Saint Antony's Fire

by Steve White

  All at once he was no longer sharply outlined and fully colored, but had taken his place in the indistinct grayness of the material world. They watched as he turned his back on the companions he could no longer see or hear and set about finding a crucial-seeming place in the machinery where a bomb could be hidden and, hopefully, explode with crippling effect. Finishing his task, he exited the turret through a hatchway.

  "All right," Winslow told the others, "let's get inside the dome. We don't know how long it will take to locate this control center."

  They set out through the walls and passageways of the outer city. Winslow had never traversed this labyrinth, only overflown it. He could never have found his way through the maze had it not been for the enormous, sinister dome that loomed over it, giving them an objective. They came to the dome's terraced, weapon-bristling base and passed through it in their incorporeal way. Once inside, the raiders stopped, awestruck and gazed about them. A couple of clandestine Catholics from Heron's crew forgot themselves and made the sign of the cross. Winslow, remembering his own initial reaction, couldn't blame them.

  He decided his original impression of a city within a city had been accurate. The Grella they encountered here moved about with an air of disciplined purpose absent from those outside the dome. This was the citadel.

  "Remember that large central building we were taken to for questioning?" he said to Virginia Dare. "Surely that's where the control chamber will be."

  "We don't know that for certain," she cautioned.

  "Still, it's the way to bet." He led the way, trying to remember landmarks he had sighted before.

  The sun had settled behind a low-lying wrack of clouds, and the sky was dark gray with oncoming dusk, when Owain emerged from the weapon turret. He saw no Grella about, but flyers were drifting by overhead. He found a niche between two nearby buildings and settled in to await the fall of night.

  As the stars came out, he discovered it was hardly worth the wait. The magic artificial lights—the Eilonwë insisted that they weren't magic, but Owain wasn't taken in by that for a moment—began to wink on, until the illumination exceeded that of a full moon. At least it wasn't as bright here as it was on the outskirts, where powerful beams of light turned the edges of the forest into day.

  It made sense, Owain reflected with a nod. The Grella gunners who, according to Mistress Dare, were controlling the weapon turrets from afar in some sorcerous way, would be able to clearly see any attackers who emerged from the woods . . . as the Eilonwë would soon be doing.

  The thought reminded him of the urgency of his mission. Hefting his load of bombs, he emerged cautiously from his bolt hole and looked around. Off to his right, he sighted another of the turrets—they were tall, to give them a clear field of fire over the low buildings, and reflected the unnatural light. He began moving stealthily in that direction, keeping as much as possible in the shadows cast by the buildings.

  Very few Grella seemed to be out. Owain was congratulating himself on his good fortune in that regard when he turned a corner and a figure appeared ahead. He flattened himself against a shadowed wall and held his breath, but there was no commotion. Easing himself away from the wall with great caution, he saw the figure shuffling away, and as it passed under the lights he saw it for what it was: one of the soul-robbed Eilonwë slaves. It continued on into an area where low huts clustered among sparse-foliaged trees. The area was dimly lit, but Owain could make out other figures, all moving in the same listless way toward the huts. Evidently this was their curfew time—and their subjugation was so complete that the Grella need not even herd them into the kind of pens Owain had imagined. A shudder of loathing ran through him, for he now knew there were worse things than death—worse even than ordinary slavery.

  He rejected his half-formed thought of seeking the slaves' aid. These ensorcelled creatures couldn't even wish to help him free their race. But at least they wouldn't be very alert. He hurried past, flitting from one shadow to another, and made his way to the turret.

  Remembering how he had gotten out of the first one, he turned a wheel on the hatchway and swung it open. Apparently there was no need for locks here, where there was—or was supposed to be—no one but the Grella themselves and their mindless servitors. As expected, the interior was identical to the one he had seen previously. He placed a bomb in the same critical-seeming place, hoping as before that he was right about its criticality, and moved on.

  He had placed another bomb in another turret, not far from the arch, before old habits caught up with him. His previous experience with elusiveness had taught him to keep a sharp eye in all directions—except upward. So he had no warning when a beam of dazzling light from a Grella flyer speared him from overhead.

  An ululating wail from the flyer brought him out of his momentary paralysis, and he saw Grella figures approaching at a run, their hand-held light piercing the darkness. He sprinted into the shadows, dropping his bombs and letting them roll. It was too bad he couldn't detonate them, but at least they would provide confusing distraction when they roared to life at the time Mistress Dare had set them for. And without their weight, he was able to dart among the buildings. The flyer was easy to evade, but he knew with cold certainty that the foot patrol would find him.

  His half-joking boast was suddenly no longer a joke. Darting from shadow to shadow, he made his way toward the arch.

  The raiders reached the central structure and passed through its walls. Winslow recognized some of the corridors through which he had been led as a prisoner.

  "What is this control center going to look like?" he demanded of Virginia Dare.

