Charon: A Dragon at the Gate flotd-3

by Jack L. Chalker

  “You’re going to try and retake control then?”

  He nodded. “Now, I don’t want to minimize anything. You’re still new here—a little over a year total, I think. You still don’t really appreciate what we’re up against.”

  I waved my hands around. “This place is equipped to take the whole system, and your planet wide underground is effective. I can’t see why you’d have a problem at this stage.”

  He smiled grimly. “Ah, but you see only the surface. First of all, we can’t depend on the weapons here. Didn’t you ever wonder why those troopers in Bourget had projectile weapons? I took a great risk with the laser stuff there. One small tabarwind and we’d have been blown to kingdom come.”

  “You know, ever since I’ve been on Charon I’ve heard about tabarwinds,” I told him. “And yet they have to be rare. I never saw one, or met anyone who did.”

  “It only takes one to scare hell out of you. It’s, a whirling electrical storm that reaches from the ground to the ion layer surrounding the planet. Nobody knows what causes them, but they look like something out of the most fanatical of religious hells. There’s even a religion based on them, if you can believe it. They just appear—i-no cause, no real reason we’ve ever found. They can be anywhere—except here, in the center of Gamush, for some reason. They follow no set path and no logic, and they vanish as quickly as they come. It can be a year between them—and then there can be dozens, even hundreds. Aside from the direct fury of the storm, almost anything electrical within a dozen or more kilometers of the storm just goes crazy. Overloads and explodes, often with a force beyond anything inherent in the exploding device. No sorcery, no force of will can stand against them. And electrical energy attracts them like a magnet.”

  “Sounds like an experience I can gladly skip,” I told him truthfully.

  “And they’re more common than you think,” Koril went on. “There are three right now in the north, and that’s where we have to go.”

  I sighed. “I see. But reduced to those primitive weapons, numbers mean even more—and I think you have them. If Bourget is any indication, the masses of people here really don’t give a damn who runs things.”

  “As usual anywhere,” Koril agreed. “Oh, it’s certain that we could take as much as seventy percent of the north and the few settlements on Gamush without problems. Tukyan’s hardly worth worrying about it’s so primitive. I have enough powerful sores, trained and developed here, to carry the day, force the government to a few strongholds like Monttay and Cubera. But it makes no difference. As long as they hold the Castle they hold one of only two spaceports on the planet, and they hold the power really. The trade, the records—the whole economy. Holding that, they can disrupt the business of the planet. Things don’t work right, people get hungry, or angry. And while we deteriorate sitting on our seven-tenths, they wait for reinforcements either from the other three Lords or, maybe, directly from the aliens. Basically, we take the countryside without the Castle and we take nothing we can hold. Take the Castle and the rest falls automatically into line.”

  “Then we must take the Castle.”

  Tulio Koril laughed. “Easier said than done, my rash young assassin. Far easier said than done.”

  We sat in a small briefing room, eight of us and Koril. I looked around at the faces there, but aside from two I didn’t recognize any of them. The two I knew were Darva, of course, and Zala Embuay whose presence was unexplained. It was definitely Zala we were seeing, not Kira, but we all knew that Kira was present too.

  The room was darkened, and a picture appeared on the screen of a huge, black circular stone building set atop a commanding mountain. Pagodalike, there were a series of stone porches around it at regular intervals almost all the way to the not quite fiat top of the building.

  “This is the Castle,” Koril told us. “It is eighty meters high from ground level, but there are an additional forty meters below ground. The building is divided into fifteen levels, and has excellent drainage. Its walls are solid stone, a meter thick, reinforced with steel plating and mesh. Beneath it, inside the mountain, is a network of tunnels leading to remote, below-ground armories. You could probably blow a nice hole in it with a laser canon, but you’d never get a second chance at it. Even so, you would have to be a genius to make that first hole, since the outer rock surface is chemically coated with a clever armorite compound developed on Cerberus. It will deflect a laser and, if you’re not careful, reflect it back at you. Because of the coating, the wa of the Castle is inert to us. It acts like a true physical barrier to the best wa sense. You can’t throw a spell to disperse anything or anybody behind it. Of course, they can’t do it to you either—but, remember, they don’t have to. They can hold on until reinforced either from other areas or from space. That topmost area is a shuttle cradle.”

  I had to admit the place was most impressive, although I knew of two dozen weapons that could bring it down. Of course, none were available in the Warden Diamond—and two would also destroy the planet.

  “The top level is shuttle receiving,” Koril continued, “and there is a series of lifts around the exterior for moving people and goods up and down, mostly by a clever counterweight system. The fourteenth floor is the living quarters of the Lord of the Diamond, her servants and whatever entourage she might permit. On the next eight floors below are special troopers and a defense force, living quarters for the rest of the top government and their staffs, and central records. The bottom five floors, all below ground level, include a supply level and warehouse with tunnel access, a special prison known as the dungeon, a reception level and general offices, and more defensive and trooper personnel. Additionally, on many of the upper levels there are governmental and experimental offices, labs, and the like. All in all, quite a complex.”

