Yngve, AR - Darc Ages 02 - City Of Masks

by City Of Masks (lit)

  Okono pointed one bayonet against the dwarf's face, and he would have gone pale if the dust had not already done the job. "The power plant!" he pleaded. "Just shut it down, and the turret shuts down!"

  "Show me where," Awonso said, and lifted the dwarf onto his shoulders. "And why haven't you done that already?"

  "What, and leave us defenseless against attack? Do I look like a fool? This way, behind the big stairs. Mind my head!"

  The dwarf ducked in the doorway, and they disappeared downstairs.

  "Should we help them?" Threo asked Okono. "They could face some resistance down there. Or would you rather face down those towers?"

  "Which is the most dangerous choice?"

  "Both. Death by radiation or laser, you choose."

  She checked the battery cartridges in the remaining rifles, pulled them out of their sockets, and pocketed them as spare ammunition.

  "I have never been underground," she said. He pulled her against his chest and they shared a kiss, knowing it might be their last one. Then they followed the path of the dwarf and the scholar, into the bowels of the city.

  Outside, in Vanitia's maze of streets and canals, Kensabur took jet-powered leaps in a zigzag path, each leap two hundred meters long, touching down on chimney-tops and bell-towers, bounding off them with the power of his hydraulic knee joints.

  The gun tower rumbled as its enormous laser cannon rotated in a feeble attempt to trace his path. One shot fired into the air and continued into space.

  The warning lights in his helmet told him that he had all but used up his jet fuel, and he landed by a fountain one block away from the harbor. The two bloody scythes slid out from his arms once more, and the city crowds reeled back in horror.

  Everywhere masked faces looked at him from corners, windows and canals; he simply could not believe that a whole city afflicted with the Plague had persisted for such a long time, when other cities would have collapsed from despair and isolation.

  And the masks! He had seen similar disguises during the celebrations after the Spring Joust or on New Year's Eve, but this - little children wearing masks as if it were the most natural thing in the world, even infants carried by their mothers to be suckled! It was insane.

  He strode down the street while stones and vegetables bounced off his armor, tossed by angry citizens. Not the hero's welcome he had hoped for; he bit his teeth together and pumped his arms with the rhythm of his thumping feet.

  The power pack had enough energy left to last him about half an hour. Then he could eject himself from the suit - and perhaps find a boat for their escape...

  His arrival in the harbor, wielding the bloody scythes, was greeted with panic. Workers scattered in all directions, ships disembarked in haste - and the giant chain was hoisted across the mouth of the harbor, blocking all ships from escape.

  Now the two gun towers began to take aim at the harbor itself; the giant guns slowly dipped downward, and their tracer beams floated silently across the parked ships and shallow waters, seeking out the single knight.

  Kensabur headed south along the wave-breaker, so close to the southern tower that he passed below its lowest angle of fire. He kept an eye on the northern turret, and saw the tracer light slide southward, a bright-red mark of death, past fleeing sailors and toward him.

  Then the dot was chasing him, moving only slightly slower than he could run. He stopped by the end of the southern wave-breaker, at the base of the southern tower. Here the blockade chain emerged from a concrete bunker's low porthole and hung just above the low tide, freshly greased. Moving quickly, he ran for the chain and raised one scythe to chop it off.

  In one brief moment, the red tracer-dot was reflected in the raised scythe blade - and he took one quick step away from the chain.

  A near-invisible pulse shot out from the northern tower, and hit right where the bright red spot touched the ground. The spot burst into a blue flame, and the great chain snapped with a resounding bang. The whole length of chain splashed into the water and sank to the bottom of the harbor.

  Kensabur laughed and held up the scythe blade at the northern tower, imitating the ancient obscene gesture, and shouted through his loudspeaker: "Sit on this!"

  He did not stay around for the tower to respond. He ran for the giant doors he had visited earlier, with the archaic lettering above the entrance - it was his one chance to enter the southern turret and maybe, just maybe turn the battle in his favor...

  The gates were shut, as he had anticipated. The tracer from the northern tower kept chasing him. Kansabur took to marching back and forth in front of the doors, hoping that the unseen gunners might fall for the same trick twice.

