“That’s….”
“Don’t worry, Triplanetary Intelligence managed to put an end to it, set them back a decade or two, and we’re pretty sure that there’s a way to deprogram someone.” Glancing at the shaft, she added, “None of which makes me feel better given what we seem to be facing down there.”
“You think it’s rigged to visual imagery?”
“Almost certainly, which is why it didn’t effect me. I was wearing sensor goggles at the time, and the images didn’t get through the filters.” She frowned, and added, “A safety feature we built in. Yours have it too, if you were wearing it.”
“How come I didn’t know about this?”
“Orders. The last thing we wanted was for that to become public knowledge. Bad enough for a few deep-cover organizations to start working on that sort of thing. Worse if some two-bit shrink decides that they’re going to mess around with neural deprogramming.”
“So what do we do now? Have you seen Clarke or Mortimer?”
Shaking her head, she replied, “I’m afraid not. I think we’ve got to assume that we’re on our own up here, at least for the moment. It’s not a big moon. We’d see them if they were here. What worries me is that now that the computer has worked out that we’re not simply going to walk towards it, it might decide to do something else about us. Wake those sleeping legions down there.”
Frowning, he said, “Maybe we need to play its game.”
“What?”
“You said that those goggles could protect us, right? So we go down there, wearing them, and act as though we’re responding to stimuli. It’ll buy us time, if nothing else, maybe enough for us to work out some way of stopping it. Or at the very least, of finding the information we’ve been looking for. What do you say?”
Taking a deep breath, Harper replied, “That’s the most powerful computer complex that either of us has ever seen. Our goggles are designed to protect us against normal systems, systems we know and understand. The closer the range, the worse it will get.”
“Granted, but the only other choice is to set a new record for the longest parachute jump in history, and I’m not sure I’m up to that today.” He looked around, and said, “We came here with a specific objective in mind, and it’s right down that shaft. I don’t think we have any other choice than to take full advantage of it. And we both knew that the odds were that this was a one-way mission, going in.”
“We don’t even have a working communicator,” she protested.
“So we go for the best we can manage, and destroy that machine if we can. I’ve still got my explosive charges. Ninety seconds, and all of this can be over.”
Shaking her head, she replied, “It can’t be that simple.”
“We’ve got to try,” he said, fumbling in his pocket for his goggles. “Are you with me?”
Nodding, she said, “Of course.”
Salazar donned his eye-wear, waiting a moment for the start-up sequence to complete, and Harper reached across to the controls on the side strap, tapping buttons to boost the countermeasure systems to their highest possible level. A series of red lights winked on, power discharging at an unimaginable rate. They wouldn’t have long to complete the attack.
The pair returned to the shaft, the lights inside still pulsating, and as Salazar looked down at the core once again, more warning alerts littered his heads-up display, the subliminal programming trying to cut through his firewalls, complete the work that it had begun during his first exposure. Even through the protection of the goggles, he still found the sight almost overwhelmingly compelling, still struggled to resist the forces urging him to give in, to surrender his will and everything else to the programming that was trying to change his very soul.
“It’s only going to get worse,” Harper muttered.
“Then let’s get this over with,” he replied, sliding down the shaft. All around, the winged humanoids slumbered, all connected by tubes and cabling to the wall, strange lights dancing around while he watched. More programming, perhaps, or some sort of feeding process. Certainly there was no sign of food or water in the moon, the one large chamber instead dedicated exclusively to what could only be described as storage.
This army was larger than he’d feared, that much was certain. Thousands upon thousands of them, nestled together, all with the same dull expression on the faces, the expression they had worn during the attack on the colony. Was there any consciousness left, anything at all, or had it all been ripped away by the implacable will of the machine they sought to destroy.
He saw no other defenses, no sign that anything else was watching him. Presumably the system thought that the sleeping army and its own internal protection was sufficient. Had it not been for Harper’s paranoia, it would probably have been right. For a brief second, he was cast into darkness, and looked up to see another moon sliding overhead, blocking out the sunlight before moving on.