  "How should I know? Although," she amended, "I'm sure it will have lots of the . . . desks with buttons and lights where the Grella sit when they're controlling things at a distance. Oh, and it will probably have screens of glass, or something like glass, on which you can see distant images as though you were there."

  Something else to do with Dr. Gilbert's experiments with amber, Winslow thought, and left off any attempt to understand it beyond that. Instead, he led them from one room to another with increasing haste and anxiety, looking for what Virigina Dare had described.

  He was glad he had pushed them so hard on the previous march, so as to arrive here ahead of schedule. But his self-congratulation was tempered by his gnawing fear that they still might not have allowed themselves enough time to find what they sought, in this oppressive labyrinth.

  They found themselves in a kind of foyer, with double doorway to one side. All at once, the doors slid aside to reveal what looked like an empty closet—empty save for two Grella, who emerged and walked away. The doors slid shut behind them. Winslow wondered what they could possibly have been doing inside that tiny, bare chamber.

  Virginia Dare grabbed him by the arm. "I have it! That little room—it goes up and down. The Eilonwë had them in their great age, using some kind of pulleys. They're for getting from one floor to another without having to climb stairs. There must be levels below this. And that's where the Grella will have their control center. It would be the most secure place."

  "But how do we make this . . . moving closet take us down?"

  "We don't have to. They must have stairs—or ramps, which the Grella prefer—in case the power fails."

  Winslow looked around, and pointed to a door off to the side. "Let's try that."

  They descended the ramp, past several switchbacks. Finally there was no further to go. They emerged through a wide doorway into a vast circular chamber whose walls were lined with what Virginia Dare had tried to describe: large windows that looked out on scenes far away—on the outskirts of the city, or so it seemed to Winslow, for the artificially lit landscape they revealed looked like the weapon turrets' fields of fire. The floor was largely covered by concentric, outward-facing rings of the instrument-bearing desks, most of which seemed to have their own smaller versions of the glasslike screens on the walls. Grella sat at most of these desks, but by no means all, and the scene held
an unmistakable quality of humdrum routine.

  At the center of the chamber, like the hub of a wheel, was what looked unmistakably like a citadel within the citadel: an octagonal space completely enclosed by armored walls that rose to the ceiling.

  Winslow, ignoring the nervous mutterings of his followers as they gazed at those sorcerous-seeming windows, turned to Virginia Dare and indicated the Grella in the chamber. "These must be the watch—the ones who're now on duty."

  "Yes. They have no reason to suspect that this is anything but an ordinary day. When the alarm is sounded, they'll bring in a full crew to man all these desks." She gazed intently at the central stronghold. "Unless I miss my guess, the leaders direct things from in there, where they'll be even safer and where they can see their underlings without being seen. They'll enter it directly from the upper floors, by way of the moving closets."

  Winslow glanced at his timepiece—and bit back a startled oath. Finding this place had taken them longer than he'd planned, and there was little time left before the Eilonwë would launch their assault. He thought furiously.

  "Virginia, set two of our remaining bombs to explode five minutes after the time for the attack." She gave him a sharp look, but knew this was no time for arguments or questions. As she set to work, he turned to Shakespeare. "Will, I want you to take these two bombs, go back up the ramp we just came down, and wait at the first landing. When the attack begins, reenter the normal world and leave the bombs on the landing, one to each side of the passageway. Then come back down here and rejoin us."

  "Uh . . . how will I know when the set time is, Captain?" Shakespeare indicated the timepiece which Winslow wore and he did not.

  "Trust me: you'll hear a lot of noise down here. That will be your signal." Winslow grasped Shakespeare by the shoulders. "This is important, Will. I'm entrusting it to you because I need a man I can rely on." There was also the fact that the actor was less likely than anyone else, with the possible exception of John White, to be useful once the fighting broke out, but Winslow saw no pressing need to mention that. Shakespeare swelled a bit with a young man's pride in being given a responsible charge, took the bombs, and scurried off.

  "Now," said Winslow, indicating the armored command center, "let's scout that out."

  The enclosed chamber held only one Grell, wearing the chest insignia of rank, although there were chairs and desks for several others in an outward-facing semicircle from which an array of glass screens showed various views, including the large room outside. In the very center of the chamber, on a kind of raised dais, was a circular desk overlooking everything. Directly above it, set into the ceiling, was a dome of obscure purpose.

  "So there's just one officer of the watch," Winslow stated, not even needing confirmation from Virginia Dare. As she had predicted, there was one of the double doors of the little moving rooms. Another, very secure-looking door gave egress to the main space beyond.

  Winslow reached a decision, and turned to a sailor who was, if not precisely brilliant, utterly reliable. "Grimson, remain in here. When we appear in the outer room and start killing, you'll see us in that . . . window. At that moment, return to the real world in the way I've explained to you and kill this Grell. Then open the door to admit the rest of us, and stand guard here, at this double door, and kill any Grella that come through." He grinned. "While you're waiting for them, you can amuse yourself by smashing as many of these instruments as you can."

