Shadow of the Warmaster

by Jo Clayton

  “And if we go in low, you won’t have to run the ballast motors.”

  “Run them a shorter time anyway.” He spoke absently as he watched the pulses from the Palace scanners go ghosting past them, invisibilities made visible by the field, eerie undulating tadpoles of light swimming through the mist and vanishing behind them. Five minutes. He bent over the dead reckoner, touching the controls with careful delicacy to keep Wind-skimmer moving in the right direction. Ten minutes. Another chime. He started the pumps sucking. “Ten minutes more,” he said. “Then we’re there.”

  He brought the airship down and down until she moved about forty meters above the grass, then he shut the motors off and let the wind take them. The sudden silence felt odd, almost painful. He didn’t want to talk, nor, it seemed, did any of the others. He watched the hypnotic dance of the scanner pulses as the silvery wigglers darted past and past, endless numbers of them-a dance that ended so abruptly he leaned forward, startled, not believing he wasn’t seeing them any longer. “Elli.”

  “What?”

  “Something’s happened to the scanners. Those dragonflies? Maybe they had business at the Palace.”

  “What else could it be?”

  He shrugged, settled back. “Pittipat wouldn’t put his hide at risk, not if he knew it. They did it, all right, those aliens. I wonder who they are and what they want.”

  “I’m afraid we’re going to find out if we go in like we planned. How close are we?”

  “Two, three minutes, why?”

  “You sure the altimeter is working?”

  “As well as it ever does. I’ve been flying since I was a tweener, Elli. You get to know where you’re riding by how the air feels. The reading’s not out more than a yard or so either way.”

  “I was thinking we could have dropped below the wall, that would stop the pulses, wouldn’t it? Why don’t you take Skimmer up again and see what happens?”

  “No. There’s no reason to risk the sound of the pump being picked up.”

  She grimaced. “You’re the pilot.”

  5

  The Palace slept; dim red sparks looped steadily across the gardens like fireflies tied to a track, the guards undisturbed in their rounds. Karrel Goza brought Windskimmer over their heads to the open-air theater. He turned her nose into the wind, touched on the motors and used a trickle of their power to hold her in place for the minute or so it took Elmas Ofka and her isyas to slide down the ladders onto the top tier of the theater seats, then he brought the airship around and cut the motors off once more, let the wind drift her out of the enclosure and across the tip of the lake to the Imperator’s hunting preserve, an ancient forest that the Hordar had left wild and the Huvved hadn’t touched.

  Half a kilometer in, he dropped a mooring cable with a grasping claw, anchored Windskimmer to one of the larger trees, turned off the cuux field and arranged the two chairs so he could stretch himself across them and drowse away the time until he had to go back for Elmas Ofka and the isyas.

  6. Begin with Elmas Ofka on the top tier of theater seats, her isyas around her waiting for a guard to move on, then shift to-

  the maze of corridors in the subterra of the Imperator’s Palace/concrete tunnels, gray paint on the walls, enigmatic numbers and glyphs in dirt dulled black, grit on the floors that make walking silently close to impossible, branches cutting off at angles to make things more confusing, ramps leading to lower levels at unpredictable intervals, stairways behind half-doors, pervasive hum of airmachines that keep cold dry air moving restlessly through the maze, six meter strips of coldlight tubes pasted in staccato lines overhead and on each wall. Voices echo an indeterminate distance.

  Elmas Ofka crouched behind the curving stone bench; condensation trickled in cold rivulets down her body, dripped from her nose and saturated the tight cowl that covered her head and the lower part of her face. Around her she could hear the isyas breathing; they sounded louder than surf after a storm. Thankful that the wind was blowing into her face so the cats wouldn’t scent her, she held her own breath as she watched the guard below in the well of the theater wave his handlamp about. Even in the back beams of the powerful lamp he wasn’t much more than a silhouette, but she could see that he was broad and muscular, probably one of the laggas old Pittipat brought back from exile on Tassalga to put the boot harder into ordinary Hordar. He looked regrettably alert, more so than the cats who were shivering and stepping with exaggerated delicacy over the wet stone. Silently she urged them on, her teeth clamped so hard her jaw ached.

