by Larry Niven
“And I,” he said, impressed by the timbre of his voice. “A mere thief, pledge my all in this mortal combat. We stand together!”
The others nodded, a circle of power, well pleased with what they had wrought.
Xavier, a floating bald god, smiled down upon them. “I will help where I can,” he said. His expression grew more serious. “And get ready. Griffin and Gibson, you are both thieves. Your power is stealth. You would have found something right out of Wells, given the right path—” Xavier jerked. “I hear them. Take your places. The pirates are coming.”
* * *
Celeste moved slowly, unwilling to take even the slightest chance that some hidden trap or concealed antechamber hewn into the lunar rock or constructed by Cowles engineers might provide comfort and safety to her prey.
They were her prey now, especially that smug bastard Griffin. Nothing else mattered. She would see them all dead, all but Ali … if that was possible.
Kill them all.
Shotz, darling dead Alexander, would not have had that. He would say that she had obligations to her men, to those who had followed him in the name of a country that would never be. An artificial island that might have been their home.
Madness.
She fought the sound of a giggle, a tickle in the back of her throat that triggered the urge to laugh aloud. That would be insane, wouldn’t it?
The five men remaining to her followed behind as they combed the stage, this strange setting decorated like an English manor, seeking signs of life. A game of some kind had been played here, one for which the rules were uncertain. Cannons, strange toy tripods and inanimate costumed grubs were strewn about, as if awaiting commands for a new awakening.
“What is all of this?” Fujita said, crossbow cradled in his huge hands like a child’s toy. The wound in the big man’s side had been bandaged, but it seeped red. Still, he was more than a match for three of these play-acting morons.
“More nonsense,” she said. “I am tired of this fantasy. We will finish this, and go home.”
No one dared disagree aloud, but she could read their expressions. None of them seriously believed that they were going home, regardless of what happened here.
They circled the room and returned to near the big entrance door. Standing between barber’s mirrors, she saw two infinite lines of her own images … skewed. One mirror was ajar, just by a crack. “Here,” she said.
Slow and steady. Their prey were bottled. There was nowhere to go. They could afford to be … careful. Thorough.
Just as Shotz had taught her, long ago. Take care of the small things, and the large ones will take care of themselves.
She looked through the open mirror and into a ramp. A water slide minus the water.
This was not the path they had followed coming up from the pool. There had been more than one route. Shotz had booby-trapped the other door, and this one had been concealed on both ends. So long as her prey was trapped, it did not matter if the last act of this strange story was played out in an English manor, or in the subterranean lunar pool.
But they were going to come out like bullets, into … what?
“Wait, Celeste,” Fujita said, wrestling with the other mirror.
Gallop grew impatient, swung the butt of a crossbow. The mirror shattered. A stairway was concealed beyond.
“Go,” Celeste said, and followed.
The stairway was so narrow that her broad shoulders brushed both sides. Fujita had to twist and turn and push to squeeze himself through. It dropped and twisted, and expanded before a door of what seemed gray stone.
* * *
The six pirates spilled through and fanned out fast.
Angelique crouched behind her stalagmite, watching. She blinked. Her contact lenses, useless for most of the game, flared to life so that a huge blue arrow danced above the heads of each of her enemies. Each arrow was indexed with weapon indicators: crossbow, air gun. The woman Celeste was labeled Leader in fluorescent green—high score for anyone who could take her out.
The pirates fanned into the chamber, very alert, and spread out, maintaining an effective field of fire. Angelique looked around: Each of her team were also labeled clearly with an arrow. Pity that the pirates couldn’t see it. She muffled a giggle, but allowed herself a nasty grin.
There was something else they couldn’t see, and as they passed a man-sized stalactite they learned what.
The big Asian guy to the right of Celeste suddenly buckled. Angelique saw only a hint, a flash of light, but suddenly the guy was down, groaning.
