by Mike Wild
At last, they exited the cavern, found themselves back in the more familiar confines of corridors, even though they had no idea where these might lead. But they couldn’t worry about that; couldn’t dally. The gunfire was still disturbingly close. Garrison’s people were doing better than they’d given them credit for.
They raced through an archway and skidded to a halt. Trix’s arms pinwheeled. This because other than for the narrowest of ledges, there was no more floor on which to run. At least, no floor at this particular moment in time. Directly in front of them was a yawning pit through which came a dull whistle of wind. The entirety of the floor of the large chamber ahead was composed of thick metal plates of maybe two metres square, each of which was clanging open and closed at staggered intervals of five seconds or so. The order in which they did this occasionally brought a number of squares into alignment, forming straights of three or ‘L’s here and there, some of which linked briefly with others before the whole pattern collapsed again. Pathways, of a sort. A panting Trix, seeing the only visible exit was on the far side of the chamber, and there were ten rows and ten columns of these squares between them and it, had had, for the moment, enough. Her question came out as high-pitched as a question was ever likely to get.
“What the fuck is this?”
Ralph eyed the clanging plates carefully. “Quite fascinating.”
“Fascinating? It’s a Sonic The Hedgehog deathtrap!”
“Not a trap. It’s a theory of mine. That there must be a way to circulate air throughout the levels. I think these panels perform that function. From the look of the drop, perhaps five or so levels at a time. There are probably more shafts like these elsewhere, operating between different levels. These plates, these shafts, are, if you will, the lungs of the dungeon.”
“You make the place sound alive,” Yuri said.
“Perhaps it is alive, in a way. Self-sustaining, certainly. A quite remarkable feat of perpetual engineering.”
Trix turned at the sound of gunfire—in the corridors now. “It’s going to be a lot more alive than we’ll be if we don’t get our arses over to the other side.”
“To cross, we’ll need to work out a particular sequence. Time our movements just so.”
“Ralph, we don’t have a hell of a lot of time for that.”
“The alternative, I fear, would be quite deadly.”
Trix sighed. “Okay, work it out. Yuri and I’ll keep any company at bay.”
Even as she spoke, shadows of their pursuers appeared on the corridor walls. Determined, striding shadows. They heard the soft crunch of fresh magazines being slammed home, new rounds chambered. Trix waved Ralph off along the ledge to calculate their route while she and Yuri took up squatting positions on either side of the archway. Yuri dug into his backpack.
Garrison’s people were in the last stretch of corridor now, and Trix held up a fist to Yuri. He nodded, watched her fingers counting down—3, 2, 1—and then leaned out to roll a smoke grenade towards their pursuers. As it went off with a whuff, Trix swung out and fired three bolts into the billowing grey fog. A thud and a cry of pain signified that at least two had found a target. Garrison’s men retaliated by firing blind. Chunks of stonework from the arch were blown away.
Trix got back under cover just in time. Her heart thudded. She knew the weapons they were carrying—TSR-73’s—and, whilst lethal, they should not have been that powerful. Nowhere near. And still, they hadn’t jammed or backfired once.
“Yuri, what the hell goes on?”
“Look, English,” the Russian said, cautiously peering out. “Look.”
Trix followed his lead, peering into the fog. And saw. Saw what hadn’t been noticeable back in the minotaur hall, or in the cavern, because the effect was so faint. But here, through the smoke, its visibility was somehow enhanced. The weapons Garrison’s people wielded were glowing.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Trix said. “Enchanted assault rifles???”
“It is unexpected development, I must admit.”
Garrison’s people fired again. More of the archway vanished. Trix and Yuri were almost blinded by stonedust. The Russian made a mad dash to her side. The old man, meanwhile, was two sets of plates in, hopping, as she watched, from one to another, his concentration solely on his next move, oblivious to the rain of death about to penetrate the chamber. If he got in the way …
“Change of plan,” she shouted to him. “We’re coming over.”