Glancing at Harper, he froze for a moment. No other moon was supposed to pass that close while they were here. That someone could influence the courses of huge objects like that seemed impossible, but it was evidently happening. He looked down once again, the inviting light growing ever larger, ever brighter. They were almost there, almost at their goal, and no matter what happened, they had to complete their mission. Even if they only detonated the charges, they could stop this army before it could ever take to the sky again.
The cave opened out, but the gravity field fell away, and he and Harper were falling, floating towards their target. The lights were growing blinding now, even through the protection of the goggles, and Salazar was struggling to resist the symbols, Harper moving faster than he towards their goal. He looked up, and saw figures rushing towards them, masks over their faces, diving towards the pair with outstretched wings.
On instinct, he reached for his charges, tapping the control and hurling the pack into the depths of the moon, the systems set for the maximum possible yield. The light winked once, then twice, and died. Something had blocked the detonator, and he could guess what. He reached for Harper, ready to abort the mission, but she resisted his tug, continuing towards the core, her eyes vacant, glassy. A red light on the side of her goggles gave the reason. At some point within the last moment, she’d run out of charge, and was instantly exposed to the full force of the core.
Arms reached down for him, and he looked up to see a winged figure looking down at him, emotions playing across his face as he tugged at Salazar, trying to drag him away. He shook his head, reaching for Harper, but she was falling away, out of his reach, moment after moment, lost to the machine.
“She’s gone,” a strange, sibilant voice said. “She’s gone, and there’s no way to retrieve her. Not yet, anyway. You’ll be captured yourself in a matter of moments unless we get out of here right now.” As Salazar continued to struggle, the figure continued, “We’re risking our lives, our souls, to rescue you. You might at least cooperate!”
“I can’t leave her,” he protested.
“You’ve got no choice! There will be another time, but not if we don’t get out of here, now!” The figure pulled at Salazar, harder this time, and finally he relented, allowing himself to be pulled back up the shaft. As they rose, all around, eyes snapped open, thousands of the soulless creatures around him focusing on the escaping pair. He reached for his pistol, then paused. He had eight rounds in the weapon. They outnumbered him by thousands to one. For the present, safety lay only in flight, in speed, nothing else.
The pair burst into sunlight once again, as the army began to awaken beneath them. More of the humanoids were waiting at the entrance, tossing a weighted net after them before pursuing Salazar and his rescuer. As he’d suspected, they were flying towards the second moon, this one far smoother than the first, only a single entrance awaiting them. Almost as he watched, he could see their target receding, could see the moon that had been his goal falling away behind him.
“You’re most fortunate,” his rescuer said. “It’s rare to find anyone who can resist the Controller for any length of time. I presume the device on your eyes is the answer.”
“Until the charge ran out,” Salazar replied. “Will they follow us?”
“No, not now,” he said, as they dived for their sanctuary. “The Controller husbands its resources most carefully, and won’t risk its servants on an attack it doesn’t believe it can win, not to kill one rogue human who dares to enter its sanctum. Especially as it has the prisoner it sought.” Turning to him, he said, “You came to destroy it?”
“If I could.”
“You aren’t the first. I suspect you won’t be the last.”
“Some day, someone will,” he replied.
A curious smile crossed the humanoid’s face, and he said, “That, my friend, is a pleasant thought. A comfort in the nightmare in which we now must live. Though perhaps only a small one, at that.” They dived into the tunnel, a shaft not dissimilar to the Controller’s lair, this time heading for a smaller chamber at the heart. The humanoid turned, and asked, “Have you any native ability to fly?”
“None.”
“Good.” He released Salazar, who fell to the heart of the moon, the gravity fields shifting and changing to secure him in position in the middle of the chamber. He struggled, tried to move, but the forces were locking him in place more securely than any restraints. He looked up at the figure, who flew back to the surface.
