by Chris Bunch
‘You’re right. I don’t like your information at all.’
NOTED MAGICIAN, MYSTIC, KILLED IN MYSTERIOUS FIRE
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BALTIMORE, EARTH - Leslie Richardson, 63, better known as ‘The Great Deceiver,’ was found dead in his houseboat moored not far from this city on the Patapsco River. He died, police said, of mysterious burns, possibly incurred by a freak lightning strike on his boat, although the craft showed no signs of fire damage.
Richardson acquired great fame as an illusionist before and during the war, and was honored for having devoted the War Years to touring and entertaining Federation troops. He said he owed this to the Federation because he had been working on Glayfer XIX when the Al’ar landed and was briefly a captive of the aliens. He was freed when a surprise counterattack drove the Al’ar from the planet.
After the war, he announced, through his then-manager, that ‘the illusions I’ve worked for all these years have lifted the veil,’ and he retired from performing to devote his life to contemplation and writing about ‘Other Worlds’ he said he could catch dim glimpses of through fasting and meditation.
The Great Deceiver was known for his charm and self-deprecating humor as well as for his famed tricks, one of which, the ability to seemingly become invisible in the midst of a crowd, has never been duplicated by anyone.
He is survived by . . .
‘Exiting N-space. One jump short of reaching point projected from battles.’
‘Thanks,’ Wolfe said.
Taen lifted grasping organs, set them back on his rack. ‘I find it what you would term amusing that you express gratitude to your machine. It seems a thorough waste of energy.’
‘You’re right. And I’m polite to you, as well. Ship, do you detect any sign of life?’
‘Negative.’
‘Do you detect any planets, asteroids, any habitable place?’
‘Negative.’
‘Are there any signs of broadcast on any frequency?’
‘Negative.’
‘Make the final jump when you’re able.’
‘Understood.’
The world was cold, bleak, forbidding.
Wolfe looked again at the screen, then away from the gray and black wasteland. ‘What’s the environment like?’
‘Slight traces of oxygen. Not enough to support human life. Gravity half E-normal. Do you wish geological, atmospheric data?’
‘No.’ He looked at other screens showing the far-distant sun and the other two planets in the system, both frost giants.
‘Do you detect any transmissions, any broadcast sign of life?’
‘Negative.’
‘This makes no sense. There’s a planet here, as close to Point Zed as possible, and it’s deader than God.’
‘I suggest we make a circumnavigation,’ Taen said. ‘The Guardians, if they are, or were ever, here, would hardly blazon their presence to the heavens.’
‘Ship . . . do as he says.’
‘Understood.’
‘I am afraid you were correct. This world has never seen habitation,’ Taen said.
‘Maybe . . .’ Wolfe closed his eyes and let the Lumina carry him to the screen, through it to the desolation below. ‘Ship,’ he said. ‘Turn through 180 degrees, then descend two hundred feet.’
‘Understood.’
‘What are you attempting?’
‘Pure bluff. As if we just saw something.’
‘I have a launch,’ the ship announced unnecessarily as a rock outcropping spat fire at them. ‘I am taking standard evasive -’
‘Cancel,’ Wolfe snapped. ‘Turn hard into the direction of the missile! Drop one hundred feet.’
‘Understood,’ the ship said, and the gravity twisted, contorted, ‘but this is contrary to my programming.’
‘Full power now!’
‘Understood.’
The missile, a gray-black tube with an adder’s flattened head, flashed at them, past, and Wolfe thought he could see the alien lettering along its sides.
‘Not prox-detonated,’ he said, ‘or -’
Steering jets flashed along the missile’s flanks, and it rolled, then spun wildly, an aelopile, smashing into the ground just below the skimming Grayle.
‘There’s somebody home,’ Wolfe said, hanging on to the control panel. ‘Is there any way we can send flowers and gentle words?’
‘I do not know of any.’
‘Ship, get us the hell over the horizon. Full secondary.’
‘Understood.’
‘As soon as we’re -’
‘I have a second launch.’
‘Damnation! Stand by to launch missile.’
