“That is the way of it, eh?” he said. “For over ten thousand years—ten thousand of your world’s circuits around its sun—the Ve-Ky have attempted to find the Museum. This is a momentous occurrence for them. If any of their initial teams breaks out of the Survey Vessel, they will be sure to give the coordinates to thousands more waiting outside. Then the fortress will swarm with enemy. Then—”
He plucked at his beard. “I’m afraid I will have to flush the vessel immediately. I cannot risk further infestations at this time. Perhaps that is fitting. I realize you did not mean me any harm, but you’ve brought this about through your rash actions. You will have to accept the price of your thoughtlessness.”
I wasn’t going to accept anything if I could help it. “Maybe if you and I worked together, Curator—”
“You are fighting creatures,” he said sharply, interrupting me. “I realize you hate the idea of defeat. I quite understand. Therefore, to be merciful, I shall give you ten minutes to make your peace—”
“Curator,” N7 said. “I have an idea.”
The old man jerked around, frowning at N7. “The soulless automaton speaks. I find you unsettling, machine. No. You will remain silent in my presence.”
“Just a minute, sir,” I said, hurrying to N7, kneeling beside him. “What’s your idea?” I whispered.
N7 glanced at the old man. The near giant had turned away to study the rest of the bridge.
“The Curator said the ship is infested with Ve-Ky,” N7 whispered to me. “Yet, he has appeared in the center of the ship. That would indicate he’s able to teleport from one location to another. Perhaps he can move a combat team to the various infested locales, as he calls them. We will rid the ship of the Ve-Ky for him within his time limit.”
I looked up, ready to repeat N7’s idea.
The Curator was staring at us, and he didn’t look pleased. “I heard him,” he said heavily. “I am unhappy to hear his voice after telling him to keep quiet. Still, it is a sound idea. And it has been several eons since I’ve spoken with fringe dwellers such as you. Also, you have returned my Survey Vessel to me. Yes. I shall give you this opportunity then. Ten minutes. If we can pull this off in ten minutes, I shall let you remain in the Orion Arm exhibit until the lot of you die of old age.”
-20-
Before we began the ship-clearing assault, I implored the Curator to take me to my quarters so I could reload the Magnum.
The Curator agreed, and he explained the process to us. It was simple and to the point.
“You must stay in a tight circle around me. I do not feel like expending more energy than is seemly. That would be inelegant and wasteful. Do you understand?”
I nodded, as he seemed impatient.
Ella, N7 and I stood by him as the Curator manipulated his thick fingers. The tips glowed as before. I heard a sizzle of energy, smelled something sharp and heard air displacement as we appeared in my quarters.
I staggered. Ella fell flat while N7 stumbled against the Curator. The old man shoved the android away, sending N7 crashing against a bulkhead.
“Do not presume to touch me again,” the Curator told a prone N7.
I kept my opinions to myself, snatching several boxes of ammo. I flipped open the .44’s cylinder, shoving bullets into the chambers.
As I did, N7 picked himself up, and Ella stood as she checked her pulse rifle. Soon, the three of us circled the Curator again.
N7 tugged my arm and indicated the old man. I shook my head. N7 gave me an imploring look. It was so pathetic I relented.
“Curator,” I said.
The old man grunted a monosyllable response.
“N7 is sorry for touching you,” I said.
The Curator scowled at me.
N7 continued to motion urgently.
“He, ah, won’t do it again,” I added.
“The machine had better not,” the Curator said. “Once is more than I will tolerate. Now, cease your chatter and ready yourselves for war. Are you ready?”
“Yes, Curator,” I said.
“Then let me think,” the old man said, bowing his head. “Ah, this is a terrible manifestation indeed. I should caution you that we’re about to enter a hot zone. The Ve-Ky have already slain several hundred of your people.”
I gripped my gun harder. I hadn’t realized that. “Let’s go, sir.”
“I hear the anger in your voice, trooper,” the Curator said. “That is the proper attitude for this. The Ve-Ky are merciless ravagers.”
