The Empty Warrior

by J. D. McCartney

  But the impact moved it. Its stabilizers and antigravs were designed to deal with energy weapons, not the forces imparted by a forty-five caliber slug. As the bullet hit, the machine swung wildly to a near forty degree angle as it fired. Because of that the blast it aimed at Regulus went wide to the right, and by then Regulus was airborne. Before the robot could right itself and fire again, his powerful jaws closed around it and snatched it from the air, crushing it even as his big paws hit the floor. Then in typical canine fashion he took the robot and, shaking his head wildly, beat the machine repeatedly against the stone of the arena floor as bits of plastic and metal spewed from it in every direction. And all around the floor the pack heaved themselves upward, their mighty jaws and stalwart, carnivorous teeth closing around the exposed throats of bewildered dragons.

  Elorak was momentarily stunned by the unexpected attack. She had turned away from O’Keefe to watch Regulus and stood as if frozen while the alpha smashed her protector. In only a moment she came to her senses, but it was time she did not have. O’Keefe had only to drop the barrel of the pistol two inches and she was in his sights. As she raised her blaster to take aim at Regulus, he loosed a second shot. It caught her directly between the shoulder blades. Her body shield protected her from the killing power of the bullet, but the simple physics of the blow knocked her face down to the floor.

  She quickly rolled and turned to face O’Keefe, but as she did so, a shadow passed over the Earther from behind. It was Shaula. Landing between O’Keefe and Elorak, she raced by the Vazilek’s right side, deftly taking the woman’s blaster in her teeth and tearing it from the grip of her gloved hand. The dog raced away with it toward the far side of the arena. Hatred flamed across Elorak’s countenance.

  She pulled the serrated knife—the same knife that had emasculated so many new inmates—from the sheath at her thigh and, still sure of her invulnerability, smiled wickedly at O’Keefe. Then cat quick, faster than he found conceivable for a woman with artificial limbs, she was on her feet, charging toward him with murder in her eyes. She took a step, then two, while O’Keefe steadied the Colt. The vortex at her throat was less than five feet away. Her arm was already drawn back to thrust the lethal shank into his chest when he pulled the trigger, spinning his last bullet away from the barrel amidst the gases from the burning propellant. It tracked toward its target at a rate that even Elorak’s mechanically enhanced reflexes could not foil. But the slug was aimed imperfectly. It was not going to hit the middle of the generator as O’Keefe had intended. It was slightly off target, an inch or two at most. But O’Keefe had no way of knowing that, and in the end it made no difference. The sides of the shield vortex, rather than absorbing the impact, channeled the bullet directly into the center of the shield generator. The irresistible force of the bullet’s impact shattered it and drove its wreckage, along with the steel collar that had held it, back into Elorak’s throat and through the flesh of her neck, snapping her spine and decapitating the woman as a wide spray of blood and tissue fanned out behind her.

  The inertia of her body was largely mitigated by the impact, but her legs still pushed her trunk forward with enough force to collide with O’Keefe and knock him down once more, his cranium solidly impacting the arena floor. Elorak’s knife danced across the stone behind him, beyond where her body had cartwheeled to rest. Her head landed a few feet away, at an angle that allowed him, for the first time, to look into her unshielded eyes. The last things he saw before the pain engulfed him and his mind sank gratefully into unconsciousness were her lips moving with no voice and the look of incomprehension that was spread across her face. It was a face that he could now see for what it was, a face bereft of the soft focus her shield had hitherto always provided, a face scarred by an inept rehabilitation from some dreadful scorching. The same burning had probably taken her limbs. For a moment O’Keefe almost, but not quite, pitied her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN:

  Banes from Below

  Lindy stood woodenly in the second level of the arena, stoically preparing to watch his friend die. The tiny hope that had been reignited within him when he learned of O’Keefe’s unlikely alliance with the dogs had been crushed when Elorak announced that the aberrant was to be forced into a fight to the death with the guard Manka. It seemed that all was lost. Ultimately he found he could not bring himself to watch the horrific scene unfolding on the floor below. Instead he sank to the stone between his fellow inmates, hugging his knees to his chest and hiding his head between them, his eyes gazing dumbly down at the steps on which he sat. Even as the murmurs of the crowd mutated to excited chatter and then to roaring cheers he could not find the will to stand and watch the contest. It was only when Steenini grabbed him under the armpits and hoisted him erect amidst the wildly screaming prisoners did he comprehend what had happened. The guard lay dead in the arena, its own dagger protruding from its skull, and Elorak now marched confidently toward O’Keefe, just as the Earther had planned all along.

