“It won't be long now,” Alkasta told her.
Lydiana shook her head. “It has already been long enough.” She gave Alkasta a withering look. “I can almost understand ferals like Kashar and even brutish atavisms like with Gravikk...” she started.
“But you cannot understand me,” Alkasta finished for her. “You can't understand why someone of my breeding and background can do what I do.” She laughed and corrected herself. “Can excel at what I do.”
The scientist's look managed to become even more disapproving. “You aren't an animal like them. How a woman can kill so often, can even come to relish the killing,” she waved her hands in a hopeless gesture. “It is turning back the impetus of our culture. Reverting to savagery.”
Alkasta nodded slowly. “Perhaps we need more of the savage in us. Perhaps that is why the Ky'am Freetraders lost the war.”
If Lydiana had a rejoinder to Alkasta's biting remark, it didn't find purchase on her tongue. The Revenger was rocked back and forth by a violent force. Tremors swept through the vessel, causing anything that wasn't firmly bolted down to jounce and sway. Alkasta looked forward to Doma Undari's vantage-throne. Far too important to be relegated to the crash couches of his servants, Undari was ensconced in a high-backed chair just forward of Nagrin's elevated command console. The vantage-throne was poised at the very center of the command deck, affording Undari a clear view of the crew's workstations and the bow-mounted image relays. The seat was richly cushioned and equipped with an array of momentum baffles and acceleration nullifiers. Yet even Undari's seat exhibited a slight shiver as the ship plunged still deeper into the boiling mass of Antares.
“Kashar had better be calling up his damn Grey Gods!” Gravikk barked out as the tremors grew still more violent. A work panel above the communications shack came slamming downward, jarred loose by the increasing violence. It slammed down into the comm relays and demolished them in an explosion of sparks. The operator was thrown back, her chair upset by the explosion. Together they crashed against the steps leading up to the captain's deck. Dead or simply stunned was a question none of the observers were willing to leave the security of their own seat to answer.
“I have a response!” Dravein cried out. “It is faint, but there is a response!”
“How near are we?” Nagrin shouted at the navigator.
“I can't say, but it is there!” Whatever relief the occupants of the Revenger could share in knowing there was indeed a gate ahead of them was dulled by the weakness of the signal.
“Won't the gate open?” Alkasta muttered. She wasn't ashamed of the fear she felt. This was a far different thing than fighting an enemy on the field of honor or foiling assassins lying in ambush. This wasn't a thing she could fight, something she could oppose with her dying breath. If the pressure building against the ship grew worse, it would be crushed like an egg.
“There's a response,” Lydiana stated. She drew a grim amusement from Alkasta's fright. “That means the gate will open. If the response is weak, it means we're still far away. We have to go deeper to reach it. Past the critical depth.” It was her turn to laugh. “We know very little about the beings we hope to contact. Least of all the capabilities of their ships. It may be that they can penetrate depths our vessels can't reach.”
A chill rushed through Alkasta's body. The critical depth was the point of no return. Once they passed that they either found a gate quickly or they were pulverized by the atmospheric pressures of Antares. She looked toward Undari, for the first time seeing him as more than just her lord and master. He was a symbol of hope now. If he recognized the danger, then he would surely call the expedition off.
“My lord!” Nagrin shouted. “We are nearing critical depth!”
Alkasta held her breath as she waited for Undari to respond. He knew the danger, knew what it would mean if they pressed on.
“Is the response signal growing stronger?” Undari asked, his voice as emotionless as a lump of gravestone.
“Yes, my lord,” Dravein called back. “Response is gaining strength of frequency at a steady rate. The key is working.”
“Then push on,” Undari declared. “Get us to that gate, Captain.”
The ship shuddered even more fiercely as Undari gave the command. The Revenger felt as if it were in the grip of some primordial titan, lashing it back and forth in malignant fury. Any moment Alkasta expected to see the bulkhead buckle inward. If it held, they would be crushed, the whole ship compacted into a fist-sized nugget being drawn down into Antares's core. If it didn't hold, they would be exposed to the murderous environment outside. Decompression was a very hideous sort of death, far less kind than anything Alkasta had delivered in the arena.