‘Weapons station ready.’
Wolfe hurried across the control deck and swung down a control station.
‘Launch the missile,’ he ordered. ‘I have it under manual control.’
‘Understood.’
‘Shadow Warrior, this is foolish,’ Taen said. ‘You cannot think as fast as a ship-slayer.’
‘I’m not planning on thinking,’ Joshua said. ‘Now shut up.’
He felt the Lumina, forced away his own fear, tension.
Breathe . . . you are the void . . . you are the fire . . .
He was out, beyond the ship, riding just ahead of the blast wave of his missile, barely aware of his hands moving on the control panel as the missile came up and around toward the oncoming Al’ar rocket.
Touch the void, be part, be all, reach out, feel . . .
His awareness flashed out once more, floated above the crags as the long double-finned Al’ar ship-killer flashed toward him, then felt his own missile beside him.
Hands coming together, fingers outstretched . . .
Far away, in a safe, warm world, Wolfe’s hands left the missile’s control panel, splayed, moved together, and he heard Taen’s hiss of alarm.
Touching . . .
Wolfe’s missile veered into the path of the oncoming projectile, and flame balled over nothingness, then vanished, and a few, tiny metal fragments spun down toward the rocks below.
Wolfe stood over the missile controls. Taen was out of his rack, halfway across the compartment.
‘Don’t bother,’ Wolfe said. ‘It’s dead. I killed it. Ship, get us the hell off this world. We’ve got some rethinking to do. I’ve had enough of this nonsense.’
‘How was that done?’ the Al’ar said. ‘I knew you could project your awareness, but how could you affect what your rocket did without touching anything? ’
‘I don’t know. But I knew, as I took the controls of the rocket, that I could do it.’
The Al’ar stared at Wolfe. His hood flared suddenly.
‘Shadow Warrior,’ he said after a time, ‘now I feel fear toward you. I no longer know what you are, what you are becoming.’
TEN
Taen and Wolfe muscled the cylinder out of the lock, hastily set up its tripod legs, and ran for the nearby rocks as the Grayle lifted away into space. The cylinder slid three antennae out, and one swiveled up toward the sky.
The two space-suited beings stumbled on, moving as fast as the bulky suits and their heavy pack frames and slung blast rifles would let them. Wolfe kept glancing at the hillcrest. They’d made about a quarter of a mile when Wolfe saw the flicker of movement, knocked the Al’ar down, and flattened beside him.
A double-finned missile arced over the nearby hilltop and smashed into the cylinder. Smoke, fire flared up, and rock dust obscured the clearing.
Long moments later, it settled. There was a crater about thirty feet deep surrounded by splintered boulders.
Wolfe got to his feet, licking blood from his lip where the blast had smashed his head into the rim of his faceplate. He unclipped a lead from his suit and plugged it into an improvised connection on Taen’s armor.
‘I guess they told us.’
‘Your diversion was clever.’
‘We’ll see if it fooled them into thinking we just dropped the sensor and scooted, or not.
Then it’s clever. But I sure hate to lose that snooper. Damned thing cost me too many credits to just throw away.’
‘Would you rather have thrown away your life?’
‘Nope. But I wish I wasn’t such a stickler for authenticity and had thrown them the spare toilet instead.’ Wolfe checked monitors. ‘How thoughtful. It wasn’t a nuke they dumped on us. Shall we press on and see what else the lion has protecting his den?’
‘When you speak to other Terrans, do you also attempt to confuse them?’
‘As often as possible.’ Wolfe turned serious. ‘Taen, do you have any sense of whether we’re going after some robot deathtrap, or is there intelligence, such as maybe your Guardians, inside?’
‘I do not know.’
‘Second question. How many ways are they going to try to kill us? Anything besides the usual Al’ar methods?’
‘I do not know that, either.’
‘Elaborate.’
‘Toward the close of the war, when we realized the Federation was slowly closing the trap, we experimented with many different types of weapons. I was not taken into the confidence of our leaders, so I do not know what devices may have been successful enough to be taken out of the laboratories and put in production.’
