by Mick Farren
There was a sudden tension in the dome. The interpreter started pumping out calming abstracts, but they had little effect on the increasingly belligerent lantere.
"Are you threatening us?"
"We're trying not to, but if we don't do this our way, I think you're going to have problems with our future cooperation. We do have the firepower."
Weapons were being hefted to emphasize the point. The interpreter seemed to accept the situation.
"I think we have to go along with the humans' proposal."
The lantere was still being stubborn.
"If we were to attack the asteroid base, I could find myself fighting against my own kind."
Rance nodded grimly at the charred bodies of the medians.
"That can sometimes be the price of your freedom."
There was a long silence. Finally the lantere gave in.
"Very well, I will agree to this foolhardy expedition, but I still have grave doubts."
Renchett whooped and spun his weapon. "Let's get ourselves some girls!"
Rance looked at him. He wasn't smiling.
"This may not be that easy."
Sixteen
"The suits don't work," Dyrkin told Rance.
"What do you mean the suits don't work?^ 1
"Try one. They go on the way they always did, but once they're on, there's no flexibility. You can't move your arms and legs. Also, they're secreting something that's got everyone close to throwing up."
"What the hell is going on? We're only hours out from the recstar. There's never been a problem with the suits before. Why now?"
Rance followed Dyrkin to the messdeck. The ship had completed its third and final jump, and preparations were under way for the attack. A problem with the suits was little short of a disaster. Rance immediately stripped off his dress tans.
"Somebody throw me a suit."
Hark tossed across one of the shapeless black blobs.
"It's like they know what we're doing and they're refusing to go along with it. It's like they won't go against the Therem."
"That's ridiculous superstition. The suits don't have the brains for anything like that."
Rance placed the suit on the deck and stood on it. The suit began to crawl up his leg, but it moved more slowly than usual. The slowness was easy to interpret as reluctance. When the suit covered his body, he experimentally flexed his arms. The suit resisted. The same happened when he tried to bend his legs.
"See what we mean?"
"We're not going to be able to use them."
"What are we going to do? We can't go into combat without suits."
"We could use radiation armor."
"It's goddamn bulky. It's going to really cut down on our mobility."
"What the hell else can we do?"
"Nothing. We'll have to go with the radiation suits. Dyrkin, scout around and see how many you can come up with."
"What are we going to do with the suits?"
Rance shook his head. "I don't know. I'm going to talk to the aliens and see if they've got a line on any of this."
The meeting with the aliens was brief. They had nothing to contribute as to why the suits should be behaving the way they were. Strangely, they seemed more inclined than Rance to accept the men's idea that the creatures were actually refusing to act against the interests of the Therem.
"Even though it seems at the time to defy logic, an intuitive feeling may be a pointer to the truth." "Sure."
"We don't feel that these things should be allowed to remain loose in the ship. The current loss of function may be only the start of an entire destructive cycle. We have no idea what might be built into their genetic code. We urge you to destroy them."
"The suits are not that easily destroyed," Rance reminded them.
"So simply jettison them into space."
"You want us to do that?"
"It would seem the obvious solution."
"The men aren't going to like this. They've been a long way with those suits. Remember that we and the suits are symbiotic."
"The men would probably like it even less if someone else disposed of the suits."
"You've got a point there."
The men didn't like it. The announcement was received by a hard silence. No one cursed'and no one complained, but also no one moved. Nobody wanted to be the first. Finally Dyrkin broke the deadlock.
"He's right. They're going to have to go. They ain't working with us no more."
"Maybe it's just a delayed-action side effect of the jumps. Maybe they'll come back to normal."
"Damn it, you know that ain't true. They've left us, and we've got to dump them. They could turn on us."
Rance quickly took control before the mood could alter. "Load them on a pallet and let's get it over with. Dyrkin, pick a squad to take care of this."
To his complete surprise, Dyrkin turned on him with something close to a snarl.
"No way, Rance. Each man does his own. As each man gets his radiation armor, he goes to the lock and blows out the old suit."
Rance nodded. "As you want it."
It became a solemn procession. The radiation armor was brought down to the messdecks. It had been hastily sprayed black so those wearing it wouldn't present too obvious a target. Each man in turn received his issue, fitted the suit, and checked the servos. Then he picked up the black blob of dormant suit and started the long walk to the nearest lock. Each would pause for a mo ment as his suit floated into the void, and then he'd turn and make the walk back.
Communications started coming in from the asteroid. The survival of one of the Anah cluster seemed to be causing some degree of excitement. There were constant demands for information. The ship sent a broken, ragged signal of modulated static, as if the communication equipment were much more badly damaged than it really was. A number of shuttle craft came out to meet the Anah 5, but they seemed content to remain at a distance, merely inspecting the disabled newcomer. The asteroid base appeared to be accepting the slowly limping ship on face value. The men moved into the lower drop bay from where they were going to launch their attack. They were very quiet. Rance had worried that the discarding of the suits would have had a dampening effect on the men's spirits, but it seemed to have had quite the opposite result. They were quiet but deadly. They were fighting for themselves, and they weren't going to let anything stop them.
