by Roland Green
He wanted a time to come when this would be normal. He suspected that she did, also, but that time had not yet come.
She was also ignoring everything except the printout in her hand, a hand that was actually trembling slightly. Keegis gathered his dignity by taking the bag in one hand, and the printout in the other.
One glance told him that it was not the worst news: an Overseer breakthrough from one of the arcology's gates to the Rael homeworld. He realized that he should have known that from Bruegind's face; even if she could not have been as calm in the face of that final disaster.
Cracking the Primary Director's codes had seemed impossible at first, but some of the survivors of the Kel-Rael arcology who had rallied to Keegis were computer experts, Lieutenant Chan-dis at the head. Some artificial intelligences shared with organic ones the habit of getting sloppy about security after a while.
Thus, useful amounts of information occasionally came in to Keegis's band from forward-deployed taps into enemy communications. Some taps were deployed so far forward that collecting data from them was a scout's most dangerous job.
So far, the scouts had collected only bits of useful data from the taps, but quite a lot more by using their own senses, and passive armor sensors to study the area around them. It was the accumulation of the second kind of data that made Keegis's eyes widen at the text of the decode.
"It's really four messages that we arranged in a sequence," Bruegind said helpfully.
Keegis gave her a sour look. "I can read a standard format, Lieutenant."
"Yes, sir."
Keegis read the decode three times, then handed it back to Bruegind.
"Send out the ready team. Objective: the nursery," he said. "And wake up the second team. We're going with them."
"The nursery?"
"If it's survivors from a ship or base supplied from here, they may include parents. They're close enough to reach the nursery if rhey're not detected. We have to meet them as soon as possible."
"And . . . we?"
"I use that intimate pronoun, Lieutenant, because we will both be needed. I need to be ahead, and we may need your tank-driving skills."
"Yes, sir!" Bruegind looked ready to kiss him, a hardly unwelcome, but thoroughly ill-timed impulse. Keegis was so startled that he dropped the sleeping bag.
He need not have worried. The lieutenant was dashing off, so fast that she could not have seen him or heard his final muttering, "Always assuming that Hulmot wasn't hitting the home
brew too hard during the last days. . . ."
• « «
They waited until M'lenda was totally confused before climbing out of the grille opening. Both the grille itself and the fan were gone, removed, so Gregis said, by Overseer forces.
"They need to keep clean zones as much as we do, with all their electronics," he said. Hellandros nodded; this seemed to be a concept familiar to wizards, and if you couldn't trust a wizard and a Rael technician, whom could you trust?
Ohlt and Brinus went first, the sailor and the expert climber, sliding down a rope to the floor three men's height below. They quickly posted themselves where they could cover both possible approaches to their landing spot, between two rows of house-high doors.
The rest of the companions Ohlt realized that he now thought of everyone by that name) came down swiftly.
"No signs the constructs opened the storage lockers," Gregis muttered. "I was worried, when I saw the fan gone."
"They could have opened them, then sealed them again," Chakfor said. "That's a trick any good thief knows. Cover his trail."
Jazra nodded. "And anyone wanting to hide a heavy tank wouldn't have used any of the regular storage areas. Too vulnerable—to rule-bound superiors, as well as the enemy."
"And here we thought you were the strictest officer ever commissioned," Zolaris said. He tried not to laugh.
Jazra tried not to glare.
"Is it common," Elda asked, "for Rael to have these tanks in their personal possession? Seems rather like keeping a siege tower in your fruit cellar."
Gregis actually laughed, and Jazra said, "No, it's not at all common, actually. It was an old tank that had been decommissioned. Hulmot was restoring it as a hobby."
Kutsav had no decryptor, so the Rael had to ask him if he could guide the humans. Ohlt recognized confusion in a Rael face well enough to need no translation.
So did Chakfor Stonebreaker, who said, "Ah—isn't there a letter in the Rael alphabet that's pronounced oss.? So the death-strike might be in something marked with that letter?"