‘You bring utter peace and confidence to my soul. Come on. We’ve got some hills to hike.’
CHITET MURDER CHARGES ROCK FEDERATION
Master Speaker Athelstan: ‘Government Tried to Assassinate Me.’
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BATAN - Chitet Master Speaker Matteos Athelstan today accused the Federation of masterminding a plot to murder him in last month’s suicide-crash of a starship into his palace.
The ship has now been identified as being the Exploration Vessel Occam, an ex-Federation warship disarmed and converted by the Chitet two years ago. It was reported missing on a routine venture two months before it dove into Speaker Athelstan’s Residency, and had been assumed lost with all hands.
However, three days ago the surviving crew arrived at a mining camp on the Outlaw World of Triumphant, and claimed that they had been hijacked by a Federation spyship of the Sorge class.
According to documents sent to this com, the Occam’s Master, Captain Millet, said they were following their orders when a Federation vessel identifying itself as the Harnack ordered it to cut its drive. Captain Millet of course obeyed. The Harnack then connected airlocks to the Chitet ship and, when the lock was open, Federation sailors coldly murdered four of Captain Millet’s crewmen and seized the ship.
They were imprisoned in a hold and then released, with minimal supplies, on a dangerous jungle world, no doubt, Master Speaker Athelstan said, in the hopes they would be destroyed by the savage beasts of that planet.
However, due to the inspired leadership of Captain Millet and the other officers, the crew was able to . . .
Wolfe slid to the knife-edge of the ridge, peered over, and quickly ducked back.
The fortress sprawled across the hill beyond them, although little could be seen aboveground. But the knolls were a little too regular, the mounds winding between them too convenient.
He reconnected the com lead to Taen’s suit. ‘We’re on it. How do we get inside?’
‘We fight our way in,’ the Al’ar said. ‘I know of no way of communicating with whoever is inside, nor would they be likely to believe me, especially as I’m in the company of a Terran.’
‘In the old holopics,’ Wolfe grumbled, ‘I’d pretend to be your prisoner and then we’d jump ’em. Pity you come from a race that doesn’t believe in silliness like that.’
‘Why should anyone bother taking an enemy alive, unless killing captives makes the others fight more fiercely, as Terrans do? Certainly we never concerned ourselves with our own prisoners.’
‘I know,’ Wolfe said. ‘But they vanished along with everybody else. Forget it. Why haven’t they opened up on us? Surely they’ve got IR sensors.’
‘Perhaps, perhaps not. Perhaps they are waiting to see what our move will be, or perhaps they are waiting for us to move into the open.’
Wolfe thought for a moment, then wriggled out of his pack. He took out a small tube, opened it, and took out a small, slim rocket. As the rocket came free, guidance fins snapped out of slots. He carefully pried at the tube and stripped five metal rods from it.
He clipped these into slots on the tube to form a launching rack.
‘We’ve been where we are too long,’ he said. ‘Move over to behind that boulder there. And we won’t need to be careful about anybody homing on our signals once the shooting starts.’
He unhooked the com cable and reeled it back into his suit. He ran awkwardly about thirty yards, set the rack down, slid the rocket into position, came back. Then he took what looked like binocs, except with an extra barrel in the center, from his pack and slithered back up to the ridge-crest.
Wolfe focused the viewer, put the crosshairs on one of the knolls, touched a stud on its side, then a second.
The small rocket shot into the air. Following the homing signal, it shattered against the knoll, a surprisingly large explosion for so small a device.
Instantly the knoll unmasked a multitube weapon, sending laser fire spattering in the direction the rocket had come from.
A moment later, a second pillbox exposed itself and put crossfire into the same area.
Joshua backslid into cover. ‘Maybe they don’t have infrared,’ he said, putting his pack back on and crouching across to where Taen waited.
‘Did you mark those two?’
‘I did.’
‘Now it gets interesting. Did you ever take part in an infantry assault?’
‘Never. My fighting was in space or in-atmosphere.’
