The Battle for Terra Two

by Stephen Ames Berry

  “No,” said the Overmind. “The Trel cache was discovered just as the Empire entered its final cataclysm. It’s never been explored. The device the Scotar have is Imperial—a prototype ferreted from Pocsym’s vaults by Guan-Sharick and used to establish a fallback point on Terra Two. It’s limited to surface use. The spaceborne unit that was used to remove your destroyer must have been brought by the machines.”

  The color drained from Detrelna’s face. “The Empire had no spaceborne unit? How am I to get a ship to Terra Two?”

  “There’s a prototype of such a device hidden on this ship. You will need one other starship positioned here to send you through.”

  “Reinforcements are on the way.”

  “Don’t count your ships before they arrive, Commodore. I did. It cost me my body. And finding the device, you still have to escape the ship with it.” The Overmind spoke quickly, voice almost inaudible. “Computer’s heating my casing. Finishing me, it will come after you.”

  “Where’s the device?” said Bob.

  “Deck forty-eight—Agro. Program your shipcar with that deck number and flag section red one-eight-four.”

  “Agro red-one-eight-four,” repeated Detrelna.

  “Computer’s made a green hell out of Agro, piled all the treasures and mysteries there that the Empire sent, at the end. You’ll find what you need there, in the House of the Dead. Go now. Luck.”

  As they left, a faint tendril of thought touched McShane. Empty is the House of Sakal. Empire and Destiny.

  “What?” he said, turning back as the door opened.

  From somewhere nearby came the high, wrenching sound of flawed crystal cracking. As the door shut, the men heard something soft and wet smack onto the deck.

  “Skirmish one to computer,” said Detrelna as they reached the shipcar. He turned, hearing a noise. McShane had slumped into his seat, head in hand.

  “Bob, what is it?” Detrelna bent over the Terran.

  “I have a terrible headache.

  “We have to go on.”

  “I know.” Raising his head, Bob swung around into the car, ashen-cheeked. “I’ll be fine. This car isn’t tied into the computer, is it?” he asked, resting his head against the seatback.

  “No,” said Detrelna, tapping numbers into the modest control board. “We’d have been squashed like bugs against the bulkhead if it were.” He grunted with satisfaction as the confirmation flashed across the small screen. “Ready.”

  “Don’t you want to call for help?” asked Bob.

  “No.” He engaged autopilot. The shipcar rose, pivoting 180 degrees. “Not only is Implacable under-crewed, but if our visit here becomes an official mission, official questions will be asked. They’ll find out I killed those mindslaves and disabled this monster.” The car picked up speed. “Court-martialed, I’d be found guilty. We have few prisons. My personality would be altered—for my own good. I would become a simple, happy, thin man. Losing my drive, creativity and intellect, I’d spend the rest of my long, useless life watching the fruits of others’ imagination parade by on the vidscreen.”

  “To Agro,” said Bob, taking the blastrifle from the floor.

  “I should check in,” said the commodore as the car spiraled down a ramp. “Detrelna to Implacable,” he said, touching the communicator at his throat. He waited a moment, then tried again. There was no response. “Odd,” he said, looking at McShane. “Never had this problem.”

  “Could Revenge’s computer be jamming?”

  Reaching behind his thick neck, Detrelna unsnapped the communicator. Stubby fingers moving with surprising dexterity, he popped open the back of the tiny oval. “Detrelna to Implacable,” he said carefully, watching the pattern of light that flashed along tiny crystalline veins.

  “Was I right?” asked Bob as the car raced along an interminable stretch of gray corridor.

  “Yes,” said the commodore, snapping the communicator together and fastening it back around his neck. “Something’s blocking our signal.”

  “Computer?”

  “Probably.” Detrelna glanced behind them. “At least nothing deadly’s streaking after us. We’re almost there.”

  McShane sat up, headache forgotten. “Check your weapons,” said Detrelna as the shipcar rounded a bend, slowing. “And put on your helmet. We’re here.”

  McShane looked ahead. Soaring overhead, a great slab of armorglass blocked the corridor. Strange flora blossomed on the other side, an explosion of green.

  The car stopped, settling to the ground.

