Argonaut Affair tw-7

by Simon Hawke

  The Rangers fanned out as they clocked in, circling round the palace complex from both sides and firing their weapons as they ran. The plasma blasts whumped against the walls, imploding them and bursting into washes of blue flame. A black garbed figure came diving out of one of the second-story windows as the palace erupted into flame. He hit the ground in a hard and awkward roll and came up running, favoring his side and holding his left shoulder as he ran.

  "Benedetto!" Delaney shouted. "Come on, he's heading for the robot!"

  "For the what?" yelled Curtis, but Delaney was already sprinting after Benedetto with Andre running behind him. Deciding that two of them were sufficient to catch one man, Curtis turned his attention back to the assault. They were only a handful, one small unit, and they had to hit hard and keep on hitting hard until the Temporal Counter-Insurgency battalion clocked in from Galveston and came through the confluence to reinforce them. With any luck, they'd already have the job done by the time the T.C. I, strike force came on the scene. They had to get in and get out fast. The last thing they needed was for S.O.G. units to show up.

  As Curtis and his squad moved in, a howling mob of half-naked men came streaming out from the compound, bearing down on them. Curtis blinked several times. They seemed to have about six arms apiece.

  "Fire!" Curtis shouted.

  His squad opened up on the attackers. They kept on coming, living torches running at them until they fell to the ground as lifeless hunks of charred meat. "Sir," said one of his men, "did those guys have-"

  "Never mind," said Curtis. "Just fry anything that moves."

  "Or flies?" the soldier said.

  Curtis looked up. "What in the name of…"

  Screeching like banshees, the harpies came diving down, talons extended.

  Moreau struggled to his knees, his face a mask of blood. Drakov was gone. The entire side of the building was demolished and the laboratory was in flames.

  "All for nothing," Moreau said, wiping the blood away from his eyes with his one good hand and gazing about him through the smoke at all the ruin. "Drakov!" he shouted. "Drakov!"

  The flames were coming closer and he crawled away, coughing from the smoke.

  "You should have killed me, Nikolai," he said. "You should have killed me while you had the chance."

  He struggled to his feet and lurched out of the laboratory into the hall. He could feel the plasma blasts slamming into the building and he knew there was very little time left. He staggered into Drakov's quarters and half collapsed onto his desk. He pawed through the papers, finally finding what he sought. He tucked the files beneath his arm and rummaged through the drawers, seeking the spare warp disc he knew Drakov kept there for emergencies. He knew it would be programmed with escape coordinates. He had little doubt that Drakov had already made good his escape. Wherever he had gone, Moreau would follow.

  The entire room shook as a plasma blast hit the outside wall and the ceiling fell in. Moreau's hand closed around the warp disc as the debris struck and knocked him to the floor. The whole room was in flames. Half buried under the wreckage, wincing from the pain in his broken wrist, Moreau reached for the controls.

  The fall had broken Benedetto's shoulder, but it hadn't slowed him down much. He knew well what to expect from the soldiers of the Temporal Corps and there was no chance to clock out. When the plasma blasts had hit the building, he was blown right through the window and the fall, in addition to breaking his shoulder, had shattered his warp disc. The only chance he had left now was Talos.

  Trying to ignore the pain, he sprinted hard for the harbor. He glanced over his shoulder and saw two figures running after him. He swore and redoubled his efforts, but they were gaining on him. A plasma blast exploded on the ground to his left. Seconds later, another one hit to his right, directly ahead of him. They had him bracketed. The next one would find its target. He started to run serpentine to throw off their aim. It was the only thing to do, but it resulted in their closing the distance between them.

  He reached the giant robot straddling the harbor, with plasma fire exploding all around him. One blast hit right next to him, close enough to throw him to the ground and set his clothes on fire. Gasping with pain, he ripped off his burning shirt and threw himself through the doorway in the robot's ankle, stabbing with burned fingers at the controls which would shut it. As it started to slide to, two plasma blasts struck it in rapid succession, the wash of blue flame coming through the slowly closing opening. He threw himself back just in time. Several more blasts hit the door and he saw molten bronze flowing at the bottom of the crack. There was no way out now. He was sealed in.