Clenching her teeth and closing her eyes, Alkasta waited for the end.
* * * *
It was with a sense of unreality that Alkasta led Undari's guards down the Revenger's gangway. The dreamlike impression wasn't lessened by the eerie environment the ship had set down in. Orbiting a small dwarf star, the nameless planetoid was little more than a sphere of barren stone. Knife-like ranges of mountains separated by winding valleys. Dust in the atmosphere lent the daylight a purple tinge. The air had a crisp, almost crackly feel to it and a smell she could liken only to dead flowers. The Revenger's computers had declared the atmosphere to be within the safety range for prolonged human exposure, unpleasant but harmless.
Even in the field of her reflex armor, Alkasta felt almost ethereal. She knew it was due to the low gravity on the planetoid, but that knowledge didn't make her any more comfortable. The lessened weight was simply another contributor to the feeling of unreality that gripped her.
She'd never expected to set foot on solid ground again. Alkasta had been convinced that the Revenger would never emerge from the tunnel. If she closed her eyes she could again feel the pressure mounting, hear the groaning of the hull as the ship compressed around them. The steady drone of the key as Dravein tried to open the gate was only imagination, but it had planted itself firmly in her memory. When they finally reached the gate, well past critical depth, they knew at least they wouldn't die deep within Antares.
Now they were here, on this tiny ball of rock circling a dwarfish star. Doma Undari had brought them through the depths of Antares to contact potential allies, but a scan of the planetary system had revealed only the scantiest signs of intelligent development. All of those signs had directed them to this planetoid and this particular place upon it.
“Hardly a cheering sight,” Gravikk grumbled. The spliced half-reptile looked immense in his banded reflex armor, a bulky x-launcher clenched in his gloved hands. His forked tongue flicked out, tasting the air.
Alkasta gave him only the briefest nod. What loomed before them across a dusty plateau wasn't cheering. It was almost nightmarish. A megalithic structure of some sort, cast from a porous black stone. It had too much regularity to be a natural formation, but it was no such regularity that conformed to any rational geometry. The more she tried to concentrate upon its outline, the more her perceptions became distorted, almost as though her awareness were sliding away from the black walls, repelled by its erratic contours.
“Be thankful what we're looking for isn't in there,” Alkasta said, tearing her eyes away from the dark ruins. She pointed down toward the base of the structure where a much smaller building had been raised. It was still foreign and strange to her experience, but at least it had a recognizable pattern to it. The smaller structure was crafted from some dull metallic material, laid out in a sort of hexagonal arrangement. Some sort of energy generator had been erected alongside it, a steady pulse of light strobing from vents in its sides.
“Where are they?” Gravikk wondered. “They can't have missed the ship coming in. We should see somebody. Somebody should be around to welcome us or at least tell us to scram.”
“I will go and see,” Kashar announced, thumping his chest with one hand while unlimbering his mag gun. The feral fighter didn't overly trust the unseen protect
ion of his reflex armor, preferring a briefer and more tribal approach to protection. The pelt of a predatory canid was tied across his chest, its head resting across one shoulder. The exposed skin of his opposite shoulder was ritualistically scarred into patterns meant to evoke the protections of his Grey Gods. The only concessions that Kashar had made to more civilized ways of thinking were the boots on his feet and the equipment belt around his waist.
“Let the probe go first,” Alkasta told him. “You follow it, then we will follow you.” A wave of her hand and the spotter probe flew out from the Revenger's bay and down the gangway. A flattened disc-like machine, the probe was larger and more versatile than the small drone that accompanied Alkasta's squad. It had enough synthetic intelligence to obey the intention of a command and adjust its interpretation of its duties based on unexpected complications.
