Devil's Hand

by Jack McKinney

  He asked himself whether the brain would expect him to come up through the breach. It would be a difficult and hazardous ascent. But then, why would they have trenched the Hall’s floor if they knew about the stairway? He forced any decision from his mind and fell back, allowing his instincts free reign.

  And something told him to push on.

  Five minutes later the team was creeping up the steep stairway Cabell had described, and Edwards’s hand had found the panel stud that would trigger the door. He gave the team the go sign and slammed the switch with the heel of his fist. They poured up and out of the tunnels wailing like banshees, rolling and tearing across the nave’s hard floor, lobbing concussion grenades and loosing bursts of death.

  Two rows of Invid soldiers who were waiting for them to come through the nave’s front entrance were caught by surprise and chopped down in seconds. But two Shock Troopers stepped out of nowhere and began dumping annihilation discs into the hole, frying a quarter of the team before the rest could bring the ships down with a barrage of scanner shots. One of the ships cracked open like an egg, spilling a thick green wash across the floor; the other came apart in an explosion that decapitated the lieutenant.

  The nave was filled with fire, smoke, and pandemonium now, but Edwards moved through it like a cat, closing on the brain’s towering bubble chamber while the team mopped up.

  Two seven-foot-tall sentries came at him, spewing bolts of orange flame from their forearm cannons, but he managed to throw himself clear. At the same time he heard the simultaneous discharge of two rocket launchers, and covered himself as the projectiles found their mark.

  Edwards was on his feet and back on track before the explosions subsided. Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of an unarmed robed figure making a mad dash for the brain. The alien started babbling away and waving its arms in a panicked fashion, as if to plead with Edwards to cease fire. Edwards held up his hand and the nave grew eerily silent, save for Obsim’s rantings and the crackle of fires.

  “What’s it saying?” Major Benson asked.

  Edwards told them all to keep quiet. “Go ahead, alien, make your pitch.”

  A rush of sounds left Obsim’s mouth, but it was the brain that spoke. In English.

  “Invaders, listen to me: you must not destroy the brain. The brain lives and is a power unto itself. Your purpose and desires are understood, and the brain can see to your needs.”

  Again Edwards had to tell everyone to cut the chatter. The tall Invid continued to mouth sounds from its snaillike head, which was bobbing up and down at the end of a long, thick neck.

  “Behold,” the brain translated, as the communicator sphere began to glow. “Your people are at this very moment battling our troops near the rings of Tirol’s motherworld.”

  The communicator showed them a scene of fierce fighting, Pincer Ships and Veritechs locked in mortal combat.

  Obsim made a high-pitched sound and swung around to face Edwards, hands tucked in his sleeves. “The brain can put an end to it.”

  Edwards stared at the alien, then leveled his weapons at the bubble chamber.

  “Showtime.”

  From the command chair’s elevated position on the SDF-3 bridge, Lisa had a clear view of the battle’s distant light show, countless strobelike explosions erupting across an expanse of local space like so many shortlived novas. The Veritech teams were successful at keeping most of the Invid ships away from the fortress, and those few that had broken through were taken out with the in-close weapons systems. But the silent flares, the laser-array bolts, and annihilation discs detailed only half the story; for the rest one would have to turn to the tac net and its cacophony of commands and requests, its warnings and imprecations and prayers, its cries and deathscreams.

  Lisa had promised to keep it all at arm’s length, to maintain a strategic distance, much as she was doing with the fortress. Resolute, she voiced her commands in a clipped, almost severe tone, and when she watched those lights, it was with a deliberate effort to force their meaning from her thoughts.

  An update from one of the duty stations brought her swiveling around now to face the threat board: the two motherships had changed course. Lisa called for position and range.

  “Approach vectors onscreen, sir,” said an enlisted rating tech. “They’re coming straight at us.”

  “The Skull team requests permission to engage.”

  Lisa whirled around. “Negative! They’re to pull back at once.”

  She turned again to study a heads-up monitor and ordered a course correction.

