Asgard's Conquerors

by Brian Stableford

  "Oh merde!" I said, with a great deal of feeling. "The bastards!"

  But I could see in Sigor Dyan's face that he didn't believe that I was innocent.

  It seemed the perfect time to give up the unequal struggle and let go, so I let the dizziness and the fever take control, and I fell into insensibility.

  21

  My memory of subsequent events is understandably a little hazy. The fever didn't make me delirious in the sense that I was afflicted by crazy dreams, but it did put such pressure on my brain that I suffered continual lapses into semicoma.

  They tried to ask me more questions, and I tried to answer them, but I wasn't terribly articulate and I don't suppose they got much joy out of it. I wasn't taken back to my cell, but was instead removed to some kind of isolation unit. All of a sudden, everybody that touched me was wearing rubber gloves and surgical masks. Even in my dilapidated state I knew that they were locking the stable door with the horse long gone. Since I slugged my first invader I'd been manhandled by an awful lot of soldier boys. The disease would be peacefully incubating away in a great many bodies by now. If the Tetrax really had planted a biological time-bomb inside me—and I didn't doubt it—they'd made sure it had a nice long fuse, so it wouldn't show up too early. I was still cursing myself for not having realised how perfidious they were.

  Tetron biotech makes for very good medicine, and a weapon like this one would have been useless even against the likes of human beings. The invaders, by contrast, could do very little even to treat the symptoms. And I, poor hapless weapon, had to suffer alongside them.

  I must have lain in my new bed suffering the ravages of the fever for several days. At first, I didn't even notice when they wheeled in the other patients, and the realisation dawned on me only by degrees that there was only one person I knew who possessed a shock of bright blonde hair like that adorning the head which was tossing and turning on the pillow five metres away.

  There had been no need to worry about betraying Susarma Lear to the invaders. She'd already been betrayed—probably by order of the Tetrax, so that she could start the serious business of spreading her germs far and wide.

  I remember thinking to myself, not altogether coherently, that it was a great pity, because now there was no U.S. Cavalry out there to ride to my rescue.

  At some stage I must have been able to take a good look at the other two people who'd also been moved in, because by the time I became compos mentis again I knew who they were.

  They were Sergeant Serne and Trooper John Finn.

  I would like to report that I was tough enough to recover before anyone else did from the ravages of the sickness, but I wasn't. Truth to tell, I was still very much under the weather when the others were beginning to recover, and it took a lot of effort on the colonel's part to get me to pay proper attention when she woke me up in the middle of the night.

  "Come on, damn you," she said, shaking me in a most unkind manner.

  "Just leave me to die," I told her in a croaky voice.

  "You're not going to die, you stupid bastard. Would you rather I slapped your face or poured cold water over you?"

  "Neither," I told her aggrievedly.

  "Then you'd better pull yourself together, hadn't you?" She still had a grip on the collar of the nightshirt our hosts had provided, and she was bouncing my head around, apparently in the hope of shaking some sense into it.

  "For Christ's sake stop it!" I told her. She did, and the relief was very welcome.

  She'd switched on a bedside lamp in order to see what she was doing, and she pointed its tiny light straight at my face to check that I was present and paying attention.

  "Okay now?" she said. "Seme's still out for the count, but it looks as if he and that rat Finn will live. Did they tell you that they think the Tetrax used us to carry the virus into the city?"

  "I was there when they reached the conclusion," I told her.

  "Is it true?"

  "You know as much as I do," I assured her. "But I believe it. Don't you?"

  "Is this place bugged?"

  "Jesus, Susarma, I haven't a clue. Alex Sovorov reckons they aren't clever enough, but he doesn't know his arse from his elbow. They don't know English anyway—don't be so bloody melodramatic! Have we any secrets left?"

  "Only one," she said. "Before we left the solar system, I was told to investigate the possibility of making a deal with the invaders, to support them against the Tetrax, if that looked like a better deal than the Tetrax were offering. If they really did use us to start a bio-war, I'm inclined to wonder seriously which side we should be on."

