A Star Wheeled Sky

by Brad R Torgersen

  “This is true,” Lethiah said. “But it’s the only thing I have to give you all. I’m the last of my people. Perhaps, even, the last woman from Earth. I can’t fight wars for you, nor can I defeat your enemies. But I can point you to the tools you might need, to do the fighting for yourselves. And that is why we have to go in there.”

  Garsina felt the force of Lethiah’s words, and could sense their effect on the others. Antagean was still skeptical, but sobered enough by the possibility of a threat outside of the Waywork to take the matter seriously. Captain Fazal was an infantryman who understood clear objectives, and the will to take them. Elvin was a fighter at heart, who’d served Starstate Constellar and Family Oswight with equal fidelity. Garsina herself was not a fighter, but realized nothing in the universe remained stable forever. If this shadow had not come to disrupt the Waywork, something else would have done it. The time for humanity to be unleashed had arrived. That opportunity was worth more to her than her own life. Especially if it meant potentially keeping the power of the Waymakers out of Nautilan hands. Where it would surely be abused, to the detriment of all.

  They talked more, about tactics this time. Captain Fazal used a dim, red light from his combat pack to illuminate the dust at their feet. He drew lines and symbols in the dust, explaining himself to his men, as well as to the leadership council. He would make a feinting attack on the bivouacked landing site, drawing off the attention of the Nautilan troops, while Antagean—with Axabrast acting in the role he knew best—made for the pyramid’s portico. Any enemies discovered inside would be Antagean’s and Axabrast’s to handle. To make the feint truly effective, Fazal couldn’t spare any of his men.

  Zoam Kalbi was left to choose which team he wanted to be with.

  The little infotainer—glasses forgotten for the moment—had sulked all evening. If he’d found the expedition fascinating or fun to that point, now that it came down to actual shooting, the man’s mood had soured considerably.

  “I’ve said it before,” he groused, “we’re working against Starstate Nautilan when we ought to be working with them.”

  “Enough of that nonsense,” Elvin snarled. “If you won’t actively help us, then you can stay here. On your own. Whatever happens to you is not our problem.”

  Kalbi took several deep breaths, then mumbled about going with Antagean’s group.

  “Fine,” Elvin said, “but you stay the hell out of our way. There will only be five of us, with just two armed.”

  “Three armed,” Garsina said, holding up her carbine.

  “Lady,” Elvin said, “we never did get around to showing you how to use that properly.”

  “I’ll have to learn on the job,” she said.

  “By my side, Lady, please,” Elvin implored her.

  “Of course, Elvin. Of course.”

  “I think it’s settled, then,” Lieutenant Commander Antagean said, and put out his hand—a mere shadow in the light of the moons—to Captain Fazal. Who shook it.

  “No wireless is going to play hell with our ability to talk to each other,” he said.

  “That’s a disadvantage both sides will have to deal with,” Wyodreth said. “I think once you hit that camp, there’ll be no question on our part—as to when we should run for the pyramid entrance. After that, we’ll have to depend on Lethiah. Captain, don’t feel inclined to stay and spectate. Once we’re inside, and you and your men have had enough fun for one night, make a hasty retreat for the wreck. They won’t be able to successfully track you through the ruins until morning, at which point you and your men ought to have gone to ground. We’ll either have been able to do something with the machines inside, or not. If the answer is ‘not’ then…well, dammit, Captain, I can’t say much more than good luck.”

  “May God favor the bold and the free,” Fazal said.

  “Victory with honor, hurrah, hurrah,” the entire group said quietly amongst themselves—save for Kalbi, who merely prepared himself to follow wherever Antagean and Axabrast led.

  Hours crept by, as Captain Fazal carefully moved his troops to where he wanted them. Despite the moonlight, the ruins made for excellent cover. The security on the wire at the aerospace landing site never seemed to notice, if ever they detected any movement. Eventually, all of the TGO personnel were gone, and their weapons and equipment with them. Leaving Garsina to stare at the portico with the others. She saw no movement of any kind from within, though the light coming from the interior was quite noticeable. In fact, with the ruins being a warren of shadows, the portico was now the brightest thing in any direction.

