Crown of the Serpent

by Allen Wold

  A transparent sphere was superimposed around the volume of victim systems, then another, smaller one was drawn inside that and more or less concentric with the first, then another deeper within, and at last a small sphere at the very center. "But as you can see," the sergeant went on, "there are no stars or systems at the middle."

  Then the uninhabited stars returned to the display, little dia­monds of green. None were within the innermost sphere, or even near it.

  "But there is something there," the sergeant said, and the center sphere of the display enlarged until it filled the entire screen and beyond. A moment later a small dot appeared at the center of the still enlarging sphere. The image steadied for a moment, then there was a jump in magnification to show what might have been a small moon, craterless but not smooth, and very dark.

  "What the hell is that?" Polski demanded.

  "Preliminary probes," the sergeant said, "indicate that it's an artificial world of some kind." The lower left quadrant of the screen was replaced with a set of bar-charts. "The mass of the object is only a fraction of what one would expect if it were solid rock, or even ice, and the elemental survey indicates that it is in fact ninety percent metal, so we have to assume a hollow sphere." That data could be read from the charts, by those who understood them. "It is most dense at the center, which may mean that's where the main power plant is, but there are no indications of power of any kind." A new set of charts replaced the first.

  "How big is it?" somebody asked.

  "About three times the radius of any planetary station we have," the sergeant answered.

  "This is fantastic," Darcy said. "Even if this isn't the raiders' base, we'll have to look into it sooner or later."

  Rikard recognized an eager hunger in her voice, if only be­cause he felt the same hunger in himself.

  "And," the sergeant went on, "since there's no noticeable energy output, even in infrared, we have to assume that this station is a derelict, and has been for quite some time."

  "Where did it come from?" somebody asked.

  The sergeant turned to look at the speaker. "You've got to be kidding," she said. "This thing was discovered only three stan­dard days ago. Your guess is as good as anybody else's."

  Polski got up and went to stand in front of the screen. "This is important," he said. It was almost as if he were speaking to himself. He stared at the enigmatic object on the screen for a long moment, then turned and looked around the room. "I think it's worth investigating," he went on.

  There was a general murmur of consensus. Rikard glanced sidelong at Darcy, saw her grin slightly. "Not the job we were asked to do," he said softly.

  "He doesn't need us," she whispered back. "But damn, I wish we could get into that place before he does."

  "We can always pay a visit after we get the Leaves. You think they'd let us?"

  "Maybe we shouldn't ask," Darcy said with a self-satisfied smile.

  "Major Sukiro," Polski was saying, "I want you to take charge of an expedition to check out that thing."

  "And miss out on all the fun here? Let Major Chiang go."

  "You're the best qualified for the job," Polski said tiredly. "You'll have a gunship and two platoons of goons."

  "You think that might actually be the raiders' base?"

  "I think it's possible, and if it is, I want you there to deal with it."

  "And who's going to do my work here?"

  "Major Chiang. You'll leave as soon as the goons are equipped and on the gunship." He turned to the com sergeant, who nodded and started making arrangements. Then Polski came over to where Rikard and Darcy were seated. There was a glint in his eye that Rikard didn't like.

  "I suppose we can go on about our business now," Rikard said hopefully.

  "I want you to go along with Sukiro," Polski told him.

  "But why? You don't need a secret agent now."

  "That's true, but you've had experience with entering and exploring mysterious structures, you can figure out what to do and where to go. The police just charge in with guns blazing. That might not be appropriate."

  Rikard would have thought he was joking if it weren't for the intensity and seriousness of his voice. "All Sukiro has to do," he said, "is take her time. Look around. Put herself in the place of the people who built it."

  "Easy for you to say," Polski said, and he was not joking at all. "We're not explorers, kid, we don't have the right mindset. And besides, if what you felt at that house was correct, then there are Tathas to deal with. You're the only person I know who has dealt with the Tathas and survived."

