by Brian Daley
All the things that people, however careful, had forgotten, physics remembered, and didn't miss a trick. Though plants had been anchored in their bunkertike planters, branches and fronds whipped, some breaking loose. The air was a whirlwind of leaves, petals, flying soil that had sifted through retention nets, fragments of bark, and projectile fruit. Loose glasses and a bottle overlooked by Charivari shattered into splinters.
The furniture had remained secure, but cushions went sailing. Weapons, ammunition, and various pieces of clothing and equipment flew. Sortie-Wolf nearly lost an eye to a stylus from an inner pocket of his own uniform tunic, which he'd set aside.
The passengers themselves set up an ululation of concerted wails, roars, and howls as they tried to protect themselves even while they whirled and fell, tumbling.
Alacrity and Floyt slammed against the convex of the hull. Redlock, seizing a well-mounted sculpture, saved both himself and Dorraine. One of the Severeemish bodyguards tore through a section of railing. The porcelain funeral urn containing the remains of First Councillor Inst remained firmly in place, but a hurtling rocket magazine hit it squarely, bursting it apart. Gray-white ashes were scattered across the passenger space.
The Pearl swung back, righting herself. Alacrity and Floyt slid down the curve of the hull to land in a heap on the deck, stunned. The shuttle was shaking and bucking; they did their best to cling to the deck carpeting.
The ship began to stabilize. Alacrity wondered where King's Ransom and the other aircutters were, then realized that very little time had passed.
"There! Open fire!" Redlock yelled into his proteus. He was standing in the middle of the main lounge area, the Severeemish and others getting to their feet all around him.
Shaking the pretty lights and restful fog out of their heads, Floyt and Alacrity saw what he was pointing at. Down where the Scimitar had been circling, a dark shape was rising with gathering speed. It was larger than the Blue Pearl, a cluster of bulbous, pendulous shapes, spiny with commo and detector vibrissae and armament. In the fleeting glimpse they got of it, they saw the intruder ship changing color, beginning to match Epiphany's sky. Alacrity registered numbly that it must be some new stealth system he'd never heard of before. The stealth ship fired another flight of missiles.
The Blue Pearl's defenses had barely saved her from the first, unexpected salvo, with a flurry of jamming and counter-measures aimed at the missiles' guidance systems. Those systems had been analyzed; the shuttle merely rose a bit and the twin fireballs streaked red annihilation beneath her. They failed to detonate.
Redlock's ship opened up with an answering volley. A long, straight bridge of blinding yellow-white light connected the intruder and the Pearl's underside for a moment. If the intruder had shields, they failed; part of her upper hull disappeared.
A doomsday crack shook the sky, air rushing into the vacuum created by the cannon bolt. The stealth vessel jolted and wobbled, then, trailing thick blue smoke and windblown flames, began an emergency descent that threatened to become a crash.
The Pearl followed her kill down. For the first time Floyt noticed the long, silvery seam of a crack in the shuttle's crystal hull, curving from the level of the main lounge area almost to its apex. He also noticed how sluggish the shuttle was.
"What's he landing for?" Floyt sounded angry. "Why doesn't he wait for reinforcements?"
They became aware of Redlock's mustering the band members, a few other Celestials, and the Severeemish, including the giant who'd taken out the span of railing and now seemed none the worse for it. Dorraine was standing by the remains of her father's funeral urn, silently studying a shard she'd picked up from the deck.
"I don't want them back in possession of that site," the governor was saying, "not even for a few minutes."
Alacrity nudged Floyt. "See? What'd I tell you?" Floyt made a sour face.
"But, my lords Seven Wars and Sortie-Wolf," Redlock was saying, "I still think it might be best for you both to remain in the shuttle."
Under the heavy bone cliff of his brow, Seven Wars' dark, close-set eyes widened a bit. He answered in a hearty, good-natured tone.
"And miss a good fracas? Don't you think you owe your allies better treatment than that, Governor?" His son and their bodyguards made laughter resembling steam locomotives leaving a station. Redlock gave one of his rare, brief smiles.
Dorraine let go of the shard; it shattered to fragments on the dance floor. They all turned to her.
