D & D - Tale of the Comet

by Roland Green

  No longer held by the song, she drew her sword and sprang into the open. She halted, and drew her dagger to join the sword. She hoped she looked more formidable than she was, or she had only moments to live.

  "Pardon," one of the two women standing over the dead hobgoblins said. Both of them were as tall as Little Bilton, green-skinned, and as bare as a bride on her wedding night. One of them knelt, and pulled her knife from between a hobgoblin's ribs, while the other seemed to be groping for words.

  "Pardon," she said again. "Song—song for them." She kicked

  a hobgoblin. "Them—fish killers. You .. . song not for you."

  "I understand," Gredin said, nodding as emphatically as she could. She hesitated, then sheathed both sword and dagger. "You did no harm. Your song is lovely."

  "Lovely like you," one of the—sirines, they had to be—said. "You have brother?"

  Gredin strangled a laugh, remembering the sirines' customs. "No brothers. Only sisters."

  "Friend?" That was the other sirine, who had now finished cleaning her knife.

  "Yes, but for me only. We are to be wed before the leaves turn."

  Gredin might have believed that the sirines were disappointed, if she had not seen their shoulders shaking with laughter as they turned away. Then, with a splash smaller than any of the dead fish on the shore could have made, they both vanished.

  "You are unmaidenly eager to wed," Kalton Praug's voice came from behind her.

  "Speak of virtue when you have it yourself," Skindulos said. "Or was it another seen with Nai K'del on his lap the other night?"

  "We talked only of the temptations of life in taverns," Praug said, with dignity. "Besides, 1 think she is an avatar of the All-Mother. A servant of the All-Father must always be courteous to such."

  That was not what he had said about Nai or any other woman when he first joined the watch, but Kalton Praug had, in time, learned so much more about the world that folk doubted he would ever return to the Patriarchy.

  "And, of course, Mongo was only discussing that wrestling hold with you," Skindulos said.

  "Of course," Praug said, then grinned. "At least I win my wager with Torgia Mel. She said the sirines were only a wind-borne rumor. I said otherwise. She will be glad of the news, if not of her loss."

  "We had best go on to the grove and tell Drenin Longstaff," ' kindulos said, "once we have spoken to our own captains."

  "You do not think of Asrienda anymore, I trust?" Praug said.

  "Why should I not? Is she not fair? Is she not—?"

  "—protected by the druid?" Praug cut in. "And will he not i urn you into a pine tree the next time you annoy Asrienda?"

  "Yes," Gredin said, "and then she will cast a spell to bring a woodcutter to you, and have him chop you down for firewood. We shall be warmed by your heat this winter, but not as you would warm Asrienda!"

  Praug laughed, another ability he had only recently gained, and Skindulos looked half-amused, half-angry. The two men mi ned, and started the climb back to their horses.

  Gredin followed at a distance, twice looking back to see if die sirines were still in sight, but they were off about their af-lairs. No more likely to return than Fedor Ohlt's company— i hose good folk who perished in the great battle in the mountains that had left a whole valley as ruined as if the gods themselves had taken sides.

  She wondered if Erick would care to join in the ride to Drenin's. He could not walk that distance yet, but he could ride.

  • • •

  Fedor Ohlt was not the only one flung about like a doll by i he gate's collapse. Jazra landed sprawling and sliding. If she hadn't been masked, she might have plowed a trench in the dust and debris on the floor with her nose. As it was, all she had was minor scratches on the mask.

  By the time she'd brushed the dust off her goggles and could see clearly, she saw her team getting to his feet, deploying to repel the attack. At first their movements were a trifle uncertain, thanks to Kel-Rael's lighter gravity, but they quickly gained assurance.

  Not recognizing exactly where they were, thanks to the limits of Fworta's repaired instrumentation, hut knowing they were | in an arcology attacked by the Overseer, deploying made as much sense as any other move. It made more sense than a headlong run, which was as likely to take them toward trouble as away from it.

  Covered by Elda, Gregis walked to the nearest com outlet and studied the displays. He jacked in a secure tester. Its random signals would sound like static to anyone listening for signs i of circuit activity, but would still interrogate the outlet enough to provide useful information.

