Outlander 05 - Parallax Red

by James Axler

  All of them had no choice but to agree. Whereas the GRASER followed the general configurations of a cannon, the MD was a dark metal ovoid with a convex dorsal surface, about three feet long and half that in diameter. On the end facing them, they saw a round, recessed lens. Flexible metal conduits curled, twisted and bent double on all sides of it. Tubes forming concentric circles occupied the rear of the platform.

  Pointing to the tubes, Sindri said, "The MD is powered by antiprotons, concentrated and held in those storage rings around which they constantly move. When the discharge setting is activated, a stream of particles are released through that lens, a power of about two thousand joules to a three-second burst. You can squeeze about ten bursts out of it before the batteries need recharging."

  "Doesn't seem like a very reliable weapon," Grant observed.

  "In truth, it is not. Though developed as such, the MD proved more useful as a tool, to mine buried elements and ores."

  "Why did you take it to the redoubt, then?"

  Sindri shrugged. "I thought it might be needed to force egress through doors that could not be opened or passages blocked by rubble. My people had no choice but to turn it on your so-called Magistrates. It was their only defense."

  "No smaller models were ever built?" asked Kane.

  "Not that I am aware of, no." His response was glib, practiced and smooth.

  Putting the cart in reverse, Sindri backed it out of the niche and into the main corridor. He drove slowly along it, silently, as if lost in thought. Then he said, "You were lying to me, Mr. Kane. You know why the Magistrates were in the redoubt, don't you?"

  Kane didn't reply for a long, tense moment. Carefully he answered, "We aren't sure, Sindri. Believe me."

  "But you have suspicions?"

  "Yes."

  "Do me the honor of presenting them to me, please."

  Brigid said, "We suspect they were looking for some signs of us. Your people's paths and theirs crossed at the wrong time. An accident."

  Sindri's shoulders stiffened. "Why would Magistrates be looking for you? Are you criminals?"

  "In many circles on Earth," answered Brigid, "we most definitely are."

  Sindri looked at her wide-eyed. "Miss Brigid, I would have never believed it of a young lady with your refinements. Your companions yes, but not you. I can scarcely credit it."

  He smiled conspiratorially, leaning toward her. ' 'What crime did you commit? Did you punish an unfaithful lover, stab him with a jeweled letter opener on the night of the full moon, then dance about naked in his blood?"

  Brigid's eyes slitted in confusion, and she drew as far away from him as the bucket seat would allow. "What? No, of course not."

  Sindri's face fell in disappointment. "Then what did you do?"

  She tried to shrug casually. "I wanted to know a few things that weren't meant to be known."

  "Elucidate, kindly. I'm quite fascinated."

  "What the hell difference does it make?" broke in Grant harshly.

  Kane couldn't help but smile. Out of all the exiles at Cerberus, Grant was still the most sensitive about his criminal status. He didn't like to think about it and he certainly didn't enjoy talking about it.

  Sindri turned around to look him reproachfully. "It makes a very great difference to me, sir. Common ground we all share, you see. I, too, am a criminal."

  Kane angled an eyebrow at him. "What kind?"

  "Oh, the very worst, from a philosophical point of view." Sindri's fingers began tapping a nervous ditty on the steering wheel. "An idealist, a savior gone wrong. I kill in order to save."

  Grant's lips twisted in a barely repressed smirk. "Just who did you kill while saving them?"

  Sindri laughed. "Ninety-five percent of the population of Mars. I hope you don't want their names, because they've tended to slip my mind."

  The food at Sindri's table came from self-heat ration packs. The fact that he served it on plastic dinnerware didn't improve its taste, look or smell very much. Kane tried to feed some scraps of a rice-pilaf concoction to Robinson Crusoe. The cat sniffed at it to be polite, but declined to consume any. Kane couldn't blame him.

  Grant and Kane were surprised by the fiery wine Elle served them. Brigid drank a little of it, but not much.

  The table had been moved out of Sindri's improvised living quarters and into the barnlike warehouse. Trolls stood around it here and there at a respectful distance, but their black eyes never left the three outlanders at the table.