  "There have to be others on Kholtri, who'd jump at the chance to help out if it would mean their freedom—or a re­ward."

  "And who could I trust, if I could find them on short notice? No, Rik, I need you now, more than before."

  "You don't know that."

  "All right, then, how about going for its own sake. You'd love to get into that place before the authorities do, wouldn't you? And you will, if you help me now, without having to sneak, and who knows—I certainly don't—what you might be able to bring out—maybe even with the Federation's blessing."

  Rikard tried to think of a demurer but couldn't.

  "Isn't this just exactly the kind of thing you're looking for?" Polski went on.

  "It is that," Darcy almost whispered.

  "You think about it," Polski said. "Now I've got things to do." He left them and went to talk with Brenner and Anavür.

  Rikard and Darcy sat there for a moment, doing, in spite of themselves, just what Polski had told them to.

  "So what are we going to do?" Darcy said at last. "That derelict sure is tempting, but… " She got to her feet. "Let's get out of here."

  They went out the front door but sat down on the step just outside.

  "We don't really have to do this," Darcy said. "Just tell Leo no, then let's take the next ship out."

  Rikard didn't answer. He looked around at the desolate city. Where the light was right he couldn't see the glass walls at all, just the floors, connecting stairs, and supporting columns, with here and there an enclosed sanitary. He could look through building after building, until even mis fine glass's cumulative refraction eventually grayed out his vision, maybe three or four blocks away.

  "The thing that bothers me most," Rikard said at last, "is being pushed. I hate being pushed."

  "My sentiments exactly," Darcy said. "Leo doesn't need us especially. How about Kevin St. James? He doesn't know any­thing about the Tathas, but he could do almost everything else Leo wants."

  "Sure he could. He's about the slickest Gesta I've ever met."

  "Then there's Vashnia ka'Gorolshir."

  "Who?"

  "She's an Atreef on Kholtri. I'll bet she knows a lot about Tathas."

  "Would she take the job?"

  "Probably not. Maybe Silver MacReedy. What she doesn't know she can learn the first time out."

  "I've heard of her," Rikard said. "Isn't she a little bit cau­tious?" Meaning she hardly ever took chances.

  "I guess so," Darcy admitted. "But she could do it."

  "Better one of them than me. Except for one thing."

  "The Tathas."

  "Exactly. Except possibly for Vashnia ka'Gorolshir, I'm the only person I know who's had any experience with them, and Vashnia's on Kholtri, and I wouldn't bet that any Atreef would leave there—not this generation at least."

  "Then let Sukiro deal with them the best she can."

  "You don't know what you're saying, Darcy. I've been with them, I've been touched by them, I've felt the full force of their psychic projections. And I've felt them here."

  "I still don't see how they could possibly figure into this."

  "What if somebody on Kholtri found out about them, found out a way to shield themselves from their psychic emanations —the way the miners protect themselves from balktapline ore —and has gathered up a bunch of them and is using them to subdue the towns they want to raid. Something like that."
<
br />   "But Tathas are mindless, or at least so insane it makes no difference. How could anybody get them to cooperate?"

  "Force them. Bring them out in cans, they'd feel safe in cans. Then expose them to sunlight and open sky. They panic, broadcast their agony all over the place, everybody feels it and falls down in shock. Or maybe use the Tathas effluvia some­how, find the active compound, distill it, spray it around, and use it to open the victims' minds to their own telepathic com­mands, even if they aren't naturally telepathic. However they do it, if Sukiro goes in there unprotected, and the raiders are there, and they are using the Tathas in some way, then they just do it again and Sukiro's force is knocked unconscious in less than a second. She won't even know what happened."

  "Are you saying that you want to go along?"

  "No, but I sure as hell feel guilty about turning Polski down."

  "You almost make it sound like, if you don't go with her, she won't come back."

  "That's exactly what I'm afraid of," he said. He stood up and went inside. She followed him a moment later.