“We will return shortly,” the figure said. “Once we have had a chance to verify you are who you purport to me. Until then, I suggest you try and rest. There will be time for more questions later.”
“Harper?” he asked.
The figure paused, hovering in the air, and replied, “If there is any chance at all, it will be her battle to fight. None of us can intervene, not until it is done. I am sorry. I truly am. But I fear that is the way it must be.”
Chapter 8
Clarke and Mortimer walked down the runway, the latter periodically glancing at her datapad, watching for traces of residual radiation. Though the landing strip itself was clear, the surrounding buildings were all reduced to rubble, shattered, torn and twisted. The little writing that remained was in a proto-indo dialect, easily translated by their datapads, but so little remained as to be almost unintelligible in any case.
“Anything?” he asked.
“Levels are a little high, but well within safe limits.” She paused, then said, “That’s interesting. I’m picking up a steady heat source, somewhere way down below us. It has to be artificial. Nothing natural would be that stable.” Turning to him, she said, “Maybe we’ve found whoever is in charge up here.”
“Assuming anyone is,” he replied. “Anyone operating this field must have seen us come down. Everyone for a few thousand miles would have. I’d expected someone to come and meet us as soon as we landed, if anyone was going to.” Looking around the deserted runway, he said, “I don’t think anyone has been here for a very long time.”
“Then who’s clearing the landing strip?” she asked. “This doesn’t add up.” Gesturing ahead, she said, “The heat source is that way, about two hundred meters underground. There’s got to be some sort of access way down there.” Nodding, Clarke walked to the nearest building, picking up a collection of small chunks of debris. “What are you doing?”
“Leaving a message,” he replied. “Assuming anyone is coming after us.”
“Even if they left right away,” she said, “They won’t be here for thirty-six hours at best. And that’s assuming they can travel in something that at least approximates a straight line. We’ll be back up on the surface long before our theoretical rescuers can arrive.”
“Let’s hope so,” he said, arranging the rubble to form a crude arrow, pointing at the building that was their goal. “There’s no point not removing unnecessary risks, though.”
“If you felt that way,” she replied, walking towards the half-ruined structure, “We should both have stayed at Base Camp. It’s a little late to be getting squeamish now.”
He followed her towards the building, pulling out his datapad and extending the sensor filament, saying, “Structure looks reasonably sound. Enough that it isn’t likely to fall on us when we step inside, anyway.” Shaking his head, he added, “Though there’s no sign that anyone’s given a damn about the place for a lot of years.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out a flashlight, and directed it into the wreckage. “No active power readings, no lights, and the dust is unbroken.”
“There,” Mortimer said, pointing at a pile of debris. “A hatch.” She turned to him, and asked, “We going down together?”
“You think there’s any point splitting up at this stage? Neither of us is in a position to call in the cavalry, and I’m not even sure I could taxi that shuttle to the other end of the runway, never mind try and take off in it. We might as well stick together.”
With a nod, she pulled the hatch open, revealing a long shaft, leading straight down, gleaming rungs jutting from the wall. She pushed down on one with her foot, using all her strength, and looked up with surprise as it held. Clarke looked around for another chunk of debris, throwing it down the shaft, and a second later, with a loud clang it hit bottom.
“Nothing stopped it. No defenses.” She looked up, and said, “This is damned peculiar.”
“It’s a mystery,” he replied, “and I only know one way to solve it.” He climbed onto the ladder, slowly descending, testing each rung as he went, his flashlight swinging from the strap around his wrist. A moment later, Mortimer followed him, careful to keep a safe distance from Clarke as the two of them wordlessly climbed down, the only sound the clang of each foot on the metal.
“Something else strange,” Mortimer said. “The shaft’s clean. No rust, no decay, nothing. It’s though someone only finished building it yesterday.”
“That’s as good an explanation as any,” Clarke replied. He stepped off the final rung, onto a cold metal floor, the walls decorated with freshly-painted writing. Holding up his datapad, his eyes widened as he read, “Control Room. Launch Silo. Sleeping Quarters.” He paused, then said, “Or maybe Slumber Room.”
