by Jack Yeovil
XIII
Lauderdale stood up, red and sticky from his face to his waist, and returned to his terminal.
He would recover his androids, and march on the Fort. With his infallible mechanical catspaws he would restore control. Everything had failed him. Every human agency. The demon had been a damp squib. The Path of Joseph had been betrayed. But his androids were not like the other resources. They would never let him down.
He touched his fingers to the keyboard, and a spark leaped from the terminal into him…
He was dead, but his body kept moving…
XIV
The demon was uncomfortable. To be reduced to such a lowly form after the glorious freedom of the datanets was humiliating, and confining. But the church's hagwitch had driven him to it.
It ran its hands over the terminal, getting the feel of the flesh. It would not do. He smashed the plastic casing of the machine, and reached in, pulling out a fistful of transistors, wires and metal interstices. One by one, it stuck them to its face, latching them into his skin, feeling the machine parts meld with the blood and bone.
There was a battering at the door. Someone was trying to get in.
It tore its tunic and shirt open, and scored deep lines in its chest, then shoved in the innards of the machine. Electrical currents sparked in its brain, and sped through its new, mutating body. Its heart ceased to beat, but an accumulator pumped energy into his copper-laced veins.
There were shots, and the doors jerked open a crack. Fingers appeared in the slit, and the protesting metal shutters were forced apart.
The demon found what it was looking for in Colonel Rintoon's chest.
"Come and get me, popish tart," it shouted.
XV
Stack got the Ops Centre doors open, and strode in. He realized Chantal was with him. And Captain Finney and Sergeant Quincannon.
He held out his hand, and Chantal took it. They didn't need to say anything.
The thing standing over Rintoon's butchered corpse turned, ropes of blood flying from its face, and raised a dripping, red sabre.
"Lauderdale," Stack shouted.
"No," it said. "He's not in just now, If you'd care to leave a message at the tone, I'm sure he'll kill you later."
Chantal squeezed past, and stood face to face with the creature. Stack knew this would be a last stand for one of them.
The thing had torn itself apart and stuffed itself full of machine components. Lights winked in the ruptures in its flesh. On its shoulders, above its spindly human arms, were three-elbowed, claw-tipped waldoes, greasy with blood and oil. From its torso sprouted spikes like the one the cruiser had grown in St Werburgh's.
Stack knew what he was looking at.
"This is it," Chantal said to the demon. "You can't retreat any further. Your back is against the wall. You have to defend that body until it drops. Then you're lost. There's no way back into the darkness."
It lashed out at her with a new cyberlimb it had grown out of Lauderdale's coccyx. It was like a six-foot scorpion's tail. She dodged it, and landed three sharp kicks on its chest, toes sinking in between the deadly spikes. The creature was unsteady on its feet. It was changing so fast that it couldn't adapt its centre of gravity.
Stack had his .45 out. Quincannon was slipping the safety off his automatic. The Cav men exchanged looks, and took aim.
"Come on in and get me, coppers," it screamed.
Stack's first shots went into the thing's back near the tear through which the tail was protruding. Quincannon emptied his clip into its head. The thing swallowed the bullets and incorporated them into its body. The head was lumpy with lead now, the bullets visible under the skin like hard boils. It no longer resembled anything human.
It was laughing.
It reached down with its tail and took the sabre from its frail human hand. The blade whirled, and fastened to the limb.
The tail lashed at Chantal, and sliced across her hip. Her uniform was cut, and she bled.
She kicked again, aiming for the flesh between the metal.
Chantal closed with the creature, and hugged it. Rasping, artificial laughter sounded. A knifelike blade lunged out of Lauderdale's body and scraped past Chantal's cheek.
Stack leaped into the room, and joined the fight. He grabbed the creature's leg, tugging at it, weighing it down. Finney and Quincannon had machine pistols which they didn't use for fear of hitting Chantal or Stack. Finney picked up a wooden map-pointer, and thrust it into the creature's body. Quincannon punched it in the head.
It staggered and fell.
"Freak you," the thing said. Chantal grabbed its voicebox, and tore it out. The component came free with a sucking noise. A rattling hiss escaped through the new mouth in its neck. Up close, Stack could see plastic-coated wires and maggotlike muscles knitting inside the creature's body. It was out of control.
Quincannon kicked its head with a heavy boot.
Stack climbed along the twisting body, and got a two-handed grip on the tail. It was wired to shock, and he felt an electrical charge for a second before it went dead as he tore it from the body.
Finney swung a heavy chair at its head, and dented the plate over the forehead with a caster.
The chair bounced off the skull and out of Finney's hands. One of the waldoes extended, claws pyramided together in a spear-point, and punched the captain in the belly. The waldo burrowed into her ribcage, ploughed up through her heart, and burst out between her neck and collarbone. The claw opened like a grapple, and the dying woman's eyes clouded. Slowly, Finney brought her hands round, and took hold of the waldo running through her. Stack saw her fingers getting a good grip. Gritting her teeth, Finney pushed herself away from the wall. The claw shook impotently and bit into her shoulder.
The waldo tore free of the creature, pulling a long string of flesh and wire with it. A spray of biofluid exploded from the uneven, stringy hole in its flesh. Finney stiffened, slipped and fell.
Chantal, one hand pressing the head to the floor, held up a glass tube of clear liquid in the other, and muttered something in Latin.
The throatless thing screamed as she poured the contents of the tube into the hole in its forehead.
"The power of Christ…" she gasped.
The creature arched. Chantal rode it, and continued her ritual. As she spoke, she slapped its face, commanding its full attention.
Inside its head, the mechanics flared and burned out. It collapsed.
