Dark Foundations

by Chris Walley

  Merral ran around the heavy table in the center of the room, overturned it, and pushed it at his attacker. As the creature began to wriggle free, Merral swung a chair at its head. The Krallen snapped the chair legs off.

  Merral ran to the end of the kitchen, flung open the door into his father’s workroom, stumbled in, and pushed it shut behind him. He tabbed the light on and leaned hard against the door, gasping for breath.

  He looked around for something to keep the door shut and defend himself. On the table was a large unfinished model of a spaceship—the Assembly frigate Clearstar, Lucas Ringell’s vessel.

  And I can be sure Ringell would have done a better job now.

  There was a heavy blow behind his head. A gleaming, steely hand punched through the light wood and polymer of the door.

  A weapon. Find a weapon!

  Suddenly he noticed the odd chemical odor to the room. What was it? What had his mother complained about?

  The door rocked and creaked as another set of claws punched through it.

  “Glue!” On the table by the model stood a flask with bright red liquid.

  The doorframe recoiled at another blow.

  Merral grabbed the glue flask, flicked off the safety covering, and squirted the fluid over the door latch. There was a momentary sensation of heat and Merral stepped back. A new pounding began on the door, but it stayed in place.

  On an impulse, Merral poured glue over the two sets of protruding claws. Again there was the brief burst of heat and the chemical odor as the glue set.

  The Krallen gave a high, angry howl. The door shook furiously, then flew off its hinges. The whole structure—with the Krallen still firmly attached—crashed into the room, sending up a shower of dust. The hind legs lashed out furiously.

  Seized by some strange and undefinable emotion Merral squirted glue on the creature’s jaws and was gratified to see that, in barely a second, they froze wide-open.

  Suddenly, Lloyd staggered through the kitchen door, with his gun. There was a graze on his face and silvery stains all over his jacket.

  “They’re all dead!” Lloyd gasped, then saw the Krallen. “But that ain’t!”

  “Don’t worry,” Merral said, suddenly aware that his hands were trembling. “It’s not going anywhere.”

  Lloyd walked around the Krallen. “Glued down. Neat, sir.”

  “Give me your gun, Lloyd.”

  The big weapon was passed over.

  “I’ve been wanting to do this for a bit,” Merral said and stuck the muzzle in the open mouth.

  “Hasta la vista, baby,” Lloyd murmured.

  Merral pulled the trigger.

  There was a flash and an explosion of fragments that whizzed and hissed around. Merral was thrown backward with an arm-wrenching jolt.

  “Actually, sir,” Lloyd observed quietly as he brushed smoke from his face, “I find firing just one barrel quite adequate.”

  Merral gazed at the shattered and dripping remains of the Krallen and the devastation of the workroom. “I’ll remember that.”

  As they stepped carefully through the debris that cluttered the kitchen floor, Merral turned to Lloyd. “‘Hasta la vista’?”

  “I think it’s an old Austrian farewell.”

  “It doesn’t sound like old Austrian.”

  Merral stopped in the general room to pick up his sword, gazing at the still Krallen forms lying amid pools of fluid, the broken glass, the shattered furniture, and the pitted walls.

  “Oh, dear,” Merral said. “They are not going to like this.”

  As they walked outside a dozen soldiers met them.

  Together they did a quick tally. Eighteen Krallen had been dispatched outside the house, six inside.

  “A two-unit team all accounted for,” Merral said. “With no loss. Well, only to property.”

  “Look!” a soldier said, gesturing down the road toward the Gate House.

  In the night sky, a flare blossomed red.

  30

  They ran back to the gateway and Merral sprang up the steps as Balancal waved him over.

  “Okay?” Balancal asked, in a matter-of-fact tone.

  “Yes. There are now twenty-four Krallen less. No loss.”

  “Tuh.” Balancal’s face puckered into a wry grin. “You always were an underachiever, D’Avanos. There’s another twenty-odd thousand to go.”

  He gestured toward the causeway. “Your creature warned us five minutes ago that there was activity due. And it was right.”

