Fear the Alien
Page 30
“Ma’am?” Joachim Hep was at Brielle’s side in an instant, his firm hold grasping the shoulder of her armoured survival suit. A moment later, the rest of the party halted, the armsmen taking guard positions while their taciturn leader worked his way back down the line towards Brielle.
“I’m fine, Joachim,” Brielle answered. “I’m fine. It’s this place. It plays havoc with the senses.”
“That it does, ma’am,” replied Brielle’s advisor, stepping back having satisfied himself that his mistress was able to continue. “I cannot read it either.”
At this, Quin interjected. “My lady, how much time do you perceive to have passed since we set out across this chamber?”
Brielle looked to the warrior, distracted, beguiled even, for a brief moment by the swirling patterns of his facial tattoos. “How much time?” she repeated, turning her head to look back the way the party had travelled. “I would say… Emperor’s mercy…”
“How long, my lady?” Quin pressed.
Brielle looked back to the feral-worlder, her throat suddenly dry. “Three, three and half…”
“Minutes?” Quin asked.
“Hours,” Brielle said, the sight of the passageway mouth, a hundred metres behind, still fresh in her mind.
“…aeons,” Adept Seth whispered.
“Behind us,” Brielle whispered into her vox-link, having subtly disengaged the external amplivox. She made an effort not to change her stance or the pattern of march as the party continued on its way across the dusty chamber.
“Yes, my lady,” Quin answered, having followed her lead and adjusted his own communications in the same manner.
“How long?” Brielle asked.
“For me?” Quin turned his head as he walked, raising an eyebrow sardonically.
“Fair point,” Brielle conceded. “How long?” she repeated.
“No more than thirty minutes,” Quin said.
“Can you tell where?” Brielle asked. Brielle herself had been aware of movement to the party’s rear for several minutes.
“In this half-light,” Quin answered, “it’s hard to be sure. But, I would say that we are being tracked by one observer, using the folds of the dust as cover, to our rear and left.”
It took a supreme effort of will for Brielle not to turn and look in the direction Quin had described. She could not help but imagine a crosshair aimed at the centre of the back of her head, making her skin suddenly itch beneath her armoured helmet. She felt an irresistible, inexplicable urge to pull the helmet free and shake out her plaited locks, which felt as if they were pasted to her scalp. She shook the notion off, adjusting her step, treading softly through the dust, focussing her every sense behind her for any sign of pursuit.
Brielle imagined she heard a distant voice, so quiet it was little more than a thought. She glanced towards the astropath, and noted that his head was cocked at an odd angle, as if he too were intently listening to something. She focussed upon that distant whisper, half-hearing the forming of alien words, yet not quite able to discern them fully.
++There are more, mistress++ the astropath’s thought-message touched her mind, his withered, scarred mouth not moving at all.
++Where?++ She formed the reply in her mind, unsure whether the astropath would hear her. Evidently, he did hear, for the thought came back immediately, ++Everywhere, mistress. All around us. They slumber… yet they stir.++
With a conscious effort, Brielle closed her mind. She had felt the touch of madness in the astropath’s thoughts, a cold dread verging on the insane. Her eyes met briefly with those of Quin, who nodded to the fore. Whilst Brielle’s attentions had been otherwise engaged, the party had come upon the opposite side of the vast chamber. She looked back, seeing that they had somehow crossed the impossible distance in what felt to her like the course of barely five or six hours.
Brielle stood at the very brink of a wide chasm, cut with unreal precision into the black rock of the alien tomb’s dusty floor. Far below, there emanated a lurid green glow, the same glow, she mused, as had suffused the chamber they had just crossed, yet here it was direct to the point of blinding intensity. Far above, the vaults were lost to blackness, and Brielle saw no other way forwards than to cross the vast chasm.
“Deploy the line,” she ordered.
Santos Quin motioned to one of the armsmen, who stepped forwards and unlimbered a heavy grapnel launcher. The man braced his feet wide, and aimed the launcher at a point on the ground across the chasm, some forty metres distant.
“Fire!” Quin ordered.
The launcher’s report was deafening, the explosive crack filling the stillness of the tomb. Brielle experienced an instant of profound dread, as if their intrusion must surely be noted, as if the sound would bring attackers down upon them in an instant. She glanced all around, half-expecting the shadows on the black stone walls to resolve themselves into the dreadful forms of long-dead guardians. She shook off the notion, but guessed that the other members of her party shared it. Even Quin was casting cautious looks all about.
Brielle was brought back to the present by the impact of the grapnel as it struck the ground on the far side of the chasm. She watched as the module at the end of the line activated, power hooks springing forth to bite into the stone, before the energy was shut off an instant later, leaving the blades embedded in the ground. The armsman activated the mechanism on the launcher, and the line tightened. Using a similar system of power hooks mounted at the launcher’s base, the armsman secured the device to the ground on the party’s side of the chasm, and stepped back.
Brielle made for the line, before both Quin and Hep stepped forwards to block her path.
“With respect, ma’am,” Hep said, bowing as he did so lest he give undue offence. “Please, Brielle,” he continued, his voice low. “I cannot allow you to cross first. Your father would have me flayed by the bilge-rippers.”