She went to join her husband, flinging back her resplendent robe and opening the heavy brooches, one the tragic mask and the other the comic, set at either shoulder. Letting the robe fall, she drew two silvery little guns from the folds and overlaps of her tightly cinched gown. They were modeled after antique derringers.
Redlock didn't object to her tacit insistence on coming along. Floyt had already seen the Queen of Agora use a handgun; she was good at it.
"I'll be going too," Alacrity called down, and started picking his way through branches, broken glass, fallen fruit and melting ice, dirt and debris. Redlock glanced at him but didn't answer, going back to his council of war.
Floyt caught Alacrity's shoulder. "This doesn't have anything to do with us, you know, or with what we came here for."
"Ho, I have to get a look inside that Precursor site."
"Is there any point in asking you why, goddammit? No, never mind; you'll only get vague on me again." Floyt was also puzzled that the Earthservice conditioning didn't force Alacrity to hold back from becoming involved. Something deep within the breakabout must have overruled it on this subject.
"I'll explain it some time, Ho."
"Don't put yourself out. Let's go."
They were both hobbling a bit. Alacrity showed only an instant's surprise that Floyt was coming along. Floyt himself didn't understand it too clearly. Alacrity was still a major factor in accomplishing the mission, so that was a rationale to use against the conditioning. More to the point, Floyt, on his way to receive his bequest a few hours before, had realized that at some time in their misfortunes they'd become friends.
"We volunteer, sort of," Alacrity declared as they joined the others near the Pearl's main hatch.
"Wallflowers at the landing party," Floyt muttered. One of the bandswomen laughed.
The shuttle descended. Below, the stealth vessel had grounded lopsidedly, smoke and flame still rising from her. Seven Wars, studying the craft through a pair of outsize vision enhancers, said, "They're abandoning her. It's difficult to tell who they are through the smoke."
"What if they're faking?" Floyt wondered aloud.
"All their systems appear to be out," Redlock observed. "Still, I don't plan to board the intruder. I only wish to secure the site and post guard until the King's Ransom and the other aircutters show. I want to make sure they don't get back in, and that they didn't leave anyone inside."
He consulted his proteus. "That shouldn't be more than another few minutes."
The Pearl settled in some distance from the downed ship, with a ridge of ground between them for protection just in case. Alacrity and Floyt followed the others down the ramp, then the shuttle rose again, to stand off and make sure the intruder vessel remained where she was.
The landing party had been set down near a hill, half of which had been removed. A tunnel mouth, a precise equilateral triangle ten meters on a side, angled down into Epiphany. There were construction lights, apparently rigged by Weir research teams.
"Underground site," Alacrity murmured to Floyt. "I never heard of one before."
"Is that why they wanted to keep it to themselves? Weir's people, I mean?"
"Ho, nobody shares a Precursor find, not if they can help it."
"Citizen Floyt; Master Fitzhugh." Redlock spoke in the easy, listen-up voice of an experienced squad leader. "If you gentlemen will be good enough to mount guard here, the rest of us will proceed. Our proteuses aren't integrated and they'll be of no use once inside anyway. Recognition signals will be ver
bal and visual. Our challenge will be 'interlock,' and the countersign, 'downcheck.' Understood?"
"Got it," Alacrity replied. Floyt was bewildered.
The others already had their instructions. The point man was a Celestial sergeant from the Pearl's crew, wearing vision enhancers set for night work. The officer who'd greeted Alacrity and Floyt when they'd first dashed inboard was next, with two more of Redlock's elite. After them would go the governor and Dorraine, along with the Severeemish. The four musicians would bring up the rear and do flanker duty as necessary.
"About two hundred and fifty meters in, there's a chamber at the end of this adit that our research team used as a base of operations," Redlock said. "We'll proceed to that, then check other areas if it seems appropriate. Everyone is to stay within sight of those ahead and behind them. Fitzhugh and Floyt, make sure to relay the passwords to my troops when they arrive."
The main party moved out. The Celestials were silent and wary, the Severeemish methodical and rigid, looking as if they were just waiting to open up on everything in sight. Everyone in the group seemed to be old hands at what they were doing, even Dorraine. The adit curved gently to the left.