  While Gregis worked, Hellandros walked over to Jazra. Past ■ feeling only pure relief at being alive, he was letting his curios- J ity run free.

  "I wonder if I could develop a spell to do that?" he said, ! pointing at Gregis.

  "If we win, the arcology has facilities left, and you stay here ' long enough, you might have a chance to do it. Or you could travel to other Rael worlds that do have the facilities."

  Hellandros shuddered. "My lady captain, one outward and j one homeward voyage among the stars is enough for me. I was "! curious, however. Most common magic works with organic, or ' at least natural substances. I was not entirely sure that cold would affect the deathstrike, although heat and cold are among 5 the most universally applicable results of magic."

  Hellandros sounded ready to go on, and at this point Jazra j would have let him. She was ready to listen to a classification j system for computerized magic for three hours, to keep her ! mind off what might be lurking just beyond the range of her . people's passive sensors. Zolaris had threatened to disembowel 1 anyone who went active without a direct order, or the presence of the enemy.

  However, Gregis chose that moment to turn around. "We're 1 at Green Four-Twelve, and we seem to have locked in through | the emergency gate there. The com is dead, at least to this loca- 1 tion, but I detected no signs of damage or jamming.

  He looked back at the gate, then at Jazra. "With your permis- '

  sion, Commander, I'd like to wipe the gate's memory "

  "Does that mean no way back?" M'lenda asked.

  "Not through this gate," Gregis said. "But our emergence al.M > drained the emergency power for it. We couldn't use it again anyway. All that wiping it will do is eliminate any data the enemy could use to identify or track us, or at least any that hasn't been transmitted."

  "Then the emergency gates have their own—ah, com links?" Ohlt asked.

  Gregis nodded.

  "Then by all means fry the cursed thing's memory and let's be on our way." Ohlt said. "If the Overseer comes looking for us, the first place he'll start is here."

  Jazra saluted Ohlt for his deductive powers, and sound analysis of the tactical situation. A barbarian native seafarer had become a fairly good marine in less than one-eighth of a Rael

  year, which was not a despicable achievement for anyone.

  • • •

  The Security Segment of the Primary Module of the Primary Director quickly received the following message: POSITIVE INDICATION OF GATE ACTIVITY IN GREEN SECTOR. EIGHTY-SEVEN PERCENT PROBABILITY OF EMERGENCY GATE USE,

  WITH UNCONTROLLED IMPLOSION OF LAUNCHING GATE RESULTING IN INDETERMINATE DAMAGE TO RECEIVING GATE.

  A busy few seconds followed, as interrogatives went to a wide variety of places within the Overseer-controlled portion of the arcology. This included about one-third of its actual space, but somewhat less of its vital facilities. This had required much replication of equipment to maintain the necessary defensive capabilities, and allow free passage for other Overseer units ihrough the main gates.

  As a result, another third of the arcology was what might be called a no-man's-land. The remainder was believed by the Director to contain hostile organic life forms: surviving Rael by their readings. They showed only limited defensive capabilities, and no offensive capabilities that the Director considered justified major action against them.

  After the initial assault
into the arcology, and the capture of its main gates, the arcology was merely a way station, not a major objective. A sufficiently sophisticated artificial intelligence—such as a Primary Director—assigned to garrison duty, will develop a kind a tunnel vision remarkably similar to that of organic intelligences under the same circumstances.

  The summary of the replies to the interrogatives was recorded in due course:

  EVIDENCE OF ORGANIC EMERGENCE FROM GATE, PROBABILITY SEVENTY-TWO PERCENT, PLUS/MINUS SEVEN.

  SPECIES: INDETERMINATE NUMBER RAEL, INDETERMINATE NUMBER UNKNOWN.

  NINETY-SIX PERCENT MEMORY DEFICIT IN MOST PROBABLE GATE OF EMERGENCE. NO INDICATION OF ORGANIC SABOTAGE.

  All of which would have made Gregis proud for having disabled the gate's memory without leaving a trace, and Jazra relieved, had either of them had access to the Primary Director's data.

