Sean Dalton - Operation StarHawks 03 - Beyond the Void

by Sean Dalton - [Operation StarHawks 03]

  His fingers curled around it, thawing it against the warmth of his own flesh.

  Chuckling, he left the vault standing wide open and made his way to the forbidden part of the City. It might take him a couple of entire work cycles to walk there, but that did not matter.

  Overcome the pain, these grooves of pain, these firebrands of agony.

  Overcome the oneness. Break it. Make the. oneness two halves.

  Separate. Apart. Independent.

  Two. We are two. I am ...

  No! Oneness!

  Kelly and Siggerson almost reached central control when they rounded a bend in the corridor and came face-to-face with a motionless phalanx of twenty-seven warbots standing three across and nine deep.

  Kelly’s gut did a flopover, and Siggerson let out a small, strangled sound. But Kelly didn’t hesitate.

  “Open fire,” he said, and triggered both plasma launchers.

  He slagged the first row, taking out their weapons in his first sweep, then cutting them at the knees, so that they sagged, melting slowly together. Siggerson took out the second row, thus fouling the return fire from the third. Warbots struggled forward, trying to climb the heap of scrap metal smoking in their way. Their clumsiness was almost comical, except for the deadly blast of a plasma bolt that passed so close between Kelly and Siggerson that the sleeve of Kelly’s uniform charred.

  “Fall back!” said Kelly, and they scrambled back around the bend of the corridor.

  Siggerson was bone-white, and Kelly couldn’t quite get his breath. They were badly outnumbered. He needed to think, dammit, think.

  His gaze rose to the exposed struts of the ceiling framework. He elbowed Siggerson and pointed.

  “Up. Move it!”

  The swiveling action of a surveillance camera caught the corner of Kelly’s eye. He swung and blasted it. By then Siggerson was up the ladder rungs bolted to the wall. Kelly started up them just as the warbots came around the corner.

  Hooking his elbow over a rung, Kelly grabbed one of his throwing stars and flung it at the nearest bot. The star sliced cleanly through gleaming hull metal, and a shower of sparks erupted from the bot’s throat. It veered crazily to one side, fouling the path of another. Siggerson slagged them both from above, giving Kelly time to finish climbing up.

  Balancing on the struts while maneuvering around wasn’t easy. Kelly got tangled in wires and nearly panicked before he extricated himself. But after the first hectic moments, he got the hang of it: move forward, fire, move, fire, move again. As long as he and Siggerson kept to random movement patterns the bots below had trouble tracking them. Whatever kind of warfare the bots had been designed for, it wasn’t guerrilla.

  The last one aimed right at Siggerson and fired before Kelly could slag it. The metal strut supporting Siggerson sheered. He made an effort to spring to safety but fell, dragging a light track and wiring down with him in a sparking, crashing mess.

  “Siggerson!”

  Frantic, Kelly watched him fall. Dust fogged everywhere. Kelly swore to himself and hunted for a way down. He skimmed down the ladder rungs and clambered recklessly over a fallen bot hot enough to scorch the soles of his boots.

  “Siggerson,” he said, kicking the debris away and going again through all the horror he’d felt when he found Caesar. “Olaf, are you—”

  Siggerson sat up, coughing. “Just ... wind ... knocked out of me,” he said.

  Kelly helped him to his feet and dusted him off. A camera ahead of them swiveled their way. Kelly blasted it. It was really a waste of plasma since Maon knew they were coming, but Kelly hated the things.

  “Let’s go. I’m fine,” said Siggerson, although they were already walking.

  But Kelly moved away from him to the opposite side of the corridor and got both hands on his launcher triggers. A forcefield slammed up just centimeters away from him. Kelly halted, unable to keep from glancing uneasily over his shoulder. Sure enough, a forcefield went up behind them. They were neatly trapped.

  “What now? Is this it?” asked Siggerson, still out of breath.

  But Kelly remembered how Caesar and Phila had escaped. He didn’t have a prong but he did have another throwing star. Pulling it out, he knelt at the beam set and began prying gingerly.

