by Chris Walley
“Okay, sir; the right leg. A count of five. And Lorrin?”
Merral stared at the body by him, struck by the bloodied hand lying on the gray sand, its fingers wide open as if ready to receive something.
“Later. He’s gone Home.”
“Oh, what a mess. Sorry,” Frankie muttered, his fists clenching and unclenching, and Merral glimpsed tears in his lieutenant’s eyes.
“It is, Frankie. Better get back to your men. Stay low, and when I give you a signal, fire at the intruders. The men mainly.”
Frankie seemed to take control of himself. “The men. Okay. Be careful, sir.”
“I will be,” Merral answered automatically before he realized how stupid it sounded.
He saw Frankie touch Lorrin’s outstretched hand. “Sorry,” he said in a tone of immense sadness. Then, bent double, he raced back to his men.
Merral stared at the ship, forcing himself to concentrate on the task ahead and not think of Lorrin next to him, dead and silent.
There were shouted orders behind him, and more whistling sounds and small explosions broke out against the cliff. Something, somewhere, clanged off a piece of metal. Merral slung the gun across his shoulder and prepared to run.
He turned and caught Frankie staring at him with an inquiring look from over a bulwark of gray metal plates, stones, and camouflage fabric.
Merral crouched into a running position and raised his thumb.
“Fire!” came the shout, and there was a jumble of hissing sounds behind him. Bitter, angry shrieks came from under the ship. Merral slowly counted to five.
He ran.
He had intended to dodge from side to side, but in the end fear drove him to run as fast and straight as he could. Ducking as low as possible, he raced across the sand, expecting at any moment to feel something hit him. He was aware of the grit under his feet and things whining and whistling past him.
A stone or a ricochet bounced off his armored jacket with a harsh clipping noise. Sand spat up around him. Something seemed to skim by his helmet, and from somewhere there was the smell of burning.
Now, though, the ship’s leg was in front of him. Gasping for breath, Merral ran gratefully behind its protective bulk. But he knew he dare not stop.
Urgently, he began pulling himself up the ladder as fast as he could. He was under no illusions that the foot of the leg, midway between his men and the enemy massing around the ramp at the front of the ship, was safe.
Rung by rung, his chest heaving under his armor, Merral clambered upward, aware of the heavy gun tugging at his shoulder and the bush knife clattering against the ladder.
He was no more than a dozen rungs up when he felt the ladder vibrate sharply. He glanced down to see an ape-creature, its black hair lank and wild, climbing up after him with fluid movements of long arms. It turned its face up to him, showing bottomless dark eyes and pale flaring nostrils.
Merral redoubled his speed but, in a second, his ankle was grabbed in a ferocious and tightening grip.
Barely thinking, Merral slipped the gun off his shoulders, grasped the strap and let it drop butt first.
There was the sharp crack of metal on bone as the gun’s butt struck the creature’s skull. Merral heard a soft groan. The pressure on his ankle was suddenly released, and something large and heavy tumbled down, striking the ladder as it went.
There was a deep thud from the landing leg pad.
Without looking down, Merral shouldered the gun and resumed his hectic scramble upward. Weighed down by his weapon and encumbered by the stiff armored jacket and helmet, he found the climb difficult. Twice he felt his feet slide on the oil-stained rungs. Below him, and from under the ship, he could hear renewed firing and wild screaming in response. Trying to ignore it, Merral kept on climbing.
Suddenly he found himself inside the dark sanctuary of the undercarriage cavity. There, gasping for breath, he paused and listened to the shouts and noises from below. He glimpsed, far below, the still figure of the ape-creature sprawled on the sand at the foot of the ladder. It could almost have been asleep, but the pool of glistening crimson fluid around it denied that interpretation. There had been deaths all round this morning. Merral felt a spasm of pity for the creature he had slain. He wished it were all over. He glanced back to where, beyond the tilted sled and the intruder bodies, he could see his men behind the piles of metal tubing and rocks. They were feverishly scooping and pushing away sand to make their position more fortified. With their backs protected by the cliff, it seemed a reasonably secure position. If there were no further direct assaults, they might be safe until the reserves arrived.
