Tara frowned as she rummaged in a hold, searching for extra parts to use on the mind probe. She did not know the identity of the tech company masters. What she did know was that she had a better understanding of ancient cyborg technology than anyone else she’d met so far. That was one of the reasons she’d been sent to Avalon IV.
Ah. This part should do.
She picked it up and stuffed it into a carrying pouch.
She cocked her head. A sudden feeling told her it was time to get back down to the crypt. Cade was a cagey fellow. Could he talk his way out of this? She frowned. He had divined far too much. He was supposed to be a soldier, a thug in uniform, not a thinker putting two and three together. It was a good thing the Web-Mind hadn’t taken Cade’s words to heart.
Still, if the Web-Mind starting talking to him again—
Tara headed for the exit, finding herself moving faster. There was no reason why she should feel this way. Maybe it was simply woman’s intuition alerting her.
“Damn,” she said, beginning to run.
Tara hurried out of the hut in the yard. The bad feeling had become even worse. She glanced at the bowmen on the ramparts. They seemed content. She headed for the cave, tightened her muscles to push through the invisible barrier—and was shocked when it wasn’t there. She kept feeling with her left hand. The right held an emitter. Why would the Web-Mind have dropped the barrier?
She peered down the corridor as the elevator door opened. “Cade,” she hissed.
Cade stepped out of the elevator, a laser emitter in his right hand.
She aimed and fired, hitting him in the shoulder. He jumped backward with startling speed, disappearing from view.
Tara turned and ran, zigzagging, sprinting out of the cave and shouting a warning at the sentries on the rampart. They must kill the intruder or he would harm the gods below. She reached the hut, stunned Cade hadn’t raced after her and fired. Half in terror, she opened the door and fled for the subterranean stairs. She had to reach the X-ship. She had to get out of here before the freed Ultra killed her.
***
Cade hadn’t chased Tara because he staggered back into the elevator. The beam had grazed his left shoulder, feeling as if someone had shoved a red-hot poker into his flesh.
Laser shots were deadly for many reasons, this among them. The intense heat incapacitated and brought about shock. Cade had immense bodily resources, but he couldn’t just shrug this off.
With a groan, he pressed buttons. The door closed and the elevator started down. He slid to the floor, panting, trying to keep himself alert. Sweat pooled on his heavy features. He blinked rapidly, attempting to discipline his pain receptors so his body would obey him. He couldn’t understand why Tara hadn’t taken advantage of her strike and charged, killing him. Maybe she was waiting for the elevator so she could come down here after him.
The elevator stopped and the door opened. Panting, Cade tried to rise and failed. He gritted his teeth. If he lost, he would die. He would have failed in his last promise to his wife.
“Not…going…to happen,” he whispered.
He started crawling like before. This time, he headed for the mind-probe chamber. There should be medical equipment in there.
He climbed to his feet, not daring to look at his grazed shoulder. Soon, he stumbled into the chamber, looking around. Over there by the chair—
He stumbled, swayed as his mind threatened to blank out—
“I’m not going to faint again,” he muttered.
He thumped onto his butt beside the mind-probe chair and used his good arm, finding a small spray bottle. He looked at his shoulder. The fabric there was burned away. He used his good hand and ripped away more cloth. A red burn on his deltoid oozing with blood—
He clenched his teeth and wiped the blood away with ripped-off cloth. He groaned at the pain. His head pounded and blackness swam before him. The agony… He found himself breathing heavily several seconds later, still conscious. Dully, he raised the small canister and depressed the nozzle. Quick-heal mist hissed onto the laser burn.
That stung, but it wasn’t agony. Almost immediately, a cooling sensation told him the quick-heal was helping.
Glancing at the shoulder, he knew he’d sprayed enough. Yawning, he had a nearly overpowering desire to lie down and sleep. Instead, he rummaged through the med pouch and found a flask of—he unscrewed the cap, finding water. He guzzled it, and that helped keep his eyes open.
Why hadn’t Tara attacked after burning him? He’d staggered backward into the elevator. Maybe she’d failed to see his serious condition. But if she hadn’t attacked…what had she done?
There was a noise.
The soldier froze, listening intently. Was Tara in the crypt? He didn’t hear anything more.
Wiping his sweaty face, the soldier attempted to concentrate. What was the correct tactical move? Maybe he needed to reconnoiter and find out. Did that mean another trip upstairs? He wasn’t sure, and found that his mind was still fuzzy.
“Get a grip, soldier. Now is the moment to act.”
***
Tara slammed another compartment shut. This was the last unit where she needed to do that. The X-ship should respond if the charges did their work.
Breathing hard, damp with perspiration, she hurried down a corridor and climbed a ladder up a turbo-lift. Reaching the next level, she raced along a corridor. What if the soldier had made it aboard the X-ship? She’d locked the main hatch. Therefore, that should be impossible. But that damn Ultra had succeeded in things that should have easily thwarted him. He’d had a laser. He’d escaped from his cell and the crypt. In some manner, he’d gotten past the androids. Why hadn’t the Web-Mind contacted her aboard the X-ship?
