Shadowprey: A Black Foxes Adventure

by Dennis L McKiernan

  “You can sense this?” asked Trendel.

  “I can.”

  “If so,” said Arik, “it must be where the hive is.”

  “Hive,” said Trendel. “A good name for it.”

  Moving more cautiously, now in Rith’s spell-cast silence, a bubble that would not allow sound to escape, they finally came to a large, roughly circular chamber, the farthest extent some hundred feet away, the ceiling some twelve feet above the floor. And hanging upside down were hundreds of the hideous insects, as well as spiderlike silken egg cases, each containing hundreds of—“What?” asked Rith—“Pupae, I think,” said Kane. “And all the giant bugs, all the pupae, seem to be in a state of estivation.”

  “Estivation?”

  “Summer dormancy,” said Kane. “But given Thaddeus’s story, at least some now and then come awake. And I don’t think the flamethrower has enough fuel to take the entire colony down.”

  Rith smiled and said, “But we do have enough dynamite.”

  “You’ll have to go in silence, Rith, and put the charges where they’ll do the most good,” said Arik.

  Rith nodded and said, “Give me the packs.”

  As they shed their backpacks, Arik said, “Ky, if any come awake, you’re shadowbolt should do.”

  “What about the flamethrower?” asked Kane.

  “I think we’ll need that to cover our retreat,” said Arik.

  “Good idea,” said Kane.

  “I wish we’d thought to bring timers instead of fuses,” said Rith.

  “Too late now,” said Arik.

  In complete silence, Rith set the charges around the hive, each bundle with a fuse calculated to last until they exited the caverns.

  Finally, she ran around the chamber, still making no sound whatsoever, and with a small blowtorch she lit every fuse, and then said, “Time to go.”

  And go they went, Rith leading the way, Kane bringing up the rear. They had just reached the juncture leading to both the south and north entrances when the first bundle detonated with a thunderous Kaboom! deafening everyone. And moments later all the others blew. Rith tried to protect them from the sound of the blasts, but it was too late; they now couldn’t hear a thing. Wind screamed past them, bearing pea-sized rocks and pelting dust and hurtling water, all blown outward by the bellowing explosions. The only thing that did protect them was the tortuous maze behind them.

  Rith and the others turned, but then the cavern flared red as flames roared out from the Flammenwerfer. Arik and Ky spun ’round, as giant insects flew at them. Kane at rear guard sprayed fire, and Ky blasted with darkbolts, and Arik cut loose with the Tommy gun, and Trendel drilled bugs with his .45. With bugs burning and exploding and flying apart, chitin and snotlike slime splashed on them all. Rith screamed a sound, one that her deafened comrades did not hear, and bug wings shattered, and they crashed to the floor of the cavern, where Rith shot them with her .45 automatic.

  And they burned and shot and blasted and reloaded and burned and shot and blasted, and Rith screamed and Ky threw bolts of darkness, but the flamethrower ran out of fuel. Kane unslung his trusty double-barrel 12 gauge, and began blowing bugs apart. Arik used up the last of his Tommy gun drums, and he switched to his .45s, one in each hand. But still the hideous bugs came on, wings whirring, deadly proboscises extended to stab. Arik dropped his spent left-hand gun to the stone, and he ejected the empty clip out of his right-hand one. He grabbed a fresh clip and jammed it in and continued firing. And even as he used his last cartridge, and as Kane ran out of shotgun shells, and as Ky fainted from overextending her powers, and Rith slumped to her knees from overusing her own, that was when the bugs stopped coming; they were all blown to bits of chitin and shattered pieces of wing and gobs of yellowish slime.

  And the companions were all covered with sticky snot.

  As Trendel knelt by Rith, and as Kane cradled Ky, Arik reached down and pulled Ky’s .45 from her holster. Speaking loudly in order to be heard in their deafened state, Arik said, “We got, what, eight bullets left in this gun, and twenty-one more in her three spare clips. That was close.”

