Mark watched Carolli programme the control panel beside the door. Fine. We need to know what that thing behind there is. Watch out for the cane, there are Crystals hidden in the grip, and a possible trip-trigger below. Get your binders open and don’t let them drop.
He truly believed she was stupid enough to drop them?
Ellis did not toss her head. It was heroic.
She was grateful to discover that the binders were a familiar old Autocracy design and relatively easy. They were the same composite as the door, bulky, heavy and unwieldy, but their lock was straightforward. The Autocracy had been running out of materials and ideas at the end. Silence, broken by the sizzle from behind the plexi protecting the tank, was oppressive. It struck Ellis that Carolli was neither ranting nor gloating and that might mean something nasty was imminent. She doubted it boded well. Carolli never boded well.
“Is there a problem?” she asked. “You used to love a good taunt.”
“You mean so I explain how you’re going to die and let you work out how to escape?” asked Carolli, without turning to face her. “No. I think not. I need to focus.”
“Not even a clue? You’ve lost your style.”
He ignored her and calmly carried on with this work.
Uncertainly she glanced at Mark but he was concentrating and also ignored her.
“Oh go on,” said Ellis. “You know you want to. I won’t give up till you do.”
Carolli’s fingers tightened on the head of his cane; with a slight shrug he turned to face her. “I broke your wretched mother’s neck by throwing her downstairs when she refused to allow me to inseminate her for the betterment of our species. I’m Latent. Satisfied?” He sighed. “I always regretted not doing the same for your father. A bomb got him.”
It was a punch to the stomach but she did not stagger.
She’d always known the truth. It was only proof they’d lacked.
Why confess here and now. To wrong foot her? Or because he just didn’t care?
Ellis looked into Carolli’s smug face and something inside her died. He was so sure of himself and she’d never seen him that openly confident before. Two adult Donn could not be contained for long and no one knew that better than Emir Carolli, yet he genuinely wasn’t concerned. They were the last two representatives of a race he loathed, and he was tainted by a lingering vindictiveness towards Ellis, but nothing more. There was no fear, no doubt. He didn’t foresee any problems and he knew the Donn. Her heart skipped unevenly.
“You don’t actually care about us, do you? There’s nothing we can do.”
“Good guess,” he said. “You can’t harm, read or control a Latent, so it was a guess, too. I have a match pair of conjoined Donn mid messy Ritual Bonding – well done for surviving initial separation sane, by the way, I didn’t expect it and it is most impressive...”
“Thank you.” Her lips were numb.
“And now I see you together emotion obviously remains intact, again congratulations, so neither will be capable of leaving the other even if you could. It simplifies matters.”
He pointed his cane at Mark’s hips. It spat a fine blue bolt.
With a gasp Macluan buckled and slid to the ground.
His open binders rolled away into a corner by the door and lay shivering.
“Localised paralysis of the lower limbs for long enough to hold you, it locks the spinal cortex,” explained Carolli, serenely returning to his programming. “In half an hour this room will become a launch pad. Enjoy the view, I’m locking you in. You’re stuck. He can’t move and I know you won’t be able to carry him. So let me work. I’m in a hurry.”
There was no pain she realised dully. There should have been shared agony and she’d felt no pain. He’d done it again, gone away so far that she couldn’t feel him any more.
Why the legs? raged Ellis, why always shoot your legs?
No reply. I’ve done my binders too.
Disconsolate, terrified, Mark?
Chapter Forty-five
If Soren Nevus had ever known someone was going to let Sam loose in a turret he’d’ve swapped sides on the grounds that he was far safer being shot at. Every schoolboy’s best dream was Sam’s worst nightmare. He tried to tell himself it was a game. It’s not real, I can do it, a hundred points and level up… It helped. Not much and definitely not enough.
What had Tam Harris said? Yellow handgrip, little red button?
Yellow handgrip, check. Little red button, check.
Now, how about some of the black whizzy things?
The screen looked curiously muzzy.
