Charon: A Dragon at the Gate flotd-3

by Jack L. Chalker

  I wasn’t the only one shaking my head in wonder as the big lift descended, stopped, and form-fitted itself neatly into the indentation for it in the floor. There were a number of hand carts on it, mostly empty, with security troopers and maintenance personnel on them, all of whom paid us no mind whatsoever. I admit, though, that at least I, and almost certainly most of us, were close to being nervous wrecks at this point. Still, this was just the sort of stunt I might improvise if this were my old stamping grounds. I knew that our greatest danger until we got off wasn’t from these faceless men and women but from somebody’s nerve springing in our group and giving us away.

  When the lift was cleared we stepped uneasily on, only to find that several troopers also came up, pushing carts with cases of what looked like ammunition for the projectile weapons and, possibly, laser pistol power packs. No sooner were they on than a loud gong sounded overhead, and we started up, one floor at a time. The system was obviously designed for slow ascent and descent. It would stop on every floor no matter what.

  The next floor, and most of the others, were not open spaces like the warehouse level but instead opened on access corridors that went down a few meters, then branched off to the right and left. Security guards were visible on each level, wearing special color-coded passes which, I was acutely and suddenly aware, we did not have.

  The troopers with us didn’t seem to notice, hut when one cart got off at the fifth level the security men did check badges. At the seventh level when the rest exited, badges were given an even greater scrutiny. Alone and rising, I shouted to Koril, “Badges!”

  He nodded and patted his pistol in its holster. It was pretty dear that we’d have to take his lead and use brute force—and, once we did, all hell would break loose. As we cleared Level 9 he whispered, “Draw weapons and shoot as soon as you’re able!”

  At Level 10, the topmost point you could go on these lifts without full security clearance, eight armed security guards waited for us with very ugly-looking projectile weapons. Even if they didn’t suspect us, and they probably did, they would be ready to shoot anyone on the lift at the slightest provocation.

  As our heads came up over the floor and into the clear, I shouted, “Wait! Don’t shoot!” The guards naturally hesitated at that, and that was all we needed. As our shoulders cleared we opened wide rapid fire with the laser pistols. None of them had a chance against such concentrated fire.

  “Everybody off—fast!” Koril shouted. “When they don’t give the go-ahead signal this thing!! drop like a stone!” We needed no other urging; the last of us was off before the lift levelled with the floor—and just in time, too. Apparently the guards above had the locking mechanism, and with no guard to throw it the big platform rumbled and dropped immediately from view.

  Kaigh looked back at the gaping hole and shook his head. “Close.” We all turned our attention back to Koril, who was looking around critically.

  Finally he said, “This is the primary guard floor for the upper levels. There’ll be some fifty, sixty people here even if the rest were drawn off by the outside attack. I doubt, though, if we could walk through to the main stair without getting slaughtered. Park, Darva, Kira—stay in the middle of our circle. No firing even if fired upon. Bluff, bravado, and conventional weapons will no longer get us anywhere.”

  We knew what he meant and quickly formed up, allowing the sores to surround us. But neither Darva nor I put down our weapons. In the last analysis, something was better than nothing. Still, we’d gone through this procedure, and for now, I was certainly willing to let the pros do what they did best What bothered me most was that what they were going to do was form an actual circle as we moved. Should anyone in the circle fall, breaking contact, one of us would have to complete the connection and quickly. Otherwise, instead of the pooled power of the highly trained Class 1 sores assembled by KorQ, there would be only individuals—possibly capable of protecting themselves, but hardly me.

  The circle was formed quickly, but we didn’t start right away. The concentration required to Tint the wa of so many powerful minds was enormous. Darva, Kira, and I looked around nervously, and I know they were wondering why our unseen enemy hadn’t charged. I could see why with no difficulty. The entry corridor dead-ended about twenty meters in, and you had to turn either right or left. From the diagrams I knew we had to go left to get to where we had to go—and so would any defenders. With the lift behind us, troopers on all lower floors, and safety seals in place above, we couldn’t retreat, not even climb up or down, nor could we remain for long or that lift would return with really nasty goodies just for us. Any defender would naturally prefer to stake out a route of inevitable march by an invader than attack in this confined space, where we had good shots ourselves.