Brielle suppressed a smile, despite her mild annoyance, for she was ever ill at ease with others taking risks on her behalf. Yet, she knew her advisor, one of her father’s oldest friends, was correct. She smiled gracefully as she returned his bow and stepped aside.
“And I,” interjected Santos Quin, “cannot allow you, Joachim, to cross first.” The warrior held up a hand to wave away any objection Hep might voice. “I too have duties to observe.”
Brielle watched, amused, as Joachim Hep considered Quin’s words, before he too stepped aside, allowing the feral-worlder to approach the secured grapnel launcher. With a gesture, the warrior deployed his armsmen so as to cover the far side as he prepared to cross. Unravelling a cord from his belt, Quin attached himself to the grapnel line, and lowered himself over the edge of the chasm.
Brielle watched as Quin progressed, slowly at first, but with increasing speed, across the wide chasm. She imagined for an instant that the green light blazing from below flickered for a moment, as if in recognition of the intrusion, but cast off the idea as imagination born of tension. A sound caught her attention, and she looked towards Adept Seth, noting that the astropath was mumbling under his breath, his ruined mouth working, the incoherent words muffled by the helmet of his survival suit.
“Seth,” Brielle called softly, mindful of disturbing the stygian silence of the tomb. The astropath appeared not to have noted his mistress’ call. “Seth!” she hissed, her teeth gritted.
“Mistress?” Seth replied, finally comprehending that he was being addressed.
“What is it, Seth?” Brielle asked, once more forcing down concern at the astropath’s manner.
“I…” Adept Seth stammered. “I think we should leave now, mistress.”
“Leave? What are you talking about, Seth? What’s wrong?”
“It’s the sleepers, mistress… it’s their dreams… I can’t…”
Brielle weighed the situation in her head. Her astropath appeared to be losing his grip on reality, but she needed him here, to communicate with her vessel in orbit, and for the edge his prodigious powers could pr
ovide in a dangerous situation. Yet, it appeared now that those same powers were proving his undoing, for it seemed to Brielle that the echoes of the dreams of the long-dead builders of this vast tomb were somehow afflicting him. If it came to it, she knew she could order one of the armsmen to incapacitate the astropath, to bind and drug him until the expedition was completed, but in so doing she would handicap their efforts significantly. She could not afford to lose the astropath, not yet, at least.
“My lady?” Brielle heard Quin address her over the vox channel. She turned, to see that the feral-worlder had made it safely across the chasm. “My lady, I will have one of the armsmen attend to the adept, have no fear. Now please, it is safe for you to cross.”
“Thank you, Santos,” Brielle answered, noting that one of the armsmen had moved closer to the astropath, evidently responding to a surreptitious order from Quin. She approached the lip of the chasm, and stood at its very edge for a moment, gazing past her feet into the lambent depths far below. She experienced again a wave of disorientation, having little to do with any fear of heights and more to do with the subtly wrong geometry of the tomb. She could not quite place it. It appeared sometimes that no two planes intersected exactly how they should, as if perspective were somehow out of kilter. Taking a deep breath, she pushed such concerns to the back of her mind and withdrew a cord from her belt. She seated herself at the edge of the chasm, and clipped the cord to the grapnel line.
In a single motion, Brielle swung out beneath the line, suspending herself below it. She tested the cord attaching her belt to the line, and, satisfied that it was properly attached, began to winch herself across. Above her, Brielle could see little more than darkness, the vaults far overhead twinkling with what she took to be stray reflections from the actinic energies raging below her. Pulling herself along, one hand over the other, she concentrated not on the hundreds, perhaps thousands of metres below her, but on those minuscule points of green light twinkling in the darkness overhead. She judged herself halfway across the mighty gap before she noted that the lights above appeared to be growing in brightness.
“…dreams… the guttering flame… stirring…” Brielle heard Adept Seth over the vox-channel, and craned her neck to look towards Quin. Doing so, she saw that the feral-worlder’s gaze was turned upwards, transfixed upon those same green lights that had held her own attention as she had crossed the gap.
She looked back upwards, to see that those same lights were now twice as bright, and were swooping down towards her!
“My lady!” Quin shouted. “Beware!” The warrior raised his boltgun in both hands, bracing its butt against his shoulder. The weapon’s staccato bark was deafening, and its discharge illuminated the darkness with blinding orange fire.
Hanging precariously halfway across the depthless chasm, Brielle felt suddenly painfully aware of how exposed her position was. She had no time to seek out the targets Quin was firing at, or to engage them herself. Instead, she gritted her teeth and hauled on the line, dragging her body into motion, hand over hand.
Even as she concentrated upon crossing the chasm, the air all around Brielle was filled with flashing light, the discharge of the armsmen’s heavy-gauge shotguns as they blasted at the foe Brielle could not see.
“My lady!” Brielle heard, surprised by how close Quin’s voice sounded. She looked around, to see that, somehow, she had traversed the chasm, and Quin was reaching out a hand to help her climb up over the lip. She looked to his outstretched glove, before something behind him caught her eye.
“Quin!”
The warrior followed his mistress’ gaze, turning on the spot and bringing his boltgun up, one-handed.