He thumbed an indentation in the panel. It was audio. Cue blaring assault on eardrums, whhraaammm, whrrroohm... The ZR’s motivators rumbled an underlying drum-roll, walloped a few bass rivets back into place and punched his eardrums into pulp. Sam lunged and stabbed it off, gulping precious quiet. After some more fumbling, the screen cleared and he was in a goldfish bowl surrounded by a kaleidoscope of whizzing Darts.
Right. There they were. Black whizzy things.
In the distance, in the far, far distance roared a wide white tidal-wave speckled with fire and crested by foaming Glo-whites guarding Imperious’ huge grey dinosaur.
Jenson was nuts. It wouldn’t work. It couldn’t. They were as good as dead.
And then he saw the wheels. Seven giant wheels. One had been his Homeworld.
He knew that, he’d seen them before but not like this, this was different.
This time he was on the other side, the wrong side, the side that had to lose.
They didn’t see him, them, the ZR, they were far too small and insignificant.
Whatever they did, could do, might do, it meant absolutely nothing.
Even Sam’s eyes stopped moving.
* * *
“Fire,” yelled Harris. “Press the trigger. Sam?” He checked. Sam was there, the turret was alive and all systems functioning. Sam just wasn’t doing anything.
“Fire!” he screamed again. A trio of Darts zoomed past, delivering a barrage of hull-wrenching force. “Fire!” Harris’ voice cracked. He let fly a volley of his own.
A Dart reeled and split slowly, spinning lazily in a white-hot flare.
The com-link buzzed in from the flight-deck. “Problem?”
Already lining up the next target, Harris had a disheartening amount of Darts to choose from. “How soon,” he pleaded, “until we breach the blockade and get some help?”
“Not long. I’ve got all frequencies open; the boys know we’re coming, all right. Will you look at those spiteful Jillies?” He meant the wheels, what else could there be?
The Darts’ attack tactics tended to symmetry. Jenson’s strategy did not. There was a skinny chance they’d corkscrew through enemy lines using sheer surprise but he needed to concentrate. For a hectic minute Jenson veered and Harris shot in gritty, determined silence.
They weren’t making much headway. Tam yelled at the link again, “Sam!”
Jenson flipped a cone and broke the bad news. “It’s no use yelling at Sam. He can’t hear you. His link’s off from his end, somehow or other he’s shut the bloody thing off.”
“May we pull over while I switch him on?”
“No. No room, sorry.”
“Didn’t think so.” Harris faced eternity stoically. “On my own then, am I?”
* * *
“Paralysis will last long enough for you to watch the launch. I thought you’d enjoy each other’s company.” Emir Carolli sauntered over and tugged Ellis’ binders, clucking sadly because they were already open. She held on like grim death. With a mock bow, he let her be and she gripped them convulsively, staring at his cane, unable to look away.
“Quite,” he tapped it briskly on the floor. “Everybody thinks I’m being pretentious, dear, dear me, how stupid. Don’t try anything silly, Mellisand, there’re guards outside watching you. After we leave it won’t matter, the door’ll shut. You won’t forsake your mate and he can’t move. Even together you won�
��t raise the wattage to get out of this. Oh, and you can’t persuade me to help you.” He twirled a finger at his temple. “Latent. Remember?”
“What happens next?” Her voice sounded steady but didn’t really belong to her.
“Well,” he said. “I’m off to our moonbase to watch the show.”
“To us.”
“Nothing else happens. Why should it?” The devil cane ground the dirt. “I leave, you’re locked in here. I’ve started the countdown so it should take,” he glanced at the settings, “precisely twenty-nine minutes twenty seconds before you’re a blast-shield. That, by the way, is interesting.” The tip of the cane waved at Mark. “I didn’t think his pain threshold would be so low, it should’ve taken two shots. He shouldn’t have passed out so quickly.”
“Minon shot his leg too.”
“Ah.” Bile flashed in the pale eyes. “That would explain it.”
Ellis’ eyes were drawn to the door. The lock, Mark had been watching the lock...
