Devil's Hand

by Jack McKinney

  Edwards was already in touch with GMU control. “Grant apparently had the same idea,”

  Edwards reported. “He’s sent the Wolff Pack in.”

  “The computer is invaluable,” Cabell urged. “You must inform your troops that there are ways to deactivate the brain without destroying it. It could be of great use to all of us.”

  Edwards felt his faceplate and stared at Cabell obliquely.

  It is invaluable, it controls all of them…It could be of great use to us. The words rolled around in his mind, settling down to a dark inner purpose.

  “I want command and control,” he said into the cam while everyone’s attention was diverted. “Get the Ghost Squadron ready for departure. I’ll be down to lead them in personally.”

  Exedore and Lang met separately with Cabell and Rem after the committee session was dissolved. While the military faction was off deciding how best to deal with Cabell’s revelations concerning the Invid brain, Lang, fully aware of the regulations he was violating, took the two Tiresians to the SDF-3’s engineering section and eventually into the hold that housed the spacefold generators. On the way Cabell talked about the history of Tirol and the sociopolitical upheavals that had paved the way for the Great Transition and the emergence of Robotech Masters.

  Lang and Exedore were as rapt as Cabell had been only an hour before. At last someone knowledgeable was filling in all the gaps of the saga they had tried to patch together from records found aboard the SDF-1 and the Zentraedi flagship. And how false those records were now proved to be! Even the misinformed. scenarios Lang himself had worked out, the timelines he had spent countless hours assembling, the motives and explanations he had assigned.

  Cabell spoke of Zor as one would of a demiurge, and in many ways Tirol’s story was Zor’s own-from his noble birth as a senator’s only son, to his untimely death at the hands of the Regent’s newly-evolved troops. Cabell told them of Zor’s remarkable discovery on Optera, and of the subsequent development of Protoculture and Robotechnology; of the creation of the Zentraedi, and the growth of a new political elite; of the war that raged throughout the empire, and a renegade’s attempts at rebalancing the scales…

  Lang was given to understand that Zor, Cabell’s one time student, hadn’t so much kept the secrets of Protoculture from the Masters as scattered them across the galaxy. There were still Flowers, on Optera and on many of the worlds Zor had seeded just prior to his death, but the Invid found them sterile and unusable because their Pollinators had also been taken. And while the Masters were in possession of these curious creatures, they no longer had the matrix that allowed for Protoculture conjuration from the Flowers. Zor had seen to it that no one could profit from his discoveries; and in the end he had driven himself half mad, convinced that he could somehow rule over all of it and parcel out to the universe the gift of everlasting life.

  Exedore and Lang learned a little about Cabell, also; about how he and Zor and several other Tirolian scientists had deliberately refused to embark on the dangerous course the Masters had followed-the road to heightened powers and the toll that journey extracted.

  Ever since the Masters left, Cabell and his young assistant, Rem, had been trying to replicate Zor’s achievements. But Cabell was now beginning to believe that the process was more one of mind than of matter, and that Protoculture would never be scientifically conjured from the Flowers-it had to be willed from them.

  As Lang listened to Cabell’s assessment of the Masters, he found himself growing weary and almost bemused by the Expeditionary mission’s ironic accomplishment: in leaving Earth behind, they had left the door wide open for the Masters’ arrival. It occurred to him that peace would never have been possible with such a race, and he could only shudder at the thought of Earth in the incapable hands of Leonard and the Army of the Southern Cross.

  Once in the fold-generator hold, the language of pure science replaced the grunts and glottal stops of the Tiresian tongue. The computer was their interpreter now, and as Cabell inspected the generators, he and Lang began to communicate with mathematics and schematic appraisals. Lang was amazed at how quickly the Tiresian was able to adapt and reshape his thinking to fit the demands of Human artificial-intelligence systems.

  “But you have the necessary Protoculture reserves for a fold,” Cabell said after a long while. “Enough for a flotilla of ships, in fact. All that’s lacking is sufficient fuel for the Reflex drives.” He saw Lang’s bewildered look, and quickly created a program that could illustrate his ideas. Once or twice he called on Exedore to define a word or phrase.

