“Or a diagnostic bed,” he whispered back. “It looks like that as well.”
“Whatever it is,” she continued, “it failed our friend down there. He has been dead for an age.”
“Yet, something down there is still alive somehow. You felt it too. The body may be dead, but something is still active in the chamber. Look at the machinery.”
“The ceiling of this chamber is two meters thick,” added Shasti. “I’ve never seen an alloy like this. I assumed they used a heavy military laser to cut this meter-and-a-half hole.”
Fenaday waved to Mmok. The half-cyborg came up to the hole the same way they had. Mmok looked into the hole only briefly. He cursed and drew back from it, unnerved.
Fenaday began to fear the nuclear device they brought with them might be inadequate. He had never believed in ghosts—despite his Irish heritage—and didn’t now. He thought some vestige of the life force of the Titan might exist in the computers and machinery shifting around the monster’s bed. Perhaps the attacks originated in the machinery, but he didn’t believe it. There was too much malice and hatred in what he felt from his encounters with their enemy.
“Mmok,” he asked, “if we fire off the bomb outside the chamber, will it do the job?”
“How the hell should I know?” Mmok snapped. “This metal is meters thick so the blast will go up and out easiest. That’s physics. The hole should still admit plenty of blast, but I don’t know anything about this equipment. I can tell you this metal is harder than anything we make. I’ve had Cobalt doing a spectral analysis. I don’t know what they used to cut this hole with but it would normally be mounted on a battlecruiser.
“This is new alien equipment, from a race we don’t know. Something spoke to us telepathically. That’s been bullshit until now. What else can they do that we don’t know is possible? Force fields? How deep does this installation go? Maybe all the really critical stuff is below another floor made of this metal. If that’s the case, then there is no way this small nuke can cut through another layer of this alloy. I’d need a shaped charge.
“The best way,” concluded the grim half-cyborg, “is to put the bomb down in there. This is our one shot. It has to work. If you cook off the nuke up here and it doesn’t do the job, then this whole area will be gone. We’ll never be able to get to back to this chamber to try again.”
Fenaday lay on his back, away from the hole. “I was afraid you were going to say that.” It was obvious to him now. They had to lower the warhead into the crypt itself. They had no idea how much blast was needed to accomplish their mission. Putting the weapon in the crypt, contained by the incredible walls of the chamber, would greatly increase the effect and perhaps even protect the areas of Barjan over them.
They retreated from the hole, rejoining the others. Fenaday sketched the details of what they had seen. He sent Telisan for a look. Connery and Li rested on their guns and stayed on guard for Shellycoats. Fenaday did not want Duna near the hole, despite the little scholar’s curiosity.
“I want to put the warhead in there. We lower it in. I’ll arm it, then you’ll pull me out, and we run like hell.”
Telisan stared at him as if he had lost his mind. “Why not arm it up here and lower it in?”
Mmok answered. “We don’t know what sort of defenses are in that pit, either mechanical or cybernetic. The bomb might draw any sort of attack as we lower it in. Once it is armed, there is a distinct chance it could be triggered by an EMP, computer virus or even mechanical damage. The other problem is this is a jury-rigged detonator, a bunch of cannibalized stuff from other systems. I don’t want to lower it down there and have to wonder if it is going to go off because some bump or jolt on the way down disconnected something. It would be embarrassing to be walking back here, wondering why it didn’t go off and get caught in a delayed blast.”
“No, the only safe way is to lower it, check it, then set the timer once we’re sure it’s working,” said Fenaday. “Can we use an HCR?”
Mmok shook his head. “No. They aren’t made for that sort of work. I don’t have that level of control over their hands. The interlocks on the timer are too delicate. If I’d thought of it before…” he shrugged.
“So,” said Fenaday, fear drying his mouth, “down I go.”
Mmok looked over at him. “Better you than me,” he said with rare sympathy.
“Madness,” the word whispered through their minds. Terror returned, and they all froze. Only silence followed.
“I don’t believe that the creature, the machinery, say the consciousness of this place, is aware of us,” Fenaday said. “Else, why aren’t we dead?”
