Voyage Across the Stars

by David Drake

  “Lissea!” he said. “Remember your promise. You’re going to take me along?”

  Toll Warson withdrew his head from the hatch of the nearer tank. “Sure doesn’t look like much,” he said. Ned looked at him sharply.

  “If you’re going to come,” Lissea said, “then get moving. We’re heading for the lake.”

  She took the Old Race artifact from her wrist and tossed it to Carron as she got into the jeep. He squawked and caught it.

  The sensor suite bulged from the luggage trough and added nearly fifty kilos to the jeep’s burden. If the loaded vehicle could carry the two big mercenaries, it ought to manage one man and a small woman, though.

  “Bloody hell, Slade, drive!” she said. “Do you need an engraved invitation?”

  Ned fumbled clumsily with the controls for a further instant before he got them sorted out. Toll had feathered the fans as he cut power, while Ned always left the blade angle coarse. The fans sang as Ned pushed the throttle forward, but it wasn’t until he changed the unexpected setting that the jeep lurched ahead.

  The ground trembled again, without violence but continuing over a thirty-second interval. Ned wondered whether the crust of Pancahte was setting up for a major displacement. Worse come to worst, open country like this was as good a place as any in which to ride out an earthquake.

  “But Lissea?” Carron called.

  Pancahtan aircars marked the position of the leading truck like vultures following a dying horse. Yazov put his boot to the firewall as soon as Lissea implied he was clear to follow Deke’s truck. Tadziki and Toll Warson boarded the 1-tonne on the fly, drawn onto the bed by the men already there.

  Ned slid the jeep’s throttle to the stop also. He could adjust his speed by tweaking blade pitch and the angle of his fan nacelles, lifting high enough that the skirts spilled air when he needed to slow. The battery temperature gauge began to rise with the constant high-rate discharge, but that was nothing to worry about.

  Some of the hurry was justified. Lissea was in command, so she ought to be present when her personnel reached the capsule. Less creditably, a part of Ned had no intention of losing a race to Yazov in a locally built truck.

  Least creditable of all, Ned wanted to leave Carron Del Vore as far behind as possible. That was petty, but Ned didn’t claim to be perfect

  On smooth stretches, the 1-tonne might have had a speed advantage, but on this terrain the jeep’s agility put it ahead early and kept it there. A bulge in a spreading leaf might be no more than a kink of growth, but it might as easily conceal a boulder big enough to rip the skirts off a hovercraft. The two mercenary-driven vehicles skidded and wove about the potential hazards.

  Pancahtans took chances in an attempt to keep up with the Swift’s experts. Some of the locals flew up, flailing as their vehicles cartwheeled and scattered bits of bodywork across the landscape.

  The peninsula was nearly three hundred meters long. Some of the civilian craft had stopped or were idling at the near end. Because all the Pancahtans were looking in the other direction, dicing between the vehicles brought shouts of anger and surprise. When the jeep’s skirts brushed an enclosed sedan, the civilian driver reached out to shake his fist—

  And almost lost it when the 1-tonne blasted by, thirty meters behind. Several men in the box of Yazov’s truck kept their weapons pointed while Josie Paetz jeered and pumped his right index finger through his left fist.

  On both sides of the peninsula, Hammerhead Lake danced in vertical spikes. The jeep’s air cushion and the howl of its fans masked the vibrations agitating the water. Ned wished he’d learned more about the amplitude of the quakes to be expected on Pancahte.

  The buildings and vehicles at the end of the peninsula were fifty meters ahead. “Hang on!” he ordered.

  The nacelles were in the full-aft position to provide maximum forward thrust. Rather than reverse their angle with the wand on the left side of the control column, Ned spun his yoke to pivot the jeep at the same time he dumped the plenum chamber.

  The combination of active and passive braking slowed the vehicle from seventy kilometers per hour to a dead stop in less than twenty meters—excellent performance for a hovercraft. Besides, deceleration stresses pushed Ned and his passenger comfortably into their seatbacks instead of trying to bounce them off the dashboard.

  Ned added a bit of tricky reverse steering to fishtail the jeep between the big Pancahtan aircars. Guards with their face-shields raised gaped at the exhibition.

