From behind there rang a voice through the air. “Not so, fool brother of mine, for I was of the Circle and I yet live!”
Pon Barius and the Black Foxes whirled to face the door.
And there in the entryway stood a tall, black-haired man with a long, aquiline nose and a wide leering mouth. He was dressed in sable and wore an ebon cloak. On the front of his doublet was emblazoned two red crescents—one small, one large—Phemis and Orbis as bloodmoons. Behind him in the shadows of the hallway the blackness seemed to churn with unseen figures.
“Horax!” hissed Pon Barius.
“From childhood on, you always were such a predictable fool, my adopted brother!” sneered Horax, his black eyes glittering. “I knew you would come here and spend your power to nullify the wards.”
Filled with rage, Pon Barius drew himself up to his full height and for a moment seemed taller than all the others, taller even than Kane. “It is you who are the fool, Horax. Go back to your Drasp and squat in that swamp like the bog spider you are!”
Horax laughed, his voice chill. “Ever the idiot to think that mere words alone would send me scurrying.” His gaze shifted to Rith. “No, brother, I’ve come for the knife and what it contains.”
“You’ll not have it,” shouted Pon Barius, stepping toward Rith as Foxes drew blades and Arton reached for his crossbow and Kane stooped to pick up his spear.
Yet in that same moment, Horax shouted out a command—”Va’tchok!”—and stepped to one side as howling, black, three-foot-tall skelga, bone thin but with needle-sharp rending teeth and long shredding talons, boiled into the chamber and sprang toward the Foxes and Pon Barius.
Zzzzzaaakk! Arton’s crossbow bolt took the first one in the chest as it leapt upon Pon Barius, the dark goblinlike creature shrieking and falling back as the silver quarrel slammed through ribs and lungs and heart. In a blast of indigo fire, the skelga detonated, cobalt flames exploding outward, leaving nothing behind.
Horax raised hands burning with witchfire and flung a gesture at Pon Barius—Crraaak!—the chamber rocked with detonation, and Pon Barius flew backward and crashed into the pillar then fell to the floor, the smell of lightning and burnt flesh filling the air.
Rith’s hand flashed to her bandolier and she raised a silver dagger to throw at Horax, but the yawling black tide was upon them, sweeping them under. And needle teeth and razor claws tore through leather and flesh, fangs ripping, talons slashing, and red blood flew wide.
But silver blades left long flaming gashes where they met muscle and sinew and bone, and screaming skelga burst into violet flames. Ky’s black blade, too, carved deep through demonkind, parting limbs from torsos and heads from necks, the ebony edge sharp beyond reckoning and leaving ruin behind.
Kane was overborne by ten or so skelga, the big man going down under a howling swarm, teeth and claws ripping and rending.
Yaaaahhh! Yawling a wordless howl, Kane raised up from under the mass, hurling skelga away, and he wielded his spear as if it were a quarterstave, bashing demonkind left and right.
But one of the hurled skelga crashed into Ky from behind and slammed her into the hemispherical wall, her head striking white stone. Down she fell at the feet of Horax, all consciousness gone from her, her ebony blade lost from her hand and skittering across white granite.
And still skelga howled and attacked.
But Horax scooped up the unconscious syldari, wrenching her up and against his chest, and he howled a word or two.
And the skelga fell back.
“The dagger,” hissed Horax to Rith, one clawlike hand clutching limp Ky by the throat. “Give me the dagger or she dies.”
“Don’t do it, Rith,” cried Arton, a silver long-knife in each hand. “He’ll kill us anyway.”
Rith glanced from Horax to Ky to Arton to Arik and then back to Horax. Now the wizard’s talons pressed into Ky’s flesh and blood seeped out from under his clutch. Rith reached into her leather jacket and took out the silver dagger. Slowly she extracted the weapon from its sheath, and flipped it over in her hand, her fingers gripping the blade. She extended her arm and stepped toward Horax, as if reaching out to give it over. But then, viper swift, she hurled it at his head. With a cry, Horax jerked aside, the blade shearing through his left ear and clanging into the wall, blood splatting against white granite as the dagger fell spinning to the floor.