  After what seemed an eternity, he gave the cats a toothy whistle, slapped at them with the leashes and followed them across the oval well. There were double doors at the far end; she heard the jingling of keys as he unlocked them, the sounds amplified by the acoustics of the place, then the chunk and thud as he pushed one of the doors open and whistled the cats outside.

  As soon as the door boomed shut, Elmas Ofka stood, leaped onto the bench and ran along it to the nearest flight of stairs, the isyas trotting silently behind her. She led them down the stairs, but stopped before she stepped into the well to let Tezzi Ofka spray her once again with the scent-destroyer a cousin of hers had come up with, a mixture of kedaga, an herb cats avoided like most of them avoided water, crushed crab beetle and stinkfish oil. Even to her relatively insensitive nostrils it was a revolting mess, but better than having the cats set up a howl when they came across an intruder’s scent trace on the guard’s next appearance here.

  As soon as the others were sprayed, she ran across the flagging to the raised platform in the center of the well and stopped by the door in the near end; according to her information it led down to the dressing rooms and, more importantly, into the tech’s area where the lighting was controlled and the other effects were contrived. And where there was rumored to be access to the subterra. She waved Harli Tanggаr forward, stepped back so the isya could work on the door.

  Harli started to kneel, straightened up. She put her hand on the door and pushed gently. It swung open. “Ondar,” she breathed, “look.” She pointed at the latchtongue, neatly sliced through. “Someone’s ahead of us. The aliens you think?”

  Elmas Ofka bent closer; whatever had dealt with the latch was similar to the cutters N’Ceegh made for them. “Probably.” She straightened, waved the isyas closer, pulled her cowl off her mouth. “I want to go in,” she whispered, “but I won’t take you where you don’t want to go. It’s all or none. Call it.”

  Harli Tanggаr tugged at her cowl, uncovering a broad grin. “In,” she breathed. The grin went round the circle. In, in, yet again in.

  Elmas Ofka nodded, drew the cowl higher so only her eyes showed. She pushed the door open and stepped into the vestibule.

  7

  The entrance to the subterra was wedged open a crack; a short distance inside a roving-guard was lying against a wall. Tezzi Ofka knelt beside him. “Still alive,” she said, speaking in a throaty mutter that dropped dead less than a bodylength away.

  “Knocked out?”

  Tezzi Ofka shook her head. “No bump or bruise. N’Ceegh is working on a thing he calls a stunner. Could be something like that.”

  “They aren’t worried about someone finding him.”

  “Looks like.”

  Elmas Ofka frowned along the grimy corridor, glanced over her shoulder at the other branches fading into dimness as they dipped downward. “They seem to know where they’re going.”

  “Kind of them to mark the way for us.”

  Elmas stretched upward, touched a small white splotch high on the wall. She settled back, looked at her finger, rubbed her thumb against the sticky white stain. “Marked more than one way. Let’s go.”

  Following the trail of white splotches accented with the bodies of unconscious guards, N’Ceegh’s spotter in her hand, Elmas Ofka led them deeper and deeper into the maze, making better time than she’d expected thanks to the alien invaders who’d cleared the way for them. Down one level, two, three…

 
; The needle jumped on the spotter; Elmas stopped, signaled Lirrit. The isya dropped to her stomach and wriggled around the bend on toes and elbows, vanishing for several seconds before she came back the same way, jumped to her feet and brought her head close to Elmas Ofka’s. “Aliens. Two. Stopped. Watching something.”

  Elmas Ofka thought a moment, then took the isyas back around several corners until she came to a branching tunnel. Eyes on the spotter, she turned into it and began picking her way to a point equivalent to where she’d been; twice the spotter jumped, twice Lirrit Ofka went ahead and darted the unlucky wanderer, then Elmas Ofka rounded a bend and saw the end of the tunnel; beyond that there was what looked like a vast open space. After signaling Lirrit Ofka and half the isyas to wait, she led the other three toward the opening, keeping close to the wall, moving warily, ready to dart anything that popped into the arch.