The asteroid was starting to broadcast warnings. They wanted the Anah 5 to stand off in deep space. Shuttles would be sent to take off the crew. This was understandable. Those on the asteroid had no idea of the levels of damage. For all they knew, the ship might be five minutes away from blowing itself to atoms. The Anah 5 ignored the warnings and kept on coming. It went right on broadcasting the unintelligible signal. The messages from the recstar began to sound more than a little spooked. The two bodies were now in visual contact. On the asteroid, they had to be entertaining the idea that the Anah 5 wasn't capable of stopping and was going to run right into them. The warnings started to be a good deal more threatening. There was a first tentative mention of force, although it was actually too late for that. The ship and the asteroid were now so close that neither could damage the other without doing damage to itself. The asteroid population must have been wondering if anybody was left alive on the cluster ship or if it was just a drifting hulk sending an automatic signal. The interpreter seemed to derive a lot of entertainment from imagining the state of mind of what was now being thought of as the enemy. It seemed to take a positive delight in directing the overall operation.
A more serious warning came in.
"Reverse spatial motion or we will be forced to deflect you with our heavy weapons. Please acknowledge."
This was the moment to change signal. A prepared message was sent. The deliberately desperate voice of lantere cut through the storm of jagged static. The fac that it was a lantere sending should have alerted the base to. the fact that things were very wrong on the cluster ship. The big crustaceans were natural enginee
rs, but they never operated ship-to-ship communication.
"We are reducing spatial motion as best we can. W are coming round onto your darkside. It will be a clo dock."
The static took over again, but the Anah 5 did begin to slow as the two bodies came closer and closer. It still looked as if they were going to touch, but then, at the very last moment, the cluster ship started to curv around the asteroid.
"Ground troops stand by."
In the drop bay, the fighting men sealed their armor, concentrating fixedly on the small details rather than speculating about what was to come. The lights went out, and the bay's atmosphere was allowed to whistle into space. The eerie, drawn-out noise scraped on their already stretched nerves. The Anah 5 entered the asteroid's shadow. The bay doors open. Below them was the dark expanse of rock with its clusters of steadily shining lights.
"Let's hit it! By the numbers."
The first troopers launched themselves into the void. They jumped in groups of five, five men clinging to a soft, lozenge-shaped floater. The nulgrav floater compensated for the opposing gravity fields of the ship and the asteroid and sank lightly and silently toward the rec-star's surface. The troopers' one advantage was that the asteroid had no appreciable ground defenses. In normal combat, such a heavily armed installation would have been reduced to red-hot slag before ground forces could hope to set foot on it. The Therem had never planned for piracy. The men of the Anah 5 were able to float down shielded from all sensors by the bulk of the ship. As long as they observed helmet silence, their presence would not be detected until they actually entered the base.
Rance was in the fourth party to drop. Renchett, Dyrkin, and Hark were hanging onto the same floater. Rance was coming to rely on these veterans, and he wanted them beside him on what might conceivably be their last mission. The first three groups touched down without mishap. In the final moments, the ground seemed suddenly to rush up at them. Rance told himself that it was only an illusion and braced himself. They touched with only the slightest of shocks. He detached his armor from the webbing on the floater and looked around. Men were drifting down all around him. Above them, the Anah 5 filled the sky. Using only hand signals, he started moving the men who were already down out of the immediate landing area. One group's floater, when it was only a few meters off the ground, did a sudden flip and came down on its edge. There were muffled curses in everyone's communicator. It was a breach, but Rance hoped that nobody on the asteroid would notice the brief, random noise.
The Anah 5's damaged subbrain had yielded only a partial plan of the recstar. Rance displayed their immedi ate surroundings on his visor. If they'd come down in the right place, there should be a main exhaust vent over on their right. He peered into the darkness. It was only after a minute or so that he spotted the containing wall. It was time to break helmet silence.
"Bearing 351 on dead reckoning. That's our back door; let's go!"
The men moved forward, pulling the weightless floaters behind them. They were forced to traverse giant conduits and other enormous pieces of equipment. Everything on the outside of the asteroid was so huge that the men started to feel like microscopic parasites crawling across the outside of something that they hardly even understood. The containing wall around the vent was a little more human in scale. It was smooth, circular, and maybe fifty meters high. As they approached it, Rance issued another order.
"Grappels forward."
There were three puffs of smoke as grappling hooks were fired up and over the wall. The trailing lines would be used to haul men and floaters up and over the wall. At the top they'd strap on to the floaters again and descend slowly down the vent. Everything went well until they started dropping down the wide shaft. A man lost his hold on his floater and tumbled headlong into the vent. Even in the asteroid's low natural gravity, he was certain to be killed by the fall. As he fell, he screamed. The dragged-out howl echoed blood-chillingly in everyone's helmet. If anyone on the asteroid had spotted them and was monitoring, he'd be scanning the whole area by now.