  Ned hadn’t thought about Lissea since he had got the jeep under weigh. His attention had been limited to the potential threats and potential obstacles in all directions of his vehicle. Now he looked at his commander in sudden trepidation—the sedan their skirts had brushed, that was on Lissea’s side.

  She was smiling and relaxed. “Not bad,” she said as she scissored her legs over the sidepanel. “Not bad at all.”

  Via, they’d both been tight as cocked pistols when they got into the jeep. The fast ride had let out tensions. The business with the tanks was more like waiting for the guillotine to drop.

  Deke Warson knelt beside the circular door of the nearest building. “Knelt” was the operative word: the opening was only a meter-fifty in diameter, and the wall from soil to roof was less than two meters high. A sunken floor could explain the outside height, but the door was presumably sized to its builders.

  Who were unlikely to have been human—though the Old Race tanks had to be crewed by beings the size and shape of men. As Ned had said, the tank fit him like a glove.

  Three Pancahtan soldiers stood in line abreast on either side of Ayven in his silver armor. They watched the mercenaries involved with the building five meters in front of them.

  A severe shock—the first Ned had noticed during this spasm—rocked the site. One of the armored men fell down. He jumped upright again and backed into his proper space. Hammerhead Lake was beginning to boil.

  “Got it!” Deke shouted, oblivious to external events while he concentrated on the lock. A kit of delicate electronic tools lay open beside his right boot. The circular doorpanel rotated outward and up from a hinge concealed at the two-o’clock position.

  Harlow and Raff jumped onto the roof from the inner courtyard. “No problem!” Harlow called. “We can just lift it over.”

  Lissea slipped between Pancahtan guards. Ned followed a pace behind her. As a reflex, he put his hand on one man’s shoulder.

  That was a waste of effort. The fellow didn’t feel the contact. When he lurched, startled by Lissea’s sudden appearance before him, he knocked Ned into his fellow. It was like jumping between moving buses: nothing an unaided human did was going to affect his mechanical neighbors.

  “Like hell we’re going to lift the sucker!” Deke called as he squatted in the low entrance with his 2-cm weapon pointing forward. “We’re going to take it right through this door I got open!”

  “Shut up, Deke,” Tadziki ordered. “We’re going to do exactly what the lady behind you says we’re going to do. Now, get out of her way!”

  Deke glanced over his shoulder in surprise. “Sorry, Cap’n,” he muttered.

  He hunched quickly through the opening instead of hopping aside. Lissea followed. Ned gestured Tadziki to go through behind her, then gripped the roof’s coping with both hands. Harlow reached down to help. Ned got his boot over the edge unaided and straightened again on top.

  Ned wasn’t claustrophobic. After his moment of fear in the Old Race tank though, he didn’t feel an immediate need to enter another strait enclosure.

  Like the Old Race bunker, this building appeared to have been cast in one piece. The roof was unmarked by antennas, ventilators, or support devices of any sort.

  The walls of the inner court were pentagonal and parallel to those of the exterior. The enclosed area was about five meters wide. Flanked by Harlow and Raff, Ned reached the inner edge just as Deke Warson led Lissea into the courtyard on her hands and knees.

  Raff spun twice, aiming
his rocket gun at what turned out to be nothing—smoke or the brightwork of a civilian vehicle catching the late sun. His disquiet bothered Ned. The Racontid generally seemed as imperturable as a rock.

  “See, it’s just a little thing,” Deke said. “We’ll get it through the doors easy.” He gestured to the capsule as though it was his sole gift to Lissea.

  The ground shook again, violently. The building moved as a piece, but Ned noticed the ancient structure fifty meters away was dancing to a slightly different rhythm. He bent to rest the tips of his left fingers on the roof to keep from falling.

  A crevice opened beneath a Pancahtan hovercraft, then slammed shut again to pinch the flexible skirt. The occupants bailed out, bawling in surprise. This couldn’t be a common occurrence, even for Pancahte.

  Hammerhead Lake shuddered. Great bubbles of steam burst in a warm haze that drifted over the buildings.

  Carron Del Vore was in the courtyard with Lissea and six of the mercenaries. Toll Warson waited at the outside entrance, his weapon held across his chest as if idly.