  Lang watched as a series of esoteric holographic displays took shape on the screen. He studied them a moment and offered Cabell a restrained smile. “Now I understand.”

  A fold required an all-important interaction between Protoculture and the fuels that powered the Reflex drives themselves, an interaction his teams would never had guessed.

  “But what you have here would call for a magnetic monopole ore, Cabell.”

  The Tiresian looked impatient. “Well, of course. How else could it be done?”

  “But we haven’t the equipment necessary to create this much material,” Lang told him.

  “And even if we did, it would require more time-”

  “Nonsense,” Cabell said dismissively. “You have all the ore you need right there.”

  Lang and Exedore followed Cabell’s finger out the viewport.

  “Fantoma?”

  “You don’t remember a time when the Zentraedi were miners, Exedore?” Cabell asked.

  Exedore seemed almost embarrassed by the question. “I do, Cabell. But we were never told what it was we were mining.”

  Cabell turned. to Lang. “The base may be difficult for you to utilize since it was sized to suit the Zentraedi; but the ore is still there for the taking.”

  Lang stepped to the viewport and looked long and hard at the giant planet’s jade-colored crescent. Then, as his eyes found diminutive Tirol, he recalled a premonition he had had long before the SDF-3’s departure from Earthspace. He thought of the SDF-3’s sizing chamber, and of Breetai’s small team of Micronized Battlepod warriors.

  Exedore was standing alongside him now. “But will we have enough time, sir?”

  Lang said, “We have nothing but time.”

  The lights in the sky are stars, Jonathan Wolff told himself short of the tunnel entrance. He had dismounted the Hovertank and was gazing up into Tirol’s incomparable night. But there was at least one light up there that wasn’t a star, and he made a wish on it.

  Minmei was somewhere on that unblinking presence he identified as the SDF-3, and the wish was meant to ascend to her heart. Wolff had hardly been able to keep her from his thoughts these past two days; even in the midst of that first day’s battle he would recall her face or the fragrance of her hair when she had come to the dropship hold to wish him luck, to embrace him. He wondered how he had allowed her to take hold of him like this, and considered for a moment that she might have witched herself into his mind. Because it was out of control all of a sudden, a flirtation he had played on the off-chance, never figuring she would respond. And what of Catherine? he asked himself. Was she, too, staring up into evening’s light, her arm around the thin shoulder of their only son, and sending him a wish across the galaxy? While he had already forgotten, broken the pledge he had promised to stick to this time, so they could have the second chance their marriage so desperately needed.

  Odd thoughts to be thinking on such a night, Wolff mused.

  “All set, sir,” the lieutenant’s voice reported from behind him.

  Wolff took a quick breath and swung around. “I want it to go by the numbers, Lieutenant,”

  he warned. “Two teams, no surprises. Now, where’s our voice?”

  The lieutenant shouted, “Quist!” and a short, solid-looking ranger approached and snapped to.

  “You stick to me like glue, Corporal,” Wolff told him. “Every time I put my hand out I expect to find you on
the end of it, got that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Wolff gave Quist the once-over. “All right, let’s hit it.”

  The lieutenant got the teams moving through the smoke toward the subterranean corridors. It hadn’t taken a genius to locate the entry once they had gotten a clear fix on where the Beta from Skull had touched down. And that crazy kid, Baker, had a good memory if nothing else, Wolff had to concede; his recall of the ruined buildings in the area bordered on the uncanny.

  Wolff signaled for everyone to hold up at the entrance. He peered down into the darkness, then took a look behind him, where four Hovertanks were guarding the rear. The corridor was tall and wide, but not big enough to accommodate a mecha. Stairways, secondary corridors, and some kind of huge lenslike medallions could be discerned from up here.

  Wolff found himself thinking back to the journals his grandfather had kept during a minor Indo-Chinese war few people remembered. Back then, Jack Wolff and a handful of tunnel rats used to go into these things with flashlights and gunpowder handguns. Wolff checked the safety on his blaster and had to laugh: his grandfather wrote about the booby traps, the spiders and rats. Today it would be mindless feline robot drones and a host of other stuff they probably hadn’t even seen yet. But all in all it was the same old thing: a sucker’s tour of the unknown.

