by John Rankine
Ricochets from the rock face notched up the noise level. Concentration was a problem in itself. Koenig threw himself behind the cowling of a generator and took stock. From where he was he could see the exit, where a guard was taking aim down the aisle at the oncoming truck. Standing up and using his left hand to steady his right wrist, he fired half the length of the cavern, aiming for the centre of the target. The Copreon pitched down face forward, fingers tightening on the trigger of his carbine for a long continuous burst that loosed a swarm of ricochets round the set.
Koenig waited a fraction overlong to see him fall. A guard who had run up the ramp to the hoist platform, saw the move and fired from the hip. A thump like a mule kick hit the Alphan high in the left shoulder and spun him round.
Alan Carter, who had followed Koenig to the same cover, raked the Copreon from navel to throat and saw him reel off the edge, a bisected man. Then he was on his knees beside the Alphan commander.
Koenig was sitting cross-legged, swearing in a monotone and shoving a pad inside his jacket.
‘Are you all right, Commander?’
‘Right enough. For God’s sake watch your back, Alan. I’ll manage.’
Helena Russell was thumping the driver’s arm. Teeth clenched and dark eyes enormous, Sandra was out of communication, on a one-to-one link with her control gear and self-hypnotised to get the clumsy truck up the ramp and out. She had only registered the diversion in the rear as some kind of bonus. She had been aiming to run down the guard before he could fire and, being directly in line, she knew that he was aiming at the power pack and not at her vulnerable chest. Helena’s voice in her ear was so much gobbledygook, until a highly emotive name tripped a relay and it all made a kind of sense.
Helena Russell was shouting, with no regard for refined usage, ‘It’s them! They blasted a way in. Commander Koenig and Paul. Turn back!’
Once the message was processed by her overstrained computer, action was instantaneous and almost fatal. Without slackening speed, Sandra heaved over the driving bar for a tight turn and the truck tried to spin in its own length. The medical trolley, bouncing on the fork arms, went solo, following the logic of mechanical laws, with its bottle flailing like a bolas. The truck was poised on its inside wheels and Helena Russell leaned out as a counterweight. Two Copreons, who had been coming up at a jog trot in its wake, found that it was bearing down on them and scattered.
Laser flares seared briefly from behind the generator cowlings. Suddenly, it was all over. The guard commander had lost half his men and reckoned he needed more instructions. A whistle shrilled and those Copreons who could still move were away at a run to throw themselves behind the barrier of the horseshoe console spread.
Sandra cut speed, slewed between two generators and ran down to where Koenig was standing with a tunic sleeve stained red. In the best tradition of the medical service, Sandra whipped off her gown and began tearing strips. Helena zipped open the tunic sleeve and went to work.
He gave her a minute, not wanting to appear ungrateful, then he said, ‘That’s enough. Leave it. We have to get out while we can.’
‘I’ve stopped the bleeding. Try not to move your left arm; it should be strapped up.’
‘You can do it when Eagle Nine is off the pad. Thank you.’
There was a crackling hiss as Alan Carter sent a warning burst into the operating console. A head had been raised to check out the sudden lull. Koenig called, ‘Fall back. We’ll use the truck.’
One by one, the Alphans slipped out of cover. Sandra dropped the fork and Carter and Paul Morrow stood on the beams. Koenig sat beside the driver, Bergman and Helena crowded on a tiny freight platform. The truck moved off, climbed the ramp with a growl and plunged into another corridor of the endless underground complex.
In the Copreon pleasure dome, Menos was looking grim faced at the monitor spread. From being ahead, with at least an outside chance of breaking through the stalemate which had held his people prisoners on Pelorus, he was suddenly fighting for survival. He knew that Gregor was set on a final solution. The policy of détente was finally blown and he only regretted that he had not used the uneasy peace to undermine the android position. But the tin men still had to get inside and, although they had mechanical power in plenty, there were sophisticated tools in the Copreon locker which might yet bring biological man to the top of the heap.
A buzz from the powerhouse distracted him and he stalked over to the console. The operator there said, ‘The controller asks for you, Excellency.’
‘Why can’t I see him?’
‘There is damage to the communications panel.’
From the distant end, it was no loss. The Copreon leader’s face was a good thing to miss. He packed enough menace in the single word, ‘Menos.’
‘The Alphan women were here, Excellency.’
‘So. You have them safe.’
‘No, Excellency. The other Alphans broke through from the old Salman Drift . . .’
‘Broke through?’
‘Some kind of explosive charge ripped out the hatch and breached the wall itself. We did what we could. There are many casualties . . .’
Menos was thumping the desk with a balled fist. ‘The Alphans, man! What happened to the Alphans?’
‘They have a freight carrier. They have taken the main trunk up to level one.’
‘Call up all off-duty personnel. See that you maintain full power or you’ll take a one-way trip into the lichen. Get a work party fixing that breach. The androids are moving against us.’
‘At once, Excellency.’
Rama joined Menos. She said, ‘They are getting close. We should be in the command post. They need your determination to strengthen them.’
