Dark Powers

by Jack McKinney

  And an age of deprivation and conflict would be brought to a close. Still shielded in her thoughts, like a hot cinder, was that night so long ago in the Flower gardens of the paradise that had been Optera.

  There she had surrendered at last to the emotional enticements and seductive intellect and form of Zor—had surrendered herself to him and surrendered the secrets of the Flower as well.

  And was discovered in the act by the Regent, who flung himself off on the descending spiral of devolution. But soon, all those torturous memories and misdeeds would be behind her, and her Children.

  “Therefore, prepare yourselves, my Children! Gather and make ready, for we abandon this planet at once, for Haydon IV!”

  In the Genesis Pits abandoned on Optera by his wife, the Regent peered into a cloning vat. Work on his project had not been without its problems; his biogenetic workers were less adept than the Regess’s, and had been forced to start from scratch after the first abortive attempt.

  But now things were going well. The workers had used the most perfect egg available, an unquickened one from the clutch that had spawned the Regent, feeling it was the ultimate perfection of Invid plasm.

  The Regent gazed into the vat as into an aquarium. What floated there was no ordinary Invid clone, though. It had a cobra hood like his own, a row of eyelike turbercle sensors that mimicked his.

  It was a new Regent, a false one.

  “I am pleased,” he said. “Make certain that it’s ready by the time I’ve crushed the Sentinels.”

  Karen found Jack in one of the training areas the Sentinels had set up near their temporary groundside billeting area. She had been looking forward to teasing him about being compulsive in his training, but the look on her face changed when she saw he wasn’t alone.

  Bela was with him on the firing range, showing him how to use the Praxian crossbow. He was getting the hang of it, and put a quarrel within a foot or so of a bull’s-eye at twenty paces.

  “Ah, Karen Penn,” Bela smiled. “You once asked me about our weapons; now you see they’re so easy that even a male can use them. Jack here is making fine progress; would you care to try?” Bela clapped Jack on the shoulder in comradely fashion and gave him a sisterly hug. She towered over him, a full head taller.

  Karen made no effort to keep the frosty tone out of her voice. “No, thank you. Lieutenant Baker, I’m just here to let you know that your request has been approved; you’ve been reassigned to Hovertank duty in the Wolfe Pack.”

  “Hey, that’s great!” He had studied Jonathan Wolfe’s style, and decided he wanted to serve under the man. “Did you get what you wanted?”

  She looked at his grin and felt like belting him. He didn’t even understand that she was sore at him. “Yes. I’m going over to Commander Grant’s GMU staff as of tomorrow morning.”

  “Congratulations! Let’s go celebrate. Bela, want to join us?”

  But Karen was shaking her head. “No. I’m sure you two have lots of—exercising to do. And I wouldn’t want to intrude.”

  As he watched her walk off, Jack said, bewildered, “Did I say something wrong, Bela? I don’t think I understand what just happened.”

  Bela shrugged and recocked the crossbow with one swift, powerful pull on its forestock grip. “Personally, I often find it difficult to comprehend your species at all.”

  At last, after weeks of frantic preparation, training, reequipping and rearming and reorganizing, the Farrago was ready to lift off.

  The original plan for a Karbarran starship and fighting force to accompany the Sentinels had had to be abandoned; the Invid had disabled all Karbarran ships, and the new ones on the drawing boards wouldn’t be ready for months yet.

  “The new production lines for VTs and other mecha will be fully operational in another six weeks,” the senior Karbarran administrators had assured the Sentinels. “When you’ve freed the women of Praxis, we will be ready to help them become an army.”

  The word was that the Invid garrison on Praxis was much smaller than that on Karbarra, and the Sentinels were hoping for a brief campaign. The Karbarrans cheered as the Sentinels lifted off and passed through the open wedge of the dome. Lisa looked down on the planet and thought that in spite of the pain and losses the war had cost so far, the sight of a liberated planet and a free people made it worthwhile.