Tara reached the piloting compartment. It was tiny like a coffin. She opened the hatch, slid onto the padded seat and closed the hatch. She reached back to her neck and removed a piece of pseudo-flesh. Picking up the ancient jack, she shoved that into the slot, the jack reaching the junction that touched the upper part of her spinal cord.
She grunted, but nothing happened.
“You idiot,” she muttered. She hadn’t activated flight control. First, though, she had to blow the explosives carefully inserted this past year.
Tara picked up a small box with a button on it. If this didn’t work—
She licked her lips, closed her eyes and stabbed the button with her right thumb.
The X-ship rumbled and shook as a noise like thunder told her the explosives had detonated.
Her heart was beating fast. If this worked, she could survive Cade, survive the Web-Mind, too, for that matter. It was an ancient and foolish Web-Mind. The resurgence of the cyborgs would need cunning, young and fresh Web-Minds.
Now was the moment of truth. She flipped a switch…and the X-ship began to activate.
Her eyelids fluttered. She lay back, a spot on the padded seat for the jack in her neck. She arched and sucked in air. She no longer saw with her eyes, but with her visual cortex. She used the X-ship’s sensors. There was fuel in the tanks. It still possessed ancient armaments. Would they work?
In the tiny piloting chamber, Tara Alor grinned. She was whole again, part of an X-ship. She remembered how to do this all right.
“Engage main engine,” she whispered.
The X-ship began to shake as old gravity dampeners went to work. Slowly, the X-ship started moving upward like Arthur’s sword Excalibur emerging from the stone that had held it.
“Excalibur,” Tara said. “I’ve named you.” She laughed wildly as the X-ship gained velocity, moving past rubble.
Then the sleek and ancient vessel was free, its thrusters burning and killing the bowmen on the ramparts and those in the caves as fire blew through the tunnels.
Tara no longer cared, as her sensors sought the nearest orbital up in space.
Chapter Forty-Two
Cade pulled his arms down that had covered the back of his head and picked himself off the floor. The quake was over. It
had lasted long enough, and it was much hotter down here than before.
As he stood, he realized that hadn’t been an earthquake. It had been Tara blasting off with the X-ship.
He thought about that, realizing the local Nian would be dead. The exhaust from the thruster would have killed them. Would the elevator still work?
Cade shook his head. He’d worry about that when it was time to go up. The crypt still had lights, which meant it still had power. With Tara gone…he had time to roam the crypt.
That meant he could take his time—if he did it quickly enough—and make sure the Web-Mind died the final death. Then, he would have to make sure the tech company couldn’t land later and reconstruct a Web-Mind from the example down here. That meant he had to find explosives that would destroy and pulverize everything down here, keeping the secrets of the ancient cyborgs to the distant past.
It was time to get to work.
***
The X-ship sped up through the atmosphere. The vessel was an atmospheric and low orbital space superiority fighter. It was bigger than other craft of its type and had proved effective in countless battles.
Tara Alor was jacked in and secure. She was grinning, delighting in the feeling of freedom that flying an X-ship gave her. She was more akin to a bird or bat than a regular pilot. Her sensors felt the wind on her titanium skin. She heard the whistle and detected enemy with far-ranging sensors just as a bat used its natural abilities. She didn’t need to move a joystick or push a button. She thought and the X-ship reacted directly to her jacked-in brain.
As Tara lay back on the padded couch, her eye-sensors saw an orbital up there far above the highest clouds. The platform guarded the planet from hostiles. It was not programmed to look down, although it would notice her once she approached within a kilometer.
“You ready, baby?” she whispered.
Oh, she was ready. She just hoped Excalibur had adequate armaments to do the job.
The indicators in her mind said the weapons systems were ready. Would the explosives in the warheads still work? Would her guns jam, explode or do something else unexpected?
The X-ship continued up as Tara targeted the orbital. She had three ancient missiles and launched the first one.
The missile left the X-ship’s M-tube, a good sign, ejected far enough away—it did not ignite, but plummeted downward, tumbling end-over-end.
Tara saw this with the ship’s sensors and wondered if she should detonate the nuclear warhead. No, she wouldn’t worry about it.
“Fire number two,” she said.
Another missile ejected from the M-tube.
On her padded seat in the piloting chamber, Tara held her breath.
The missile’s thruster ignited, and it roared upward, building velocity as it did.
Tara shouted with glee. The ancient weaponry worked! It worked! She was going to leave Avalon IV. She was going to reach Rohan Mars, and they could come back down and collect the Web-Mind. The future looked wonderful indeed.
The X-ship continued for space as the missile led the way. Tara waited—
Orbital lasers struck, beaming the now fast-rotating missile. The trick was not giving a laser any time-on-target. The missile had mirror-bright hull plating. It would take seconds for the lasers to scour the mirrors and make the protective hull less effective.
All the while, the missile closed on the orbital.
“Now,” Tara said.
The missile pulsed upward. The orbital lasers burned down—the warhead ignited with a shape-charge explosion, the blast, radiation, heat and EMP directed up at the orbital.
Tara held her breath.
The orbital crumbled, blasted. It shifted in its path and intense heat began melting it.
“A kill,” Tara said.