  He had seen battles won because of stupid enemy leaders. He also had personal, painful experience of serving under bad leaders, during his father's brief alliance with Tharlos Pasko. Once one had come under the spell of the wrong leader, foolish strategies would be carried on much longer, even when they were obviously wrong.

  He was not disappointed. Another pulse from the northern gun narrowly missed him and punched right through the door with an echoing blow. Then he dug his armored feet into the ground, pushed against the doors... and they gave way. The shot had blown a crossbeam bar to smithereens.

  Kensabur walked in through the open door and marched down the corridor leading to the southern tower. Power cables hummed on the wall beside him, and water gurgled through pipes to keep the cannon from overheating - but if he cut the cables, he would still be defenseless against the other tower.

  He thought briefly of his friends, and whether they still lived. Then a small garrison of soldiers came rushing at him from the stairwell leading up the tower, and he knew what to do. The two scythes slid out with a rasping noise caused by the friction of dust and dried blood.

  Kensabur weaved his arms in front of him, and the soldiers fired. The laser pulses failed to penetrate his breastplate, and before the men could retreat he was upon them, doing his bloody handiwork.

  Heads rolled. Masks were cleaved in half. Some of the faces revealed were perfectly normal, others hideously deformed. It did not matter to him. He had a debt to pay.

  A shadow fell on the floor from behind him, and he heard a loud, burring motor noise. Slowly he turned, restless for the armor to move faster, and faced a dark shape hurtling through the air...

  Too late did he make out the shape of the object: the heavy hook and block of a crane, rattling down from its chain as it was pulled along a ceiling rail.

  The crane hook struck his breastplate with the force of several tons: he felt the plate buckle and the pressure change knocked the air out of his lungs. He toppled, slipped on the bloody mess on the floor, and slammed onto his back.

  Kensabur coughed and gasped for air, but the dent in his armor was pushing in against the breastbone and choking him. Warning lamps lit up around the insides of his helmet, and he tasted blood in his mouth; his vision started to blur.

  Years of training took over; he pushed all buttons with his feet three times, and set off the emergency mechanism. Explosive bolts went off on the sides of the torso, arms and neck; the armor pieces came loose and his helmet clattered against the floor, while the coolant tubes whipped out of the power pack. He drew a gasping breath and his vision cleared.

  Now he saw and heard the city lord's cloaked "robots" as they came charging at him, their metal masks impassive in the gloomy lighting, their legs moving stiffly in a parody of a robot walk.

  But he could also hear the echo of their heavy breathing.

  Kensabur crawled out of the armor's legs dressed only in his coolant suit, tubes dangling by his sides, and reached down inside the backpack. He turned the hidden self-destruct switch, grabbed a rifle from the floor and hurried up the stairwell to the tower.

  When the three cloaked men dressed as robots arrived at the armor's power pack, it detonated.

  The blast knocked them over but was not strong enough to kill them. One "robot" lay moaning on the floor with a metal sp
linter in his body, while the other two struggled to get upright.

  Chapter 12

  Meanwhile, several levels beneath the ruined palace...

  Awonso puffed and wheezed as he carried the dwarf through seemingly endless vaults and passages, toward the city's power plant. They followed dripping copper ducts and the few scattered electric lights that were still working. The air was humid, hot and acrid with ozone.

  "How much do they feed you?" Awonso asked, and leaned against an ancient brick wall. "You weigh almost as much as I do!"

  "Let me carry you! " the dwarf said, tapping Awonso's head. "Onward, fatty! Do you want to see your friends fried by those giant guns?"

  Awonso pushed himself off the wall and continued, down a stone staircase, through mists of leaking steam. "Is it getting hotter?"

  The dwarf wiped sweat off his own face, and then wiped Awonso's forehead. "It is."

  "I fear that..." Awonso breathed heavier. "The power plant is under too much strain to power the gun tower. It might shut down itself if the strain does not ease."

  "And what makes you the expert?"

  "I come from a long line of engineers. Where do you come from, little man?"

