Juanita Coulson - [Children of the Stars 04]

by Past of Forever (epub)

  “Meej see them fellow come soon soon! See them fellow die!” the N’lac piped, waving his little club valiantly.

  A red-skinned, golden-eyed David, ready to slay his Goliath!

  In fact, compared to even a tall humanoid like Praedar, the indications were that every Evil Old One was a Goliath.

  But would the famous legend follow the same happy-ending pattern this time around?

  The data feed showed that pressure in the octagonal matter transmitting chamber was near the maximum feasible for its structure. Dan slammed shut his helmet’s face plate and cued the dredge. The giant rig trembled beneath him, straining to be released. Readouts leaned into the red. “Not yet. We give Praedar his crack at them first. This is immortality for him, whether he lives or dies...”

  Praedar and Meej were waiting, two humanoid Davids.

  Telltale scale lines showed a momentary hiccup in the matter-transmitting chamber’s energy field. Armilly’s monitors indicated that the latticework box was bulging, its metalline sides stressed.

  Had those organic, self-repairing processes combined as well as they should have with the fiuidics elements? Maybe they’d lost some of their efficiency after two millennia. In that case, there might be no need for the injector gun, Praedar’s anti-esp device, or the dredge. A transportee materializing in the chamber could be met by an overtaxed terminal and sudden death as the box collapsed.

  Why not wish for a magic wand, while he was at it?

  Praedar provided a steady vocal anchor to Dan and other observers on the outside. “... The gases are filling the dome. They do not appear to affect Meej adversely yet, nor am I having breathing difficulties..

  “Shut your helmet, dammit,” Sheila muttered on an adjacent audio channel. “Quit using your lungs as guinea pigs.”

  Kat chimed in. “You’ve picked up Dan’s penchant for mangled metaphors. She’s right, Praedar. Don’t be foolhardy.”

  Praedar didn’t break the flow of his tour-guide description, but he did take their advice, securing the pressure suit’s face plate. “Extensive exposure to such an atmosphere would impede other humanoid life forms, as would this pressure level. However, I am not noticeably stressed, as I believe the medical data will prove.” “Cocky,” Dan growled, envying the Whimed’s awesome strength and his species’ evolutionary advantages over Homo sapiens.

  “Your assessment of the time factor was quite accurate, Dan,” Praedar said. “It would seem the cycle has neared...”

  Something was happening.

  Popping noises and a peculiar hiss overrode the audio’s carrier wave. Praedar, unruffled, announced, “I can see a form. It is amorphous, indistinct—in sections. Interesting. Transmission is apparently not instantaneous. Note that.”

  “Okay, okay,” Dan said through clenched teeth, his hands poised on the dredge’s controls.

  Meej and Praedar were finally getting a chance to meet the enemy face to face.

  No, not face to face. There was no face, in humanoid terms. There was a swirling mass, coalescing in the octagonal box. The huge body gradually replaced those little hovering solar systems, a slimy, glistening blob encased in a chitinous dark exoskeleton. No true features showed, only randomly placed insectoid eyes shimmering near the being’s middle. It looked fragile, tendrilled. Things undulated sinuously, like alien hair.

  Dan’s gorge rose. He wanted to look away, but didn’t dare. The reality was far worse than his nightmares. This was the N’lacs’ foe, fed on the food of nonanthropomorphic gods and become a hideous, living giant.

  Praedar was still speaking for the records. “My measurements suggest certain esper emanations. I am activating the oryuz and preparing to fire the sedation darts. The alien has assumed complete form at twenty-one oh eight, local meridian time ...”

  Monitors spewed figures. Data poured from the dome to the complex’s labs and storage banks—the truth, undeniable.

  It was an Old One in the flesh, the species Praedar insisted must not be called evil, because its motivations could not be accurately compared to those of humanoid races.

  In Dan’s mind’s eye, Chuss’ bloody corpse hurled a defiant contradiction of that idea. That excrescence in the matter transmitter was evil.

  “We’re less than insects to them,” Dan whispered. “Unfeeling toys, servo hands made of organic materials .. .”

  The Old One swayed, almost filling the towering, boxy “altar” within the ancient temple. It was a personification of malevolent danger.

