“Yes,” the Thrumpit said, “The Diary of Disordered Skies.” It waved a tentacle toward Bria. “This warrior, wisdom wanting, will find we answer the duty drums. That terrible tome is here. But the tides come quickly, bitter sea waves that want to waste the wan pages of history. Inside, citizens! We will close the sea doors and seize the book.”
The Thrumpit shuffled back into the light, seemingly moving backwards as two eyes and two feet faced away from any direction of movement. But it moved quickly, as its broad, flat feet slapped at the floor.
Bria led the group forward. When Gowgoroup passed inside, coming last, the doors shuddered loudly and began to close. The roar of the wind rose in pitch as the door’s opening shrank, until finally a high whistle ceased when the black metal gates clanged shut. The Library rang with silence.
“If we don’t beat the tide,” Eydis said, looking back at the tall doors. “We will be trapped here till tomorrow.”
“We beat tide,” Bria said. She looked up at the ceiling of the long, straight passage. The dense stone overhead had a high metallic content. She could not contact the ship through it. She tried to contact Tarkos and could not reach him either. Not ideal.
They walked. The long hall sloped upwards, back into the cliff they had descended. Pale, green light from recessed LEDs seeped from a ridge near the top of each side of the wall.
“No other Kriani here?” Bria asked.
The Thrumpit said, “Alone we suffer, struggle-siblings, the Librarian and Ruinreader.”
Bria turned as she walked, studying the dimensions of the hallway. “Ulltrian?” she asked Eydis. She closed her nostrils in disgust.
The archeologist understood Bria to be asking if the Ulltrians made this space. “Yes,” she said softly. “They preferred underground structures for all their most important buildings. Nothing else is very permanent here. Hurricanes and tornadoes are common on the surface of this world.” She stopped. Ki’Ki’Tilish and Gowgoroup passed her by. But Bria halted and turned, lowering her head to peer at the human.
“Listen to me,” Eydis said. “I still don’t believe it. I still use the past tense. Could it be true? Could there really be Ulltrians alive? Here? And how many?”
“Don’t know how many,” Bria said. She hesitated with her instinct to tell this human as little as possible. But she needed Eydis, and if the human knew more, she may be better able to help the Alliance. “But Ulltrians survive. On sunless planet wandering deepest space.”
Eydis drew in her breath in surprise and clapped her hands on her head. “I see! Now it all makes sense! You think it’s the World Hammer. You think there are Ulltrians on the World Hammer.”
“Hammer?” Bria asked.
“That’s the name they gave the free planet pair that passed this world, twenty eons ago. Hurk-ka-Dâk-Ull, the World Hammer.”
“Yes,” Bria hissed.
“But… you must warn the galaxy, Harmonizer.”
“Will warn,” Bria said. “But now, don’t know if Ulltrians know we know.”
Eydis thought about that. “So, you hope to… surprise them?”
“Find, know, surprise, contain,” Bria growled.
Eydis nodded. “Let’s get the book.” She hurried after Ruinreader and the rest of the group.
The hall opened into a huge chamber. Black skeletons of metal, set in a circle arrayed around the center of the vast chamber, reached forty and fifty meters into the air, casting thin shadows in the pale green light. On these shelves, tall folders or books stood on edge, thousands and thousands of them, each nearly a meter tall.
“These are ancient books,” Eydis explained, gesturing at the towering shelves. “The Ulltrians kept them as a monument to their past, to the era of hardcopy. Of course, all their later records were digital.”
Bria pointed above the shelves, where four strange old ships, forged of dark wood or other organic materials, hung by metal cables from the domed ceiling. A pale gray glow of natural light shone down on the ships, cast by a vent in the dome.“What are?” she asked. One was clearly a primitive airplane, and two appeared to be open boats of bronze colored, polished wood. But the last was an unrecognizable structure: a cylinder of black wood.
“Exemplars of there kind, that’s what they are. Marvellous old Ulltrian machines. Two boats, simple open sail boats. An aircraft—one of their first. And a hurricane ship.”
“Hurricane ship,” Bria said, tasting the words.