  Several of Ayven’s companions had fallen because of the most recent shock. The Treasurer’s son remained upright. The primary washed the left side of his powered armor blood red.

  “Lissea?” Ned called. “Better move it out. I don’t like the look of the lake.”

  He gestured. She couldn’t see the lake’s surface, but the plume of steam must by now be visible from the courtyard.

  “What do you figure’s going on, Master Slade?” Harlow muttered. He was as nervous as Raff, or he wouldn’t have asked the question in a fashion that tacitly granted Ned officer status.

  Lissea gave a curt order and pointed at the capsule.

  “Lava must’ve entered the water channel feeding the lake,” Ned said. “We’re going to have a geyser or worse any minute now.”

  The capsule rested on an integral ring base. Four of the mercenaries gripped the ovoid and tilted it end-on so that they could manhandle it through the doors. It was heavy but not too heavy to carry.

  Carron reached between two of the men. He touched what must have been a latch because the whole upper surface of the capsule pivoted upward. Deke Warson cursed and bobbed his head as the top opened toward him.

  Inside the capsule was the wizened yellow mummy of a man. They’d found not only Lendell Doormann’s capsule, but the desiccated remains of Lendell Doormann as well.

  “All right, let’s get it moving,” Lissea ordered. She slammed the capsule closed again. “We can look at all that later.”

  Her voice sounded thin against the background rumble of Hammerhead Lake. Ned wished he had a gun, even if it was no more than the pistol he’d lost while deactivating the tanks.

  Feeding the capsule through the doorway was a two-man job. Deke took the front of the load; Coyne, who was bigger than he was strong but was strong nonetheless, took the back.

  Lissea was talking to Tadziki and Carron. The men bent with their heads cocked to hear her over the voice of Pancahte.

  “Come on,” Ned muttered to Harlow and Raff. “We can help out front when they get it clear.”

  The other men in the courtyard couldn’t get through the doorway while the capsule blocked it. Dewey looked up and called to the trio on the roof, “There’s nothing but dust inside. What do you suppose this place is? It’s old.”

  Ned nodded. All they could prove was that the bunker, the tanks, and these very different buildings predated the settlement of Pancahte five hundred years before. His instinct told him that they were at least an order of magnitude more ancient yet; which of course was impossible, if the Old Race was really human.

  If humans had evolved on Earth.

  “Let’s go,” he repeated to his companions. He crossed the roof in quick strides. The land shuddered in an undertone. The vibration wasn’t immediately dangerous, but it seemed even more menacing that the fierce jolts of moments before.

  “Toll, we’re coming,” he called and dropped down beside Warson.

  Toll grinned sidelong at him. “Our friends there are getting nervous,” he said with a nod toward the guards in powered armor. Ground shocks had kinked the parade-ground line. Even Ayven stood skewed a little from his original stance.

  “They’re not the only ones,” Ned said.

  Deke backed through the doorway, cursing the load and the building’s architect. He kept his end of the capsule centered perfectly in the circular opening. Ned stepped in beside him. There were no handholds on the top end of the ovoid, so it was a matter of balancing the weight on spread hands. A patina roughened the capsule’s metal surface enough for a decent grip.

  Raff and Harlow took opposite sides in the middle. More men spilled through the doorway behind Coyne, but there was no need for them now.

  Toll Warson walked to the bearers’ right front like a guide dog. He waved with his left hand to Ayven Del Vore. “Give us a hand, then,” he warned. “Or get out of the way.”

  “What is it?” Ayven said. His voice was harsh and metallic through the suit’s amplifier, but even so it sounded weak beside the crust’s groans.

  “Show him what it is!” Carron said, stepping between the capsule and the line of guards. “Set it down for a moment so that my brother can see exactly what he’s trying to steal.”

  “Yes, do that,” Lissea said.

  “I represent the government of Pancahte!” Ayven rasped. “I have a right to know what strangers are trying to take from our world!”

  The mercenaries lowered carefully. The ovoid wasn’t intended to rest on its side. Ned stuck the reinforced toe of one of his boots out to cushion the capsule from ground shocks. The adjutant muttered an order to Coyne, who did the same on the reciprocal point.