  Three females danced in the shaft of sunlight slanting in from the skylight. They moved in hobbling, graceless kick steps to the skirling and twanging of men playing pipes and harps.

  Sindri apologized effusively for the food, but felt that it would have been a shame to waste the enormous cache of it on the station.

  "The eleventh commandment of the universe," he declaimed. "Thou shalt not waste."

  Kane refrained from commenting that by following the eleventh commandment, and eating two-hundred-year-old rations, they were increasing the odds of contracting severe gastrointestinal disorders.

  Without preamble, Sindri said, "You were going to tell me how you know, and how much you know about the Danaan."

  Brigid lifted a speculative eyebrow. "We were?"

  "Our bargain, remember? I showed you around the station, provided you with its history and numerous samples of my good faith."

  "And," declared Kane, "there's plenty you haven't told us. The least of which is when we can expect to leave."

  "Shortly, Mr. Kane. You will leave shortly. Now, as to my request?"

  Brigid took a sip of the wine and repressed a shudder. "There isn't much to tell. A short time ago, in Ireland, we encountered a small group of people who claimed Danaan ancestry."

  Sindri leaned forward eagerly. "Did they have any of their technology?"

  "Not as such. A few artifacts which were regarded as holy objects, a few places they revered as Danaan power points."

  "And a harp," said Kane, casting a sidewise glance at Elle.

  Sindri stroked his chin contemplatively. "Harps. Like the ones here?"

  "No," Brigid answered. "More conventional in shape, but apparently operating on the same ultra or infrasonic principles."

  Sindri's face lit up with a startled smile. "The harmonic and disharmonic resonances? Oh, this is far better than I hoped."

  "We were told that the Danaan could manipulate hyperdimensional vortexes," said Grant. "Naturally occurring mat-trans gateways. Is there evidence of such things on Mars?"

  Sindri shook his head. "There is only evidence the Danaan wielded a mighty science, the science of energy being moved in precise harmony and in perfect balance."

  Kane's nape hairs tingled with suspicion. He knew Sindri was lying by omission. The little man was more than an accomplished dissemblerhe was a smooth and practiced actor.

  He asked, "How are you going to make it worth our while to help you and your people settle on Earth?"

  Sindri smiled coldly. "It is something beyond the limitations of descriptive language. I'll have to show you."

  "Then get to it," Grant said with a gruff impatience.

  Propping his elbows on the table, steepling his fingers beneath his chin, Sindri gave him a direct, level stare. "I shall, Mr. Grant. But there is more I have to learn from you first. Much, much more."

  "Until you start giving us more," said Kane acidly, "your education has come to a stop."

  The pipes fluting in the background suddenly fell silent, but the harps continued to sing. The tune subtly changed, the notes octaves lower than they had been.

  "I don't think so," Sindri stated calmly. "It has only just begun. I will walk in all your minds, looking at your memories, strolling here and there among the ru-ins of your broken dreams. Make no mistake about it I will find what I need."

  Sleep suddenly came over Kane in waves. He swallowed a yawn, the effort making his ears pop. His eyes began to water. He looked at his companions and saw them blinking their eyes
rapidly, straining to keep them open.

  Kane realized what was happening. The drugged wine had placed them in a relaxed, receptive state so the vibrations of the harps' notes repressed and controlled areas of the brain. The harp music spoke of sweet, slow winds and deep, comforting night. The music crooned to them, a lullaby urging them to care about nothing but the need to crawl into the embrace of sleep.

  It took all of Kane's strength to keep his head upright. He snarled and reached for Sindri with an arm of lead. He forgot he was sitting down.

  Although he was distantly aware of sliding from the chair, he was deeply asleep before he hit the floor.

  Chapter 19

  Kane didn't drift into a dreamhe dived into it, shoulder-rolling across loose sand, joining Grant behind a bullet-pocked boulder. The rock wasn't very large, but it was the only decent cover available for yards around. Hazy heat waves shimmered from the Great Sand Dunes hellzone, making visibility uncertain.

  Kane looked at the scarlet streaming from between the leg pieces of Grant's armor, like a bubbling spring of blood. The blood wasn't a bright arterial red, but the Roamer land mine had still inflicted serious lacerations, even through the polycarbonate shin guard and Kevlar undersheathing.