  Merral stared over the parapet. The drifting wall of mist shimmered white in the glare of the spotlights, but through the gaps he could see movement just beyond the blasted section. A line of a dozen Krallen had moved forward, their shoulders interlinked by cabling, and walked down into the lake, their heads barely above the water line. No sooner had they done this when another similarly linked group clambered across them and silently took up positions at the front.

  Merral ordered Karita’s sniper team to fire.

  In seconds, there was a fusillade of shots. As small puffs of smoke rose from their bodies, the front line of Krallen sagged beneath the dark waters.

  The soldiers on the wall cheered, but as another dozen Krallen clambered on top of those that had just been destroyed, the cheering faded.

  There was another volley of sniper fire. The new line tottered into the water only to be replaced by yet another row of Krallen. The pattern repeated itself again: a new round of sniper fire, a further collapse into the water, and another new unit moving on top.

  Within minutes, it was uncomfortably obvious that, despite the losses, each successive Krallen line was moving a little further out before being cut down. Merral was astonished and repelled by the way that the Krallen treated each other as disposable building blocks. Despite another five volleys from the snipers, within ten minutes, the gap in the causeway had been half-filled by a long, swaying chain of interlocked gray creatures.

  A new patch of mist swirled slowly across the causeway and obscured the view. When it lifted a few minutes later, Merral could see there were other creatures among the Krallen. Tall ape-creatures waded out with cabling and cockroach-beasts scuttled in between them, cutting and binding.

  Feeling almost overwhelmed by this inexorable, oncoming foe, Merral called Karita. “How long can you keep firing?”

  “Commander, we now have only around twenty rounds each.”

  “That’s not enough. Keep them in reserve. Hold your fire until I tell you.”

  It took the Dominion forces only another twenty minutes to bridge the gap in the causeway. Once they reached the Ynysmant side, wires were carried across by ape-creatures and locked in place and slats placed on top of them. Finally, those Krallen who had rebuilt the crossing and had not been destroyed unlinked themselves and climbed out of the water. Then, apparently none the worse for their immersion, they bounded back to the far side and regrouped into neat ranks.

  So far a silence had prevailed among the enemy, but now synchronized wails, whistles, and hoots began. The noises echoed through the mist and through the darkened streets of the town and as they heard the sounds, the soldiers visibly shivered.

  They are brave people, but even the brave have limits.

  Merral was summoned to hear a new message from Betafor.

  “Commander,” she said, “the lines are preparing to move.”

  “That’s no surprise,” he answered. “But Betafor, have you detected the presence of anything else in among them?”

  “Such as?”

  “A baziliarch?”

  There was a moment’s silence before the answer came. “No.”

  Can I trust her?

  Merral walked back to join Balancal. “Any minute,” he said.

  Balancal nodded.

  The howling and wailing grew. Soon the Krallen ranks began to advance at a slow and measured pace.

  A long way back, half hidden by the mist and the darkness of the evening, Merral discerned ape-creatures and cockroach-be
asts moving within the great mass of the enemy.

  The advancing line crossed over the broken part of the causeway. When they reached the pile of destroyed Krallen, they strode over the fallen forms as if they were stones.

  Merral glimpsed nervous eyes and pale faces all around. He touched the microphone stud. “Men!” he called out, trying to inject hope into his voice. “Now is the time for courage and action. You fight for Ynysmant, Farholme, and the Assembly. Above all, you fight for the Lamb!”

  There were shouts of agreement in response, but in them, Merral heard fear.

  They know we are too few. They know we cannot win. . . . Lord, have mercy on us! Act now! We need your help!

  Balancal sighed wearily. “These things do keep coming, don’t they? Well, let’s see if these cannons work.” He picked up a switch.

  Merral ordered the soldiers to take cover.

  “One, two, three, now!” Balancal said and for a blinding instant, night was replaced by day.

  As the sound of the double roar of the guns pummeled him, Merral saw the Krallen line turn into a boiling cloud of dirty fragments. The echoes of the blasts died away and he heard ragged cheers from the wall.