  “Blood and martyrs!” Josie Paetz said. Hot water slopped over the shoreline and swept across the rock.

  When the wave withdrew, it left a slime of mineral salts. The water lapped one of the Pancahtan guards to the ankles of his armored boots. He backed farther away, staring at the lake’s roiling surface.

  Carron worked the capsule’s latch again and drew the lid open. Ayven started back, throwing a hand up reflexively to shield his armored face.

  “It’s a coffin, brother dear!” Carron cried. “Do you begrudge Captain Doormann the corpse of her great-granduncle? Do you?”

  The two-place aircar which Ayven had ridden jiggled on the ground. The driver looked nervously out of his cab. The similar vehicle whose soldier passenger was still astride the saddle now hovered twenty centimeters above the rock.

  Ayven spun on his heel. His armored foot struck sparks from the rock. “Go on back to Astragal,” his amplified voice commanded. “The body you can have, but the capsule my father will decide on.”

  The men lifted. Lissea stepped close to Ned to swing the lid down with her extended arm. The Pancahtan guards stepped dashingly out of the way. Had they never seen a dead man before?

  Though the remains of Lendell Doormann had an eerie look to them. It wasn’t that the wizened corpse seemed alive: the rings of blue-gray fungus on the sallow skin belied that notion. Rather, it seemed that the body had been dead and mummifying in the sealed capsule for the entire time since Doormann vanished from Telaria—despite the fact that he had carried on intercourse with the Pancahtans for another fifty years yet.

  A double wave broke over the margins of Hammerhead Lake. The pulses washed across the peninsula from three directions. “Bloody fucking hell,” Deke muttered, stepping through water as high as his boot tops with the same mechanical precision that he had maintained when the surface was dry.

  Yazov was already in the open cab of the nearer 1-tonne, though it wasn’t the vehicle he’d driven to the site. The hovercraft’s flexible skirts dampened the quick choppy motions of the ground into longer-period motions. The truck surged and fell slowly. By contrast, the two big aircars of the guards hopped and chattered despite the shock absorbers in their landing struts.

  The mercenaries handed the capsule to their fe
llows waiting on the bed of the 1-tonne. “Tilt it back on its base,” Lissea ordered.

  “And two of you hold it there,” Tadziki added as he helped lift the ovoid straight himself. “Paetz and Ingried.”

  Ned’s helmet hissed, static leaking from a nearby transmission. Ayven had given an order to his men, who stamped toward the six-place aircar. One of the guards slipped on yellow-white froth that had been left when the waves receded. He hit the rock like a load of old iron.

  A shock knocked down almost all of the people standing on the peninsula, Ned among them. The open door of the pentagonal building flapped with the violence of the quake. Hinges which had survived centuries and perhaps millennia snapped off. The panel clanged down on edge and hopped around an inward-leaning circle until it fell flat.

  Hammerhead Lake belched again. Because of the steam, Ned thought another wave was oozing over the shore.

  Yazov ran up his fans. Air spewed from beneath the truck’s skirts. Ned stepped back, peering toward the lake.

  “Get going!” Lissea ordered. Her shout was barely audible. Carron was at her side, looking concerned but not frightened.

  Yazov pulled the 1-tonne in a tight turn. Mercenaries on the truck bed braced themselves against the capsule to steady it.

  It wasn’t a wave. It wasn’t a geyser either, though steam and water roaring a hundred meters high made it look as though it might be.

  Ned ran toward the parked jeep. He keyed the general push on his helmet radio and shouted, “Don’t anybody shoot! This is Slade! Don’t anybody shoot or we’re all dead!”

  The thing rising from the lake was faceted and huge, towering a hundred meters above the shoreline before anyone could be sure it was a solid presence. Its bulk walled the three sides of the peninsula into what had been Hammerhead Lake. The lake was the pit which had held the thing, and the thing filled that kilometers-long cavity as a foot does its sock.

  The thing was a starship, a pair of dodecahedral masses joined at the center by a pentagonal bar. Though three hundred meters long and nearly as thick from base to peak, the bar looked tiny compared to the twelve-faceted balls it joined together. Lightning flashed from one lobe to the other. The enveloping steam flickered like a fluorescent tube warming up.