  "I happen to be the son of..." the dwarf hesitated. "Who am I fooling? The son of nobody in particular. I was the court jester, there was no other work for me. I took on the part of the former counselor, and his mask, and imitated his manners.

  "It was an act, to amuse the old city lord, the big-nosed one, and let him dream that an old friend was still alive. I used stilts to make myself taller, and sculpted a larger head to fit the counselor's mask, and I put the false head on my shoulders.

  "My act was good, all too good. The old city lord made my act his new counselor. I had no name, so I made one up... and 'Sarastos' was born, the perfect advisor, the man with no past and therefore no weaknesses."

  Awonso stopped and glanced up at the dwarf, who peered down from above Awonso's head. "You are telling me... that no one suspected why you were never seen in the same room with Sarastos? All those years?"

  "That is what Vanitians do."

  "They talk to the mask. I know. How did this crazy game begin? Were they all Lepers from the beginning?"

  "I have been trying to find out, and not get my throat slit in the process. According to city records, a section of the ancient catacombs caved in during an earthquake some ninety years ago. A band of Leper nomads found the exposed passage and made their way straight into this city. The official version says that the city fought back the intruders, and the contagion was destroyed.

  "But I have pieced together another version, if you can believe it. Can you imagine how lucky those misshapen marauders must have felt, when they found the passage? All that wealth and security which had been denied them now lay at their feet!

  "But they were shrewd enough to know they could not simply storm Vanitia and slaughter the citizenry. If the outside world found out, armies from other cities would lay siege to Vanitia and torch it into oblivion.

  "So they devised a diabolical plan for their tribe to infiltrate the population. They sent out spies at night, disguised as normal citizens, scouted out the tunnels and streets. They learned of the great masquerades which occurred regularly four times a year. And a New Year's masque gave them a perfect opportunity. Cloaked and wearing the masks of the other unsuspecting citizens, they arrived in force and tainted the city's water supply with the Plague.

  "It could have been done in any sort of manner. Perhaps they dumped their own dead into the reservoir, I do not know.

  "Then all they had to do was wait while the next generation, the grandparents of today's Vanitians, were born Lepers. Imagine the horror, the shock!

  "And then came a group of masked Lepers from the outside, walked straight into the city lord's palace, and said: 'This is our city now. Wear your masks at all times, let your children wear them, and we can live together with you, in peace. If you refuse, we shall tell your neighbors, and you know what that means.'

  "The rest, as the saying goes, is history."

  Awonso put the dwarf down; they had arrived. "Your story... it is too contrived. Too perfect. It couldn't have been that well planned."

  The dwarf shrugged and gave Awonso a wry smile. "I admit, it is pure speculation. Would you rather believe the Lepers stumbled into Vanitia on New Year's Eve and made their plans up as they went along?"

  "Yes. Now show me the entrance to the city's reactor."

  They were quite near now, crossing a stone and metal walkway across a huge water reservoir. Beneath them, the boiling water cast an eerie blue glow. They came to a locked steel door in the rock wall, marked with an engraved skull and a faded bas-relief message in Old Aenglich: DANGER! NEUTRON RADIATION. The dwarf picked a key from his belt and unlocked the door. They pushed the half-stuck door open and went in.

  Awonso's mouth fell open. "Great Goddess."

  The walkway on which they stood encircled a metal cylinder some sixty meters tall and twenty meters wide. The cylinder hung halfway sunk into the glowing reservoir; white layers of mineral deposits covered its pitted surface. From the top of the cylinder went the ducts that pumped fuel into the reactor, and the tubes that pumped byproducts out of it.

  The cylinder emitted a constant low hum. Solid, self-sustaining, built by forgotten engineers hundreds of years ago, this device had provided power for Vanitia and other cities through the dark ages. It could not be switched off.

  Awonso felt as if he had intruded on some sacred site, where only the proper guild workers should be allowed. His skin tickled in the hot air, and he feared he was being poisoned by invisible radiation.

  "The fuel ducts!" Awonso shouted over the rumble of boiling water, and pointed upward. "All we have to do is cut off the flow of fuel, and the reactor stops churning out heat for the electric turbines. We can stop the gun turrets without leaving your city defenseless. And I can get my radio working... damn! Let's get out of here."