  Kane reached out to examine the wound, but Grant slapped his hand aside angrily. "Don't waste time on me."

  Kane hesitated. He was twenty years old and on his second dark-territory probe. He didn't know Grant very well, and as his squad leader he wasn't supposed to. All he was expected to do was obey the man's orders.

  Through helmet comm-links, they heard the shouts and curses of the other four members of the squad pinned down in the gully an eighth of a mile away. The sporadic pop-popping of muzzle loaders interwove with the deeper, steadier stutter of Sin Eaters and Copperheads on full auto.

  Grant and Kane had walked point, and Kane sensed impending danger with every step that took them farther away from the gully. Though intimidated by Grant's grim manner and seniority, he informed him of his suspicions.

  Grant ignored him, told him to shut up and march. So when armed Roamers began rising from pits they'd dug in the desert floor, tossing aside sand-covered tarps, it was almost a relief.

  The two Mags had heeled around, saw they couldn't backtrack and headed for the boulder. Grant was in the lead. When the black-powder mine detonated under the pressure of his right foot, it ruptured the surrounding earth in a gout of smoke, dirt and flame. The cracking shock wave knocked Kane down, but picked up Grant and cartwheeled him to within a few feet of the boulder.

  The primitive mine's low explosive power contained more sound and fury than death. It also provided a pall of smoke and dust, allowing Grant to crawl behind the rock. Kane held his ground, firing his Copperhead in long, left-to-right bursts, then bounded across the smoldering crater and joined Grant behind the boulder. A storm of bullets struck it, chipping off shards and bouncing away.

  Grant palmed grit from his helmet's visor and checked the Sin Eater's action. He had lost his Copperhead in the detonation. "How many do you figure?"

  "Too many," Kane replied, ducking his head as another rifle ball dug a gouge in the rock. "We're about as outnumbered as we can be."

  Grunting and wincing, Grant shifted his leg. More blood flowed out from beneath the polycarbonate shielding. Kane reached for it again.

  "Lay off," Grant snapped. "We've got no time for first aid."

  "And I've got no time to deal with a stubborn bastard who passes out from loss of blood and expects me to drag his ass back to the Sandcat." Kane's reply was as sharp as Grant's command. "I'm going to take a look at it, try to stop the bleeding. It's that simple. Sir."

  Tersely Grant said, "Be quick about it."

  Kane loosened the seal and lifted the shin guard away. Crimson spilled over his black-gloved fingers. Pushing aside the torn edges of the Kevlar, he examined the ragged, blood-pulsing gash at the base of the knee.

  "Bad?" Grant asked.

  "Not really. But not good, either. Bet it hurts like hell."

  "You've got a gift for stating the obvious," said Grant between clenched teeth.

  Kane opened up pouches on his web belt, removing field dressings and a pressure bandage.

  "I should've listened to you," Grant said. "How'd you know?"

  "Instinct. Ninety-nine percent of the time I'm wrong, but that one percent makes up for all the time I waste on paranoia."

  Grant chuckled, then bit off a groan as Kane began treating his leg.

  There was a tap on his shoulder, and Kane felt thrown out of sync with the dream reality. "I'm not really interested in this, you know," Sindri said. "I had already deduced that you and Mr. Grant were Magistrates."

  "Fuck off," Kane snapped, unscrewing a vial of sulfa and blood coagulant. "You wanted me to remember, so I'm remembering."

  Sindri clucked disapprovingly. "You've gone too far back. This is what, a dozen years ago?"

  Kane nodded, frowning, his thoughts leaping ahead. The Roamers had made a concerted rush to overwhelm their position, hurling their mines as grenades. One had detonated nearly at Kane's feet, deafening him, chunks of the hardened clay case battering him and cracking a couple of ribs. If not for his helmet's visor, he would have been blinded.

  Only their superior firepower beat off the attack, routed the Roamers, drove them into the gully and the deadly fusillade laid down by the rest of the hard-contact squad.

  A few of the ragbag bastards escaped and disabled the Sandcat. The Mags had been forced to hike a day and a night through the Colorado hellzone, Kane lugging Grant almost the entire distance.