“Your senility theory, perhaps,” Telisan speculated.
“Whatever,” Fenaday said. “Maybe it’s recovering from its previous efforts. I don’t think we have much more time before it becomes aware of us.
“Mmok, get the bomb rigged for the descent. We’ve got D-rings and rope in the supplies. Shasti, help me make a harness. The rest of you, lay low and stay quiet. Don’t even think loudly. That goes double for you, Belwin. I don’t want it to think of a live Enshari up here.”
Mmok and his robot team checked the hoist and hooked up the bomb. They took special care with the bomb trigger. Fenaday and Shasti quickly rigged a harness and D-rings, to allow him to slide down as well. She put a line on him so he could be pulled up easily. They moved over to the pit. He nodded to Mmok. The cyborg and Verdigris swung the bomb out with the derrick erected by the deceased Enshari archeologists. They stared anxiously as it descended into the pit. Despite their best efforts, the bomb oscillated on the way down.
Fenaday threw in his own rope. He wanted to wait till the bomb set down without drawing an attack before starting his drop. The bomb reached bottom, but one swing banged it into the side of the platform. Everyone but Shasti and Verdigris flinched away from the hole. It landed finally, canted at an angle.
“Just what I was afraid of,” muttered Fenaday. He moved into a position to rappel into the pit. The hardest part, he thought, is always the first lean-back, trusting the rope. He eased into the proper stance and looked up, catching Shasti’s eye. Her perfect face showed no emotion; he read anxiety in her anyway. He smiled reassuringly. She didn’t return it, just watched him as he disappeared into the hole.
Fenaday spun slowly in his harness, then eased his grip and started dropping fast, hoping to present a moving target, in case the crypt had different defenses against biologicals. He reached the floor in seconds and crouched near the bomb, laser in one hand and torch in the other. One of the crab robots extended a lantern into the pit. Its light didn’t fully illuminate the chamber. He realized the chamber was far larger than he suspected. Sidhe could have docked in it. The light uncomfortably illuminated the immense skull, only five meters away. He tried not to look at it.
Banks upon banks of machinery hummed around him. Many seemed active at a low level. He saw an irregularity in the wall, well away from the platform. He spun his hand torch to tight beam and shone it in that direction. The beam diffused over distance, but he could definitely see a section of the wall bowed in, though not breached. Fenaday remembered the stories Duna told of the rare, but devastating earthquakes that destroyed Barjan several times in ancient days. Perhaps some ancient earth movement had damaged the machinery. No lights flickered there.
This has to be a confinement, he thought with a shock. Someone meant to come back for the creature but never did. Tended by the machines, yet somehow conscious, it died, waiting for a parole that never came.
He jerked his attention back to the here and now and reached for the arming mechanism of the bomb, opening the first interlock.
The waterfall sound that had faded to background suddenly rose. Fenaday felt a consciousness fill the chamber. He heard a creaking groan, as of huge rusted hinges pushed from frozen disuse. Fenaday’s head snapped around. The giant skull was shifting, turning toward him. Its eyeless sockets came to bear on him.
“Who?” hissed t
he voice in his mind, with a malevolence he never dreamt existed. Fingers of thought clawed at his brain.
Fenaday screamed, a high, shrill sound of pain and terror. He snapped up his pistol, firing convulsively, shot after shot, into the horrific skull’s immensely thick cranium. Superheated bone chips flew.
*****
“Get him out, get him out!” Shasti ordered. “The thing is alive.” She hefted her tri-auto, but she had no clean shot. She feared severing the rope or hitting Fenaday with a ricochet. “I need a laser,” she yelled.
Telisan, Mmok and the others leapt to the tripod, hauling on Fenaday’s safety rope. Duna raced to the hole, brandishing his energy weapon. He leaned in for a shot and saw the nemesis of his race stretched out in all its horror. And it saw him. The terrible head ceased moving. The triple eye sockets bore into him, devouring him with their emptiness.