“Va’tchok!” shrieked the mage.
Howling, skelga sprang upon the Foxes, bearing them back and under as blades burned long streaks of fire through demonkind.
It became a chamber of rending and tearing, of hewing and bashing, of howls of agony and cries of desperation . . . a chamber of blood and fire and death.
But at last it ended.
Bleeding and torn with gaping wounds and gasping harshly in the stench of burnt demonflesh, as Kane hobbled to fetch his gear, Arik and Lyssa surveyed the carnage.
Of the demons, all had vanished in flames but for the corpses of the four skelga rived by Ky’s ebony blade.
Arton lay on the floor panting, and his blood ran in rivulets across white granite, mingling with the black ichor of demonkind.
Badly damaged, Rith sat with her back to the pillar. Her eyes were closed, but she yet breathed.
Pon Barius was dead, his chest blown open.
Of Ky there was no sign . . .
Nor was there any sign of Horax . . .
Nor of the silver dagger . . .
And the entrance was once again sealed with the burning blue light of the deadly warding witchfire
26
Calamity
(Coburn Facility)
“Gone flat? Entirely?” asked Toni. “Are you certain that it isn’t just a console failure?”
“Perhaps, though I doubt it,” answered Stein, reaching past the medtech to key a command on the compad. He paused a moment then said, “Their autonomous systems are yet working, so the brainstem is functioning. But the cognitive areas and memory and perception, and the like . . . all nonfunctioning.”
“Brainstem?” Mark Perry looked questioningly at Stein.
Disgusted, Stein turned away, but Alya Ramanni said, “It means, Mark, that their hearts are beating, their lungs are breathing, and so on. It’s like their bodies are on autopilot. But as to their mental capacities, well . . .”
“I know what it means, Ramanni,” snapped Perry. “They’re vegetables!” The lawyer whirled on Toni. “I told you hours ago that we should stop this insane experiment,” he spat, “but oh no, you had to go on. And now Arthur Coburn is a goddamn brainless slab of meat and it’s all your—”
“Silence!” Toni’s shout brought Perry up short. “Dammit, Mark, now is the time to fix the problem and not the blame. So shut your gob or I’ll have you ejected.”
As Mark stood sputtering and puffing, Toni turned to Stein. “Henry, verify that what your consoles are reading is in fact the case. If only the autonomous functions are working, we need to know what has happened and why.”
Stein nodded and moved toward the readouts on the rigs themselves.
Toni looked at Rendell. “Timothy, go down to the AIC and see if you can talk to Avery. If not, then reboot him. We’ve got to reestablish contact. I’ve a hunch he can tell us just what has happened. And, oh, before reinitializing, make certain that no significant damage has occurred; we wouldn’t wish to reboot if in some manner it will harm Avery.”
“Right,” barked Timothy, and he glanced about and called out, “Billy, Sheila, let’s go.” The two comptechs—a wiry, brown-haired man and a diminutive blond woman—followed him out.
Now Toni turned to Drew Meyer, the physicist standing at her shoulder. “Drew, see if you can assess the damage here. If we can get these displays fully functional and get the holovid working again, perhaps we won’t be so—so in the dark. —And dammit! Why aren’t the lights back on?”
Toni took a deep breath and exhaled, then looked at Alya Ramanni. “Alya, get security to call in all the crew. We’re p
robably going to need every bit of talent we have to set things right.”
Alya turned to the vidcom and began punching buttons as Toni faced the console operators. “All right, does anyone have something of significance to report?”
Immediately, Alya Ramanni turned back to Toni and spoke up. “I do, Toni. The building vidcoms are out. I can’t contact security.”
“Damn!” gritted Toni. “What the hell is next?”
“Here, can you use this?” Mark Perry reached into his suit jacket and hauled out his personal vidcom.
Alya Ramanni reached for it. “I’ll try the outside line.”
Stein and two medtechs at the gimbaled rigs engaged the readouts.
As Stein watched, one of the medtechs called out, “Temp.”
The other medtech moved down the line and read the displays. “All green.”