  Siggerson touched his shoulder. “Let me do that. You’re going to electrocute yourself.”

  Kelly moved out of the way. Seconds later blue fire crackled everywhere, making him cringe. The field ahead of them fell. They ran forward.

  Nothing else came at them. Kelly didn’t like it, however. There had to be more. It couldn’t be this easy, just two defense postures to overcome.

  He felt it before he saw it. A crawly, creepy, crackling sensation that sucked across his skin and made his hair stand up in swift prickles. Kelly halted, frowning.

  Siggerson took a couple of steps on, then he too halted. He threw out his hand in warning.

  “Look!”

  Kelly squinted ahead, but the corridor as usual was poorly lit. He couldn’t see anything more than the fact that an intersection lay ahead.

  “What is it?” he said. He ran his tongue across his teeth. They were itchy. His skin felt like it was shifting around on his bones. He backed up a step in spite of himself.

  “An open teleport beam,” said Siggerson.

  The unconcealed fear in his voice affected Kelly. They used teleportation all the time, but it was never something you could take for granted even with all the safety features built in. And rule number one was to never, never, never leave a beam open. He’d heard horror stories of people getting sucked into it and either being sent nowhere or coming out reassembled into pathetic things that quickly died.

  “We must not go closer,” said Siggerson.

  “I’m not arguing,” said Kelly. Mentally he ran back through the layout. Even if they doubled back and tried the other route in, there was no guarantee they wouldn’t run into this same thing. “But just how close can we get?”

  “No!” said Siggerson firmly. He shook his head at Kelly. “No closer. Do you know what happens if you—”

  “Yes. But we can’t just stand here.” Kelly frowned and looked back the way they’d come. He looked at the ceiling. “Could we go over it?”

  “No. Too close. It’s not passive, Kelly. Even from here, I can feel its pull.”

  Kelly knew Siggerson wasn’t exaggerating, but something had to be done. He slung the launchers over his shoulders out of his way. “I’m going to try,” he said grimly.

  Siggerson gripped his arm. “Don’t be a fool! You can’t make it. To even try is suicide.”

  “And what other alternative do we have?” retorted Kelly. “We can’t wait on the very slim chance that Ouoji will knock out the power plant. Something is going to come along here very soon to collect us. And I won’t turn back and accept defeat. I just won’t.”

  He stared into Siggerson’s eyes. Reluctantly Siggerson released his arm and moved out of the way.

  His dour expression gave Kelly no confidence, but it had to be attempted. He climbed up into the ceiling struts and began carefully crawling forward.

  Before he’d gone very far, he could feel an insidious pull that made his skin feel as though it were being turned inside out. He squinted his eyes to protect them. Tingles went through his teeth until he found himself grinding them fiercely and forced himself to stop. He paused, gasping, and all he wanted to do was go back.

  But he’d already made his decision. He forced himself on. Now he was close enough to see the grid. It glowed with a pulsing light that filled the corridor with an eerie luminescence.

  What had only seemed to be a pull now became a powerful sucking force that drew first his feet, yanking him half off his perch. His stomach folded over a crosspiece, and he tightened his grip desperately. His launchers slid off his shoulders and dangled from his elbows, getting in the way. He could feel the drag increasing, as though the machine sensed it had him. His fingers loosened despite his struggles to hang o
n.

  When his right hand came off, it was a shock. He flailed and slid, coming to a wrenching halt that jarred him to the shoulder. His left hand clung with a death grip. The rest of him dangled above the grid.

  He gasped for breath and tried to pull himself up far enough to grasp the bar with his right hand. His fingertips brushed it and slid away. Grunting with the effort, he tried again and didn’t reach as far. Perspiration ran into his eyes, stinging them. He tried a third time, telling himself he could make it.

  Instead, he slipped. His left hand gave out, and in that last split second of awareness, he knew he was falling straight onto the grid, straight into nowhere, never to return.

  * * *

  14

  It didn’t happen.

  One moment he was falling. The next instant he hit solid metal, flat on his back, with a jarring impact that made him think he’d broken in half.