She kicked in more thrust, the X-ship jumping for freedom. The way was open for her to reach the waiting spaceship out there.
“Glorious,” she said. “This is glorious.”
***
Dr. Halifax did not agree. The small man watched from the sensor station in the piloting chamber aboard the Descartes. The scout was getting low on battery power, but it still ran silently, having drifted ten thousand kilometers from its former position, meaning it was two million, ten thousand kilometers from Avalon IV. Thankfully, the teardrop-shaped vessel the tonnage of a Concord missile cruiser had remained on the other side of the proscribed planet.
Now, however, on the Descartes side of the planet, the doctor witnessed the thermonuclear destruction of an orbital.
His throat went dry and his stomach curled with terror. Frantically, he searched nearby space for the launching vessel. That he couldn’t find anything intensified his fear.
Who else was out there? Why hadn’t he spotted them before this? He should have known there were more players in the game—
“Group Six,” he moaned. That made perfect sense. Group Six must have sent a backup vessel. The Director didn’t trust him. The old man had made that perfectly clear on Earth.
Halifax cursed himself for being an idiot. Titus—
“No, no,” Halifax told himself. “Titus will see that I remained on the job. This might win me a promotion.”
The doctor nodded. His impeccable logic—
“Hold on,” he said. The sensor scope was showing something else.
With his face pressed against the rubber lining, Halifax watched a vessel rising from the planetary surface. Either that, or someone had inserted an atmospheric ship, it had looped underneath the orbital and made this assault.
“Hold on, hold on,” Halifax said. He replayed what the sensors had seen a few moments earlier. “I’ll be damned.” A missile had sped up at the orbital. The missile had been launched from deep in the atmosphere. Did that mean this ship had climbed from deep in the atmosphere? Had the tech people launched a ship that inserted into the atmosphere, it had looped low and come up here…
Halifax frowned. Just what in the hell was going on? What kind of ship was that? He didn’t recognize its type.
The small doctor tugged at his collar. This was a mystery. A deep enough mystery meant some would want this kept secret, and others would dearly want to know. Perhaps his information had just increased in value. Yet, if that were true, that would mean he was in even greater danger than he thought. He had to remain hidden. Yes. At all costs, he couldn’t let anyone find him here.
Well, he was here. He was the Group Six agent, or he could still remain a freewheeling dealer of secret data. What was the ship going to do next? If it flew to the teardrop-shaped vessel, he would know much more.
Exhaling, not sure he was up to this, Dr. Halifax wished Cade were here. If the man was still alive, he might have answers to all these questions.
One thing was clear: if Halifax survived this, and the planetary ship and teardrop-shaped vessel left, he could land the Descartes on the planet and pick up Cade—if he could find the man on the planet, and if Cade was still alive.
Chapter Forty-Three
Cade was alive all right, as he explored the crypt from one end to the other. He found all sorts of interesting equipment, weaponry and explosives. He even found some food and water that Tara must have carted down here.
Gathering what he needed, he started rigging explosives. He would worry about the elevator once he was done down here. He wasn’t sure of his destiny, if this was it or he could figure out a way to leave Avalon IV. The chances were good he was marooned on the planet forever. Thus, destroying the Web-Mind and anyone who came to retrieve the cyborg abomination was his primary goal for now.
“First things first,” he muttered more than once.
This was his specialty. He had booby-trapped many a place in his life. As he worked, he began to whistle. Maybe this was why he’d survived a millennium in stasis. The cyborgs thought they could rebuild, but the universe was saying no. Or, maybe there was an afterlife, and that meant a deity was saying no. The god had enough of abominations like cyborgs.
It took t
wo and a half hours of rigging until Cade was satisfied. The work strengthened his morale. The fact that he could fulfill the old one’s expectation in him felt good. He double- and then triple-checked his work and finally decided that he was done down here.
It was time to see if he could get out. That might mean he’d have to deal with the Nian. However, waiting this long to go up should mean that any blast, heat or fires up there should have dissipated by now.
He had a fully charged laser emitter, a heavy Gyroc rifle with shells and several old-style grenades. He’d tossed a few grenades, grinning when they’d exploded. That indicated the ancient cyborg weaponry still worked. He would wait until he reached the surface to test the Gyroc rifle.
He went to the elevator and found it intact. That was excellent news. How far down was the crypt from the surface?
“Doesn’t matter,” he said.
Would the elevator take him up? It was time to start. Taking a deep breath, Cade entered the thing and manipulated the controls. For a second, nothing happened. Despairing, Cade closed his eyes—
The door closed, and the elevator jerked, starting up. Cade forced himself to breathe. Any second, he expected it to jolt to a halt. The outer top struck something, or something dropped on top of the elevator, and the box mechanism slowed. Grinding noises grew as the elevator rose more slowly than before. The noises became worse, and the elevator was only inching up now. The box began quivering and then shaking. Just how many rocks and pounds of stony debris did the elevator shove upward?
Several times, Cade had to force himself to breathe, as he found himself holding his breath. The grinding noises troubled him. The—
The elevator stopped, although it continued to quiver.
Cade held his breath, tense, waiting for the elevator to begin moving again. It did not.
The Soldier: The X-Ship Page 24
