul insect-based antibiotics that had been developed by one of the first settlers to the planet hundreds of years before. Finally, the nanotes programmed the destruction of the ticks by internal overheating as soon as their jobs had been completed. When the nanotes were well on the way to having the ticks readied, and the three flocks were nearby, she released thousands of mayflies above the tree. Moments later, as the birds came close together to feed, their collective mind rose to just at the level of instructable sentience. She let them feed then asked the birds to collect the ticks, that the tree itself was transporting up to its top branches in small gel packages through its internal plumbing, and go out and place them around the infected bison's eyes.

  Harold

  Human Settlement on Storfisk

  'Mum! I don't want oats and muesli for breakfast with just milk! I want it with fruit juice like Glint had, and Jenna is having toast, eggs and fruit as well so why can't I have that?'

  Marie looked down at her ten-year-old green-eyed, olive sk.inned child, with her long, gleaming chestnut hair, and smiled. She thought of the whirlwind visit of Basalt and its eclectic crew, who had stayed with the large Spitz family a few weeks earlier. She had known the effects would be felt by the family for a long time to come and frowned a little at her daughter.

  'Because, Rebecca, I know that you will only eat a half of each and leave the rest to be fed to the house tree. You know how I feel about that. It's a waste.'

  Rebecca looked up, cheerfully saying, 'OK, then just give me what I will eat, Mum. I wish Glint was still here though. He was so funny. But at least I have Harold so I suppose it's all right.'

  Jenna, Marie's other daughter, whose lighter skin and blonde hair reflected her father's strong Old Earth Nordic origins, spoke from the other side of the table. 'So where is that dragon? I bet he's high up the tree stalking the winged rodents again. I wish he wouldn't do that, his breath just so stinks afterwards. And he is so gross when he has killed one, being so pleased with himself. And besides, Marko and Topaz are very good at creating the ACEs, but I will be much better. Everyone says so.'

  Marie looked at the fifteen-year-old and silently agreed she would be very good at the family business, as some of her creations were already held in high regard throughout the region. However, she did not agree that Jenna's builds would be as good as Marko's, because even though he was a media star, had a simply superb self-propelled, self-repairing midi design and fabrication computer called Topaz (which she did not believe was a sub-Augmented Intelligence as Marko asserted, but a full AI), and she loved him as her little brother, it was a fact that the cat, Nail, the mechanical spider, Flint, and the creature, Glint -together with the one that they had created by themselves called Spike -were a fabulous group of Artificially Created Entities the likes of which she had rarely seen before.

  As she served the children their breakfasts, the large dining room slowly filled with the other members of the Spitz family, including her two husbands and their other two wives together with the remaining younger children. Catlike creatures strolled in to check the contents of their feed bowls, as the watchbirds -originally kea from Old Earth stock - also checked in to pick up their breakfasts before flying back out to their posts high in the huge, altered tree that had been the generational family home for hundreds of years.

  Just as Marie had finished making toast, the metre-long dragon that Marko had bought for the family as a special gift arrived in his usual style by flying in through one of the open window ports and gliding quickly around the large high ceilinged space, cheerfully barking each name of the family members. Finishing his circuit, he landed amongst the cats, bustling them out of their feeding bowls to growled and hissed insults ... their intellect was on a par with petulant four-year-old humans.

  Harold dismissively yawned at each of them in turn and announced that they had nothing in their feed bowls which interested him anyway. After folding his four wings snugly down against his body, the dragon walked upright on his two rear legs, swishing his long tail from side to side, across to the main table to quickly climb up the back of the senior husband's intricately carved high-backed chair.

  He placed his two small true hands on Peter's shoulder while grasping the back of the chair with the long toes on his more powerful rear hands-feet, then peered around in front of Peter's face as the large solidly built man quietly shovelled large spoonfuls of oats, muesli and finely chopped dried fruit steeped in milk into his mouth.

