THE BURNING HEART OF NIGHT

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THE BURNING HEART OF NIGHT Page 40

by Ivan Cat


  It had taken hours for the expedition members to penetrate Coffin Island down to the robotic factory and, despite not having to bore the tunnels through rock-hard ghutzu, Arrou knew that he could not retrace that path as quickly as Jenette needed. Jenette and Skutch were going to do something. Jenette had refused to tell Arrou what that something was before the intervening mass of Coffin Island grew large enough to block comset transmissions, but Arrou knew it was dangerous. Arrou could tell by the tone of her voice.

  Shoulders heaving, Arrou hoisted himself onto the ledge where the body dump had exploded and washed humans and domestics down into the tubes and tendrils below. Plastic membrane hung in tatters. Fetid, slimy caverns opened above Arrou where the cadavers had been packed so tight. Arrou desperately needed rest, but he pressed on into the narrow horizontal fissure, which lead to where the beacon shaft continued upward.

  Whoops!

  Arrou froze, halfway through the fissure. He saw movement on the far side, faintly illuminated by his own glowbuds. A section of the shaft-wall flapped open and two sets of sickly Khafra legs stepped into view. Arrou instantly recognized the ancient in-joan and her ragged companion, in-robert. Fortunately in-robert was not light-footed and made lots of noise, which prevented the in-humans from hearing Arrou before he saw them.

  "Pilot goes up?" in-robert asked, his blind-eyed skull turning up the shaft. "Think Pilot goes up?"

  "Yes," hissed in-joan, creeping upward on joints that seemed to be hinged all wrong.

  "But buzzers followed sound down tube. Found canteen in pit."

  "Sounds tricky. Buzzers stupid." A thousand wrinkles contracted on the female's muzzle. "Maybe not Pilot that goes down. Maybe Feral goes down, but Pilot goes up. Remember, was sneaky Feral near Null, protecting humans."

  "Yes. In-robert remembers." The wretch began to shiver. "Maybe ... maybe Null not safe. In-robert wants to go back and make sure Null is safe."

  "Null will be safe when in-joan is in Pilot's skin," in-joan gurgled evilly.

  Moving like arthritic crabs, the in-humans climbed the beacon tower. Arrou carefully wriggled out of the fissure. On his left, a half-closed flap of ghutzu covered a tunnel chewed into the depths of the island. It swung slowly closed, blending seamlessly into the tower wall. Arrou guessed the in-humans had probably dragged Dr. Bigelow through that secret passage when they kidnapped him for his skin; it probably connected to the tube tunnels below and served as a quicker way to the surface from the reactor chamber. Arrou wished he had known about it before.

  Letting the in-humans climb to the limit of his hearing, Arrou followed, climbing and stopping as they climbed and stopped, so that if the two nasties heard anything, they would think it an echo of their own noisy progress. At the top of the tower, Arrou peeked into the interlocking grottos near the robotic factory. The in-humans were paused at the joining of two bubble caverns. In-robert started for the factory, but in-joan turned aside.

  "No," she said, ambling toward a swooping wall. Arrou wondered at her peculiar gait on level ground: four steps on four legs, as all Khafra walked, but then awkwardly rising up and taking four rapid, unbalanced steps on hind legs. It took a few repetitions for Arrou to figure it out: the in-human was imitating bipedal human locomotion. Reaching the wall, in-joan's leprous forearms grabbed a broken ceramite slab and toppled it, revealing another secret hole. "Short way," she announced.

  The ragged in-robert scuttled over in the same strange two-footed, four-footed gate and sniffed the hole. "Aaahh. In-joan sneaky," he gloated.

  Both creatures disappeared into the hole. When Arrou felt it was safe, he crept over to the opening and looked up. A buzzer-chewed tunnel climbed almost straight up into the darkness. He could still hear the in-humans' movements and chatter.

  "Short path good," said one.

  "Beat Pilot to top," snickered the other.

  Trusting the in-humans' superior knowledge of the island, Arrou decided to follow. He ascended rapidly behind them, hampered only by the occasional avalanche of loose material. Once he slipped when a section of roots crumbled under his hind feet, sending a slide rushing into the darkness below. Arrou skidded down, digging in with forearms and pressing his armored back into the roots behind him. Sheer upper-body strength stopped his fall. He held on, wondering what the in-humans had heard.

  Arrou heard a smack and a yelp. "Climb quiet!" snarled the old female.