He pulled himself up onto a narrow mesh walkway at the top of the ladder and stood up cautiously, catching his breath and looking around in the gloom. There was a strong smell of grease, and from somewhere came the humming of pumps. Panting from his exertions, he glanced around at the untidy complex of piping and cabling about him. He saw a number of labels in a red spidery script that he had never seen before. Despite the incomprehensibility and ugliness of the lettering, he was struck by what he saw, sensing that there was something about both the writing and the labels that spoke of humanity. Indeed, as he looked around, he felt that the whole structure, with its tubes, pistons, nuts, and bolts, seemed in some way, of human origin. There was nothing here, he was sure, that was alien. Wrong perhaps, but not alien.
Pushing such thoughts to one side, Merral concentrated on trying to enter the ship. To his relief he saw that ahead of him the gangway extended to an oval, polished, gray metal door. He approached slowly, fearful that it would be locked or that it might open to reveal attackers. He held the gun at the ready in case the door should suddenly open.
To the right of the door Merral noticed two triangular buttons. A tentative press of one of them caused the panel to slide sideways with a hissing noise. Beyond it was an ill-lit, green-painted corridor that seemed to run sideways across the vessel. As the door opened, Merral was assailed by a stale organic smell, reminiscent of old garden compost but somehow more acrid, that made him wrinkle his nose.
So, I can now enter the ship. Yet he paused.
Somehow, he was reluctant to trade the fresh air and indirect daylight of the undercarriage bay for this fetid, dark tunnel. He steeled himself to enter, but with one hand gripping the edges of the doorway, a thought suddenly struck him.
He could, he realized, simply place his charge here, trigger it, and slip back down the ladder. With this hatch blasted away or—at very least—rendered useless, the intruders would have to stay in the Farholme atmosphere. To Merral, the idea suddenly seemed a compellingly sensible proposal. It avoided the risk of his entering the ship at all. Indeed, it had the great advantage that he could be back with his men in moments. And wasn’t that where he belonged? The only problem was that the envoy had ordered him to enter the ship and do battle with the creatures inside. Yet as he thought about that command, a doubt surfaced. After all, he told himself, the envoy had not stated exactly when he had to enter the ship. Could it be perhaps that they were to achieve surrender first?
In a second, his initial doubts had multiplied. Who really was the creature that had appeared to him earlier? In fact, was he so sure it was right to obey him? After all, did not the Scriptures say that the devil himself could appear as an angel of light? Perhaps—and the idea came to him forcibly—it was a trick to lure him to his destruction.
Anyway, even if the envoy was not some demonic phenomenon, Merral told himself that it could not be ruled out that he was merely some sort of vision, a figment of his imagination as it labored under the stresses of the day. As he reflected on the idea that the envoy was either an illusion or a demonic visitation, he became aware of an appealing corollary to such interpretations. In either case, he had no obligation to keep the unwelcome promises he had made concerning Anya and Isabella. It was an attractive idea. And yet—
Torn by uncertainty and trying to stave off a decision, Merral leaned farther inside. As he did,
he caught his finger on something sharp and felt a sudden stab of pain. He snatched his hand away and sucked the gashed fingertip.
His attention painfully drawn to the door, Merral glanced around the frame, noticing that there were in fact numerous rough metal edges. He was surprised. Assembly practice was always to round and polish smooth all surfaces, whether visible or invisible. Such carelessly raw edges would never have been allowed on a finished product.
In a moment his perspective changed, and he now realized that there was something about this ship that he hated to an intense degree. Fueling that hatred was a certainty that this vessel was at the heart of the corrupting evil that had descended on his land. And as his hatred blossomed, he felt that every one of the dreadful events that had happened since Nativity had ultimately originated from this ship.
