Thieves of Light

by Michael Hudson

  "He was ready. You are not-"

  "Why not? What are we waiting for?"

  The question failed to deflect Li-hon from the point he had begun to make. "Your protest is triply inappropriate. We have also dismissed challengers who have been here longer than you. There is no meaning in the order of ascension. Also, Bro'nech came to us with his potential more completely realized than you did. He needed only polishing. You need molding. And most important, you are not challenging for the Eleventh. You are challenging for the Ninth. The standards other sergeants may set for their platoons are meaningless here."

  "So it's you that's holding me up. Well, what am I not doing right? What am I not doing that you think I ought to be?"

  "The truth is, I'm reasonably content with your progress." He grinned his disturbing toothy grin. "So is Pike. He's already collected half a thousand units from those who bet against you."

  "If I'm doing so well, why can't you tell me when this will be over?"

  "It will be over when you've learned what you need to."

  "What, more games of cavalry and castles?" Bhodi said, waving a hand toward the battle board. "What good is any of it? Do you know what I did today? I beat Kil Vander at Ja-Nin. I beat a Celtan. I beat a Guardian-class fighter."

  "Perhaps. Some observers credited the floor and an awkward fall with the victory."

  "They're wrong," Bhodi snapped. "I made it happen. Look, there's no one in the training section better than me with an Allison. Everybody knows it, and after today everybody's going to know they've got to respect me hand-to-hand, too."

  "The respect of your peers is important," Li-hon said. "To you. But it makes no difference to the Arrians whether you're held in high regard or in contempt. Your skin burns the same either way."

  "Why are you trying to make me think I'm not ready? I know I am. I know what I can do."

  "I'm not trying to puncture your confidence, Bhodi Li. I'm trying to push you off your pendulum in the middle of a swing, so that you see yourself as neither invulnerable nor helpless. The truth is somewhere in between, and until you grasp it, you can't be trusted in combat."

  Bhodi would not hear it. "What's my ranking?"

  "What?"

  "You know what I mean. On the instructors' chart. Where do I stand?"

  Li-hon frowned and growled deep in his throat. "There is no such scoring."

  Bhodi's face wrinkled in puzzlement. "But Pike said-"

  "I can fully believe he did. But there is no such scoring. How could there be? Each challenger, each vacancy, each commander's need is different. How can they be compared?"

  "He lied to me?"

  "If he felt the reason sufficient, he might have."

  Shaking his head, Bhodi said, "It doesn't matter. I don't need to hear it from anyone else to know I'm right."

  "Then what do you need?"

  "A chance!" Bhodi fairly shouted. "Jesus, I don't understand you people. You want me and you don't want me. You talk about the psychology of defeat and then do everything you can to bust me down. You get me primed for fighting and then won't let me fight."

  "What, in your opinion, should I be doing?"

  The anger left Bhodi's face and was replaced by a grim determination. "For starters, you can let me have a crack at the maze room."

  "You do not even know what you are asking for."

  "Then tell me."

  Li-hon studied Bhodi closely before answering. "The Arrians do not wait until they have crystals in hand to begin their preparations to use them. They land their teams on disputed worlds and unclaimed worlds and build warrens, quite extensive when time permits, where the crystals can be taken to be reprogrammed. They need time and they need secure cover to be successful."

  "Because you'd just destroy the crystals if you had the chance-better to lose a crystal than lose a world."

  "Yes. So again and again we find it necessary to go underground and clean out the warrens to retrieve or destroy a captured Photon crystal. The catacombs of your Photon arenas are an echo of this need."

  "And the maze room-"

  "The maze room pits a single challenger against an unknown number of living opponents inside an Arrian warren. Your opponents know the maze. They know what your objective is. They know that you have to come to them."

  "That's no different than going after the base goal in the game."

  "You're wrong. It's very different."

  "It doesn't matter. I want it. I want to try. Give me a chance to find out. The worst that can happen is that I'll discover you're right-that I'm not ready."

