Labyrinth of Night

by Allen Steele

  Marks nodded grimly as he quickly adjusted the oxygen-nitrogen flow on her chest pack. When she had failed to report back to the monitor center, Commander L’Enfant had sent him to look for her. By the time he had found her in Module Three—bound and gagged, consciousness regained and madder than hell—the commander had called a full alert. Marks sympathized with his teammate; getting mugged by a couple of unarmed civilians was, in itself, a serious wound to one’s self-esteem. And considering that one of them had been this dude Nash…

  ‘I’ll be more than happy to help,’ he murmured. He pulled his Steyr off his shoulder and handed it by the strap to her. ‘And this time, ain’t gonna be no mercy. I’ll break his fucking neck.’

  Swigart grinned and he grinned back at her, and for a few moments they were so tough that they managed to forget that they were both scared out of their wits. Because they knew, if only instinctively, that Charlie Akers must have gotten off a few rounds at whatever had killed him.

  And it hadn’t slowed the bastard down. Not one inch.

  Kawakami felt the slight pressure of the gun barrel at the back of his neck. ‘You don’t need that,’ he said softly.

  ‘I’m afraid I do, Dr. Kawakami,’ L’Enfant replied from behind him. However, the smooth metal bore lifted away from the scientist’s neck. ‘More comfortable? Good. Now get those cameras switched on so we can see what’s happening out there.’

  The gun was Nash’s .38; L’Enfant had hidden it in a thigh pocket of his jumpsuit, and no one had known it was there until he had pulled it out, the moment that Marks had discovered Swigart bound and gagged in the storeroom. He had then ordered Boggs out onto the surface to seal the Module One outer hatch and assist Swigart as the Hornet’s ground crew. As soon as Marks and Swigart had stepped into the main airlock and he had received assurance from Boggs that he was outside the habitat, L’Enfant escorted Kawakami from Module Eight, leaving Isralilova behind in the monitor center to watch the screens.

  Even then, the commander had left nothing to chance; once they were out in the corridor, L’Enfant had slammed shut the hatch to Module Eight and used his keycard to lock it from the outside, effectively imprisoning the Russian scientist inside the monitor center. Then he had ushered Kawakami down the corridor to Module Two.

  As Shin-ichi Kawakami switched on the array of external TV monitors and selected from the array of cameras positioned around the habitat and the nearby pyramids, he could hear L’Enfant speaking into his headset. ‘Okay, Alphonse, how’re you doing there?’ he asked.

  Kawakami noticed that L’Enfant, apparently without realizing it, had discarded the ridiculous code words he had used earlier. It seemed as if the commander had been shaken by Akers’ death more than he cared to admit. ‘Okay, depressurize Module One ASAP and let Swigart get to her craft.’

  Kawakami reached for the headset that dangled around his neck, and immediately felt the sharp pressure of the gun return to the base of his skull. He hesitated for a moment, then slowly pulled the headset on. ‘If you’re going to kill me,’ he said, ‘go ahead, but I think you need all the help you can get right now.’

  He gave him a sidelong glance; L’Enfant’s face was lost in the deep shadows of the darkened command module. After a second the gun lifted away from Kawakami’s head once again. ‘No tricks, Dr. Kawakami. I’m not playing games anymore.’

  ‘I never was, Commander L’Enfant.’ Kawakami touched the lobe of his headset and suddenly he could hear cross-talk on Channel One:

  ‘…Okay, I’m in tight and powered-up. Internal electrical is copacetic. Now depressurize the garage and get out there…’

  ‘External CAS power off. Emergency air flush on Module One initiated…’

  ‘…CAS fast-start checklist commencing…’

  ‘…I’ve got the shroud off your craft, lady, so hurry your ass up in there before I fly this fucking thing myself…’

  ‘…Primary servos check, hydraulics check, gun locked and loaded, auto TADS on/off circuit check…’

  ‘…Don’t you get near that thing, Boggs, or I’ll rip off your balls…’

  ‘…On-board ECM is hot and checks out. Watch your gauges, Megs, I’m popping it now…Don’t get bothered, lady, I’m just trying to…’

  A sudden, sharp squeal of electronic feedback. Kawakami hissed painfully as he clapped his hands over his headphone until the main computer system automatically dampered the interference.