"King's Ransom ought to be here inside ten minutes or so." Alacrity frowned. "Now what d'you think's so important Redlock couldn't wait and send a whole friggin' armored column down there?"
"If you want to tell me, tell me," Floyt prompted. "I hate being a rhetorical sounding board."
"I can't. Yet."
The main party followed the bend in the tunnel, the last rearguard musician finally disappearing. Alacrity started forward, into the tunnel mouth.
"Hey!" squawked Floyt.
"Ho, I'm going to take a look around, and it's not going to be on Redlock's guided tour. I'm not going to steal anything, and I won't run into any trouble because Redlock's marching band will be out there in front. So don't lecture me."
"That was 'Hey' as in 'Hey, wait up!' you ass."
"Sorry, I can be a jerk sometimes. Next tour group leaving right now."
They stayed close to the wall, easing through the semi-darkness as quietly as they could, but not trying to copy the nightstalk tactics of the governor's bunch. Their footsteps echoed softly. The incline grew steeper.
"Is this a typical Precursor construction?" Floyt whispered.
"There's no typical Precursor anything."
The walls were flat and smooth, but seemed to have a fine grain. Every thirty meters or so a buttress ran along both walls and across the floor, so the two were obliged to hike themselves over a waist-high barrier. In their worse-for-wear condition, it was a complication they didn't need. It was also proof the place hadn't been built for foot traffic, at least not the human kind.
"Redlock forgot something," Alacrity realized. "Earplugs."
"What for?"
"If one of those honeys lets fly with an H.E. rocket in this place, you're gonna know what for."
The worklights had apparently been turned off at some central point. Soon the two were feeling their way along the left side of the tunnel with their left hands, right hands on their weapons. As their eyes adjusted, they saw that the tunnel walls gave off a dim glow, a ghostly green-white that came from what appeared to be a whorled grain in the walls, but the material felt icy cold.
"Heat sink?" Alacrity puzzled as he led the way. "Redlock called this an adit. I wonder just how big the place is."
The barriers were a good spot for an ambush, or for one of Redlock's crew to shoot them accidentally. They crossed with all caution, guns drawn. Floyt repeated the challenge and countersign to himself several times to make sure he had them straight. Their conditioning was bothering them less than their own apprehensions but, having started, they were drawn on by the mystical feel of the Precursor site. There was a sharp, not human or even organic smell to the place—not mustiness but definitely old.
"All right then, who were the Precursors?" Floyt had once asked Alacrity during the voyage to Epiphany.
"Ask anybody; they'll tell you. Then ask somebody else and you'll get a different answer. It's the biggest guessing game since religion."
They crossed still another buttress, almost two hundred meters into the tunnel by Alacrity's calculation. He went over first, then motioned Floyt on, a motion barely visible in the glow of the walls.
But now they could make out a brightness up ahead. Human-style lighting was part of it, but so was something else, something irregular. And they could hear deep, distant sounds, unintelligible yet somehow familiar.
The incline was very steep. Floyt was worried about losing his footing; Alacrity's pathfinders still gave him good purchase. The glow before them grew brighter, outshining the walls. Its source was somewhere close, around the bend.
Suddenly they heard yells, Severeemish roars, the chatter and hiss of weaponry, and the concussion of a rocket. Floyt understood what Alacrity meant; even at a distance, the report slammed their eardrums.
The firefight died away abruptly, raged again for ten seconds, then became sporadic.
"Now what?" Floyt asked, his heart hammering.
Conditioning and instincts told them to get out, but they were indebted to Redlock, perhaps even more so to Dorraine. Alacrity bit his lip. "You ever feel like everybody else's problems are simpler than yours?"
Floyt thought about how Redlock had intervened on their behalf and the look on Dorraine's face when she'd found out that her father was dead. "Not right now, for a change."
"Yeah? Okay, Ho; keep your head down."
They made their way to the next buttress, crouching low, then crawled behind it to the adit's right wall. From there they could see the end of the tunnel.
