Mech (imperium)

by V. B. Larson

  Sarah found she could move now, although movement wasn’t without its cost in pain. She reached down and felt around with her right hand. Bruised, tender flesh met her probing fingers. She reached out with her left hand and bones grated in her wrist. She loosed a rasping scream. Fire ran up her arm. Clearly, her wrist was broken.

  “What’s wrong, Mom?”

  “Bili, help me up,” Sarah said, reaching for her son. Together, they managed to get her into a sitting position without causing more damage to her wrist. Bili rubbed blood back into his legs, which had been under her body and that of the killbeast’s.

  Suddenly, something came up and softly touched them both. A delicate hand brushed her cheek.

  “Who is it?” whispered Bili.

  Sarah reached out blind with her good hand and caught a handful of long fine hair. “The skald.”

  “The nutso?”

  The skald moved away from them, then returned. He touched each of their cheeks in turn and moved away again.

  “He wants us to follow him,” said Sarah.

  “Jeez, Mom. I don’t know about this guy.”

  For some reason, she felt she could trust the skald to help them get out. He certainly didn’t want to stay here, of that she was convinced. “Maybe he can help us get out. I may not be able to go far without help, Bili.”

  Grabbing hold of the skald’s fluttering hand with her good one, she was quickly hauled erect and together they began climbing a shifting pile of rubble and bodies. The side of the pit had collapsed, allowing them to escape. She was surprised at the strength in the skald’s wiry limbs. She leaned on him heavily.

  Just as they reached the lip of the pit, they stumbled over Zimmerman. He was crawling on his belly, making his way out of the pit by inching along. His voice was bubbly, as though he spoke through a mouthful of blood. “Take me with you, or you’ll never find the flitter.”

  “I know exactly where Lake Axalp is,” Sarah told him coldly. It felt wonderful to be free of the man’s controlling hand for once. “You have no hold over us.”

  “Wrong.” he bubbled. He stopped, breaking off into a coughing fit.

  “Come on, Mom. Let’s get out of here before the aliens notice us,” urged Bili.

  Sarah hesitated. She nudged Zimmerman with her foot. “What do you mean, wrong?”

  “I… I lied,” he said, “only I know where the flitter really is.”

  Twenty

  After many hours of vicious fighting in the black treacherous tunnels of the nest, Mai Lee’s forces reached the throne room. Inside the battlesuit, she was sweating profusely, despite the continuous gush of cool air coming from the overtaxed air conditioning system. The suit was finally overheating due to the continuous one hundred and ten percent output she had demanded unrelentingly from the reactors. Her haggard eyes, dark with exhaustion, had pressed against the vision scopes until livid welts had almost swollen them shut. Salty perspiration burned her swollen tongue.

  “This is it. This has to be it, we’re at the bottom,” she said, striding over a morass of stiffening corpses. The twisted form of a multi-legged hest entangled one of the suit’s claws. Irritably, she shook it loose and flung it onto one of the empty thrones. She eyed the thrones disappointedly.

  “Where are the queens? Are you sure there are no deeper levels?” she demanded of a nearby Captain.

  The man shook his head, backing away from her in fear.

  Her chest-guns tracked him on automatic, and she pondered the trigger lever with a sneer. Then she sighed. Another corpse would do little to help her now. Her troopers had been devastated in any case.

  The situation was painfully clear. She had spent her strength against the nest in hopes of killing their queens and thereby breaking the back of her enemy. But the queens had vanished, probably fleeing into deep escape shafts, the entrances buried and carefully hidden. She had broken her own back, not theirs. She had lost all but a few companies of troopers.

  The aliens had won.

  Rage and frustration took hold of her fully. With a booming roar of intense fury, she drove the battlesuit in great crashing bounds toward the four thrones. She opened fire on the largest of them, letting fly a blue gush of flame as she neared it. Chips and splinters of the throne exploded around the great chamber. Echoing reports rang from the walls with deafening volume. Under the fierce heat of the Gi’s breath, the throne liquefied and ran like wax.