“No! Until I tell you, you must stay exactly where you are.”
Trix ignored him, gave Yuri a determined look, and produced the small disc she’d taken from the cavern. She gave a hard flick of the wrist, and it radiated out into a full-sized, circular shield. Master teams always did get the better gear.
Yuri sighed, flicked his. “You had best make room, Professor,” he shouted. “We have little choice in this matter.”
They pounded over a plate that had risen next to the ledge, and leapt for the one on which Ralph stood. They landed either side of him just as the old man was leaping to his next choice; they rolled to keep up, and by the time the roll was done, they both had their shields raised as protection, angled at forty-five degrees back the way they had come.
Just in time. The smoke cleared; Garrison’s people reached the ledge. One limped, carrying Trix’s bolt in his upper thigh, and was clearly so pissed off he ignored caution to hobble straight at them. The plate beneath him collapsed, and he plummeted away with a scream. The wild burst that he fired as he went thudded into their shields, and Trix and Yuri grunted from the force of it, actually felt themselves pushed back.
“Less commotion, please,” Ralph said. “I’m trying to think here.”
Trix and Yuri stared at each other. Trix stared at Ralph.
“Sorry, we do apologise.”
“Yes, well, if you want to stay alive, step to your left in three, two …”
“Your left or my left?”
“What?”
“You’re facing the other way!”
“Oh, yes, yes, of course. Just move as I move, but do it now.”
They moved, keeping their backs pressed to Ralph and their shields towards Garrison’s people. Trix imagined that their shuffling awkwardly along like a six-legged, carapaced beast presented an unexpected and somewhat perplexing image to their adversaries, which probably explained the slight delay before they opened fire. In the brief moment of peace, Trix was able to appreciate what Ralph was trying to navigate them across; she glanced down through a nearby collapsed plate to see a drop of at least five levels lit by some torches in a corridor revealed by moving plates far below. As one plate opened, it was filled by a giant eye staring up at her. Just an eye.
The bursts from four master-team weapons physically shifted them across the new plate as Ralph contemplated their next move, and they barely heard his instruction over the sound of their beleaguered shields. Both were made from high-impact plasmet, but, even so, spirals of the plastic/metal alloy were gouged from them as the bursts hammered home. As they shuffled forward under Ralph’s lead, Trix and Yuri reinforced their grips and glanced at each other, the same concern etched on their faces—the shields were already beginning to crack; would they last until they got to the other side?
“How far?” Trix asked. And then louder, “Ralph, how far???”
“Five more rows,” the old man answered. “Two across to bring us in line with the exit.”
Trix’s voice juddered as she spoke, her whole body shaking as her shield took more damage. “We’re not going to make it.”
“We’ll make it.”
They might have—just—if, at that moment, the plate on which they were standing hadn’t fallen away beneath them, Ralph’s timing of their next move off by a second. The old man was one foot on, one foot off and managed to stagger onto the next plate, but Trix and Yuri were both caught out. The Russian was lodged on the edge with one arm while still managing to hold up his shield to cover them, but Trix
had dropped straight through and dangled below him by one hand while her shield hung uselessly from the other. Yuri could do nothing for her—to try would expose him and Ralph—and as bullets slammed into the plate where Trix’s hand maintained its tenuous grip, he pictured it being scythed off and she falling to her death. Thankfully, the angle of fire from this distance made for some close misses—a chunk of flesh was torn from the side of Trix’s hand by a ricochet, but to her credit she hung on—but there were no direct hits damaging enough to loosen her grip. A direct hit, however, was only a matter of time.
Yuri saw her staring up at him. He saw her make up her mind. Then the arm holding the shield swung up, and Yuri grabbed it. At first he thought she meant for him to use it to pull her up, but if he tried that manouvere both of them—and Ralph—would be cut to pieces. That, though, wasn’t what she had in mind at all.
“Take it,” she hissed. “You’ll need it to get you and Ralph across.”
