by Galen Wolf
The servants had nearly finished collecting the Count's stores. Gaijann saw them start to flee back towards the door. Then one of them dropped his pack. It struck a sharp rock, shredding it and spilling its contents into the sand. He turned to scrabble for them and the other servants went to help him, picking up dropped objects in their hands and arms. Their voices were filled with panic.
Gaijann glanced at the incoming aircraft and then back at the servants, running frantically for the door but still seconds away. "Quick, quick"
"There's literally nano-seconds before the ships hit the door." Atorkh had his hand to his mouth.
Severan stood at the door, ready to pull the men through. But the Count pushed in front of Gaijann and hit the mechanism. The huge black doors began to close rapidly. Gaijann knocked the Count out of the way and slapped the door switch get it to reverse, but the momentum could not be stopped. The servants' faces twisted in terror as they saw the door closing, and they redoubled their pace, but they were too far. The doors shut in front of them, locking them out. Gaijann saw their faces twist in terror, but there was nothing he could do.
Instantly, the mercenaries heard the thud of cannon and felt the sudden heat of the plasma wash through the Taurine of the library door. The Taurine kept the superheated plasma out but enough heat came through to bring a sudden flush of sweat to their cheeks behind the door, but out there, it was an inferno. The Taurine kept the superheated plasma out. The Count stepped back from the door as the heavy cannon rounds slugged into it. They heard the awful sound of men dying. Then more explosions as the second Kissag craft strafed the Library entrance. The detonations echoed in the library, but the door didn't even buckle.
"Nothing will get through that," the Count said.
Severan stared at the Count.
Gaijann said, "No, nothing can get through - not even your servants."
Torina screamed. "You let them die!"
The Count looked at her and said, in a measured tone, "I had to close the door before the cannon fire hit us."
"But your servants were still out there," hissed the healer.
"Yes," he said. Then he paused. "So?"
"So?" Her cheeks were flushed with heat and anger. "You just killed four men."
He shook his head. "No, I didn't kill them," he said slowly, regarding her as if she were simple.
Torina's voice shook. "You closed the door so they couldn't get in."
"It was not my intention to kill them. That was an unfortunate consequence of me closing the door to keep us alive. Do you propose that I kept the door open so that both they and we would be killed?" He shook his head. "That seems a very peculiar idea."
"They were good servants," Mehefin said in a helpful tone.
Her father nodded at his daughter. "They were. Very good."
"It'll be hard to get new ones so well trained - so used to us."
The Count smiled sadly. "It is a loss that I regret."
Torina scowled and shook her head in disgust. "Are you even people?"
Mehefin looked quizzically at the healer. "I don't know what you mean."
"I mean - do you have feelings? You don't seem to care they died."
The Count seemed puzzled. "They weren't men; they were slaves."
Torina turned from them walked away. She said to Atorkh, "What the fuck?"
he boy shrugged. "He's a cold, cold man."
"You think?" Her face was full of rage.
"It's done," Severan put his hand on her shoulder. "Like it or not; it's done."
"But did you see what he did?" Torina said, still angry.
Severan nodded. "I saw."
"And what do you think of it?"
Severan paused. He looked at Torina and said, "What I think doesn't change anything. I'd rather it hadn't happened, but it did. We need to focus on our mission. The planet will turn to the darkness in 19 hours and if we're not out by then, we will all die."
"Yes, but if we die, then that's up to us, we came here of our own free will. They didn't. So it's not the same."
Severan put his hand on Torina's cheek and said through the neural net. "He will get his come-uppance, I'll make sure of that. But we need to move quickly, Torina, or we'll all die in here."
Torina wasn't letting it go. Out loud she said. "I'm disgusted. I don't like their mission and I don't like them." She jabbed her thumb at the Count and his daughter. "They'll sacrifice us as easily as they did their servants."
Gaijann put his hand on her shoulder. "We're not doing it for them. Remember that, kid. We're doing this because it's our job and we're the best."
