Body seethed with pain, rage, fear. Excitement. Had never felt anything like it. I was at sea. Arms and legs shook as adrenals dumped. I crouched in the duct. Must have resembled an animal, eyes wide, with the hair standing up on my head. Filthy, bloody, wounded.
I hurt, but I shut down the pain. Must help Father.
Video input projected chaos. Rebels surged across minefields, sweeping it with their own bodies. Guards terrified by sheer ferocity. A few external guards overwhelmed.
Excellent—sauropods being driven into inner garden by pain collars, the Menagerie turning against its masters. The guards were frightened, but regrouping. If only the saurians were intelligent, they could …
If only …
Swarna’s entertainment center. His pleasure—entering mating camosaurs. I saw better application of technology.
I crawled along the duct and headed to the entertainment complex. All computer centers were underground. Sealed during initial alarm. There was no direct access. Nothing human could reach them.
I am not human.
I am Death.
14
I couldn’t breathe. The conduit was too narrow for a human body. It was barely large enough for a cat.
But if my head could fit through, then the rest of me could. Pain was nothing. I felt my hips slip out of their alignment, and there was a stretching sensation, overwhelming pain as I torqued my spine.
Mustn’t sever the spinal column, but the conduit was threaded like a corkscrew. I slithered along, taking out filters as I went, ripping them from their moorings, and pushing them ahead of me. A bone in my hand broke from the pressure.
I ignored it. There was nothing for me but to continue.
I was at the window of the entertainment control center. It was grated. An air purifier was set into the wall, controlling the air flow. It made the computer room impervious to attack by gas, by germs, by almost anything.
It was set into the back of the wall by welded struts, and glued into the base by a new polyacrylic cement, with a breaking strength of seventeen hundred pounds.
The human body is an odd thing. If every muscle in the human body pushed or pulled in unison, it would be capable of exerting fantastic force. Most people care about hurting themselves, and never reach their full potential physically or mentally.
I was wounded, and had very little purchase. I set my toes, finding some kind of grip on the tunnel. I set my hands to the unit, and I pushed.
Father.
I could not move this thing. I had reached the limits of my strength.
Father.
I had to stop, stop before I died.
But I am a thing of evil, and the only way that I can cleanse that evil is by dying. Dying at that moment, in the service of something that I
(Love)
I could hear the metal whine as the purifier began to move.
15
The Nigerian at the first security monitor saw the first alarm go red.
Until that moment, the entertainment complex had been secure. The rebellion couldn’t possibly reach them, down where they were, beneath walls of concrete and steel. There was no way that anything could be done to compromise them, and there was security here as there would be in few places in the world.
But he saw the tiny red light come on, and interpreted it quickly.
Air system compromised.
There was a faint rumble of an explosion up above, and they looked at each other. What had gone wrong?
Then they heard another sound, a sound that was much, much closer, and it was something that came from the wall itself.
The wall plaster was splitting, cracking and peeling away a foot back from the reinforced ventilator grille.
Their eyes widened. Beneath the plaster, one-eighth-inch steel sheeting, welded at the seams, was coming undone, peeling back, screaming. A trickle of thin red fluid ran from within.
They watched, hands hovering over the alarm switch, horrified, not quite able to move, as the wall gave birth.
There was a gasping sound, rising above the dying hum of the ventilator, and a child’s bloodied head came through the hole. The technicians were frozen. The child couldn’t have been alive. It was torn, and dusty, and one ear was almost torn away. Blood drooled down its neck. But its eyes. Its eyes were so alive. They burned.
There were three men in the room, and the child fixed each of them, in turn, with those terrible eyes.
They still had yet to move, frozen, horrified, watching the dreadful process.
The child fell out, and slid down the wall, leaving a slick of blood. Thudded to the floor.
It shuddered like a puppet with tangled strings. No man in the room had managed to move yet.
The child-puppet stood, wavering, as if its strings were being mended, strand by painful strand, under the urging of a will that was stronger than death.
With dreadful slowness its head rose. It blinked blood from its eyes. Its clothing was torn to shreds. The body beneath the clothes was so thin, it seemed starved.
Then it opened its mouth, screamed, and flew at them.
16
I rolled the last body out of the way and crawled into the seat in front of the security monitor.
I shut pain somewhere far, far away, but set my body to healing in the best way that I could. What I needed to do was to crawl somewhere quiet and dark, and allow my body to begin its process. But there was no time for that. No time at all.
There were multiple intake devices available, and I had to find the right one, and find it quickly. With bloodied fingers, I ripped out the paneling, and found the fiber-optic cables leading to the main processor. Split them, and reached back to the base of my skull, found the input dock, and spliced the cables in.
I died.
I was the room, the cooling system, the environmental unit. My eyes filled with light. My brain is a puny coprocessor. It can perform a pitiful few billion functions a second, but that would have to be enough. I raced through the wiring wide as railway tunnels, my consciousness a ghost in the machine.
I ranged beyond. I was the outer walls. I could disrupt communications. I tied into main security systems, found them already compromised.
