The Presence wanted the artifact to surface among the peoples of the galaxy. Blade’s rapacity was merely a tool for that transmittal. Something had happened last time that resulted in the treasure’s being left behind. This time, this time, it would not be lost, even if everyone had to die in order to ultimately release it from Aldenia isolation. Everyone, that is, except the messenger, Sergeant Darman “Blade” Kilmer. Used once, used again.
Against the Presence I possessed a major advantage which the Humans did not have with their less developed sensitivities. I was aware of it. I could fight it, resist its takeover even while the rest of DRT-213 seemed to be moving inexorably, even against their wills, to come under its domination.
“We have to investigate,” Blade insisted.
“It could be following us,” Ferret suggested in a chilling voice. “It’s better to confront it now in the open where we can see it.”
“No!” I countered. “We will be at the pod tomorrow. It is more important that we return to the ship with the intel about the Blobs.”
Mine was a lone voice against. Even I had to admit that I was curious about this thing that had already led to death, and would likely do so again.
In the end, as I suspected, Captain Amalfi decided our duty lay in investigating. I heard a dry, raspy chuckle, but when I looked there was nothing there.
“Pia?” I said to her privately.
“Go away!” she snapped. The Presence had got to her as well.
The Presence became so powerful in my mind as the team drew near the power source that even I had to struggle to resist it. Its taut, greasy tentacles probed every area of my brain. A spring screwing itself into my core. My entire body felt horned and crusted with filth and transferred sin.
The bot on point cautiously entered another Indowy ruin from the bad times. There was little left of the settlement, but it must have been one of considerable size judging from the mounds covered by stunted forest out of which rose fragmented plascrete walls. The evil that is done, I thought, lingers long after the doer is gone.
I still sensed nothing alive, just something there. Here. Like the harpies of old human lore luring ships to wreck on the shoals.
It’s alive.
I whirled toward Pia.
“Let’s leave this place! Now!” she warned suddenly, resisting the power.
“Shut the fuck up, cunt!” Blade rumbled.
Like the trained hunting machine that it was, the bot made its way to one of the smaller mounds and stopped on top of it, indicating that it had localized the energy source. Then, unexpectedly, for no apparent reason, it exploded with a terrific bang. Pieces of it whizzed in all directions.
Everyone hit the dirt. Weapons appeared ready for use.
“What the fuck …?” Blade exclaimed.
My heart thudded. “Will you listen?” I pleaded. “Whatever it is, leave it be.”
“It was an old mine that exploded,” Sergeant Shiva reasoned.
“It was not a mine,” I argued. “Remember the first robot? It also went off like that for no reason.”
Both of them had detonated, I thought, because they came too near the Presence and its voltage. What kept it from doing the same to the team? Had it other plans for us? A somber thought.
“Chickenshit elf,” Blade said.
He got up and climbed to the top of the little mound and began digging. None tried to stop him. They were as curious as he, mesmerized by the Presence and its unrecognized objective. We had been deliberately led to this evil place. I backed off as taa squeezed into my system. My ears tapped anxiously against the sides of my helmet.
Gorilla called up one of the two remaining bots to help with the excavation. It went to work without suffering the fate of the previous robot. Within a short time, the powerful little machine burrowed into the mound. It pulled out of the hole and into the light a rather thin plasteel case. It was black, about a half-meter long, slightly rectangular, and was equipped with two queerly fashioned handles for carrying. Gorilla’s sensors remained silent, no longer picking up an energy source.
Blade threw off his helmet. He pounced greedily upon the little case. A quick cleaning revealed a control panel on one side. Sergeant Shiva took the case from Blade and thrust it at me.
“You understand Indowy,” he said. “Read the inscription.”
I balked at even touching the thing. I looked at Blade; he already knew what it was. It was what he had been looking for.
“Read it, Sergeant,” Captain Amalfi ordered, his patience tried.
