World Killers

by Jack McKinney

  The Enforcers on the ground and their Armored Officer who skimmed overhead in his open, single-occupant skirmish ship kept careful watch on their captives. Sometimes, after an eighteen-or twenty-hour work shift, the females became rebellious, unwilling to reenter their cells. That was when it took a good jolt from the slave headbands or a nerve lash to keep them moving.

  Sure enough, one of the habitual troublemakers broke from the line just as she was about to pass through the portals to the slave kennels. She was shorter than most of them, and solid, round-faced and olive-skinned. Heedless of the rebukes of the headband and the nerve whip, she was still defiant.

  "I'm not going back into any cage!"

  "You have been warned," the nearest Enforcer said, activating the POW/slave's headband. Writhing in pain, she would be flung into her cage despite what she had said, and so would anyone who stood with her. It was tedious work for the Enforcers, but they had nothing better to do anyway. They lived, literally, to serve their Regent.

  But on this bright turquoise Haydon afternoon, the timetable was suddenly thrown out. The headband didn't respond, and the defiant one stood there, showing her white teeth in a fighting sneer, hands up in combat posture, feet positioned and ready.

  The Enforcer tried again, but there was still no response. Another amazon, with a long flame-red braid, stepped from the ranks, and two more came behind her. The Enforcers registered the fact that there was some sort of malfunction and prepared to reestablish order in a more direct way, with sonic lashes and warning shots-or with armored blows and Protoculture blasts, if it came to that.

  But as the first Enforcer raised its weapon, an Invid rifle beam hit its helmet squarely and blew it apart. Another rifle bolt hit the next nearest Enforcer, drilling through it in a split second. Pistol blasts peppered the skirmish ship and the Armored Officer in it, who, taken

  by surprise while flying low and slow, emitted smoke and flame. The skirmish ship went off kilter and slewed toward the road surface.

  The warrior women of Praxis quickly realized that an ambush had been mounted, and that the despised headbands could no longer deal out punishment. There were people on the upper landing stage-Tiresoids, though they were wearing Haydonite robes for some reason-urging them on.

  The warrior women didn't need much urging. With a chorus of cries like angry Hellcats, they sprang at their enemies.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The DNA sings its four notes

  Cytosine, adenine, guanine, thymine.

  In infinite configurations

  As though Bach were God,

  Or vice-versa

  Mingtao, Protoculture: Journey Beyond Mecha.

  "How do we know this isn't the demented malfunction of a berserk android?" Tesla bawled, plastered up against the rear wall of the travel capsule. Garak and Pye were hunkered down near him.

  Jack was checking the action of his submachine gun nervously, making sure for the tenth time that the magazine was loaded with exploding armor-piercers. "You don't get a vote, so it doesn't matter what you think. And the rest of us believe Jan."

  He tried the magazine release again, to make sure he could eject an old and insert a new one smoothly. He was about to say something else when Bela broke in.

  The big amazon turned on Tesla, holding her sword. More than twice her height, the Invid sucked his gut in, afraid she was about to split it open.

  "Yes. I believe my people are being held prisoner here. Yes, I believe that Veidt and some of the others are in a conspiracy to throw your species out, and yes, I think the Regent's reign on Haydon IV will end today."

  But she turned to Jan anxiously, in spite of that. "Can't this thing move any faster?"

  "We'll be there soon," Janice Em tried to reassure her. "But I must tell you that the battle's already being joined."

  It was unnecessary to ask where that information had come from. Jan's inexplicable link with the Awareness that resided in Haydon IV had already proved itself beyond doubt. Elevators, funiculae, bucket transporters-they had all come at Jan's beck and call, speeding the raiders on their way.

  And the Awareness had told her things, things the others couldn't hear. She knew of Veidt's saboteurs' remote-canceling of the power system that energized the slave headbands; of the escape of Rick and the others; of the risky battle plan they were following. She knew that Veidt himself was ignorant of the fact that she had tapped into the Awareness.

  She had also been shown the origins of the hatred between Vowad and Veidt, and the reason Vowad was the linchpin of the entire battle.

  Jan also knew things the Awareness had chosen to tell her alone, at least for now-things about its defensive systems. Better than anyone on the planet, she knew how time was pressing on the Awareness, the rebels, her own raiding party-the entire focal point of events.

  One thing she didn't quite understand was why the Awareness of the planet had accepted her. It was barely translatable into Human terms, but in some ways the Awareness had seemed to recognize her, as if some message had been built into it to awaken at the instant when the synthetic mind of Janice Em made contact with it. That troubled her greatly, but there was simply no time to address it right now.

  The travel capsule began to slow. "Game time," Jan said.

  "Are you sure you've got the terminus pinpointed?" Jack asked, taking up a firing position just before the doors, the submachine gun raised. The others were kneeling or standing behind him, readying Karbarran pneumatic rifles and Garudan clawguns and dart-throwers, and grenades and all the rest, in a hedgehog of conventional fire-power.