The Precursors hadn't any use for landings or ledges; the adit simply ended at a sharp angle, plunging into a vast underground chamber. They couldn't make out much except that they seemed to be looking into the upper reaches of the place. Brief shadows flickered against the ceiling and there were the sharp sounds and echoes of the battle.
Someone—Weir's research teams, presumably—had built a stairway down the last, steepest stretch of the adit, bracing it with suction disks and tension members. The steps led to a catwalk grating where the adit simply emptied into the artificial cavern.
There one of the Daubin' Band musicians lay unmoving, badly wounded or dead, blood darkening the white stripes of her shimmerskins. Her over-under infantry rifle lay nearby.
"Ambush," Alacrity guessed.
"Could she still be alive?"
Alacricty made a who knows? face. They began to ease up over the buttress, then ducked back as they heard running footsteps on the catwalk. A figure came into view, pounding up the steps in silhouette, crouching low, impossible to identify.
Alacrity braced both arms across the barrier, aligning the barrel of the Captain's Sidearm. "Halt! Stand fast!"
The figure froze almost comically, posed like a statue of a cat burglar.
"Interlock," Alacrity called out. Floyt glanced at him. His face, merely shiny with sweat a few moments ago, streamed with it now, catching some of the glare of the cavern.
"Interlock!" Alacrity repeated. "Gimme the damn countersign; I'm not asking you ag—" He threw himself sideways, taking Floyt with him. They heard the enraged buzzsaw of a flechette burpgun, the reports of the rounds battering their ears, the metal slivers whining and ricocheting off the floor, barrier, and walls, nearly as much of a hazard to the marksman as to his targets.
All the tension and resentment in Alacrity—some of it dated back to Terra and the underhanded way he'd been framed and recruited—exploded. With a curse in some language that didn't sound quite human, showing his teeth and the whites of his eyes, he scrabbled back to the barrier, staying below the line of fire, and waited for a lull in the swarming of flechettes. Lying asprawl, he eased the muzzle of the Captain's Sidearm up, barely over the buttress, and let fly.
Floyt, who'd been present on a previous firing, already had his fingers in his ears.
&nbs
p; The bulky old handgun overloaded the adit with thunder-flash, heat, and death. It had been designed for use against the dangers a vessel's skipper might face: boarding, riot, and mutiny. Its discharge was attended by almost overwhelming visible light and sonic energy.
Alacrity fired again; the shot boomed, reverberating through the place.
The flechette burpgun had fallen silent. Alacrity pushed his hip howitzer up higher for a better angle on a third shot, still without so much as raising his head. Then he swiftly wriggled to a different firing spot elsewhere along the barrier, using shoulders, heels, one hand, and the back of his head.
In the wake of the concussion and glare, he was up, forearms once more steadied across the barrier. The man was backing toward the catwalk, nearly on all fours, the burpgun aimed where Alacrity had been.
Alacrity cut loose again, just as the burpgun muzzle swung to bear on him. The fierce blare of energy caught the intruder squarely, knocking him backward through the air as it simply vaporized his middle. For an instant Alacrity saw the disbelieving look on a face that seemed to be all bulging eyes.
The body hit the catwalk and lay smoking and crackling. Alacrity was up and over the buttress, sprinting for the catwalk. Floyt brought up the rear, the Webley in his hand, it's lanyard ring flapping and clinking.
Floyt fetched up against Alacrity's back, almost toppling them both. They were gagging on the smoke, breathless and nearly spent.
"See?" Alacrity asked in a remote voice as they gazed down into the chamber. "Didn't I tell you we'd seen a Precursor artifact?"
"Hell, no, you didn't," Floyt answered softly. "All you did was hint. I wonder if the one on Weir's terrace is an egg. A nit."
The causality harp they'd seen at Frostpile was small and uncomplicated compared to this shifting, churning titan. The Precursor chamber was wide and high—fifty meters or more through its long axis, the vertical—and most of that was occupied by this fuller, terribly complex looking nebula. The primeval smell they'd noticed was all-pervasive.
The half-familiar sounds came to them clearly, the tonalities and near-subsonic hum, the great baritone chiming of the thing. It was more alive-seeming than the first; the adumbrations and eddies, brume-shapes and hazy images seemed much more immediate, nearer to resolution.