They all stared at me. Glared. Even Gun Maid. Although they should have trusted me by now, they seemed more wary and suspicious than ever. I looked at the case, reluctantly. A wave of dizziness overcame me when I saw what it was. A lindal. I jerked back from it in horror.
“I cannot,” I said.
A lindal was one of the damnable creations the Indowy had invented long ago to induce taa in the Zentadon and to master us. I suspected it could also be used, in the wrong hands, to affect similar hormonal imbalances in other peoples in order to control them. It was one of the most hellish finds imaginable, one that empowered its possessor to literally rule the galaxy, as the Indowy had done. No more powerful military device could be imagined than one which obligated the unquestioning obedience of entire populations, while at the same time investing their soldiers with super strength and abilities. The Homelanders would indeed pay untold millions of credits for it. So would a dozen other renegade and dissident groups and governments, including Human ones. Including, I also suspected, the Blobs.
“It’s something important, isn’t it?” Atlas surmised, walking around the case and looking first at it and then at me. “Indowy technology is always worth a fortune. That box can make us all rich; a cool billion credits at least.”
“Back off from it,” Blade warned. “It’s mine. I found it.”
His eyes fixed greedily upon the case. Big scar-faced Sergeant Shiva reached out and touched the object with his fingertips, as though to verify the treasure as actually real. Atlas and Ferret knelt by it, their eyes wide with avarice.
I looked around for allies. Considering the present temperament, Gun Maid was the only one I could hope for. After all, she and I had experienced something special together, hadn’t we?
“Pia?” I petitioned. “You Humans have a folklore about finding a magic lamp with a genie inside.”
Three wishes?
Yes. Three wishes.
This is not a magic lamp.
She read me! I sent my thoughts and she picked them up! She indeed had some of the Talent herself.
Listen tome …
It’s hard …
I reverted back to speaking. “Pia, you remember how you said this planet had a feeling of evil to it? That you felt it?”
I pointed at the box. My hand trembled.
“That is at the core of the evil,” I said, grabbing her by the shoulders and trying to shake the Presence out of her. “Rubbing the magic lamp never brings anything but tragedy. That lamp contains an evil genie who may ultimately destroy Humans the way it almost destroyed the Indowy and the Zentadon. That case is more dangerous to civilization than all the Blobs in the universe.”
She refused to listen. None of them listened, so transfixed were they by the prospects of the unholy find.
“Smash it now,” I urged. “Then bury it again, so that it will never be found.”
“Fu-uck,” Blade growled. “Fuck off, elf. This thing will make us rich. Make me rich. I was the one who found it, wasn’t I? Wasn’t I?”
He took a step back and brought the sniper’s rifle to port arms, prepared to defend the treasure if he had to.
The mad laughter of the genie who led us here shrieked through the rain. DRT-213, to a Human, ignored it.
C·H·A·P·T·E·R
TWENTY SEVEN
A type of insanity seemed to catch the team in its grip following the discovery of the Indowy artifact. I couldn’t help believing that
the genie in the lindal was already struggling to freedom and that it and the Presence might be the same thing, that the moment we entered Aldenia airspace we became part of some grand evil design that was now starting to play itself to some climax. The treasure was as red meat thrown to starving animals. Each became suspicious of the others and their designs upon it.
Indeed, the black case represented a life of wealth and comfort and power to whoever possessed it. Not merely a life … lives. A Human that wealthy could transport to Kali and have himself rejuvenated as many times as he wished. When rejuv finally failed, he could have his brain, his soul, transferred to a different body and start a new life. He could be a woman, if he desired, or a bisexual with the accouterments of both sexes — screw herself himself, as Gorilla joked obscenely — or a multi-sexual like the Posleen. All this, especially if the billions of credits did not have to be shared.
The excitement called for an early camp so everyone could have a chance to look over the find. Sergeant Shiva designated the bivouac area on high ground within a field of boulders, some of which were as large as small Zentadon dwellings. No one ate. Blade’s gaze seldom left the plasteel box that Captain Amalfi appropriated in the name of the Galaxia Republic.