A blast of hatred, so intense as to have flavor and color, burst from the pit, forcing everyone but Shasti back from the edge. Shasti held her ground though it beat her to her knees. She put her head between her hands. For the first time in years and over a vow she had sworn to herself, Shasti screamed in pain.
The members of the landing force, wherever they were on the planet, heard the scream of rage sound in their minds.
*****
On the deck of the bulk-fluid hauler, Angelica Fury and Rask stumbled to their feet, their eyes wild. They stood on the open cargo platform with the five others of Rask’s fire team. The ramp was down. On the field they could see Shellycoats of many sizes forming from debris. One stood as tall as the giant marshals which had led the attack back on the island. Fury wheeled on Rask. “Oh my God, tell me you have the ramp’s power restored.”
Rask lunged for the portable generator and put it on maximum. The ramp began grinding upward, cutting off the view of the onrushing Shellycoats. Someone screamed and firing broke out behind them. They whirled. Shellycoats had formed from the tools, fire extinguishers and miscellaneous contents of the hold. Rachel Van Vugt, from Engineering, toppled forward, her eyes unseeing. A Shellycoat had impaled her on a length of pipe. The other ASATs backed away, firing furiously, dropping the things as they formed.
“We need a smaller place to defend,” screamed Fury. Despair beat in her chest as she swept up Van Vugt’s fallen weapon, blazing away, determined to sell her young life at the highest price she could extract.
Rask pointed to the raised area holding the cargo master’s crane controls. “Only two ways in and out,” he shouted in response. “We can hold there.”
“For how long?” she asked.
“For as long as we got ammo,” snapped Rask. “Come on.”
They backed away, firing as they retreated.
*****
Exploding claymore mines followed by gunfire told Daniel Rigg trouble had arrived. He bolted to the main verandah, where the guards were already firing out the windows. Shellycoats advanced from all directions on their fortress camp. Barrier wires sparked and blasted them, but as one vaporized, another appeared, incorporating bits of the destroyed one. The shuttle gun crews began to fire.
A whine sounded at his feet. Rigg looked down. Risky’s tail was between his legs. Rigg reached down, patting the dog’s head. “It looks like a fight, boy. We’ll give them a good one. You look after yourself and wait for the next expedition. I promise you there will be one.”
He drew his heavy sidearm, opening his mike on the battle frequency and started bawling orders. “Everyone keep your eyes on your own front. Cut the firing rate, controlled bursts. We ain’t making ammo, so mark your target.”
He looked up as a shadow fell across the room. A ‘marshal’ advanced toward the embassy. Made of cars, it towered thirty meters into the air.
Pooka’s chain guns took it apart. It fell with a horrific crash. In the middle distance, he saw several cars on the freeway ramp stir and crawl toward each other.
Chapter Eighteen
Fenaday had dropped when the others let go of the rope. He was not conscious of it. His body splayed out in a rictus of pain. The laser hung from his hand by its lanyard. His eyes were open but saw nothing of the pit.
But they did see. The alien consciousness of the pit grew. It reached out to him. His body arced in torture as the mind of the Titan, far too large and complex for his mortal brain, invaded. No longer conscious of himself, he became one with the dead thing in the pit.
He saw himself as a giant, proud in his service as the highest of the warrior monks of the Prekak order. His duty was to protect his kind and the lesser races with whom they dealt. War raged with a force of darkness, inimical to all life. The Enemy was terrible and the Prekak fell before them in desperate battles. Lesser races perished entirely. Soon, the Prekak fought the forces of darkness on the surface of their own homeworld.
Finally came a time of complete desperation, as defeat and extinction threatened the Prekak. The Order of Scientists conceived a last defense, the great machine. He, as the First, claimed the honor of the risk of being wedded to the machine. The telepathic powers of the Prekak, strongest in those chosen for the Order, were all that stood between them and the darkness of the enemy.