  Polski was talking with Major Chiang and several of her sub­ordinates. Rikard went up to him and said, "I'm going along."

  Polski turned a broad smile on him. "That's great."

  "But I've got to have some say in things."

  "That's exactly what I want."

  "Sukiro won't like it," Chiang said.

  "She'll have plenty to do keeping the goons under control," Polski told her, "but as far as I'm concerned, Rikard and Darcy will be in charge of the operation—until they find the raiders, if they do."

  "Not me," Darcy said, "I don't know anything about leading expeditions."

  Rikard looked at her, not as surprised as he thought he should be. "You want to stay behind," he said, "and bring off the deal with Djentsin yourself?"

  "It's a sure thing, Rikard. It's important." But her eyes flick­ered to Polski as she spoke. Rikard's stomach sank.

  He turned away from her and looked at Polski. "The main problem," he went on, "is the Tathas. Somebody from Kholtri has to be behind that. The raiders must have learned how to use them if they can put a whole town to sleep all at once. That's what happens when you come under their influence, you slow down, shut down, look for a dark hole to hide in. If the feeling is too strong, and there's no place to hide, you find that hole in your mind, and then you go crazy.

  "Some of what Savathorn said begins to make sense now. The Tathas make you feel that the light is too bright. The sky looks like black gun-grease to a Tathas. Tangled whips sort of describes what Tathas look like, with their tendrils and fibers all waving about. Black lightning, I don't know what that is, but it feels like Tathas talk to me.

  "Who knows how many tame Tathas these raiders have in their control? Sukiro won't know if they're being used on her until it's too late. And then the raiders will take their brains."

  "You don't have to convince me," Polski said with a wry grin. "You're leaving the day after tomorrow."

  Rikard glanced at Darcy. She wouldn't meet his eyes. "What about our peculiar friend?" he asked Polski, to cover his dis­may. He looked past the colonel to where Grayshard was seated in the far corner of the headquarters.

  "He's got the credentials, and he's determined on going along. Orin doesn't like that, but too bad."

  "Part of that," Darcy said, "is because Grayshard is pulling strings on her the way she did with Korijian on Nowarth." Her voice did not sound at all as if she had just brought a three-year romance to an abrupt end.

  "Very likely," Polsty said, "but she's also pretty tight about doing things by the book. Look, I'm going to be busy for the rest of the day, so you'll have to look out for yourselves, but I can let you have a driver and I'll fill you in on the details later on tonight, okay?"

  "Fine," Rikard said, though, under the circumstances, things could hardly be fine again.

  Part Three

  1

  The derelict, when they reached it twelve standard days later, proved to be a huge, dark body, unlike anything in the Federa­tion or elsewhere. On its irregular surface, covered by several millennia's accumulation of microscopic space dust, were dished areas like antennae, slant-sided ridges, towers both solid and lacy, bulges with connecting ribs. There were no lights, no energy emissions of any kind, no signs of life.

  Reconnaissance drones sent back images of finer detail— shallow undercut trenches, deep pits surrounded by tapered rings,. circular patches where the surfaces was rippled like waves, structures that looked like buildings cut in half, knobbed spikes, floating disks, and spiral ramps that led nowhere.

  But there was one feature that recurred, with variations, in many places: a semispherical* bulge with one flattened face, at the base of which was a circular area slightly raised from the rest of the surface. On one of these the dust on the circular "apron" and across the bulge's flattened face had been dis­turbed.

  "That's what we're looking for," Sukiro said. "That bare metal wasn't exposed by meteorites."

  "Then that's where you go in," Brenner said.

  "No, the next hatch, nearest."

  While Brenner located the entry point she wanted, Sukiro gave orders to make a boarding party ready. There were six of the famous goon squads aboard, but she decided to take only half of this force with her, leaving the other three squads on the gunship as a reserve.

