Bloodwars

by Brian Lumley

  ‘Originally, Paxton was my idea. A bad one, as it turned out. He had a talent - telepathy, in which he was very gifted - but he was too much of a loner to fit snugly into an organization such as E-Branch. And the fact of the matter is that I needed a watcher to watch the watchers. E-Branch looked out for my country’s security, among other things, and did a wonderful job of it. But being what it was, there was always the chance that someone in the Branch might go rotten. It wasn’t impossible by any means; after all, it had happened before - and to a Head of Branch, at that! -the time Norman Wellesley turned traitor. Talents such as E-Branch employed for good … might conceivably be employed in the opposite direction, and devastatingly; or for personal gain, whatever.

  ‘Paxton would be a Branch operative, responsible to Head of Branch, naturally, but mainly responsible and reporting to me. This wasn’t just my idea, but fitted in well with the thinking of others higher up. So Paxton entered E-Branch. To make a long story short, he didn’t fit in; the others sniffed him out almost from square one; he especially fell foul of Ben Trask, and more especially of Harry Keogh.

  ‘Paxton . .. fucked up!’ The minister shrugged apologetically. ‘Excuse the expression, but right now it seems the only one that fits. Rightly or wrongly, he was responsible for the death of the then Head of Branch, Darcy Clarke, and would have been responsible for the Necroscope’s death, too, except Keogh was a different kettle of fish. But we mustn’t forget that, at the time, we were trying to kill Keogh! So in a way it wasn’t a personal thing: you could say it was Paxton’s duty to kill him. But Keogh wasn’t about to die, not that easily. Paxton failed; the Necroscope was multi-talented and got into his enemy’s telepathic mind; he did something to him that killed his talent, robbed him of his mind-reading skill.

  ‘Afterwards, Paxton came to see me. He was a broken

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  man, and I have to admit to feeling partly responsible …’ The Minister paused and shuffled uncomfortably, but in a little while continued: ‘Remember, I am responsible for E-Branch: not only for what the Branch does, but also for its security. And Geoffrey Paxton knew a hell of a lot about the organization and all its members. I thought it would probably be a good idea to retain a measure of control over him, to continue to be his paymaster. After all, it’s unusual for a dog to bite the hand that feeds it. That was my reasoning, anyway …

  There was an opening in CMI. I got him work there in an administrative capacity, watched him for five years until eventually I was satisfied he’d settled down and wasn’t going to be a problem. But CMI has its own Command and Control structure - and its own rules. One of which is that when a man gets promoted to Command level, he also gets a change of name; it’s a simple security measure. I had already lost track of Paxton, but would have anyway as he went up in the world.’

  Goodly asked: ‘How far up?’

  The Minister glanced at him coldly, then back at Turchin on screen. He took another deep breath and said, ‘As an organization, CMI is split three ways. From the bottom up: Administration; Operations; Command, Control and Instruction. Paxton performed so well on the Command level that they were reluctant to let him work in a field capacity. He persisted in volunteering, however, and eventually got a transfer - and yet another new name: would you believe Smith? No one outside CMI could keep track of him after that, which is the whole idea, of course. CMI Ops has three branches, three Officers Commanding. And Paxton, or “John Smith” … is now one of them.’

  ‘It didn’t take you long to find out about all of this. About Paxton, I mean.’ Goodly’s tone of voice sounded close to accusing, and the Minister at once rounded on him.

  ‘Mr Goodly, you’ve known me for more than twenty years! Is there no trust left?’

  ‘Just recently? Damn little!’ Goodly snapped.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Turchin said, holding up his hands.

  And Zek added: ‘Let’s keep it impersonal. If you fight now you’ll only be wasting time. And it’s not our time to waste, but Ben’s, David’s and all the others’.’