The machine worked. He went from monk to Godhead with a mind so powerful he could raise and animate matter with his own life’s essence. He called these manifestations his soldiers of light and air. He gathered their remaining armies. With the deadly force of his mind, with the power it wielded over the very elements of the planet and with his soldiers of light and air, he descended on their enemies, driving them from the Prekak homeworld with great slaughter. There would be no escape from retribution. He was raised to love justice and to judge with mercy, but the Enemy’s nature would not countenance clemency, and their sins demanded payment. He and the forces of the Prekak pursued. Their attack was made more bitter for all the helpless dead he and the Order had failed to protect.
Finally the Enemy was driven to their own homeworld, facing a maelstrom of destruction, wrought chiefly by his mind. Continents quaked and volcanoes erupted. He wielded lightning as if it were an energy weapon. The Enemy fell, but they too had their scientists, and their final weapon was also a psionic attack. As he closed in on their last fortress, it struck his mind with mental talons. He quailed under terrible blows. Soldiers of light and air faltered and flickered. The Enemy rallied, counterattacked. The battle hung on a knife’s edge.
He reached deep inside himself, drawing on the discipline of a lifetime in the Order. He would not fail his people. He could not. Were the dead to be left unavenged? Were future helpless populations to suffer? He could not bear the thought. He drew the steel of his soul and steadied. Somehow he bore the unimaginable agonies and struck back with mighty blows. Despite terrible damage to his new mind, he hung onto the enemy, warping the very substance of the planet, destroying their evil for all time.
The agony grew unendurable. As he felt the last of the enemy die in despair, his own mind gave way. His comrades drew near to give him their love and praise, as the greatest hero of his race. He looked upon them and saw only more enemies. Death poured out from him. His mind was severely damaged, or none would have lived even for seconds. The soldiers of light and air turned on their former allies. They were now something lesser and needed to manifest themselves in physical form to do injury. As they originated in his mind and soul, their number was almost endless. The Order battled back in dismay, calling, pleading with him to return to those who loved him.
He fled into the reaches of space, pursued by his own kind. He landed on world after world and woe to the life of that world, in whom he saw only the enemy. His friends pursued, now in grief, intent on ending the terror caused by their fallen hero.
On Enshar the Order caught him. He had begun his conquest of the tiny people of that world. His soldiers of air and light had grown weaker and lacked much of their former intelligence. In truth, they were effective only when he focused the strength of his mind on them. Even then, they were the merest shado
ws of their former selves, as was he. For subjugating the tiny primitives of Enshar, however, they sufficed even in their near imbecilic state.
The Order, led by a new First, landed and attacked. Relentless pursuit and battles had worn on him, and the scientists had made new arms for the Order. He was taken in defeat, pinioned and brought to justice. Death was not in their judgment, for they were a just and merciful race. He had been the greatest among them and suffered unimaginably in their service. They still bore him love and honor for that. Yet, his crimes were severe. There were innocent, lifeless worlds behind him. He had to answer for all this.
They sentenced him to confinement and meditation. The machine and his powers were a part of his mind. They could find no way to remove either without causing his death. With the Order’s new technology, his powers were repressed and confined. They hoped that, sealed away in a suspended animation chamber, yet conscious, the disciplines of the Order would restore his balance. They confined him in a chamber from which his power could not emanate to disturb the pitiful Enshari, the remnant of which the Prekak now took as their charge.
He was secured in his life-preserving chamber and left to ponder his sins. They would return for him when they judged his penance complete.
Though he could not control or influence the Enshari, as part of his penance he was allowed to sense them. The Order hoped it would teach him remorse. Perhaps, at first, it did. Eventually, he came to see them as insects, scurrying above him, burying him in the excreta of their cities. In a few of their short lives, he was forgotten, reduced to mere legend. Eons wore on, yet there was no sign of a return of his kind. In loneliness and terror, he called to the Enshari, who could not hear him. Buried alive and forgotten, he grew to fear the Prekak were no more—that they had come to disaster out among the stars.
His hatred of the Enshari became all consuming, even exceeding what he had felt for the Enemy. He plotted their destruction, in infinite detail, over millennia. The plan became second nature.
Was Once a Hero Page 23