  “The wa is one,” Koril chanted. “The wa is one.” The others repeated the chant, again and again, until they were all in sync. It was eerie. Still, we’d all seen Tully Kokul, a mere 4 or 5, shrug off laser pistol shots aimed directly at him. This was an infinitely more powerful group—the combined wills and power of the best Charon had to offer outside of the Synod. In fact, I realized, this was exactly what the Synod itself was, and why these sores were here.

  They would be the new Synod—if we survived a wall of bullets and who knew what else and then reached the Synod itself, one floor above and almost certainly waiting.

  Even I could sense the enormous power of the circle Koril and the others had created. All around us was a wall of wa, acting magnetically. We would see how well it repelled—for we started to move.

  Troopers were waiting for us down both halls, of course. As soon as we turned left, then right again to walk together in very tight quarters, the troops from the wing on the right moved in behind us. They were cool and quite professional, I had to give them that. They let us get ten meters or more down that long, seventy-meter straight path, before they opened up. Both Darva and I froze for a moment when they did, and almost killed us all—for the circle kept moving, steadily, as it had to.

  Enough of those primitive but deadly missiles were fired from remote positions and from gun stations along the hallway that paint flew, hundreds of holes seemed to appear all around in the walls, and the air seemed to grow almost solid. Yet, as we continued to move, not a single one seemed able to strike us, either directly or by ricochet.

  The circle, acting as one, stopped about halfway; the others were in a trancelike state, seemingly oblivious to the horror that was being unleashed on us. No matter what, none of the three of us in the middle could keep from flinching and ducking, and it took a mighty amount of will power to just stand there, and try and match the motions or lack of them that the sorcerers’ circle made.

  The reason they stopped was soon clear. A massive wall of wa-force emerged from the circle and reached out in all directions from us. It was an almost blinding, overwhelming sense of force and power, more power than I had ever felt before in anything or anybody. It was almost a living thing, like that tabarwind, but totally invisible to any who could not sense the wa. It struck out at those with the weapons in an ever-widening circle, touched those weapons and controlled them.

  Sometime I will work out the physics of what they did, but basically they did to the weapons what would have happened to Darva and me had we immediately tried to significantly reduce our mass after my final transformation. The reaction was similar, with much heat being generated—and in projectile weapons the ammunition always has an explosive charge.

  One by one, as the force met them and took hold, those weapons started blowing up. Troopers screamed in pain, and several came charging right at us in blind fury, hoping to break the circle by sheer physical force. Our own weapons had not been affected. Picking our shots carefully and going between the shoulders of the sore circle, we calmly shot the hell out of those attackers. There weren’t very many after the first batch from front and rear. To make sure we wouldn’t have any spell problems, we all used laser weapons. At this range, even Darva couldn’t miss,
and she seemed particularly proud of herself as she gave me a wink and a big grin. I glanced over at Kira, who was all grim and businesslike. Well, to hell with her. What good was it to be good at something if you couldn’t enjoy your work?

  We started moving once again, but we were all ready for it now. We inside the circle kept a clear line of fire, though, not only because of the threat of more hall attacks but also because we’d have to pass some of the gun stations and offices. From that close, a man could physically hurl himself into the circle.

  Nobody did, though. We reached an abandoned gun platform at the base of a wide set of stairs. Wide—but not wide enough to accommodate a circle our size, and steep enough so that we couldn’t really see much of anything on the next floor. Whoever designed this place had put a lot of thought into it.