And that was the signal! Suddenly, from all sides, bolts driven by crossbow and air pressure whizzed through the air. Only one of them found a target, the shoulder of a short, wide man to Celeste’s right.
Celeste turned—a blur! Dear heaven that woman was fast! And fired even though she could see nothing. The air gun bolt disappeared, but they heard a yelp. Scotty’s yelp.
Xavier, bless his black heart, had given them an invisible thief.
* * *
Scotty yelped as the dart hit his calf, the tip lancing through muscle and into bone. Swallowing a groan, he faded back. Xavier’s magic had enhanced his thieving abilities, the capacity to hide in plain sight, but had been no protection against Celeste’s dart.
He had taken out the big woman’s wingman, but this wound put him out of the action until he could remove the dart and staunch the flow of blood.
Scotty leaned back against the stalagmite, gritted his teeth and pulled the dart out. He tore his moist shirt into strips, and bound his calf. If he focused his eyes carefully, he could find the shimmer in the air where Xavier’s magic bent the light. Could Celeste see him? Had that been a lucky shot? The big woman peered in his direction, body tense, but without specific focus. So … some combination of luck and feral instinct.
* * *
The waters of the pool glowed in bands of light like a field of new snow reflecting an aurora borealis.
The pirates were goggle-eyed for a moment as the chamber expanded, became even vaster, until it seemed like the pool was an infinite ocean, the dry land merely an insignificant speck upon it.
And what an ocean! Its waves rose up and rolled toward them like a tsunami, and Miller screamed in terror.
“It is just an illusion!” Celeste barked, but the dart that blossomed in Miller’s stomach was real enough.
Fujita whirled and fired blindly, once, twice … and got a satisfying scream in return. They had made someone pay. Not so dearly as they shortly would, but these … amateurs, who had ruined the plans of a lifetime, would pay more. There would be more screams. Oh, yes there would.
Two down. She knew she had hurt another one, the pain-filled squeal made it clear. And that left … five. Five to go.
* * *
“Damn!” Wayne squawked. “I’m hit!” His breath in her ear. Direction? Angelique peeked up over the plastic stalagmite, and saw Wayne’s blue arrow shade to red.
“He’s bleeding!” Maud’s voice. Whatever calm they had been able to impose upon her was gone now—the panic was breaking through like a whale through ice.
Angelique heard a z-zing! sound and something flew past her eyes, lodging in the rock behind her. She threw herself flat, wondering how the pirates had seen her, knowing that Xavier’s illusions were up against technology no gamer would ever have possessed. Their final gambit might be more final than any of them had anticipated. Certainly than they had hoped.
Then … something was crawling out of the water. It was huge, and oceans dripped out of its spiky fur. It looked like a mutated mooncow. Angelique realized she was looking at a male version of that creature, with giant jaws and claws.
It levered itself up, shook itself—damn, that was real water spraying around! She felt it!
The titanic beast headed straight for two pirates crouched behind stalagmites. Its teeth tore and short cilia-like tentacles around its mouth grasped. The pirates screamed as they were hurled in all directions, bodie
s broken on the walls, impaled on stalactites.
And above the din, they heard a voice: “Hold fast! It’s a trick!”
Celeste, damn her!
“We’re about out of ammo,” Angelique said.
Xavier’s voice whispered in their ears. “I can force everyone into the water. Shall I? Angelique? Everyone?”
“Do it.”
* * *
Darla was stumped. She had examined the bomb top to bottom, probed carefully, and knew that she was looking at death. The tamper switch was totally beyond her. If she tried to disconnect the wires, or remove the explosives from its anchoring epoxy blob, the damned thing would trigger. There was just no way, no way to stop it from …
And then she had an inspiration.
The former mermaid triggered the communication link. On the other side of the window, Max Piering picked it up.
“Got an idea,” she said. “This thing is designed to trigger if you jostle it. And they did a damned fine job. What they didn’t consider is that someone might want to set it off on purpose.”
“What?”