  Dismounting, Detrelna twisted on his helmet then took a flat, oblong device from beneath the dashboard.

  “Locator,” said McShane, recognizing the machine from times past.

  “Programmed with our exact destination, taken from the car’s navsystem. Shall we?” said the commodore, pointing with blastrifle toward the greenery.

  Helmets on, rifles at port arms, the two men approached the transparent barrier.

  Parting along an invisible seam, the armorglass slid open—an opening just wide enough for two. From inside came sharp, feral cries worthy of a Jurassic swamp.

  “Sounds like everything in there eats everything else,” said McShane.

  “Here comes a filling morsel,” said the commodore. Snapping off the rifle’s safety, he stepped over the threshold. Bob followed.

  Behind them, the armorglass snicked quietly shut.

  Chapter 14

  “How are you, my dear Christian?” asked Jesus.

  Hochmeister looked up from walnut writing desk, blinking at the Raphaelite Christ standing in the late brigadier’s living room: thorns crowning chestnut hair, stigmata piercing the delicate frame, tattered, soiled white linen robe; the Renaissance vision of The Levantine as granted a shabby, five-color immortality by millions of cheap reproductions.

  “Shalan-Actal,” sighed the admiral. He leaned back in the overstuffed green-velvet Regency armchair. “You look more like a Hollywood pretty boy than an itinerant Galilean rabbi. And your compassionate visage needs improvement.”

  “Still working on your memoirs?” The transmute pointed to the neat pile of yellow foolscap on the desk.

  “Still,” nodded Hochmeister, setting his pen back in the ink well. “Art, Goethe reminds us, is long, life short. I’m now at chapter thirty-two, mine and Canaris’s chat with Rommel, convincing him to join the Putsch.”

  “I met Rommel once,” said Shalan-Actal.

  The admiral’s eyebrows rose. “You met Rommel? I thought you were out pillaging your galaxy?”

  “Don’t forget, Admiral,” said the Jesus-form, “we—biofabs—were created on Terra’s moon. Our war with the Kronarins only lasted ten of your years. And although Pocsym didn’t allow us to meddle in Terran affairs, there were training missions. Naturally, I met the alternate Rommel. It was early in his career.”

  “I met him early in my career, midpoint in his. What was your impression?”

  “Talented and daring.”

  Hochmeister nodded. “A great soldier and a fine Chancellor.”

  “Only a soldier in my reality, Admiral.”

  “Why have you come?”

  “Need I have a purpose, Admiral?” The brigadier replaced Jesus.

  “All you do has purpose, Shalan-Actal. In that we’re much alike.”

  “Perhaps,” said the brigadier-form. “Although my own kind don’t call me monster.

  “We’ll soon need spokesmen, Admiral.” The dead brigadier’s pale blue eyes met Hochmeister’s. “We remain undetected by authorities in this reality. Soon, we’ll have seized your sister world. That done, we will subjugate this world, not as green insectoids, though. Rather, as humans from space—a sort of peacekeeping galactic league, out to bring order to the backward worlds.”

  “Very romantic. Why should I sell your pseudo Pax Galactica?”

  “The alternatives are unpleasant, Admiral. Experience has shown that our casualties soar when thousands of xenophobes hurl explosives at us. It then be
comes cheaper to neutron scrub the planet and breed workers. And it frees our warriors for duty elsewhere—some compensation for lost time and industrial output.”

  “Interesting,” said the admiral. “But why not just kill me, steal my mind and imitate me?”

  “Would you believe we dislike unnecessary bloodshed?”

  “No.” Pushing his chair back, Hochmeister rose, facing the Scotar across the table. “I’ve been here three weeks to the day, Shalan-Actal. You’ve given me the freedom of the post. For which I thank you.”

  “Collegial courtesy, Admiral.”

  “Perhaps you think me either blind or stupid.”

  The brigadier-form shook its head. “Neither. Merely incapable of hurting us alone and unaided.”

  “I’ve made some observations, drawn some conclusions.”

  “Yes?”