  ‘…Watch it, Al, you almost fried the comlink. Rapid flush nearly zeroed-out, I’m opening the main doors…’

  Kawakami lowered his hands. He glanced over his shoulder again at L’Enfant. ‘Your CAS has its own ECM system? Why would you…?’

  ‘Nothing you need to worry about.’ L’Enfant leaned forward; he was now visible in the half-light on the TV and computer screens. His face was rigid and dispassionate in the soft purplish glow. ‘Just a little surprise we had worked up for our friends down there. Now get me a picture from the City.’

  Kawakami returned his attention to the console, switching from camera to camera. A montage of live-image TV pictures fell across the screens—a close-up of the habitat, a distant shot of the Face, a quarter-distance view of the D & M pyramid, a stern-angle picture of the Akron—until he found a shot of the C-4 Pyramid, taken from a camera positioned close to the primary entrance to the Labyrinth…

  There. Shadow-cast, indistinct movement.

  He caught his breath and froze the camera. Yes. Something was moving in the stone doorway. He zoomed in as much as he could; the image blurred and became indistinct, but the motion wasn’t lost. Kawakami breathlessly tapped a code into the computer keyboard and the image was enhanced.

  A giant was coming out of the Labyrinth. It lurched forward on pillar-like legs into the cold red morning light of the Martian sky, dragging its enormous claws through the soil.

  Just behind it, another was coming through the doorway.

  And, on another screen, yet another juggernaut had just appeared as a grainy image, approaching from the direction of the D & M Pyramid.

  Kawakami suddenly remembered the ancient Greek legend, of the monster that haunted the island of Crete. As in that legend, these creatures came from a labyrinth…only this time, there was more than one, and there was no Theseus around to slay them. But the similarity was too striking to be ignored.

  ‘We’ve found the minotaurs,’ he whispered.

  ‘Get away from that thing!’

  W. J. Boggs was standing next to the F-210 Hornet; he had just pulled away the protective aluminized shroud and was bent over to remove the landing skid chocks when he heard Swigart’s voice through the comlink. He looked up to see the Navy pilot bounding toward him from the habitat, her assault rifle held at the ready as she made broad-jumping bunny-hops across the sand.

  ‘Easy, Lieutenant.’ He stood up from the forward skid, holding up his empty hands. ‘I was just getting your plane ready for…’

  ‘Nobody touches this craft but me. ‘Specially not some blimp jockey.’ Swigart ran to the stubby port wing, kicked the remaining chock out of the way, then glanced around the one-seater aircraft; Boggs noticed that she was particularly careful to check the nozzles of the rocket engines, as though she expected to find that he had deliberately clogged them with something. Apparently satisfied, she stepped around to the starboard side, passing the slogan Eat Shit and Die! which had been hand-painted beneath the cockpit, and began climbing up the fuselage rungs to the cockpit.

  Swigart pushed open the tinted canopy, then hesitated for a moment, looking down into the tiny cockpit. ‘Damn hell,’ she muttered. She then half-turned on the top rung and held out her assault rifle to him. ‘No room in here for this,’ she said. ‘Take it…and don’t get any ideas.’

  Boggs didn’t reach for it. ‘Gee, are you sure? I might decide to shoot you in the back or…’

  ‘Just take it, asshole!’ she snapped. ‘I don’t got time for this!’

  ‘Since you ask that way, sure…’ B
oggs extended his hand and Swigart tossed the rifle to him. She gave him one last mean look, then scrambled the rest of the way into the cockpit. ‘Hope you have a real good flight.’

  ‘Fuck you.’ She reached up to grab the interior handle and slam the canopy down into place. ‘Now get out of here. Go play with your toy balloon or something.’

  Boggs stepped back a few feet, carefully keeping away from the exposed muzzle of the Hornet’s 30mm cannon, then cocked his left fist upward to give her the bird. If Swigart noticed, she didn’t make any response; through his helmet, he could hear the thin whine of the F-210’s engines being powered-up for launch.

  Okay, now what? He glanced toward the Akron, remembering the last time his ship had been caught in a fire zone. Toy balloon or not, the Akron was an even larger target than the old Burroughs; it was probably a good idea to get the dirigible out of here before the shooting started.