  Li-hon took forever to respond, as though wrestling with a decision of tremendous weight. "Very well," he said at last. "I'll arrange it." But that isn't the worst that can happen, Li-hon thought. The worst that could happen would be that you win.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Bhodi Li had expected to see very little with his first glimpse of the maze room, because he thought the great volume of the arena would be fully taken up by the structure of the maze. When the moment for that first glimpse arrived, he indeed saw very little, but for a very different reason. The chamber was virtually empty, like a new house where the furniture hadn't been moved in yet. There was almost nothing to see.

  With Li-hon standing at his elbow, Bhodi scanned the surprising scene. The "floor" was hard-packed soil the color of sienna, and the walls were cleverly painted in a way that made the illusion of a planetary surface extend to the horizon. The landscape was featureless save for three gently sloping mounds, like great waist-high anthills, located in a triangle near the center of the chamber.

  "That's the Arrians' favorite design," Li-hon said, following his gaze. "They use it everywhere the terrain allows. Very low profile. We had to develop special sensors to detect them. As soon as we did, they started scattering phony ones all over the map, with all three entrances booby-trapped."

  So that's what the dark patches are, Bhodi thought.

  Each mound had a black wound-more like a hole angling down into the earth than a doorway-on the side facing the center of the triangle. The sight reminded Bhodi vaguely of the storm cellar in The Wizard of Oz, minus the doors. The rest of the warren was underground, unseen and unknowable.

  Defensively, the whole arrangement was both elegant and intimidating. A warrior standing in the entrance and facing outward had the protection of a foxhole and the sightlines and battlefield command of a machine-gun nest. Even if the defenders were driven down into the tunnels, any entrance could be covered by a crossfire from the other two.

  "Nasty," Bhodi said.

  "Yes. At the real warrens, only two of the three entrances are booby-trapped."

  Bhodi swallowed hard and tried to keep his discomfort off his face. "So when do the nasties show up?"

  "They're already inside."

  He knew better than to ask how many. "I get the approach for free?"

  "The Arrians prefer not to fight on the surface when they can avoid it," Li-hon said. "Why should they? May I see your weapon, please."

  "Yeah," Bhodi said, handing him the Allison. "Why should they? So how can you tell which of the entrances is safe?"

  Li-hon checked the power reserve and the output rating, then handed the weapon back. "You can't. Good luck, Bhodi Li." Then he walked away and disappeared through a doorway that made it seem as though he were stepping off the edge of the world.

  For a long minute Bhodi stood stiffly in place. This is a psyche-out, he thought tersely. He wants me to get jelly-knees and go back into my shell. I can't believe they can't give any better briefing on cracking a warren than 'You can't.'

  Bhodi looked up in the direction of the hidden observer's booth and its invisible wide-field cameras. I'll bet he packed the booth, too. He wouldn't tell me, because he wouldn't want to give me any extra motivation. Haj and Pike and the First Guardian — maybe the whole damn platoon, come to see Bhodi's last hurrah. Son of a -

  Turning his attention toward the triple mound, Bhodi tried to steel himself
for the challenge ahead. Two out of three chance I don't even make it past the entrance. Great odds.

  He realized that his mouth was dry and his heart racing. Scared? he taunted himself. Yeah. Scared of putting my head down one of those holes and getting it fried off.

  Everything they ask me to do, they already know I can do, he reminded himself.

  But this time, Pike's assurance could offer no comfort. They didn't ask me to do this — I asked. I'm the one who said I was ready, not Li-hon. And now I've got to do it, or I can't face them again. But how? How do you beat these kind of odds? For a long moment, he wavered on the verge of following Li-hon out the exit, laying down his Allison, and going home to safe, tame little Montclair.

  It was something else that Pike had said that rescued him, a comment he had made after Bhodi had won his fourth straight live-opponent duel. "You know what I like about you?" Pike had said, clapping his hands on both of Bhodi's shoulders. "You fight dirty."

  At first, Bhodi had wondered if he should take offense. But Pike hastened to explain that he meant Bhodi wasn't afraid to expose himself to a hit to gain an edge or achieve an objective.