As the probe drifted away on its suspensor field, Kashar scurried off, using the machine's shadow to help hide his silhouette as he made his way across the open ground. Alkasta trusted the probe to relay whatever it detected back to her combat shard, but experience had taught her not to doubt the usefulness of a more human approach. Kashar might be a technologically backward feral, but his instincts sometimes picked up on hazards undetected by the computational logic of a probe.
Alkasta let the spotter probe and Kashar reach the midway point between the Revenger and the structure before starting her own troops forward. Fanning the squad into a dispersed formation, she kept Gravikk with her at the center. Following in their wake came Doma Undari and his personal guards, along with Lydiana.
“The situation doesn't look promising,” Alkasta reported as the images from the probe were relayed back to the shard. “There's no sign of anybody.”
“On the contrary,” Lydiana corrected her. “That power plant outside the structure is still active. A plasma reactor of that sort would fit with what we know of their technology. It hasn't been powered down, which would indicate someone is around.”
Alkasta took Lydiana's observation and had the spotter probe angle around to get a better look at the power plant. It was a crude and primitive piece of machinery. Even a cursory look told her that it would need considerable maintenance to keep it operational. Left to its own, she suspected the reactor would either break down or overheat and go up like a bomb.
“If anyone is around, they certainly aren't showing themselves,” Alkasta said. “They didn't respond to the hailing transmissions. They haven't come out to meet us.”
“It is possible they believe we are hostile,” Undari stated. “There's only a little that is known about them, but what we do know is they're at war with the Algoryn and by extension Vardos Yarkarri.”
“The enemy of an enemy,” Lydiana stated. “Any rational being would accept your overture of alliance, my lord.”
Alkasta kept watching the terrain around they were advancing across and the images being relayed by the probe. “A shared foe doesn't make a friend,” she cautioned, not for the first time.
Undari brushed aside the warning. “If they meant us harm, why didn't they open up on our ship as we were approaching?” He pointed with the barrel of his compression carbine at a set of ugly-looking cannons mounted on the roof of the structure.
“Maybe they wanted to get a better look at us first,” Alkasta said. “To know who they were shooting at.”
“I can't agree with that assessment,” Undari declared. “Care is warranted but pessimism isn't. Our vardos is prepared to make a generous compact with these people, offer them support to prosecute their war with Vardos Yarkarri and its allies. All we have to do is show that we mean them no harm. Explain to them our purpose in coming here.”
“Just look at that power plant,” Lydiana suggested. “Even forgetting our shared interests in defeating Vardos Yarkarri, the technological improvements we can offer them are obvious. Since setting foot on this planetoid there's been no evidence of even a primitive nanosphere.”
Alkasta could have argued that point with her, but she decided against it. Some of the more backward planets they had contacted weren't so keen on adopting the technology their vardos could provide them with, sometimes out of suspicion or superstition, and other times simply from pride. It would do no good to remind Lydiana of that. Undari's mind was already made up. Anything that threatened the triumphant vision in his head would simply be construed as defeatism at this point.
The spotter probe moved away from the plasma reactor, circling around toward the building itself. Up close the metal walls took on a stiff regularity. They appeared to be prefabricated components transported to the planetoid and assembled later. The uniformity of shape and size was almost monotonous until the probe directed its attention to a gaping hole in one of the outer walls. The fissure was big enough for even Gravikk to walk through without ducking his head. The metal at the edges was blackened and appeared to have been melted by whatever force had struck it. The probe directed its cameras to the litter of scrap strewn about the breech. There was a suggestion of design in the wreckage, but the most recognizable of the debris was a shattered twist of metal that resembled the claw of an enormous crustacean.
Alkasta ordered the probe to hold position at the opening. It set its camera peering into a dark corridor just beyond the hole. There was more debris, but no sign of activity. The probe focused on a bulky object standing several yan into the structure. After adjusting its lighting filters, the object became clear.