  ‘Goddamn,’ Boggs muttered. ‘I don’t get it, Waylon. How can the same shit happen to you twice in the same fucking place?’ Slinging the rifle over his shoulder, he began to bound toward the Akron…

  He suddenly heard, from the general vicinity of the City, the sound of popcorn popping: distant, muted by the thin atmosphere, yet unmistakably the echo of gunfire.

  Startled, Boggs ground his boot heels into the sand; he fell over backwards, but barely noticed as he stared in the direction of the pyramids. Nash and Sasaki were missing from the habitat, and since Swigart had told L’Enfant that her weapon had been taken from her when they had made their escape…

  ‘Oh, no,’ he whispered. ‘Miho.’

  Boggs lurched to his feet, yanked the Steyr off his shoulder, and began to race across the red sands toward the City.

  They had stayed off the comlink channels to avoid giving themselves away to L’Enfant and his men, so they had to touch helmets and use hand signals to communicate with each other. As soon as they had exited the base through the Module One garage doors, Sasaki had suggested that they hide in the C-4 Pyramid.

  It seemed like a good idea. Nash knew that it would only be a matter of minutes before their absence was discovered. He also realized that L’Enfant would probably have the Akron searched, possibly before any place else. Like it or not, the plan for smuggling the science team aboard the dirigible was now dead, as was his scheme to hide himself and Sasaki in the observation blister. All they could do, at least for the time being, was make a run for the city.

  Escaping into the City was almost equally risky, though, since monitor cameras ringed the site. Yet if no one was watching the screens in the command module, they just might be able to get into the C-4 Pyramid and hide within the Labyrinth until it was time for the Akron to depart. Boggs had to get the dirigible out of Cydonia within the next twelve hours; if they could hold out inside the City for just that long…

  Grabbing Sasaki’s hand, Nash ran for the distant pyramid. It hurt like hell to make the ten-league hop-skips in the lesser Martian gravity; every time his boots touched ground, his swollen stomach muscles shrieked in agony, yet it was the quickest way to cover the long distance between the base and the ancient necropolis. Sasaki didn’t have any trouble keeping up with him, although she hesitated when they approached the first of the stalk-mounted surveillance cameras. Nash was tempted to shoot out the lens, but then he realized that, the next time someone attempted to use that particular camera, it would provide a clue to their whereabouts. He let it go and kept running.

  They had almost made it to the pyramid when something came through the doorway.

  It was nine feet tall, metallic and jet-black, although odd streaks of dark red ran chaotically across its seamless form like imperfections in a sheet of mica. Human-like in its general form, it had trunk-like legs which shifted on double-jointed knees and wide footpads which oddly resembled the MRV. In fact, the behemoth was akin to a CAS; with its wide, massive body, rotary joints, low sloped head and vaguely hunched back. But its accordion-jointed arms were gorilla-like in their length, almost touching the ground as it lumbered forward, and the hands were massive, sharp claws.

  Nash stopped dead in his tracks, his mouth gaping open; Sasaki halted with him, grabbing onto his suit for support. A single, cyclopian eye moved toward them within a narrow eye-slit and stopped as it locked onto them. The leviathan paused for a moment, then ponderously began to advance toward them. Behind it, a second creature—identical to the first except for a different pattern of red markings—was emerging from the stone doorway.

  ‘Back off,’ he said softly. Freeing himself from Miho’s grasp, he took two steps backward, warily raising the Steyr into firing position. ‘Take it slow, but back away…’

  Sasaki didn’t respond; she stayed in place, staring at the black monster. Nash remembered that his comlink was switched off and she couldn’t hear him. He hesitated for a moment, then stabbed the appropriate button on his right gauntlet’s wristpad. ‘Miho!’ he snapped. ‘Back off!’

  She jerked a little at the sound of his voice, then switched on her own radio; however, she still didn’t move away. ‘August, I don’t think it’s…’

  At that instant, the first creature raised its vast arms and lurched toward them.

  Nash heard Sasaki’s scream through his headset. He lunged forward, shoved her out of the way, then raised the Steyr to his shoulder and clenched the trigger with his right forefinger. There was the muted noise of firecrackers next to his ear; he felt the rifle stock recoil against his shoulder, almost knocking him off-balance, as spent shells danced across the back of his forearm.