She was right on both counts. When the elevator dropped them to the operations room below the rotunda, there was an atmosphere of near panic. An intricate stylised diagram of the whole area, including the android sectors, filled one wall and moving columns of red asterisks could be seen converging on the Copreon enclave from three sides. Androids had been sent out into the old workings and along the main shuttle link which had been kept open throughout the phoney peace.
Menos’s presence seemed to steady the ranks. A senior man, wearing an armband with crossed swords picked out in red enamel, watched a quicker-moving blob come to a halt and said urgently, ‘A shuttle has pulled in at our terminus.’
Menos knew what he was at. Charges set below the platform could blow the area, but the damage would be irreparable in their lifetime. It was good-bye to any thought of progress. The man wanted somebody else’s finger on the button.
Menos said curtly, ‘Now,’ and turned away to a monitor screen for the detail.
There was the shuttle, with its doors slid open and coal black androids heaving themselves jerkily onto the platform. Then the tiled floor ripped along its length, jetting smoke and tongues of vermilion flame. The shuttle lifted from its track and flung itself at the roof. The screen filled with a boiling mass of debris.
The shock wave was carried through the rock and the floor of the operations room itself went into spasm. Rama grabbed for Menos’s arm to steady herself. Dust shook from the ceiling. As the screen cleared, the platform was seen to be in a state of chaos, twisted metalwork and fangs of fragmented rock poked in random order out of a mass of smoking rubble. A massive slab passed a point of no return and fell with a definitive thud as though to set a last seal on destruction.
Menos was turning away, but Rama, still holding his arm, said, ‘Look!’
Here and there, the rubble was lifting from below. Dented and battered and some with limbs askew, the black androids were still following a programme. It was an obscenity. They were crawling out of the pit, dedicated, inhuman. Those who could not move, who were trapped beneath weights that even their powerful limbs could not shift, would go on thinking and striving for all the years it would take before their self-energising cells finally jacked it in and gave them peace.
CHAPTER NINE
He had twenty men heaving around at the breach and they were making progress. They had trimmed the ragged opening to a regular oblong and were using stone to build a permanent seal. They had the footings laid in fast-setting metallic cement, another by-product of infrangom, when the ladders poking up above the gallery of the old workings began to move. There was a row of faces staring through the gap to see a black ovoid head rise over the rim.
A guard was first to kick himself into action and the android was chest high, swinging ponderously for the next foothold, when a tracer line homed point-blank on his metal shell. There was no penetration, but the hammer blows broke his grip in mid-swing. He fell. Other ladders round the gallery were at work. Gregor had personally directed a detachment to plod in darkness through the maze and seize the powerhouse.
The same shock wave beat Sandra’s concentration as the labouring truck stormed up the last ramp to level one. The roadway heaved. Sections of cladding broke from the walls and leaned in. The driving lever jerked from her grip and the truck drove itself at the left-hand wall like a ram. The motor ran to a demented howl and cut dead.
The driver looked defeated. Paul Morrow picked himself up from the deck and patted her bare shoulder. ‘Don’t worry. Nobody could have done better.’
Koenig, braced with only one hand on the scuttle, had come near to pitching over the hood.
Only Helena Russell’s prompt reaction of anchoring him with an arm round his neck and another round the superstructure had kept him in his seat. When he could draw breath, he said, ‘We can’t grumble, it did us proud. Let’s get on.’
Faintly, from below, came the sound of a carbine being loosed off. The Alphans looked at each other. Carter said, ‘Who would they be firing at now? Civil war?’
Bergman, closer than he knew, said, ‘Androids?’
For Koenig’s money, it was an academic question. He wanted to see open country and a chance to get into Eagle Nine. He said, ‘This is a main roadway. They must have moved heavy gear down this way when they set up their generators. It has to lead to a surface exit.’
Up ahead, there was a slow curve that blocked a long-distance view. As they rounded it, he was vindicated. A hundred metres on, up an easy slope, there was a wall-to-wall hatch that looked to be the very twin of the one leading to the rotunda.
Left arm hooked in the remnants of Sandra’s gown, Koenig started a jog trot. It sent needles of pain into his shoulder, but he reckoned it was no time to hang about. Sounds of firing were still coming from below. When they reached the shutter, Carter said, ‘It’s the same. I can work the release.’
It was actually on the move when the nudge of a sixth sense penetrated Koenig’s haze of pain. He said, ‘Lasers!’ and had his own ready as the hatch lifted for a full due. A black android was bringing its fire arm up to aim as four laser beams flared for the same target and turned its ovoid head into a melted stump.
Morrow said, ‘You were right, Victor. There’s an android Putsch going on. All to the good. They’ll be too busy to play fancy games with barriers round the Eagle.’
Carter said, ‘It’s not going to matter, unless we get there fast. The androids don’t dig us either, if you remember.’
There was a shallow defile leading into the valley and they pounded along it. Panting, Bergman said, ‘I’d guess this was parallel to the other, but over left. Not right, or we’d have crossed it before.’