  He half ran, half staggered up the metal stairs toward the control room, pulling himself along with his right hand grasping the railing. "Bastards!" he swore, as he climbed the stairs, "fucking bastards!"

  Finn and Andre fired charge after charge into the door in the giant robot's ankle. They saw the bronze soften and start to flow, but even the intense heat of the plasma charges was not enough to blast the door open.

  "It's no good," said Delaney. "The door's melted shut."

  "Then he's not going anywhere," said Andre.

  "Don't bet on that," Delaney said, tersely. From inside the robot, they heard the sounds of machinery and hydraulics starting to move.

  Curtis had posted guards around the perimeter of the transit area, but he needn't have bothered. The terrified population had fled in terror from them. The ground was littered with the corpses of Moreau's creatures and with the bodies of several of the Rangers who had been killed in the suicidal attack of the harpies. Drakov's ruined palace was ablaze. It was all over by the time the first wave of the T.C. I, strike force battalion started to clock in. Curtis approached Col. Cooper, the commander of the strike force.

  "Looks like you people didn't need us," Cooper said. "You seem to have the situation well in hand."

  "We had no idea what kind of resistance we might have encountered, Colonel," Curtis said. "There was a — "

  "Jesus H. Christ on a crutch!" said Cooper, looking beyond him. "What in the hell is that!" Curtis turned around. "Holy shit!" Finn and Andre were running at top speed toward them, while behind them, gaining with every massive stride, was Tales. The bronze giant, with Benedetto at the controls, was moving slowly, awkwardly, but with the length of its strides, it didn't need to move fast. Servomotors within it whined with each giant stride. The huge arm lifted the bronze obelisk of a sword.

  "Skirmish line!" Cooper shouted out to his battalion. "Fire at will!"

  A hundred plasma rifles opened up on the advancing robot, wreathing it in an aura of blue flame and blackening the bronze. Benedetto was blinded by the plasma fire, but he remained at the controls, keeping the robot advancing toward the soldiers. He felt the intense heat building up as the relentless barrage continued. The bronze began to soften.

  "I knew I should have installed cannon in this ridiculous contraption," Benedetto said, grimacing with pain. The controls were growing hot to the touch. "I'm going to be cooked alive like some damned lobster." He slammed a control lever forward, but the robot arm holding the sword remained immobile, the servomotors damaged by the plasma fire. "Damn it!" Benedetto swore. He reached for the level controlling the arm holding the shield.

  "Maintain fire!" Cooper shouted as the strike force and the Ranger unit poured everything they had into the robot. Molten metal was now running down its exterior like hot wax flowing down a candle. The robot's impassive features sagged. Molten bronze fell to the ground in globs with each step it took.

  Inside the control room, it was like an oven. The interior walls were starting to glow red. Benedetto's skin was turning red and blistering. His hands were being crisped as they worked the controls. "Christ!" he screamed, in agony. "CHRIST!"

  The left arm extended from the giant's body and then bent at the elbow back toward the robot's chest. Benedetto was blind now, but he knew the soldiers were somewhere in front of him. With his last ounce of strength, he releas
ed the locks holding the shield in place and then slammed forward the lever controlling the arm.

  "Look out!" Curtis shouted.

  The massive bronze shield spun toward them like some flying saucer. The soldiers scattered, but the shield ploughed into the ground where they stood, crushing a number of them beneath hundreds of pounds of superheated metal.

  "Concentrate your fire on the legs!" yelled Cooper. "Slag that fucker!"

  Benedetto's hair burst into flame. He screamed as his skin crackled and the fluid ran out of it. He smashed his head repeatedly against the interior wall of the control room, then staggered back and fell over the railing, landing hard on his back in the room below. The impact snapped his spine. Overhead, at the dome of the robot, the huge V-20 warp disc came loose from its fastenings and plummeted down, crushing him as it smashed into pieces.