"When did you learn the Rael alphabet?" several Rael asked at once.
"I know more than that. Hellandros put a learn-languages spell on himself, to help him learn Rael, and he's been teaching me. He thought that would pay for my axe."
The wizard looked like a cat caught in the creamery. Zolaris looked outraged. Jazra's shoulders shook as she tried not to laugh. Gregis didn't even try to stifle his own laughter.
Hellandros pointed to their right. "Chakfor is raising the point, because I see a side passage that way that has the letter over it. It looks old and dark, but it is wide enough to take a heavy tank. I think."
"Only one way to find out," Ohlt said, and jazra nodded. He turned to the wizard. "Can you be ready with something to destroy any spy devices the Overseer left?"
"Of course," Hellandros said, almost complacently.
Keegis's patrol was now farther into no-man's-land, and closer to Overseer territory than anyone except a few scouts had gone in many days. Nor had all of those scouts returned. Keegis maintained a controlled exterior, but would not have been completely unhappy to wake up to find that this had all been a dream.
But Bruegind had never been in his dreams. At least not wearing full armor, as she was now, and with a diagnostic kit slung across her back along with her extra ammunition.
She had plenty of room for the kit, because no one was carrying more than half a load, whether blaster charges, grenades, or stunners. Their one magnum cannon was mounted to cover the approaches to their citadel, and the flamethrower was too low on fuel to be worth carrying.
Keegis hoped that any newcomers had brought their own ammunition. Otherwise they might hinder as much as they helped.
Slussa, a civilian technician who had turned into a formidable fighter, hurried up. "The false image tape's loaded and transmitted," she said. "All three surveillance cameras on this net will be getting pictures of patrolling Doomed. With luck, the Director will think we've broken through with the deassimila-tor, and made them desert.
"If we're not that lucky at least they might send something out to check the camera for tampering," Slussa continued, "just in case, 1 booby-trapped it." "You have a nasty mind," Bruegind said.
"Look who's talking—"
Conversation was cut off by a shrill scream that echoed from the walls around them. A scream of someone denying reality,
lest it drive her over the bounds of madness.
• • •
They had come a hundred paces down the tunnel, and it showed no signs of ending. It also looked as though it hadn't been entered since before the arcology was attacked, and the hard floor might not show traces of even a tank's passage.
Ohlt had just realized that any castle builder would sell his family, and half his remaining years for the secret of Rael stonework, when the scream echoed down the tunnel. He whirled, turning up his helmet light, and ignoring a rude command to "Douse it!" from Zolaris.
"Where's Breena?"
The light showed everybody, and in proper formation, except the trade delegate. It also showed a line of tracks in the dust— fresh ones like the companions', made by Rael boots, but going the other way.
Jazra said something that was not in the memory of Ohlt's decryptor, then, "Vorris, Zolaris, go catch that witless seller of shoddy goods! Sedate her if you have to, and hide her until we're done in here."
"No!" Ohlt said. "You need Zolaris here."
"We ne
ed you as much," Jazra said. "Or weren't you thinking of going?"
"He was, and I'm going with him," Elda said. "Vorris, do you want another Rael, for balance, or can we start the party now?"
She did not wait for a reply before heading back in Breena's tracks. Jazra used another untranslatable word, then turned to Hellandros. The last thing Ohlt heard was the captain addressing the wizard: "Hellandros, can you measure the distance to the far end of this place . . . ?"
Keegis's face lost its mask-like quality for a moment.
"Somebody's just found out what happened to the nursery," he muttered. That really did mean a newcomer. Everyone in the arcology who was in his right mind knew what had happened to the nursery.
They had better move in, or they would have another person, maybe several, not in his right mind. Keegis's little citadel of resistance could not deal with too many more fugitives who could not take care of themselves. The medikits were low on treatments for wounds, and exhausted as far as dealing with mental trauma.
Slussa was staring wide-eyed at what her sensor pack was displaying on her faceplate.