It made sense. They were up among the trees on a neglected and overgrown surface road, when Helena put her hands to her head and almost tripped over her feet. Sandra was reeling from side to side. They were the only two of the six without degaussing helmets; both had been stowed on the rack of the medical trolley and Pelorus’s freak magnetic fields were getting to them.
Koenig and Carter took Helena between them, linking arms and half carrying her. Bergman and Morrow supported Sandra. Heavy bodies crashing through the bush told of more androids closing in from every angle on the Copreon sanctuary. When they broke cover on the far left of the apron of open ground, Koenig was expecting to see a wrecking party working on the Eagle. But she was still on site and seemingly intact.
They were less than twenty metres from the open hatch, when Gregor, doing a methodical scan round the operation, picked up the movement and made an evaluation. The attack was going well. Penetration had been achieved in several sectors. He had lost some units, but the future was assured. There would be time to make good all the losses. Did it matter whether the Alphans withdrew to their base or not?
Unusual surges in the circuitry and, indeed, in his own cortex were making him jumpy and less able to make objective decisions. He knew the cause. The wandering asteroid was playing havoc with the magnetic fields around Pelorus. Something like human rage ran through his computer. The meddling strangers were upsetting the smooth function of pure intelligence. They were a disease. His judgement told him that the six Alphans were no threat and only wanted to get out; but a sudden, vindictive impulse beat a path round his circuits. Golden claws moved definitively round the controls. Eight black androids stopped dead in the valley, took a new direction and set off again to converge on the grounded Eagle with instructions to destroy.
The troop carrier had halted, halfway down the long slope, to command the valley with its heavy gun. It was trained on the invisible entrance to the rotunda. In response to Gregor’s new instructions, the gunner began to turn the turret to line up on Eagle Nine.
Alan Carter flung himself into his pilot seat, wiping sweat from his face with the back of his hand. Those with degaussing helmets had already been forced to make maximum adjustments to beat the wild magnetic flux that was running crazy. He knew there would be no help from on-board instruments until he was many kilometres away from Pelorus.
Koenig had seen Helena settled in the passenger module. On the last stretch she had been a dead weight, deeply unconscious. Too long under such a battery might well end in permanent brain damage. He dropped wearily into the co-pilot seat and said curtly, ‘Take her up, for God’s sake, Captain.’
Carter said, ‘Manual?’
‘Manual it is.’
Eagle Nine’s motors roared into life.
To Morrow and Bergman in the passenger module, it seemed desperately slow, but Carter was not to be stampeded. None knew better than he that any failure in procedures could set them back for a long and intricate repair job. He cut corners where he could, but he went by the book with preliftoff checks until he knew that Eagle Nine would answer the final call.
Koenig knew he was right, but he was fairly thumping the arm of his chair before Carter ran along the last sequence and shoved down the red lever for liftoff.
Androids were breaking cover all along the foot of the slope. Eagle Nine was half hidden in a swirling cloud of dust and small trash as her motors beat to a crescendo and her plate feet lifted from the plateau.
Paul Morrow was at the communications hatch and yelling, ‘Over by the cliff, Commander. On the road. A bloody great cannon!’
Koenig was swinging the ship’s lasers and methodically blasting androids from left to right. But it was taking time. Those he had not yet reached, were standing stock still and firing up the hill at a target they could hardly miss. Heavy-calibre shells were hammering at Eagle Nine as she jacked herself slowly off the pad.
She was twenty metres up and beginning to accelerate, when a streak of vermilion jetted from the muzzle of the distant gun. The platform she had left erupted and the updraught spun the ship like a cork in a whirlpool. Alan Carter, fighting for sea room, gunned his motors and was rising out of it, still in a frenetic spin, when the gun, matching his rise with nice elevation, fired again. This
time, the android gunner had got it right.
The damage-report panel on the instrument spread was a mass of red hatching. Eagle Nine’s upward thrust cut dead and she began to fall. An autobeacon began to transmit a May-Day signal that would go out as long as any part of the gear held together. Carter fought a failing power pack to level her off and came down on four feet. When they struck, there was a rending crash as the under structures went into progressive collapse. Eagle Nine was out of business.
Menos, in his bunker, was similarly facing the conviction that his enclave was at the end of the line. Androids had finally stormed through the breach in the powerhouse and were systematically closing down power feeds to the Copreon defence system. It was only a question of time. A small, local power pack kept the command post operational; but, elsewhere, the lights were going out section by section.
Rama said, ‘Is it the end?’
‘It is the end.’
‘There was not long to go for you and me, in any event.’
‘No.’
‘What happened to our people on Copreon?’
‘We shall never know.’
‘There is much we shall never know. Perhaps we should have lived our lives differently?’
‘However we had lived them, the end would have come. That is the human story. Few people can be content on that last day when they face oblivion.’
‘The androids will go on. For them there is no death. They will be the intelligent life force on Pelorus.’
Menos left the control spread with the monitors darkening one by one and stood facing her. He put his hands on the sides of her neck. Rama’s hands closed over his, holding them on site. Grave and unsmiling they looked at each other in a long, considering gaze.