That isn’t what Key had told us, but I decided to keep that to myself.
The Curator’s fingertips glowed, and the same disorientation occurred as before. This time, though, we appeared in a corner of a vast engine compartment. Great cylinders purred with power and entire banks of wall controls flashed with lights.
Scattered throughout the mighty chamber were over one hundred charred corpses. Smoke still rose from some, while a horrible stench clung in the air.
As we appeared, twenty assault troopers in bio-suits traded shots with twice that number of electrical-flashing humanoids.
I began to fire, holding my gun in both hands. BOOM, BOOM. An electrical soldier stumbled onto the deck. I swiveled slightly. BOOM. BOOM. One pitched off his feet.
The rest of the Ve-Ky noticed after the third invader sizzled on the deck, with blood flowing from the opening in his weird body armor.
They targeted me, of course. I stayed near the Curator. I figured Mr. Super-High Tech would have some sort of defense. Each Ve-Ky bolt zigzagged toward me. Many appeared to be right on target. None of those reached me, however. They stopped a body’s-length away as if smashing up against a force field. I’d guessed correctly about the old man. A thought struck me then. Why had the force field let me in while keeping everything else out? The Curator must have allowed me in.
Without the slightest qualm, I took full advantage of the situation, dumping empty cartridges onto the deck and reloading. I should have had speed-loads, but didn’t. Several times, my fingers shook as I tried to shove bullets in the chambers.
“They’re retreating,” Ella shouted.
The Ve-Ky weren’t stupid. Once they realized they couldn’t do anything to me—provided I stayed near the Curator—they must have figured it was time to regroup elsewhere.
BOOM, BOOM. I moved the gun. BOOM, BOOM.
“Don’t let any get away,” the Curator said. “I do not have time for that. I will use anti-force against all of you if you fail.”
I glanced at him. The old man seemed serene. The eyes, though, swirled with menace. This dude meant what he said.
“Gottcha,” I said.
I left the magic circle of his protection, racing after the retreating Ve-Ky. BOOM, BOOM. One pitched to the deck. I re-sighted. BOOM, BOOM. Another stumbled onto his skinny knees. I used the power of my bio-suit, making long leaps, gaining speed as I went. BOOM, BOOM. This time, as I ran, I reloaded without shaking fingers. I was in the zone, hating these bastards for killing my people.
The remaining Ve-Ky spun around. I guess they were angry with me.
Now, though, things had changed considerably. The remaining assault troopers saw that it was possible to kill the invaders. They lay on their bellies or aimed from behind heavy instruments, firing rapid pulse-rifle volleys. That slowed the electrical suits some. Even better, an intense concentration of pulse hits could short-circuit a suit. At that point, three pulse shots killed a Skinny. The enemy began going down in droves once my troopers figured that out.
Before the last Ve-Ky died, a bolt tore into my bio-suit. The discharge turned me rigid with waves of pain. The bio-suit malfunctioned and began flowing off me. I tried to twist away, but another electrical bolt struck. This one shattered my visor. Foul air billowed against me. The stench made me double over and gag.
I rolled away from the last bolt and lay there panting. I’m not sure how much time passed.
The next thing I knew, the Curator looked down on me. “Is that it?” h
e asked in his deep voice. “Are you done?”
“No,” I said, trying to get up, but I couldn’t. My bio-suit had stopped flowing off me, but it was hard like stiff rubber.
“It appears that you are done,” the Curator said. “That is a pity. Oh, well, I gave you an opportunity for life. You must admit that, yes?”
“I’m not done,” I said. I closed my eyes, concentrated and found that the suit didn’t want to obey me in the slightest. “I am the master,” I told it. I tried to move again.
“Take his gun,” the Curator said.
Someone pulled at it. I gripped harder, and I roared a maddened oath. The person tugged the gun from me anyway. That was too much. Rage washed through me and the bio-suit began to respond. Slowly, I got to my knees—the more I moved the softer the living skin became. I looked up and ripped the gun from N7’s grasp. He wouldn’t meet my eyes. Shaking, with sweat dripping off me, feeding my bio-suit, I climbed to my feet, glaring at the curious-seeming Curator.