  “Bring those Amblers in,” Wolff ordered.

  Two squat, bipedal Robosearchlights moved up to throw intense light into the hole.

  Wolff and his Pack began to follow them down.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  If Exedore had an Invid counterpart, it would have to be the scientist [sic], Tesla, for no other of the Regis’s children was possessed of such a wide-ranging intellect and personality. It is interesting to note, however, that although fashioned by the Regis, Tesla had much more of the Regent in his makeup. One has to wonder if the Regis, taking Zor as her only model, mistakenly assigned certain characteristics to males, and others to females. Marlene, Sera, and Corg-her human child-immediately come to mind. Was she, then, in some sense culpable for fostering the Regent’s devolved behavior?

  Bloom Nesterfig, The Social Organization of the Invid It was Tesla who told the Regis about the trouble on Tirol. He was one of the Regent’s “scientists”-how she laughed at this notion!-and currently the commander of the Karbarran starship that was transporting life-forms back to the Regent’s zoo on Optera. Tesla had been something of a favorite child, but the Regis had become suspicious of his ostensibly metaphysical strivings, and had nothing but distrust for him now that he had allied himself with her estranged husband. Tesla reminded her of the Regent; there was the same burning intensity in his black eyes, the same distention and blush to his feelers. He had no details about the situation on Tirol, other than to note that the Regent had dispatched two additional warships from Optera to see to some new emergency.

  “So he’s gotten himself into another fix,” the Regis sneered.

  “A possible entanglement, Your Highness,” Tesla replied, offering her a somewhat obligatory and half-hearted salute. “A complication, perhaps. But hardly a `fix.’”

  The two were on Praxis, where a shuttle from the Karbarran ship had put down to take on supplies and specimens. The starship itself, a medley of modular drives and transport units from a dozen worlds, was in orbit near the Praxian moon; it was crewed by slaves, ursine creatures native to Karbarra, a world rich in the Protoculture Peat that fueled the ship.

  A sentry announced that one of Tesla’s lieutenants wished to speak with him. The Regis granted permission, and the lieutenant entered a moment later. Two Praxians, cuffed at wrist and ankle, followed. They were ravishing creatures, the Regis thought, appraising the duo Tesla had handpicked for the Regent’s zoo. Tall, Tiresioid females with thick, lustrous pelts and strategic swaths of primitive costume to offset their smooth nakedness.

  The Regis confessed to a special fondness for the Praxians and their forested, fertile planet; but Praxis held even greater charms in its volcanic depths. Tesla, however, was unaware of the Genesis Pits she had fashioned here-her underground experiments-in creative evolution.

  “Shall I take these two to the ship?” Tesla’s lieutenant asked.

  As Tesla approached the females to look them over more closely, the taller of the two began to spit and curse at him, straining wildly against the cuffs that bound her. The Enforcer turned to silence her and took a bite on the hand. Ravishing, the Regis told herself, but warriors to the last.

  Ultimately the lieutenant brought a weapon to bear on the pair; stunned, they collapsed to their knees and whimpered.

  Tesla nodded and adopted the folded-arm posture characteristic of his group. “Yes, they’ll do fine,” he told his soldier. “And see that they’re well caged.”

  The Regis made a scoffing sound when the females had been led out. “My husband’s need for pets. Instead of furthering his own evolution, he chooses to surround himself with captives-to bask in his self-deluded superiority.” She glared at Tesla, finding his form repugnant, in so many ways inferior to the very beings his ship carried like so much stock.

  “So what are you bringing him this time, servant?”

  Testa ignored the slur. “Feel free to inspect our cargo, Your Highness. We have choice samples from Karbarra, Spheris, Garuda, Peryton, and now Praxis. A brief stopover on Haydon IV, and our cages will be full.”

  The Regis whirled on the scientist. “Haydon IV?” There was a sudden note of concern in her voice. “Have you given clear thought to the possible consequences of such an action?”