  It meant that for at least a few hours, the newcomers' presence was suspected, but not a high priority for response.

  Ohlt saw enough of Jazra's map updates to know that they were not wandering in circles. They were simultaneously examining each level of each sector—Green, Blue, Red, and Yellow—for signs of hostile or friendly presence, and trying to keep themselves undetected by the enemy all the while.

  Jazra handed over the updates only when she could do so in radio silence. Here in the arcology, radio signals were unpredictably detectable; walls and ceilings might block them or reflect them to greater distances than usual.

  Ohlt sometimes had the feeling that he was prowling through the lair of another evil wizard, who had filled his lair with gigantic mushrooms in a dozen different colors. Then he had turned the mushrooms to stone, making them so heavy that huge iron beams were needed to prop them up. Meanwhile, monstrous serpents and worms had crawled out of the earth, to feed on the mushrooms.

  The arcology was a city not much smaller than Port Enkrimpe, although at its peak it had held only a fraction of the population. The Rael had far more machines to do things like haul cargo and people, or keep their houses clean, and much of the Kel-Rael arcology was the equivalent of waterfront warehouses and artisans' shops.

  As they marched, they remained alert. When no enemy showed itself Ohlt began using that alertness to study Rael signs, and peer through open doors. He saw tables, chairs, and what he recognized from Fworta as food processors, inside doors marked with crossed Rael eating implements. He saw exercise equipment that was rather badly smashed, and with bodies lying among it, under the sign of a bent arm. He saw under the tilted red square badge of the Rael healers a door that had nearly been fused shut, and allowed no view.

  It did, however, allow a smell to escape. The odor told Ohlt everything he needed to know about the fate those in the hospital had met when the Overseer's host stormed into the Kel-Rael arcology.

  Indeed, that smell was never completely absent. Neither were the smells of blocked sewers, decaying food, the residue from explosions and blaster strikes, leaking fuel and lubricants, damaged electrical equipment, and all the other remnants of battle.

  And a battle it had certainly been. In many places the fighting must have raged over several days, at least, and neither side had everything its own way. Breena's spirits alternately rose at the sight of places where Doomed and spider drones lay in ruined piles, and fell at the sight of Rael corpses, most of them far gone in decay.

  "We had better find the nursery soon," she said at last. "Or all the children, and their nurses, will die of a plague from all this filth."

  It raised no one's spirits when they finally found a living Rael. He was a filthy, emaciated laboratory technician named Kutsav. They read his name off his coverall; he could not speak coherently.

  He appeared to have been living for some time in the ruins of his laboratory. It had contained a number of cages of animals used for scientific experiments. All the animals were dead, and so were three of the Rael. Kutsav had been living amid the dead, eating the animals' food, sneaking out at night to drink from a broken water pipe, and generally existing at the level of an animal himself.

  He fought the visitors when they tried to take him with them, struggling and howling as if death awaited him outside the laboratory, instead of possibly a road back to health. Eventually they had to sedate him. After he collapsed, they had to wait until he revived enough to walk, all the while hoping his howls had only reached friendly ears.

  He was still more mad than not when he awoke an hour later, but he could talk, even if not so coherently.

  "Gave me . . . blue box. Hulmot's blue box. Has to come. Death strikes us."

  Ohlt recognized one of the Rael's dataholders sticking out of a half-ripped pocket of Kutsav's coveralls. He reached for it.

  Kutsav slapped the human's hand away. "No! Death strikes us in blue box. Yellow box mine. Mine.'"

  He would have started howling again, but Vorris was ready with a milder dose of the sedative. It left Kutsav calm enough to stay quiet, but lively enough to walk.

  That was one point on which they all agreed. They would leave no living Rael behind.

  "And if we had vehicles, I'd take the bodies for decent cremation," Breena said, and no one disagreed with her by so much as a raised eyebrow.

  • • •

  "Jazra?"

  She turned to see Gregis sitting close enough to whisper. He had been at the far end of the line when she signaled for a halt.

  "Yes?"

