by Brian N Ball
“Red Alert!” stammered the electronic voice. “Red Alert.”
Danecki and Khalia surged towards the narrow corridor at the far end of the Central Command area, the winding corridor down which they had attempted to push Batibasaga.
“This is a six-hour Red Phase Alert,” said the voice of Central Command. “Countdown begun.”
“Follow!” Danecki called over his shoulder.
Metallic voices screamed and whistled from concealed channels. The whole fort rang with the harsh outbursts of alerted security systems.
Khalia had an impression of Mrs. Zulkifar sliding against a thin wall of black haze as Danecki pulled her onward; she saw that Wardle was following them, and that the Jacobi youth was trying to get to his feet too.
The confusion of the noise, and the speed of Danecki’s rush had not completely disoriented her. She understood the importance of the fort’s harsh stammerings. Six hours!
“Keep going!” snarled Danecki as she stumbled into the corridor. “We might get past the security net!”
“Why not one of the other ways?” squealed Mrs. Zulkifar.
“Didn’t you see the barrier?” snapped Danecki.
“Wouldn’t it be safer—staying—back—there?” she panted.
“No! Nowhere’s safe! Save your breath! I’m trying to find the robot!”
The corridor wound downward in a narrow tube of subtle planes and varying degrees of light and semi-darkness. What was it, Danecki wondered, as they slithered from smooth sides to sudden abrupt corners. A maintenance shaft? An escape route in case of siege?
The fort kept them in touch with the progress of the hunt for the other survivors. “Two—three—four humans identified!” roared a sullen voice all round them. “Apprehend, search, find! Report! Intruders—apprehend! Security to apprehend and remove to Security Wing!” called Central Command. “This is Red Phase Alert! Five humans identified!”
“Six hours!” snarled Danecki back at the voices. “Six hours before the machines abort!”
A scream behind them in the corridor told them that someone had fallen and was hurt.
“Jacobi,” said Danecki. He was momentarily pleased, not so much for himself as for the girl’s sake. The more the fort could be confused by capturing the long-delayed visitors, the greater were the chances of his finding Batibasaga. So long as they could remain free, there was a chance of success.
“Central Security System reporting,” cut in a harsh voice. “Have apprehended a female, mixed heritage, no identifiable characteristics known to this System. Instructions?”
“Place in Security Wing!” came back the order.
A weapon system asked for directions. It offered ranges, frequencies, attack formulas, and procedures to blast ships that had been rust and dust for a thousand years.
“Red Alert!” called Central Control. “Intruders, Duty Commander! Instructions?”
Six hours! Less! Danecki had no need to urge the girl on. Down they went, slithering and sliding, bruising bones and jarring flesh.
Then they came to the place of bones.
“No!” screamed the girl. “No!”
The corridor had leveled and widened at this point. The light was weak, but strong enough to reveal the three skeletons in every detail.
They both stopped. The girl caught Danecki’s arm, and he was grateful for the comfort. The sight of the long-dead human beings in this functional and ancient piece of machinery was utterly shocking; a find so totally unexpected that it had the effect of stunning both of them.
They saw the jumbled heap where two corpses had fallen.
Khalia recognized the bright, long hair of a woman about one of the skulls. She moved towards it, horrified but full of pity for the woman who had died down there.
Danecki examined the third skeleton beyond the heap of bones. Obviously one man had fallen alone. A knife had killed him. The golden handle still held firmly to the ribcage, jammed hard against it. The point was in the center of the clean, white ribcage. Great force had thrust it there, for a rib had been broken aside.
In three or four seconds he had summed up the cause and outcome of the terrible encounter. He revised all his estimates of the fort’s capacities and strategies in those seconds. “It’s vulnerable,” he said.
Khalia didn’t hear. “They came in here,” she said bleakly.
“Yes,” said Danecki. “We have to find out how.”
How had three people entered this most closely-guarded sanctuary of the Confederation? How had the machines been overcome? And why was the pitiful human refuse still allowed to remain in the winding tunnel?
Almost as an afterthought, Danecki stirred with his foot the simple blaster lying a yard from the solitary skeleton. It was a museum-piece. A thing at one with this echoing, eerie installation. It appeared to be charged, but he couldn’t bring himself to touch it.
Not until he took the girl’s hand would she continue the descent of the tunnel. The sight of the antique bones in their unlikely mausoleum had shattered her.
When they rounded the next subtle curve, they found what the tunnel led to.
There was no more harsh electronic clamor from the various systems. Instead, there was a cold, eternal silence. It was appropriate. The light was muted too, but there was enough to show the immensity of the Confederation’s power.
Stretching into the distance was a dim, gray cavern, a vast space full of the supreme accomplishment of the long-gone Confederation.
“It’s true!” Khalia gasped in awe. “The legend.”
“Yes,” said Danecki, remembering the robotic guide’s account of the history of the ruined fort above. “It is true.”
Before them lay the Black Army.