  Reinhardt’s voice was booming through the squawkboxes, his bearded face on one of the screens. He asked for a second correction, a subtle maneuver to reposition the main gun.

  “Coming around to zero-zero-niner, sir. Standing by…”

  “Picking up strong EV readings. We’re being scanned and targeted.”

  “Get me Lang,” Lisa ordered.

  Lang addressed her from a peripheral screen; he had anticipated her question. “We’ve shunted power-from the shields to the main gun, but we’re still well protected.” At the same time, she heard Reinhardt say, “Prepare to fire on my command.”

  “Has the Skull pulled out?”

  “Uh, checking…”

  “Quickly!” she barked.

  “Affirmative,” the tech stammered. “They’re clear.”

  “On my mark-” Reinhardt started to say.

  Suddenly two brilliant flashes flowered into life in front of the ship, throwing blinding light through the viewport. Caught in the grip of the exposions, the fortress was shaken forcefully enough to toss techs from their stations and send them clear across the bridge.

  Lisa’s neck felt as though it had snapped. She put one hand to the back of her head, and asked if everyone was all right. Sirens somewhere off in the ship had changed tone; the fortress had sustained damage.

  “What happened?” Lisa said as reports poured in.

  “No trace of the ships, sir.”

  “God, it’s like something vaporized them…”

  Lisa watched in awe as the light show began to wink out.

  “What’s going on out there-has the enemy disengaged?”

  The threat-board tech scratched his head. “No, sir; er, yes, sir. That is, the VT teams report all enemy ships inactive. They’re dead in space.”

  The tech on the SDF-3 bridge wasn’t the only one scratching his head. In a corridor fifty feet beneath Tiresia’s Royal Hall, Jonathan Wolff was doing the same thing.

  “They just stopped firing,” one of the Pack was saying.

  Certainly no one was about to argue with that or be anything less than overjoyed, but the question remained: why?

  Wolff poked his head around the corner of the corridor like some of the others were doing, and saw half-a-dozen bipedal Inorganics stopped not ten years from the junction. And not simply stopped, but shut down-frozen. Presently, everyone who could stand was out in the middle of the central corridor gaping at the silent drones; it was the first time any of them had had a chance to inspect the things up close, and they found themselves relieved enough to comment on their remarkable design. Wolff, however, put a quick end to it.

  The requested fire team had arrived without incident from the other side of the collapse.

  Wolff sent the wounded back, along with most of the original squad-it was looking better for Powers-and pushed on toward the Royal Hall. The field command post had yet to hear word one from Edwards’s team.

  They remained cautious and alert as they regained the ground they had surrendered.

  Wolff led them past the computer room and on into a confusing warren of tunnels and ducts. Along the way they passed dozens of Inorganics in the same state of suspended animation. But at last they came to the trench Edwards had seen earlier, and instinctively Wolff knew they were close to reaching the center.

  “It’s blue smoke and mirrors,” Edwards sneered as the image in the communicator sphere de-rezzed. He had seen
the explosions that wiped out the two troop carriers, but remained unconvinced. “You could be running home movies for all I know.”

  Obsim made a puzzled gesture and turned to the brain.

  “You have a suspicious mind, Invader.” The synthesized voice had a raspy sound to it now, as though fatigued.

  “That’s right, Mister Wizard, and I’m also the one holding a gun to your head.” Edwards half turned to one of his men. “I want immediate confirmation on what we just saw. See if you can raise anyone.”

  The radioman moved off and Edwards continued. “But if you are on the level, I’ve got to say I’m impressed. The brain is certainly far too valuable to destroy-but then again, it’s far too dangerous to remain operative.”

  Obsim showed Edwards his palms, then fumbled to open a concealed access panel in the bubble chamber’s hourglass-shaped base.

  “The brain can be deactivated. It can be yours to command.”

  Interested, Edwards stepped forward, brandishing the weapon.

  “Go ahead, alien.”

