Dark Powers

by Jack McKinney

  “Wait,” he blurted. “Why haven’t you told the others of—this matter?” As a scientist, he had discovered interesting things about the ursinoids’ belief system. He had expected Lron and Crysta would have explained their quandary to the Sentinels long ago; though it was perhaps some slight advantage to him that they hadn’t, he found it puzzling.

  Crysta made an irritated sound. “You understand nothing, Invid! The knowledge that comes from our Seeing is fragile. Revealing it can change the Seeing and the Shaping to something else, something even worse. If you hadn’t already known about—about our dilemma, I would never have mentioned it.”

  Tesla nodded to himself. So. It might be that there was hope for him yet, if he could manipulate things. Certainly, he hadn’t much else going for him. He, above all, had reason to hope that the Karbarrans’ vision of the future came out well; otherwise, Tesla would be among the first to feel their wrath, and he knew how terrible their vengeance could be.

  The entry was more of a free-fall, really, Lron’s piloting veering between the suicidally reckless and the professionally competent. He peeled part of the ablative layer off the shuttle but got them down without registering, as far as they could tell, on any Invid instruments.

  Jack Baker found himself pressed into his seat, eyeballs in, slipping into and out of a red-out. He just hoped Lron had a greater tolerance of g-forces, because this felt like it might be an embarrassing moment to have the pilot take a snooze.

  Karbarra was a barren, windswept place, pockmarked and wormholed as a result of their generations of intensive mining. Lron pulled out of his bone-jarring entry and gave the ship some thrust, leveling off at virtual landing altitude, searching. He quickly had his bearings, and closed in on the landing site he had selected.

  All the Sentinels were alert, manning weapons stations and ready to open fire. But the spot selected by Lron, an abandoned operation where a major vein of iron ore had given out, was deserted. The Sentinels had been counting on decreased surveillance and patrolling, what with the Invid occupation forces presumably cut to minimal strength. It seemed they had won the bet—so far—but that still left an awful lot of the enemy.

  Lron set the shuttle down gently through a huge gaping hole in an enormous cracked dome at the center of the processing area. It was a location already noted by the Karbarran resistance, he explained. It was as safe a base of operations as the team was likely to find, at least for now.

  Rick began getting things organized even before they unbelted. Bela was anxious to get Halidarre up for a look around and to feel the freedom of the sky; it took some strong talk to make her see that a ground sweep and sensor scan of the immediate area would be necessary first, to make sure the Sentinels weren’t spotted by somebody before they could do the spotting themselves.

  Karen Penn felt some foreboding, seeing the young admiral standing up to the imposing amazon and camly telling her it was about time she started learning to take orders. Her hand went to her sword again. “Orders? You dare tell me I lack discipline? And who are you to give me orders?”

  His mouth had become a flat line. “I’m one of the people you Sentinels came to for help, remember? I’m part of the force that’s giving you a fighting chance at winning back your planet. Now, when our joint council makes a decision, we stick by it; that was the bargain. And the decision in this case was for a recon mission with me in command and Lron in second place. So let’s see if you can take orders as well as you give them.”

  Bela suddenly grinned, throwing her head back. “I keep forgetting that you males can be just as hard-nosed as a woman! All right, Admiral, we’ll do it your way—but, mind: when I’m put in charge of an operation, I’ll expect the same from you.”

  “Fair enough.” Privately, Rick decided that he didn’t want anything to do with an operation run by the impulsive warrior-woman.

  His every footfall in the vast, echoing halls of the Invid Home Hive seemed to be mocking the Regent.

  There was still no word of the task force he had sent to Tirol, no answer from the Regess. It was all too troubling for him to even take pleasure in punishing subordinates. He paced along now with his elite bodyguard marching a discreet distance behind, their armored steps resounding.

  And he cursed again the tactical misfortunes that had made it necessary to abandon the Living Computer, the newest and by far the best of the giant Invid vat-grown brains, under the Royal Hall. It was inactive, and could fall prey to harm, could atrophy—could even be damaged by the upstart mongrel species who had somehow routed his legions.