  I reached into my pack and brought out four small silvery globes, each with a thin metal band around its middle. Almost as if on an unspoken command, the circle broke and the sores took up the defensive positions at the end of the hall which, until a few moments ago, had been occupied by troopers—in some cases they had to push still smoldering bodies out of the way. At almost the same moment a trooper came down the stairs, opening fire. I heard some yells, but Kira acted with blinding speed and sliced the man almost in two. He collapsed in a bloody heap and fell to the base of the stairs.

  Without looking back at casualties, I rushed to the bottom of the stairs, twisted the ring on the first globe, and threw it underhanded to the top. Without waiting, I did the same for the second. The first went off before I could manage the third. It produced such a bang and shock wave I was almost knocked over. I took no chances, throwing number three before the second went off, and number four immediately after I’d regained my balance. Only then did I look around.

  Class 1 sores or not, they were human beings and they had been startled and surprised by the gunman. Kaigh was certainly dead, and Krugar was clutching her bloody side near her right hip. Now we were seven—down to four good sores, but what the hell else could we do?

  We had already delayed too long for the concussion grenades to be one hundred percent effective, and we had to press on. It was Kira, who started the run up the stairs, and we had no choice but to abandon Krugar and charge up behind her, all weapons drawn. The only optimistic thing I could think about at this point was, well, at least the place wasn’t sealed enough to permit a gas trap.

  I half expected Kira to be gone by the time I made the next floor, but there she was, two more dead troopers at her feet. We were still theoretically three floors from Aeo-lia Mature—if she was there at all—but we were now beyond the security cordon and into the offices, living quarters, and labs of the Synod and top bureaucrats.

  The eleventh floor resembled a hotel complex with all the doors shut tight. Nice, modern, comfortable—and because these were offices and quarters, it wasn’t really possible to tell what was what. They changed a lot, as would be expected.

  Koril paused to take a breather. “Krugar is in good enough shape to try some self-repair and maybe hold off anybody coming at us from below,” he said between puffs. “Whew! I’m not as young as I used to be, that’s for sure.” He sighed. “Well, I’m not worried about troopers anymore. I think we can probably walk straight down this hall with no problems—but shoot anything that moves anyway.”

  “You don’t think they’ll make any more attempts?” I asked him worriedly.

  He shook his head. “They know that anybody who can get this far is no slouch. No. Any members of the Synod here will have retreated to the thirteenth floor reception area. They’ll be waiting for us there.”

  I looked at the others. “Are you and the other three enough?”

  He shrugged. “Depends on how many are there and who they are. We’ve been damned lucky so far. Let’s hope our luck holds out.”

  It was preparedness, the training of the sores, and a lot of inside information as well as skill and brass that had brought us this far, but in the end Koril was right. We had been lucky, too. He was certainly right, also, about the rest of the way. None of those doors opened, and we were unobstructed in our walk to the eleventh and twelfth floors. We could all hear, though, the floors below being occupied as soon as we left They had the lift system, after all. They just didn’t, want to shoot up the official quarters. The troopers had already failed—now it was up to their bosses. In one sense, I suspected that the troopers, particularly the officers, were now very much on our side. If we failed, their own failures would have to be accounted for to those very same bosses. No, I decided, for that reason more than any other, they’d stay out of the rest of this fight.

  Koril paused at the bottom of the stairway to the thirteenth level. “All right—Ku, Kuril, Kindel, stick close to me.You know what you must do. The rest of you follow us up, but stay out of it. None of your weapons will mean much now.”

  We understood what he meant. Our part was at least theoretically finished. All we could do was needlessly guard the back door.

  Koril took in a deep breath, let it out slowly, then turned and started slowly up the stairs. One by one the sores followed him, then Kira, Darva, and myself. I don’t know what I was expecting to see at the top, but it wasn’t a sumptuously furnished empty room.