  “You don’t have sufficient force, even with your special powers and the replacements you’re busy breeding, to hold both this world and its alternate. The war that brought you here, the war you lost, greatly reduced your numbers and your machines. You must be very short of transmutes if you’re trying to enlist my aid.” Walking past Shalan-Actal, the admiral went to the picture window. He stood looking out over the Green Mountains and the fading splendor of autumn. The Scotar turned, watching him. “Yet knowing this, you’re planning to invade your point of origin. Attacking World One, shall we call it, leaves you vulnerable here. If detected and attacked, you’d be overwhelmed. Failing on World One, you’d have no safe haven to fall back on.”

  “We call it Terra One, Admiral. And the attack will not fail. Our enemies have but one ship insystem. They’re expecting help. Something other than help is on its way. Oh, and, Admiral—you missed something.”

  Hochmeister turned, frowning. “What?”

  “Our allies. We have allies. Nonhumans, like ourselves. With their help, nothing can stop us.”

  “I’ve seen no other life forms here,” said Hochmeister.

  “But you have seen them, Admiral. You even fought them. You and your pickup army gave us a hard fight. That you didn’t stop us was due to the Maximus device itself. The genius of the High Kronarins went into it. It seems to be self-healing.”

  Blood etched in Hochmeister’s mind, the Scotar counter attack was the most vicious fighting he’d seen since Third Warsaw: The last fifty or so gangers rallied in a rough square around Malusi as the Scotar warriors and their guard spheres charged, breaking against them, wave after wave. Blasters shrilling, machinepistols rattling, grenades exploding, screams, orders, counter orders, the whole ghastly scene backdropped by a rising red sun.

  He’d looked down to where zur Linde lay beside him in a ditch. The admiral could see right through the fist-sized blaster hole in the captain’s stomach to the mud beneath. Cut off from the gangers, they’d shot their way through the Scotar, trying for the woods, when an azure bolt had found zur Linde.

  “Odd, Admiral.” His glazed eyes stared at the wispy, pin-streaked stratocumuli now catching the first light. “I remember dying this way. Before . . . dawn.” Blood-frothed lips.

  “Perhaps you have, Erich,” said Hochmeister. “Maybe we’re fated to live forever that which we first became.” He would have said more, but zur Linde was dead.

  Standing, blaster in hand, the admiral had seen the Scotar and their machines vanish.

  Stunned, the gangers had stood for an uncomprehending instant, then broken into a ragged cheer—a cheer dying with them in fierce white flare, a tiny nova gone almost before it came.

  Blinded, thrown back into the ditch, Hochmeister had been picked up by the Scotar and locked in Detention. His sight returning, he could see through the small, thick glass window the black-scorched earth where the gangers had died; killed, Shalan-Actal had told him, by something called a photon mortar.

  After a week, they’d moved him into the Maximus CO’s quarters, letting him roam the base unguarded. Knowing he couldn’t escape, he’d tried anyway, believing they’d expect it of him, wanting to seem predictable. They’d caught him trying to slip through the neatly restored defenses and shooed him back to his quarters.

  “The machines,” said Hochmeister. “Those horrible slicing things. Those are your allies?”

  “Yes. From yet another reality.”

  “You’ll bite off more than you can chew, bug. It’s a tyrant’s failing.”

  “A failing that’s overcome you, Admiral.”

  “I’m but a servant of the State,” he shrugged, “a nineteenth-century man with a seventeenth-century philosophy, trapped in this poor and bloody time.” He turned back to the window.

  “You have one day to consider my offer,” said Shalan-Actal. “If you won’t accept, I’ll turn you over to our allies. They want human specimens. Do I make myself clear?”

  Hochmeister only half heard the biofab. He was watching the men and women running from the Maximus portal building, leaping over two dead warriors. They carried blasters, wore black uniforms, backpacks, boot-sheathed knives and purposeful looks. The last one out turned to throw something small and round back in. Hochmeister stepped casually to one side of the window.

  “I said, Admiral, do I make myself clear?”

  Slipping his hands into his pockets, Hochmeister leaned against the cement wall. “I’m clear,” he said. “But before you plan too far ahead, you might want to look out the window.”