  "What I feel just now," I told her, "seems to me to be evidence that it's not a good idea to take on the Tetrax. The invaders are not going to win this war, even if there are twenty billion of them."

  "The Salamandrans tried tricks like this all the time," she assured me. "We learned to cope. If you know what you're up against, it's not so difficult. Maybe the invaders could win—if they had our help."

  "Not against the Tetrax," I told her. "It could have been worse. It's flu, not bubonic plague—it may be a dirty trick, but they could have played even dirtier. They've aimed to incapacitate, not to kill."

  "You think it was intended to be a warning shot across the bows—to let the invaders know how far outclassed they are?"

  "Who cares?" I complained. I wondered whether she'd just woken me up for a friendly chat, or whether she had something important to discuss. My body felt as heavy as lead, and my head hurt.

  She must have seen that I wasn't in a good mood, because she got to the point. "We were shipped straight in here," she told me. "We didn't see much on the latter part of the journey, either. How much did you see? What are the chances of getting out of here?"

  I managed a hollow laugh. In retrospect, I guess it would have been difficult to manage any other kind.

  "They don't keep much of a watch on the doorways," I told her. "We could walk right out. Trouble is, the atmosphere outside has no free oxygen. Even if we had suits, there's nowhere to go but the shaft we came down. Beyond the shaft—invaders by the million."

  She didn't seem particularly daunted by this news. "If we can pass for invaders . . ." she began. She left the sentence hanging. Then she said: "How many other humans are down here?"

  "Only Alex Sovorov," I told her. "And he's next to useless. Anyhow, he's scheduled to get very sick in a day or two— we were sharing a cell. He's never going to forgive me."

  She looked round at the other beds. "How far can we

  trust him?" she asked, nodding toward Finn.

  "About as far as you can throw a feather into a headwind," I told her. "He probably already told the invaders everything he knew, and they probably sent him down here with us to make regular reports back. They may not understand bugs, but with Finn around they don't need to. Turncoat through and through."

  The expression that crossed her face was one I'd seen before—determination mixed with disgust. Then she looked at me again, and I was surprised to see the expression change. It wasn't exactly a friendly expression—she didn't have one of those in her repertoire—but it showed traces of concern for my welfare.

  "Get some sleep," she said, sounding very tired herself. "In the morning, play dead. I don't want them to know that we're recovering."

  I didn't think it would be very difficult to pretend to be ill. I hadn't much faith, yet, that I was recovering.

  In the morning, though, I really did feel a lot better. I woke up to a welcome absence of pain and disorientation. I can't say that I was brimful of joie de vivre, but I no longer felt as if I'd been through a document-shredder. I felt almost capable of coherent thought, and began to notice things.

  I noticed for the first time the nurse who spoon-fed me breakfast, and with a gently practised hand tipped water on to my tongue for me to sip. She wasn't an invader—she belonged to one of the other Asagardian humanoid species, as did most of the prison's menial workers. She didn't say a word, though she
must have noticed that I was paying attention for once. It was unlikely that she spoke any parole, although she seemed to understand when I thanked her for her help with the food.

  I noticed the doctor, too, when he gave me my morning examination—taking note of my temperature and pulse-rate before lifting my eyelid to shine a light at my pupil. I did the best I could to be ill, but I guess my body couldn't lie, because as soon as the doctor went out, Sigor Dyan came in. He barely glanced at the colonel before drawing up a chair to the side of my bed.

  "I'm glad you're recovering," he said flatly.

  "Thanks," I said weakly.

  "It gives me hope that our own people will recover. The virus is already decimating the troops in the City. I am beginning to feel the effects myself. In two days, I will be in that bed, or one like it."

  "Where will I be?" I asked.

  He shook his head to indicate that he hadn't quite decided that yet.