  He had been obliged to recall more troops from the outer marches of his crumbling realm to insure that nearby worlds under his dominion remained that way. The Regent rasped angrily at the thought that perhaps his task force had met with some reversal. At the worst possible time!

  And then there was the thought that chilled him as much as any. What if the Robotech Masters should return to wage bloody war, and catch him in this disorganized state? He rumbled with displeasure, kicking out at a pillar that resembled a neural axon.

  He cursed his mate again, for taking half his race from him. What could she need them for? She wasn’t even engaged in conquest! Wasn’t even pretending to help him maintain sway over the realm. It wasn’t fair; this was all her fault.

  Something had to be done.

  The Regent paused, turned, started off in another direction. When he got to the vast egg chamber, he was pleased to find that nothing was amiss, and the Special Children of the Regess were all there, unmoving and unaware in their gelatinous suspension. Row by row, rank on rank.

  “Special Children.” Typical of her, she hadn’t even deigned to tell him what the phrase meant. The Regess had merely made it clear that these were to be some ultimate manifestation of the Invid genetic heritage, and that theirs would be some higher destiny.

  “Indeed?” the Regent snorted to himself. When the empire was crumbling and the enemies of the Invid might be at the very Home Hive soon? What higher destiny could such Special Children have than to defend their Regent and conquer, conquer for the glory of the Invid?

  Yet—he must proceed carefully. He wasn’t even sure what he was dealing with. It wouldn’t do to unleash some new and even worse danger—perhaps a generation of Invid who would know no loyalty to him, or even be infected with aspirations of their own.

  No, best to go cautiously. In the interim, he could reassign his forces, maintain the status quo for the time being. He had already managed to scrape up some frontier troops and dispatch them to reinforce the depleted Karbarran garrison. Perhaps he could even use the Special Children as a bargaining chip—get the Regess to trade him the loyal fighters he required in return for these quiescent eggs.

  And Tesla! With his mystical talk about the Fruit of the Flower and his promises to bring a menagerie of defeated enemies for the Regent’s entertainment! What of him?

  Seething, the Regent went off to dispatch another message to Haydon IV and demand immediate word of Tesla, on pain of horrible punishment to those all along the line who might fail to provide it.

  “I simply have a feeling she’ll listen to you,” Vince Grant told his wife. “You just have that way with people, darling.”

  She put down the medical report she had been filling out, preliminary evaluations of the vast array of salves, preparations, pills, and powders from every Sentinel’s homeworld; she was trying to understand them and the physiologies of the patients she would be expected to minister to.

  “Vince, why don’t you talk to Crysta. I mean, you’re more her size.”

  That got a grudging chuckle out of him. “I don’t think this has anything to do with size. I’m just a jumped-up engineer who got a commission ’cause he knows what makes the GMU tick. But you understand people, and Crysta’s just big furry people. Besides, you’re a mother.”

  Jean looked him over. “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “I’m not sure. I was showing her around the GMU and, you kno
w, there’s that picture of Bowie on my desk. When I explained about him, it made her clam up, and she cut the tour short.”

  Jean felt a mixture of curiosity and professional obligation now; he had seen her get interested in a case, just like this, so many times before. “We really don’t know much about the Karabarran children, do we? Oh, the reproductive cycle’s right there in the data banks, nothing unusual—especially when you compare them to those Spherians! But I mean, what’s happening to them right this second?”

  “That occurred to me, too,” Vince said soberly.

  She rose and kissed her husband, standing on tiptoe to do it. “You’re pretty smart for a jumped-up engineer, y’know that?”

  He gave her a half smile. “Smart enough to come to you when I run into a real problem.”

  The sensors and detectors indicated that they had made their landing without being spotted. Sweeps by Rick, Jack, and Karen on hovercycles, and, inevitably, a surveillance flight by Bela and Gnea on their flying horse, just confirmed the fact.

  Then it was Rem who got stubborn, as Rick assigned him, along with Gnea, to guard the shuttle and man the commo-relay equipment, so that the recon team would be sure of getting a direct link to Farrago if and when it was needed.