  Toward the end of the rugged trek, Kane was so punch-drunk from exhaustion and consumed with pain from his cracked ribs that he had shot a cactus to pulpy pieces, hallucinating that it was an ambushing Roamer. It had taken him nearly a week to remove all the needles from his face.

  He looked over his shoulder at Sindri. "What is it you want me to remember, exactly?"

  The little man shrugged. "I'll know it when I see it. Now move on."

  Kane let his mind go with it. He didn't feel as if he had much of a choice.

  Thunder rumbled and the dark clouds flashed with lightning. Grant watched it, listening to the soft patter-ing of raindrops against the window. He looked at Co-baltville's Administrative Monolith, its white facade shimmering in the downpour, light still shining from the slit-shaped windows on every level.

  He glanced down, at the feeble, guttering torchlight in the Tartarus Pits, spread out below the Enclave towers. Tomorrow he would be down there with Kane, searching every cellar and every squat for pregnant out-landers.

  Intel section had received information that a group of them were hidden somewhere in those narrow, twisting lanes, hoping against hope to give birth before they were discovered and ejected from the ville.

  Ejection was not an option. Salvo had issued ter-mination-on-sight warrants, and so the Magistrates had to serve them. It was their portion of duty and service to the baron.

  "Can't you sleep, sweetheart?"

  Grant whirled, stomach muscles jumping in adrenaline-fueled spasms. He hadn't heard Olivia come up from behind him. He made himself grin, feeling ashamed that he had almost forgotten she was there. It was her flat, after all, on the top level of the residential Enclaves. Olivia had earned her place there. Grant lived two levels below, and it was something of a bend in rules for him to be in her place at all.

  But as a Magistrate who had just been awarded his third meritorious-service citation that very morning, he wasn't too worried about a reprimand. He had other concerns preying on his mind.

  Olivia slid her arms around his waist, snuggling her naked body close, the hard nipples of her breasts pressing into his lower chest. Grant enfolded her in an em-brace and held her, his cheek muscles aching with the strain of maintaining his grin.

  Olivia was a beautiful woman, with her light brown complexion, black hair plaited and beaded and big eyeswise eyes, yet innocent, deep and brown. Th
e wisdom that had helped her earn a senior engineer's rank of E Level at the age of twenty-four also helped her sense his discomfiture. However, her innocence didn't allow her to understand it.

  Tilting her head back, troubled eyes searching his face, she asked, "What is it?"

  Gently, hands on her smooth shoulders, he pushed her away, holding her at arm's length. He started to speak, then cleared his throat. She stared at him un-blinkingly, waiting.

  He inhaled a deep breath, then slowly expelled it. "After the ceremony today, Salvo told me."

  "Told you what?" Her question came out as a whisper, full of dread.

  "Our contract application was refused. You and me don't meet the profiles, at least not yet. Maybe in a couple of years, once my administrative transfer is scheduled"

  Olivia twisted out of his grasp, turning her back. She stared into the shadows of her apartment. Softly she asked, "Who had the most incompatible scores, me or you?"

  Grant squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. "It doesn't matter."

  Olivia hugged herself. Flatly she said, "So I guess that's it. We're through."

  Grant felt so weak and weary and defeated, he couldn't dredge up a reply. She had spoken the truth. He and Olivia were finished. Submitting a formal mat-ing contract application had been a calculated risk, naming names and listing all pertinent statistics. Now that it had been reviewed and refused, he and Olivia had drawn attention to themselves. Their relationship was now officially unsanctioned and couldn't continue lawfully.

  Into the bleak cold of ruined hopes came a jarring intrusion. "Oh, for God's sake," moaned Sindri from his perch on the windowsill. "This is so puerile."

  Grant whirled on him, feeling the hot prickles of shame rushing to his face. He growled, "You little sawed-off asshole, you wanted me to remember!"

  Sindri's face screwed up as if he tasted something exceptionally sour. "Not these old maudlin memories, five or more years old. What can I do with them? I mean, really "

  He propped his cane beneath his chin with one hand and made back-and-forth sawing motions across it with the other, miming the playing of a violin. He shook his head ruefully. "All of you are going to have to do much better."