She bit the back of her hand to offload her anger then fixed her mouth in a hard line.
"Come on, Tor." Gaijann squeezed her arm. Then they turned to look at the task ahead of them.
CHAPTER FOUR: Entering the Labyrinth
Atorkh interrupted. "I'm getting multiple life forms from inside the library. I'll patch them in now. Put your visors on."
Gaijann and Severan pulled down the visors of their helmets and then on the neural net they became aware of myriads of small things all around. They emerged out of holes all around the library entrance hall. The emotional content coming from them was hostile. Severan peered up towards the ceiling high above.
"They're all around us," Gaijann said.
Severan put his rifle off safety. "We'll have to fight them here. Protect the Count and his daughter."
Torina shook her head and rolled her eyes in disgust, but did as he said. They formed a circle around the Count and Mehefin. The Count pulled out an energy pistol. "I have a weapon."
"Just don't shoot us by mistake," Gaijann said. "We're not as easy to replace as servants." Then he switched on his stealth and disappeared. All that was left was the marks of his boots evident in the inch thick dust on the library ground.
"What are all the things in the shelves?" Atorkh said while he watched the strange life forms on his screen.
"Books," said the Count.
"Oh, right," Atorkh said, "Never seen one in real life."
"Don't damage them."
"We won't damage them unnecessarily," Severan reassured his paymaster.
And then the things appeared. They were around three feet long and thin like worms but grey and dry like stone. They had eyes and teeth at one end of their tubular bodies similar to lampreys and they dropped from above like a rain of caterpillars from a tree. Once the worms hit the ground, they slithered towards them, sliding from side to side through the dust like vipers. They moved too quick to shoot.
Severan put down his rifle. His cyborg eye locked on the first worm and it exploded in a shower of fire and sparks. Then the giant shifted his gaze to the next. But there were so many of them. They surged over each other, a wave of snapping mouths and weaving bodies. If one got close enough before his eye could burn it, he grabbed the worm in his green cyborg fist and froze it. The creature's body reduced to hundreds of degrees below zero in nano-seconds. The abrupt change in temperature fractured the worm's body and it crumbled in fragments of ice, falling to the floor in a scattering of stone and dust.
"They looked weird on screen because they're silicon based life forms, not carbon," Atorkh said.
"Fight, don't talk," hissed Severan.
Atorkh shrugged and moved his drones into formation.
Gaijann's stealth cloak was broken every time he stuck his enemies. His invisibility was interrupted for microseconds and then flicked back on so he looked like a movie shot in stroboscopic light - a blur and a shadow, too fast to be fixed by the eye. His whirling vorpal dagger went snicker-snack and cut the worms in twos and threes. As they landed on the ground, the segments of worm wriggled and moved to snap and bite. Gaijann stamped on them hard, breaking them into grit. He yelled, "You have to destroy them all, the segments can independently animate."
Though she was a healer, Torina had some offensive capability and she reversed her healing fields against the worms. When healing, the fields worked insid
e damaged flesh to repair ruptured cell membranes, allowing the refilling of cytoplasm and knitting together protein chains, but reversed they did the opposite. The only problem was that it wasn't working on the worms.
"The fields aren't damaging them," she muttered.
"They're not carbon," Severan said, his breath rough from exertion. "Their cells aren't made of peptides and proteins - they're made of silane chains. Your fields won't decompose them. Concentrate on healing."
Behind the front line, Morah stood muttering words into the air around her. She spoke syllables in an ancient, dead language and as she uttered the phrases of summoning, she ran her razor sharp fingernails over the base of her thumb, drawing a line of blood. With a hiss, she offered her own blood to the demon she summoned. She promised it lives to devour if it obeyed her commands. And then, satisfied with the bargain, the demonic creature phased in.
Breaking off attention from the worms for an instant, Gaijann felt the familiar mix of unmanning fear and gut wrenching disgust he'd experienced before when Morah called her pets. He watched as a creature of pure evil became visible; darkness within darkness until it took on the shape with the folded wings of a bat and, as it turned its head, Gaijann saw a mouthful of serrated teeth that extended down its throat. It was black, about seven feet tall; its fingers were barbed, and its mouth gobbled as its vile red tongue flopped between its flabby lips. He knew it was a Belphegor.