Father.
He changed settings on Menagerie pain-fences. Froze drawbridge controls. A good beginning. I could do more.
Cracked codes on emergency security shield, broadcast recall code to backup troops. Energy weapons were being used. I could dampen and disrupt. Swarna’s troops would fall back on explosive weaponry, which would place them on greater parity with the rebels. Father’s pulse rifle would now be dysfunctional. But he had … other skills. It would throw things further into balance. But it was not enough. Not nearly enough. There must be more.
The Menagerie.
Last radio reports stated Five Songs rebels were streaming through the minefield. Heavy casualties. I disarmed it.
More.
Swarna’s private codes were the work of a moment. I would enter the mind of the ankylosaurus.
17
Ni watched Stump-Leg die. In one moment the rebel was beside him, cursing gutturally and firing his ancient rifle at unseen guards. He was probably unaware that the man he fought beside was a Swarna clone. Ni was just another rebel, firing at guards and soldiers with lethal skill. In the next moment, Stump-Leg’s head was aflame, slagging, and then the skull exploded in a shower of brain and bone and smoldering hair.
The men and women of Five Songs had converged in the night. Maps supplied by the clones revealed safety corridors through the Menagerie and the garden, protected by electronic pain transmitters. The safety corridor was mined—and every day the security computer selectively armed and disarmed different segments of the minefield. They could only hope that their map was up to date.
They were wagering their lives that it was.
So far, it was a poor bet. They had made it as close as the garden, but were pinned down in a cross fire, faces in the mud and muck, drowning in the
torrential rain in a night that threatened to last forever. When they tried to move, the mines blew them to pieces.
Screams of pain and frustration churned the air, some of them originated in the throats of the camosaurs behind them. The sound, the shock, the smell of torn flesh combined into an overwhelming sensory collage, paralyzing the warriors of Five Songs where they crouched.
And then—
The energy bolts, pulse-rifle plasma blasts ripping them in unending salvos, just stopped. The sky no longer rippled with fire, was no longer seared with an angry aurora borealis. A guard screamed in frustration and fear and confusion, cursing his suddenly useless weapon.
Ni smiled grimly, gripped his machine rifle, and charged across the minefield. Behind him, the rebels gasped at his lone, headlong plunge, expecting to see him blown into bits in the next moment.
But—there was no explosion.
Bullets exploded around him as the guards switched to the non-energy-based weapon. Ni charged directly into the fire, a lone figure screaming defiance, and for a long moment the rebels watched him. Watched as he fired, cutting down two guards atop the wall. Watched as the bullets finally found him, and tore his body to pieces, throwing him this way and that, until he lay, in the rain, unmoving.
And then, something broke among the rebels, and they charged. Charged across the dead minefield, charged the inaccurate rifles and machine guns. Charged the ancient walls of Caernarvon Castle.
They died the way Zulus died at Roerke’s Drift, by the hundreds. But over their shattered bodies came more, and yet more, and the guards were overwhelmed, screaming.
The earth shook. And in the light of the flaming wreckage, a giant shadow fell upon the rebels from behind.
Again the carnage paused, and all turned to look.
One of the great placid plant eaters stood watching them. A speaker box chained at its throat suddenly crackled with sound.
“Hello,” the box said. “I am an ankylosaurus, an herbivore of the Cretaceous—” Then it stopped, and seemed to shudder. Then there was … a change. Something happened in its eyes, and it no longer gazed at them dully. Suddenly, its eyes were focused, intelligent. And the speaker said, “Follow me. We have taken control of the Menagerie. Follow me …”
And the ankylosaurus charged, directly into Caernarvon’s suppressing fire.
They watched as the machine-gun fire ripped into it, and then a rocket, blowing a great piece of living armor from its hide. It screamed in an agony that was too human, the scream coming from its throat and the box at the same time, and it collapsed, dead, tail twitching. But its enormous bulk gave them cover closer to the wall.
Then there was a scream from behind them, as a thirty-foot iguanodon charged. Bipedal, carnivorous, a relic of the lower Cretaceous, it shrieked, folds of loose flesh beneath its jaw puffing and deflating with each scream. On thick, gnarled legs it plunged through the deactivated minefield. The earth thundered as it approached, and the men on the wall screamed, pivoting their weapons as the creature, suffering unimaginable torment, charged through the electronic barrier and went to the attack.
On momentum alone, it made it all the way to the wall, and slammed into it headfirst. The men on the wall screamed, as much in sheer terror at the size of the beast as anything else.
And as they fired—
Another iguanodon came out of the smoke, through the barrier, and attacked at the northeast corner
And then another, and the rebels of Five Songs watched, amazed, and then raised their arms to the sky, screaming and shrieking their pleasure.
Truly, the gods were with them.
18
I was in a world of split attention. I rotated my consciousness between the creatures a hundred times a second, controlling their actions, feeling their agony as the bullets poured into me.
I transferred out of their bodies when the pain grew too great. I had to suppress my physiological reaction when the bullets hit, or I would slide massively into shock.