  "I like the guys that come back with phaser tracks all over their armor," Pike had said. "The armor's there to protect you. If you never take advantage of that, you're not getting out on the edge where you ought to be. These types that come out of a firefight without so much as a scorch mark on their fighting suit, you can have 'em. Give me the guys who fight dirty."

  That's how you beat the nasties, Bhodi thought. You fight dirty. That's the way you used to play when it was just a game. And win or lose, that's the only way to play it now -

  That decision cleared the emotional cobwebs from Bhodi's reasoning, and immediately he found himself following a more productive train of thought. What kind of booby trap would they use? Hydraulic walls to crush you? A dead-end with a five-meg phaser cannon firing straight up at you? Razor-sharp spikes that shoot out of the ceiling?

  No matter what the trap, Bhodi realized, an invading force could find out which entrance was the real one simply by being willing to sacrifice two warriors. Unless you designed a booby trap that was so well hidden nothing gave it away until it was too late for the would-be invader to relay his discovery back to his platoon mates. A warrior goes down into one of the holes and is simply never heard from again.

  Yes-it would have to be something quiet. No explosions, no odd noises. It would have to be something tidy, to avoid having a clutter of dead bodies to warn the next one in. And it would almost certainly have to be something that was automated, tripped by sensors of some sort. They wouldn't want to isolate part of their fighting force in dead-end false tunnels, not when they could be needed elsewhere.

  So what, then? A slippery ramp with a vat of acid at the bottom?

  Bhodi wished he had some sort of flying camera to send in first. Even if they fried it, a glimpse of what was past the entrance would be worth the loss. If only I didn't have to go in first and find out the hard way -

  Then he realized that, in fact, he didn't have to go in first. He had no partners, no equipment to spare and the landscape was barren, but there were other resources. Specifically, there were grapefruit-sized light globes arrayed all across the "sky"-the ceiling of the arena.

  Backing off a few steps, Bhodi pulled on his helmet and raised his Allison above his head. With three pinpoint blasts, he burned away the supports that held three of the globes. They dropped loudly to the surface, dimmed rapidly and went out, but did not shatter. The last of the three rolled to a stop just inches from his booted foot.

  "What's he doing tearing up the arena?" Haj demanded, coming up out of his chair in the observer's booth. "My arena. Li-hon, I insist you put a stop to this right now."

  "I said he would have a chance," Li-hon said. "Sit and watch."

  "I won't tolerate it. No one has ever done anything like that before."

  "I agree," Li-hon said. "And I'm interested to see what use he makes of them. Sit down, Haj. This is only the beginning."

  His plan vague but complete, Bhodi scooped up the faintly warm globes and started toward the warren. He circled around the back of the nearest of the mounds, cradling the lights in the crook of one arm and holding the Allison at the ready with his other hand.

  Then he started up, as though on his way to play king of the hill. Three steps up, he was on his knees. By the time he was at the top, he was lying prone.

  When he peeked over the top, he could see slightly inside the entrances of the two other mounds, but nothing of the entry to the one he was on. Holstering his Allison and leaving two of the lights perched precariously on the top of the mound, Bhodi squirmed forward on his belly until he was close enough to the entryway to stick his head out and look down into the tunnel.

  There he paused for a moment and bled off some of the incredible tension he felt with a hearty exhalation. Then he touched his helmet controls, activating the image amplifier built into its faceplate, and stole a peek inside.

  He had not expected to be shot at, and was not. Why should they scare him off at the door, when patience would bring better opportunities? But he did not see much. His head motion plus the sudden transition from the well-lit arena to the dark catacomb made the amplified image ghost like a badly tuned television.

  Tensing himself, he took another, longer look. This time he saw an empty earth-walled corridor an armspan wide and barely fifteen feet long, terminating in a T with a cross corridor.

  There are two hiding places, he thought as he withdrew. They get to hide around the corners, and I'm backlit against the sky. So easy they ought to be ashamed.