  Bounding like a grasshopper, she pounced upon the largest of the thrones like a wolf leaping upon the back of its lumbering prey. Using the titanium claws, she ripped dark molten chunks of resin from it.

  Then she saw the entrance to the larvae room. Pale squirming shapes turned their tubular eating orifices in her direction curiously. Inside her suit, a savage grin split her features. Clearly, the queens hadn’t managed to save all their children.

  Without hesitation, she strode into the nursery and commenced a most gruesome slaughter. Humping about in mindless panic, the larvae were blasted to fragments, withered by searing flames and ripped apart with merciless metal claws.

  When it was over, she had regained some degree of calm. Exiting the nursery, she ordered her remaining troopers back to the lifters.

  On the surface she was surprised to see it was dark, the sky lit only by the lurid glare of the smoky fires that still burned among the horkwoods. The condition of the lifters was another shock. During her absence shrades that had been deposited aboard the lifters during the suicidal attacks of the culus squadrons had burst from hiding and taken a grim toll. Most of the pilots and crews were dead. Many of the lifters were badly damaged and inoperable. She led her weary army onto those that were in the best repair and managed to get all her remaining forces airborne. A few squads of battered helicopter gunships joined them as an escort.

  On her way into Grunstein, she paused only to circle around the peak where the Zimmermans had made their last stand. She was gratified to see nothing move other than the blue cloaks of dead men, stirred by the ceaseless mountain winds. The entire crown of the mountain was choked with bodies. The blackened muzzles of the artillery pieces pointed at the skies, like the sightless eyes of the dead.

  She put the battlesuit into standby mode, letting the engines idle. The external vents opened, puffing out moist hot air and sucking in the fresh thin air of the night.

  She smiled again to herself. She had lost this chance for victory, but her enemies had suffered greatly as well. Indeed, the Zimmermans had paid the ultimate price of obstructing her path.

  “How should I set our course, Empress?” inquired the wing commander politely.

  The chest guns snapped to target him, still on automatic. He stiffened, his ingratiating smile fading.

  “We fly to the Grunstein Interplanetary Spaceport,” answered Mai Lee. “It is time that we left Garm.”

  “I think he’s getting heavier somehow,” grumbled Bili, struggling to keep his corner of Zimmerman’s makeshift stretcher aloft with his one good arm.

  Sarah, taxed beyond making a reply, concentrated solely on putting her right foot ahead of her left. They progressed with agonizing slowness. Behind them walked the tall silent form of the skald, holding up the rear of the stretcher. She wondered what they would have done without his strange but strong presence.

  Irritatingly, Zimmerman was awake and talkative, although reputedly unable to walk. “It’s not much further now. If there’s any way we can all pick up the pace here, our odds of surviving the night would be greatly increased.”

  Sarah halted. The others bumped to a stop. Her limbs trembled with exertion and anger. Turning her head, she glared down into Zimmerman’s face. “We would all make a lot better time if we dropped you right here.”

  “Ah, but that wouldn’t be prudent,” said Zimmerman with a knowing smile. With an expression of sudden alarm, he raised up his head and peered into the dark forest that surrounded them. “What was that?”

  “What?” asked Bili, looking concerned. He eyed the for
est with the distrust he had gained ever since seeing the digging alien after the crash.

  “Could that have been a landshark?” asked Zimmerman. “They prowl this area all the time you know.”

  Sarah watched this fear-provoking performance with dull awe. How could the man be so relentlessly selfish and manipulative?

  She leaned close, hissing into his face. “Knock it off or so help me, I’ll drop you right here and you can crawl out. We may not make it, but you’ll be dead for sure.”

  Zimmerman gasped and took on a look of great pain. He raised a hand weakly and closed his eyes. “Wait a moment, the hole that monster punched into my thigh is causing another spasm.”

  Sarah just glared at him, unimpressed even if his pain was real.

  “Look now, everyone. I’m very sorry to be such a burden. I really regret every bite of excess food I’ve ever indulged in right now, believe me. But if we can pull together, if we can stick it out, we’ll all survive.”