“The timer. They concentrated on the motion sensor, but the timer can be engaged. I can set it for … four minutes. Get your people out of there. Up the stairs, at least thirty feet away, and above the water level.”
He frowned. “What are you thinking of, girl?”
She managed a smile. “Mischief,” she said.
Piering cleared out his men, and she extended the tip of her multitool’s probe, and very carefully tapped out a two, a four, and a zero. Two hundred and forty seconds. This had to work. She didn’t know what was going on up top, but it couldn’t be good.
She gulped air, exhaled, gulped again, and again. She’d held her breath for almost three minutes on the way down here. In three minutes she’d be breathing air again. No need to worry about the bends, not in lunar gravity.
Darla took a last deep breath, and then let the water back into the chamber. It splashed around her, and rose to her shoulder.
At the moment the pressure was equalized, she triggered the bomb and dove back out the door. With all her strength she swam toward the Moon pool’s distant blue light.
* * *
The walls of the pool chamber erupted beasts from a madman’s dream, nightmares of tentacle and fang, furred and scaled and glistening pink wetness. Celeste held her ground, but three of the other five pirates flinched away. For the last minutes, the pool had expanded to enormous dimensions, and with the sensation of solid ground beneath their feet, the pirates had grown too confident.
Too much pool was exactly the same as seeing no pool at all. They misjudged their distance, and fell in, yelling obscenities—briefly. Then their cries were swallowed by water.
The pirates were infinitely better prepared for combat upon the land. Even in water, they outclassed gamers by a wide margin. But the combination of visual and auditory effects and strange water behavior confused them just for a moment.
And then it got worse. Robotic seahorses rose up from the water, gliding straight for the bewildered pirates. Nosed up against them in what should have been a friendly fashion, but the pirates reacted by shooting and stabbing, losing focus … and the gamers attacked them from behind.
Driven to extremes and knowing that this was their very last chance, even Maud jumped howling from the edge of the pool, holding a damaged air tank in her hands, bringing it down hard on Gallop’s head.
He glimpsed the blow a moment before it landed, and managed to roll so that the metal cylinder scraped down his ear and glanced from his shoulder.
Then he had his hands on her. Maud screamed, as if suddenly remembering that this wasn’t merely a game at all, that she may have made a critical mistake …
And Sharmela raised her arms, screaming: “Ouroboros! Serpent of light! Hear my call and join the fight!” A glowing band of light grew out of the water, coiling around the pirate’s face, obscuring his eyes and vision. He panicked, thrashing, and released Maud.
“I’ll ’ave you, asshole!” Mickey screamed, suddenly grabbing the man’s throat from behind.
Another pirate grabbed Mickey from behind, and it turned into a four-way tussle, the special effects blinking as the computer tried to keep up with the constantly shifting holo-targets.
To call the results “chaotic” would have been a massive understatement. Pirates dove to get away from the grinning, attacking seahorses, and came up with water sliding in slow sheets from their faces, choking them. And right into the swinging fists of gamers who, while hardly professional, were certainly enthusiastic.
In water, there is little balance, and no traction to push against. Much of a professional punch or chop is a matter of gripping the ground or twisting the hips, and all of that was taken away from them, their aquatic environment more of a leveler than they might have thought.
Not enough, though. Mickey’s nose was broken almost immediately, and he barely evaded choking by biting a slippery wet arm seeking his throat.
* * *
Darla burst half out of the pool, sweeping water from her face so she could gasp. Fair enough. Now get to shore before—
All about her were gamers and pirates locked in mortal combat. She had to reach shore before—but the blond demon was still on land, aiming a crossbow directly at her face. Darla let the water pull her under.
* * *
Elsewhere in the pool, Wayne struggled with a pirate who seemed half eel. Only the fact that robotic seahorses kept slamming into him from the sides kept the contest even vaguely even. Then Wayne screamed as the pirate’s knife slashed his side, and he kicked away, trying to put distance between them.