  Rikard was given back his personal mesh armor and leather "work clothes," and his gun. He was especially glad to have his .75 again, and the glove that was the interface between his built-in ranging system and the weapon. The goons wore light battle armor, power assisted, that had vacuum suits built in, but Rikard, and Gray shard who insisted on going along as well, needed special suits, and were fitted for these before boarding the shuttle.

  There was only the subtlest of jars as the shuttle left the gunship. In spite of his determination to remain calm, Rikard felt an eagerness that would have been alien to him only three years ago. He wanted some action, now, and was half-afraid he would get it.

  Each seat on the shuttle was equipped with a small view-screen. It was a good idea for goons going into action to have some advance knowledge of what they would be up against. The surface of the derelict, however, was almost pitch-black under the all-but-nonexistent light of the distant stars, and even the descending shuttle's heavy spotlights could show only a small area of the non-reflective surface. The shuttle crew had to rely on guidance from the gunship to find the supposed hatch nearest the raiders' putative entrance, where at last they set down on the flat area beside the bulge.

  The shuttle shone its spots on the slanting face of the bulge and, on the viewscreens within, they could see, under the layer of dust, faint lines that might mark the edges and seams of a hatch. If that was what it was, it was not big enough to admit even a shuttle, let alone a ship.

  The goons were divided into three squads. The first, under Sergeant Denny's direct command, disembarked and fanned out to cover the shuttle. All the suits were equipped with gravity enhancers, so they could walk about easily, but the gravity here was so slight that, even enhanced, it was hardly noticeable, and every movement tended to take one up and away from the dere­lict in a long, slow arc.

  One of her goons climbed to the top of the bulge as a look­out. Outside the area of the spotlight, which shone on the land­ing pad and the hatchway, the surface of the derelict was just a sea of black distinguishable from space only by the lack of stars. Only on Denny's signal did the others leave the shuttle.

  While the first goons kept watch, and a second squad stood at ready, the third squad, under Corporal Falyn, went to inspect the hatchway. They swept the dust away from the faint marks, revealing that these were indeed seams, and it looked as though the plates these seams defined might open, but they could find no external controls.

  "Shall we just break in?" Sukiro asked Rikard. She didn't like taking orders from him but was too good an officer to make any trouble over it—especially since Polski had given h
er her instructions personally.

  "Unless you can think of another way," Rikard said.

  As it turned out, the goons didn't need most of the special equipment they had brought with them for just this purpose. Their two-meter prybars proved adequate to the job. But when the first seam was cracked, a cloud of gas escaped from the chamber within, momentarily frosting the helmets of the pri­vates who were working the bars. Sladen and Petorska held the valve as it was until the gas stopped coming, then let Colder and Yansen take over while they cleaned off their face plates. The valve sections rotated like an iris, into the edges of the bulge, moving at last so quickly that Colder and Yansen would have fallen into the opening had there been any gravity to speak of.

  The second squad was ready for this, and moved in at once, their light blasters drawn and set on full. They shone bright lights into the opening, but there was no movement within, and their lights showed only a circular chamber, its arching walls of ribbed steel, with a broad walkway surrounding a steep ramp sloping down below surface level.

  Corporal Nelross sent a private in to circle around the walk­way to the back, where there was an irregularity in the curving wall. This proved to be some kind of control panel, though Gospodin could make no sense of its buttons and dials. She came back around the other way.

  Sergeant Denny called her goons in from their positions, and they formed up at the top of the ramp, ready to go in. Sukiro told the shuttle crew to keep tuned, then Denny's goons led the way. When everybody was inside, at the head of the long ramp, Falyn's goons closed the outer portal again, and pasted on a temporary seal, so that if there was air pressure farther in, it wouldn't bleed out when they opened internal doors.

  The ramp, broad enough for five to march abreast, began to spiral counterclockwise after a run of about ninety meters and a descent of thirty meters or so, and as they went deeper they could feel the pull of artificial gravity, lighter than normal, but plenty enough to make movement easy. The gravity enhancers in their suits reduced power automatically in compensation.