“You are an excellent fighting animal,” the old man told me. “Your rage is exquisite.”
“I am Commander Creed,” I panted.
“It would appear you gain confidence by indulging in excessive self-identification. Clearly, you have a high pride quotient. Unfortunately for you, Commander Creed, you have poor grasp of tactics against the Ve-Ky. Allowing them to damage your suit seems foolhardy. Still, I enjoyed the exhibition of battle prowess. And I seem to remember something about—you’re humans, is that not so?”
“We are,” I said.
“Yes, yes, this is most interesting. I should have recognized that when I saw the Ve-Ky dead in the control room. That was an anomaly, I thought. Clearly, you are a technologically foolish race, barely above stone tool usage. Yet, you have been flying in my Survey Vessel. You destroyed a Rip 92 Attack Vessel earlier. That is what alerted me to the situation. Commander Creed, you have made me curious. I suspect there is a story behind your presence here. I believe I want to hear that story.”
“What about the Ve-Ky?” I asked.
The hint of a grin appeared on his lips. “Let us take care of that, shall we?”
The Curator’s fingertips glowed once more. He began to sweep them here and there. Before him appeared a ghostly control panel. He tapped in the air, tapping against ghostly controls. I saw images of electrical-suited Ve-Ky. They winked out one after another as if someone had blown against them like candles. Maybe the Curator did just that, metaphorically speaking.
After a few minutes of manipulation, the Curator closed up the ghostly panel. He shook his hands and the glowing fingertips turned normal colored again.
“That’s it?” I asked.
“Not quite,” he said. “I do not care to have to watch my back. Therefore—” He clapped his hands. It produced a thunderous sound, one that made my ears ring. The ringing didn’t stop, but got worse. It made my eyelids heavy. As the ringing continued, I slumped over unconscious.
-21-
I woke up on a military cot, my mind aching as if with the worst hangover of my life. Sitting up, I found myself in a gigantic dormitory. Perhaps half my crew slept in the giant room with me.
This reminded me of a World War II dormitory in every way. I used to watch a lot of old World War II movies as a kid. Everywhere I looked, the blankets, the springs, the flooring, seemed right.
That made me suspicious. Could the Curator look in my mind? That wouldn’t surprise me.
I went outside and stopped in shock. The clouds, the Sun, it felt as if I was back on Earth. I glanced around at the trees, stared at the robins tweeting and squirrels gathering nuts.
This was the Museum, right? The Curator had spoken about taking us to the Orion Arm exhibit. Were we already inside the Earth scene?
I had a bad feeling about this.
I spotted N7. He stood by a tree as if taking a whiz. As I approached him, I saw the android carving his name into a tree with a knife.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
N7 turned around as if shocked. He lowered his knife, putting it behind his back.
In spite of myself, I approached the tree. Yes, there was “N7” carved into the bark.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
The android looked away.
“This doesn’t have anything to do with what the Curator said to you earlier, does it?”
“Why was he so dismissive of me?” N7 asked. “I found that disconcerting.”
“It shouldn’t bother you,” I said.
“Yes. Exactly, it should not, and yet it does. I do not understand that. I have begun to wonder…”
I raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to continue.
“If the Curator has some kind of power to cause…trouble in me,” N7 said.
“Are you talking about Pinocchio power?”
“I do not understand your allusion.”
I told N7 about Pinocchio, how an old man had whittled a wooden puppet because he’d wanted a son. The puppet had gone around trying to turn into a real boy.
“That is interesting,” N7 said. “Yes. I think you’re right. In some manner that I don’t understand, the Curator has disquieted me. That is not logical. I am a machine. He is correct in saying that I lack a soul.”
“If you lack one, why would you care?” I asked.
“I should not.”
“Right.”
“Yet, I do. Could the Curator possess a power to do such a thing to me?”