‘That doesn’t improve my mood.’ Wolfe took off his pack, took out two round grenades, one anodized white, the other red, and an egg-shaped object almost as large as his head. He twisted a dial at the top. ‘When I charge, you put one burst on that first pillbox, then concentrate on the second.’
‘That sounds extraordinarily hazardous for you.’
Wolfe shrugged. ‘It’s about the only way to take out interlocking fire. But if anybody else starts shooting at me, discourage them. Try not to get killed.’
‘That is not my desire at the moment.’
Wolfe thumbed the first grenade’s activator, overarmed it into the open space in front of them, came to his feet, and ran forward. As he came into the open, he pitched the second grenade to his front, underhand, just as the first exploded and smoke boiled.
A moment later the second grenade blasted a flare of energy. Wolfe saw Taen’s weapon fire past him, saw return fire from one of the turrets, then hurled the egg-shaped object high into the air.
It hit just short of the first pillbox, exploded, and the turret blew up, metal disguised as rock tearing with a screech audible above the crack of Taen’s fire and the blind return blasts from the second pillbox.
He dove forward into smoke, feeling rounds smash into rock a foot away, pulled another grenade from its pouch, touched its stud and threw.
Again fire flashed and Wolfe, lungs searing, stumbled up, unslinging his blast rifle, and ran past the flare, sending rapid-fire bursts toward the second weapons bunker.
An explosion sent him tumbling, arm coming up to protect his faceplate. Another turret must have unmasked - a rocky column above him shattered and cascaded down.
Wolfe rolled twice, came up, and sent a burst at the weapons station, then felt death behind him and went flat.
A blade slashed as he rolled and saw a six-legged gray metalloid spider rearing over him.
The scythe on one arm lashed down and smashed his blast rifle as Wolfe yanked his pistol from its holster, fired twice.
The blasts took the spider in its leg segments, and the robot thrashed, toppled, as the Al’ar pillbox ‘saw’ movement and blew its carapace into fragments.
A moment later, Taen’s weapon blasted the third pillbox into silence.
Coming from between the rocks were three more of the robots. Each was about eight feet tall, with a body like a round cigar and a small dome on top with a weapons tube jutting from it.
Wolfe knelt, held his pistol in a two-handed grip, and sent bolts smashing into the first. It shuddered, sidestepped, came on.
The one behind it reared as a ray from Taen’s weapon took it head-on, and his second burst seared its belly open, revealing multicolored circuitry.
Wolfe sent a grenade spinning at the first, and the blast went off under it, seemingly harmlessly. But the robot froze in midstride, then sagged to the rocks.
The last spider was on Wolfe, cutting at him. Wolfe ducked, had its metalloid arm in his hands, trying to twist it. Inexorable force twisted, sent him down, and the scythe inched toward his faceplate.
Breathe . . . fire, burning all, blazing, wildfire, firestorm, beyond control . . .
He felt muscles tear, and the robot’s arm bent, metal scraping. Wolfe rolled forward, came to his hands and knees under the nightmare, then stood, lifting against the greasy underside of the spider, pushing up, and the robot flipped onto its back, legs flailing.
Joshua saw his pistol, had it, and sent the rest of the magazine smashing into the robot as its legs flexed and died.
Taen was beside him. ‘It is gone. And you are hurt.’
Suddenly Wolfe was aware of pain in his side, looked down, saw the black where a blast had burned his suit, and felt his suit’s air hissing out.
He fumbled at his waist, but Taen’s grasping organs were ahead of him, opening the patch and sealing the suit.
Wolfe swayed, and the Al’ar pulled him into the shelter of some boulders as another turret opened fire. The fire spattered harmlessly against boulders.
Breathe . . . breathe . . .
‘Are you injured?’
Wolfe felt his body, shook his head, then realized Taen could not see the gesture.
‘No. Not badly. Burned a little. Sorry. But I just lost my fondness for goddamned spiders.’
‘Those devices surprised me,’ Taen said. ‘I had heard no stories of their development. I would guess they were completely experimental, since it was so easy to deactivate them.’