  "Just as I said," Jan went on, reading signs none of the others could even perceive. "The Central Slavepen command post."

  To the astonishment of Enforcers and Armored Officers who hadn't even been aware it was movable, the central pylon in the middle of their command post swung open. They were preoccupied with the first reports of a slave uprising and mystified by the fact that they couldn't get any response from the slave headbands.

  But every Invid there heard it when the first Armored Officer to spot the raiders squealed an almost ultrasonic peal of alarm.

  Kneeling and standing in two ranks, Jack and his party began hosing fire all around the

  command center.

  Although the weapons of the fallen Enforcers were outsize by normal Human standards, they were not too unwieldy for the robust amazons. The guns were appropriated at once. With piercing yells, many of the women took great pleasure in ripping off the inert headbands and hurling them to the ground and stomping them flat, or twisting them into junk, or, among the brawnier, simply snapping them in two.

  By that time, a flying carpet was settling nearby, carrying the Tiresoids who were robed as locals, but flown by a real Haydonite.

  Rick had intended to make a quick announcement to get things on track, but Lisa beat him to it. She flung off her robe and leapt to the shining pavement while the carpet was still a yard above the road, holding her pistol high and firing it twice to get their attention.

  "Warriors of Praxis! We are Sentinels, allies of your great fighter Bela! We've broken free of the Regent and we mean to raise rebellion! Are you with us?"

  Some of the liberated slaves fired into the air too, to signal their intent, while the rest cheered Lisa and those whom the amazons naturally assumed to be Lisa's followers. The rest of the Sentinels were also shedding their disguises, and though several of them had the obvious drawback of being male, the Praxians hailed them. At least the big dark-skinned fellow with the rifle was amazon size-and more-and looked encouragingly tough.

  "The power to the slavebands is out, but we're not sure how long that will last," Lisa went on. "We have to strike at once! Your queen and your sisters are right there in the Central Slavepen. Here's how we're going to get them out."

  It was basically the plan the Sentinels had thrown together while waiting for the slaves to pass by, but she had inserted a few refinements of her ow
n. Rick had to admit he was impressed. The amazons, all drilled in the disciplines of warfare, split up into squads and moved out with little confusion or delay.

  Inside the slavepen command post, things had begun going disturbingly wrong.

  A short time before, the power-relay system that energized and controlled the slave headbands had simply gone dead. Almost immediately, reports had begun coming in from the working parties at various Invid installations and en route that the Praxians were in revolt. The cages where the captives were quartered had become a bedlam, too, and the amazons were apparently trying to bend the bars apart with their bare hands.

  Word had been sent to the Regent, and troops were already being deployed to trouble spots from elsewhere in the city and the countryside.

  "At least one bunch is still under control," an Armored Officer observed in his single-sideband voice. A remote screen showed a column of returning prisoners shuffling through the main entrance of the complex, heads bent in dejection and exhaustion.

  "Perhaps the malfunction isn't systemwide," another suggested, then the two turned their attention to deploying reinforcements. But no one in the command center had noticed that the instrumentation on the slaves' headbands was dark. And they had turned away before realizing there were no Enforcers or Officers driving them along.

  Nor were any Invid looking at the screen as the women turned not toward the cargo elevators that would take them down to their cages, but rather toward the building's arsenal.

  Invid dashing around to respond to the emergency took no notice either, and the slaves' dejected heads helped with the deception. That is, until the Praxians reached the door of the arsenal itself.

  An Armored Officer barred their way. "Stop! Where are your overseers?"

  Zibyl, the round-faced, olive-skinned one who had shown defiance outside the complex, led the line. Now she looked around in feigned surprise, saying, "Why, I don't know, Great Master; they were there not a moment ago. Perhaps they stopped to speak to another Master. Shall I go look for them?"

  She took a step back the way she had come. "Stand where you are," the Officer shouted. It automatically took a few steps in that direction, too. "Slaves aren't supposed to be in this area unaccompanied!"

  As it did so, several of the women slipped past, behind its back, silently entering the arsenal.

  "I see no overseers," the Officer was saying. "And I see no function lights on your headbands. In fact, some of those women back there have no headbands at all! All of you, line up with your hands against that wall while I contact-"

  The Invid got no farther. From the tattered remnants of her fighting costume Zibyl pulled the pistol Lisa had given her. The Officer was just facing back toward her when she squeezed the trigger. The beam was set at minimum dispersal, a star-hot line no wider than a pencil's lead.

  Zibyl was wearing a fey smile.

  The Officer went windmilling back as green goo and little meteor sparks spurted from the rupture in its helmet. Zibyl shot it again, dead center in the chest, and twice more; the Invid flopped to the floor with a deafening clang of heavy metal.

  Just then there was a yell from the rear of the column, "Enemy fire-team coming!"