  Peter looked into the ·eyes of the exquisitely beautif ul, almost classic ancient-Chinese, dragon's head. 'Your breath stinks again, Harold. I need you to go brush your teeth, and floss, please, then come back, as you have flying-rat fragments in your teeth. And walk, please. No flying inside, OK!'

  Harold nodded. 'Oh, yes, that would be sensible.'

  He leapt down to the floor, ignoring the insults from the cats concerning his oral hygiene, and scampered across to the nearest ablutions on all fours. He pushed the screen open, then jumped up onto the nearest basin before reaching out to pull some floss from the toothbrush branch with his small hands. He carefully flossed between his teeth, smiling wide into the mirror to check he had removed all the scales and meat fragments that came from his night-time encounters with the vicious little gliding rodents which constantly tried to gain access to the family tree. Satisfied, he snapped off one of the numerous quick-growing toothbrushes from the scented branch above the basin, vigorously brushed his teeth and tongue then dropped the used brush into the basin, which had already absorbed the discarded floss.

  He washed his hands for good measure, wiped them dry on the long, slowly moving soft fibre by the screen door then walked back to the table where his chair had been moved to be between the two husbands. Clambering up, he looked down into his food bowl, with its dried fruits, processed meats, cereal cakes and pot of yoghurt, and reflected that since he had been woken by Marko, some months before while onboard Basalt, and told of his special tasks, his life had been very good. Judy, another of the wives, handed him a glass of fruit juice which he gratefully accepted, drinking deep of the delicious nectar that he knew, from his data files, was that of white nectarines.

  The tall dignified man on his other side spoke. 'So how many of the little bastards did you get last night, Harold?'

  'Six more confirmed dead, John, and ripped up a few more, so I don't actually know how many more will succumb to their injuries. But their numbers are increasing every night. I am intrigued that they appear to be communicating more between themselves. They also seem to be using diversionary tactics as well.'

  He saw the look that passed between the men. He cocked his head, then opened a laser link from one of his eyes across to the house comms and memory hub, querying all known behaviour of the creatures. After processing the information he looked up at John and dropped his voice to a low murmur.

  'So we may have something more than just an ordinary seasonal infestation?'

  Peter smiled down at this latest family member, resisting the urge to pat his sleek, beautif ul black-pearl-coloured head. 'Marko, Topaz and Stephine, plus Patrick, certainly made you well, Harold. They created in you a creat
ure of considerable potential. I aspire to someday make one as special as you. Yes, we need to have further discussions about this. But first we need you to guard Rebecca and Jenna well. You know about the Games Board visit to their school today. The Board know who we are and they take a great interest in your makers.'

  Harold nodded and wondered if he should share with the men what Fritz had given him to force on the Games Board by whatever means available to him, but decided that it was best not to complicate matters further as he knew that the whole family was agitated over the visit of the Games Board recruiter. Instead, he nodded.

  'Yes, it should prove to be an interesting day.'

  Peter looked across at Harold, then said, 'Um, Harold ... it might be a good idea to be nice to the cats. They are a tricky lot at the best of times and are good at finding and killing the rats. I think that you should be nice to them as you never know when you will need backup.'

  Harold pondered the comment for a few seconds, then nodded and looked at John, who had a small smile on his face, then across at Peter.

  'Yes, you are right. I shall try to befriend them, but I find them such a moaning lot!'

  The two men chuckled in agreement.

  The family finished its breakfast, leaving their plates and bowls on the table. Harold quickly cleaned his teeth again, then, after everyone had left to get ready for the day ahead, he perched on the back of Peter's chair to watch the large dining table clean up. Small, dark green shoots grew, with a slow and dignified motion, up out of the living table's surface to find, then slowly wipe, the insides of the wooden platters and bowls clean. Large leaflike segments of the table opened as the rootlike shoots gathered then gently took the clean tableware down into the table itself, storing them until needed again.