  Still, she breathed a prayer that the worst was behind them.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FOUR

  In a way, the very things I’ve counseled the others against are what the Sentinels’ mission is all about: hurling one’s self into the midst of the Shapings and taking the risk that their design will not turn to one of utter tragedy.

  And yet, in the Sentinels there is that added dimension that most of the species on Farrago are from Haydon’s Worlds. I pray, for them, that it brings out the most benign manifestations of the Workings of the Protoculture.

  Dr. Emil Lang, The New Testament

  This time, Farrago went in ready for trouble, finger on trigger. The ship emerged from superluminal drive even further from Praxis than it had from Karbarra, since Lisa wanted to get a handle on the situation before any shooting started.

  Encountering no immediate opposition—in fact, no sign that the Invid had detected the ship’s arrival at all—Lisa moved fast to consolidate what she hoped was the advantage of total surprise. VTs launched to fly cover and screen any enemy attack; the strike forces readied for their go signal. The flagship bore in toward the planet and still there was no sign of a response.

  “Nothing in the air, zero activity on the ground, no commo, no power sources—nothing,” a tech officer reported from the GMU. “Captain Hunter, if they’re playing dead, they’re doing an amazing job. It looks to me like there might be nobody home.”

  “Oldest trick in the book,” Lisa heard Jonathan Wolfe murmur over the command net. But what if Wolfe was wrong? She had learned to expect the unexpected from this war, and surely an uncontested landing would be the most unexpected thing of all.

  She warily brought the flagship in close, but not too close, staying beyond the orbit of the outermost of Praxis’s two small moons. The next move wasn’t hard to figure out, but it brought her a personal pang of regret.

  “Skull Leader, we’re going to need recon; pick your elements and tell ’em to watch their tailerons down there.”

  “Roger,” Max Sterling answered.

  It had come as a bit of a surprise to Lisa that Rick, in returning to combat duty with his old unit, hadn’t attempted to step into the command slot. But the Skulls, like the oldtime Israelis and Swiss before them, didn’t let mere rank or seniority determine who flew lead.

  That was decided by who had the most experience with the particular mecha, knew the current situation and tactics best, had the superior performance record, and so forth. And right now, Rick Hunter, admiral or not, was far from the top of the roster. So, he had swallowed his pride and taken his place as wingman to a young lieutenant commander who had been in high school when Rick Hunter was Skull Leader.

  Still, there was no question that Rick would be going down on the flyby; with the ranks of the Skulls thinned as they were, and Max preferring to use veterans on an iffy mission like this, it was only to be expected.

  At Max’s command, several Alphas—Rick’s among them—broke formation and mated their tail sections to the rear of the same number of the powerful Betas, forming aggregate ships with tremendously increased range and firepower. The problem was that maneuverability was decreased and mechamorphosis capability was nonexistent.

  The Alpha-Beta conjoinings swept out for a pass at Praxis. The rest of the Alphas, Betas, and Logans fell back to guard Farrago under Miriya; Max had led the over-flight, of course.

  The mission elapsed-time counters ticked off tense minutes. But there was nothing to report, beyond the stillness on the planet and the static of the commo channels.

  The Skulls were very low on fuel by the time they finished the low orbit, and Farrago
moved in to retrieve them. Lisa gave the word that the second recon group go in, this time lower, and had the shuttle stand by with its landing party.

  In due course, Battloids trod the deserted streets and countryside of Praxis. A contingent of Wolfe’s Hovertanks, with Jack Baker among them, was checking one of the largest cities on Praxis—a large coastal town, really—block by block, house by house, for use as a base of operations. Technical teams from the shuttle swore that there was nothing on or under the planet’s surface higher up the evolutionary ladder than native wildlife. There were plenty of indications of Invid occupation, but the fortifications and temporary Hives were abandoned.

  There was no sign of the women of Praxis.

  “But—why would they leave with the Invid? What use would that be?” Gnea was close to tears.