  Meej shrieked and clutched his head. The N’lac had been lifting his club, moving to strike at his brother’s killer. Now, unseen claws ripped at him, smashing the e.t. to the floor. Meej writhed in agony.

  Nanoseconds later the same force hit Praedar. The Whimed staggered, gasping, his flow of scientific description interrupted.

  “Fire the injector gun!” Sheila bellowed. “Now!”

  Praedar did. He held the pain at bay, his oryuz device shielding him, for the moment. The med stunner spat its supply of darts, point blank. Zoom lenses showed the needles embedded deeply in the quivering, exoskeletoned monster. Dosage levels read empty. The Old One had absorbed the entire charge.

  To absolutely no effect, except to accelerate the Old One’s assault on its humanoid gadflies!

  Meej jerked and danced pathetically. He raked at his skin, drawing blood. Praedar dropped the injector gun and grabbed at his helmet, undogging seals, pulling it off. The oryuz, now useless, encircled his erect crest as the Whimed screamed, his back arched, and he began tearing off his protective gear. In moments he’d be flaying himself, as Meej was doing.

  Near the ramp, below the hill, in the complex, and in the village, humanoids shrieked as a massive mind attack swept over them. Dan felt tendrils probing his mind, twisting, torturing.

  A single Old One, wielding incomprehensible esper weapons, was crushing the will of potential slaves.

  The N’lacs, caught totally unaware, had never had a chance.

  Maybe... just maybe... this time, forewarned and forearmed, humanoids could fight back.

  “Hang on, hang on,” Dan pleaded, tears of pain filling his eyes as those intrusive, invisible knives lanced at his gray matter. “Praedar! Hang on! Get Meej! Move! To your right! TO YOUR RIGHT!"

  He didn’t wait to see if they did. He slammed the dredge into full engage. Fifteen metric tons of vehicle, its treaders whining in overdrive, thundered forward.

  Readouts pegged all the way into the red. Power systems keened.

  Dan was nearly hurled out of the cab. He continued to roar at the monitors. “Move to the right, Praedar, move to the right!”

  Then he was flattened, helpless, sprawling, barely able to breathe. Dan gazed dumbly at the screens. Had Praedar heard him? Could the Whimed somehow find the will and strength to act?

  Yes! Yes! Praedar tugged at Meej, edging to the right.

  Slowly... so slowlyl

  Time moved in nanoseconds.

  Dan whimpered, on fire, roasting on the Old One’s esper spit...

  It didn’t matter. The dredge was on automatic. And there was no leisure for that alien to absorb and control the intricacies of humanoid technology. It had disabled the driver, but the dredge was impervious to its assault.

  The dome loomed, dominating Dan’s universe. It seemed to hurtle toward him as the dredge plunged along its preset course.

  Fumes boiling from its cowling, the rig smashed through the curving wall and into the dome, through the lattice-walled chamber—and its occupant.

  A tiny, still-functional fragment of Dan’s mind prayed: Please, let the alien gases cancel out the oxygen factor. No fire. Please, don’t let there be afire ...

  Its kinetic energy drained, the dredge lurched to a stop with its intake hoses buried in the opposite wall of the ancient building.

  Dan was hit with a barrage of ricocheting debris. Chunks of metalostone hammered at the cab, shattering the screens and pelting him. Steel-sharp shards, puncturing the pressure suit and cu
tting the face and body within.

  The alien esper tentacles were gone!

  He was free!

  Gobbets of still-pulsing viscous flesh and exoskeleton clung to him, mingling with Dan’s blood and the tatters of his suit.

  Groaning, he turned his head, squinting through a seething fog of powdered stonite, metalline, and alien.

  Beyond the spot where the transmitter had stood—to its right —lay two bodies. One was tall, lean, and crested. The other was small and red-skinned. Both were bleeding. And both were moving—feebly, as Dan was, in obvious distress—but moving.

  They were alive.

  And the Old One wasn’t.

  Shouts, outside the jagged hole in the dome wall, came from a rescue squad. Sheila was giving orders and assembling a crew to assist the wounded.

  Fine! Let them take over now.