  "In-robert does climb quiet," the feeble one protested.

  "Quiet like sick Null," in-joan snarled again.

  Another smack, another yelp.

  Arrou caught his breath and continued up. The buzzer tunnel branched off at points and smells came out of those alternate paths: smells like machinery, smells like mildew, smells Arrou could not identify. He stayed to the path behind the in-humans as it snaked upward, occasionally leveling, sometimes steepening, and eventually becoming a precipitous vertical pipe. At one point he heard in-robert inexplicably chanting, "Made Null safe, made Null safe." Almost immediately, the tunnel became less steep. Arrou was forced to squeeze around a jumble of shiny cones, which had been crammed into the tight passage. Arrou guessed right away that they were the missing C-55 warheads; they had threads that looked like a perfect fit for the torpedo shaped casings in the munitions bunker. And he saw the meaning of in-robert's words: the metal cones were chewed open, their innards strewn about. The in-humans had made the warheads useless to keep their Null-God safe. Pilot Karr would not be happy, but Arrou could not stay and mourn for broken warheads. Mindful of Jenette's warning to hurry, he kept on climbing after the in-humans. The tunnel snaked erratically for some distance more and then twisted back to a gentle upward slope.

  A short time later, Arrou saw the two cancerous in-humans. Less than ten paces ahead, they were stopped in a snug, den-like chamber. Arrou watched their sickly necks crane out a hole at the far end.

  "This one smells sunlight," said in-robert.

  "Ugllugllugh," in-joan burbled, shrinking at the very mention of such a terrible, infectious word as sunlight.

  In-robert's reaction was different. "This one misses the light," he whined. "Misses the colors."

  In-robert flinched when he realized what he had said, expecting the female to strike him, but instead her voice was sweet, as one might speak to a kit or demented elder.

  "Do humans live by light? Do humans live by colors?" she asked.

  "Yes," in-robert answered.

  "No!" shrieked in-joan. "Humans live in the light and in colors, not by light and by colors. Humans are blank." In-joan walloped her weaker companion where his pink human skin cloak stretched over his head.

  Arrou crept closer as they argued.

  "How do humans live?" in-joan demanded.

  "With mouth and ears?" in-robert replied meekly.

  "With mouth and ears," in-joan agreed. "Humans live with mouth and ears. We must live with mouth and ears." To emphasize the point, she scraped her claws across her empty eye sockets. "We must be blank."

  Arrou froze as the two fell into silence, but he was near enough to see beyond the den. Outside lay a low-ceilinged cavern, filled with root-smothered colony buildings. It was lit by the faint light of Arrou's glowbuds streaming out of the den. Even in that dim light, he recognized the second underground chamber where he had been bitten by the large buzzers.

  "Hear wind," said in-robert. "Smell burned roots."

  In-joan opened her mouth and drew air over her olfactory membranes. "New human hole to surface. Close. Below us." Her breath rattled in her emaciated chest. "Go no further. Pilot will come. Lay trap here."

  A new human hole. Below the den. Now Arrou knew exactly where he was. That new hole was the first one Karr bored with the Gattler, it lead to the cavern with the cracked roof and the winch lift to the surface—and the heavy lifter. All he had to do was get past the wretched in-humans and he was home free.

  With no time to waste, Arrou coiled and sprang, leaping higher and farther than a human could from such a crouched
start. Unfortunately, his back brushed the roof of the small den as he arched toward the exit hole. The keen-eared in-humans heard the grind of armor plate against ceiling.

  "Feral!" in-robert shrieked and cowered.

  The ancient female, however, rolled and slashed at the noise with nasty accuracy. Leprous forearms raked across Arrou's unarmored underside, gouging deep, then clung to Arrou's hind legs, but the feeble creature was half of Arrou's size and could not hold his mass back. They tumbled out of the den, falling, locked together, down the cavern wall, and smashed into a crumbled building. Ceramite sections collapsed on top of the combatants, Arrou taking the brunt of the impact. His head swam from the concussion, and in those heartbeats of dizziness the in-human attacked with unforeseen ferocity. Teeth sunk into Arrou's armor plate. Talons gouged at his vulnerable eyes.

  "Die Feral! Null foe!"