  She dropped to her knees and eased her head past the edge.

  The room beyond was immense; the ceiling was three levels up, aboveground, with a series of slim horizontal windows circling just below it, windows with one-way glass in them, black now because of the fog and clouds. The floor was another level below where she knelt; it was laid with black and white tiles in a swirling pattern that made her dizzy when she shifted her eyes too quickly. At the north wall there were several tiers of theater seats with a separate thronechair for the Imperator; at the south end, near where she was, a large curved screen, blindingly white, took up part of the wall; in the space it left there were three inconspicuous doors, one to the east of the screen and two on the west. A guard stumped back and forth in front of the single door, the scrape of his footsteps loud enough to send her heart knocking in her throat.

  She frowned; the chamber was filled with shadows, except near the screen which seemed to gather in and amplify what light there was. Nothing moved except the guard. Why was he still moving? Was he beyond the range of the alien’s weapons? They were at least ten yards closer to him than she was. Did they have to be almost on the man before they could take him out? Why were they waiting? What did they expect to happen? She glanced down at the spotter, stared at it, startled; there were two spikes on the line, not one. She shifted it slowly back and forth, watching the spikes shift. Something else was out there, something closing on the guard. She moved her eyes slowly over that dizzying floor; whatever it was, she couldn’t see it, no matter how hard she searched. She looked at the scanner. The two spikes had nearly converged.

  A section of floor reared up. She heard a hum like an angry bee. The guard dropped. There was a short whistle, then a small alien with brownish fur was standing over the guard’s body, waiting.

  8. First the video room (that’s what it looked like, giant size), then the operations cell of the mainBrain.

  We parked the miniskips on the stage, out of sight behind some low railings and got into the subterra with almost no difficulty. Adelaar had sense enough not to argue and let Pels take the lead, she’d seen a little of his work on Weersyll; besides, she was carrying a heavy pack she cherished like a child, her tools. I had a launch tube slung across my back and half a dozen clips for it in a pouch on my belt; the darts in the clips were loaded with bang juice strong enough to take out a wall if the need arose. Portable back door, you might say. Pels was in huntmode and harder to see than a black ship in the CoalSack. Shadow made him a special stunner, one small enough for him to carry in his mouth; he had it in his fist now and used it whenever he came on a guard we couldn’t avoid or some idiot with weak kidneys heading for the can. There weren’t many of them, thank whatever. It was late and most sensible folk were sleeping.

  I was navigator, reading the chart, calling the turns, laying on rubwhite to guide us should we come back this way when the job was done. I shot it up near where the ceiling met the wall, where not many people would notice it.

  We didn’t have much trouble; Pels laid out half a dozen, I shoved them against the wall and on we went. Boring, eh? If you plan right, that’s the way it should be. You don’t want interesting experiences at a time like this. We used about fifteen minutes reaching the place Kumari took one look at and called the video room. Then we waited while Pels sneaked up on the guard. It was slow and tedious, nothing we could do but watch our backs and sweat out the computer’s reaction time; some of the men Pels blanked had to be guards, at least one had to have missed a check-in by now, maybe even two checks if our Luck went sour on us. We were counting on redundancy; there’s no gadget made by man or god that’s foolproof, you have to include some sort of back check to make sure an idiot particle hasn’t wandered where it shouldn’t.

  Stunner hidden in his mouth, Pels eeled forward on toes and elbows, his fur mimicking the pattern of the tiles; if you were as high as we were and you knew what to look for, you could find him; the floor would shift a little as if something moved a lens across it. But if you were down there walking a tedious stint like that guard, you’d most likely never see him until he had you.