  But that assumed that this was the true entrance, and not one of the sucker traps-an assumption he wasn't going to make without testing. He poked his head out past the edge for a third time, and when the image of the corridor stopped ghosting, hurled the light globe down into the darkened tunnel.

  It bounced once against the floor, and a moment later four bluish beams of phaser fire flashed from below and intersected in the air above the globe. Bhodi resisted the impulse to duck back out of sight. He watched as the globe bounced twice more, strangely untouched by the continuing phaser blasts, arced back toward the floor a third time-and then vanished. There a momentary hum, a crackling noise, then silence.

  Bhodi blinked, then backed quickly away from the edge. It took him a moment to realize that the globe had dropped right through the floor as though nothing were there. That in fact nothing was there. Part of the floor was missing, its absence hidden by some clever trick of lighting and coloration. The automatic phasers had missed their bouncing target because they were meant to miss. They were there only to drive an intruder along at an appropriately reckless pace.

  Climbing down from the first mound, Bhodi circled clockwise to the next. As expected, the second entry way appeared identical to the first. He repeated his test, sacrificing a second globe. This time nothing happened. The globe rolled to the bottom of the ramp, bumped the back wall of the cross corridor, and came to a stop unmolested.

  A second-man-through booby trap? Bhodi wondered. Smart systems that won't get fooled the same way twice? Or the real entrance, with hidden snipers that are cool enough to wait for the real thing?

  Instinct more than reason persuaded Bhodi that he had in fact found the real entrance. But he felt little joy at the accomplishment. They know I'm up here now. And they'll hear me coming, slipping and sliding on that dirt chute, and fry my butt on the way down.

  He retreated to the back of the mound to consider his situation. Just a moment, he thought. Just a moment of surprise is all I need — one trick they're not expecting. Just enough to get me to the bottom in one piece.

  Then, in a moment of insight, he realized that he had the trick in hand-had practiced it a hundred times in his own house (and been reprimanded countless times by his Mom for doing so). The steep-sloped entry way was like a stairwell, and he had already perfected the fastest way of going down a
flight of stairs Bouncing up, he scooted in a sweeping lefthand circle to the area between the mounds. He lobbed the third light globe down the mouth of the second false entryway, then started running toward the real entryway. When he reached the shadowed threshold he leaped toward the darkness, catching the top of the opening with his hands and used that as a leverage point to swing his feet forward.

  He was flying feet first down through the chute, out of control. If he had guessed wrong, he was going to end up flat on his back at the bottom, the breath knocked out of him, staring up at the pseudo-Arrian who was going to have the pleasure of dispatching him.

  But he had not guessed wrong. His entry into the chute had tripped some sensor, and as Bhodi dropped toward the bottom a figure stepped out from the right and started firing up the ramp. But Bhodi was not where the warrior expected Bhodi to be, and the shots missed low. A moment later Bhodi's boots caught the warrior in the thorax, driving his body backward and snapping its neck forward.

  The collision drove the guard all the way to the wall, where it was sandwiched momentarily between rocklike earth and a human projectile. With something to push against, Bhodi turned his fall to the floor into a twisting roll and came up with the Allison in his hand. He burned his opponent's chest pack with his first shot, and only in the light of its exploding circuitry did he see that his opponent was Qeth, disarmed, and quite unconscious.

  One Bhodi did not linger. He snatched up the fallen warrior's sidearm with his free hand, tested it with several shots down the dark passage to the left, then started himself down the passage to the right with both weapons at the ready, like a two-gun sharpshooter from a four-horse Western.

  He went thirty steps into a corridor so dark that even the image amplifier couldn't capture enough light to provide a sharp view ahead, then slowed as a feeling of terrible apprehension began to haunt him. Something was wrong. It was as though the sound of his own footsteps had changed Suddenly his unarmored right elbow was seared by a phaser blast that came out of nowhere. He twisted toward what he had thought was a wall and dropped to a crouch, ready to return fire if only he could find a target.