My physiological pain reactions hammered at the gate of my mind, almost more than I could bear.
Through saurian eyes, I could see the flashes of light. Now the rebels swarmed up, climbing over the gates on ladders of dead dinosaur flesh. Although they died, they killed as well. Guards were confused, terrified.
I allowed my attention to be distracted
It hurts—!
The pain. I took a direct hit. Explosive weapon … bazooka-type. Chest. My attention shrunk.
Must get out.
Must get out.
Must …
Couldn’t transfer.
It hurt, more than dream or nightmare. I never dreamed of pain like this. Mind wouldn’t work. Felt heart shudder slow stop.
Blood pressure dropped.
I was …
I …
19
Tanesha watched as a rebel died planting a satchel charge against Caernarvon’s main gate. The guard who shot him died a moment later as the charge detonated, sending steel and stone and flame into the night sky. This was the moment!
Her ears still ringing, Tanesha grabbed her rifle and charged forward, buoyed by the joyous screams of the other warriors of Five Songs, all about her.
This was a moment to remember, for whatever brief minute of life remained to her. The guards were actually falling back, cut to ribbons by the guns of the rebels.
But there was no illusion. Within minutes, reinforcements would arrive, catching Five Songs in pincers. Then it would be over. Then, all of the death would be for nothing.…
Unless Aubry Knight, Aubry Jai, could succeed. But that was the future, for now there was the killing, and the dying, and there was enough of each to fill her world.
20
Caernarvon’s great halls shook with the thunderous pulse of explosions as Five Songs battled with Swarna’s guards.
Aubry was deep inside himself, only his senses beyond his skin. He was completely at peace.
His pulse rifle had failed, and the laser sight on his pistol wasn’t working. Something had happened to the power all over the Citadel. As long as the guards were concentrating on the external threat, it helped him.
San was in the darkness, near him.
They were aware of each other, supporting each other’s positions, and seemed able to anticipate the movements and thoughts. His eyes were sharper than they had ever been before. Even in the shadows, he was aware.
There was a moment to their right, and he swiveled to face it, squeezed off a silenced burst.
Another burst of fire, and this time from concealment. The throne room was sealed off, weaponry projecting from slits in the walls.
Aubry depressed his trigger until it clicked, empty, clicked again and again.
San smiled at him, enormously. “Good luck, my brother,” she said, and flew at the door.
She rolled a smoke grenade before her. It exploded in a dark cloud, and she rushed behind it. The wall cracked with fire, and San, sprinting faster than Aubry had ever seen a woman run, was caught a dozen times. Her shock armor dampened the impact of the shells, and her momentum carried her forward, screaming all the way. She slammed a disk-shaped explosive charge against the door, then hurled herself to the side and—
In the confined space, the detonation was almost unendurably loud, and Aubry’s ears split. His head felt as if it had been smashed with a hammer.
Smoking wreckage was everywhere.
San lay sprawled in the wreckage, her arms and legs twisted and broken by the impact, shock armor torn and smoldering. Through her open visor her eyes stared up, sightless.
Then she blinked.
Aubry had her in his arms in a moment. She was too weak even to cough, but a bubble of blood slid from her mouth. “Go,” she said, almost too softly for him to hear the word. “Finish it.” Then she lost consciousness.
The air was filled with smoke, and flame, and the moans of the dying.
There was no need for speed. He climbed over the rubble, and th
ere, at the back of the room, at last, sat Phillipe Swarna.
21
Aubry walked forward slowly, with measured step. He felt as if his hair were on fire, and with every breath, the heat stoked up to a higher level.
Phillipe Swarna was old, old, but there was no doubt that when the man had been young, and in his prime, when he had walked with full utility, when his eyes and heart had been his own, before he had required marrow transplants to keep himself alive, he had been Aubry Knight.
“Who are you?” Swarna quavered, his voice an old man’s voice.
“I am you,” Aubry replied.
Swarna shook visibly. “Tanaka!” he ranted. “Tanaka!”
And near Aubry, to the left, something rustled. Covered with dust, and bleeding from where an ear had been torn away, Tanaka stood. He raised a dusty pulse rifle. It was useless, now.
Aubry leveled his machine rifle. His finger tightened on the trigger.
No response. It was empty.
His hand shaking, Tanaka straightened his scabbard and drew steel.
“This man is my primary,” Tanaka said. “You may not pass.”
“You are wounded,” Aubry observed bluntly. “All I have to do is wait, and you will bleed to death.”
“But you can’t wait,” Tanaka said. “Your feint outside will fail. Everything will be for nothing. Reinforcements will arrive in minutes. To kill him you must pass me.”
Aubry turned, walked two paces, and plucked a rifle from the hands of one of the dead guards. He fired a short burst into the ceiling. Marble chips and plaster raised on them both.
“San told me that you were her teacher. That you are a man of honor. I would not kill you, unless you force me. You are armed only with a sword. Stand aside.”
“Will you?” Tanaka asked. “You are a warrior of your people, as I am a warrior of mine. It would be dishonorable to shoot me.”
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