“Respiration.”
Again the medtech moved down the line, finally saying, “All green.”
“Heart.”
“All green.”
And so it went down through the entire checklist.
All read green except brain activity, and here, but for the autonomous functions, the readouts were flashing red with alarms.
Stein stood scowling, one hand cupping an elbow, the other stroking his chin, the doctor completely perplexed.
On the fourth floor, Timothy and the two comptechs stepped to the security door of the AIC; Timothy slapped his hand to the palm reader and spoke his name. It did not respond.
Power’s out, you idiot!
Timothy pounded the butt of his fist against the panel. After a minute or so, a muffled voice called through the door. “Step back under the emergency light so I can see who you are. The vidcams are out.”
The trio obliged the voice, and moments later the door swung open, the security guard operating it manually. Behind him the artificial intelligence center was dimly illuminated by emergency lights.
“Jeeze, Doctor Rendell, what’s going on?” asked the short and slightly pudgy young man.
Timothy glanced down at the comband encircling the guard’s left wrist. “Didn’t they tell you?”
“Lightning, they said.”
Timothy nodded. “That’s right. Any damage here in the AIC?”
The young man shook his head. “I don’t think so, but I’m not a tech. Jeeze, it sounded like bombs or something! Then the lights went out.”
As the guard levered the door closed, Timothy and the comptechs walked into the enshadowed AIC, the room huge. Desks sat ’round the perimeter of the chamber along with tables and chairs and carrels. Timothy passed beyond these work areas and into the band of consoles scattered about the room and surrounding the thick, shatterproof, smoked glass walls which protected Avery. The AI itself sat darkly within. In the shadows the glass chamber looked like nothing more than an enormous sullen cube, twenty feet on a side, with cables of fiberoptics leading in and out along with thermoshield lines bearing nitrogen coolant.
Timothy stepped to the master console. Indicators glowed and luminous lines crawled across the screen. He studied them a moment, then said, “Hm, that’s peculiar—it looks as if the test is still running.” He flicked on the microphone. “Avery?”
There was no response.
“Naraka!” muttered Alya Ramanni, then she called to Toni, “There is no answer. I think all the building vidcoms are out.”
Toni turned to Mark Perry. “Mark, find a security guard with a comband and get him to call central security and have ten, twelve combands delivered here. We’ve got to equip ourselves with the means to communicate with one another. Then have him initiate Operation Greentree to get all our tech force back into the building.”
“Greentree?”
“An emergency calling tree, Mark. Each tech knows the drill. —Now go.”
Perry nodded and turned to leave just as David Cardington, deputy chief of security, entered.
“Hold it, Mark,” said Toni, “here comes a comband now.”
Cardington, a tall, thin man in his late forties with brown hair and hazel eyes, paused a moment, peering through the shadows for Toni, and then he strode to her. “The perimeter is secure, Doctor Adkins. Nothing is burning. But all hardwired comm to the outside is down. We took a helluva hit and it probably fried the PBX. I think we also took a hit on the incoming mains.”
“No doubt, David, but what about the backup power? The turbine should be up and running by now and we should have lights.”
Cardington shifted his stance. “I’ve a man on his way to see; till he calls in, we won’t know.”
Toni said, “I sent a man, too: Michael Phelan.” She sighed. “Regardless as to what they might report, initiate Greentree. And get us some combands, ten or twelve. I’ve got key people all over the building and no way to communicate.”
Cardington nodded, then spoke into his wrist.
Bearing one of the battery-driven emergency lights he had taken from its wall bracket, the wide beam diminishing the farther it pressed through the blackness, at last Michael Phelan reached the second subbasement. He could hear footsteps clanging down the grillwork steps of the iron stairwell behind. Pausing, he saw a handheld light bobbing as someone came down after. Michael waited.
“Who’s that?” called a voice, the light shining down.
“I’m Michael Phelan,” Michael called back up. “I’ve been sent by Doctor Adkins to see why the power isn’t back on.”
“Oh.” The light came on downward. Michael saw that it was carried by a security guard. “Charley Johnson here. And that’s why I’ve come, too. To see why the lights are out.”
