Freya released the door just long enough to grab the golem head Gulbrand had stuffed with explosives. She slid it into the gap, and the door slammed into the metal skull and stopped, its motors whirring impotently. Gulbrand had a knee on one of the golem’s arms, preventing it from using its gun, and continued to slam the creature’s head into the floor with minimal effect. “Hold it still,” said Freya, and Gulbrand shoved the thing’s head against the floor and strained to hold it in place as the spindly but unnaturally strong limbs writhed and flapped beneath him. Freya held her gun to the golem’s temple and fired. It spasmed and then lay still.
“We need to move,” Freya said. She no longer heard explosions in the distance.
Gulbrand got to his feet, taking the golem’s machinegun. Freya squeezed through the narrow door opening, her gun drawn. Gulbrand came after her, grunting as he pushed the door open far enough to get through. He kicked the golem head out of the way and let the door slide shut. The walls of this room were covered with pipes and conduits; it seemed to be a junction of sorts. The only other door was in the far wall. It slid open and another golem came through, leading several others behind it. Freya moved aside and Gulbrand opened fire at the same moment as the golem did, tearing through its fragile frame with the machinegun. Freya hit the next one in the head, and Gulbrand mowed down the rest before they could train their guns on him. Gulbrand fell against the door behind him with a grunt.
“Gulbrand!” Freya cried. He’d been struck in the belly, more than once by the look of the stain spreading across his clothes.
“We must… keep going,” Gulbrand said, bending to pick up the explosive-laden skull.
“You’re hit,” Freya said. “Let me take a look at it.”
“Nothing to do about it,” Gulbrand said. “Go.”
Freya nodded. She had neither the time nor the supplies to deal with a belly wound.
One of the fallen golems was stuck in the door, preventing it from closing. Freya slipped through the gap into the corridor beyond and Gulbrand followed, grunting with pain as he squeezed through. As they passed another four-way intersection, a door slid open ahead of them and golems poured through.
“Back!” cried Freya, and they retreated around the corner to the right as the machines opened fire. This corridor was noticeably curved—an indication they were getting closer to the Hub. Two golems came around the bend in the opposite direction, and Freya fired several times, hitting the one on the right in its left hip joint. It fell to the floor as Gulbrand blasted the torso of the other to pieces with the machinegun. Two more rounded the bend behind them, and Gulbrand took these out as well.
“Go!” Gulbrand commanded, holding out the satchel of explosives. “I will hold them off!” He dropped to one knee and fired another burst, taking out another pair of golems. The explosive-packed skull lay on the floor beside him.
“Gulbrand—” Freya began.
“Go, damn you!”
Freya turned and ran down the passage. She was now moving orthogonally to the center, but there would be another passage cutting inward up ahead. All roads lead to the Hub. She could only hope that Gulbrand had drawn most of its defenders away. She was almost to the next intersection when she was nearly knocked off her feet by the blast from an explosion behind her. Freya choked back tears. May your gods carry you to a better world than this one, Gulbrand.
She rounded the corner and was surprised to see a humanoid figure about fifty feet down the corridor, hurrying away from her. It looked like a golem, but it wore a deep red cloak with a hood covering its head. None of the other golems had worn any clothing at all. Was this an Izarian? A human? Some higher-ranking type of machine? It did not appear to be armed.
She ran after the being, gun raised and ready to fire. At the far end of a corridor, a door slid open and more golems armed with machineguns poured through. They aimed their guns in Freya’s direction but did not fire. There could be only one reason for this.
Freya came up behind the cloaked figure and wrapped her left arm around its neck, bringing the figure to a quick halt. Its skin was cold and hard—machine, not human. With her right, she pressed her gun against its temple. She said nothing. The golems wouldn’t understand her, and words were unnecessary. They knew what she was about. She had no doubt the golems, with their preternatural accuracy, could kill her without injuring the cloaked machine, but would they take the chance of a dying nerve spasm causing her to pull the trigger?
The answer appeared to be no. Whoever or whatever the cloaked figure was, the golems showed it a great deal more deference than they did to other machines. Would it be enough to get her into the Hub? It was the only chance she had.
She moved slowly forward, pushing the cloaked figure ahead of her. The golems kept their guns trained on her but backed away down the hall. Was the cloaked figure directing them, or were they taking orders from some higher power? If some greater intelligence were directing them—some vast computer at the center of the Hub, perhaps—what would happen if it came down to a choice between its own survival and that of the being in the cloak?
The golems continued to retreat, going through the door into the chamber beyond. Freya, still pushing the cloaked figure ahead of her, followed them. Checking to the left and the right to make sure she wasn’t being flanked, she stepped into the chamber. It was perhaps a hundred yards across, with a vaulted ceiling in eight segments that narrowed to a single, huge column in the center. The walls were lined with various electronic displays and controls. Scores of golems stood at various points near the perimeter and scattered about the room, some of them in groups, others alone. Presumably they had been engaged in activities of some sort, monitoring or directing the production of machines in the city, perhaps. But now they all stood completely still, facing Freya. A few were armed, but most were not. None of them made any move toward her. The vast chamber was completely silent except for the quiet hum of the ventilation system.