  Praedar had done his job, buying them time. And Dan had done his. They’d earned a rest. He abandoned his struggle against unconsciousness and sank in dreamless—nightmareless—darkness.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The Long View

  There was a dull ache in Dan’s head, his arms, and his legs. A haze of soft noises and voices came from an adjacent area. The solidity of a bunk or cot was beneath him.

  He was swimming in free fall. Where was his safety tether? He had to get back to...

  Not to the ship. It was gone.

  To home, N’lac Valley, and his friends.

  Where was that tether?

  He had hold of it. It felt remarkably like a hand, strong and masculine. He struggled to get his eyes open, then winced in the sudden glare of bright room lights.

  The face looking down at him was his own, grown older. Dazed and blinking, he said faintly, “Adam?”

  “It’s about time you woke up,” his brother replied. The tone wasn’t nearly as stem as Dan remembered, and the big blond officer sitting beside the cot was grinning. “Whitcomb said she thought keeping you sedated this long assisted the healing, but that you’d mended enough.” The Commander took a deep breath.

  “What the hell were you trying to do? Be this generation’s Morgan McKelvey?”

  Morgan, their grandfather, crippled in a failed FTL experiment and terribly burned by alien energies...

  Dan’s universe snapped back into sharp focus. He hurt. It was a muted, all-over ache, though, not the searing agony of bums. He struggled to sit up. Adam helped, steadying him until the trembling in Dan’s muscles eased.

  “Not... not Morgan. There wasn’t a fire, was there?” Dan asked.

  “Not according to the footage I’ve watched,” Adam confirmed. He leaned back, studying the younger man. “That was an incredible stunt you and luxury pulled. You’re both due for the highest commendation Terra and Whimed can give you and medals from the other sectors, as well.”

  “Praedar? How is he? How’s Meej?”

  “Both alive,” a familiar, sassy female voice said. Sheila entered the room, wielding a med scanner, checking Dan out. “Not that the three of you have any right to be. Fom! You heal fast! You’re a credit to Joe’s and my efforts.”

  Dan groaned, rubbing the back of his neck. “I feel as if the dredge fell on top of me.”

  Memories! He brushed reflexively at the invalid’s jumper he was wearing, half expecting loathsome scraps of the Old One’s flesh to come off on his fingers. There was none.

  “Yeah, you were a mess,” Sheila said. “All of you. I told you that you were going to need parameds.” She patted her racks of supplies. “Good thing, though, that the Commander’s chief surgeon came here with all the latest mending goodies—for Terrans and other humanoids.” The blonde sighed tiredly. “The important thing is that you’re in a lot better shape than our late, unlamented invader. Rosie and Hope have their work cut out for them—trying to reconstruct that oversized glob of ugly..

  “It... it seems like something that happened to someone else,” Dan said. “Something I saw on a vid.”

  “You can watch it on vids,” Adam noted. “Your expedition’s vids, and the news tri-dis those reporters put together. It’s the best evidence package ever. Everything is on holo-modes.” He leaned forward, pressing Dan’s shoulder. “You’re going to be famous, you and Juxury. All the data your team collected makes the Fleet’s job easier, to boot. Astrophysics division is backtracking right now, using that line-of-sight vector you figured out. We can pinpoint the area of uncharted space they came from. I’ve got our preliminary defenses in place and on the lookout. We’ll be ready for those scouting robots, if any more try to get through. And the mapping comps are searching the planetary records, checking for matter transmitter sites—now that we know what they are.”

  Relief was a stimulant. Dan managed a smile. “Sounds good, Adam. They won’t catch us off guard. Not ever again.”

  His brother shook his head in fond amazement. “Thanks to you and your scientific team.”

  Dan learned that he’d been out of it for six days. Sheila and Joe had used deep-sleep healing therapy to keep him zonked and give his injuries a chance to knit. Adam’s Space Fleet rescue squad had responded quickly to Feo’s frantic appeal; the troops had been on T-W 593 for nearly three days. By the time they’d arrived, of course, the danger was over. They were cooperating with the expedition to mop up now, using those kilotons of information gathered during the crisis.