  ‘Listen,’ the Minister told all three, a hint of desperation showing in his voice, ‘ever since I found out that CMI were interested in the Branch over and above what one would normally expect - and especially interested in Nathan - I’ve been trying to discover what was going on. Goodly -‘ he turned to the other - ‘Wasn’t it I who warned you they’d be coming for Nathan here at HQ? Look, Paxton is his own boss within the organization . .. well, more or less. I mean there is an over-all Officer Commanding — but he no more suspected Paxton than anyone else. The raid on the HQ and the trouble at Radujevac were the first he knew of it. Paxton was doing his own thing, don’t you see?’ The Minister paused to mop his brow, and after a moment continued: ‘Paxton has a flat in the city. We’ve checked it out, and at last we’re beginning to understand. It’s full of stuff on E-Branch, the full range of the Branch’s talents; on Harry Keogh, the Necroscope’s origins and what he was capable of; and on the Gates at Perchorsk and Radujevac, almost everything you have on file right here at HQ. Remember, Paxton worked here! He didn’t have to lift any of this stuff; he was required to know it! He knew Harry Keogh well enough, for sure!’

  Goodly frowned. ‘An obsession?’

  ‘I think so.’ The Minister had cooled down a little. ‘He wanted his talent back. Harry Keogh had robbed him of his telepathy, and he wanted it back again. A vampire took his talent away from him, so perhaps a vampire could return it. And Paxton knows there are vampires in Starside . ..’ This time the Minister thought he was finished, but Goodly didn’t.

  ‘So he was interested in Nathan, the son of Harry Keogh. But .. . how did he find out that Nathan had come over? I mean, that he’d come through the Gate into Perchorsk?’

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  The Minister slumped in his chair. ‘Yes, you’re right. I had to tell CMI. I mean, I had to! E-Branch and CMI are all we have left in the line of national security. If anything was to go wrong we would need a back-up and CMI would be it. So I had to bring them in on it! And, of course, Paxton got to know about it; it switched him on; it was what he’d been waiting for. Now he could stop playing and start pursuing his real goal, to get his talent back. In this world … or in some other.’

  Turchin was looking mystified. ‘But if he knows about the Radujevac Gate — if all he wants to do is cross into Starside — why hasn’t he tried it earlier?’

  The Minister threw his hands in the air. ‘I don’t know! Maybe he wanted to be sure. Maybe he was waiting until he had a full hand. Maybe the rest of it was literally an obsession, just a crazy idea he was playing about with -until he found out about Nathan - the son of Harry Keogh, the man who’d caused all of his problems in the first place.

  ‘It must have seemed too good to be true; it confirmed what Paxton had always suspected, for another Necroscope had come into our world out of Sunside/Starside. And now he, Paxton, was tired of waiting. If he wanted to get his talent back - and maybe other talents, too - he knew where he had to go. But there could also be a revenge motive. He’d failed to kill Keogh, so maybe he could get his boy instead. But not until he had what he wanted out of him. Just how he would go about that, I can’t say - and maybe Paxton can’t either! Maybe he’s playing by ear. Anyway, beyond this point it’s all conjectural and you’re as wise as I am. The rest of it is known …’ The Minister was through.

  ‘All very pat,’ said Goodly softly, after a while.

  ‘You don’t believe me?’ The Minister looked at him again.

  ‘Yes, I do because my talent tells me nothing is going to change around here. You’re going to be the Minister Responsible for quite some time to come. Which also means that whatever you’re doing wrong, or mistakenly, was done with the best of motives. Because if it wasn’t.. . the Branch has a knack of dealing with its enemies.’

  Turchin spoke up. ‘Do you threaten your superior?’

  Goodly looked long and hard at the screen. ‘No.’
He shook his head. ‘Not a threat, but a promise. And if you’re unwilling to help us out of this, I make you the same promise. Look, it’s quite obvious that you’re a good man. Ben Trask thinks so, anyway, and that’s good enough for me. You are trying to help your country, and we’re trying to help our friends. But neither side can succeed alone. So in helping us you’ll be helping yourself, because if you don’t … well, come what may, I personally guarantee that E-Branch won’t be helping you out of anything again. Not ever.’

  Finally Turchin smiled. ‘That kind of loyalty means something to me. It’s my kind of loyalty! But you know, Mr Goodly, my entire country expects my loyalty. And between the three of you, you’ve made it all too plain where my duty lies. The Radujevac Gate is closed, for the moment. And now I believe we must close the one in Perchorsk, too.’

  Zek was on her feet at once. ‘But not until Ben Trask and the others are out!’

  Turchin shook his head. ‘I can’t promise that. There will have to be a time limit on it.’