  “This whole mission is pointless if we can’t report back what we find here,” Rick fumed at him. “Now, I don’t want any more arguments from anybody!”

  Rem subsided, and the team began loading up with weapons and gear. Lron casually weighted himself down with twice as much paraphernalia as any of the others and didn’t seem to feel the burden a bit. Something was making him most untalkative, though.

  As it was, Rick was more concerned with trying to get the right mix of equipment and weapons distributed among his team. Lron had revealed that the network of natural caverns and abandoned mines constituted a virtual underground roadway, and that the unit could make most of the distance to its objective that way.

  That meant spare handheld spots, night-sight gear, and so forth. Rick let Bela keep her Wolverine rifle, but assigned Kami to a much more powerful but short-range Owens Mark IX mob gun, in case of close fighting down below. Rick took a Wolverine for himself. Karen was assigned an elaborately scoped sniper rifle, her marksmanship scores being the best of any of them.

  Lron lugged the magazine-fed rocket launcher and an assortment of ammunition; Jack was given a solid-projectile submachine gun that fired explosive pellets. Rick made sure they were all wearing “bat-ears,” in case there was any subsurface fighting. The bat-ears amplified soft sounds, left normal ones unchanged, but dampened loud ones—so the scouts wouldn’t be deafened in an underground firefight.

  Bela didn’t put up the expected argument about leaving Halidarre behind; even she could see how impractical it would be to drag the horse through the tight spots the team could expect to hit down below. She put aside most of her Praxian weapons, taking only her long knife.

  Lron led the way to a mine elevator that smelled of must and stale air. He fiddled with a power connection that looked dead, and made the elevator’s motor hum with readiness. The group boarded, turning on helmet lights. Rem and Gnea watched them descend into the darkness.

  Veidt, Cabell, and the others were mystified by what they saw—or, rather, didn’t see. Long-range readings on the surface of Karbarra indicated that there had been little or no battle damage on the planet below. Their main city, Tracialle, was still shining and whole under its crystalline dome.

  “This isn’t logical,” Veidt said. “The Karbarrans are fierce haters of the Invid, and we assumed the fighting had been furious.”

  But instruments definitely indicated heavy Invid military activity below, although there was no sign of combat. With some few exceptions, the industrial and technical infrastructure seemed to be intact and functioning to a modest degree, the buildings still standing for the most part, the social systems operating normally.

  “Perhaps this is all some ruse?” Sarna wondered, turning to her husband. “Can it be that the Karbarrans went through all this to lure us into a trap?—but no. Surely they could have diverted the ship here on one pretext or another as soon as we staged our mutiny?”

  “And it makes no sense for them to have risked their lives against the Pursuer, or again in combat against the task force we surprised,” Cabell pointed out. “Then there’s this business of the reconnaissance. Some piece of the puzzle is still missing.”

  They were interrupted by the ship’s mismatched alarms again, and Lisa’s voice came over a PA speaker that resembled a cornucopia.

  “Battle stations, battle stations! An enemy force has left hyperspace for approach to Karbarra. They have detected us and are maneuvering for attack. Skull Squadron and Wolfe Pack, prepare for launch. All weapons stations prepare to fire on my command!”

  For Jonathan Wolfe, it was a relief to be called to the cockpit of his Hovertank. He had been driving his Wolfe Pack all through the voyage, trying to wrench his mind away from the thoughts that tormented him, with preparation and drill, maintenance checks, and intense briefing and training sessions.

  It hadn’t helped. There was still the guilt that he had left his wife and son far behind so that he could share in the REF glory, and now it would be years before he saw them again.

  But an even worse guilt, grinding his conscience raw and then grating at the bloody wound, was the undeniable image of Minmei, Minmei. The sound of her voice, the aroma of her hair, the face and eyes, her coltish charm. The recollection of how it had felt to put his arms around her in the garden at the New Year’s Eve party on Tiresia. Her kiss, which had made him as light-headed as some school kid.