  "1 was trying to remember who Hulmot was. He was a retired marine tank commander, a sergeant, I think. Loved to tinker with machines. Anything from a pipe-repairer to an assault tank. He e-mailed me once for advice on how to realign the equilibrium motivator on a turret-mounted—"

  "So," she almost whispered, cutting him off, "this Hulmot had a tank? In a blue box? Or a storage unit in Blue Sector?"

  Gregis was scrolling his map display. "Three storage areas in Blue Sector. Plus a few areas that are listed as available for emergencies, some of them where nobody would think of looking." He adjusted magnification. "Let's start there."

  Zolaris looked over their shoulders, and Ohlt looked over Zolaris's. "Quite a little command meeting we have here, it seems," Jazra said dryly.

  "I note that one of those area is close to the nursery," Zolaris said. "Is that affecting anyone's judgment?"

  "Well, if we can take out two targets with one burst . . ." Gregis began.

  "If there is a second target, and not fifty Doomed and ten drones between us and it," Zolaris said. "Or if the second target hasn't been turned into a trap for us."

  Jazra didn't glare at Zolaris because Fedor Ohlt was doing all the glaring any man needed to receive. "Let's find the nursery," she said, "whatever might be waiting for us there. Breena's putting on a good face, but not knowing is killing her."

  "If the news is bad, that may kill her faster," Zolaris said.

  "No," Ohlt said. "If you know, then you don't kill yourself with hope. Believe me, I thought I had faced the worst, but I yield that honor to Breena."

  "I doubt she really wants it," Jazra said. "All right, people. Let's go on a tank hunt."

  Fifteen

  Jazra was thinking of Ohlt's image of the ventilation ducts: Giant worms or serpents emerging from the earth to devour magic mushrooms. The man had a soldier's heart, and, sometimes, a poet's head.

  Right now they were crawling through the bowels of one of the snakes. The ventilation duct was actually large enough for Chakfor Stonebreaker to stand upright, and for a human to walk bent over. The Rael had to squat, and that was noisier and harder on the muscles than outright crawling.

  They were more than halfway along the last stage of their journey to Hulmot's "blue box." Zolaris and Chakfor had just taken point. Standing upright, the dwarf could see farther, and Zolaris was with him because he knew Rael technology. The storage area closest to the nursery was ventilated by this duct, so there should be a booster fan and grille with, if they were lucky,

  enough room to squeeze by the fan.

>   If they weren't, they would have to take out the fan, which meant time and noise, or take off their armor, which meant vulnerability until they could put it back on. jazra mentally shrugged. Worrying ahead of schedule was absolutely the wrong thing to do now.

  She touched M'lenda's shoulder and said, "Any sense of where it is?"

  The half-elf shook her head. Her splendid auburn hair had grown since she joined the companions, but was dirty, luster-less, and tangled. Well, none of them were going to win prizes for good looks for a while.

  "Metal affects my direction sensing," M'lenda replied impatiently. "I told you."

  "This duct isn't metal."

  "There's metal all around it, though. In every direction."

  "Does it make any difference how much metal?"

  "The more metal, the less I can tell direction."

  "What about being directly over or beside a large mass of metal?"

  M'lenda stared at her. "It would almost entirely vanish. It did that once, when I rode on a barge loaded with pig iron. And I could hardly tell my left hand from my right inside Fworta."

  How much metal a barge held, Jazra didn't know, but a heavy rank had to mass as much, even if it also used ceramics and artificial organics.

  "If you have that feeling again," Jazra said, "tell us. 1 mean that. Tell anyone within hearing, and they'll take it to me and Ohlt."

  M'lenda went on staring, then suddenly grinned. "The tank is metal! So I can find the way to it by not finding my way. Why didn't I think of that?"

  "Because I only just thought of it myself, and I've lived with metal detectors, and other sensors all my life."

  M'lenda laughed softly. "We do make good partners, don't we, with our magic and your technology?"

  "Captain! Captain, we have a decode."

  Captain Keegis's first reply was incoherent. His second was unprintable in any tongue known to the Rael or their computers.

  His third reply was nonverbal. He rolled out of his sleeping niche, bag and all, and tried to stand. The bag caught his legs, and he hastily pulled it up as he remembered that he slept naked, and was now facing the female lieutenant Bruegind.