Mehefin pulled back from the demon, terrified. Her father clutched her to him and pointed his pistol at the Belphegor, presumably to defend them.
"Don't worry," shouted Gaijann as he sliced then crunched another worm. "It's one of Morah's. Like her, it's on our side - mostly."
The Belphegor flapped its leathery wings and rose into the air, snapping at the worms like a bat going after flies. It grabbed them in its loathsome hands and clamped the life out of them, squeezing them between its clawed fingers like dry mud.
"What is it?" Mehefin's face was white.
"It's a demon," Gaijann said, ducking the rotating teeth of a worm that dropped onto his shoulder and lunged at his face.
More worms dropped from the air above and landed on Atorkh's shoulders and head. One got through the energy shield defense produced by the k-mesh armor. The worm ate its way into his cheek and Gaijann saw it writhing in the youth's bloodied mouth. Atorkh screamed in pain.
Severan reached round and put his fingers into Atorkh's mouth, grabbing the worm by its tail, yanking it out with his cyborg hand and then crushing the crystals of its frozen body before throwing them away. Atorkh screamed louder and put his hand to his ripped flesh to staunch the blood. Torina went to him and began to heal.
"Dammit Severan, that hurt like hell." The youth touched the rapidly knitting wound in his cheek.
"It's only pain boy," Severan's red eye danced over worms dropped by the feeding demon and igniting them in puffs of flame and smoke. "You'll get used to it."
"Leave your cheek alone, while I finish healing," Torina said. "Don't poke it!"
There were only a few worms left now and Severan was finishing them off. Gaijann sheathed his knife and looked at Morah. She was observing her demon that still hovered, flapping in the air above them.
"Not going to try a worm?" Gaijann asked. "I thought you ate your defeated enemies."
She looked sardonically back at him. "They're too dry for me," she said. "They stick in my throat."
He thought it was a joke so he grinned at her. When she didn't smile back he figured she probably meant it.
Mehefin was shaking, wrapped in her father's comforting arms.
Severan seemed keen to move on. Gaijann watched the big man stride off into the Library.
"The boss is sure in a hurry," Atorkh said to Torina.
Torina was watching Severan too. She shook her head. "He's not just here for Count Owain. There's a personal angle as well."
"Know what it is?" Atorkh said.
Torina shook her head. "Nah, he's a mysterious man."
Gaijann whistled. "This sure is a big place." The rows of books went straight ahead and then twisted right. Then he caught movement above. Way up in the shadows, something shifted, as if waking from a dream. Their HUDs showed life readings all around them. So many, so thick, but invisible to the naked eye.
"See those on your visors?" Atorkh asked.
"Could be more worms," Gaijann grimaced. "Maybe they live in the shelves."
"They're made of rock, right?" Torina said.
"Clay and silicon," Atorkh said. "So, rock - yeah."
Severan had stopped ahead. Gaijann ran up to him. "Which way are we going?"
The rest of the party had caught up now.
"Any preferred direction?" The assassin asked.
"Down," both Severan and the Count spoke at once.
Gaijann shook his head. "I can't see a down."
"There will be," Severan said.
The party moved forward into the hall of endless books, hands on their weapons, their nerves spooked by the things that moved in the shadows above them.
Torina peered into the gloom high above. "That's not worms. The signal'' too big."
Severan looked up and Gaijann followed his gaze. "Let's just hurry," he said. But there was something - some things - up there above their heads.
Torina kept looking up nervously. Atorkh had his visor down and was watching the shadows through it. Even Morah appeared preoccupied. Her demon had gone back whence it came and, it seemed to Gaijann, who always took a particular interest in her, that she was keeping to the back of the line more than normal.
Atorkh flipped his visor up and looked up at the ceiling far above. "They're up there but I don't know what they are."