  Tesla shrugged his massive shoulders. “What could go wrong, Your Highness? Haydon IV

  is our world now, is it not?”

  Haydon IV belongs to no one, the Regis kept to herself. Captives aside, Tesla would be lucky to leave that world alive.

  Her husband was about to make a serious mistake, but she could not bring herself to intervene.

  The raucous sound of a static-spiced squawkbox woke Janice from dreams of electric sheep. One eye opened, she spied Minmei on her knees across the room trying to adjust the radio’s volume.

  “Too late,” Janice called out.

  Minmei swung around, surprised, fingertips to her lips. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  Janice sat up and yawned. “I’m sure.” She’d fallen off an hour ago, just after Lynn had left their new quarters for parts unknown. “What is that-a transceiver?”

  “No one will tell me anything about Jonathan. This is a kind of, uh, unscrambler. I thought I could pick up some combat reports.”

  Janice stood up to get a better look at the radio and its decoder feed. “Where’d you get this, Lynn?”

  “Promise not to tell?”

  Janice looked around the room, calling attention to their confinement. “Who am I going to tell?”

  “A woman who works for Dr. Lang got it for me. I explained the situation.”

  “Stardom does have its advantages, doesn’t it?” Janice kneeled down next to Minmei and reached a finger out to readjust the radio’s tuner. In a minute she located the com net’s frequency.

  “General Edwards and the Ghost Squadron are already on their way, over,” someone was updating. After several seconds of static a second voice said, “That’s good news, com two.

  We’ve lost Wolff-”

  Minmei’s gasp erased the next few words; then Janice succeeded in quieting her. “Listen, Lynn, just listen.”

  “…had him for a while, but we’re getting nothing now. Probably that force field. Everything was roses up till then. No sign of enemy activity.”

  “You see,” Janice said. Minmei was still upset, but hopeful again. “It’ll be all right, I promise.”

  Trembling, Minmei shut off the receiver and got to her feet. “I can’t listen to it,” she said, wringing her hands. “I just can’t think about the horrible things he must be facing.” She collapsed, crying, into Janice’s open arms.

  In the nave of the Royal Hall, the In
vid brain looked as though it might succumb to a stroke at any moment. Cells were flashing out one after another as power continued to be shunted to the force shield and energy reserves were depleted. A dozen or so soldiers stood motionless; awaiting the brain’s command.

  Obsim, too, was on the verge of panic, convinced now that the Regent meant to abandon him there. Looking frightened and desperate, he paced back and forth in front of the brain’s bubble chamber under the expressionless gaze of his Enforcer unit.

  “Don’t watch me like that!” he shouted, suddenly aware of their eyes on him. “Who let the Tiresians escape? It wasn’t me, I can tell you that much. Don’t I have enough to do already? Do I have to do everything myself?” He waved a fourfingered fist at them.

  “Heads are going to roll, I promise you!”

  Obsim tried to avoid thinking about the punishment the Regent would have in store for him.

  A one-way trip to the Genesis Pits, perhaps, for quick devolvement. Nothing like a little reverse ontogeny to bring someone around. Obsim had seen others go through it; he recalled the sight of them crawling from the pits like land crabs-obscene representations of an evolutionary past the Invid had never lived through, a form that existed only in the shape and design of the Pincer Ships and Shock Troopers.

  Obsim stopped pacing to confront the brain.

  “Situation,” he demanded.

  The living computer struggled to revive itself; it floated listlessly in the middle depths of the tank, dull and discolored. Obsim repeated his command.

  “Intruders have entered the subterranean vaults and corridors,” the brain managed at last.

  “Show me!” Obsim barked, fighting to keep his fear in check. “Let the Inorganics be my eyes.”

  An image began to take shape in the interior of the communicator sphere; gradually it resolved, albeit distorted, as if through a fish-eye lens. Obsim saw a small group of armed invaders moving through the corridors on foot. There were males and females among them, outfitted in helmets, body armor, visual and audio scanners. The Inorganic remained in its place of concealment and allowed them to pass by unharmed.