  Slowly, the smoke lifted, mingling with the mist. The front section of the enemy force had vanished. For thirty or forty meters, the Krallen had been reduced to little more than a heap of pale fragments. As if some monstrous bonfire had left only ash.

  But even as Merral watched, the all-too-familiar pattern repeated itself. The Krallen regrouped and moved forward, trotting with apparent unconcern through the fragments of their fellows.

  The cheering stopped.

  “Fire at will!” Merral ordered.

  As the shooting began, the Krallen, their forms sharp-edged in the harsh emergency illumination, broke into a lope. Where the causeway broadened, they fanned out and hurled themselves at the wall like the angry breaker of a winter storm at sea.

  Merral pulled the trigger again and again. He had no need to aim precisely; it was impossible to miss. Yet the attackers continued to run through a barrage of rocket, rifle, and cutter-gun fire. The noise was almost deafening, a vast medley of weapons fire, yells, and howling. Many Krallen tumbled down, yet for all the numbers that fell or stumbled, the pace of the onslaught was undiminished.

  In seconds, the first Krallen had reached the foot of the walls and were clambering up. As they reached the top, they were hewn down as swords replaced guns. They tumbled back and soon others were scrambling over their still forms.

  Merral threw his gun down and reached for his sword. A Krallen, its eyes gleaming like twin red stars, stuck its head above the wall and Merral slammed his blade deep into its skull. As it slithered back down, he tugged the sword free and cut down a second attacker.

  On the edges of his vision, he could see frantic fighting all about him, as the soldiers hacked and thrust at the enemies. He felled a third Krallen while Lloyd dispatched another with a shotgun blast in the mouth. But there were always others and the more they struck down, the easier it became for their successors to reach the top of the wall.

  Suddenly, the Krallen seemed to hesitate. Their advance stopped, and those on the wall slipped back down. The lines froze, and the wailing and hooting ceased.

  “Had enough, ’ave you?” someone yelled and there was nervous laughter.

  For a brief second, hope burst into Merral’s heart. A rescue. It’s the envoy.

  Then, in the very next instant, all hope fled.

  Merral was suddenly seized by a deep, stomach-wrenching feeling of dread and dismay. All around him, he heard laughter transform into gasps. He reached out to touch the parapet for support, his eyes drawn beyond the illuminated zone of the causeway into the dark mistiness beyond. Although he could see nothing there other than the limitless foe, he had a sickening certainty that beyond the lines of Krallen there was now something else, some presence filled with power and malice.

  Merral saw to either side of him that his comrades were staring wide-eyed out along the causeway. They too have sensed it.

  In the town behind him, the dogs began to howl with strange and troubling tones.

  “What is it?” hissed Balancal. For the first time, Merral heard dread in his voice.

  “The baziliarch,” Merral answered, his mouth dry. “A power. More than a physical being. One of the enemy’s servants in a body.”

  “A demon?” Balancal sighed. “Tuh. Last thing we need. Can we kill it? Or is that a stupid question?”

  “I doubt we can kill it,” Merral replied. “It’s from Below-Space. It occupies more than one dimension.” As he said it, he realized that to try to give an explanation was utterly futile.

  Then suddenly, from beyond the stilled enemy lines, came a noise—a massive rattling sound as if hollow trees were being beaten by some titanic drummer. Merral peered into the mist wanting—and not wanting—to see its cause.

  Within the misty dimness at the far end of the causeway, a vast, sharp-edged shadow moved with an odd jerky motion. Its form was impossible to determine, but Merral saw with a terrible thrill that it was higher than any animal and loomed over the forces beneath it.

  The baziliarch. As the word came to him, Merral felt the touch of something cold and hate-filled on his mind. He trembled, and from the moans and whimpers about him he knew others had felt the same touch. Merral looked around, seeing everywhere fearful eyes seeking reassurance.