Freya moved slowly forward, her hand on the cloaked figure’s shoulder, the barrel of her gun at the base of its skull. Golems moved out of the way as they advanced, repelled like similarly charged particles. A circle formed some thirty feet out from her, closing behind as she moved toward the center of the chamber. She was now aware of several more red-cloaked figures, standing at various places throughout the room. Perhaps there were six, to match the symmetry of the city. One super-golem to oversee each segment spreading out from the Hub?
She continued forward, not knowing what she was walking toward. But although she was surrounded by enemies, still they did not act. She neared the huge column at the center of the chamber and saw that it was lined with doors. Six of them, no doubt, all leading to the same place. The machines pursued their pattern beyond all reason. She shoved the cloaked figure toward the nearest door. It scanned the cloaked figure’s forehead and they went through. The door slid shut behind them.
They were in a featureless hexagonal room. It was empty. Freya wanted to weep. She had reached the nerve center of the Izarian Empire, and there was nothing there. In all likelihood, they would never let her out of this room. She would die here, a victim of her own hubris. She hadn’t figured out the machines; they had set out a puzzle for her and then trapped her like a rat in a bucket.
Chapter Nineteen
G ravity shifted under her. They were moving? They were moving! Of course. The little hexagonal room was an elevator. Perhaps she was wrong about this being a trap. But where were they going?
She released her hold on the cloaked figure, who took a step away but did not otherwise react. Freya kept the gun pointed at it. Freya had no sense of how fast they were moving. Five feet per second? Twenty? She counted to a hundred, and still the room descended. She was almost to two hundred when she felt it slow. A few seconds later, she had the sense they had stopped. She motioned to one of the doors, and the cloaked figure stepped toward it. The door slid open. The figure stepped out and Freya followed it.
They were in what appea
red to be a modestly furnished apartment. Except for the hexagonal shape and greater size, it reminded Freya of the captain’s quarters aboard Varinga. The floor plan was entirely open; there were no dividing walls. Against one wall was a bed. In the bed was a man. He looked to be elderly, although the complete lack of hair on his head made it difficult to determine his age. His skin was an unnatural shade of white and covered with lumpy growths. The fingers on his right hand were conjoined, so that the hand resembled a claw.
As Freya and the cloaked machine approached, the man sat up with a start. “Must you interrupt my sleep?” he asked. “I will answer your questions in the morning.” To Freya’s ear the language was strange, but her comm translated it with little difficulty. It was the same language spoken by the Truscans.
Freya moved closer to the bed, still holding her gun on the machine. “It is morning,” she said. The comm translated for her.
“Who…” the man started. “You are not a Sixth.” Freya saw now that the man’s eyes were milky white. He was blind.
“What do you mean by ‘Sixth?”
“The machines that wear cloaks,” the man said. “You are… human?”
“I am. My name is Freya. I’ve brought one of the Sixths with me.”
“How… You have taken it hostage? Your people control the city?”
“Not exactly. I managed to get inside. Who are you?”
“My name is Sol. I am… the last of my kind. They keep me here, to ask me questions. And because of the… device.”
“The device? What are you talking about?”
“Forgive me, this is… unsettling. I have not spoken to another person for many years. What is this language you speak? You do not sound like a Truscan.”
“I’m Norse. From Earth. The Truscans are—were—my allies.”
“Norse? You mean Scandinavian? How can this be?”
“It’s a long story. Maybe I’ll tell it to you someday. Right now I’ve got a bunch of friends outside who risked their lives to get me in here. I need you to tell me how to get them out of here safely.”
“Do you really have one of the cloaked machines here with you?”
“I do. I’m holding a gun on it.”
“Shoot it.”
“It’s my only leverage. If I shoot it now, I’ll never get out of here.”
“If you want to save your friends, shoot it. Now!”
The machine, sensing it was in danger, lunged toward Freya. Freya fired her gun, hitting the thing in the head. It fell to its knees and then collapsed. Freya knelt over it, but the machine was clearly defunct. She had put a bullet right through the crystalline structure that apparently served as its brain. The golem head Gulbrand had hollowed out had something similar in it. “Damn it,” Freya said. “Why did you do that? We’ll never get out of here now.”
“They won’t stop you,” said Sol. “Not anymore.”
“Yeah? Why don’t you tell me what the hell is going on here?”
Sol nodded, rubbing his chin and thinking. “What do you know of the Truscans?”
“They are human beings, evidently descendants of Middle Eastern people who left Earth sometime early in the days of the Roman Empire.”
“Yes, very good. They are the descendants of Roman soldiers and Jewish whores, if you can believe that. My own ancestors are from the distant future, the twenty-third century, when humanity was at war with another race of aliens.”
“The Cho-ta’an.”
“Yes! I understand now who you are. You are a descendent of the other group, the people who went back before us but arrived after. You see? My people went to Judea in the second century. Yours went to Scandinavia in the ninth century.”
“You know of my grandmother? Carolyn Reyes? And the others?”