"We have three organic life readings. One is in the nursery. Another, the largest, is blurred. Underground, maybe. So is the third, which is—no, wait. Their signal's stronger all at once. It's as if they'd been underground and just come out."
Keegis stared into space for a moment, with an expression that made those around him wonder what he was seeing, and hope they would see it too. He snapped orders.
"Ready team, follow me to the nursery. Bruegind, go with the reserves. Slussa, home the reserves in on that 'underground.' Move!"
Once everyone understood, and believed the rest of the orders, they obeyed the last one.
• • •
Vorris had longer legs, and Elda was a better runner, but Ohlt was determined to be the first at Breena's side if his heart burst the moment afterward.
He was first, and his heart did not burst from the effort. It nearly burst the moment afterward, from the pain on Breena's face. It was the face of one who had looked down into the Abyss, or perhaps some other plane of evil and torment, and seen everyone she had ever loved writhing there in agony.
She was holding up a charred blanket, clearly hand-made (which seemed to be rare among the Rael), showing remnants of a purple and green pattern. Ohlt looked down, and saw what appeared to be a small pole of charcoal.
Then he saw that it had arms and legs, and that they were attached to a torso.
A torso without a head.
He looked around, and the full weight of what had happened here crashed down on him. There had been twenty-odd children here, ranging from babes to ones almost old enough to take care of the babes. Several adult Rael, too.
All of them had died from blaster fire and incendiary grenades, with maybe a flamethrower burst or two. There'd been no need to save children to be assimilated into Doomed, and the nurses had fought to death by mutilation.
Some of both the children and their nurses had not died at once, either. He could tell where some of them had crawled from the places where they had been burned down, to die as far as halfway across the room.
Except for where flame had reached it by accident, the nursery equipment was nearly intact. Ohlt raised his eyes, and found himself staring at a bed that might have been made this morning, except for a little dust and soot on the blankets.
Then Breena threw her arms around him, but not to weep She held him as tightly as if they were lovers, and with one corner of his mind that still resisted this madness, Ohlt wondered if Elda would make some rude remark.
Instead, he heard a sob. Elda was standing behind him, blaster rifle and rapier in hand but both pointed at the floor. Tears cut trails in the dust on her cheeks.
Breena stepped back from Ohlt. "Thank you, Fedor," she said, as if he had just bought her a drink in a respectable taproom. Then she went over to Elda and hugged her, as if it were
Elda who had just seen the charred bodies of her children, and learned that they were not only dead, but might have died in agony.
Ohlt was shaking all over. If in that moment he had been offered a chance to destroy the Overseer and all of its works by flinging himself into a furnace, he would have run to the flames with a joyful heart.
Ridding one world of the Overseer's curse was not enough. Nothing short of cleansing the whole universe, however large that might be, would be enough.
Ohlt's returning sanity reminded him that humans were not guiltless of this sort of horror, even if they lacked the Overseer's tools.
Vorris was staring at the two women as if they had suddenly sprouted tails.
"I don't like that." Vorris said. "They keep it all inside, and when it comes out it comes out hard and bad. We'd better watch Breena—"
"We'd better not talk about her as if she wasn't here!" Ohlt snapped. He was ready to punch Vorris if the Rael said another word
Breena must have heard, because her nostrils flared and her eyes widened. Her hand had even started toward her pistol when blasters crackled, and grenades boomed outside the nursery.
Ohlt shrugged his blaster rifle off his shoulder, caught it before it hit the ghastly floor, and strode toward the door. At the last moment he remembered Zolaris's teachings, and swerved to the right. Vorris swerved left, so neither was standing exposed when a grenade hurtled in through the open doorway.
Elda and Breena were, but the grenade bounced once before it exploded, giving them time to dive between the beds. Only stray fragments gouged their backs. Both sprang up again, visibly bloody, but looking like a pair of war goddesses no sane fighter could ever wish to meet. They opened fire.