“English …”
“Just do it, Yuri.”
“I will not let you die.”
Trix winked. “I’m not planning to.”
She let go. Yuri had no chance to see her fate because Ralph was already pulling him up. They needed to move, right now. With both shields in hand, doubled up as they scampered onto the next plate, they might just make it.
So, thought Trix, might she. She’d allowed herself to fall a level or so, letting her body weight angle her backwards, spending the time whipping a grappling hook from her belt and flinging it towards the lip of the hole through which she’d dropped. Two small barbs hooked on just as the plate swung shut, leaving a slight gap but not enough of one to be spotted by Garrison’s mob. She jerked to a halt on the end of the line and dangled there, but only for a second, as there wasn’t much time to take in her surroundings if she was to help the others. Still, though, she had to admit her view was impressive—and more than a little disconcerting. Because the plates—Ralph’s lungs—were not just clanging open and closed above and below her, but on all four sides, too. She was inside a perfect cube pumping air to not two, but six different levels. What she couldn’t get her head around was that all the ‘side’ panels were clearly the floor or ceiling of the levels onto which they opened, and in one case looked down on the heads of what appeared to be a goblin war party passing beneath. The dizzying confusion of perspectives was disorientating, so disorientating, in fact, that as she swung on the grapple rope to gain momentum, she was momentarily unsure which way was up, down, or sideways. In the end her only plane of reference became the shattering sound of bullets still targeting her friends.
She took in three things as she hit, clung onto, and then flipped herself over the edge of a closing plate—that Ralph had to work his way across three more rows to the exit, that Yuri’s two shields, even combined, had almost been torn to pieces, and that Garrison’s people didn’t yet know she was there. She’d planned it that way, emerging to their side, banking their attention would be wholly on what they thought were their sole surviving prey, ignoring her after she’d fallen. She disabused them of that notion by unleashing a bolt into the chest of the most obvious target, all she had time for before the plate beneath her fell away and she was dropping once more. But she wasn’t done. Snatching the grapple away as she fell, she flung it sideways, popped up once more, and took down another pursuer before she knew what hit her. As Trix dropped back down on the rope, she watched the woman tip forward, bolt embedded in her forehead, tumble silently past her through the cube, and thud onto a plate five levels below, where her body was snatched away by a tentacled thing.
Trix took a breath. The remaining two shooters wouldn’t be so easy. Now they knew she was there, they’d be ready for her when she popped up again. But as things turned out, this worked to her advantage. As Trix gripped onto an open plate and raised her head to take a cautious recce, she saw the two of them intently scanning the chamber to see where she’d emerge. Their attention entirely on her, neither had noticed the ghouls moving towards them from the rear. But the ghouls had noticed them—oh yes, they’d noticed them.
There were screams, and Trix was momentarily caught in a rain of blood. She ignored both, concentrating on grappling her way back across the chamber. The disorientation hit again, and for a moment she was unsure she’d reached the right plate, but then Yuri’s hand gripped her by the forearm and pulled her up.
“Quite the risk you took there, English.”
“Yeah,” Trix said, wiping blood from her face. She looked back across the plates to where the two ghouls were crouched and swaying back and forth, regarding her and Yuri balefully. “But it worked, eh?”
“Which is why I regret to tell you that we have another problem.”
Trix noticed for the first time they were alone. “Ralph,” she said.
“Is fine. He is examining the problem.”
Yuri escorted her along the corridor in which they now found themselves. She saw a blue glow coming from a turn ahead. Another healing pool? But no. The corridor appeared to be a dead end. That is to say, there were no visible exits. Instead, set against an end wall was a rune-inscribed arch within which was a shimmering field of energy—the source of the illumination. From it came a sound like lapping waves, and the floor before it rippled with reflected light.
“What the hell?”
Trix and Yuri kept their distance, regarding it curiously, cautiously, while Ralph was less circumspect, moving in for a closer examination. The field was twice as wide as he, and half again as high. Ralph held out the palm of his hand, feeling the air before him but not going so far as to actually touch the field. He walked slowly all the way around it, finding it no thicker than a curtain. There was indeed only stone wall beyond it.