Merral suddenly became aware how strange his delay at entering the ship had been. Could it have been that he had been somehow influenced? tempted? Well, he decided, if that was the case then the attempt had failed.
With renewed determination and a new anger, Merral set the cutter gun beam on wide focus and checked that the status light was on red.
Then with a brief prayer and a final glance at the ground far below, he entered the ship.
41
The moment Merral set foot in the intruder ship he felt that something had changed. It was as if he had left his own world and passed into another—one that was strange and unfriendly. He found it impossible to define why he felt that this was so. The interior of the ship was dark and foul-smelling, and there were strange noises, but it was more than that. He was aware that there was something else: something too subtle to be instantly pinned down, but something that was wrong.
His hands clenched on the gun, Merral stood still, looking cautiously around. The dully lit corridor stretched to either side of him, with metal ribs protruding out along each wall and casting deep shadows on the floor. At each end, the corridor appeared to join larger longitudinal passageways that ran along each side of the ship. The corridors were higher than he had expected, as if made for giants. Or, he thought darkly, monsters.
Nothing moved. He took another step forward. With a hiss, the door closed behind him. The light and distant sounds of the outside world abruptly vanished.
Merral was suddenly aware of being isolated—more isolated than he had ever been in his life. Struggling to suppress an invading fear, he listened carefully, trying to make sense of the noises that he could hear from within the ship. Some of the noises were mechanical: a faint electrical hum, the sloshing of fluid in pipes, a distant vibration from some pump. Yet there were also other noises less easy to assign an origin to. There was a soft, high-pitched chatter, like that of far-off animals in a zoo, and a low, irregular, insectlike chirping whose source was impossible to locate.
There was a chillness to the ship, an odd, clammy coldness, different from the fresh cold of a Farholme winter. There was something about this austere green corridor and this bleak ship that seemed to speak to Merral of wild, deep, and hostile space. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise, and for a moment, he shivered uncontrollably.
“Okay, now which way do I go?” he asked quietly, his voice echoing in the stillness. He realized that he expected no answer.
“Go right, Man.”
The voice was just there. Clear, audible, and unmistakably the same voice he had heard on the other side of the lake. Merral looked around, trying in vain to find the source of the voice. Against one of the bracing girders ahead of him was a deeper shadow that he was sure had not been there a moment earlier.
“So you are here.”
“Man, the King’s servants keep their promises,” the strangely flat voice said, and Merral sensed the hint of a rebuke. Yet despite it, Merral felt curiously relieved at hearing the envoy’s voice.
Then, catching a glimpse of Lorrin’s blood, still wet on his sleeve, Merral turned to the shadow. “Lorrin Venn’s dead!” he said, and he could hear the bitterness in his voice. “The others are at risk.”
“I know. They are my concern too,” the voice stated. “Yet evil must be fought, and battles cost. If you want to serve your men and their families best, do what I say. Lorrin played his part and is safe in the Father’s house. You are not yet there and there is much to do. This is a most dark and perilous place, and there are many dangers. As you have just found.”
“Yes,” Merral answered, disturbed but somehow not surprised that the envoy knew of his hesitation.
“Now go right.” The tone did not allow for argument.
“Envoy,” Merral said, “can you go ahead first?”
“Man, do you not understand?” The voice was sharp. “This is your race’s war.”
“I see. But I thought you had the power.”
“Power has nothing to do with it, Man. It is what is right. Only those that are human can fight for humanity. Even the High King bowed to that law. Or have you forgotten what you learned about the Nativity?”
“I see. I just hadn’t seen this as the same. . . .”
“Man, I can only advise you. Am I human? Now go right.”
The urgency in the voice was such that Merral instantly started right along the corridor.
As he padded along the floor, Merral glanced around constantly, trying to take in his surroundings. The contrast with the Heinrich Schütz could not have been more marked. That had been an artistic masterpiece of light and smoothness; this, he sensed, was a coarse, even brutal, assembly of parts.