  Bela patted her shoulder. “I don’t know, warrior, but we’re going to find out. And woe to the Invid if we don’t find our sisters well and whole.”

  Lisa had those same fears for the Praxians, and other problems besides. Without the firing of a single shot, the Sentinels’ war had been brought to a shuddering halt. The Praxians weren’t likely to budge until they had some idea what had happened to their people, but at the same time, each hour used up by delay gave the enemy a chance to regroup and redeploy.

  She couldn’t afford to spend much time there if it would be to no advantage.

  It was at such times that Lisa wished dearly that the Farrago’s bridge was small, like the SDFs’. She longed to sit in the command chair she had installed, as Henry Gloval was wont to do on his bridge, perhaps with a uniform cap visor pulled down over her eyes, and try to mull her way out of her current fix.

  But she didn’t have that luxury, and every hour was a precious resource she couldn’t replace. The senior Sentinel leaders, Baldan and Veidt and the rest, wanted to confer about what to do next—even though Bela and most of the other Praxians refused to even leave the surface of their planet and return to the flagship.

  Lisa exercised her authority as captain and, at this stage of things, de facto overall commander. She got Vince Grant on the horn.

  If the Praxians won’t come to Mohammed … she thought.

  “We’re going to make one low pass with the flagship and drop the GMU; GMU will begin an intense study of the situtation on Praxis and attempt to reach some logical conclusion while I convene a full meeting of the principal Sentinels. Give me a shopping list, Vince; what will you need?”

  Most of what he needed was already aboard the Ground Mobile Unit; the rest of it was quickly transferred. It was also becoming obvious that there were no hostile forces or booby traps on Praxis; for that reason she began to fear for the flagship’s safety. Lisa ordered that a minimal force of VTs and Hovertanks be assigned to ground duty, but that most surface security would be the job of a small detachment from the remaining Destroids. All but a few of the Skulls would be pulled back to protect Farrago.

  She had a sudden thought as she was about to conclude the call, and said, “Vince, there’s one more thing that might come in handy. Tell Jean to make sure she’s got her Invid lie detector; I’m going to have Tesla transferred to the GMU.”

  The architecture of the Praxians seemed like a cross between classical Japanese and Dark Ages Nordic. They used mostly woods and rough-cut stone, and somehow there was the impression that they were used to structures catching fire or crashing down in a quake, and had come to accept it—didn’t feel they had to build for posterity.

  They also tended to fortify places, even though the last of their generations-long feud-wars—epic bloodbaths of tremendous strife and cruelty and valorous deeds—ended centuries before. But the fortifications were at lower levels, and the higher stories of the amazons’ structures could be opened to the air, with mosaic walls or panels of inlaid wood that moved aside or could be lifted.

  The local castle at the GMU landing site was the summer palace of the planet’s elected ruler. Bela showed some hesitation, in the spacious throne room; then, as senior warrior of her people, she took her place by the foot of the throne. She did not sit down, however.

  Other Sentinels had gathered there among the huge ancestral images and holy statuary. This high up, one could see the green, restless bay filling the vista to one side and gray mountains with blue-white caps of snow to the other.

  According to Praxian custom, all the war mecha had been stilled, shut down, so that peace and quiet would reign. Even the GMU was powered down, its Protoculture engines inert.

  Jack Baker, there as an observer and Wolfe’s aide, watched Bela falter as she called the meeting to order. She’s really just a kind of ranger, a backwoods cop, he thought, thrust into the spotlight by events. For once, he figured, events had picked the right person.

  Bela’s confidence grew quickly, especially with Gnea and the other Praxian women there to back her up. Halidarre was standing to one side, stamping just a bit and snorting from time to time, acting more and more like a real animal with each day she served Bela.

  Bela threw the first pitch without a windup. “I’m not as good at coming around sideways to things as are the diplomats,” she allowed. “I know a lot of you want to go on to the next front in this war. In some ways I don’t blame you, because there are no enemies to fight here. But the women of Praxis aren’t about to leave until we’ve tried our best to find out what happened to our people.