  Groggily, Ky came to, for Kane had let some of his own life-force bleed into her. She sat up and asked, “Did we win?”

  When no one answered, she called out, “Did we win?”

  “Yeah,” said Rith. “Barely.”

  “Where in the hell did they all come from?” asked Kane.

  “Perhaps some escaped when that first explosion went off a bit prematurely,” said Rith.

  “Either that or there was another hive somewhere within,” said Trendel.

  “Oh, crap, do we need to look?” asked Kane.

  “No,” said Arik. “We’ve got to get out of here before the tide comes in.”

  “I know what to do,” said Ky. “We can let Lyssa look.”

  “Good idea,” said Arik, and he stood to go.

  Kane said, “I could heal you all, but your hearing will recover shortly.”

  signed Arik,

  Kane signaled back.

  Following Rith, she led them the last three turns to the northern opening. But when they reached that place, they found their rappelling line gone. Arik stuck his head out to look for it, and a large rock came whistling past, and he heard someone yell. Arik risked a quick glance upward, and atop the cliff stood an array of black-robed people, rocks in hand.

  “Oh, crap,” said Arik, ducking back in, “there’s a bunch of cultists up there—probably the whole damn village—ready to stone us if we attempt to free-climb.”

  “Jesus Mephisto, Arik,” said Trendel, “we’ve got to do something. I mean, if we stay here in these caves, we’ll drown. And if we are on the wall at the wrong time, the tide will rip us right off, to say nothing of the fact that we’ll die of hypothermia if we try to swim.”

  “Have you got anything left, Rith,” asked Arik.

  “Some, but not much.”

  “Ky?”

  “Nada. I’m spent.”

  “We could wait them out,” said Kane. “I mean, we could get back to the hive where the tide doesn’t reach, and Lyssa could deal with the cultists.”

  With what little she had left, Rith sang a note too high for any of the others to hear. “Sorry, Kane, but the way back is blocked.”

  “All right,” said Arik. “When is the tide due?”

  Rith said, “If I remember, low tide is at five.”

  “That’s in Boston, and we’re slightly east of there, three degrees or so,” said Trendel. “Which means the tide will start inflowing a bit sooner.”

  “It’s some six hours between low and high tide,” said Arik, looking at his watch, and the tide is at dead low right about now.” He risked another glance out and down at the cold, stirring waters. “It’s fifteen feet below this opening, and at high tide this part is at least ten feet under, perhaps twenty. So, in the worst case, the Atlantic will be at this level in about two hours. When is sunset?”

  Rith frowned, remembering the almanac. “Something like six-thirty.”

  “Oh, dretch,” said Kane, “it’s gonna be close.”

  “At least we’ll get a bath and wash some of this awful snot off,” said Ky.

  And so they waited. . . .

  . . . and the tide rose . . .

  . . . and still they waited . . .

  . . . and the cold Atlantic crept higher.

  Spray began flying into the opening.

  Six o’clock came, and the frigid water now stood some six or seven feet below the gap.

  At six-thirty, crests of waves washed into the hole.

  At six forty-five Lyssa appeared.

  “Honey,” said Arik, “there are angry cultists atop the cliff ready to stone us. Would you—?”

  Lyssa vanished.

  Screams could now be heard above roar of the ocean waves.

  “Let’s go,” said Arik. “We’ll need to free climb up wet rock in the dark.”


  “Oh, crap crap crap,” said Kane.

  “Sweetie,” said Ky. “You’ve got to go. By the time we can reach the top and get a rope down to you, it’ll be too late.”

  “I know, I know,” said Kane. “But this is one of my worst nightmares come true.”

  And up the stone they went, waves clutching at their heels for the first few yards.

  Lyssa came down and added her light to the climbers, and on upward they went in a dusk ever deepening, slipping a bit here, helping one another there, Arik in the lead calling back about hand- and footholds.

  And finally and one by one they reached the lip of the precipice and crawled over, Kane coming last, trembling from exhaustion and fear.