  Koril flipped a switch, and a schematic of the building came on.

  “Get to know this. You will all have copies provided, and I want you to know every passage, service corridor, twist and turn in the place. Within the next two days I’ll be putting you to the test, showing blind areas on a computer simulator. Better know your way around or you’ll get quickly lost. Speed is important, but I don’t want any of you in there to get lost in any way, shape, or form.”

  The picture flipped again, showing the bottom level and the tunnel complex.

  “This is the weak spot of the Castle, if it can be said to have one,” the sorcerer went on. “If you look closely, you’ll realize that this is more than a complex of tunnels and caves in a mountain. This is a maze. It is certainly possible to get into the maze more than two kilometers from the Castle itself, but once in you have even more problems. There are spells and sensors everywhere. Apparent rock walls show where there is clear space, and there are literally hundreds of rock plugs that can be—and are—shifted regularly, changing the entire maze. There is, literally, no way to know the configuration of the maze at any given time. At one time, several years ago, I did discover the key to it and sent in some of my best people. Most of them got into the Castle, but only a handful got out again—and none lived to get back to me. You understand the meaning of that. Many of them were top sores. The best. Therefore, should we manage to get in, we’re in. We either take the Castle or we die. No alternatives.”

  That outlook was pretty grim, but we all could see his point. Still, somebody had a question—I couldn’t tell who.

  “How will we solve the maze?” the questioner sensibly asked.

  “The only advantage I have is that I know the entire area. I know what sort of things are Installed and what are not, and I can orient myself even to changed circumstances. Basically, I’m betting that I can solve the maze based on my prior knowledge. If I can’t, it’s all over.”

  There was a nervous shuffling in the room at that. We were all being asked to put our necks entirely in a noose made for Koril, and were totally dependent on Koril to keep that noose from tightening.

  “Now, it’s inevitable we’ll trip something, bringing troop
ers and defense forces,” Koril continued, “but these don’t worry me and should not worry you. None are above the level of a low-grade apt, maybe VII tops and more likely DCs. The least of you is a VII, and most of us are far higher than that. They keep the troop grade low to prevent any possible internal revolts, of course. But don’t kid yourself—also in the Castle are some incredibly powerful sores. The tops. The best we know. With luck, there’ll be no more than four or five Synod members there—they roam about much of the time. But the odds are extremely good that there will be at least that number, and we can’t discount Morah. We can only hope that he’s out—and then try and rig things a bit our way.”

  “What about Mature?” somebody else asked.

  “She’ll almost certainly be in. She rarely leaves, and never for any extended visits. Without her, of course, the Castle is valueless, but I feel certain the odds are with us on that much. As for Morah, well stir up a big dish of trouble in the south coast region, as far from the Castle as we can. With any luck, the fracas will bring him there. Then we enter the Castle. Finally, as a distraction, there will be a general uprising and a well-coordinated but futile attack upon the Castle itself. Our own movements will be determined both by events inside and by the shuttle schedule, which we most certainly know. It puts down at four every afternoon and remains for an hour. That means we launch our south coast diversion a day before we go hi. We go in at five the next day. Once we’re discovered, we’re committed. We must accomplish everything before that shuttle returns the next afternoon. If not, if we’re held in the lower areas through then, Aeolia need only take the shuttle up to the space station and we’re dead.” He paused a moment, then added, “Remember, you all volunteered for this.”

  Well, maybe we had—but there were a lot of ifs in this proposition. If all the attacks were coordinated. If Morah could be drawn off. If there were no more Synod members in residence than we could handle ourselves. If the shuttle kept its schedule. If Aeolia Matuze was home. And if we could think, fight, and ensorcel our way through that huge building in only one full day.

  I looked at Darva in the gloom and knew she was thinking the same things I was. “I really wish you wouldn’t come,” I told her. “You’re not strong enough for the sores and you’re a knife at my throat They kill you, they get me.”

  “I have other skills,” she reminded me, “not the least of which is the weapons practice I’ve been through here. And I’m no more a knife at your throat than you are at mine. If you’re going to take me with you I don’t want to get it sitting out the action someplace.”

  I smiled and squeezed her hand. “All right, then. It’s a team we are.”

  Her smile in return was weak. I knew she really thought we were going to die in this, and I understood that she was willing to go, particularly if it was in the pursuit of something important.

  And, I think, she understood me as well. Hell, up to the last I’d never expected to be in on the end of this thing, not directly. As it was, I was going to have more fun than I’d had in the past ten years.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  A Walk in the Dark

  We could have used four months to train for the mission; Koril gave us four days. Once he’d decided to move, he decided to move, and that was that. He said he’d picked each of us for a reason, but some reasons were easier than others to figure out.