  ‘But you won’t stop us from going in?’ Her gasp - the way her face lit up - told Turchin a great deal.

  Again he smiled. ‘No, I won’t stop you. Indeed, you’ll get all the help I can give you! It won’t be like the last time you went through into Starside, Miss Foener.’ And as quickly as it had come, his smile fell away. ‘How things have changed, eh?’

  ‘For some, maybe.’ Goodly was quick off the mark. ‘Unfortunately not for others. Have you forgotten so soon? Siggi Dam was forced through that Gate, too. But we’ll be damn lucky to find her!’

  And frowning thoughtfully, Zek said: ‘Or unlucky?’

  The Minister Responsible was now much more at ease, however. ‘Yes,’ he quickly put in, ‘but that was Turkur Tzonov’s doing. Things have changed, and for the better, due mainly to the efforts of Premier Turchin.’ And then,

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  more businesslike: ‘Very well, Sir, you’ll set a time limit. And upon its expiry the Gate will be closed. But how will you do it? I mean, it’s been tried before, you know.’

  Turchin shook his head. ‘No, they tried to destroy it — from within, with nuclear weapons! But I said we’ll close it, and we will — under a million tons of rock! You can thank your Mr Paxton for the idea. He may have made a very temporary thing of it, but my solution will be permanent! Surely nothing of flesh and blood can withstand the weight of a mountain?’

  ‘You’ll bring the roof down on the place?’ Goodly pictured the Perchorsk complex: that vast, spherical cavern at its core. Riddled with magmass wormholes, the whole place could easily be made to collapse in upon itself - and upon the Gate, blocking it forever. ‘But how much time will you give us?’

  ‘How much time will you need?’

  Zek ventured: Three days?’

  Turchin shrugged, seemed bemused. ‘Certainly, my dear. But… will that be enough?’

  ‘Three, er, Starside days?’ Returning his shrug, she tried to look innocent and failed.

  ‘Three weeks?’ Now Turchin was plainly staggered. ‘After what you’ve told me about that place, the dangers it harbours?’

  But the Minister Responsible was nodding. They might well need all of that and more, yes,’ he agreed.

  Eventually Turchin gave in. ‘As you will, twenty-one

  days. And when will your party set out?’ (

  Tomorrow,’ Goodly answered, ‘or the next day at the very latest.’ And although he was cringing inside, he doggedly deciphered a brief, echoing precognitive glimpse of the future. Tomorrow or the day after, it’s got to be. After that, and for as far as I can see right now, there will be nothing much Jeft for us here. Not for me and Zek, anyway. ..

  All of which conversation had taken place some fifteen

  hours after the battle at Sanctuary Rock. By no means a protracted period, not in the whirl of political and diplomatic activity following on the debacle at Radujevac. But in the world of the vampires, that same fifteen hours had seemed a long, long time indeed. A great deal had happened there, involving some politics but almost nothing of diplomacy …

  Turkur Tzonov, along with Staff-Sergeant Bruno Krasin and his somewhat reduced section of thirteen men — including the effeminate yet sadistic locator Alexei Yefros, who but for his talent might best be classified ‘excess baggage’ - had passed through the Perchorsk Gate some two and a quarter hours before Nathan and his party entered the Radujevac Gate. Therefore it might logically be concluded that they would arrive in Starside first. But in the context of abstract space-time mathematics, considering the complexities of white, black and grey holes, and passageways between worlds and indeed universes in general, there was sufficient disparity that they arrived last. Even in Earth’s mundane science, it is accepted that a straight line is not the shortest distance between two points. In any case, Tzonov and his men had gone on foot, carrying their weapons, while the Necroscope’s party had been ‘conveyed’ between worlds, and all of their equipment with them.

  The fighting between Gorvi the Guile’s warrior and lieutenants and Nathan’s party had been over for something more than an hour when Tzonov’s section emerged from the uppermost of the Starside Gates; emerged into starlit night, naturally, and stepped down from the crater rim onto the eerie, foreboding, blue-tinged boulder plains. It was a stroke of bad luck, but Tzonov had always known that the chance of it being sunup was only a little better than two to one against.