  "Aye, Captain," Grimson acknowledged, knuckling his forelock.

  The rest of them passed through the armored walls—the last time they'd be able to do that, Winslow reflected—and spread out, drawing their weapons and taking up whatever positions suited them. He himself stood to the side of a desk behind which sat a Grell who couldn't yet see him. He had no compunctions about killing a Grell from behind, any more than he would have in the case of any other vermin. But he wanted this one to see him first. To his amusement, he was able to carefully line up his stroke against the neck of the oblivious Grell. Even more amusingly, he brought the blade through the unfeeling neck before resuming his stance.

  He stole a glance at his timepiece. It was time.

  Abruptly, the instrument panels flashed into activity. On the large glass screens around the outer walls, captured weapons in Eilonwë hands began to flash in the darkness. The Grella at the desks jerked to attention and began shouting soundlessly at each other.

  "NOW!" shouted Winslow.

  He himself was the first to resume physical actuality. The world around him snapped into solidity and color and noise, assaulting his senses with a suddenness that would have been startling if he hadn't been prepared for it.

  The Grell in front of him certainly wasn't prepared for his abrupt appearance out of nowhere. The alien mouth opened, and was still opening when Winslow's sword flashed around in a glittering three-quarter circle, and his head flew from his body in a spray of whatever the Grella used for blood.

  Then the other English began to pop into existence, and all Hell broke loose.

  Sixteen

  It was a slaughter. None of the Grella was armed, here where no enemy could possibly reach them. And even if they had carried weapons, they would have been too stunned to use them as the humans inexplicably popped into existence and began slashing, stabbing and hacking the life from them. The quavering high-pitched hissing sounds of Grella screams were lost in the shrill alarm that must be summoning the rest of the command center's crew.

  That thought made Winslow pause in the killing and look toward the ramp. Where is Shakespeare? he wondered anxiously. Much depended on the placement of the two bombs in the passageway.

  At that instant the young actor sprinted through the entryway. "Captain," he gasped, "they're close behind me!"

  "Did you leave the bombs as I told you?" Winslow demanded. He didn't know how much time had passed

  since the attack had begun, but he was sure it was less than it seemed, as was always the case in battle.

  "Yes, but—"

  The first of the Grella emerged . . . only they weren't Grella. A wave of the Eilonwë slaves came through first, advancing in their nightmarish mind-controlled way.

  "Weapons on stun!" cried Virginia Dare to those of her fellow English colonists who bore the modified Grella weapons. The flickering beams shot out, and the slaves tumbled in unconsciousness. Nothing more could be done for them now. If this battle was won, the Eilonwë mind-doctors would go to work. If it was lost . . . but that didn't bear thinking about.

  Then the Grella themselves appeared. Some of them were technicians like those the English had just finished killing, but others were soldiers, trained to react coolly in unanticipated situations and armed with the light-weapons. Those weapons were not set to stun. With every barely visible beam, an Englishman died.

  Then, with a concussion that caused the floor to jump beneath Winslow's feet, Shakespeare's bombs went off. The blast, funneled through the entryway, blew the just-emerged Grella off their feet. Behind them, the roof of the ramp's passageway collapsed, as Winslow had rather hoped it would when he'd told Shakespeare to place his bombs on opposite sides of it. The command center was now sealed off.

  The Grella stumbled to their feet only to face a berserk charge by Englishmen and Englishwomen whose fury had been stroked to white heat by the sight of those soul-robbed slaves—the fate that awaited them in the event of defeat. They didn't even bother with the bloodless light-weapons.

  Winslow struck a Grell's weapon aside with his sword before the alien could bring it to bear. With his left hand he plunged his dagger in, then withdrew it with a twist he hoped would be as disemboweling as it would have been with a human belly. The results did not disappoint him. Off to one side he saw Virginia Dare bring her two-handed sword down in a diagonal slash that sliced into a Grell's right shoulder and exited below the left armpit. The Grell fell to the floor with two distinct thuds.

  Maybe, Winslow reflected, awestruck, that Portuguese wasn't such a liar
after all.

  "All right," he called out to the remaining English, now alone. "Let's take care of that central chamber!" He pointed with his sword toward the door . . . which he now saw was still closed.

  Before he could say more, a pale death beam lashed out from a weapon set on the outside of that armored wall in a flexible mount just under the ceiling above the door. A Heron crewman screamed as it impaled him and his body fluids exploded outward in a burst of steam.

  "Take cover!" Winslow yelled. They all scrambled behind the control desks, which proved capable of stopping the beams—at least for now. He crouched behind one with Virginia Dare, Shakespeare and John White as the beams tore at it.

  "What happened to Grimson?" demanded Virginia Dare.

  "He must be dead," Winslow grated. "The Grella must have some kind of death trap in there."