  I seemed to have been included because Koril, like many of the Brethren I’d hunted for most of my Me, had a very high opinion of Confederacy assassins, an opinion I’d tried to reinforce in my conversations with him. I was surprised he agreed to let Darva come, but as she had pointed out, what she lacked in sorcerous powers she more than compensated for with close-quarters weaponry. She’d worked hard developing those skills, and I wouldn’t want to be in the way if she wanted to go somewhere. If her opponent were equal or weaker than she in control of the wa force, or was prevented by one of us from using it, that opponent was dead. Zala—or, rather, Kira—was a more interesting choice, since I knew Koril trusted her no more than I did. If she was on the level, of course, she’d be invaluable—but she could also easily be our Trojan Horse, ready to betray us once we were trapped inside the Castle.

  The rest were his best sores, as illustrated by the “K” sound that preceded then* names, which they took when admitted to that fraternity of the very best. It was like a title or badge of rank—and when I finally realized that it explained a lot. Of them all, only Morah had never taken a sore name.

  Our party wasn’t without interesting abilities. In addition to Darva and myself, Ku, a small, dark man with a rodent-like face, was also a changeling, although very human in appearance. He was naturally nocturnal and, additionally, had some sort of built-in sonar system which would be very useful to us—along with his unnerving ability to stick to walls and ceilings like a fly. It was obvious that, if in fact someone else had made him a changeling or not, he’d adapted for himself some most useful attributes.

  Kaigh was a large, hairy bear like man who looked naturally mean, and perhaps was. I understood he was a former Confederacy frontier officer who’d found the possibilities for graft and extortion out there irresistible. Kimil was a typical civilized worlder, younger than Koril but otherwise undistinguished. Kindel was a small, wiry woman with wickedly long nails and a shaved head. Her cold, black eyes seemed too large for her head, and were constantly in nervous motion. Rrugar was a woman of the civilized worlds, in early middle age and otherwise not very distinguished from any other civilized worlder. Of us all, I realized, only Darva was native to Charon.

  Darva and I were the largest and most obvious targets, I realized that from the beginning. Over the months we had managed to scale ourselves down slowly to a more moderately tall 204 centimeters, still enough to tower over the others. Of course, our appearance, although very human, was still changeling enough to mark us. We were both damned strong and surprisingly agile, and we worked at it.

  We left Koril’s redoubt by air, in much the same manner as we’d arrived—but this time, inside the cabin of the great flying creature and not in its claws. Zala hadn’t been too excited by the idea of the trip, but apparently had been calmed or sedated in some way by Kira. I found the trip as bumpy and uncomfortable as the first tune, but took it in stride. We had a schedule to keep.

  We did not, of course, dare land anywhere near the Castle. Since there were no legitimate landing areas for the big creatures we could use, we made do with an area more than forty kilometers southwest of the seat of Charon’s government and managed to get the big thing back off the ground ourselves.

  Our equipment was surprisingly spare. Koril had risked laser pistols, with the understanding that we might have to get rid of them for any number of reasons. We also carried a small store of projectile weapons and ammunition, on which we’d practiced and been checked out at the redoubt’s firing ranges long before. Darva never did quite get the art of laser pistol down well, but she was a whiz at the projectile pistols—just the reverse of me. In addition several of us, including Darva, carried that most ancient of weapons, the sword; others carried small but deadly daggers. The burly Kaigh, to my awe and fascination, carried what seemed to be a crossbow, a kind of early weapon I’d only read about but had never seen before.

  We carried no papers or documents of any kind. All information had been hypnoed into our minds to save weight and problems. We all wore tough clothing of jungle green, a sort of forest version of the trooper uniforms, Darva’s and mine having been specially cut and tailored for our peculiar requirements. Beyond some pre-packaged food cakes and canteens, we had nothing else.

  On the road we ate mostly by transmutation, a rather fascinating process. Just as Garal had changed fruit punch into acid and Korman had changed it back, so our own sores could take almost any vegetable matter in the jungle and make almost anything of it we desired. To this day I’m still not sure if we really were eating transmuted stuff or just leaves and the like we were fooled into believing was the good
food it seemed to be. In the end, it probably made no difference. At least our bodies not only accepted the stuff but seemed to make good use of it.

  We had two and a half days to reach the Castle, which was easy enough considering the distance involved. Still, the trek was through the rough of the jungle, and not even Darva and I were any longer prepared to feel completely at home there. As we approached the mountains, though, the jungle gave way first to thick forest and then to intermittent groves with bare glades and rocky outcrops. The going was steep, since we could hardly use the known roads, and tough. Much of the open spaces had to be negotiated at night We had our first practice with Koril’s little nocturnal vision spells, but still needed the more natural and nearly perfect night eyes of Ku to keep us from breaking our fool necks.

  By the morning of the appointed day, we had made it to the place where we knew we’d be entering the caves. It was a good spot, really. Nearby, through a small grove of trees, was a sheer cliff and we were able to look out on the valley below. From any point we could see the top of the Castle, which looked even more fearsome in person than it did in any pictures.

  We settled down to wait for the late afternoon, when the real work would begin. Standing short watches, we tried to get as much sleep as we could. With some interest I noticed that, somehow, Zala hadn’t been included in the watch schedule.