“Ralph?”
Ralph flexed his palm. “A tingling. Pins and needles. Not uncomfortable.”
“I still wouldn’t touch it, if I were you.” Trix raised the mirror. “Shen, can you see this?”
“Don’t need to, Trix. It’s flaring like a small nuke on my monitor. Complete whiteout on all of your signals. Thought I’d lost you for a second.”
“It doesn’t seem dangerous.”
“Hmm. Wow. Whatever it is, there’s a hell of a lot of energy there.”
“Are you picking up any more of these flares in the vicinity?”
“Why? Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“What I am thinking, too,” Ralph chimed in.
“What?” asked Yuri. “What are you thinking?”
“Another singularity. This time a teleportal.”
“A teleportal?”
“Well, this is a dead end.”
“I’m on it, Trix,” said Shen. “No … no … nothing I can see … but that isn’t to say there isn’t a corresponding field somewhere.”
“Somewhere?” said Yuri. “What about ‘nowhere’?” What if this energy field is no teleportal but some kind of … disintegrator?”
“Disintegrator? Why the hell would it be a disintegrator?”
“Well,” Yuri intoned in his thick, Russian accent, “because I have seen such things on Star Trek.”
“You have not. Name the episode.”
Yuri shrugged. “It was a special episode shown only in Russia, where it was invented.”
“You’re taking the pi—”
“Whichever of the two it is,” Ralph interrupted, “if either, it certainly does something.” He was holding up his staff—now reduced to two-thirds of its former length. Its new end was still fizzling with the same blue energy as the field. Perhaps more pertinent, the missing length was not lying on the floor.
“That is what I mean,” Yuri said. “It is either gone, or it is gone.”
“Shen—did anything show?”
“Something. For a second. But distant, and faint. It could have been a glitch.”
“Best guess?”
“A teleportation portal … is possible.”
“There’s only one way to find out,” s
aid Ralph.
The old man was standing in front of the energy field, raising his palm once more. This time, he touched its surface, recoiling slightly as he first made contact, but, as this seemed to cause him no pain, he pressed on. His arm vanished into the field up to the elbow.
“No,” Yuri said. “You cannot be sure.”
“True, Major,” Ralph answered calmly, “but there are two things of which I can be sure. One, that if I withdraw my arm now, I’ll be wearing a prosthesis for the rest of my life—remember what happened to my staff? Two, the ghouls responsible for the blood spattering you, Patricia, will very likely soon attempt to cross the lung chamber. Should they do so, I will likely lose more than half an arm. I think I prefer to commit to uncertainty.”
“Ralph …”
The old man smiled at Trix. “See you on the other side?”
It took Trix a second, but she nodded. Ralph swallowed but wasted no more time, stepping fully into the field. Very briefly the outline of his form fizzled as had the end of his staff, and then he was gone. Yuri was the first to speak.
“I suppose that now it is our turn?”
Trix looked back down the corridor. “As Ralph said, I don’t see as how we have much choice.”
“I would feel much better if somehow he could let us know.”
The missing part of Ralph’s staff spun out of the field and clattered across the floor.
“Oh.”
“Guess that’s all the proof we need. Go, Yuri.”
Yuri went, and, taking a deep breath, Trix followed. She wasn’t sure what she expected—a feeling of wading through sludge, perhaps, or a kaleidoscopic tunnel of stars—but, as it happened, she was just suddenly somewhere else, as close to Yuri as she’d been a second before. So close that she thudded into him and stumbled back. A hand caught the back of her head, preventing it from reentering the field, and Yuri blew out a breath of relief. If she’d made contact, the top of her skull would have been sheared away.
“Take a second,” Ralph said. “The teleportation leaves you a little dizzy.”
Yuri grimaced. “It has left me wanting a piss.”