  For another day, Dan did little but shuffle around the infirmary, getting his strength back. Praedar and Meej were doing the same, as restive as he was to be out and about. Sheila, however, was holding them down until she was certain they were suffi-ciendy recovered from their ordeal. For Dan, the confinement was softened by a steady stream of well-wishers and updates. Outside, the cleaning up was well underway. The invalids wouldn’t be participating in that, of course; they’d earned a rest.

  When Sheila gave him his conditional release on the following morning, Dan walked out of the insta-cells more or less on his own. He did welcome Adam’s supporting hand. And he was still shaky enough that he didn’t try to go far—no farther than the dud pits. Adam helped him to sit down on a stack of storage crates there, where he could soak up the sun and look around.

  Dan’s first interest was Dome Hill. The scene had changed radically. The main structure had collapsed in on itself. A Fleet vehicle, temporarily converted to civilian uses, was winching a big piece of the ruined dredge out of the debris. Scientists and military personnel were all over the area. Dan was gratified to see that the uniforms were obeying the expedition’s rules about not stepping on any “importants.” Adam’s people treated the string-marked grids the xenoarchaeologists had set up as if they were guarded by plasma weapons. Baines was in charge, this shift, and the O.D. of the hilltop squad took orders from him without question.

  Adam saw Dan’s surprise. “My personnel will coordinate with yours absolutely. This is luxury’s Settlement. We’re here to aid, not administer. Dr. Olmstead, Sheila, Hughes, Rosenthal. .. they all insisted that was the way Juxury wanted it, and Feo agreed fully. Any assistance we can offer is yours. Once Dr. Juxury’s back on his feet, we’ll be turning our total attention to the defensive astro sweep.” Commander McKelvey looked skyward, his jaw setting in a firm, angry line.

  The man in charge of the humanoid outer defenses was on the job and eager to go.

  For a moment Dan was tempted to tease and say “Iron Fist!” He didn’t. That urge to one-up his brother was gone. Ever since he’d seen Adam’s anxious face above him, the rivalry and resentment that had ruled their relationship for so long had vanished. Dan wondered if it, like so much else in his life these past years, had been a case of flawed selectivity and interpretation. From now on, he’d be better able to step into another being’s skin and try to see the universe from that angle.

  They were all humanoids. And in the long view, that had proved infinitely more important than their differences.

  Sheila had followed her patients from the complex and kept a close eye on them. Kat, t
oo, was watchful, making sure Meej didn’t overdo. Like Dan, the boy was savoring the morning. He sat by the dud pits, strawbossing as Sleeg guided N’lac adolescents in creating a magic sand painting. Colored figures showed the Old Ones and their demon robots shattering into fragments. In a large circle around them were N’lacs and offworlders, stick arms linked in a united front against the ancient enemy. In a closer triad, contacting the foe shapes, were distinctive representatives of Dan, Praedar, and Meej. And in the middle of the ruined Old One was a crude rendering of the vacuum dredge.

  “We’ll need another dredge,” Dan murmured.

  “We’ll get it,” Kat assured him. “And an entire fleet of brand-new equipment. Feo’s promised that. He’s already put through the call to the manufacturers.”

  “Yeah, I think I remember him telling me that yesterday, but I was kind of fuzzy...”

  Adam said, “Feo’s going to turn the lobbying screws on the Pan Sector Council, too. Cam Saunder’s reporters will provide the clincher—all those holo-modes. When they’re through, there won’t be a humanoid for two hundred parsecs who doesn’t know luxury’s name and yours, Dan. You’re heroes.”

  “So’s Meej,” Dan murmured. The boy glanced around at the mention, grinning happily. Straightening, Dan asked, “Where is Feo? I saw Hope, earlier today, but not him.”

  “He has departed for Pan Sector HQ Central.”

  Moving carefully, Dan turned and peered at Praedar. The Whimed was leaning on Drastil’s arm, as Dan had leaned on Adam’s. Drastil eased his boss down onto a crate opposite the one Dan sat on. The two wounded warriors regarded each other. Praedar looked five times worse than Dan felt. The protective suit, the oryuz device, and the felinoid’s stamina had saved him from death, but hadn’t shielded him completely from the effects of the Old One’s esper powers and explosive decompression. Raw gashes marked Praedar’s bony face, arms, legs, and chest. There were scabbed patches where parts of his crest used to be. His starry eyes were blackened and swollen.