Carolli tracked her gaze. “Magnetic seal,” he said. “Telekinesis won’t work. The last Donn who tried took forty-seven minutes to crack the seal and couldn’t hold it. Sorry.”
He was right. Opening such doors once they were closed took vast reserves of time and energy for even the most adept Donn. The problem was breaking the seal once it’d clamped. Magnetic doors were made of thick compound lead anganite, one of the strongest and heaviest composites the Autocracy had ever used, and consisted of one solid panel dropping down, not sliding sideways or diagonally like a normal door. Once it was down the Donn would have to use telekinesis to split the seal and then hold it apart while they forced the door up against gravity. Even if the process could be kick-started, doing both and sustaining the effort was impossible; even two working together would fail. Carolli was right, once the door clamped they were trapped. Always assuming the lock’s outer lips made contact that was, if it wasn’t, if the seal was imperfect, then all they had to do was hold the door open and push up. Ellis nervously ran her binders between suddenly itchy fingers.
Magnetic drops descended slowly. What if something stopped the door from sealing?
Anganite Binders were sturdy but just how much force would they take?
Was that what Mark had been thinking? Something told her it was.
“And that?” she nodded at the fish tank. “What’s that? Will that be blown up too?”
“You’re not going to delay me, you know.” Yet Carolli was proud of the creature no matter how it aggravated him, perhaps he even felt some kind of warped empathy. “Have some respect please. That’s Six, the end product of a great deal of extortionately expensive experimentation, the control mechanism linking the seven ships above us, and the final part of the puzzle. Without him they’re just seven very big ships, once he’s in place they react instantaneously to a single command. No need for data transmission, reception or decoding, it’s instant. Wonderful, I assure you. Remember the Autocracy sonic weapons trials?”
“The ones that rebounded and blew up the shooter as well as the target? Spectacular.”
“Six channels emitting pulses simultaneously led by a Wave-forcer that can work as fast as any Donn communicates. Possibly even faster than the real animal. Problem solved.”
Ellis just looked, her mind seizing up.
All she could think about was her binders and jamming that magnetic seal.
“A pulse-channel has been installed in each wheel. They’re lethal as individuals but when conjoined by a simultaneous Wave-force, the array is quite deadly, you know, it should blast anything to smithereens. The response speed alone would make them invincible.”
He obviously expected some reaction, anything. “Why Six?”
It was such a curve-ball it almost threw him.
“No real reason. I think it might’ve been part of his original transport designation. He was a feckless, rather stupid vagrant we took from one of the Latent ships conscripted from Typhin. The Techs finally amalgamated his brain with a Crack-Crystal positronic fundament that activated dormant parapsychic circuits. Not the sixth attempt, by the way, more like the six-hundredth. When we camouflaged the Belthan moons we installed the Wave-forcer synthesis controls in Belthan Six, hence Six. It’s a fluke not a name. The thing has no name.”
She stared at the tank’s swirling mass. “It’s Donn, it’s a Latent Donn. You took a Latent and toggled his brain…” It was so horrible she could hardly grasp it.
And here, at long last, came the gloating. “Only we, only your despised Latents, have the requisite synapses to interface efficiently with external agencies like the wheels, yours are far too capricious and,” he mewed in disgust, “sludgy. Your minds wriggle like worms on a hook whereas a Latent’s rigid set does not vacillate.” He turned to leave. “I’ll leave you with that happy thought, shall I? Please, feel free to inspect the tank, ignition starts there.”
A slight bow. A jaunty tap of the cane. He left. No farewell.
The massive door grumbled as its inevitable descent began.
The guards’ fading footsteps rapidly pounded into the distance.
She waited till they were gone, counting down her heartbeats.
On ten she lunged, jamming her binders vertically into left hand seal, whipped round, scooped Mark’s binders and shoved them in the right. Diving back into the room like a spring, she waited for the crunch of spraying binders to tell her she’d failed.