  He lay there stunned in total darkness, with all the wind knocked from him.

  Siggerson snapped on a torch and came running. “Ouoji did it! She did it! Kelly, you idiot, I thought you were done for. Some people have all the luck. I can’t believe her precise timing.”

  Kelly couldn’t either. He tried to answer, but without any wind all he could do was make a strangled noise. Siggerson dragged him up to a sitting position, too excited to even check for broken bones, and thumped him enthusiastically.

  “Come on! We’ve got to move before they realize what’s going on. There will only be a few minutes before the auxiliary plants activate to divert power here from the other generators.”

  Kelly sucked in some air and began to feel like he might live. His arms and legs moved. It looked like all he had were some bruises. Lucky was right. He felt profoundly grateful to Ouoji.

  Together they headed along the corridor. Siggerson’s torch beam stabbed here and there, giving them glimpses of doors half open. Two carrier robots each holding a Visci box stood immobile as though their communications-directions line had been broken by the power shutdown. Kelly and Siggerson eased cautiously past them and hurried on. The dark silence was creepy.

  It seemed also empty. They passed three warbots, all immobile, frozen in midstep.

  “I told you,” said Kelly. “Without their robots and power to run them, the Visci are helpless.”

  They stepped through the half-open doorway at the end of the corridor and Siggerson shone his light around.

  It was a spacious, circular chamber. On the far side a vast expanse of glass overlooked the hangar. Everywhere else stood silent banks of instrumentation. Even in the intermittent stabs of illumination from Siggerson’s torch, the technology’s sophistication was evident.

  “To have this,” breathed Siggerson. “To be able to take even a part of this home. Do you realize just what kind of engineering geniuses they are? This whole ship the size of a city ... how do they power it? The genetics labs. The interdimensional travel—”

  “Just don’t forget what they are and what they want,” said Kelly grimly. He took a few steps forward, paused, and looked around.

  The silence was almost audible.

  “Well,” he said. “Looks like this is our chance to—”

  “I saw something!”

  Kelly spun around. “Where?”

  Siggerson’s torch flashed. “There. No, it’s moved. Damn!”

  Kelly turned, scanning the whole shadowy room with his finger on the trigger. The darkness pressed upon him like a living thing. He could feel a menacing presence he hadn’t detected before, a malevolence that made the muscles tense in his shoulders.

  The torch went out. Siggerson shook it, but to no avail.

  “No,” he said, his voice shrill. “No! It has to work! It has to—”

  “Siggerson,” said Kelly sharply. “Forget the torch. Get your weapon ready and put your back against mine. Now.”

  Siggerson complied, his breathing audible and jerky. Somewhere in the darkness around them, a Visci waited for its chance. Kelly swallowed, remembering how 41 had died. He imagined one of the things crawling up him to his face, smothering him, going in ...

  His heart jumped. He wiped his sweaty face, trying to get rid of the images in his mind.

  A low hum made him flinch. An array of instrumentation lights came on, then the overhead lights returned, dazzling them.

  Kelly blinked and squinted. From the corner of his eye he saw a tall shape nearby. He whirled, his launcher ready, and just in time held its fire.

  “41,” he said, his voice hollow with disbelief. “41?”

  Dammit, he had seen the man die. Yet here he stood with the lights gleaming upon his long tangle of blond hair. His tawny eyes stared at Kelly with the flatness of no recognition. He was breathing. His gaze shifted from Kelly to Siggerson, who lowered his weapon.

  “Thank God, it’s only you, 41. I wasn’t sure what we were about to face in here. Kelly, I thought you said he was dead.”

  “I thought he was,” said Kelly. He looked at 41, wanting to feel glad, wanting to feel relief. But something was wrong. He couldn’t place it, but the Visci had done something to 41 and left him ... “How do you feel? At the first chance, we’d better have Beaulieu take a look at you. Where is—”

  41 looked away and flipped a switch. A synthesized voice came through a speaker: “I am Maon. I ride this body.”