It was bigger than a human, standing upon three massive legs that were curved like the limbs of some spider. Above the triangular arrangement of legs, the object swelled into a rudimentary torso with a kind of head projecting outward from its superstructure. Two arm-like lengths dropped down from what might be termed shoulders. One of these was a more intact version of the clawed debris, the other was some manner of gun. The overall impression was of menace and brutality, and Alkasta found herself comforted by the obvious damage the thing had suffered – a jagged tear that spread across its back where its structure had ruptured.
“We've found them,” Lydiana whispered as she saw the images from the probe. “There can be no mistaking that design. It conforms to what reports our spies have relayed to us. What we're looking at can only be one of their battlesuits.”
Undari had a pleased look while he listened to Lydiana. “I've done it,” he said. “I've found the Ghar.”
* * * *
Alkasta moved her troops forward. The Ghar outpost still gave a desolate appearance, but she wasn't going to take any chances. Her honor was bound into protecting Undari, even if that meant protecting him from himself. As the probe relayed more details of the destroyed battlesuit, her concerns about their mission only increased. There was no trace of the operator of that mechanized armor, but the probe had sent back images of a tiny crew capsule that could be seen through the ruptured back. It seemed impossible to her that anything remotely panhuman could fit into such tight confines.
“We go in?” Gravikk asked as the domari squad took position at either side of the hole.
Alkasta looked back to Undari. He was engaged in a hushed consultation with Lydiana. He must have felt Alkasta watching him because he suddenly looked up and gave her a brief nod. The meaning was clear enough.
“Let the probe and the drone go first,” Alkasta told her soldiers. “Then Kashar.” She looked around for the feral, surprised that he wasn't with the rest of them outside the hole. Gravikk gestured with his thumb, pointing at a rock some twenty yan away. Alkasta felt irritation rush through her. Kashar had a tendency to wander off when some primitive fancy took him. Undari had suggested several times that she should have the feral implanted with a soma graft. Alkasta had resisted the temptation. A soma graft would increase Kashar's efficiency and make him more receptive to the combat shard, but she'd seen for herself that people who were implanted were never quite the same after. It was easy to tell what there was to be gained but less certain what would be lost.
Controlling her ann
oyance, Alkasta walked toward Kashar's position. The feral had his mag gun out, aiming it off toward the left. His concentration was such that Alkasta forgot the reprimand that she'd intended to give him. Instead she dropped down beside him and looked off in the direction that held his attention. It took her a moment, but she finally spotted something fluttering about in the air. Her temper flared up and she scowled at the feral beside her.
“You can hunt birds on your time, not mine,” she snapped at Kashar.
Kashar looked over at her, a hurt look on his tattooed face. “No bird,” he said. “No bat. Metal. Shine like metal.”
Feeling foolish as she did so, Alkasta took another look. The thing out there, whatever it was, had caught the light just right as it fluttered about; and just as Kashar said, it gave off a metallic gleam. Despite its erratic flight, whatever it was it wasn't organic. The first thought that came to her was some kind of robot, a primitive drone sent to spy on them. As she looked back to the desolate outpost, another thought seized her. Was there still someone around monitoring whatever information the robot was sending back?
“How long has it been there?” Alkasta asked.
Kahsar nodded back at the outpost. “Since probe go inside. Want try shoot?” he asked, raising his mag gun.
Alkasta hesitated. Her instincts told her to try to drop the thing, whatever it was, and cut off the flow of information it was sending... somewhere. Her duty to Undari made that course impossible. She had to get his agreement before initiating hostilities. “Wait,” she told Kashar. “Keep your eyes on it while I tell Doma Undari what we've found.”
Suspecting that they were under observation, Alkasta didn't trust relaying their discovery to Undari over the shard. She'd talk with him face to face and try to impress on her lord the seriousness of their circumstances. Even as she withdrew from Kashar's position, a far more compelling demonstration of their situation presented itself for Undari's consideration.
Beyond Antares Dimensional Gates Page 26