The weapon barked, its report shockingly loud at such close quarters, even through Brielle’s survival suit helmet. Something exploded, peppering Brielle and Quin with small metallic shards. With relief, Brielle saw that her suit was intact, its armour having protected her from the potentially lethal shrapnel.
“Are you hurt?” Brielle asked the warrior, aware that he had been closer to the detonation than she.
“Not badly, my lady,” Quin replied, before shouting a warning to one of the armsmen across the chasm.
Brielle looked across the gap, towards the remainder of the party. She was greeted by the sight of the armsmen arrayed in a semicircle, their backs to the edge of the chasm, with Joachim Hep and Adept Seth at the centre of their formation. While the fighters blasted into the darkness above, Hep was attempting to get Seth to cross the chasm.
From the darkness above the group flashed silvered, insect-like attackers, each little more than a metre in length. From what Brielle took to be the head of each creature, there shone a green light, clearly akin to that which blazed so brightly in the depths of the chasm she had just crossed. One of the metallic creatures swooped down upon an armsman, the green at its front increasing in brightness until the attacker was surrounded by a nimbus of pulsating energy. The armsman racked the slide on his shotgun and unleashed a blast at near point-blank range, but the creature swerved aside as it dived towards its target.
As the attacker fell upon the armsman, the green field surrounding it increased in intensity still further. At the last, his attacker closing, the armsman rotated his shotgun and drove its solid stock upwards, ramming it hard into his attacker’s head. The green light exploded as the shotgun crunched into the attacker’s fore section. The armsman was driven backwards, falling to land at the very edge of the chasm. His attacker plummeted, out of control, right above his supine form, and was lost in the pulsating depths far below.
“Everyone across, come on!” Brielle yelled, reaching for the bolt pistol holstered at her hip. Bracing the weapon in both hands, she drew a bead on the nearest of the insectoid attackers as it circled overhead.
“Hep!” she called. “Get Seth over here, now!”
Not waiting for an acknowledgement, she squeezed the trigger. Brielle’s pistol barked, and the shot struck home, burying itself in the outer shell of the creature’s body. The impact caused the creature to swerve abruptly, but before it could correct its course, it exploded into a thousand metallic shards, the miniature explosive warhead of the bolt round having detonated itself with lethal effect after penetrating the target’s armour.
As Hep forced the astropath onto the grapnel line and helped him cross, Brielle and Quin kept up their fusillade, the bolt rounds accounting for another three of the creatures. Then suddenly, the attackers broke off as one, as if in answer to some unheard order.
“Is anyone hurt?” Brielle asked Quin.
“Not seriously, my lady,” the warrior answered. “I do not think these creatures were made for fighting.”
Brielle looked to Quin. “Explain.”
“My lady, these creatures appeared to me to be testing our defences and our capabilities. I believe they were little more than sentinels.”
“Sentinels?” Brielle repeated. “Sentinels guarding what?”
“This place, my lady,” Quin answered. “They guard this tomb against intruders. Against desecration.”
“Against thieves,” Brielle finished, allowing herself a wry smile.
“They are close now, mistress… can’t you hear them?” Brielle heard Seth mumble from her side as the party made its way through a maze of narrow passageways. Despite herself, she was beginning to lose her patience with the astropath, but knew there was little she could do about it now.
“What is it you hear?” Brielle replied. “Please, Seth, speak plainly.”
“I hear these…” Brielle turned as she walked, and saw that Seth was trailing his outstretched hand along wall, his unfeeling, gloved fingers following the intricate engravings that covered its every surface.
“What do you mean?” Brielle asked, knowing that she was unlikely to receive a coherent answer, but preferring to keep the astropath from descending into total madness.
“It is all connected, mistress… all of it. They barely dream at all, mistress, not like we do…”
She shook her head once more, this time to clear it of the odd notions that crept into her consciousness whenever she looked too closely at the patterns on the walls.
“Seth,” she said. “Do not lay hands upon the walls…”
“We must leave,” the astropath announced, halting in his tracks. “We must turn back, mistress, now.”
Brielle stopped and turned on the astropath, ready to admonish him or order him sedated. And then, she caught an echo, a sound from the direction in which the party had come.
“It’s the chasm, my lady,” Quin said as she looked to him for his assessment. “The sentinel creatures.”
“It’s them!” Seth shrieked, and turned as if to flee.
“Restrain him,” Brielle ordered. Quin motioned to a nearby armsman, who moved in behind the astropath and gripped both of his arms at the elbows.
“Why would the sentinels be active once more?” Brielle asked, not expecting any of her servants to answer. She shared a glance with Santos Quin as he raised his boltgun and made to continue along the passageway. She lingered a moment, listening intently to the last of the sounds from behind as they echoed and faded to silence. She imagined for a moment that the sentinels might be attacking once more, before rejecting the notion, and following after Quin.
Leaving the dark, sigil-lined passageway behind, Brielle stepped out into a vast, circular chamber. The space was dominated by hundreds of tiered galleries, each one stacked upon that below, the highest lost in darkness far above. Each tier was lined with alcoves, in each of which a dully gleaming, humanoid statue stood.