  “If you can’t wait for us, we wish you well. But something’s happened on our planet that we have to puzzle out before we’re ready to make our next move.” She said it in a way that brooked no contradiction.

  That left everybody silent and thoughtful, including the senior Sentinels. Karen grudgingly reflected that the Southern Cross Advanced Leadership Program could have learned a thing or two from Bela.

  But it was Burak who stepped out of the crowd, out onto the richly polished red hardwood floor of the throne room. “My heart goes out to my sisters from Praxis,” he said. “But the question is, Do theirs go out to the rest of us? It’s time to make rational decisions.

  “We sought mecha on Karbarra but came away from there with a grievous net loss. We sought new recruits on Praxis but find an untenanted world. When will the leaders of this campaign see the obvious? There are no fighters on Haydon, no war machines on Geruda! Peryton, Peryton is the key here! Let us bypass this and other worlds that cannot advance our cause, and free Peryton from its curse! Then we’ll have legions!”

  Rick, listening, wasn’t sure what had changed in Burak, but something was giving him a new and more penetrating gaze, a ringing note to his voice, a larger-than-life aspect to his gestures. It was as if Burak had come into a sense of personal destiny. Rick had seen that sort of thing before, and the memories didn’t make him feel comfortable.

  Veidt somehow made a sound like the clearing of a throat, even though he had no mouth with which to speak. “Burak, I’ve already told you in private why I think it is essential to let Peryton wait until our forces have grown—why I think it is suicide for the Sentinels to try to address themselves to your planet now. The difficulties involved are—”

  Burak interrupted, slashing the air with his horns. “I’ve heard that too often, and too easily, from you! And I say this to the Sentinels: you care so little for Peryton? So be it! The Farrago comes apart even more easily than she went together! And the module that is my ship is mine to do with as I please; that was our compact.

  “So then, bid me farewell; for today, this very hour, Burak of Peryton leaves, to pursue his own quest and bring salvation to his world, whether you are with me and my people or not!”

  There were mutterings, and a dozen voices were raised to try to mollify him, but Burak was having none of it. The few other Perytonians there, stone-faced, fell in behind him and trooped toward the exit.

  Lisa jumped as her wrist communicator beeped piercingly for her attention. All over the throne room it was the same, distress calls reaching Sentinels in a variety of ways.

&nbs
p; “Farrago under attack by large Invid force,” was all most of them heard. Then the transmissions stopped.

  It was his hour, the beginning of a new age; the Regent resolved to decree a new calendar with that sublime moment as its starting point.

  He had stripped outposts and far-flung garrisons, put together a force even greater than the one he had assembled to send against his enemies on Optera.

  And this time fortune was with him. His fleet emerged from superluminal at just the correct angle of attack, in good formation and proper deployment. Scouts and Pincers rocketed off, this time under competent veteran commanders, to join combat with the enemy mecha trying to protect their flagship.

  And the flagship! How long he had hungered for that morsel! A Living Computer in the Regent’s command ship matched it up with the specifications Edwards had given him, and with exquisite precision the Invid sensors penetrated down and down into it until they found the junction and the components Edwards specified—the ones Lron had explained to the REF and Lang when the Sentinels first appeared.

  Lacking the grand slam of the GMU’s cannon, the Farrago turned to its lesser weapons, gamely firing and firing, weapons crews staying at their stations even though things seemed hopeless. Most of them had been in Invid cages, and had no intention of being there again, whatever the price of freedom—even if it was death.

  But luck wasn’t with them this time. The Regent’s techs and scientists had prepared a super cannonbolt in accordance with the things Edwards had revealed to them; they fired it now.

  It struck to the heart of Farrago, sending a pulse throughout the ship’s structure. In another moment the flagship was coming apart. The forces that unified it had become forces sundering it.

  The Regent watched, one fist under his chin, wondering if there was some lesson here. Then he roused himself to bellow at his communications drones. “Haven’t you contacted the Regess yet? Well?”