  Arrou lashed out ineffectually. The vile smelling in-human was virtually wrapped around him. Arrou felt its horribly smooth human hide sliding against him, felt in-joan's talons cutting cool incisions in his flesh, which would hurt like crazy as soon as his head stopped spinning. In desperation, Arrou leapt straight up— dragging the clinging creature with him—and then let his four hundred pounds crush down on her. The in-human's bones snapped like brittle sticks. She howled, crippled, but was still able to thrust out her neck and scissor her cone of teeth on Arrou's neck. Arrou felt death slicing down on his jugular. Another second and his blood would spray upon moldy roots, but eons of Khafra fighting instincts had been activated. He drew his massive hindquarters up and let loose, raking with his rear talons, disemboweling his opponent with a sound like air escaping a greasy bladder.

  The loathsome female expired.

  XXXVI

  Good intentions are no substitute for good outcomes.

  —Reflections of a Fugueship Pilot,

  Lindal Karr

  It was a new location, a new critical juncture where a tube tendril met Coffin Island's keelroot, but it looked the same as all the others to Jenette. Salt water gushed down from above and it was dark, except for the light from the searchbeam Skutch held in his teeth. Skutch's head was half submerged. He worked, choking, to place a proportional charge into the clasp of a piton. Jenette held his legs against the torrent.

  "Don't let go!" Skutch warned, gulping a lungful of air and disappearing beneath the water. He placed the C-23 in position, then used the butt of his pulse-rifle to hammer its attached piton into the fibrous wall. Finally, making sure the charge was secure, he set its detonator receiver to armed.

  Skutch curled around and broke the surface, sucking in air. "That takes care of the main charges," he gasped as Jenette helped him up. "Now we lay the last three in a pattern designed to set the chain reaction off."

  "That means we go up?" Jenette asked hopefully. They were below the level of the reactor chamber at that point and the tendril tunnels were flooding with alarming speed and force.

  Skutch nodded. Jenette turned and began scaling an ascending tubeway.

  Arrou staggered to his feet, bleeding from a dozen stabs and gashes, numbly looking at his kill. His head still spun, but, his blood lust, spawned of rage against the vile in-human, was deserting him. He had killed it. But that did not feel as good as he thought it would. His guts heaved and he suddenly feared he would loose his bowels like a scared kit. He clenched every muscle in his body, head hanging, gulping sickly breaths. His glowbuds wavered a dull purple—but they did not turn blue and begin to wink out in the typical instinctive Khafra reaction to having taken the life of another Khafra. The in-human's fetid, deformed remains, covered in the tanned human hide, partly concealed from Arrou's brain what had just happened. Most importantly, in-joan's glowbuds, covered in scar tissue, had been incapable of flaring and fading to blank, as any normal Khafra's glowbuds would if it died without fulfilling Pact; they had not made the death flash, which would trigger a suicidal reaction in Arrou. A living Khafra was a radiant thing; a Khafra whose glowbuds did not glow was a dead Khafra.

  As far as Arrou's instincts were concerned, in-joan had been dead all along.

  None of which made Arrou feel any better about what he had done. There was, however, no opportunity for regrets or wound licking. The remaining in-human abruptly let out a wail like the cry of a domestic losing its human, or the howl of a Feral mourning its bondmate, and charged out of the hidden den, bowling into Arrou from behind.

  "Killer! Murderer!" it shrieked, clawing and biting like a possessed buzz saw. If its strength had equaled one tenth of its resolve, it surely would have killed Arrou, but in-robert was even weaker than the ancient female. Arrou easily flipped the wretch onto the ground, slamming it into pipes and broken walls, at which point it lost its stomach for face-to-face confrontation and curled up in a feeble attempt to shield itself with its sickly, limp armor.

  "Not kill! Not kill!" the in-human whimpered pathetically. "Bad Feral, bad!"

  Arrou shoved a hind foot onto the in-human's neck, ready to tear unhealthy sinews from unhealthy vertebrae. "Not Feral!" he huffed angrily. "Domestic."

  "Not true, not true ... not domestic." In-robert looked up with his blind face, first in disbelief, and then, gradually, in accusation. "Not right. If you domestic, you serve humans."

  "Arrou serves humans!"

  In-robert's empty eyes narrowed. "Then you bad domestic. Good domestics serve humans. Good domestics serve all humans. Not serve just some humans." The wretch adjusted his human skin mask. "In-robert is human. You must serve in-robert, too."

  The sick logic almost made sense to Arrou's swirling head. Almost.

  Arrou growled. "Not human—in-human. Sick, abomination." Arrou tore off in-robert's offensive, pink cloak and flung it into the darkness.