  Siggerson backed away, but Kelly frowned and went toward 41. Closer, he could see the signs of physical distress: a sheen of sweat over pallid skin, dilated eyes, irregulaf breathing.

  “Come no closer,” said Maon.

  “You must release him,” said Kelly. “We aren’t beasts of burden for your use. You’re killing him!”

  “That does not matter. To ride is a sign of strength.”

  “And who are you trying to impress? Where’s your audience, Maon?” Kelly swept his arm around to indicate the empty control room. “You don’t impress us.”

  “You are nothing.”

  “Wrong,” said Kelly. He aimed one of his launchers at a control panel and pulled the trigger. An arc of plasma spanned the distance and slagged it, sending sparks shooting.

  41 turned fast, nearly lost his balance, and barely caught himself.

  “No!” said Maon’s voice. “Fool, you must not destroy—”

  “Release my friend,” said Kelly. “Look, Maon. We don’t have to be enemies. I know about the plague that is killing your kind. I know that you need another planet to settle upon until the plague is cleaned out. But you don’t have to conquer us just to save yourselves. Together, using all our resources, we could find a solution.”

  41 stood motionless for a long moment until Kelly thought Maon might be going to relent. Then 41 reached out and pushed a rapid series of controls. Nothing happened at first, and Kelly suspected it might be a call for help.

  “Kelly!” said Siggerson.

  Hearing the despair in his voice, Kelly turned just as the muffled rumble of an explosion shook the windows. Lights had come on inside the hangar. Kelly ran to the glass and looked out at the nearest destroyer. The explosion had crumpled her bridge and engine areas. He could see the crumpled hull quite clearly. Another explosion shook the windows. Another destroyer disabled. Another. And so on in rapid succession until not one ship remained untouched.

  Kelly watched helplessly. Their avenue home was now closed. He should have felt as sick with despair as Sigger-son looked, but instead all he knew was anger, harsh and corrosive, fueling his determination.

  He turned back to Maon.

  “Your defiance is futile,” said Maon. “Your actions have made little difference. You accomplish nothing against us. How can you fight us? We are your superiors.”

  “No,” said Kelly. “I don’t think you are. I think you are scared and desperate, used to overwhelming other cultures with your advanced technology, and too savage to know what compassion means.”

  “We do not subscribe to the lesser emotions. And we are not desperate. We shall overcome the plague
as we overcome all of our problems. Already an antidote has been discovered. You, trapped inside a physical shape that is large and clumsy, are far too primitive to—”

  “Too primitive for what?” broke in Kelly. “To run our own worlds? To shape our own destiny free of your interference? To resist you? To help you? If that’s true, why did you need a human researcher to find the antidote for you? Why do you need clones of humans to conquer Earth for you? Why not just go in there yourself? You have the ships, the weaponry to defeat us. Or do you?”

  “We have ships,” said Maon sharply. “Many.”

  “Then dispatch them.”

  41 made no move. His tawny eyes stared into space, eerie and remote as though he had no cognizance at all of what was happening. Could he survive this? Or was Maon in him to stay?

  “You do not order us,” said Maon at last.

  His delay in answering and the feebleness of his reply caught Kelly’s attention.

  “Is that all you have to say? Why not start your invasion now? We have defied you, angered you. Punish us and launch.”

  Still 41 did not move.

  “Who pilots your ships?” asked Kelly. “Robots or Visci?”

  Maon did not reply.

  Kelly stepped closer. “The Visci are stored on board this ship, aren’t they? Locked up in sterile containers to keep them safe. Is that any way to live?”

  “Soon we shall be free again,” said Maon. “We shall roam the oceans of Earth once it is made safe for us.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Kelly. “How many years have you been here? Eventually the robots will wear out. Then what happens? How many Visci have died inside those containers? How many remain alive? Do you know?”

  “You mock our agony!” cried Maon. “You are an ignorant savage!”

  “How many, Maon?”

  “One triad is all that is necessary to regenerate our—”

  “Where’s your triad, Maon? Those two containers that I saw being carried down the corridor, are they the rest of your triad? Why aren’t they with you?”