* * *
CHAPTER 10
The cavern held a monstrous army of gaunt silent figures—row on row of black robotic monsters. Their cone-shaped headpieces glowed with an age-old power source; antennae stirred with a dull intelligence as Khalia’s whispered voice disturbed the cold air of the eerie parade ground. And, for all their ancient and obsolete appearance, they produced in Danecki, as well as in Khalia, a sensation of unutterably powerful menace. They looked as though they could march halfway across the universe to blot out the enemies of the Confederation. They were things from nightmare, blocks of black iron, and serried rows of phalanxes—designed to come to life only when their human designers and masters were dead.
“Still functioning,” Khalia whispered. “They know we’re here!” A thought struck her. “Did they kill those—those people back there?” She pointed to the corridor.
Danecki shook his head. “These beasts have never fought. Wardle and Dross were right. They are the Lost Army that failed to fight. But they will march!”
Danecki’s mind raced: The six-hour alert! Yes! The legend—it said they would march! They must be the Regiments of Night! What will they do?
Already he was busy calculating the possibilities of the situation. There remained a few hours in which to master the fort’s control systems—one or more of them. A few hours in which they could try to halt the installation’s ponderous machinery as it ticked away the minutes and seconds of their lives. And the security systems might find them at any moment!
What can we do?” whispered Khalia. She was stunned by the awful impact of the monolithic figures. She had the sense of a huge and elemental force quivering with stored-up impatience, waiting for release and the final dissolution of both itself and the rest of the human race.
“Look around—find what we can!” answered Danecki. “We must be in an off-limits area, but it’s my guess that the security nets don’t function effectively down here! They may have been put out of action by those.” He pointed to the corridor where the pitiful ancient bones lay stark and white. “We must try to find a clue to the installation’s functioning—how it reasons, why it’s ignored us so far! Look around! Don’t go too near the robots, though.”
“I won’t!” Khalia shivered as long, whip-li
ke antennae oscillated to the tones of Danecki’s voice. It was like talking in the presence of the newly-dead—hushed, frightened tones that might stir the dead into unwanted activity. After a thousand years, the Regiments might emerge from their sleep!
Danecki stepped from the narrow corridor and into the cavern.
Heat-sensitive lighting units flooded the arena with a bright whiteness. The robotic ranks had the backs of their huge carapaces to him. Suddenly, noise beat around them. Khalia gasped and clutched Danecki. Her eyes were wide with tension, and her face was startlingly pale in the bright coldness.
“Red Phase Alert! Duty Commander to advise on Red Phase Alert! No further reports on surface activity in the destructed installation above! Negative reports continue on destruction of hyperspace vessel!”
“Quick!” said Danecki. “The fort’s beginning to assert itself down here now!”
“Three suspects apprehended by Security! Advise please.” One female, two males in custody! No recognition patterns in imprints taken so far! Duty Commander?”
“Mrs. Zulkifar. And two of the men,” said Khalia. “What will it do with them?”
Danecki shrugged. “We can’t help them.”
“You don’t want to! You’ve decided this is just another escape from personal extinction—you’re just a man on the run again I” Khalia was amazed at the passion in her own voice.
He isn’t, she told herself. He isn’t that at all!
“All right,” said Danecki. “Forget I said that. I’ll do what I can.” He felt her trembling in his grasp. He found the sensation peculiarly maddening. She was too young to die here in this gray prison, too beautiful to be another ruined life in the long-dead fort.
“I thought your only responsibility was to yourself!”
“No,” said Danecki, knowing it to be true and glad of it. He realized that he had been accepting the inevitability of the others’ death the moment Mrs. Zulkifar had leapt for the Central Corridor. If they had been quick enough, they might have had a chance. Catching the girl and hauling her after the robot had been an automatic reaction which didn’t bear analysis. “We’ve been lucky so far. I don’t think our luck’s going to continue. We can help them by staying free as long as we can—and by finding out what we can. Come on!”
Khalia followed. She watched Danecki’s wide shoulders and wondered how he had survived the year of torment. He was a man driven by furies not of his own making; though he was governed by expediency, he was not callous. He did what he had to do.
Danecki led the way past the groves of robots, along the side of the cavern. The sheer weight of numbers was oppressing. The faintly-quivering antennae picked up their careful movements. Row on row, neatly set out in blocks of a hundred, each robot exactly like its neighbors, they waited with a monumental patience for a lost war. There was no dust, no sign of aging, nor of time passing. The light flooded on dull black metal as it had a thousand years before when some tight-lipped commander had last inspected the Army that would march only when the Confederation died. It might have been yesterday. Khalia shuddered.
The robots could march at a moment’s notice.
And if they did!
Six hours, the voice of Central Command had promised. Six hours before the dull-black phalanxes moved out into the blackness of night to carry out their age-old mission of revenge.
“They’ll march!” whispered Khalia. “They will! And we can’t stop them! What will they do?”
“What the Brigadier said,” Danecki told her. “These machines are hunters.”
“But the Outlanders! Surely they won’t—”
“Yes,” said Danecki. “They will. The years will make no difference. The fort doesn’t seem to recognize the passage of years, nor the end of the Confederation.”
Khalia had a sudden vision of the monsters rooting in the forests for the few men and women who lived on the planet. “We can’t let them!”
“No,” said Danecki. “Over here. See!”