  "He's going down!" Delaney shouted. "Run for it!"

  The left leg gave way and the robot, melting like solder, slowly toppled. Its shadow fell over the soldiers as they ran and then it slammed into the ground hard enough for the shock of the impact to knock several of those closest to it off their feet.

  Delaney slowly picked himself up off the ground. "The bigger they are-" he said.

  Steiger glared at him. "Don't say it."

  EPILOGUE

  "I still say Curtis was right," said Steiger. "This was a dumb idea."

  "You didn't have to come," Delaney said.

  "Andre, will you talk some sense into this guy?" said Steiger. "It's over, for Christ's sake! What's the point of running this risk? What if we run into S.O.G. agents?"

  "He's right, Creed," Andre said. "You didn't have to come, you know."

  "All right, all right," said Steiger. "So I wanted to find out how it turned out, too. But what if we've timed it wrong? What if we-"

  "We've clocked back in months after the Argonauts should have returned," Delaney said. "We should know soon if there was any significant disruption or if the S.O.G. has managed to adjust the situation. We did have a mission to complete, you know. I want to find out if-"

  "There it is!" said Andre, pointing.

  The Argo was riding at anchor in the harbor of Iolchos. "All right," said Steiger, "so we find out what happened and then we're out of here. The sooner we get back through that confluence, the better I'll like it. Our report's going to look bad enough as it is. If General Forrester finds out about this, he'll hand our asses to us."

  "Look down there," said Andre, pointing to an area where the framework of a ship was being erected. "Isn't that Argus?"

  "So it is," Delaney said. "Come on."

  The shipwright was astonished to see them. "Fabius! Creon! Atalanta! By the gods, we thought you were dead!" He clapped his arms around each of them in turn.

  "We came close enough to Hades, old friend," said Delaney. "We managed to escape the dead warriors of Colchis, but when the ship left without us, we had to make our way back over land. It was a long, hard journey, but we had to come back and find out what became of all of you."

  "It has been a long time," Argus said. He shouted to one of his workmen. "Demetrios! Take over for me! I will return later." He turned to the temporal agents. "Come, we will sit down to dinner and we shall have some wine and I will tell you all about it."

  Inside the modest house close to the wharves, they sat and listened as Argus told them what became of the Argonauts after they left Colchis.

  "We thought we had made good our escape from Colchis," Argus said, "but Aietes sent his fleet to pursue us. For days we fled from them, but they kept on closing the distance between us until finally we saw that we could not escape and we would have to fight. But Medea tricked her brother, Apsyrtus, the commander of the Colchin fleet, into coming ashore with all his captains and sitting down to a parley. She made him promise to let us go if we gave up the golden fleece without a fight, but while she met with her brother and his captains, we had already come ashore. We fell upon them and killed every last one of them, just as Medea had planned. Then, before the Colchin fleet could recover from the loss of its commanders, we slipped away from them in the dead of night. When Jason saw Medea standing there, covered with her brother's blood, I tell you, such a look came upon his face that it was as if he were seeing her for the first time. His passion cooled somewhat after that.

  "We sailed on until we came to the island of Circe, the sister of King Aietes. Medea insisted that we stop there and we could not see why, but it seemed a pleasant island and Jason wished to please her. We came ashore and supped at Circe's table. I tell you, such a woman I have never seen before and hope never to see again. All the gold and gemstones in the world, and she wore many, would never make up for such ugliness. A fat, pustulant old hag she was, and such a smell came off her! I tell you, one look at that woman could turn a man into a swine!

  "Well, there we sat, trying to avoid gazing at her so that we could keep down our food, and Medea begins to rail at her, to shout about all the abuse that she had suffered at her hands- and I never did quite understand what this abuse was, unless it was that as Aietes' sister, she stood higher than Medea at the Colchin court-and to shout how she would be far greater now that she would be queen in Iolchos with the golden fleece. Well, not surprisingly, Circe did not take kindly to this loud display and she drove us from her table and her island, both. So, we set sail once more, Jason even more silent than before. But not Medea.