“Slumber Room?”
“Let’s check out Control first,” he said. “Right down the corridor.” He drew his sidearm, leading the way, braced for an attack that he somehow knew wasn’t coming. There was no sign of life, no sign that anyone had ever walked these corridors before. “I think we’ve found a bunker.”
Nodding, Mortimer said, “I was thinking the same thing. That civilization that was wiped out, a few hundred miles to the north. Maybe this was some sort of remote outpost, a staging area.” Warming to her topic, she added, “If you think about it, any civilization aspiring to control of a large portion of the Sphere would have to use air travel to get anywhere, and that means airbases, and lots of them. The local version of a space station.” She paused, then asked, “Why wouldn’t it be destroyed in the war, though?”
“Maybe both sides wanted to leave it intact, a prize for the winner. Maybe the missile didn’t detonate. At any rate, all of this must have happened a long, long time ago. Long enough for those buildings to decay on their own.” He heard a squeak, and turned to see a small shape scurrying across the floor, finally catching it in the searchlight.
“A robot,” Mortimer said. “Control antenna. It’s a cleaner, John. That solves one mystery. There’s some sort of computer complex here, keeping everything operational.” Her smile fell rapidly away as she added, “Christ, you think we might have fallen into the lion’s den. The same computer complex...”
“No,” Clarke replied. “I get the feeling that if someone wanted us to die, we’d be dead already. There’s a bigger mystery here, and we’re going to find out what it is.” He looked up at the tunnel, splitting in twain. “Control room, just ahead.” He walked
through a hatch, long-frozen open, and out at banks of controls panels, all but one of them empty, a skeleton sitting sprawled in one of the chairs, skull slumped to the side where it had died.
Mortimer looked at Clarke, then stepped forward, looking over the corpse, and saying, “Gunshot wound to the head. Probably had a front-row seat for the destruction of everyone he knew, everything he cared about. Poor bastard. I might have done the same in his case.” She reached down to his panel, and said, “Something’s still working, anyway. I’m getting something on the screen.” She ran her datapad over it, reading, “Power levels, life-support systems. Everything’s on automatic control.”
“Listen to me,” a strange, computerized voice said. “Listen to my last words.”
“What was that?” Clarke said.
“My datapad,” Mortimer replied. “It’s set to translate. There must be a signal coming from somewhere.” She looked down at the screen, and said, “Log entry.”
“I was sent to command this sanctuary, the launching point that would have propelled our civilization forward by a thousand years, but the angels rained down fire from the sky, they torched our cities with nuclear fire, erased every trace that we had ever been from existence. This happened in a single night, and all that remained were a few outposts, scattered and broken, to tell the tale.”
“Looks like you were right,” Clarke said.
“Listen to me!” the voice said, insistently. “We knew it would come. We had seen traces of what had been before us, heard the tales that had been whispered along the corridors of time. The angels had struck before, and will strike again. If you have reached this far, then your people face danger and destruction, just as ours did. We failed the final test of survival, failed to destroy the malevolent star in the heavens.”
“He’s got quite a turn of phrase, hasn’t he,” Mortimer said.
“I’m amazed the translation program is working as well as it is,” Clarke replied.
“We had one last hope, and now, if the servitors have labored through the ages, so have you. One means of striking back at the enemy that threatens all life, all intelligence. A spear to thrust through the heart of the machine, and avenge my lost people. My people who might live again. I charge you with two great tasks. The destruction of our enemies, and the survival of our people.” Lights flicked on, camera pickups displaying images of computer hardware. “The bio-genetic codes of our race. The ability to create a million beings to walk the lands we once knew. With memory engrams designed to allow the best of us to breathe again. I can do no more. My life’s blood ebbs away, and I must join the rest of my race in slumber. Let us live once more. Let us live again.”
Battlecruiser Alamo_Cries in the Dark Page 6