He had now come to the passageway. Here he stopped and peered cautiously around the corner. As he had suspected, it was a major corridor and seemed to run the entire length of the vessel. It too seemed to be deserted. He listened, aware of a strange, twisting soft breeze that moved around him as if there were pulses of air in the corridor.
“To the front of the ship,” came the order.
Merral was suddenly struck by the way that the voice sounded exactly the same here as it had out by the lake. It was as if it was unaffected by the local acoustics. Perena had described how the words of the envoy sounded as if they had been “pressed out of the air.” Now he understood her description.
Merral turned left toward the nose of the ship and began moving along the corridor as rapidly and quietly as he could. The light was all wrong: it was not just dull; it was as if it was somehow drained of energy. He thought longingly of sunlight.
In this part of the ship, the outer fuselage was supported by large protruding girders, and feeling that they might provide him some cover, he walked close to them. A hasty glance over his shoulder gave him the impression that a dark shadow glided along after him in the dark margins of the corridor.
Merral, his nerves on edge, was aware of new noises in the ship: a distant clattering, muffled thudding sounds from below, a high-pitched scratching somewhere. A small, eddying spiral of dust flickered around on the floor ahead of him. Despite the coolness in the air, Merral realized that he was sweating profusely.
As he moved down the long, dark passageway, staring nervously into the shadows, his initial impressions about the ship hardened. In addition to the crude, rather unfinished workmanship that was all around, nothing seemed to be as neat as on an Assembly ship. In one place, an indecipherable label seemed to have been slapped on the wall in such a hurry that it was not horizontal. In another place, a panel had been put back so carelessly that a bolt head still protruded. He passed a crumpled fragment of plastic on the floor and the Ancient English word litter came to mind. He had a growing feeling too that there was something fundamentally wrong about the whole way the ship was constructed. On Assembly ships, the framework and supporting structures were always hidden. Here they were standing visible. It was almost as if the designers hadn’t cared how things looked.
Midway down the corridor Merral stopped, suddenly struck by a new phenomenon. At his feet the metal floor had clearly been badly damaged and then patched up. The job had been done in such a rough and untidy
manner that he could feel the join through his boots. He saw that the hull skin and the roof were heavily scarred; through the uneven paint, the sheen of bare metal could be seen in places. Something traumatic had happened here, and sensing it might be important, Merral wondered what. He glanced at a girder nearby to see that fine silver globules were speckled on its surface. Gingerly, mindful of the sharp surfaces, he ran a finger along a raised edge, pulled it away and looked at it. A number of tiny, perfect, shining metal spheres were stuck to it. Rolling them between his fingers, he puzzled briefly over what they meant. Merral walked on a few more steps and paused. Just ahead of him, he heard a fragile metallic tapping sound, like the noise of a tiny hammer striking pipes.
A little more than a meter beyond him something moved. Two gray tendrils, like enormously elongated fingers, crept round a wall strut at the height of his head.
He froze as a dull metal egg-shaped structure, perhaps a meter long, followed after the fingers. Its surface was made up of dozens of facets, almost as if it was some strange crystalline growth.
Merral felt he was being stared at. He raised his gun.
“Wait!” came the sharp command from the envoy, and Merral eased his finger a fraction away from the trigger.
Suddenly the egg-shaped body seemed to rotate on its fingers and, in a fluid, precise movement, swung down two impossibly long legs behind it onto the floor. Then, letting go with the front limbs, it dropped free. With delicate and economic movements of its four extraordinary limbs, the thing moved to the center of the corridor in front of him.
There it rose up so that the body was at the level of Merral’s face. A mechanical insect, Merral thought, before realizing that the four legs, nowhere larger than a child’s wrist, were without visible joints or segments. Indeed, they seemed to have both the suppleness of tentacles and the rigidity of limbs.