Or an alarm to tell the guards the lock hadn’t sealed…
The house lights dipped dramatically leaving only the eerie navy glow from the tank.
Ellis didn’t breath. No alarms. No stress moans, no giveaway crunching.
No smashing binders. They held.
The door seal was blocked.
It was a painfully narrow gap, and shaky. It wanted to collapse.
Ellis crept forward and gingerly finger-walked the seals. Then checked again because she was too scared to believe their luck had changed. The makeshift wedge wouldn’t last long, but it had worked, the gap was holding. She slumped against the wall.
Dust settled quietly, there was no noise except malevolent slobbering from Six’s lair.
“If you’re waiting for me to beg you to leave me to my lonely fate and flee to a better life with another you’re right out of luck,” remarked a low voice conversationally.
Ellis blinked away stinging tears. “It never once crossed my mind.”
* * *
Sam’s three-way audio-link had opened but voices came from so far away it was just meaningless babble and he’d already divorced his ears. He looked down at his hands on the trigger and the targeting device and detachedly admired shiny white knuckles under shiny tanned skin. The gleam was sweat and it was how he knew that life was returning. His mind was transmitting a thousand frantic signals per millisecond but his body wasn’t receiving and whatever happened was pure automatic instinct. He’d got off three shots. All missed.
“Harris?” Jenson injected news into Dart infested gloom. “One last spurt and we’re home. Glo-whites nearside, we got an escort. Stanson’s shoved out the welcome mat.”
“About time,” grunted Harris wearily. “How are the shields?”
Now that was a question Jenson didn’t particularly want to answer on the grounds it might demotivate and depress the hired help at a strategic moment. Not well, was one possible response, diabolical was another, but what shields? round about summed it up.
There were two dull thuds. The ZR hiccupped and shuddered.
She stopped, dead in space for a searing instant.
The pilot’s life went crazy. Cones spun madly, registering hysteria one moment and nonsense the next. Nothing moved faster than Jenson as he prayed to the ship’s SC heart.
It heard him.
With a gut-wrenching groan the ZR soldiered painfully onwards.
The jolts galvanised Sam and he gradually became aware of nerve-shattering silence down the link. He checked the other turret, proud his fingers
were working again.
Status was not good. “Hello? I can’t get hold of Mr Harris, what should I do?”
There had to be a procedure, Sam was coldly positive there had to be a procedure.
At Jenson’s end there was only one procedure possible.
“Keep bloody shooting!”
Chapter Forty-six
Only the topmost curve of the Dome had struggled into the light of day but an entrance was now fully visible, though the door was drunkenly stuck. The opening had been hastily cleared of debris and was flanked by Minon’s own select and personal squad.
And overseeing it all, puffed up to twice his skinny size with importance?
Colonel Dandy Minon, mad-dog Minon, who’d never learned to work the odds.
Emir Carolli left the Dome for the MPV at a spanking pace, more than ready to bid farewell to Harth Norn. A neat DS XT-9 Deep-Space Cruiser was waiting to ferry him to moonbase, he could almost hear the motivators racing, and he couldn’t wait to shuck off the inconveniently cramped MPV. Minon had planted himself between the Dome and the MPV.
He stood directly in Carolli’s path. Saluting.
The Baron eyed him with distaste. Minon was an imbecile. Worse, he was a bungling imbecile who was no longer necessary and blocking Carolli’s swift retreat to a safe distance from an imminent eruption, and from thence off-world. He cast a lingering glance at the Dome. Its unimaginative design had always been pleasing to what he believed was an aesthetic soul and he felt a pang of regret at its impending obliteration. Under the sleek exterior fat veins were pumping the accelerant needed to launch Six’s casket, and it was already shivering with pre-thrust. Six’s launch was tied to an antiquated rocket/missile protocol, which had been obsolete for several centuries but was dirt cheap and relatively infallible. The Autocracy had been running out of money and demanded reliability at a premium. Rather neatly, the Dome’s incipient termination also solved the Minon problem.
The Horseshoe Nail (The Donn Book 1) Page 32