“Come, world warrior, life liege!” the Thrumpit called, standing between two of the stacks.
Bria followed the Thrumpit down the narrow hall formed by the tall shelves of ancient black books. They had to move single file, Gowgoroup close behind Bria. They walked a few meters before the line stopped. The OnUnAn’s encounter vehicle tottered, its leg stuck behind a tall book that protruded into the way. Bria backed up and bent down, one hand on a leg of the OnUnAn’s vehicle. She shoved the book back. Freed, the tank-like encounter suit teetered back, making Ki’Ki’Tilish scurry out of the way, before Gowgoroup continued forward.
At the end of the passage, the light was brighter and more white, shining down from a spotlight that dangled high above between the suspended ships. In the center of the stacks, they found a round central area, with two great steps around the edge leading down to a sunken floor. In this recessed area, beside two long metal desks, a Kriani lay, its six legs askew. Its chest heaved as it struggled with breath. It still had its antennae, but green ichor leaked from around their bases, and gray medical foam had been sprayed around these twin wounds.
Eydis leapt down the steps and went to the Kriani. “Librarian, can we help you?” she asked.
The antennae twitched, and the Kriani seemed to sigh. After a long while, it said, quietly but very distinctly, “Kill me.”
_____
Tarkos turned his back to the sea and lowered himself over the edge of the cliff. He had done descents before, and he always hated this awkward moment, when he first shifted from crawling over the edge to clinging to the wall. The first test of the gecko filaments in his gloves and boots always felt like the most unreliable moment.
He looked over his shoulder. The drop below yawned, the sea seeming to tilt and recede with the surging tide. His testicles retracted, tingling. He swallowed, and decided not to look again out over the disorienting sea. Instead, he leaned slightly to look down the cliff face. That was better. It seemed almost like looking across a plateau. Minutes before he had stood at the cliff edge and watched Bria and the others as they approached the door below. But now the metal petals of the vent doors blocked his view of the Library’s entrance. Bria and the others had hopefully already passed inside, but he heard nothing and he must pursue this alternate route unless the commander told him otherwise.
He told his suit and boots to extrude their gecko fibers, and he reached down with one hand and pressed it to the rock. It gripped strongly. He pushed the toes of his boots forward, and they seemed to cling to the rock. He told the suit to stiffen the boots more, as he bounced a little, testing the grip. He lifted his other hand and planted the glove on the stone face, feeling it settle and grip. He was over the edge.
The gecko grip allowed him to peel a glove or boot from the stone, but not to pull straight out. He peeled his left boot toe off the stone, and reached as far down as he comfortably could with his leg before he planted it again. Then he did the same with his right hand. Keep always three points on the rock was the general rule. It slowed his descent, but the rhythm reassured him as he climbed down.
Tiklik leaned to the edge, and then, without slowing, walked over the cliff face. Its six legs extruded wide pads that, Tarkos supposed, operated like his own gecko grips. It passed him, walking head first, moving quickly and steadily down towards the higher of the two vent tunnels.
“Show off,” Tarkos muttered as Tiklik hurried out of view. “Wait for me,” he called. He did not trust the AI enough to let it get out of his sight and into the library ahead of him.
/> Tarkos concentrated on moving carefully but quickly. The wind was growing strong, so that even through his massive suit he felt its buffeting force. A wet mist blew against the stone, which made Tarkos wonder if it would weaken the grip. But his hands and boots held firmly, and he moved without slipping down the black stone.
After fifteen minutes by the suit clock, he let himself look down again. He’d crossed half the distance to the cliff’s bottom. Directly below, the metal petals of the vent tunnel’s first opening stuck out, six silver triangles each about 3 meters high. Tiklik stood patiently on the cliff face beside the entrance, waiting.
“Did you look?” Tarkos radioed, as he resumed his climb down.
“The stone is old,” Tiklik replied. “It yields few particles.”
“Right,” he said, resisting the temptation to pull a hand free and wipe it across his helmet’s visor, clearing the spray that misted his vision. “But I didn’t mean: did look into the molecular structure of the rock? I meant: did you look in the vent? Is anyone in the vent tunnel?”