  "Stand clear!" yelled Zibyl, planting her bare feet more firmly and raising the heavy Invid pistol with both hands. She stood her ground, her jaw set, as her sisters dove or dropped or sprinted out of her line of fire.

  Four Enforcers lumbered around the corner like walking tanks, their steps resounding up and down the corridor like locomotives being hit with battering rams. They were un-limbering their rifles.

  Zibyl took careful aim at the leader, determined to buy time and ferally willing to die just so long as she could take some of the more hated slavemasters with her. She thought she might get one or, with extraordinary luck, two, before they cremated her on the spot.

  Zibyl got off the first shot but missed with the unfamiliar handgun. The Enforcers were bringing their heavy weapons to bear, muzzles the circumference of stovepipes zeroing in on her, when Zibyl heard a rich contralto behind her bark, "Sister! Hit the deck!"

  Zibyl did. The three Praxians who had womanhandled the Enforcer assault weapon out of the arsenal and into the corridor had set it up on its tripod. The gunner had to sit on another woman's shoulders to aim, and she fired.

  The shot got the lead Invid where the creature's naval would have been if it had had one, and burned it in half. The Praxians traversed the beam and cut the next Enforcer in two.

  More amazons poured into the corridor from the armory, blazing away with pistols and rifles. Zibyl spun around on her stomach and fired, too. In moments, the Enforcers were smoking debris in a spreading pool of green slime.

  Zibyl rose to her feet, coughing at the smell of it, and hollered to her Sisters, "What are you waiting for? They know we're here now! Get weapons, quickly; we haven't much time!"

  "They've been discovered," Veidt said, as he seemingly stared off into space. "The alarms are going off now."

  Vince took a deep breath. "Okay; everybody keep low."

  He pushed off from the wall with his shoulders and stepped from concealment behind the flying buttress of the Central Slavepen. The coast was clear. Vince loped toward the entrance, Wolff right behind with the other Invid rifle. Lisa, Rick, and Jean were next, along with the still-unsteady Miriya Sterling, who was being helped along by Max. Cabell came just behind, looking dignified even in this frantic endeavor, and with him floated Veidt. Karen Penn brought up the rear, covering with Rick's pistol.

  Rick had dithered a little before making the decision to give Karen his pistol, but it came down to a matter of practical necessity. Karen had the skill and training for the job he had assigned her, and it was only sensible that she be armed. Max wouldn't leave Miriya, and Rick himself wanted to be up toward the front, where he could see what was going on and help make decisions, even if this had turned into Lisa's show. To his relief, Lisa had made no objection.

  The automated weapons installations guarding the main entrance were silent, just as Veidt had promised. The fugitives made it through the door and onto the big rotunda beyond. They kept to the shadows along the walls, working their way in the opposite direction from that taken by Zibyl and the others. They were headed for the slave cages.

  Enforcers and Armored Officers, along with a scattering of scientists and other Evolveds, were running back and forth, taking no notice of the interlopers at first. Vince, leading the way, was thankful that the Invid had decided to make their Glike slave operation an Enforcer-and Officer-run facility; if there had been Inorganic bipeds, the Sentinels and the Praxians would have had little hope of coping with them.

  The checkpoint to the slave cages was a guard station one quarter of the way around the gleaming green circle of the rotunda. They were nearly there when a passing Officer noticed them and skidded to a halt, heels striking sparks from the superhard substance of the floor.

  "Halt! Identify yours-" was all he got out before Vince waxed him with a sustained burst from the rifle. Guards were just becoming aware of the danger when Vince and Wolff went charging at them assault-style, firing on every other footfall as they fast-walked. Rick dashed for the fallen officer, to relieve it of its sidearm.

  Karen rushed forward to help Vince and Wolff, laying down rounds with the pistol. The guard station had been stripped of all but three soldiers in the emergency, and they only lasted a few quickened heartbeats once the shooting started.

  But at least they left behind more weapons. Everyone was armed now except for Veidt, and Cabell, whom Rem had once warned, Stay away from guns or you'll end up burning your foot off! Even Miriya was in the fight, insisting on having a pistol. After studying the Haydonite-installed equipment for a few moments, Veidt judged that escape from the slavepens could be cut off by Invid in the command center, or even there at the guard

  station if the stations were retaken intact.

  Wolff solved that with his us
ual panache. Cycling the heavy security lock doors to open all through the slavepen maze with the station's controls, he then brought up the rifle's mouth and blew the controls to wreckage.

  "One problem down, but they'll be sending reinforcements here any time now," Lisa said.

  Wolff ran a fingertip over his superbly groomed mustache. "Then, dearest Captain, may I suggest that we not be here at that time?" He turned and set his rifle across a control console, checking fields of fire, preparing to hold the position while the others effected rescue. At Lisa's command, Karen stayed with him, handing her pistol to Jean and taking another rifle in its place.