  Moments later she was dead, her assault robot crushed and broken into scrap while the dogs had turned on the guards. Despite their armored hulls and thick, scaly skin; they stood no chance against the onslaught of the ferocious hounds. They were vastly outnumbered, taken by surprise, and armed only with whips and spears; they were no match for the fleet agility, gnashing teeth, and coordinated pack tactics of the mentally connected dogs. In only minutes the lizards were torn from their machine bases and left to die, bloody, on the arena floor. Some few escaped into the tunnels, but Lindy was certain they would not last long, because now, along with the dogs, men released from the arena cages were pouring onto the stadium floor and out into the colony complex proper. Some few of them were arming themselves with whatever they could find—picks, shovels, kitchen utensils, anything. It was clear that soon any remaining guards would be slain.

  In the middle of the arena O’Keefe still lay crumpled on the stone, unmoving. He was either unconscious or dead. But if life still stirred in him, he was more than adequately protected. One of the largest of the dogs—the black one that had mangled the assault robot—stood over him bellowing and barking fiercely, its body a bulwark between the aberrant and harm. In short order O’Keefe was surrounded by an ever growing circle of the beasts. They stood shoulder to shoulder and all faced outward, snarling viciously at anyone who dared approach them.

  “Come on,” Lindy yelled to Steenini, breaking free from the trancelike state that had held them both rooted to the rock beneath them. “We’ve got to get down there.” Not waiting for an answer, he grabbed Steenini by the shirt and pulled him up the stairs toward the now open gate.

  But the going was far from easy. Throngs of men milled about the exits, celebrating. The air was filled with the sound of human voices; some shouting, some laughing, some gibbering, some sobbing. Everyone, with the possible exception of Elorak’s toadies, was ecstatic at her demise and their newfound freedom, yet utterly unsure of what to do with it. It took Lindy and Steenini several minutes simply to make their way from their place in the stands out into the corridors. Once there, they had no idea how to find their way down to the arena floor.

  A flash of inspiration kindled in Lindy. He turned and shouted at Steenini in order to make himself heard over the din that surrounded them. “We need to find one of the dogs. They seem to know every corner of this place.”

  But try as they might, they could suddenly find none of the beasts. The whole of the canine horde seemed to have disappeared. At last they made their way to a side passage and, looking down it, saw three dogs sitting abreast of each other across its width. They did not appear to be guarding the corridor, seeming more disinterested and aloof than alert and vicious. But neither did they give ground at the approach of the two men. When both Akadeans were standing directly before them, Lindy addressed them earnestly, but carefully. There was still a great deal of suspicion in his heart for the huge animals. “We need your help,” he said. “We need to get to Hill, the man who slew the guard in the are
na. Can you take us to him?”

  The animals made no sign of reply, merely cocking their heads, raising their ears and looking at the two men quizzically. Lindy tried again. “We are his friends. He is injured and needs our help. We must go to him. Someone must treat his wounds. Do you understand?” Again there was no immediate sign that the dogs understood at all, but momentarily, the center canine made a series of whining noises interspersed with guttural rumbles and growls. Then it stood, turned, and retreated down the passage. Lindy made a move to follow but was stopped as the two remaining dogs closed ranks to block his way. They further pressed home their point by remonstrating with bared teeth and raised hackles until Lindy retreated a few steps.

  “Come on,” Steenini said, impatient. “We’re not going to get anywhere with them. We’ll have to find the way on our own.” He turned to walk back up the passageway.

  “No, wait,” Lindy called after him. “Wait a minute!” Steenini halted and turned to face him. “That dog understood everything I said, I’m sure of it,” the pilot said. “I think it went to check on something. Wait here for a while and see if it doesn’t come back.”

  “All right, we’ll wait. But not long.” Steenini clearly did not like the idea of spending any significant period of time in such close proximity to the dogs. But at Lindy’s insistence the two of them remained in the corridor, fidgeting, for several minutes. Then abruptly the dog did in fact reappear. It yelped once, and its two fellows blocking the passageway abruptly moved to either side, laying down with their heads resting submissively on their forepaws. The dog yelped again, and motioned for the humans to follow with a toss of its head before padding off the way it had come.

  “I got to hand it to you, Willet,” Steenini said as he gingerly tiptoed between the two recumbent giants and then set off at a trot behind their guide. “When you’re right, you’re right.” Lindy nodded while jogging at Steenini’s side, but said nothing. His thoughts were with O’Keefe, for if he wasn’t dead already he surely would be if they didn’t get aid to him quickly.

  The dog loped along in a four-legged canter that was obviously a slow pace for its species, but it was still a brutal stride for the men to match. Both were nearly spent after having worked for months in the mines, and neither was entirely sure of his own ability to keep up with the dog for anything resembling an extended period. Steenini voiced his fears in the matter and Lindy acknowledged him with a grunt, but there were no other words between them. Strangely, force of habit seemed to compel them to voluntarily implement the same protocol of silence enforced upon them by the guards during the daily trips to and from the mines. But at least the lack of conversation conserved some of their energy.