  Obsim pulled two dermatrode leads from the panel and placed them flat against the center of his head; his fingers meanwhile tapped a command sequence into the panel’s ten-key touchpad. At the same time, the brain seemed to compress as it settled toward the bottom of the chamber. After a moment Obsim reversed the process, causing an effervescent rush inside the tank as the brain revived.

  “Again,” said Edwards, and Obsim repeated it. Then it was Edwards’s turn to try, while Colonel Adams held a gun to Obsim’s snout. Edwards got it right on the first take; the brain was asleep.

  Edwards shut the panel and stood up, grinning at the alien. “You’ve been a most gracious host.” Without taking his eyes off Obsim, he yelled, “Do we have that confirmation, soldier?”

  “Affirmative,” came the reply.

  “Waste him,” Edwards said to Adams.

  The burst blew out the Invid scientist’s brain; the body collapsed in a heap, Obsim’s once-white robes drenched in green.

  “Wargasm.” Adams laughed.

  Edwards regarded each of his men individually; the gaze from his single eye said much more than any verbal warning could.

  Just then, Human voices could be heard on the staircase. Edwards and his men swung around, weapons armed, only to find Jonathan Wolff crawling cautiously from the hole.

  Wolff took a look around the room, as his team followed him out. There were two devastated Shock Trooper ships and twenty or more Invid corpses. Wolff had seen the charred remains of what looked like four men on the steps. Now he focused his attention on the bubble chamber.

  “This the thing the Tiresians were talking about, sir?”

  “That’s it, Colonel,” Edwards said.

  Wolff glanced down at Obsim, then at Edwards. He had questions for the general, questions about what had gone on in the corridors and what had gone on here, but he sensed it wasn’t the right time-not with Edwards’s team looking as though they weren’t full yet. Ultimately, he said, “Too bad I didn’t arrive sooner, sir.”

  “You’re lucky you didn’t,” Adams told him with a sly smile. “It was a real horror show.”

  “Yeah,” Wolff mused, watching Edwards’s men trade looks, “I can imagine.”

  Edwards broke the subsequent silence by ordering his radioman to make contact with the ship.

  Edwards was jubilant. “Tell them the mission was a complete success.”

  Without warning, he slapped Wolff on the back.

  “Smile, Colonel-you’re a hero!”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  It was without question a mind-boost for [Edwards], comparable to the one Dr. Emil Lang had received while reconning the SDF-1. And in the same way Lang became almost instantly conversant with Zor’s science, Robotechnology, Edwards became conversant with the lusts and drives of the Invid Regent. This, however, was not engrammation, but amplification. Edwards and the Regent were analogues of one another: scarred, vengeful, and dangerous beings.

  Constance Wildman, When Evil Had Its Day: A Biography of T. R. Edwards The battle was over and an uneasy calm prevailed; no one aboard the SDF-3 was sure how long the lull would last, but if the Robotech War had taught them anything, it was that they should make the most of tranquil interludes.

  None dared call it peace.

  One by one the inert Invid ships were destroyed, after it was determined that the pilots were all dead. Dr. Lang and Cabell speculated that the living computer, in addition to vaporizing the troop carriers and shutting down the Inorganics, had issued some sort of blanket suicide directive. Many among the RDF found this difficult to accept, but the explanation was strengthened by Cabell’s recounting of equally puzzling and barbarous acts the Invid had carried out. On the moon’s surface, a building-to-building search was under way, and most of Tiresia’s humanoid population had already been freed. The hundreds of drones that littered Tiresia’s subterranean passageways remained lifeless; one day soon that labyrinth would be sealed up, along with the Royal Hall and the sleeping brain itself. But that would not be before Cabell had had a chance to show Lang around, or before the Pollinators had been rescued and removed.

  There was something of a mutual-admiration society in the works between Lang and the bearded Tiresian scientist. And while it was true that the Expeditionary mission had “liberated” Tirol, it was questionable whether that could have been achieved without Cabell and Rem’s intelligence. More to the point, Cabell’s importance in the work that lay ahead for the mission’s robotech teams was beyond dispute. Lang had taken every opportunity to press him for details of the mining operation, and was eagerly awaiting the RDF’s clearance for a recon landing on Fantoma. Earth’s survival depended on their being able to mine enough ore to rebuild the SDF-3’s damaged engines, and to fold home before the Masters arrived.