  His aim was good; a jagged line of thumbhole-size pockmarks appeared in the creature’s wide chest. The thing jerked back slightly, its movements less fluid, more mechanical—now, for the first time, Nash realized that it was some sort of robot—but it didn’t fall.

  The second robot, unharmed, continued to advance steadily as the first behemoth recovered itself. Claws outstretched, it stalked in their direction.

  ‘Get out of here!’ Nash yelled. He opened fire again, still focusing his aim on the closer of the two creatures. Sasaki finally reacted; as she flung herself out of the way, the robot’s right arm swung at her, its immense claw viciously slashing through the space where she had just been standing. If she had still been there, she would have been disemboweled.

  Nash retreated a couple of steps, still firing at the first robot. More bullet-holes marred its thick skin; it seemed to have been slowed down, but it still kept coming at him. Now the second leviathan had turned and was heading straight for him. He let loose another few rounds, then whirled around to make a leap…

  The toe of his right boot snagged a rock; he tripped and pitched forward to the ground. Nash instinctively threw his arms up in front of his helmet to protect his faceplate from being cracked; his bruises shouted with agony as he smashed into the rocky soil. Ignoring the pain, he grabbed for his gun…

  ‘Nash…!’ Sasaki screamed.

  And found it missing. It had been flung aside in the fall. In near-panic, he glanced about and saw it lying on the ground about six feet away to his right. He could hear his own breath rasping in his helmet as he scrambled for it…

  ‘Roll left!’ Sasaki shouted. ‘Left!’

  Nash didn’t think twice; he tucked in his arms and twisted to the left. He caught a glimpse of a clawed fist ramming into the ground where he had been lying.

  He looked up and saw one of the robots towering above him, its dark form eclipsing the sun. It tore its claws out of the ground and raised them above its head…

  There was the rapid poppa-poppa-poppa-poppa of full-auto gunfire. The creature staggered back and suddenly Boggs was shouting in his ears: ‘Move it, move it, move it…!’

  Nash gasped and heaved himself off the ground, hastily crawling on hands and knees out from under the unexpected fusillade. He felt hands grasp his wrists and haul him up; his feet found the ground and he barreled forward, catching Sasaki in the midriff. She grunted as the breath was almost knocked o
ut of her, but let herself be carried backward past Boggs, where he stood spraying bullets at the advancing creatures.

  ‘Haul ass!’ Boggs yelled. ‘Get out of here! Move, move, move…!’

  Nash had a fleeting wish to go back and retrieve the lost Steyr, but Sasaki was already pulling him away. He glanced back and saw that the robots were still on their feet; they were less than a dozen feet away from Boggs, who still had his gun wide-open on them. ‘Get out of there!’ Nash yelled. ‘You can’t kill ’em!’

  ‘No fucking shit!’ All at once, Boggs threw down his Steyr, turned and leaped away from the monster in the lead, barely in time to escape another slashing swipe by its claws. ‘Out of ammo! Run for it! They’re gonna…’

  ‘They ain’t gonna do jack shit,’ a new voice said in their headphones.

  Nash looked around. A hulking figure in a combat armor suit stood behind them; the maw of the integrated machine-gun in its left arm was raised and pointed toward the three of them. He could see Marks’ scowling face through the tinted glass of the canopy.

  They barely had a chance to dodge aside before he opened fire.

  Kawakami had an eerie sense of detachment as he watched the TV monitors. One screen displayed one of the minotaurs and Sergeant Marks, the image caught by the camera positioned near Pyramid C-4. On another screen, replacing an earlier view of the habitat’s exterior, was a close-up shot of the same robot as seen through the fish-eye lens of another camera mounted on the carapace of Marks’ CAS; in the background lurked the massive form of a second minotaur. It was as if he were watching an action movie on TBS back home in Osaka; all that was missing was a melodramatic music score.

  He could, however, hear the brash rattle of gunfire over the comlink which threatened to drown out Marks’ voice: ‘They’re taking the rounds,’ Marks said in an almost calm voice, as if he was narrating a documentary. ‘I’ve stopped ’em, but they ain’t falling. What’s this damn thing made out of anyway?’