  "No! In-robert's skin! In-robert must hide!" The ragged Khafra wept, a miserable, burbling sound. "No skin, no hide, no safe anywhere ... Null not safe. In-robert fails, fails...."

  And then Arrou surprised himself. He stayed his claws on in-robert's neck.

  Arrou felt unexpected pity for the pathetic, self-blinded wretch; pity for all the years passed in dank tunnels away from the light, eating heat-festered maggots and worse, with no hope to end its suffering. Away from the light. Arrou shuddered. Could he have survived away from radiance for so long? He did not think so.

  Arrou was torn. Did the squalid creature deserve mercy after what it had done to his friends? Definitely not. Did it deserve to die for what it had done? Probably yes. But Arrou decided he did not like the taste of this game of vengeance. Hunting to eat was fun. Killing for hate was not. Perhaps ... perhaps the game of mercy would taste better.

  Arrou turned his back on in-robert and started to leave.

  The in-human instantly screeched and leapt. "Join us, join us!" In-robert landed on Arrou's back, gouging at Arrou's face, trying to dig out Arrou's eyeballs, as in-robert had done to poor Crash. Arrou blinked his eyes down into his skull and clenched his brows with all his might. Prickly talons dug into his eyelids, trying to pry them open and slice tender tissue underneath.

  "Rraaaagghhhhh!" roared Arrou. "In-human not bother Arrou anymore!"

  With one sweep of a forearm, Arrou backhanded in-robert fifteen feet through the air into a gutted crawler. Once more the dank air resounded with whimpering. The in-human did not move. Satisfied that he would not be attacked anymore, Arrou turned away again and headed toward the surface.

  Water frothed up the ascending tube. It rose to their knees, their thighs, their waists. Skutch held a remote detonator in his hands.

  "Now?"

  "Wait," said Jenette.

  Ahead of them, the tube opened onto the reactor chamber. In the middle of the spherical cavity, at the same level as Jenette and Skutch, water lapped at the lower end of the null-fusion reactor.

  The water rose to Jenette's chest.

  "Now?"

  "Wait."

  "We've got to do it."

  "We've got to give Arrou as much time as possible."
/>
  Skutch fidgeted.

  The water rose to their necks. Skutch raised the detonator above his head to keep it dry.

  "Wow?"

  Jenette looked out at the reactor again. The water was up over Dr. Bigelow's feet. She adjusted her comset. "Get ready, Clarence. This is going to happen fast."

  "Do it," the scientist's voice crackled bravely on the circuit.

  Skutch flipped the detonator's safety latch off and thrust the exposed red button at Jenette.

  "Fire in the hole?"

  With one last look at her friend on the reactor, Jenette clutched the detonator in Skutch's hands.

  "Fire in the hole," she agreed, jamming the firing toggle down hard.

  Hellfire erupted in the water around Karr. A series of timed explosions flashed around the keelroot's immense girth. Whuf, whuf, whuf—a quiet beat—whuf, whuf whuf whuf whuf! Pockets of explosive gas swelled, hollow balloons in the water, then rapidly collapsed back upon themselves. Expanding, roaring Shockwaves blurred the deep water, hammering into Karr's fragile blister. The turbulence buffeted him inside the translucent tendril, slamming him violently into the hardened tongue of buzzers and molecular glue; Karr choked on the water splashing around with him. For a brief moment, there came darkness and relative quiet, but then a wrenching groan built and resounded through the water, a sound like heavy steel plates being torn. As Karr's eyes readjusted to the dull glow emanating from the reactor-chamber bulge, he saw the keel root moving not too far above him. Damaged fibers snapped and tore in a widening gash where the explosions had just gone off. He felt the vast mass dropping, taking him with it.

  Coffin Island shuddered. The safety cage swung in and out of a shaft of daylight and newly disturbed dust. A distant winch complained, rewinding cable as fast as it could, the backup winch atop the cage adding its meager power to the effort, but that was not fast enough for Arrou. Jenette had done the dangerous thing! Arrou's pairs of opposed thumbs gripped the braided filament above the cage and he began pulling his bulk up the moving cable, forepaw over forepaw, hind leg over hind leg. Suddenly sunlight—glorious sunlight!—bathed every glowbud on his body and he burst out of the jagged hole at the top of the underground cavity and into fresh air. Arrou let go of the line just before it passed through a pulley rig on the tripod over the hole and let momentum fling his four hundred pounds safely away from the subterranean world.

 

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