  "We didn't know," I told him. "If the Tetrax really did send us down here just to start an epidemic, they did it without our knowledge."

  "I would like to believe that," he told me. "But I cannot be completely sure. If our people begin to die. . . ."

  I could see his point.

  "We would like to strike back," he said. "We are very angry about what has been done, and if you are telling the truth, you must be just as angry. If you want to redeem yourselves in our eyes, you must tell us how to attack the Tetrax."

  I could understand his attitude. In all probability, I could understand it better than the Tetrax could. When they had planned this strike they would have thought of it not only as a way to facilitate a counter-coup in Skychain City, but also as a way to make the invaders see reason and acknowledge the inevitability of coming to terms. That wasn't too bright. The Tetrax were always jeering at the stupidities of barbarians, but when it came to calculating the way those so-called barbarians might react to circumstances, they weren't very clever at all.

  On the other hand, understanding his attitude wasn't quite the same thing as agreeing with him. It wasn't going to do anyone any good to start taking reprisals against Tetron prisoners, or trying to slaughter the Tetrax in the city.

  "That's not such a good idea," I told him. "You fired the first shot, remember. Why not call it quits now? They're not going to let you ignore them. This is a matter of pride for them too. If you lash out at them, there's every possibility that they'll crush you. They may talk a lot about the joys of peace and harmony, but that's because they know full well that they have nothing to fear from violent opposition."

  He looked at me bleakly. I could tell from the sweat on his brow that he wasn't feeling too good. Maybe his judgment was distorted. But an empire of twenty billion people spanning fifty levels is quite some juggernaut, and I could see why he might think that the idea of surrendering to a few thousand Tetrax wasn't too appealing.

  "Mr. Rousseau," he said. "You had better decide whose side you are on. And you had better be prepared to show it. There will be no surrender."

  After he left, I looked across at Susarma Lear. She pulled herself up on to her elbow, and stared at me pensively. Behind her blue eyes, there was a lot of hard thinking going on.

  "If we're not careful," I said, "we'll be caught like a handful of corn between two millstones."

  "You have to play from where you stand," she said. "We may have to look as if we're on their side. But we're on nobody's side but our own."

  It was the only possible point of view. She would get no argument from me.

  A little later, the nurse came back with another cup of water. I sat up to drink it—there didn't seem to be any further point in play-acting. She stood patiently by the bedside, waiting. She had bluish skin and big eyes, with pointed ears and a cap of mousy fur where humans and invaders have hair. She seemed to me to have a friendly kind of face, and she also seemed to be the one person around from whom I had absolutely nothing to fear. I gave her a smile of gratitude and a respectful nod as I passed the cup back to her.

  When she took it, she switched it for a folded flimsy. I blinked in surprise, but had sufficient presence of mind to clutch it in my fist and put my hand under the blanket. I unfolded it carefully and covertly, without having the least idea what to expect.

  The message was simple enough. It said: Four suits and a homing device will be in airlock niney three periods after the lights go out. Someone will come for you. Two Tetrax will be with you. Do exactly as you are told, and all will be well.

  It wasn't signed.

  That was hardly surprising.

  What was surprising was that it was written in English.

  22

  You will, no doubt, remember my four criteria for maximising the success of an attempted jaibreak. You can imagine, I am sure, how confusing it was trying to weigh up our situation in the neo-Neanderthalers' prison camp hospital in terms of those criteria.

  I could see immediately that criteria one and two would be fairly readily met. The invaders, unlike the inhabitants of Goodfellow, were sufficiently slavish in their devotion to habit to maintain regular hours, and did not take the trouble to be overly vigilant in the hours of darkness. In addition, the epidemic which we'd brought with us was just beginning to break out among our genial hosts, and would presumably be causing a reasonable measure of chaos in the ranks. I had every faith in our ability to reach the relevant airlock easily and safely.