  “Save it,” grunted Sarah, grimly taking a new grip on the pole and stumbling forward into the dark trees.

  Zimmerman wisely fell silent for a time. Trudging forward, exhausted and injured, Sarah thought that this march had to be the worst experience of her life. Not for the first time, she reflected that the luck of her family had gone bad at the point of her husband’s accident. It was as if she were in a deep well of bad luck, where she and Bili spiraled ever downward until now it seemed that the light at the top of the shaft had all but vanished entirely.

  Utilizing reserves she didn’t know she possessed, she eventually reached the outcropping of rocks that Zimmerman had said to keep an eye out for. At that point, he directed them to proceed downhill into a steep gully. The sides of the gully were wet and slick with moss. They almost lost hold of Zimmerman and pitched him squalling onto the rocks before reaching the bottom.

  “Over there, under the tangle-bush. There should be a cave mouth,” hissed Zimmerman, hushed now that their goal was so near. There was a genuine, feverish excitement in his voice.

  They set down the stretcher and Sarah went forward to investigate. Using a hand-held glow-lamp they had taken from a fallen trooper on the way out of the nest, she examined the walls of the gully closely. After a time she discovered the entrance.

  “There’s no way a flitter could fit inside that hole,” she said, returning to Zimmerman. She directed the glow-lamp, set at its highest setting, into his sweating, dirty face.

  He squinted and waved at the light in irritation. “Just take me inside. I’ll show you.”

  Grudgingly, she obliged. Inside, the cave was quite a bit larger than it appeared. Although she saw no immediate signs of the flitter, she did see numerous familiar-looking bales of bluish reeds. Along one wall were stacked a dozen barrels of bluish dust.

  “These barrels are full of blur dust. This is a smuggler’s cache,” she said, blinking in surprise.

  “Of course. But fortunately, the former owners are beyond caring about this particular cache.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “This was Mudface and Daddy’s property,” he explained, hauling himself into a sitting position. “Recall the feast.”

  Sarah shuddered. “I’d rather not.”

  “Didn’t I tell you it was here?” demanded Zimmerman, beaming and looking for credit.

  Bili gave him a wry glance. “Just tell us where the flitter is, fatso.”

  He waved his hand at the stack of barrels. “Look back there.”

  They did and found the flitter. It was a smaller model than Sarah had hoped for. It could hold six passengers in a pinch, four comfortably. She eyed the refined blur dust speculatively, licking her cracked lips. Any one of the barrels would bring a fortune on another system. She shook her head, as if to clear it. She was done with that kind of business. It had brought her nothing but trouble.

  She noticed that the skald was eyeing the flitter curiously, running his pale thin hands over the stubby wings and the silvery landing skids.

  Directly above the flitter was a camouflaged hole that leaked starlight. It would be a simple matter to leave the cave, except for one thing. “Where’s the card-key, Zimmerman?” she demanded.

  “Isn’t it in the slot?” asked Zimmerman, smiling.

  “No.”

  “Carry me into the flitter and I’ll tell you where it is.”

  Sarah made no move. She glared at him. “You tell us now, or we leave you here for the killbeasts to sniff out.”

  “I don’t want you to be tempted to leave me behind.”

  “I’ve never been more tempted to do anything in my life, but you will tell me now, before I carry your sorry ass another foot. I can hot-key a flitter, you know. As you continually point out, I am a smuggler.”

  Zimmerman looked concerned. “It would take longer.”

  Sarah only shrugged. Behind her, the skald had boarded the flitter and now sat quietly in the back.

  Zimmerman chewed his lips and eyed her speculatively. “All right,” he sighed at last. “The codekey is in the flare kit, attached to the back of the hatch.”

  Sarah snorted at the obviousness of the hiding place and went to retrieve the key. She stood there in the hatchway, looking back toward Zimmerman where he lay on the floor, still on the makeshift stretcher. He was doing his best to look pitiful. She moved to wave the skald forward to help carry Zimmerman again, when a heavy cough sounded outside the cave mouth.