  On the other hand, Tzonov’s men were trained and their egomaniac leader ‘knew’ that Starside’s vampire men and creatures could be stopped. All it took was firepower, and he had plenty of that. The once-Head of Russia’s E-Branch wasn’t looking for that sort of confrontation, however, not

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  at this time, and certainly not on Starside; his coming here at all had been a course of last resort, which he had been forced to take. And that in turn meant that the sooner he made his way through the great pass into Sunside and safety the better. To conquer and convert a world, first conquer its weakest inhabitants.

  Tzonov’s knowledge of the vampire world was rudimentary, but he did know that the Gate stood close to a pass through the barrier mountains. Standing at the base of the crater wall, and shielding his eyes from the glare of the Gate, he scanned carefully along the silhouette of the star-limned range of towering peaks and high plateaux until he spied a deep cleft, a little to the east of his location. It must be the pass, where the mountains were split to their roots. And as Krasin lined up his suddenly silent men in three ranks, Tzonov pointed out the way for them. Setting out, Alexei Yefros kept pace with Tzonov, a short distance behind the squad.

  Yefros was a thin-faced weasel of a creature, a misogynist with bright, narrow, blackbird eyes, a thin nose and lips, and a very ugly sadistic streak. His hair was shiny-black and stuck flat to his scalp as if painted there. His reflexes were fast, his movements quick, nervous, but rarely fumbling. Tzonov had looked into his mind on a number of occasions and knew it for a cesspool; the man’s sexual proclivities were … unusual, to say the least.

  Tzonov had never made friends easily, and Yefros was not a man he would have chosen anyway. But the locator had been in Perchorsk when Gustav Turchin made his move and, knowing which side his bread was buttered, he’d fled with Tzonov and the rest to the Gate at the core of the complex. Anyway, they were espers together and Yefros much admired Tzonov, which was why the latter suffered his company. Also, there could be no question but that as a locator Yefros was one of the best; a fact which he was now able to prove.

  ‘Your “alien” is here,’ he told Tzonov. ‘There can be no

  mistaking his signal; he throws off those esoteric numbers and symbols of his like a dog shedding fleas!’ He nodded his head west and a little south, almost at right angles to their direction of travel. ‘He’s that way, across the mountains.’

  ‘Huh!’ Tzonov grunted. ‘He’s on Sunside with the Szgany — or Gypsies to you. But you waste your talent on t
hat one. Oh, I know, you found him easily enough up there in the Urals; but it won’t be so easy the next time. Nathan had to go on foot then, but no longer. He is a Necroscope and has his father’s talents. We want to get somewhere, we walk. But he … simply goes there. He can be here, there, everywhere; you’d get dizzy just looking for him! You are a locator and I’m a telepath, and our talents come in very handy. But his are amazing — and deadly! That’s the reason I issued that order on the way in here, that he’s to be shot on sight.’

  As he finished speaking there came a weird hissing and a coughing rumble from somewhere to the left and a little behind them, an animal articulation as opposed to any kind of mechanical sound. Signalling the squad to keep a low profile, Bruno Krasin at once scaled a jagged, leaning boulder, put nite-site binoculars to his eyes, and scanned the land eastwards and to the rear. In another moment, as the noise sounded again, Krasin’s jaw fell open in a silent gasp and he signalled Tzonov to join him. The squad kept going as Tzonov climbed up beside his senior man, while at the foot of the boulder Yefros waited nervous as a cat in the shadows.

  ‘What is it?’ Tzonov whispered, taking the binoculars from his 2I/C. In his perception, Bruno Krasin was the perfect military underling; the blood of Cossack forefathers ran strong in him. Dark-skinned, wiry, long-limbed and as fit as Tzonov himself, Krasin was tall, thirtyish, square-jawed, hard-eyed. As a boy, he had been indoctrinated in the ways of an obsolete ideology by his hard-line communist father, an ex-officer of the KGB. It was entirely in keeping that Krasin was one of Tzonov’s most trusted men.

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  Now he hissed a warning: ‘Shh!’ but offered no other reply. He scarcely needed to; Tzonov would have to be blind not to see the thing. His own gasp was audible - indeed visible - as his breath plumed in the cold night air and the horizontal sweep of his binoculars jerked abruptly to a halt. Then: