Dark Powers

by Jack McKinney

  Lron, his snore surprisingly soft, had rolled away from his watching place at the cave’s mouth. Kami stepped to the very edge to gaze out into the night. A glow lit the horizon, and he knew that somewhere over there was the great domed capital city, Tracialle, the single major population center of Karbarra.

  Kami and his people diplomatically refrained from ridiculing the Karbarrans and their days-long chanting rituals and dramatic, sometimes painful rites and grandiose reenactments, all performed in the name of some Foresight the ursinoids claimed to achieve. The Higher World was nothing one could contact that way; the Karbarrans were simply indulging themselves in mass delusions.

  The Higher World spoke to the Gerudans through their every sense, thanks to their strange ecosystem, and showed them routes and possibilities. Thus, they were allowed to listen in on the constant monologue put forth by every single extant thing, by dint of its very existence, and—sometimes—to comprehend what was being said.

  Kami saw a vision and didn’t hesitate. Noiselessly gathering his equipment, he scampered down the narrow ledge leading from the cave mouth to the foot of the cliff.

  It was as his vision had shown him. Kami raced light-footed across the sands toward the glow on the horizon. He followed the lay of the land, as sure in his skills as any wild animal.

  Yet, somehow his vision hadn’t shown him a swift flight of Enforcer skirmish ships that, flying high above, picked him up on infrared heat detectors. Nor had it shown him the troll-like Inorganic Scrim and Odeon mecha that appeared without warning in the darkness and surrounded him.

  Kami turned to run, but they were everywhere, as big as any Battloid, reaching for him with their multiple appendages—metallic claws and segmented tentacles and waldolike Robotech hands. He groped for the Owens gun, but it was ripped from his back.

  There was no time to use his commo link with the rest of the scouting party; he tore his breathing mask away to howl a single mournful, echoing cry into the desert night.

  The cry woke Lron at once, and Bela leapt up, throwing back her cloak. The Humans were a little slower, but not much.

  They didn’t dare show a light, but donned their night-sight equipment. Between Lron’s sense of smell and Bela’s eye for tracks, the two reconstructed what had happened.

  “Another Gerudan follows his mirages to a bad end,” wuffed Lron.

  “He came here to help your people, just like the rest of us,” Jack sneered back, “so quit mocking ’im.” Bela nodded in agreement, and Karen, standing to one side, studied Jack anew.

  “As you were, Lieutenant!” Rick snapped.

  The question was, what to do now? As many as three of the original eight on his team might be dead, and the remainder—himself included—were quite possibly stranded in the midst of an aroused Invid stronghold. All of a sudden, the Tactical Information Center back in SDF-3 didn’t seem like such a bad tour of duty.

  Rick was prepared to believe that Kami was in the hands of the biped Inorganic grotesques of the Invid. But was he supposed to lead his remaining scouts out for a desperate rescue mission, like the Fellowship of the Ring off on their marathon jog across the plains of Rohan?

  Damn it, this operation was in a very tight spot, and he couldn’t sacrifice more people for the sake of a vanished team member who was possibly hallucinating and quite probably dead.

  “We’ll stay put right here and give Hagane a chance to get back,” he went on. “Everybody make ready to leave on a moment’s notice. Baker, Penn: warm up some rations over in the cul-de-sac, where the Invid won’t pick up the heat readings. And try another commo call to the shuttle while you’re at it.

  “Bela, stand watch at the cave mouth. Are your night-sight goggles working? Good. Lron, come here and help me orient my map readouts on the local topo features.”

  The rest of them got busy, and suddenly they were a unit again. They were so intent on their tasks that Hagane’s sudden, screeching return came as a shock that made them raise weapons’ muzzles, wide-eyed.

  This time, Bela’s pet wore a capsule on each leg. As she read through the delicate papers, Bela frowned. In a few terse Zentraedi lingua franca phrases, she told the rest of them what she read. Rem and Gnea had resumed contact with the Sentinels’ ship, and the shuttle was space worthy, but the special commo rig for reaching the scouting team was permanently out of commission.

  Then Bela went on to reveal the secret of the children of Karbarra. As she did, Lron’s shoulders slumped more and more, until they began heaving, outlined against the growing light of day. It took the rest of them a moment to realize that the poor old fellow, as strong as an oak, was weeping.

  In the end, he told them the same story Jean Grant and the rest had heard up above. They also had hope, because Lisa and the other leaders had put a plan together. Bela’s brows knit as she puzzled over the symbols. When she caught on, she threw her head back and roared, and smote Lron on the back.

  Jack Baker cussed under his breath, and Karen’s features drew taut with resolve. Rick stood up from the rock he had been sitting on. “It looks like we get the desert tour after all. Bela, do you think the Invid will be able to sweat any information out of Kami?”

  She was caressing Hagane’s Alpha-sleek head. “If you think that, you don’t know Kami. They could dismember him, and he would regard it as a learning experience granted him by the Universe.”

  Rick nodded. He did some calculating and realized that there was no time to retrace the whole journey from the shuttle’s landing place.

  “Send Hagane back to the shuttle to let them know that we acknowledge the plan and will stand ready at our present position. Mention Kami’s capture, too.” He wanted to send some special word to Lisa, but that would take unfair advantage of his rank. He rubbed the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger.

  As Bela bent to her task, mumbling something about being regarded as a “lowly scribe, instead of a war leader,” Rick turned to Jack and Karen.

  “Double-check all gear, especially the weapons. Lron, check the route Kami took down the cliff. Do it carefully, to make sure there are no tracks to lead the Invid back to us.”

  “The toughest duty of all, now, eh, sir?” Karen said.

  Rick nodded ruefully. “Yeah: waiting.”

  They say the dying part’s not so bad; but then, we haven’t got much firsthand testimony.

  CHAPTER

  SEVENTEEN

  This book won’t tell you how to cheat, because when you fail to deal with reality, you only cheat yourself. What I mean to do is turn you into a shrewd player who wins whenever possible.

  Kermit Busganglion, The Hand You’re Dealt

  Tesla almost felt like his old self again, bathed and arrayed in fine raiments—robes far above the station of most mere Scientists, more appropriate, in fact, to the Regent himself—and ushered along by numerous attendants.

  But the attendants were wary Sentinels armed with an alarming variety of weapons, and he was still a captive. A large hold had been converted into a commo studio, and techs were warming up equipment for contact with the Invid-occupied Karbarran capital.

  Ah, if only this illusion were the truth! thought Tesla.

  Before him some of his worst enemies stood chained, disheveled and bedraggled-looking, thanks to makeup and wardrobe. Learna, Kami’s mate, was there, and Crysta, her paw-hands restless in their confinement. Between them stood Lisa Hayes Hunter, who wasn’t about to be left out of this grand swipe at the vaunted Invid group intellect.

  Glimmering Baldan, froward Burak, and one of Bela’s lieutenants, a Junoesque brunette, were fastened in place, too—all looking like they had been dragged in the mud and given a taste of the energy lash. At either end of the slave coffle, like living bookends, were the Haydonites, Veidt and Sarna, hovering some few inches off the deckplates. Their robes were torn and faces smudged, and their necks were encircled by riveted collars, since they had no wrists to cuff.

  Janice Em watched from the sidelines, ostens
ibly a guard but more of a media adviser—and more of an observer than anyone there knew. Sue Graham, the young camerawoman, was production coordinator for the project. She had signed on the Sentinels’ mission because it offered her more freedom to do her job her own way.

  “You know that this can never work.” Tesla tried, one last time, to get them to understand. “We Invid are a perceptive and wary race, our intellect boundless! Are we to be fooled by this naive bit of play-acting?”

  “We’ll worry about that,” Lisa said to him. “Just do as we’ve told you. Oh, and by the way …”

  She motioned, and two Spherians came forward with a gorgeous jeweled collar, a kind of regal gorget. They fastened it around Tesla’s thick neck, and it clicked shut with a strange finality. He could see that it had been fashioned from some of the dragon’s-hoard of gemstones, collected from many planets, that he had planned to take back to the Regent, before the Sentinels staged their inconvenient and patently unfair uprising.