The schematic didn't show how deep the tunnel went. Rance knew from the previous visit that the human environment was pretty deep inside this particular installation. On the other hand, if he went too low, he'd risk the chance of his whole force being sucked to their deaths at the core. At regular intervals, the vent intersected with smaller lateral tunnels. Rance let five of these go by, and then he decided that they'd gone low enough.
"Steer your floaters into the next tunnel and set down."
The pitch-dark tunnel ran on for what seemed like forever. It had to be some kind of emergency runoff from the power system. There wasn't enough heat in the bone-cold rock to register on their redscopes, and they had to rely on their helmet lights. Not that there was too much to see. The walls were smooth and unbroken rock, and the troopers had walked for some minutes before they came to an inspection port. Rance motioned for the main force to hold back. He waved to Hark to check it out. Hark examined the door and indicated that it was locked from the inside.
"Burn through it, but be careful. There's probably atmosphere on the other side."
Weapons flared in the dark, throwing the men around the door into stark relief. After a few seconds, the door blew back in a rush of pressure.
"They know about us now, for sure. We've got to move fast from now on."
Rance put five troopers through the lock. Escaping air shrieked past them. When they drew no fire, he sent another five through, then he went through himself, followed by Dyrkin, Renchett, and Hark. The ten men had fanned out into a semicircle around the blown port. The lights were on in a perfectly ordinary, if deserted, corridor. The only thing that wasn't strictly normal was the flashing of pressure-drop alarms. The section of corridor had undoubtedly sealed itself, and if nothing else, a repair crew would be on its way.
"Benset, get the rest of the men through into this section." Rance looked at the longtimers. "You three come with me. We've got to find an elevator."
They moved up the corridor at a run. As Rance had expected, they quickly came to a closed emergency door.
Hark grinned. "You want me to get it?" Rance nodded.
Hark took down the inspection cover. "How come I suddenly became the door expert?" "You've got the touch."
There was another rush of escaping pressure as Hark bypassed the automatic safety control. The doors opened on a surprised dauquoi repair crew that took one look at the armed and armored men, turned tail, and wriggled away.
Renchett raised his MEW, but Rance stopped him.
"Let them go."
"There goes the element of surprise."
"They still don't know what we're doing here."
The elevators were three sections on. Rance sent Dyrkin back to bring up the rest of the men while the others waited tensely beside the bank of elevators.
"We can't have too much longer. Somebody's going to be along to investigate any minute."
Men started streaming down the corridor. Rance used the first to arrive as a defensive circle around the elevator banks. Then he left Benset in charge of loading the rest of the men onto elevators and rode down on the first one. No word of the attack had come down to the women's level. As the doors opened, the troopers confronted a small group of women routinely waiting for the elevators. With no major ships docked at the asteroid, it was a quiet period in the recreation area. The women, who were plainly and functionally dressed, stared at the men in amazement.
"What are you supposed to be?"
In all his planning, it hadn't occurred to Rance that he'd actually have to explain himself to the women.
"We've come to take you out of here."
"You're out of your mind. You're only going to get yourselves killed."
"Where did you come from?"
"We need to talk to someone in charge."
"The shores will be here soon enough."
Hark quickly stepped in. "We need to see a Venerable Madame."
Rance glanced at him. "You kn
ow about this stuff?"
Hark nodded. The women looked at each other uncertainly. A small crowd had started to gather.
"This is going to end in a lot of trouble," one of the women said.
"This could end with us getting free of the Therem," Hark said.
A second elevator full of men arrived, and then a third. The women's attitude began to change. A plump young woman with short-cropped blond hair stepped up to Hark.
"I'll take you to Conchela."
"Conchela is a Venerable Madame?"
"You know Conchela?"
"I did once."
Hark felt a little sick. He had forgotten about the time distortion. Conchela would be an old woman by now. He wasn't sure how he felt about seeing her. Rance was starting to look anxious. Men were pouring out of the elevators, and they had nowhere to go.
"Can we speed this up?" Rance said.
He and Hark took a squad of men and followed the blond girl. The rest of the troopers took up a position by the elevators. The advance walked between the avenues of closed and empty booths. The quiet, deserted area had a strange effect on the men. They looked around nervously, almost as if they were trespassing. Conchela's home was a good deal larger than the one to which she had taken Hark. Presumably a Venerable Madame had certain privileges. She still crafted jewelery, however. As Hark and Rance came through the entrance, Conchela had her back to them. She was wearing a simple kaftan. She turned and stepped back in shock.
"Have you come to arrest me?"
Hark quickly removed his helmet. "It's me. Har-kaan." She sadly shook her head. "Don't you men ever age.
She wasn't exactly old, maybe in her mid-fifties and well preserved. Her hair was a natural gray, and there was a strength about her face and bearing that spoke of intelligence and authority. Maybe, by becoming a leader of women, Hark thought, she was fulfilling a destiny that had started when she had served in the Lodge of the Spirits.
When Rance had explained the situation, Conchela wasted no time with unnecessary questions or expressions of disbelief.