Severan, called back, "Doesn't matter what they are. There are lots of strange things in here. If they don't prevent us carrying out our mission, we ignore them."
Atorkh reached out a hand to touch a shelf of books as he walked past. They crumbled into dust. He coughed as he inhaled it.
"That's one civilization's knowledge now beyond recovery," Gaijann joked.
"It was probably shit anyway," Atorkh said.
"Maybe recipes made with long extinct vegetables."
They both laughed and the sound echoed down the empty corridors.
"Hey," Gaijann suddenly stopped. "I know this language." He leaned forward and began perusing a shelf, running his fingers along the backs of leather bound volumes. There were titles on the spines embossed in gold leaf in a strange script. The Count watched him intently, Mehefin by his side, looking curious.
Severan looked back and stopped. "What is it?" he said.
Gaijann said, "My mother's family are from Dagda VIII, way out in Perseus. This was their sacred language, the one they used for rituals and religion. Pretty much extinct now. Wonder what it's doing here?"
"The Anubisites collected knowledge from everywhere remember." The Count's dark eyebrows and sharp nose made him look like a hawk.
Torina glanced back. "What does it say?"
The Count came close, peering over Gaijann's shoulder.
"Let me see," Gaijann was in no hurry to please the Count so he deliberately dawdled over opening the book. It was old but in much better condition that the ones that had crumbled under Atorkh's touch. Gaijann ran his finger over the spine, closed his thumb and finger on it and dragged it out. It came with a slight tug, leaving a gap. Gaijann opened the volume. Minutes went by. He pursed his lips.
"Well?" the Count peered over Gaijann's shoulder - looking like he might snatch the book from the assassin.
"I don't read the language so well, but..."
"But what?" Count Owain was so close that Gaijann felt his breath on his cheek.
"Seems to be some kind of guide book to this library. There are maps."
"Ironic that you should find it so easily," said Mehefin.
He turned and smiled at her. "They call me lucky Gaijann." He met her gaze and she looked away.
He turned a
nd saw that Morah was staring at him with a scowl. "Or the Library is playing with us."
"It's only a building," Atorkh said. "It can't play games."
"Is it?" Morah said.
"Of course, duh." The boy pulled at his goatee. The witch shook her head and turned away as if bored.
Severan was in front of the party staring into the darkness like a mariner searching out a landfall.
"Is it of use?" asked the Count. "The book. What does it say?"
"Says this is called the Room of Dust," Gaijann said finally.
"I would say it's all pretty dusty," Atorkh said.
"That's it?" the Count said, "Is that all it says?"
"Well, there's lots of words in it," Gaijann said with a grin. "That's just a few of them."
Count Owain's brow furrowed. He half raised his hand. Gaijann turned his back on the Count, still reading. The Count held out his hand for the book but Gaijann ignored him. There was a tense silence until the Count turned back to his daughter. She was standing there looking curiously at Severan.
"Let's get moving," Severan was already walking off.
The Count didn't move. "You say there's a map in the book?"
"Don't you have a map of this place?" Torina said. "You seem to have an idea of the place's layout."
"I do. I have a map but it's a fragment from an old manuscript."
"Yes," Gaijann said in a leisurely tone. "Looks like there's a map in this book."
"Give it to me," the Count reached out and went to snatch the book from Gaijann's hands.
"Manners," Gaijann said, but he let go anyway.
The Count grabbed the book and rapidly turned the pages. "I can't read it."
"Should have left it to me," Gaijann said. He thought he caught the flicker of a smile on Mehefin's face. She clearly knew her father's impatience well.
"What does it say? Tell me in detail." The Count thrust the book back to Gaijann.
Gaijann took it diffidently. Without hurrying, he flicked the pages.
"So?" the Count said. "What?"
Gaijann shrugged. "Lots of names of rooms like The Room of Dust, The Room of the Dead, the Room of Other Possibilities - that sounds a fun one. Anyway." He put the book into his pack. "I'll read it later."