  It was only five paces. Shalan-Actal walked it, reaching the window just as the explosion across the courtyard blew it in, spraying the room with razor-edged glass. Hochmeister pressed against the wall, arms across his face.

  When he looked again, seconds later, Shalan-Actal was gone, a few drops of green blood marking his passing. Seeing it, Hochmeister smiled. Blaster fire and the hooting of the old British alert klaxon resounded through the complex.

  Shaking the glass from his writings, the admiral locked them in the desk then left the room, carefully shutting the door.

  There were two Scotar warriors near the portal when Lawrona stepped through. The transmute lay beside the portal, a blaster bolt through its thorax, two warriors bending over it. Firing two quick bolts, Lawrona killed the warriors, then shattered the transmute’s head with a third bolt. The last shot was still echoing when the rest of his contingent arrived.

  John looked around. “You got him.”

  “He was just a bit too sure of himself. Follow Harrison,” he ordered. “Keep sharp.”

  The corridors were well lit and empty, blaster hits and bullet holes unrepaired from the ganger assault. “Where are they?” asked Satil, running the prescribed distance behind John.

  “Near,” he said.

  Soft-soled boots moving silently across yellow linoleum, they reached the edge of the sun-filled lobby. John stopped, staring at the plate-glass windows and the sentries beyond, then motioned everyone back into the corridor, against the wall.

  “Those windows are new,” he whispered. “Probably battle repairs. We really shot this place up.”

  Lawrona risked a quick look. A pair of warriors stood outside, backs to the double glass doors, rifles over their shoulders.

  “Satil,” he said, drawing his knife. “You and me.”

  Nodding, the blonde commando officer pulled her own blade. The two dropped to the floor and began low crawling, hugging the wall.

  “They can’t see in, Hanar,” said John. “The whole complex is mirror glass.”

  Rising, the two Kronarins ran low across the lobby, burst through the doors and knifed the startled biofabs. The other humans charged after them.

  “Do it,” said Lawrona to Harrison.

  John already had the round demolition grenade out of his pack. Pressing the arming stud, he rolled it across the lobby, back the way they’d come.

  “Motorpool,” said Lawrona. Abandoning stealth, they ran, following Harrison from the courtyard, toward the rear of the compound. They were well clear when the grenade exploded, collapsing the building’s roof, burying the po
rtal beneath tons of steel and concrete.

  Reverting to its basic programming, the Maximus device closed the portal, diverting full power to its shield.

  Green blood oozing from dozens of deep wounds, Shalan-Actal stood in the Maximus command center. Hochmeister wouldn’t have recognized the room, stripped of illusion. The equipment was alien, not designed for hands with opposable digits. The chairs were flat-topped platforms, supported by fluted stems set into the floor. Transmutes squatted atop them on folded, double-jointed limbs. Tentacles moved with blurring speed, flicking over controls and telltales.

  The portal, Glorious! The portal’s been destroyed! The watch officer’s mental wail of anguish swept through every mind in the room.

  You are a fool, Bator-Akal. Shalan-Actal swayed, then steadied himself against a console. Look. He pointed to a telltale. The machine is intact, to be dug out later. There is the real danger. He pointed to a screen. The scan showed the raiders entering the rectangular motorpool building.

  But Glorious, they are so few—probably a suicide squad.

  The tall one is the Margrave of Utria. They will find a way to come for him.

  Eight assault clusters ready to counterattack, Glorious, reported Bator-Akal. Allied commander offers assistance.

  Shalan-Actal’s antennae weaved a firm resolve-commitment pattern. No. We need what warriors are left. Activate that building’s self-destruct device, he ordered, then slumped to the floor.

  Bator-Akal glanced up just long enough to flick Shalan-Actal over to Medical, five buildings away, then returned to his board and the self-destruct programming.

  They fanned out through the motorpool, Harrison and five commandos going through the maintenance bays on into the office, weapons ready.

  “Who are you?” Lawrona asked the thin, gray-haired man sitting at the motorpool officer’s desk, polishing his wire rimmed glasses.

  The stranger smiled at him blankly.

  Lawrona repeated the question in English.

  “My name is Hochmeister,” said the admiral, putting his glasses back on. “I thought you might come here.”