  The ship was shuddering at the launching of the Skull VTs. Wolfe snapped rapid commands, and his own Hovertanks went to Battloid mode, sealed for combat in vacuum, following him in a dash for the designated cargo lock. The Destroids assigned to the GMU would be going to their firing positions, Wolfe knew, and the Ground Mobile Unit itself would be warming up its weapons.

  But there would be no question of an ambush this time; today both sides were forewarned. Wolfe had felt disappointed at not being included in the recon team, but that had proved premature. Now, the Wolfe Pack looked like it was going to get all the action it could handle.

  And as for Hunter and the rest, trapped below? Wolfe felt briefly sorry for them, then got his mind back on running his little corner of the war.

  CHAPTER

  FOURTEEN

  Of course I heard all those cracks about “aliens,” and to her great credit, my wife let them pass, knowing what it was like for people fighting a war.

  I’d hoped the Human race had learned, in meeting the Sentinels, to be a little less indiscriminately prejudiced. But few aside from the Skulls were.

  Miriya overlooked all that, and fought like a tiger on behalf of the Human race and the Sentinels. And you’re telling me that’s alien? Then so am I.

  Max Sterling, from Wingmates: The Story of Max and Miriya Sterling by Theresa Duvall

  “Form up on me, Skull Team, and stick with your wingmates,” Max Sterling recited automatically, his attention devoted to the tactical displays in his Alpha cockpit. He knew his wife, comrade and wingmate, would keep an eye on the team for him.

  Max found a moment in which to be concerned for Rick. At least Rick wasn’t out here trying to fly combat in a VT; he was a good flyer, a natural, and once he had ranked only behind Max in proficiency. But Rick was years out of practice, and that had been obvious the last time he had gone into space combat with Skull. If Rick and his gang just kept their heads down, they would be all right—perhaps a lot better than the Sentinels’ main force was going to be, unless Skull got on the stick and took care of business.

  Luckily, this new enemy contingent wasn’t as numerous as the task force the Sentinels had handled when they arrived: two saucer troopships, and no command vessel at all. On the other hand, the Sentinels weren’t going to get in any surprise Sunday punches today. Even now, the clamlike
troop carriers yawned open and Pincer ships poured forth, interspersed with some Shock Troopers and even a few of the fearsome, armored Shock Troopers.

  The Veritechs leapt to meet them in a mass duel. It was a mad, swirling combat wherein friend and foe were so intermingled that it was often dangerous to risk a shot. But those Invid who got through found that the Sentinels’ flagship was throwing out an almost impenetrable net of fire, augmented by Wolfe’s tanks and the GMU’s firepower.

  Novas lit the night as mecha erupted in fireballs; tremendous streams of destructive energy were hosed this way and that, and clouds of missiles flew. Jamming and counterjamming made guidance systems erratic and put both sides in almost as much danger from their own ordnance as from their opponents’.

  A small group of Pincers, led by an Armored Officer mecha, got to the upper hull of the Sentinels’ ship after suffering heavy casualties. But as they were about to attack the craft at close range—and get aboard to wreak havoc if possible—they were met by Wolfe and a squad of his Battloids. Most of the fighting was too close even for hand weapons, and the conflict came down to REF alloy fist against metallic Invid claw—mecha feet and elbows and knees came into play.

  A Pack member wrenched off a Pincer’s arm and flung it away; the Pincer’s power systems overloaded and blew it apart from within. The enemy Armored Officer unit and two Pincers seized a Battloid from behind and began pulling it to pieces.

  But the Invid were outnumbered, being beaten or kicked or torn to bits. Just then more Hovertanks showed up, in Gladiator mode: stumpy, two-legged walking artillery pieces the size of a house. Their tremendously powerful blasts nailed the last of the interlopers; then all the tanks went to Gladiator to repulse any further attempts to land on the starship.

  The GMU’s massive main gun had sent out its inferno shots again and again, but all the enemy mecha had dispersed, the clam-ships unimportant for the moment. Vince Grant ceased fire and diverted power to the secondary gun emplacements, to conserve energy for the battle.