  There was a new rattling noise. In under a second, the mists parted and through them the creature lurched into view. Merral’s first terror-struck impression was of an enormous winged being cut out of black ice, an impossible assemblage of angles. The wings were held high as a bird might do on landing, yet their shape and their glistening blackness were not birdlike. And although something hung over the body that obscured its form, he could see a pair of powerful rear legs that were bent up against the body like those of a monstrous locust, while at the front, two weird jointed forelimbs hung down. An angular head protruded forward on a segmented neck.

  The creature moved with an unwieldy, swaying gait, yet the awkwardness of its movements could not disguise a purposefulness and intelligence. Even if I didn’t know what I do, I would know we faced no animal.

  The rattling of the baziliarch grew louder and as it did, the soldiers beside Merral prayed aloud.

  Lord, he added silently, send us your aid. In the name of the Christ.

  As the creature moved forward with its slewing steps, the Dominion forces on the causeway parted urgently before it. Those that failed to get out of the way were simply flung aside.

  Merral was aware of Vero beside him.

  “T-the b-baziliarch?” Vero stuttered.

  “Yes,” Merral said, “it’s what I glimpsed at Langerstrand.”

  As the creature approached the broken segment of the causeway, new aspects registered. It was at least twice the height of a human being and, Merral felt, longer than any living land animal. The wings were partly furled but even so they nearly stretched across the width of the causeway. He could see now that the head bore strange eyes and a cavity where a nose might have been and the jaws were wide and toothed. There was something about the head that Merral felt was familiar, but where that familiarity lay he could not be sure.

  Another terrifying dry rattle broke. The noise seemed to be made by the rear legs vibrating hard against the body like sticks against a drum skin. As Merral watched the creature move, he had the impression that, for all its size, the creature was lightly built. As if it were an insect built on the scale of a dinosaur. As it came closer he saw that each eye was as large as a man’s face and an iridescent yellow in color.

  There were two details, however, he could make no sense of at all. One was the way the body seemed clad in something, almost as if some sort of fabric hung off it, and the other was the way that the crest of the head bore a high, pointed silvery structure that glinted in the light.

  Suddenly aware of how close it was, Merral quickly
touched the microphone switch. “Stand firm! When this thing reaches our side of the gap, I want us to hit it with two rounds each—on my order.”

  As his words died away, Merral pulled Balancal toward him so that he could speak to him without shouting. “This thing affects morale,” he said in a low voice.

  “Oh, wonderful,” said Balancal. “I thought it was just me. You feel it too?”

  “Yes. Look, if it gets much closer, I don’t think the defenses will hold. Prepare for a retreat.”

  Balancal bit his lip. “Right. Thanks for the warning.” His eyes flicked to the flare gun at his belt.

  The baziliarch lurched slowly over the reconstructed part of the causeway. Merral saw that the forelimbs ended in great claws, like those of a bird. As it advanced, the Krallen in front squeezed aside, then followed, keeping out of range of its long flicking tail.

  “Fire!” Merral shouted.

  The rattling, whistling clamor of the simultaneous discharge of over a hundred weapons was almost deafening. For a second, the creature disappeared in a sheet of flame and smoke. Then, apparently totally unscathed, it swayed forward.

  “That’s impossible!” Balancal protested.

  I wish it was.

  As the smoke cleared he suddenly saw that the silvery feature atop the baziliarch’s head was not a part of the body, but a metal crown. How weird. The body was clad in some sort of loose tunic. As he recognized both the crown and the clothing, Merral had confirmed what he knew: the thing they faced was no animal, but a being with intelligence and authority. What had Vero said? “There is a hierarchy: the baziliarchs come above steersmen.”

  The terrible creature swayed forward, its clawed feet scrabbling over the dead Krallen, and stood before the wall.

  It reared up on its hind legs so that its head, looking like a weird sculpture, was at the level of the parapet. As it did, Merral saw that head and body were scarred with deep, sharp notches. It has been in a battle. He suddenly realized that he had seen the battle where these wounds were inflicted.

  The baziliarch twitched its legs against its body again with a rattle that seemed to shake the walls. With a great rustle, it unfurled its terrible, crow black wings. They too were scored and slashed.