  “Remind me to not ever do that again,” he said.

  Along the rim they found eighteen black-robed and very dead cultists, as well as eighteen dead small bugs, each cultist with a hole in the base of his skull.

  “I guess that answers that,” said Ky. “They were drones all.”

  They threw the dead bodies into the ocean and let the tide carry them away.

  “I say,” said Trendel, looking about, “where’s the flamethrower?”

  “Where do you think?” answered Kane.

  “Down below?” asked Trendel.

  “Well, I wasn’t going to try to free climb with that weight on my back,” growled Kane.

  “Maybe we can fetch it tomorrow,” said Ky.

  “Maybe we’ll just leave it there,” replied Kane.

  In that moment, Lyssa returned from exploring the maze of caverns and declared them to be bug free.

  “Tomorrow,” said Arik, wearily, “tomorrow we head for Anchorage; but tonight, after hot baths to rid us of this god-awful slime, I suggest we sleep.”

  “Amen to that, brother,” said Trendel. “Me, I’m ready to drop dead of fatigue.”

  “To sleep, perchance to dream,” said Rith.

  “I hope they’re not nightmares,” said Ky.

  said Lyssa, bright with the drones’ life essence.

  It was nearly midnight when, sextant in hand, Howard Hughes came down from the cockpit and said, “If I’ve properly shot the stars and reckoned correctly, we should be directly over the Pole, or if not dead over, then near.”

  Trendel closed his eyes and then said a word, and a moment later he exclaimed, “I say, I’m pointing straight up.”

  “What the hell does that mean,” asked Arik.

  “I’m pointing toward where her body lies,” replied Trendel, his arm vertical, “and I don’t know what it means.”

  But for the drone of the engines, dead silence filled the fuselage.

  Suddenly, Rith shouted, “The legend, Arik, the legend.”

  “What legend?”

  “The one I read back in the great library on the Isle of Azarel on Itheria. Going to the land of ghosts meant going to a star, I think.”

  Arik looked at Trendel, and they both looked at Howard, who said, “Polaris?”

  “No wonder I kept pointing north,” said Trendel, “for every world we’ve been on has its own Pole Star.”

  “Dretch,” said Kane, “now what’ll we do.”

  Trendel said, “Summon Arda.”

  Arik looked at Howard and said, “What you are about to see might be a bit beyond the pale. If you are easily disturbed—”

  “Disturbed?” said Howard, pointing at Lyssa at the far end of the ship. “I mean, you’ve got a ghost in your company. What could be more disturbing than that?”

  “You’ll see,” said Kane.

  Trendel looked at Howard and nodded, and Howard nodded in return.

  Trendel said a word and put the image of Arton in his mind, and straight before them the air in the fuselage began to swirl as of silver and frost and glitter.

  And the ship began to change, to divide into sections, and cockpits formed, and instrument panels sprang to life, and every one of the members of Risk, Ltd., found themselves wearing flex-suits and oxygen helmets and flying in formation in starfighters, including Lyssa, for these ships operated on thought alone, and a specter could surely think. That she was with them was no surprise, for day and night in space have no meaning.

  And Arik said, “Ready to jump?” and all answered Ready, Lyssa’s ship speaking for her.

  “On my mark, then. Three . . . two . . . one . . . mark!”

  And the six starfighters leapt into hyperspace.

  54

  Five Months Before the Hearing

  (Coburn Facility)

  When Kat Lawrence explained Drew Meyer’s proposed temporary solution to the power problem to Luiz Vizcarrondo and Carleen Alsberg, Luiz grinned and said, “Maybe if we raise the output voltage of the Astro, we can charge a little faster.”

  “Jeeze, Luiz,” said Al, “that’s a fine idea.”

  As they headed for the battery room, Kat said, “Let’s go look at the circuit breakers and the chargers, especially the ratings on the rectifiers. That might tell us if we can pump to a higher voltage and up the charge rate.”