  “Uh-oh,” Wyodreth said.

  “What’s wrong?” Garsina asked.

  “I’m looking over at the camp. There’s a squad moving out toward the pyramid. Maybe ten people. I hope Captain Fazal sees that. If they get to the entrance before we do…”

  The answer to the lieutenant commander’s question came a few moments later, in the form of antipersonnel rockets which lanced from the ruins—at least a kilometer away from Garsina’s position—and struck the bivouacked landing site along the length of its perimeter. A loud, automated warning horn began to blow, down on the landing field itself, and dozens of troops began to spill from the bivouacs out toward the sandbagged defensive positions, which opened up with their heavy weaponry. The cracking stutter of the big guns could almost be felt, even this far from the landing site. Little arcs of tracer fire—bullets made luminescent in the darkness—speared at the ruins, from which the rocket attacks had come.

  Suddenly, a second set of rocket attacks blasted from the ruins, even father away from Garsina’s position than the first. The unguided missiles hit one of the sandbagged security positions, several shots at once. The sandbagged hole went up in a fireball which illuminated the night sky for several seconds.

  “That detail headed toward the pyramid is double-timing back to help their comrades,” Wyodreth said, with no small degree of satisfaction. “Remind me to put Captain Fazal in for a commendation. Meanwhile, Mister Axabrast. Shall we?”

  “Aye, lad,” the older man said, drawing his sidearm. “Lady? Mister Kalbi? Madam Lethiah?”

  Antagean went first, with Lethiah on his heels, Kalbi in the middle, Garsina behind him, and Elvin bringing up the rear. Garsina crouched and ran at the same time, remembering having watched the TGO troops do it earlier in the day. Then realized nobody else was crouching, and simply stood up, putting one foot in front of the other as fast as her legs would carry her. The moonlight shining down on the ruins in front of the portico made it plain that there would be nowhere to hide. They’d be fully exposed for at least the last fifty meters. And they still didn’t know what waited for them inside.

  “Go, go, go,” Elvin said to Garsina’s rear as she pumped her legs, the bandolier of ammunition slapping uncomfortably across her chest, and the carbine feeling heavy in her hands. She was careful to keep her fingers away from both the trigger and the safety while she moved. The last thing she wanted was to accidentally shoot herself, or anyone else in the remaining leadership group.

  Wyodreth went into the portico first. Almost immediately, there were shouts, screams, and the sound of the lieutenant commander discharging his battle rifle. The shots were like physical impacts on Garsina’s ear drums, and she cringed, resisting the urge to slap her hands over her head. With Elvin close behind her, she crowded into the portico behind Kalbi and Lethiah, who were crowded behind Antagean, who was angling his weapon down the length of the corridor at the backs of several fleeing people. Three bodies lay on the illuminated floor—their blood staining the hexagonal pattern of glowing lines which spread a diffuse light throughout the hexagonally cross-sectioned space. They’d each been struck at neck level, where their armor didn’t cover.

  Elvin aimed his sidearm over Garsina’s shoulder and discharged several shots at the fleeing enemy, which did make Garsina drop her weapon—to dangle by its sling—so that she could slap her hands over her ears.

  Elvin then quickly swivel
ed his head to look to their rear, and reversed himself—aiming back the way they had come. Garsina thought she saw a flicker of movement in the ruins. Several more shots erupted from Axabrast’s sidearm, and two human-shaped shadows toppled out of the darkness. They awkwardly pawed forward half a meter, then collapsed completely. Not to move again. Elvin grunted with satisfaction, and ejected the magazine from its housing within the weapon’s single, use-worn handle. Without looking, he removed a fresh magazine from its perch on his gunbelt, slapped the magazine into the sidearm, worked the sidearm’s action, then turned his attention to the men Wyo had killed.

  Antagean stared at the people lying on the floor of the entrance. They didn’t look any different from Constellar troops, save for the fact that their uniforms were a different style and a different color. They were also young, and male, their eyes staring in empty surprise at the alien ceiling. Almost as if the last thing they had expected, at the pyramid’s main entrance, had been an enemy officer using a rifle.