“It’s mine,” Blade protested. “You’re not giving it up to them. Captain, we can split it among us. Nobody has to know. We’re all rich, rich.”
Splitting the proceeds was the last thing Blade intended doing. He glared at me. He knew I knew.
I felt isolated and shunned as the Presence worked its shitstorm within a team that was no longer as close as belly button to asshole. It wasn’t even a team anymore. Jealousy, greed, resentment, suspicion. I felt these dark emotions insinuating themselves among the DRT-bags like a malignant slime.
“Watch out for Cap’n Bell Toll,” Gorilla whispered to Ferret. “He’ll keep it for himself.”
“You’re the biggest and the strongest and the smartest,” Ferret shrewdly observed. “Are you sure you don’t have designs on it yourself?”
No one sought shelter from the rain because that meant the lindal would be out of sight. I had to physically pull Gun Maid from its orbit. She attempted to jerk away from me, so completely had she been dominated. I heard the Presence howling through the camp like a chill tempest.
“Pia,” I hissed. “You must listen to me. This is the same thing that happened on Blade’s explorer mapping mission.”
“We are all rich, Kadar San,” she said, almost in a daze.
“We are not rich, Pia. Do you not remember? We were safe as long as Blade alone knew about the lindal …”
“Is that what it’s called, a lindal?”
“Concentrate, Pia. Resist. We must watch out for Blade. He’s going to make sure that none of us reach the pod. It happened when he was here before. Only this time he will succeed in taking the genie off the planet with him.”
“Wonderful little genie,” Pia said, smiling. “You’re just sour grapes, Kadar San. We’re a team. We’ll share like a team.”
Out in the camp, Gorilla took offense over something Ferret said and went off on him like a charge of nitro with a short fuse. He grabbed the smaller Human and threw him completely across the bivouac area. Ferret landed in mud and water, cushioning his fall. With a shout of rage, the black Human leapt across the opening and landed on Ferret’s chest with both feet.
“There’s your team,” I snapped, jumping up to intervene and prevent what was obviously about to be a slaying.
Atlas darted in front of me, pointing his Punch Gun at my face.
“No!” he said.
“Captain Amalfi?” I petitioned, backing off at gunpoint.
The Captain seemed content to stand by and let the two teammates go at each other. He wore an enigmatic smile that twisted his lean face into a perverse mask. I looked to the others for support and received much the same reaction. All of us were now in deactivated chameleons, our helmets removed for camp and all expressions visible, zombie-like and without apparent concern.
Pia sat down on a rock and nibbled an energy bar while rain water ran off her cheeks. Blade occupied his own rock outside the circle, the ever-present Gauss resting across his knees as he checked it for weather corrosion and lubricated it. I sensed in him the joy of a sadist at a mass execution.
That was precisely the image that popped fully formed into my mind — mass execution.
Blade’s eyes shifted to meet mine, as though aware of my intrusion into his thoughts. Even under the circumstances of two men fighting and a gun in my face, it startled me how completely he shut down, as though slamming a psychic steel door in my face.
Ferret managed to wriggle free of Gorilla and was grabbing rocks and slinging them at his opponent, keeping the larger man temporarily at bay. Atlas’ attention was on me, not them. He jabbed me in the chest with the muzzle of the Punch Gun, forcing me backwards into the clearing among the boulders, as onto center stage. His voice began in a quiet tone of fury, erupting quickly into a continuous shriek of jealousy and rage that shocked Gorilla and Ferret into a standoff.
“Him!” Atlas bellowed. “Him … and her! They’re criminals! They think they’re so smart. I saw them together last night. They committed a crime. They were together.”
Veins popped out on his handsome face like cicatrix scars.
Maid sprang to her feet. “Captain Amalfi, listen to me. Nothing happened. I … I kissed him to thank him for saving my life. That’s all. It was a simple spontaneous emotion. I regret it now.”
I looked at her. She regretted it?