“A hexagonal hallway, six measures from face to opposite face. No organisms within have a mass exceeding forty standard units.”
Tarkos grunted. What was in there that massed thirty nine standard units? Well, not much farther, and he would see for himself. He tried to radio Bria, to coordinate with her on her progress, but his implants, and then his armor’s radio, got no response. Bria must be inside, under all this rock.
He stuck to his rhythm. Right hand, left foot, left hand, right foot. Tarkos pulled his right hand free, reached down to plant it—
And then the rock exploded.
For a moment he thought that the stone had sheered free under his weight. That would happen if a crack, on a plane parallel to the surface, lay just below the stone, so that his gecko grip would cling to the rock face and his weight would pull it away. But his hand did not pull free a flat face of stone. Instead, all around him, the rock exploded into fragments. His hands came loose as the rock shattered under his grip.
He fell backwards, hands clawing at air. His boots gripped for a moment, but the motion of his fall peeled them away from the stone also. He shouted involuntarily, and then the safety line went taut, jerking hard against its connector on the right hip of his armor. He twisted sideways, his left arm swinging down toward the precipice. His feet bounced twice, and then he started to rotate on the safety line, swinging forward toward the stone. He kicked his feet out, trying to keep from planting his face on the cliff side. Chips of stone rained down around him, falling through his view and tapping noisily against his helmet and armor. He ran a short way forward along the cliff, suspended on the line, and then ran backwards when the pendulum motion swung the other way.
Rock splintered and exploded before him, tracking his motion. That’s when he realized: these were lasers. Lasers targeted him. The first shots had cracked the rock near his hand, and that sent him falling. Fortunately no beam had hit him yet, or at least not for more than a few fractions of a second, not enough to even make his armor protest.
Still running to manage the pendulum swings of his safety line, he threw his head back and looked out, trying to find the source of the beams. His suit visor opaqued, and enhanced tacticals traced incoming lasers through the reflective trace the beams left in the sea mist.
Three blinking red lines pointed back to an origin on the stair that Bria and the others had descended shortly before. He magnified his camera view, laying over radar and infrared. Kriani stood on the stair, holding long lasers, aiming at him. He counted eight of them, and hints of motion suggested there were others out of his view, farther up the steps. They had paused in their fire, as they leaned back, shifting their weapons, taking—he realized with a shock of fear—better aim.
Eight beams cut through the air.
Rock chipped and burst, the moisture within boiling and breaking the stone. The lasers were powerful, but not well aimed. These Kriani did not, Tarkos reasoned, have proper targeting systems, but appeared to be hand-aiming. He snapped lasers out of his forearms, and pointed both at the stairs.
And then Tarkos fell.
Some laser shot had cut his safety line. He dropped, shouting in surprise. He put his hands forward out of reflex just as he slammed hard on top of the door petal over the higher cliff vent. He bounced, and when he came down again the triangle of metal gave way at its hinge with a groan of protest. He pressed his hands flat on the metal, and the gecko grip began to take hold, but the petal fell on its hinge till it pointed straight down, with Tarkos head first. Tarkos kicked but his boots did not grip in time. His legs began to fall back, away from the cliff face. It peeled his gloves away from the metal, as if he did a handspring, flipping over as he dropped.
Tarkos pulled himself into a ball, and managed to rotate until his rear slammed into the next triangle of metal, the petal below the entrance. He bounced again, and the metal protested, slowing bending down. He scrambled, rolling in place, trying to face the cliff and plant his grip. But, inevitably, he slid backwards on smooth metal. His legs kicked free, into open air.
Tiklik stood before him, just inside the hexagonal vent tunnel. The robot reached forward with its front two arms and planted the wide cliff-climbing gecko grip pads on Tarkos’s shoulders. Tarkos’s slide backward stopped, earning him enough time to plant his two gloves firmly on the springing metal, and claw toward the stone lip of the tunnel entrance. He pulled himself forward once, twice, moving quickly because Tiklik pulled hard at his heavy armor, helping him. Tarkos managed finally to reach far enough forward to slap his right hand flat and hard on the stone floor of the vent tunnel. The glove gripped.