  “How many?” Elvin demanded.

  “Didn’t…didn’t count them,” the lieutenant commander said, still staring down at the bodies. His eyes were large, and he looked sick.

  Elvin—for once—took pity on the man.

  “It’s a terrible thing, lad,” he said. “And you won’t be able to make it okay with yourself for a while. Just keep moving, see? We’ve come this far. Don’t let the gears seize up in the engine now. Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving.”

  Antagean literally shook his head, swallowed several times, seemed to hear the ongoing battle at the Nautilan aerospace site not far from the portico, and said, “Right. Sorry. Uhhh, okay. Sorry. Let’s go.”

  Elvin slapped the lieutenant commander on the shoulder, and the businessman’s son, who’d turned soldier, stepped over the dead, and trooped off down the corridor. Lethiah—who didn’t seem bothered by the bodies at all—followed, then Kalbi after her. The infotainer seemed even more horrified by the sight of the dead Nautilan troops than Wyodreth had been, and he had to be prodded to continue.

  “Follow Antagean!” Elvin roared, pushing the small man in front of Garsina, “or we leave you behind!”

  Kalbi moved, but his actions were robotic. Forced.

  Garsina moved too. Seeing the blood was something she knew she was never going to forget. It had been fresh, and dark, filling the air with a slight coppery sent. Who those young men had been, and where they had come from, Garsina would never know. As Elvin had patiently explained to her, back aboard the starliner, good people did bad things to each other in war. It was just the way of things. You couldn’t stop and judge it in the moment. Forces were at work, well above the consciences of single men. Though single men—and women—would bear the burden for those deaths well beyond the battlefield.

  They reached a right angle in the corridor. Beyond appeared to be two ramps, one of them switchbacking down, and the other switchbacking up.

  Everyone was panting.

  “Did ye notice?” Elvin said.

  “What?” Garsina asked.

  “No weapons on those unlucky fellas.”

  She hadn’t thought about it before, but what Elvin said was true. The bodies at the portico had been unarmed. Antagean must have fired in pure reflex. Would Garsina have done the same?

  “Up or down?” Wyo demanded of Lethiah.

  “Up,” the old woman said. For someone claiming to be her age, she was remarkably quick on her feet when she wanted to be.

  “Those switchbacks could be deadly,” Wyo said.

  “We’ll cover you,” Elvin said, nudging Garsina, who brought her carbine up in both hands—still being careful to keep her fingers away from the safety, and the trigger.

  “Okay,” Wyo said, looking at her, then her weapon, then back at her. He nodded once, which got a similar nod from Elvin, and then the lieutenant commander was spinning around the first switchback, with Elvin and Garsina directly behind. They pointed their weapons straight over him, as he went up the ramp, and then crouched at the landing for the next level. Garsina and Elvin followed Antagean up, then all three of them peered around to the next ramp, which Antagean sprinted up again, waiting at the next landing, and so on, and so forth. If the Nautilan troops were going to make a stand of some sort, they certainly weren’t going to do it here. Garsina was thankful, simply because for every level in the ramp they cleared without resistance, she didn’t have to do anything more deadly than sprint.

  At the ramp’s top, a huge hall revealed itself. Like the rest of the internal parts of the pyramid, light shone from a hexagonal pattern in both the floor and the ceiling. This light reflected off the metallic casings of what Garsina could only describe as machinery built in the vague mold of insects.

  “The machines,” Lethiah said.

  Only, they didn’t seem to move, nor react to anything else going on around them. As for the Nautilan troops who’d been encountered earlier, they scattered. All save for an old man who’d crumpled ten meters away. He was on all fours, coughing and gagging horribly, with a handkerchief clutched over his mouth. He paid no attention to Antagean as the lieutenant commander approached, his battle rifle raised to the shoulder. The DSOD Reservist stopped one meter away, and said in Mariclesh, “If you don’t surrender, I will shoot you.”

  “Shoot him anyway,” Elvin growled.

  Now the man on the floor looked up. His face was wrinkled, pale, and sweaty. A trail of blood led from the corner of his mouth, down his chin, and leaked across the front of his uniform.