  After several turns down different passageways, they took a left into a dimly lit tunnel permeated with the stale and dusty smell of disuse. They ran along for about fifty yards before entering a deep stairwell. The dog easily traversed each flight, and waited at each landing, turning impatiently as the men made their way down the stairs as quickly as they were able. After descending a half dozen flights, they found themselves at the entrance to another corridor, this one only about twenty feet long. It emptied into the side of yet another tunnel, where they turned right and trotted slightly uphill, passing the cell where, unknown to them, O’Keefe had recently been held.

  Lindy could see the opening to the arena ahead. As they passed through it he and Steenini found themselves surrounded by chaos. The scene laid out before them was even more macabre than it had seemed from their vantage point high above. Tank hulls were spread randomly across the floor, some still idling, all stained crimson and devoid of their reptilian controllers. The lizards themselves had been torn to shreds by the dogs. Pieces of them lay everywhere. Amidst the carnage lay also the speared carcasses of the few dogs that had been killed in the uprising. The floor was viscid and sticky with agglutinating blood while the stench of death and diesels was overpowering. Some few men meandered around the floor alone or stood about in small clusters, at a loss at what to do with no one present to order them about.

  But the two friends’ canine guide darted easily through the maze of gory destruction as the former prisoners still moved instinctively out of the way of any dog that approached them. The animal turned to look back only when it had reached the edge of the barrier the pack members had formed around O’Keefe. There the dog stood and waited patiently for its two human followers as they slowly picked their way across the floor, a slight pant the only outward sign of its exertion.

  As the pair approached the living parapet some of the hounds began to growl and stir restlessly until a sharp canine retort from the center of the ring silenced them. At once several of them moved aside forming a gap in their protective circle, allowing Lindy and Steenini to approach O’Keefe, but the huge bulk of the big black hound lying next to him hid most of his form from their view.

  As they moved left past the dog’s withers and carefully slipped around its head, their eyes glued fearfully to its teeth as they did so, they found, much to their surprise, that there was already a prisoner there ministering to Hill’s injuries. A wizened, gaunt old man with a ring of white hair around his balding pate knelt over him; methodically salving and bandaging the various gashes, welts, burns, and scrapes that covered the aberrant’s body. O’Keefe lay on his back, his legs propped up atop a small pile of wadded clothing, presumably collected from bystanders in the arena.

  Presently the wiry old man noticed them standing to the side and turned his bespectacled face up to glance at them. A slight smile creased his weathered face. “Ah, Willet,” he said urgently. “You are most welcome. You and your friend, come quickly. You must help me. He has lost a great deal of blood. He is going into shock. You two must bandage him while I go back and stitch the worst of his wounds.” He roughly rolled O’Keefe onto his stomach and stripped away the temporary bandages covering one of the long gashes left by the lizard guard’s claws.

  At first Lindy stood dumbfounded, even as Steenini knelt beside O’Keefe and began to assist. He did not recognize the emaciated, white haired man at all, and yet that man had called him by name, and in a voice that was somehow so very familiar. At last recognition crept into his brain. “Beccassit,” he breathed. And then louder, “By the Rock, it is you. What have they done to you?” Lindy had to restrain himself from falling to his knees next to the doctor and embracing him.

  “We’ll have time to talk later, Willet,” Beccassit said calmly, not looking up. He was already stitching closed the wound that he had bared. “Right now Hill’s life hangs in the balance, and time is of the essence. Now please help your friend bandage any spot where he is losing blood.”

  “Yes, of course,” Lindy said, reddening as he knelt beside Steenini. He began to unroll bandages and tear off strips of tape, handing them to Steenini as fast as the scarred man could apply them. “Where did you come by these medical supplies?” he asked as he worked.

  “From the infirmary,” Beccassit answered. “As hard as it is to believe, Elorak’s favored actually received some primitive medical care in this sewer. That was my job.” As he spoke, he continued deftly sewing up O’Keefe, quickly starting on a second gash.

  “How did you get here so quickly?” Lindy asked, still amazed to find the doctor inside the ring of canines.

  “One of the dogs brought me. I thought they meant to harm me at first, but apparently they knew I was a doctor. As soon as I was released from the arena, I rushed back to the infirmary for my bag and some supplies. Several dogs were already there. They seem to be much more intelligent than they have let on. In any case, one held my kit in its mouth, as if it were waiting for me. Then it led me here. I only wish I was more adequately stocked. I don’t know how much I can do for him with only these crude implements.”

  Immediately O’Keefe’s protector, the big black beast, rose and was at the doctor’s side, gently pawing at his arm. “Stop it!” the doctor ordered. The dog ceased but stayed standing closely by. The doctor conti
nued to stitch, but in a few moments was unnerved by the nearness of the animal. “Willet, the dog wants something,” he said. “See if you can take it aside and communicate with it in some way.”

  Lindy stood and moved off a short distance, mildly surprised that the dog followed him. He turned to face the animal, his own eyes slightly lower than the top of the hound’s massive cranium. “What did Hill say its name was?” he shouted to Steenini.