“She is telling the truth,” I confirmed, feeling unexpected sadness weeping into my soul.
“Execute the pair of them,” Blade suggested coldly.
Captain Amalfi seemed annoyed at having to deal with this issue on top of everything else. He contemplated for a long minute, his eyes on me. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking – whether he believed us that nothing happened, or if he were actually considering Blade’s recommendation. Finally, he took the easy way out.
“Both of you,” he growled. “Consider yourselves under house arrest. We’ll conduct a hearing on this once we’re back aboard the Admiral Tsutsumi.”
“Do it now!” Atlas shrilled. “They broke the law. She was screwing a Zentadon. You can’t get lower than that.”
He wanted us lynched on the spot. I looked into the muzzle of his Punch Gun. I thought he was about the pull the trigger.
“Put the weapon away,” Sergeant Shiva commanded sternly, stepping forward. He was an imposing man with the scar and the steel-like quality of both his hair and his eyes, a man accustomed to being obeyed. “They’ll be seen to in due process, if they’re guilty.”
“Oh, they’re guilty as Hell, all right,” Atlas said.
He wrenched himself away with an effort, holstering the Punch. Maid turned her back on me to underline her complete rejection of the charge that she might have had anything to do with an oversexed elf.
I’m sorry, Kadar. Oh, God, I’m sorry …
That settled, the camp temporarily at peace, the splintered team dourly turned itself to preparing for the onslaught of nightfall, only minutes away. Blade glanced around balefully and stepped out of camp to relieve himself. I watched him, all my senses screaming warnings. The others were busy in the rain erecting pop-up bivvies and rolling out waterproof bedrolls. Captain Amalfi still had the lindal.
Blade disappeared from sight. I stiffened as I received a visual reception so strong that it immediately injected a load of taa into my veins. It wasn’t as though I sensed by any telepathic means the presence of danger. It was like I was being warned of it in a manner that instantly prepared my defenses.
I saw the image of a fanger, a giant predator of the planet Shartan. It was springing at me for the kill. It was already in mid-leap. Fangers killed for food — and they killed for pleasure.
Already pumped with taa, I turned in time to see a neural grenade hissing deadly through the sheets of rain, flun
g hard into the camp specifically to reduce my chances of acting against it.
C·H·A·P·T·E·R
TWENTY EIGHT
I would have perished if it hadn’t been for the fanger warning, from whatever its source. Because of the releasing jolt of taa speeding up my entire metabolism to Humanly unbelievable levels while in the same process converting the environment around me to apparent slow motion, I was able to consider alternatives while the neural grenade was still in the air.
The Punch Gun I carried holstered at my side was incredibly lethal at short range. Capable of firing invisible energy “bullets,” it would literally eliminate all matter in its path. It would destroy the target and surrounding matter, everything collapsing into the vacuum with the sound of a thunderclap. It was a noisy weapon.
I eliminated the Punch as a choice. Crucial was the moral and legal prohibition that Zentadon no longer, under any circumstances, kill another sentient being. This derived from the Indowy use of us as killing machines. Even providing that I overcame my inbred compunction against taking life, it was highly unlikely I could draw the weapon and locate a target before the grenade exploded, wasting us all.
A second choice was to catch the grenade and hurl it away. Impossible. I had tried baseball with Humans once. I was never good at catching fly balls. Even if I caught it, we were all still dead. The neural grenade detonated immediately upon contact with anything in its path.
I thought to save Pia’s life. I had promised myself to keep her safe. She was on the far side of the camp. I could never reach her in time to whisk her to safety, even with taa speed.
That left one final pick: Save myself.
The entire scene unfolded before me in heartbreaking slow time frames, almost as though it were a still-life museum tableau. Although Blade had slammed the grenade like a baseball in that stupidly boring Human game in which a pitcher sometimes intends to bean the batter and put him out of commission, it was barely inching through the air in my perception. I saw my team members in the last instant of their lives, each unaware of impending calamity.
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