Breena was using a pistol, Elda the rifle she could wield with the same skill as her rapier. Between them they took down two spider drones and five Doomed in the time it took each to expend a single magazine. The two men filled in the gap as the women reloaded, finishing off all of the Overseer patrol they could see.
Vorris cautiously led the way out across the carnage-strewn space, to where they could see the entrance to the "oss" passage. It looked as dark and forbidding as ever, but at least it had no enemies blocking it.
Four more spider drones were in sight elsewhere, and all of them opened fire as they sighted the nursery party. Grenades burst, most spewing trails of fire, but one a cloud of gas. Ohlt pulled his goggles down and his mask up, and hoped that both had survived weeks of hammering fights and scanty repairs.
Apparently they had; he neither dropped dead nor even felt sleepy or dizzy. He had just noted that one of the spider drones appeared to have a bulging sack on its back, when several more Doomed appeared around the edge of the nursery.
Ohlt could actually see their eyes as he shot them, and would have given a good deal for a stunner, to let them have another chance. But remembered something Wylina used to say: "if wishes were cheese, dairymaids would be penniless."
The gas was blowing away, but the smoke was thickening, and Ohlt was glad he could not smell either. He was afraid that all the hot spots on the walls and ground from blaster strikes and grenade explosions would make the heat-seeing binoculars less useful than usual.
Either way, they had to rejoin their comrades. Divided like this, they could barely even hope to survive, let alone complete their search for the tank. Although what they were going to do with it when they found it, unless it was so simple to drive that a child could—
One of the spider drones blew apart, legs flying in all directions while the body rolled along the ground like a kicked ball until another blaster picked it off. Ohlt looked around wildly. His people hadn't fired, and nothing showed at the entrance to the passage.
As much as he hated to take Breena back into the charnel house of the nursery, he waved everyone back toward the doorway. Zolaris had been firm about not rushing to join friends who showed up unexpectedly; they could mistake you for an enemy.
But who were these new friends?
• • •
In a
hundred battles, Keegis had seldom had an easier shot than he had on the spider drones. The Overseer used them as cheap, expendable blaster fodder; very well, he would expend them.
His team took down all four spider drones with ten shots. The last one burst into a towering ball of flame as it went down, and Keegis recognized exploding flamethrower fuel. A good thing they'd taken out that one before it reached the passage, or the nursery; not so good that the Director still had fuel for those vicious old weapons.
The flamethrower fuel burned with little smoke, but it made a tremendous heat pulse, likely to scramble most sensors. If the other team had the sense of a rootworm—
Yes. There they went, into the passage. Bruegind was leading, and she even stopped to pump her rifle up and down as a signal to Keegis, without knowing if he was watching.
Bruegind had to become either a general or a corpse before the war was over. There was no middle ground for one like that.
Then Keegis saw four figures at the entrance to the nursery. One of them he recognized as Trade Delegate Breena—and he closed his eyes briefly, knowing what she must have seen. At least the scream was no longer a mystery.
The second was a Rael, who wore his armor and carried his weapons like the best sort of marine, but the other two—well, they wore Rael armor, and carried Rael weapons. . . .
The two Rael had no fear of turning their backs on these folk, but they were too short to be Rael. The one who seemed to be a woman was hardly taller than a Rael youth. Their complexions were ruddy, with a brownish cast to the woman's, and the man's hair was much Lighter than made sense with such a young face.
Then the woman took off one glove, to flex cramped fingers. Four of them, along with the expected opposable thumb. And when she had flexed her hand, she drew a sword that was hanging at her side, a sword as long and thin as a needle, that no Rael had carried to war for five hundred years.
Who—or, rather, what—had come through that gate with the Fworta survivors?
• • •
They climbed through, over, and around enough junk before they reached the far end of the tunnel for the metal to have been detectable from a ship in orbit. By then, Jazra was convinced that the tank was a product of their disordered wits, and that all the search for it had done was lead her people into a potential trap.