I rubbed my chin. That was an interesting idea. What was the Curator? He obviously had the ability to do things that seemed magical to us. Ella would say that’s just because we didn’t understand the means he used. I could accept that. We were technological primitives compared to him.
The Curator had told me this wasn’t his Museum. Then, whose was it? The old man had also said the Ve-Ky had tried to break into here for ten thousand years. Was that true? Or did that simply mean for a long time?
“Come on, N7, let’s look around. You can mope about your lack of a soul later. It’s time to figure out what’s really going on. There are a number of comments the old man made that trouble me.”
“Are you referring to his calling the moon-ship his old Survey Vessel?”
“I am,” I said.
“His comment certainly leads one to several conclusions.”
We’d found a trail in the woods and walked along it. The trail led uphill, which was fine. I didn’t mind a stiff walk right now. Walks helped me think.
“What conclusions are you referring to?” I asked.
“If we had the Curator’s Survey Vessel,” N7 said, “that would imply the vessel was one of a kind, not part of a fleet of transfer ships.”
I stopped and thought about that. “You mean Abaddon might have had only one transfer ship?”
“I am beginning to think that was the case.”
“But that doesn’t make sense. We know Abaddon—our enemy, anyway, maybe Shah Claath for all we know—made more than one transfer-ship attack. You returned to the Solar System telling me about a transfer assault in a different star system.”
“That is correct,” N7 said. “Yet, I have been studying the dates. Unlike humans, I have total recall. I have discovered that all the other transfer attacks took place days earlier than the Solar System assault.”
“Are you saying that one ship made all the transfer attacks?”
“That is a distinct possibility,” N7 said.
I stomped on the dirt trail harder than before. It didn’t thud quite right. It didn’t sound like a hill on Earth should. The idea I was inside a fishbowl, a dirt aquarium, seemed more possible by the moment.
“If there’s only one transfer ship,” I said, “it makes sense why the Super Fleet is headed to Earth.”
“Exactly,” N7 said. “Abaddon wants the transfer ship back.”
“And it makes sense why the enemy hasn’t made larger-scale, transfer attacks, piggybacking portions of the Super Fleet on several moon-ships.�
��
“Yes,” N7 said.
I picked up a stone, weighing it in my hand. “If we’re right about this, it means we’re stranded in the galactic core, as the Curator has taken his ship back.”
“Perhaps that is why Holgotha suggested we search for the Fortress of Light. The artifact wanted to rid the Orion Arm of any other transfer craft, leaving only its kind with the unique ability.”
I scowled, hurling the stone. It sailed and abruptly halted, sliding down what appeared to be an invisible force screen.
N7 and I traded glances. Then, we ran up the hill. I ran ahead of the android, striking the force screen first, and tumbling backward onto my side.
N7 helped me up. “We have found the limit of our exhibit.”
Soon, I put my hands against the invisible screen and shoved. It didn’t budge. I hit it with my fist, and found that it had a little give before resisting.
“I don’t know if this makes any difference to our plight,” I said, “but at least we know a little more about the force screen.”
We made further experiments. Finally, my stomach growled.
“I guess we’d better go back and get some chow,” I said.
As we turned to go, the Curator walked up the path. He wore the same blue robe as before, with the ends trailing on the ground. It didn’t dirty his garment, though. I noticed sandals on his feet. That made me laugh.
I don’t think the Curator was expecting that. He halted, eyeing me and frowning.
“What is so humorous?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“That is not the proper response,” he said. “When I ask a question, you answer. Even though you are beyond primitive, you understand the realities of power. I hold all of it.”
“Do you?” I asked.
His frown deepened. N7 gave me a worried glance.
“Do you wish to test me, Commander?” the Curator asked.
“Not at all,” I said. “I’m just wondering about your limits. I mean, we had your Survey Vessel, right?”
“You are attempting to interrogate me. That is unseemly and dangerous to your health.”
Fortress Earth (Extinction Wars Book 4) Page 12