  “Starstate Constellar, in the flesh,” the old man wheezed in Mariclesh, with a surprisingly clean accent.

  “According to Constellar Law of War, I am taking you into custody, Colonel,” Wyodreth said. Garsina didn’t know how Antagean knew the Nautilan man’s rank, but guessed it had something to do with the little pins and insignia on the man’s uniform. Which wasn’t fantastically different from the uniforms DSOD troops wore, except for the fact that the old man did not use armor.

  “Doesn’t matter whose custody I am in now, I am as good as dead,” he replied.

  “Lad, we don’t have time for this,” Elvin said.

  “No, wait,” Lethiah said, leaving the top of the ramp to walk over to where the Nautilan officer still kneeled. She knelt at his side, and used one of the handkerchiefs he’d dropped on the illuminated floor to wipe the blood from his face. Then she helped him to stand.

  “Much obliged, madam,” he said, still using Mariclesh. Then he put both hands on her shoulders and squared her to him. His eyes got large.

  “You must be the ‘one’ they talked about,” he said, almost reverently.

  “Who is they?” Lethiah asked.

  The Nautilan officer motioned an arm weakly about them, aiming a finger first at one of the machines, then at another, and then another still.

  “You talked to them?” Lethiah said, her own eyes getting big.

  “More like, they talked to us,” he said. “Through a poor young Waypoint pilot who’s mind is now jelly because I was foolish enough to bring her here, hoping she could help me divine the secret of the Waymakers.”

  “Where are the others? Where are their weapons?” Wyodreth demanded.

  “Too swift for me, as you can see, Lieutenant Commander. Regarding our weapons, the sentinels took care of that. Though I don’t know why they bothered. Armor-piercing bullets never even scratched them.”

  “You shot at the machines?” Lethiah said, her mouth hanging half-open.

  “Not me personally, woman, my men! Well, the Kosmarch’s men, anyway. I was never anyone’s idea of a foot trooper. Which is now more obvious than ever. So if it’s a prisoner you want, it’s a prisoner you have, Lieutenant Commander. For as long as the cancer lets me live. Which might not be long.”

  The old man started coughing again, making wretched noises as he doubled over, spitting blood onto the floor.

  Garsina looked around her, at the spectacular machines which dominated the hall. They wer
e huge, intricate in design, yet imposing, and oh so alien.

  “Will they hurt us?” Garsina asked Lethiah.

  “Difficult to say,” the old woman replied. “We never shot at them before.”

  “If you are the ‘one’ they talked about,” the Nautilan colonel said, “you have a place of special status in their strange hierarchy. It’s one thing to guess about the motivations and intentions of the Waymakers—I’ve been doing that most of my adult life. It’s another thing entirely to parley with one. Or at least, parley with a Waymaker representative.”

  “What did they say?” Lethiah asked.

  “We confuse them, as much or even more so than they confuse us. But they seem to think you’re special.”

  “Can you do what you need to do?” Wyo asked the old woman. “In this room?”

  “I should be able to,” she said, and walked quickly to where a collection of different Keys were all recessed into compact platforms which appeared to sprout from the floor itself. She walked up and down the rows, looking for something, then shouted an obscenity that Garsina did not understand, save for the specifically profane way in which it was shouted.

  “It’s gone,” she said.

  “What’s gone?” Elvin asked.

  “The Anchor I use to talk to them. It’s a specific one. It’s the only one I’ve ever had any luck with.”

  “Was it smaller than most?” the Nautilan officer asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I am afraid my kosmarch scooped that up. That’s the one our Waypoint pilot had in her hands, when she was being pulled by the sentinels’ strings.”

  “I don’t understand,” Garsina said. “Why can’t you just use another?”

  “I’ve never had any of the Anchors go missing,” Lethiah said. “If I knew how to use any of the others, I would. But I’ve never had any success. There’s just the one, and now it’s gone.”

  Antagean’s hands gripped the handle on his battle rifle so hard, Garsina could hear the polymer squeaking in complaint. His jaw was particularly prominent—even more than normal—with muscles flexing up and down both sides of his face.