“The names have been lost, I’m afraid. It’s been eight hundred years, you understand. That is… I’m sorry, the dates get confusing with time travel. As the story was told to me, early in the twenty-third century humans were at war with the Cho-ta’an. Earth had been rendered uninhabitable and the Cho-ta’an were on the verge of eradicating humanity. A human spaceship traveled back in time, apparently by accident, arriving in Europe during the Middle Ages. Evidence of this event prompted the people of the twenty-third century to send another ship backwards in time, but this one arrived even earlier. The crew of that ship were my distant ancestors. They arrived on Earth with the intention of filling their ship with people who could be the progenitors of a separate branch of humanity.”
“A separate branch? Why?”
“Because history can’t be changed. Understand that when this second ship, called Freedom, left earth full of Jews and Romans, the war with the Cho-ta’an was still two thousand years off. The crew of Freedom wanted to establish a human colony somewhere far from the reach of the Cho-ta’an, not only because the Cho-ta’an were a potential threat, but because history itself was a threat. The humans of the early twenty-third century had never encountered a race of humans whose ancestors left Earth in the second century. That meant that either that branch of humanity died off, or they settled in a place so far away from the main branch of humanity that even after two thousand years, the two branches had never met.”
“The LOKI principle,” Freya said.
“What?”
“My people call it the Limits Of Known Information. If you try to change history, you will fail, probably in a catastrophic manner.”
“Precisely! So you see, my people—that is, the crew of Freedom—had to travel for hundreds of years to find a suitable planet outside the reach of both the Cho-ta’an and the other humans. Then, if the Cho-ta’an did eradicate the main branch, the second branch would survive. And perhaps if this second branch did eventually encounter the Cho-ta’an, they would be advanced enough technologically to defeat them.”
“Sounds like a good plan. But something went wrong.”
“Yes. Freedom’s crew eventually located a habitable planet. It was a bit closer to Cho-ta’an space—that is, what would eventually be Cho-ta’an space—than they would have liked, but they were desperate. So they landed on the planet, which they called Toronus. By this time, Freedom’s crew and its passengers had already bifurcated into two separate castes, with very little intermingling. For centuries after landing on Toronus, the crew lived aboard Freedom, which they turned into a sort of impregnable castle, while the passengers settled the land around it, making do with bronze age technology, subsisting much as medieval peasants had.
“Understand that at this point, the passengers, who called themselves ‘Etruscans’ after the lineage of one of their forebears, were only a few hundred in number. They lacked the genetic diversity to ensure healthy descendants beyond a few generations. The crew, who came to be known by the Etruscans as ‘Sentinels,’ were in an even worse spot, as they numbered fewer than twenty. The Sentinels, however, possessed technology that the Etruscans did not, including a primitive form of stasis chamber that allowed them to artificially extend their own lives. The Sentinels were also said to harvest sperm and eggs from the Etruscans, though I do not know if this is true. The Etruscans came to resent and even hate the Sentinels, but the Sentinels had no motive but the continuation of the species. To that end, they devoted themselves to advancing the science of applied genetics, with some success. Through breeding controls and gene editing, the Sentinels were able to eliminate congenital defects among the Etruscans and increase genetic diversity, ensuring the survival of the species.
“The number of Etruscans—the name was at some point shortened to ‘Truscans’—doubled, then quadrupled over the course of a few generations. Soon they numbered in the tens of thousands. As the population grew, so did their understanding of science. They had a big advantage over medieval peasants on Earth, you see: they had seen the Sentinels’ technology, and although the Sentinels encouraged them to think in supernatural terms, the Truscans eventually threw off superstition and began to look for ways to create for themselves the sorts of wonderful
tools and devices used by the Sentinels. This process was self-reinforcing: technology allowed the Truscans to live longer and gave them the luxury of educating their children in natural science. Three hundred years after the founding of the first colony on Toronus, the Truscans developed rudimentary space travel. A hundred years after that, they developed hyperspace gates, which allowed them to settle worlds in other solar systems. The Sentinels, for the most part, did not interfere with this process, and in fact encouraged it to some extent. After all, their ultimate goal was to foster a branch of humanity that was numerous and powerful enough to defeat the Cho-ta’an when the moment came.”
“You are saying that the Sentinels were aware of the threat from the Cho-ta’an. But hadn’t even encountered any Cho-ta’an at that point.”
“Correct. The Sentinels knew of the Cho-ta’an only through the records passed down by their ancestors, who had traveled back in time from the twenty-third century. They knew the location of the Cho-ta’an home world, Yavesk, and the region of space that the Cho-ta’an would eventually colonize. They knew the main branch of humanity would eventually encounter the Cho-ta’an, and a war would break out—with catastrophic consequences.
“As the Truscans continued to spread out across the galaxy, though, the Sentinels became concerned that they would soon reach the regions of space that would eventually be colonized by the Cho-ta’an or the other branch of humanity. Ultimately the Sentinels decided on a drastic course of action: they would shut down the hyperspace gates that the Truscans used to travel between the nine worlds they had settled so far.”
The War of the Iron Dragon: An Alternate History Viking Epic (Saga of the Iron Dragon Book 5) Page 16