  The large chamber was entirely crimson. The ancient-looking chairs upholstered in some silken material were ornamented with metal studs of a bright golden color that were inlaid in the dark native woods; the tables were equally antique and polished to a mirror like sheen. The carpet, too, was crimson, although of some thick, plush hair that the wa said was not native to Charon. In the center was a golden path, marked by two golden stripes of colored cloth woven into the rest and leading up to a raised platform. The platform itself was almost like a stage, with a huge wooden throne in the center of the same polished material and upholstered in the same deep red, but this time encrusted with what looked like—and turned out to be—enormous precious stones from all over the known galaxy. Two slightly smaller and more recessed but similar chairs flanked the big one. Behind the whole thing, eleven similar chairs were arranged in a permanent semi-circle. The entire stage area was decorated with gold-embroidered crimson drapes, hanging loosely around the back and tied back at the front.

  We all stood there gazing about the room. I couldn’t suppress a low whistle. “Like something out of an ancient fairy tale,” I remarked.

  Koril looked around, his eyes ablaze. “More power than those ancient Icings had is represented here,” he responded seriously. “This is the seat of Charon’s government I used to sit on that throne, remember. I know.” That wistful, almost dreamlike quality left his voice. “She’s redecorated since I left, though. In a way it’s too bad. I had some great works of art looted from the Confederacy’s top museums on those draped walls. Still, all in all, it’s a nice touch.”

  “Skip the ulterior decoration comments,” Kira broke in. “Where the hell’s the enemy?”

  At that moment I detected slight movement behind the thrones, and I saw Kira’s laser pistol come up. Koril quickly forced her hand down. “No use in burning the place down—unless you have to,” he told her. “You can’t harm these with that toy.”

  From behind the chairs five shapes emerged. All wore gold-embroidered robes of that same crimson as the room, and all wore scarlet hoods as well. They looked eerie and impressive, as they were supposed to.

  Koril smiled a bit and with a flick of the wrist beckoned his three associate sores together in line, hands linked.

  The figures walked out to the front of the stage and stood there, also in a line but not touching one another. Three of the five were women. One was Korman I saw—the only familiar face. None looked particularly worried.

  “Just the five of you?” Koril said pleasantly. “I’m shocked.”

  “More than enough for the lot of you,” Korman responded for the group. “We don’t spend quite as much time here as we did in your day, Tulio. We don’t have to.” With that, all five
levitated a meter or so above the stage and moved out just beyond it. All of us gasped at this, for we all realized it was no Warden trick. They were really doing it.

  “Parlor tricks, Dieter?” Koril scoffed. “I thought we were beyond that.”

  “No parlor trick,” one of the women answered him. “We are not as you knew us, Tulio. We are immortal, as powerful in body as in wa, with minds clearer than your merely human minds could ever be.”

  “So that’s how she kept your allegiance,” Koril responded. “With the new model alien robot bodies. You serve her now because you are programmed to serve! No longer humans—but mere machines.”

  “We are not ‘mere machines,’ Tulio,” Korman replied. “I’ll admit I have never heard ‘programmed’ used as a curse word before, but you are wrong. We were among those who freely chose to. throw you out, Tulio. Freely. And none of us has ever regretted it. Should we choose, we could leave this place. Really leave, Tulio. The wa within us dies as it would in you, but leaves us alive and whole—and more than human.”

  “May we—examine those fancy new clothes of yours?” Koril asked, and all of us understood that he didn’t mean literally.

  “Go ahead. We can fool any scanner, rig any test—but look at us as we really are. Be our guest, Tulio—and the rest of you. You are powerful ones indeed to have come this far. But no tricks.”

  Koril had a pained expression. “Would I insult your intelligence?” With that, all four of them reached out their Warden senses to the five who still floated, impossibly, in the air.

  “You see our superiority,” Korman continued, not so much bragging as being rather matter of fact about it all. “You are a good man, Tulio. You served Charon well and the Brethren before that. Don’t you see that the revolution is now? Are you so old and blind and prejudiced that you can’t realize that your ideals can become reality now—out there? With your1