The pull of Tiklik abruptly let go. Tarkos jerked back, sliding to the end of his fully extended arm. But he did not fall. The glove held. He looked up, and saw that lasers had cut the robot’s two front arms off. The thin limbs tumbled down the cliff face. Tarkos’s armor squealed in warning now as beams cut across his back, ablating shielding. Tarkos threw his other hand forward, gripped the edge, and pulled hard, using the power assist.
Tiklik reached forward with another leg, trying to grab onto his armor again.
“Back up!” Tarkos shouted. “Get out of their line of sight!”
Too late. Tiklik’s arm fell away in a shower of sparks. Tarkos cursed in frustration. Part of him was ashamed and angry that he’d had such doubts about the robot, and now it was being cut to pieces trying to help him. “Back up!” he shouted again, planting his hands firmly on the stone.
He pulled himself into the tunnel. It sloped downwards, at about 25 degrees, toward a pale glow. Dozens of bird-like creatures shot up out of the tunnel, screaming a high pitched protest. Tarkos swore and pushed ahead, but the thick flock of bird-creatures offered a moment of protective cover. Pieces of dead birds fell around them, smoking, cut up by crossing beams. He crawled forward quickly, hands slipping twice on the dead creatures, and threw himself down. He slid till he lay out of the line of fire.
Tiklik tried to back up with him, but the robot toppled against the far wall, still in view of the stairs. Beams cut across its black carapace and scarred its remaining legs.
Tarkos rolled over. He sent a command from his implants, and a thin rod separated from the left shin of his armor. It unfolded spindly legs, a propeller, and wide diaphanous wings. The drone could fly, but Tarkos needed it to create a stable view of the scene before them. He instructed the drone to flatten itself to the floor and crawl forward with furious speed, toward the entrance. The drone slipped to the edge of the cliff, barely visible. Tarkos called the camera feed from the small surveillance drone into his helmet visor.
There were six Kriani visible on the steps now. At least two were out of sight, then, farther up the steps. The six stood, aiming their weapons at the entrance, firing at will.
Suddenly, it hit Tarkos that these Kriani had antennae. Did that make a difference? All the ones that had attacked before had torn their antennae off. He had no idea what s
ides if any that meant they were on. But, in any case, his mission here was not to fight Kriani.
Tarkos entrained his armor’s targeting system to the drone’s telemetry. Using his implants, he had the drone paint targeting laser points onto the weapons held by the six visible Kriani. Then Tarkos held both of his arms up. His armor’s lasers were still extruded from their forearm mounts. Their aiming prisms tumbled, picking out directions.
The armor fired six hundred beams within 300 milliseconds. None of them missed. The laser fire from the Kriani stopped. Tarkos pushed himself to his feet.
“Tiklik,” Tarkos said, hurrying to the robot’s side. “You’ve been cut up bad. Will you survive?”
“There is no damage to my primary core,” the robot said.
Tarkos reached down and tried to help the robot stand on its three remaining legs. “Are you in much pain? Can I help in some way?”
“There is negative feedback,” the robot said. “I am trying to adjust for it.”
Tarkos looked back to the stairs on the other side of the glen. Shattered machinery littered the steps, the fragments of the destroyed weapons. One wounded Kriani lay among the wreckage, hurt either by one of Tarkos’s lasers striking through its weapon, or by the weapon exploding. The other Kriani had retreated out of view. Tarkos felt a wave of relief. As he watched, the fallen Kriani climbed onto its six legs; it looked very likely to survive. Tarkos had only killed a sentient being a few times, and only under terrible duress, during his career as a Predator. He always felt a weight lift away when he came out of a firefight and discovered he’d killed no one.
But then, as Tarkos stared at the hurt Kriani as it slowly turned and started up the stairs, two of its limbs fell away in a spray of blood and twin puffs of steam and smoke. Tarkos involuntarily shouted. Other Kriani leapt forward into his view now. Two reached to help their comrade forward, and the other, holding a still-intact weapon, aimed and fired.
Well of Furies Page 10