  “Landshark,” hissed Bili, grabbing her arm and trying to pull her into the flitter. Sarah’s mouth sagged. It must have tracked them, stalking them while they moved through the forests and following their spoor down into the gully. Wildly, she thought of the story of the boy who cried wolf once too often.

  She stepped out of the hatchway, moving to help him, but she was too late. The landshark was already thrusting its snout into the cave mouth. A great bulbous head appeared, blocking the entrance almost entirely. Powerful forelimbs with six-inch curved claws made for digging followed.

  “Let’s go, Mom!” shouted Bili.

  Zimmerman, terrified as deeply as he had been during the feasting, found the strength to struggle erect. Trembling with the effort to lift his bulk on one thin leg, he determinedly began to hop toward them, dragging his injured leg behind him. The landshark caught up with him in a sudden lunge, just as he reached the barrels full of blur dust. They went over with a crash, firing great clouds of bluish dust into the air.

  In horror, Sarah slammed the hatch shut before the dust could reach them. There was no hope for Zimmerman now. Breathing in that much blur dust at once was definitely fatal. A few grains of the hallucinogen could keep you high for hours. Breathing in gouts of it was deadly. She doubted if even the landshark would survive.

  With a great gulping motion, the landshark sucked the man into its toothy maw, making jerking motions as his legs vanished into its head.

  Demonstrating its initial effects, the blur dust gave Zimmerman a sudden rush of inhuman vigor. Although he was already mortally wounded, he beat at the head of the monster with wild fury. Savage blows rained around its eyes and the sensitive olfactory regions, making it wince. Sarah thought that Zimmerman was probably breaking the bones in his hands, but he kept on striking it, even as his life’s blood gushed out.

  Then she managed to shove the codekey into the slot and hit the throttle for emergency lift. The flitter shot out of the shaft and into the open night air.

  After a few minutes she managed to steady the wobbling craft and set a course for Grunstein Interplanetary.

  Beneath them the treetops swept by with blinding speed. She hugged as close to the leafy canopy as she dared, hoping to avoid detection. None of them spoke about what they had left behind in the smuggler’s cave.

  Long after midnight, Drick was awake and back at his old desk. To his delight, he found his portable holoset and his flask of blur distillate were still there, although more than half of the moonshine had leaked out. The holoset was a disappointment
as well, as all the net stations were out except for the automated ones that showed only the most dull comic reruns at this time of night. Not surprisingly, KXUT hadn’t been heard from since the building had been bombed.

  The vaporous distillate had lost none of its flavor however, and with a heavy contented sigh, Drick loosened his sash and leaned back in his self-contouring chair. Suddenly, he sat up with a brilliant idea. Keying in his account codes, he accessed the public net and coaxed the computers into providing him with a private viewing of last week’s rayball game. He had been interrupted with the invasion at that point and had missed it. Damn the price, what did a few credits matter now?

  He sipped his distillate and heaved another sigh as the holoset flickered, bringing the correct image up. Hot numbness washed over his mouth and took the edge off his tension. He had been tense for days now, he realized.

  Bauru took an early lead in the game, scoring two goals from the third tier in the first period. The Dragon defense was hard-pressed to hold them, and when the Dragons finally got the puck, it took several minutes into the second period before they managed their first goal. Although his team was losing, Drick was happy. For the first time in a week he was comfortable and relaxed. He took another heavy slug of the drug, knowing it was too much, but wanting to do it anyway.

  When the security plate glowed into life, it displayed what had to be the most unwelcome sight Drick had ever seen. It was a mechanical nightmare, a draconian battlesuit of some kind with a mouth that glowed with an unnatural blue radiance.

  “Gi?” he questioned out loud, recalling vague memories of the thing from his great Aunt’s estates. The distillate had dulled his wits. He took another drink, and was surprised to discover he had drained the flask. He was alarmed just a bit, realizing that he had taken too much, but then the feeling of alarm faded as the drug fell over him like a veil.

  “I am bringing my army to the spaceport,” she told him, her voice oddly disembodied from the alien image on the holo-plate.