  Still, he thought, admiring himself in the reflective metal of a nearby power panel, it looked quite striking on him. Something he would one day gloat over, when he had his revenge.

  “Thirty seconds,” Sue Graham called out.

  The ersatz slaves moved to their place in the background. Out of vid-pickup range, guards on either side trained their weapons on Tesla. As the time counted down, Lisa stepped forward a bit, her chains ringing, a sardonic look on her face. “And, Tesla? One more thing: you’d better play your part exactly right.”

  “Is that a threat, female?”

  “It’s a fact,” Lisa told him evenly. “That collar’s locked on you now, and it’s got fourteen ounces of shaped Tango-Seven explosive charges built into it. If you disappoint us, I’ll blow your head off in front of all your friends down there.”

  “Surely, in this lower-lifeform gender business, the females are the worst of a bad lot!” Tesla nearly wept. But then a tech was silencing them. A moment later, the image of an Invid officer unit—the heavy cannon mounted on its shoulders making it look like Robotech Siamese triplets—peered out of the screen at them.

  It seemed to recoil a bit in a gesture of surprise. “Tesla!” it said in the strange, single-sideband sound of a mecha drone.

  “Yes, of course it’s me!” Tesla broke in. The lights around him felt disturbingly hot, and he wondered if they might set off the explosives around his tender throat. The Sentinels couldn’t be that deranged, could they? On the other hand …

  “Let me speak to the Living Computer!” Tesla burst out. “I arrived just in the nick of time to drive our enemies from this star system, but I have important news!”

  The officer appeared to hesitate, but Tesla screamed, “Do as you are ordered!”

  Used to obeying, it complied. In another moment, a Living Computer appeared before Tesla on the screen. It was far smaller than the one captured on Tirol, and seemed to have less peripheral equipment and fewer convolutions.

  We’re inside their system! Lisa exulted, trying to look defeated and numbed from beatings. Here goes.

  Tesla began his spiel again: how he had returned to Karbarra in time to repulse the Sentinel raid, and how he needed landing clearance, to repair damage and hold urgent consultation with the Living Computer.

  What the Computer didn’t see, what Tesla himself barely felt (and dared not register), were lines of mental energy reaching out from Veidt and Sarna. The Haydonites—bracketing Tesla from either side in a kind of mental crossfire—meshed their wills and thoughts with his, guiding and reinforcing, sending a steady current of emphasis and believability along the link Tesla had established with the Invid brain.

  Invisible to all, Veidt and Sarna manipulated Tesla and, through him, the brain, though their powers were very weak here, so far from Haydon IV. But it didn’t take a vast, brute effort of mental force to accomplish what the Sentinels needed; it only took a slight touch here, a psychic stroke there, to create a conducive atmosphere. It only took a convincing patina of truth.

  The Living Computer went so far as to call off its red alert—even more than the Sentinels were hoping for—and granted immediate landing clearance.

  “And, incidentally,” it added. “The Inorganics have captured an alien, a Gerudan, out in the wastes. He’s being brought here now. I shall begin the torture slowly, so that you may enjoy the finale.”

  “No, no, er …” Tesla didn’t know exactly what to say, but knew his captors wouldn’t take kindly to having one of their number subjected to Invid inquisition.

  There was no time to consult with the Sentinels, so the scientist improvised. “I wish to examine him whilst he is still intact. Therefore, have him imprisoned with the other hostages for now.”

  “Very good, Tesla,” the brain responded. “When do you expect to make planetfall?”

  “Um, my vessel has suffered damage in the heroic fight to drive away those insurrectionists, and so I will make one decelerating orbit before making my landing.”

  “As you wish.” When the brain signed off, Tesla’s knees buckled. He moaned weakly, begging for his captors to remove the resplendent collar. Lisa turned and shouted orders for the bridge. The helmswoman, a Karbarran nearly Lron’s size, brought the enormous wooden wheel over. The Farrago left orbit, to edge out of the planetary ring for a Karbarran approach.