  Criteria three and four, however, were the jokers in the pack. Did we have somewhere safe and cosy to go? Did we have anywhere to go? What sort of anywhere could there possibly be? It was all very well for our cryptic correspondent to assure me that a homing device would be provided along with suits to protect us from the alien atmosphere— but where was "home" supposed to be?

  In addition to all these puzzles, I had also to worry about the identity of the man who had undertaken to assist us. As far as I knew, there was only one person outside of our sickroom who could write in English, and that was Aleksandr Sovorov. I could not think of any less likely person to mastermind a jailbreak. In the no-hoper stakes, Alex could give John Finn a hard race, and maybe beat him. At least Finn was devious; Alex had not even dishonesty to recommend him.

  At the first opportunity, I slid out of bed and passed the note to Susarma Lear as covertly as it had been passed to me. I glanced in Finn's direction, to indicate my suspicion that we needed to be discreet even among ourselves. Finn had not yet raised his ugly head to take notice of the rest of us, but I had observed when he took his food that he did not seem to be in any worse state than I was, which presumably meant that he was only pretending to be unconscious. Deceit came as naturally to him as breathing.

  While the colonel read the note I moved into a position where I was between her and Finn, so that she could move her lips without being in his line of sight. That way, I figured, a whispered conversation could not be overheard.

  She began with the obvious question: "Who sent this?"

  "I don't know," I muttered. "Unless they've shipped more English-speaking prisoners down in the last couple of days, it can only have come from Aleksandr Sovorov. I can't believe that he's behind it, but he may be the middleman. If I had to guess, I'd say the Tetrax have arranged the break, and he's relaying a message from them."

  "Why should the Tetrax want to spring us?" she asked.

  "Who knows? Gratitude, maybe. They do have a strong sense of obligation, even to their slaves and other assorted catspaws."

  "You really believe that?"

  "It's not easy. I've met 822-Vela, and he didn't seem to be a mastermind. But who can tell with the Tetrax? Anyhow—somebody sent it. Do we really have that much to lose?"

  She pursed her lips. There was more than one possible answer to that.

  If we jumped, we'd be leaping in the dark. We had to ask ourselves the usual questions: How bad was the frying pan we were in? And what sort of fire might we end up in?

  "Do we go?" I asked. For once, I was looking for a second opini
on. I guess being in the Star Force was beginning to pollute my soul. Instead of making up my own maverick mind, I was actually waiting for guidance from my superior officer. It can really take it out of you, being ill.

  "Damn right we go," she said. "How the hell else do we find out what's going on? I'll tell Serne."

  "What about . . . ?" I tossed my head slightly to indicate the guy behind me.

  She favoured me with one of her best smouldering glares. "I don't think we can trust the bastard," she opined, in a fashion which suggested that Finn might be too ill to travel, whether he had recovered from his fever or not.

  "It may be better to take him with us for precisely that reason," I pointed out. "If he's with us, we can keep an eye on him. If we leave him behind . . . who knows what he can get up to?"

  She shrugged her shoulders. "I guess he's still in my command," she said. "But I don't know how long he was in their hands before they shipped him down here, and I don't know how much he might have told them. We should never have brought him, in spite of his experience in the levels and his supposed knowledge of Tetron surveillance devices. We should have sent him to the penal battalion, where he belongs."

  I wasn't about to quarrel with that. Had we but known why the Tetrax really wanted us. . . .

  "What do you think is happening up above?" she asked.

  "At a guess," I said, "a pitched battle. The Tetrax in Skychain City—and anyone else they can trust—will be making the most of the epidemic. They've had months to figure out where to cut the invaders' supply-routes. Starships will be landing to give support. For all we know, the Tetrax have plans to take control of ten or twenty of the levels below the city. Maybe they even know a way to get down here—and bring us out. I'm not prepared to underestimate their ability to wage effective war—not any more."

  "And we thought they might want to hire the Star Force," she said regretfully.