Chantal stood up.
"It's gone," she said. "It'll never have a body again."
"What now?"
"We pray for the souls of the dead."
XVI
In Salt Lake City, Nguyen Seth floated in his isolation tank, seething at the small defeat that had been visited upon him. So, the datanets still linked the Continental Americas, and the temporal power of the Catholic Church ran unchecked. In the end, that would not matter. In the end, it was a simple question of the Inevitability of Nightfall, of the strength of the Dark Ones.
After all, the Catholic Church was not an impregnable body. The Path of Joseph had found more than a few converts even as high as the Inner Councils of the Vatican itself. But the setback was bitter. Under the energy-enriched fluid, Elder Seth's lips curved into a smile. The Sister who performed the exorcism would have to be watched. Perhaps he would take her himself. He did not care to be inconvenienced, and he lusted after a chance to avenge himself.
The Dark Ones had given him longevity, had made him more than other men. He would not fail them. They would not fail.
In the End, there would be a War, fought in the Great Wastes of the New World, and all the powers of the world would be aligned against the Dark Ones.
His hands knotted into fists and his teeth ground.
They would fall. The Dark Ones would prevail. It would be as it had been prophesied.
Elder Seth put the recent irritation out of his mind, and concentrated on his new business. The Duroc, latest of his servitors, was in Europe, p
reparing a new course cf action.
This time the Dark Ones would be rewarded.
XVII
Now the mission was over Chantal felt curiously flat. As always, she was drained. Mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually. Once the demon was banished and she had done what could be done for the dead and the dying, she turned off. Sergeant Quincannon had helped her to her room, and tucked her in bed. As if she needed one, she had found another father. Her wounds turned out to be a superficial cuts, so she told the medical orderlies to leave her alone and see to the needier cases.
Three days later, and things had not changed. She sat at her desk, and plumbed the emptiness inside herself. She felt the need to visit Mother Kazuko, and not only to give her teacher whatever comfort she could during her recuperation. Mother Gadzooks O'Hara had been her confessor before she was her martial arts master.
It was like this every time. She reached the accomplishment of her purpose, and found too many important questions still unanswered. It had been a grueling assignment, and she felt she had much to confess. She knew the demon's attempts to assail her faith, in God and in herself, had been base stratagems, but she needed to talk through the feelings that had been stirred. She could never be thoroughly rid of the pictures the fiend had planted in her mind, but Mother Kazuko would help her deal with them, would help her cleanse herself. Perhaps there would be time to stay at the retreat, to pursue her theoretical work. She could do with some cloistered tranquility and contemplation.
Recently, her missions had been getting closer together.
Someone knocked at her door.
"Come in."
It was Nathan Stack. She looked up from her breviary—she hadn't been focusing on the words for over a quarter of an hour—and smiled at him.
Stack was recovering well. He was strong. He would survive. Many hadn't. The US Cavalry had airlifted the mentally and physically wounded out to a facility in the Phoenix PZ, and buried the dead within sight of Fort Apache. There had been enough to fill a new graveyard. They hadn't had individual funerals, just a mass ceremony conducted by the regimental chaplain. Chantal hadn't felt able to speak, but she had vowed to light a candle for Cat Finney in St Peter's. She hoped the woman had gone where the good sufis go.
"We've got Federico back. The Quince has run a systems check, and there doesn't seem to be any damage. The sergeant and your car are getting along famously."
Chantal got up, and went to the door. She accompanied Stack down to the courtyard. Newly-assigned personnel were supervising the repairs and reconstruction. Major General Hollingsworth Calder, the new commandant, had promised General Ernest Haycox, the overall c-i-c of the Cav, that the fort would be on line within the week. Haycox himself had flown in from Fort Comanche to take a look at the site of the disaster. There were rumours of resurgent Maniak chapters out in the desert. And the corps were complaining about the the roads left unpatrolled.
You could tell from their faces which of the Troopers had been just shipped in and which had lived through the demon download. It was in their eyes.
Quincannon saw her, and saluted.
An ops captain walked over. She was new, and didn't look anything like Finney.
"Sister," she said. "We've had a communication from Rome for you."
The woman handed over a sealed print-out, and left.
Chantal broke the papal seal, and read her orders. They were countersigned by Cardinal DeAngelis, and didn't tell her more than the basics.
"I've been recalled," she told Stack.
"I thought you wanted to go to California?"
She sighed. "I do, but it will have to wait. It's marked urgent. I have a mission. Somewhere in Europe."
Stack didn't look happy about it. Quietly, he had come to rely on her. There was something he hadn't told her about, but which he wanted to. Something he found difficult to get straight in his own mind. She could tell. She had found she could catch his moods.
"I have to go," she said.
"I know."
"And you never told me how you escaped from Lauderdale's androids."
He hesited, "I know. It's kind of complicated."
"Save it for when I come by again."
"Sister…"
"Yes?"
"Never mind," he kissed her on the cheek, like a brother. She tried not to be disappointed. "Goodbye, Chantal."
"Goodbye, Nathan."
He walked away, and vanished into the shadows under the eaves of the fort. She turned to Federico, and keyed in her door-open code.
"Good morning, Sister," it said.
She felt comfortable with Federico's leather seat under her, and experienced that slipping-into-a-warm-bath thrill she always had when she was in the car. Federico played The Everly Brothers' "Bye Bye Love," but she didn't want to hear that. She selected Nat King Cole's "Route 66."
The main gates of Fort Apache slid open, and she drove over London Bridge. Ahead of her was the Big Empty, the desert heart of America.
"Ciao," she said, mainly to herself.
The End
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