The pirate, grinning, outswam him, and retracted his arm to strike—
And suddenly the world exploded.
In the history of the universe, there may never have been an explosion quite like this: industrial blasting–putty funneled through a fifty-meter tunnel into a natural aquifer in a low-gravity environment.
Under ordinary circumstances the shock wave would have been harsh. In this very special world it felt as if half the water rose out of the pool in a savage pulse. Water, gamers, pirates and robot seahorses all fountained into the air. Friends and foes alike, confused and confounded, screamed like frightened children as they flew toward the ceiling.
* * *
Up until the last moments before the explosion, the pirates had been swinging the tide of battle their way. Angelique had not taken to the water, preferring to remain on the land, waiting to make use of her last bolt. And then, perhaps, sell her life dearly.
Rivers of fire, assaults of monsters, wind and lightning … even an invisible man had merely slowed them down.
Now Angelique heard another scream, and it was her own. A blow to her head from behind, and she realized, sickened, that one of the Moresnot bastards had snuck up behind her. One of the pirates stood over her, drawing a bead with his air gun. Double vision told her that the ringing in her head was concussion.
Then the man grunted and went down sideways, knocked back by a flying dark body whose limbs were a cat-quick blur of action.
Ali to the rescue! The man rolled, punched, and Ali’s head snapped back, blood rushing from his nose.
Angelique dove forward, and managed to grab one of the pirate’s limbs, before his booted heel caught Ali under the chin, driving him back and up into the air, landing with a woof!
Then the pirate tied her into a knot. “Quiet, bitch, if you know what’s good for you—”
* * *
Scotty saw his opportunity, and dove at Celeste. If he could stop her, it might put an end to all of this. But the instant he hit her she collapsed beneath his weight, went down with reflexes so fast it was like bouncing a ball off a wall. And his entire world was full of crazy woman.
She was strong, almost as strong as him, and to his alarm, quicker and more skilled, in some art he had never before encountered. It wasn’t a blind brawl: Rather some kind of grappling art that w
as all head-butts and knees driving for his groin at the same time she was seeking crippling locks on his wrists and fingers. It was like being dropped into a sack with a rabid weasel.
Damn!
She tried to bite his right eye! Scotty jerked his head sideways, realizing to his dismay that she was winning. In combination with his wounds and fatigue, Celeste was just too much for him to handle. The world was spinning.
And then … the Moon pool exploded.
Water shot up in the air like a waterspout, a thunderclap that smashed against the ceiling and showered back down with a Moon-shaking ker-whoom! The shock wave forced Celeste to slacken her grip on him, as her eyes widened in surprise. Perhaps she’d thought it was just another special effect!
The heart went out of him. He knew what that explosion meant. It meant that Darla had failed, that she was blown to jelly, and it was over.
Something went black and red behind his eyes. No matter what happens to me, this bitch is dead!
He got two hands full of hair, and even as she sank her teeth in his forearm, rolled Celeste over and into the pool.
Scotty managed to drive his fist into her gut the moment before she hit, so that the air gushed out of her mouth even as he gulped a breath. In the water she panicked, struck out for the surface, but with all the strength remaining to him he rolled her under. Wiggled around her and clamped his legs around her waist as she pried at him, struggled … and then finally, blessedly, went limp.
Gasping, Scotty hauled her back up, in time to look directly into another gas-powered dart gun as the pirate triggered the bolt—
* * *
The shock wave lifted Darla out of the pool and into the air, almost gently, like an avalanche of foam. The combination of fatigue, oxygen debt and shock made the entire experience surreal. She watched men, women and molded plastic automatons flying through the air with the greatest of ease, saw it all in a kind of slow-motion tumble, rising, rising …
The water pushed her firmly into a wall, stunned but not really dazed. She held onto a rock projection that had missed her head by inches. Beneath her, a big Japanese man was about to step on Ali’s neck. She dropped down, landing on him, and while he was twice her size, tumbled him back into the Moon pool.