  "She began to make plans for the palace we were to build for her in Iolchos and she had me design a pleasure barge upon which she would cruise between the islands. Well, then a storm came and kept us busy and her quiet for a time. Of course, when the storm had passed away, she blamed us for her discomfort and demanded that we provide smooth sailing from then on. Still, we all tried to be patient.

  "Well, we did not encounter such adventures upon our return journey as we did when you were with us, only that there were other storms which we survived-thanks to the lessons you had taught me, Fabius, about sailing in a storm-but then when we were drawing close to home, we came upon an island where we found the fallen body of a giant made from bronze. The bronze was molten, as if this giant had been placed within some fantastic forge and then left out upon the ground to harden once again. His sword was raised, as if he had been fighting for his life, but the flames which had been cast at him overcame him. There was also a ruined palace on this island, a palace which had been razed to the ground by fire, and we learned from the people of the island that a powerful god had lived there once, and that this god had somehow offended the other gods so that they came and fought with him and there was a mighty war in which this god of the island was defeated.

  "Jason took all this to be an omen and he turned to Idmon and asked him what it meant, if it was possible that these gods had fought over our voyage. He asked Idmon if he had any premonitions about what his future held in store for him. Idmon tried to look into the future, but as you know, Idmon does not always see things clearly. He looked disturbed and told Jason that he had an intuition that Jason would be happy, but he did not see him upon the throne of Iolchos. At this, Medea lost her temper and called him an old fool and other things more vile, insisting that of course Jason would be on the throne in Iolchos, how else could she live but as a queen. Jason said nothing. It was on this island, also, that Hercules and Hylas parted company with us. Hercules looked disturbed when he heard about this god who had once lived upon the island and he said that there was a strange feeling he had about the place, a sort of kinship to it, and he would stay there for a while, rest from the voyage, and then travel on with Hylas to seek his fate and fortunes elsewhere. We wished him luck and sailed on as he and Hylas waved to us from shore. I have not seen either of them since.

  "We stopped once more at Pelion, but when we went ashore, we found no trace of Chiron. The cave was just as we remembered it, but the centaur was no longer there. It was deserted. Jason was saddened by this. We waited for a long time, but Chiron never returned and finally we continu
ed on.

  "And then, the night before we were to make safe harbor here in Iolchos-for I knew we were already in familiar waters — a most peculiar thing occurred. Medea had taken to sleeping with the golden fleece and while we were anchored offshore for the night, in a protected cove not far from Pelion, I was awakened with the others by a fearful noise. It seems that Pelias had placed a spy within our midst and that spy was none other than Orpheus, the last man I would have suspected, even had I thought there was a traitor among us. He had been promised a great reward and a post as the poet at the court of Pelias if he could contrive to sink the ship or to kill Jason or to somehow stop him from fulfilling the conditions of the quest. "Well, Orpheus did not have the stomach for committing murder, so he had waited to see what would occur that would give him an opportunity, yet he did not act because, he claimed, he had come to look upon us all as friends and, I think, although he did not admit it, because he was afraid. Yet now that the time had come when we would be sailing into Iolchos on the next day, he knew he had to act or else forfeit the reward. He did not believe that Pelias would honor the promise he had made to Jason and he believed that all of us would be set upon and killed if we came back to Iolchos with the golden fleece.

  "While Medea slept, Orpheus had stolen into the cabin and taken the golden fleece. But it was heavy, as you know, and in dragging it out of the cabin, he made some noise and woke Medea. We found them both on deck, with the golden fleece between them, Medea screaming like as not to wake the dead and beating him about the head and shoulders with such fierceness that it was all poor Orpheus could do to cover his head and shield himself from her. Well, when we found them that way and Theseus pulled Medea off him, Orpheus cried and confessed everything to us. Medea demanded that we kill the traitor and Theseus looked to Jason to see if that was what he wished, but Jason said not a single word. Instead, he bent down, and with a great grunt of effort, picked up the golden fleece and threw it overboard.