It was a small recess rather than a room. Raised a few feet above the echoing cavern, approached by means of three high steps, it was clearly some sort of reviewing platform. Inside, when Danecki had helped Khalia into its somehow-safe interior, they looked out at the Army.
“There have to be controls,” Danecki said.
He examined the walls of the recess. They were of the same bright metal as the rest of the cavern. Cold to the touch, without a seam or a sign of a joint, it left the fingers tingling slightly.
“What can we do?” asked Khalia hopelessly. “If there were controls, wouldn’t the fort blow itself up if we touched them?”
“The Army would march first,” Danecki said. It was what the fort had been made for. It was not a sanctuary at all, but a weapon of revenge. “It will be programmed to march out. Then, when there’s no more need for this installation, it will abort itself. Dross is right. This fort isn’t designed to keep a small remnant of the Confederation alive—the surface installation is designed for that.”
Khalia shivered. “It will be dark now. Up there.”
She thought of Wardle’s enthusiastic lecture on time. “There’ll be a moon,” the Brigadier had said. “I wish I could see the sky and hear the rain. This place reeks of death.”
Danecki stared at the far end of the great cavern. The girl was against him again. He caught the deeply exciting smell of her fear. He tried to ignore it.
“There has to be an opening,” he said. The fatigue of the long hours in hyperspace, the sheer bodily exhaustion of the hunt through the forest, and the mental exertions of programming Batibasaga had left their mark. He shrugged off the deadly lassitude. The girl’s presence made it easier; there was a certain amount of grim pleasure in trying to work out what to do. “There has to be a way in!”
“Those?” the girl said, pointing to the corridor where the skeletons lay.
“Yes. They couldn’t have come down the spin-shaft. Not unless they were imprinted on the personnel selectors. They couldn’t have been Confederation staff! And yet they reached this lowest level of all!”
“They have to have a way out,” said Khalia. She gestured to the robots. “A route to the surface.”
Danecki grinned. “I wouldn’t want to be on the surface when their exit is blasted through!”
Metallic voices rumbled briefly.
“Did you hear?” said Khalia.
“Yes. Two more caught. That leaves us. Curse the Doctor’s robot!” Danecki exclaimed. “I relied on it— Knaggs was right! I’m sure of it! But why doesn’t it try to take control!”
He thought with fury of the chore of selecting its delicate circuits, of the hour-long fumblings amongst the membranous strands.
Again the metallic voices snorted and rumbled in the distance. Weapons systems chanted off ranges. A maintenance unit called for assistance. Central Command ordered the removal of the newly-caught captives to the Security Wing.
Khalia caught herself staring into the bulbous sight-orifices of a row of black monsters. They seemed to acknowledge her presence with a peculiarly repellent awareness. She imagined the faces, with their rocklike immobility, watching her struggle. “They’re horrible,” she whispered. “Horrible!”
Danecki amazed himself by putting an arm around her. It was so natural a gesture that he questioned it only when it was completed. His mind rang with conjectures still. Why had the underground cavern and its systems allowed their entry? Why were the skeletons permitted to remain in the corridor, when no other sign of human occupancy remained? How was it that the three humans had penetrated the recesses of the fort? At the same time he could handle Khalia’s fears.
“They’re machines,” he said. “Nothing more. Men made them. If we can find their controls, we can make them harmless.”
“Not them! They’re beyond control! They’re waiting for us to go down there—they are! I saw a hundred of them staring this way! I did! I did!” The girl was near hysteria. She clutched his arm with an ecstasy of desperation
.
“No,” said Danecki. “Metal. Plastics. Circuits. That’s all.”
“I don’t want to die down here! Not here—I know it’s selfish and I know Mr. Knaggs died, but I don’t think any of us will get out! I couldn’t die down here!”
More to himself than the girl, Danecki said: “It’s a difficult thing to live with.”
“What?”
“The fear of death.”
“You don’t care—you’re only thinking of yourself! You’ve lived with it for so long that you don’t care any more! You’ll wait and do nothing!”
“No!”
Danecki’s abrupt denial stopped Khalia’s hysteria. “I didn’t mean that I thought you didn’t care about anyone but yourself,” she said haltingly.
“That went long ago,” Danecki said. “I care.”
They stood together in silence for a while. The girl was very close to him. Danecki sensed, both in himself and the girl, the sexual awareness which comes in moments of mortal peril. She had the scent of a woman who desperately needs to make love.
Me? thought Danecki. Approaching a middle age I’ll not reach because of a hard-eyed young killer or a thousand-year-old war! Not with me.
He recalled the mindless violence of a year spent in a series of ferocious duels. There was a long period of calm and peace before that, but the year had eroded its memories. He was a refugee in a refuge that wasn’t.
The girl’s indefinable scent was stronger. She was dishevelled, but the clear freshness of youth made the tear marks an ornament on her glowing skin. She was young and she had never been truly afraid before. Did she know that all men and women felt the urge to couple when death hung over them? Danecki saw the swell of her breasts moving closer. Her lips parted.
“I couldn’t do it to you,” Danecki said. “Not here— not a man like me!”
The girl closed out the army of robots; she moved trancelike and with complete assurance. “Here,” she whispered. “And now.”