  As Pels got closer, the guard’s nervousness increased. He kept looking around, snapping and unsnapping the flap of his holster, pacing jerkily about, wheeling and glaring at each whisper of sound. Pels changed his technique. He moved and froze, moved and froze, timing his progress to the jitters of the guard; the operating range of that stunner was just under two meters so he had to be very close before he could trigger it and hope to do the job.

  Before he went down, Pels got a good look at the man. “Fiveworlder,” he said. “Looks like the local bigass has brought some muggers home from exile; I suppose he feels safer with gits like that keeping the crawlers off his back.”

  Squat and powerful, sniffing trouble even if he couldn’t see it, the Fiver swung his head back and forth as if questing for a scent. He was good all right, I wouldn’t want to be the one to take him, but he’d never gone up against an Aurranger Rau in huntmode. Pels got him going away, laid him out like butcher’s meat.

  Adelaar and I sprinted along the ramp that led down from our tunnel, moving like the devils in hell were chasing us. We got the door open and she went to work; she’d spent some time over what the EYEs had told her about the system, so she needed about thirty seconds to put a hold on the alarms. Pels and I nosed about. The place looked empty, but we weren’t taking chances, we checked every shadow. There was no one about, no techs or guards, just the interface ticking over by itself. When we got out front again, Adelaar’d begun the tedious process of switching the instructions of the alarm system. I could see it wasn’t all that difficult, she was clucking and snorting as she worked, scorn oozing from every pore. Watching her was about as interesting as watching grass grow, so I went to help Pels carry the guard inside.

  We’d just dropped him behind a bench when the door slammed open.

  “Don’t move.”

  Pels and I froze; there was a load of menace in that whispery female voice. I took a chance and turned my head. Seven more females in black with knitted black socks over their faces followed the first through the door, spreading out so they could keep their weapons on us from half a dozen directions. Definitely not authorized personnel. The wormholes were having a busy night. “Can I straighten up?” I said, as mildly as I could manage. “I’m getting a crick in my back.”

  The leader used her free hand to tap twice at her weapon. “The darts these shoot don’t stun,” she said, “they kill.” The look in her eyes which was all I could see of her face said don’t push it, I like you about as much as a bad smell. “Three seconds for a man your size. Less for your friend.” She thought that over a moment. “Probably less. Keep that in mind. Get yourself straight. Slow and easy. That’s right. Now. Both of you. Step over that bench and flatten your backs against the wall. That’s good.” She glanced at Adelaar who hadn’t been interested enough to look around and see what was happening. “What’re you doing?”

  “Don’t bother me,” Adelaar snapped; hands briefly stilled, she scowled over her shoulder at the speaker. “Unless you want a load of
trouble landing on your necks.”

  “Talk as you work.”

  “No.” Adelaar turned back to the board and went on with what she’d been doing.

  I didn’t like the way that conversation was going. Adelaar had no intention of being reasonable, especially since she was right; what she was doing was more important than this woman’s curiosity. However, I was fairly sure the woman wouldn’t see it that way. “Uh,” I said, “I can tell you in general terms what’s going on. She’s not playing games with you, you’d better let her concentrate on what she’s doing; it can get touchy, changing the rules on an alarm system that complex.”

  The woman’s eyes switched back to me. She wasn’t liking me much more than before, but she was willing to listen. “What do you mean?”

  “You came across some bodies on your way here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Some of them were guards. You know how they check in?”

  “We know there’s something they’re supposed to do.”

  Fools and drunks, they say Luck looks after them, maybe they should add angry female rebels. Going into a place like this with no preparation… ah! “Every twenty some minutes they touch a thumbplate set up along their routes. That tells the Brain there that they’re on the job and where they should be. If a guard doesn’t report and all systems look clear, the lid blows off. My friend is changing the rules, making touch and no-touch equivalent states. In other words, it doesn’t matter what a guard does or doesn’t do.” I snatched a look at Adelaar. “No, I’m wrong, she’s done with that. She’s putting together a clear corridor so we can get out clean once we have what we came for. Did you use those darts on anyone?”