  Down in the bays and holds and hangar decks, the mecha came to full alert, systems at high pitch. Logans, Alphas, Betas, Hovertanks; drum-armed Spartans with their giant, cylindrical missile launchers; long-barreled MAC IIs that were walking hydras of cannon tubes; quad-muzzle Raider X self-contained artillery batteries; and ground-shaking Excalibers bristling with a half-dozen diverse heavy-weapons systems—the Godzillas of the second-generation Destroids.

  Scuttlebutt about the Karbarran children and the concentration camp had filtered its way through all ranks in no time, though nobody had made any official announcements.

  So, they think they’re gonna gun down a buncha kids, huh?

  The mecha formed up and waited, their crews avid for the word to go.

  “That’s it,” Rem said. “That’s as much as I can get working. Farrago says turn-to, and that means there’s no time left.”

  Gnea nodded, taking a place behind him in the communications officer’s chair since there had been no time to repair the copilot’s. She took one last look in the aft hold, to make sure that Halidarre was well secured. Then she said, “Prepared.”

  Rem smiled, punching up the ridiculous mission the shuttle would have to fly. Admiral Hunter’s book said he should let the computers do the flying, but the computers had been used as a scratching pole by a very big polecat. Besides, Rem had invented new computer designs and he didn’t trust them as much as people who knew less about them.

  The shuttle’s engines shrilled, coming up to power.

  “Not long now,” Rem told Gnea.

  The Farrago began its long approach orbit on a course chosen by the Sentinels because it led through the least-well-monitored portions of the enemy detection skynet.

  This time, Tesla’s face filled the communication screen. His would-be slaves couldn’t be exhibited because they were all otherwise involved in getting Farrago and its fighting forces ready to hit Karbarra like a sledgehammer.

  “Er, Karbarra Control,” Tesla said delicately. He still wore that dismaying, priceless bib; moreover, there were unsmiling Sentinels surrounding him, just out of camera range, with an appalling collection of energy devices and even cruder things—pointed, glittering implements with unpleasant implications.

  “Some of these pesky ablative surfaces and hull features on the captive ships I’ve incorporated into mine have begun to break up under the stress of entry. Inferior technology, you know. I’m sure they’ll burn up upon hitting the deeper atmosphere, but you might, um, alert your sensor techs not to pay any attention to the little cloud of objects coming down with me.”

  The Haydonites’ spell was still in effect. “Of course,” said the Li
ving Computer, “of course. Your landing area is at coordinates 12–53–58 relative; we will roll back a segment of the Tracialle city dome to permit your entrance.”

  Tesla tried to sound enthusiastic and grateful, expecially since one of those horrid, overmuscled Praxian harridans stood ready to stick a halberd into his side if he made a mistake.

  “Oh! How very kind! I will speak to the Regent of your cooperation and efficiency.”

  “Thank you, Tesla.” The brain signed off.

  * * *

  “We’ve got a tentative location on that concentration camp,” Vince relayed up to Lisa, “but it’s still not dead certain. It’s obvious that they’re not in the camp Lron mentioned, because that’s been torn down. But we’re ninety percent sure we’ve got the new one spotted.”

  “We’ll go in with a wide deployment of the attack forces,” she decided. “I want everything we’ve got in the air.”

  “All set,” he answered.

  “Then, begin launch operations.”

  The composite ship began seeding the sky with air-combat elements. The VTs and the Logans went first; then the Skulls dropped and deployed, beginning a slow approach toward Tracialle, skimming the ground. Max and Miriya got the Skulls in proper array. Down almost at the surface, Jonathan Wolfe’s tankers made their drop and took up least-conspicuous routes, minimizing the chances of being spotted and riding low on their surface-effect cushions.

  Farther along, the flagship moving even slower, Lisa ordered the dropping of the scouting force. Fighters on Tiresian airbikes, one-passenger Gerudan flitters and Perytonian sky cars, and even Veidt and Sarna in their bubble-topped Haydonite flier—shaped like a Robotech ice-cream cone—dispersed. They took up an immediate search formation, preparing to move closer to the city in order to pinpoint the location of the Karbarran children.

  Rick and the others heard the roar, were ready for it. With a wash of sand and superheated air, the shuttle set down at the foot of the cliffs. The star Yirrbisst was just rising, bringing daylight to Karbarra’s barren landscape.