  During the course of the discussions, Lang learned something of Tirol’s gradual swing toward militarism in the years following Zor’s great discoveries. Cabell spoke of a shortlived but wonderful time when exploration had been his people’s main concern.

  Indeed, the Zentraedi themselves were originally created to serve those ends as miners, not as the galactic warriors they would eventually become. The defoliation of Optera, the Invid homeworld, had been their first directive under the reconfigured imperative. There followed a succession of conquests and police actions, and, ultimately, warfare against the very creatures whose world they had destroyed.

  Then they had traveled halfway across the galaxy to die…

  As Lang listened he began to feel a kind of sympathy for the Invid; it was obvious there were mysteries here even Cabell had yet to penetrate. But what also gripped Lang was a sudden existential dread, rooted in the fact that war was not something humankind had invented, but was pervasive throughout the known universe. It brought to mind the rumors he had been hearing, to the effect that General Edwards was already pressing for the construction of an entire fleet of warships. According to his camp, the return mission had to recognize a new priority: the idea of peaceful, preventative negotiations was no longer viable-not when war against the Masters was now viewed as a certainty.

  Oddly enough, Cabell took no issue with Edwards’s demands. It was not so much that he wished to see the Masters of his race obliterated-although he himself would have gladly put to death the cloned body politic they had created-it was his unassailable fear of the Invid.

  “Of course I applaud this victory and the freeing of my people,” Cabell told him. “But you must believe me when I tell you, Doctor, that the greatest threat to your planet is the Invid.

  Put aside your sympathy-I know, I saw it in your face. They are not the race they once were; they are homeless now, and driven. They will stop at nothing to regain their precious Flowers, and if that matrix exists-they will find it.”

  Lang wore a sardonic look. “Perhaps it would be better to do nothing-except pray that the Masters find the matrix and leave.”

  “I fear they will not leave
, Doctor. They have all they need with them, and your world will be nothing but a new battleground.”

  “So what choice do we have?”

  “Defeat them here, Doctor. Exterminate them before you face the Masters.”

  Lang was aghast. “You’re talking about genocide, Cabell.”

  Cabell shook his head sadly. “No, I am talking about survival. Besides,” the old man thought to add, “your race seems to have a penchant for that sort of thing.”

  Rick was among the dozens of VT pilots who had ended up in sick bay. There was no tally of the dead and wounded yet, but the hospital was already overcrowded and shuttles were still bringing up men and women from the moon’s surface.

  When Lisa first received word of his injuries she thought she might faint; but she was relieved now, knowing that his condition had improved from guarded to good, and that he had been moved out of ICU and into a private room. But she wasn’t exactly rushing to his side, and couldn’t help but feel somehow vindicated for her earlier remarks. At the same time, she recalled the last visit she had paid Rick in sick bay. It was shortly before the SDF-1 had left Earth for a second time-ordered off by Russo’s council-and Khyron’s Botoru had been waging a savage attack against the fortress. Rick was badly wounded during a missile barrage Lisa herself had ordered. She remembered how frightened and helpless she had felt that cool Pacific morning, seeing him in the throes of shock and delirium, his head turbaned in gauze and bandages…It was a painful memory even now, eight years later, but she was determined not to let it soften the anger that had crept in to replace her initial dismay-an easy enough challenge when she found him sitting up in bed and grinning, well-attended by the nursing staff.

  “Here you go, hero,” she said, placing a small gift on the sheet, “I brought you something.”

  Rick unwrapped the package and glanced at the audio disc it contained-a self-help guide that had been a bestseller on Earth and was enjoying an enormous popularity on the fortress. He showed Lisa a confused look. “The Hand That’s Dealt You…What’s this supposed to mean?”