  Soaked with sweat, they fled and shut the door. Awonso lifted the dwarf onto his back and they started to follow the ducts toward the source of the nuclear fuel.

  Suddenly they heard approaching steps and hid themselves in a niche. A familiar voice spoke, and Awonso waved from his cover. "Don't shoot! It's me. Help us follow the fuel duct, so we can shut it off."

  The dwarf began to speak, but Okono and Threo were not in the mood to listen. "I think I know where it is," Okono said. "Follow your nose."

  "Eh?"

  She looked sternly at Awonso, and wiped her sweaty forehead; her robe clung to her curves and revealed what lay underneath.

  "In your city and my city, the power plants run on hydrogen. But with the poor safety of this place, and the open arc-lamps, the catacombs could be blown sky high if they pumped pure hydrogen gas through these leaky ducts. So they use a less flammable byproduct of the city sewage system."

  " She knocked on a dripping duct and wrinkled her small, flat nose. "Methane... with a whiff of sulfur. Such a waste of good waste! It ought to be used for manure."

  The dwarf made a loud whistle and pointed to a door. "Hey! Here are the private quarters of the old city lord, if you wanted to know."

  "The man with the big nose we saw pass by here yesterday?" asked Threo.

  "The same."

  "He lived down here?"

  "Only when his replacement was using his official rooms. They traded sleeping-quarters now and then."

  Okono ignored them and headed for another doorway. She shouted for the dwarf to unlock it. They entered the other great secret of the city: the sewer central. The stench was overpowering.

  "I can never stay here long," the dwarf said and pinched his nose. "I faint, you see." He retreated through the door.

  The only faint illumination in the vast underground room came from shafts in the ceiling. There had to be thick windows at the bottom of the canals, through which the tinted sunlight could shine down.

  Okono pointed to the giant funnels t
hat went into the pools of raw sewage. A warm draft came from the mouths of the funnels and sucked heavier-than-air methane gas into connecting ducts.

  On the metal wall next to the door was a row of control levers. Threo reached for them. He saw a faded sign: DRAIN.

  "I have it! I just pull these levers and drain the flow of sewage to the funnels, and the gas stops coming."

  "How long does it take before the reactor shuts down?" asked Awonso. "I would guess hours, at least."

  "Get out of here," Okono said, and slammed a fresh cartridge into her rifle. "There is a quicker way."

  "Stop!" Awonso flailed his arms at her. "If you ignite this whole roomful of methane, we all die! Even if the combustion isn't hot enough to burn us to death, it will suck the oxygen out of the catacombs and suffocate us!"

  "Will you be my friend?"

  They turned to the source of the synthetic voice, and saw the dwarf enter with Kiti-Mo grabbing his collar.

  "Get this thing away from me!" the dwarf asked.

  "Kiti-Mo! Release the little man and come here. Shut the door, little man."

  With a hurt stare in Okono's direction, the dwarf pushed the door shut. Kiti-Mo walked over to its owner and stood to attention. Okono bent down and said: "Kiti-Mo, I want you to take this rifle and wait here for five minutes. Then you press the trigger and shoot the beam at those ducts over there..." - she pointed - "...until you hear a great noise. Then you can walk out of here and I will find you. Can you do that?"

  The robot's voice sounded almost human. "Will you come back for me?"

  "I promise." Okono frowned briefly, swallowed and handed the rifle to the robot. She stroked the shiny metal head. "Start in five minutes from... now."

  "Counting," the robot said. Threo grabbed the dwarf, and they ran for the exit.

  Chapter 13

  Kensaburé was a knight in peak physical condition. As a trained warrior he had perfected his breathing technique before he learned to read, but a broken rib made it much harder to keep his breathing under control.

  How many steps left? he wondered and looked up the winding brick stairwell, illuminated by shafts of sunlight from the embrasures. He aimed his rifle upward, prepared to fire as soon as the gunners came into view. A peek through an embrasure gave him a narrow view of the harbor. The northern tower was still waiting for him to come into its sights.