Briefly, they shined their beams into one another’s faces, then Michael said, “Let’s go.”
Stein spun on his heel and stalked away from the witch’s cradles, his medtechs following. As he moved through the shadows, Toni called, “Henry, where are you going?”
Without looking at her, Stein called back, “To the AIC. The medical monitors just might be fully operational there.”
“But what about the alpha team? We’ve got to extract them.”
“Not until I find out what’s going on,” Stein answered, then he was out the door and gone.
“¡Madre de Dios!” declared Roberto Sanchez aloud, though he was alone in the rain behind the Coburn Building. He pulled his wrist to his face. “Chief, Sanchez here.”
Tinnily came the response. “Go ahead, Roberto.”
“The whole substation is in ruins, chief. Wires down, transformers ruined, twisted metal. It looks like it was hit by a bomb . . . a big one.”
“Keep your distance, Roberto. Some of those downed wires may still be hot. We’ll let Tucson Solar handle it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And keep others away, too.”
“Yes, sir.”
Timothy Rendell squatted beside the console. A panel was open and a pair of legs stuck out. Inside, a flashlight beam played over boards of integrated circuits. “Okay, Sheila, what’ve you got?”
“It looks as if the entire comm unit is out, but I can’t find any overt signs of damage.”
“Then a reboot . . . ?”
Sheila scooted out. Sitting on the floor, she looked at Timothy and shrugged. “In my opinion it’s our best bet to restore comm,” she replied. “But you know, sir, if we do reboot, Avery’s going to lose some memory—from a little to a lot, depending on what’s gone wrong.”
Timothy nodded then stood and called out to the man eyeing the fiberoptic bundles. “Billy?”
“Nothing yet, though there’s a helluva lot I haven’t examined” came his reply.
Timothy sighed and held a hand out to Sheila. She reached up and took it and he levered her to her feet. “All right then,” he said, “let’s begin checking the status of Avery’s backups. See how much memory we are likely to lose when we do initialize.”
There came a pounding on the door, and the guard let Stein and two medtechs into the AIC. Nodding to Timothy and his comptech
s, they strode to the medical consoles.
A moment later there again came a pounding on the door. This time it was Greyson. He came with combands and gave one to Timothy and another to Stein. “Toni says to check in on channel four.”
In the control center, David Cardington’s comband blipped. “Chief, Charley here.”
Cardington looked at Toni. “Go ahead, Charley.”
“I’m down here with Michael Phelan. We found a body—Raymond Arquette—looks like he was electrocuted. And the turbine: it’s shot all to hell.”
Toni groaned and turned to a young lady at a console. “Tricia, take a medteam down to the generator. They’ve found a body.” As the medtech called to a comrade, Toni stepped to Cardington. “What channel? I want to talk to Michael.”
Cardington looked at his wrist and then said, “Channel one.”
Toni thumbed the microswitch on her own comband. “Michael?”
A short pause, then, “Yes, Doctor Adkins,” came his reply.
“What’s the status of the generator?”
“The main turbine shaft seems welded to the bearings. And all generator coils are fused.”
“What about the H2 supply?”
After a moment he replied, “I think it’s all right. No leaks. The valves are free.”
“How long to repair the turbine and generator?”
There was a pause, then Michael said, “I don’t think it can be done, Doctor Adkins. I mean, this thing is really blasted. What we need is a complete replacement.”
“Thank you, Michael. Come on back up. Adkins out.” Tony clicked off her comband then growled, “Damn, damn, damn.”
Mark Perry stepped to Toni. “What is it? What’s it all mean?”
Before she could answer, her comband beeped.
Greyson looked at Timothy. “What’s up?”
Timothy ran his hand through his hair. “Well, John, it appears that Avery is still running the game, the test, but none of the voice paths are working”—he cast a glance at the comm console—”and neither are the input compads, so we can’t contact him. We haven’t found any damage, but a vital chip or two could be fried. We won’t know until we run a full diagnostic, though we won’t have Avery to help us.”
Shadowtrap: A Black Foxes Adventure Page 25