  They reached the room and Al flipped open the circuit-breaker panel. “Fifty amps each, and there are twenty-four of them,” he said.

  Kat frowned and said, “Okay, fifty amps times twenty-four is 1200 amps total, the max we can pump in. And at 110 volts, that’s a wattage of—Shit! I’m gonna to need a calculator for this.” She whipped out her holocom and punched a few buttons, mumbling about watt hours and voltage and Avery’s consumption and the feed from the Astro and need to remain under the amperage limit. But finally she said, “If the rechargers keep pumping at a steady rate, we can get the batteries back up to full in about eighty-five minutes. Which is more or less what Meyer calculated. It looks like I’m gonna owe him a bone-jump.”

  “Okay, Kat,” said Al. “Let’s see what the rechargers can actually handle. It could be that all we have to do is up the circuit breakers.”

  As they stepped to the recharger array, Michael Phelan came in and said, “Oh, man, I’ve got either some good news or bad.”

  In the control room, the switch-overs had been made, and the main holo and one of the tech holos and one of the med holos had been shut down. Greyson’s holo now displayed in miniature the scene occurring in virtual reality.

  “Avery is dumping more data into the ID crystals,” said Sheila Baxter.

  Toni glanced at the VR display. “Thank god, the Horror at the Asylum is over,” she breathed, and watched as the Black Foxes hurtled through hyperspace.

  “I think the venture the Foxes were on probably should be called Horror at Cold Point,” said Grace Willoby, standing nearby.

  “Well, whatever it’s called, if I had had to watch myself boff one more doctor, student, or blue-collar worker, I think I would have gone bonkers.”

  “I dunno,” said Grace, “I mean, they were so handsome and studly that I found it quite tittilating, so to speak.”

  Toni blushed, for in truth, so had she.

  John Greyson, Drew Meyer, and Alya Ramanni reentered the control room, and Greyson, yet puffing from the climb up and down the stairs of the building, said, “Oh, my, I was hoping that the main holo wouldn’t have to be shut off.”

  “Speaking of turning off things, we think that all the items on emergency circuits that can be shut down are now without power,” said Drew. “And if we switch the Astro over to run only the rechargers, the stuff we missed on the main building circuits won’t matter.

  “Good,” said Toni.

  Both Greyson and Drew moved to get a closer look at the holo scene. As Greyson sat down, Drew said, “Ah, starfighters. This is my adventure—twenty-fifth century, Galactic Patrol—where I was the alien Drewmer. I wonder who’s flying my ship?”

  Henry Stein, wheeling a cart of electronic apparatus out from the medlab, said, “Bah, what does it matter?”

  “Just curious,” said Drew, now peering even more closely at the holo projection.

  “What I wonder,” said Billy Clay, “is just w
hat in the hell is this secret plan of Arda’s?”

  “Beats me,” said Drew.

  “Well, there is this,” said Alya. “The Foxes started in medieval times in Itheria, then moved to late Victorian times in Egypt, then to the World Depression times of the 1930s, and now they are in the Galactic Patrol times in the twenty-fifth century.”

  “Your meaning?” asked Billy.

  “They are moving from the past to the future,” said Alya. “Moving from the primitive to the sophisticated.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “And I don’t know,” said Alya. “But it is the only thing I can see that seems to be a notable pattern.”

  “The other thing is,” said Sheila, “their technical knowledge is increasing, and their general understanding of science and the world and such. I mean, the data that Avery downloads into the ID crystals shows that, if nothing else.”

  Greyson nodded and looked away from the holo scene and toward Sheila. Beyond her stood Stein at his cart. Greyson gasped, alarm on his face.

  “Good lord,” said Drew, “I think it’s Lyssa in my ship.” He laughed and added, “I suppose a ghost is as close to an alien as any of the Foxes could be.”

  Toni’s comband beeped.

  “Toni here.”

  “Toni, this is Kat. The goddamned LED gauge on the H2 tank is erratic. We don’t know how much fucking H2 we’ve actually got. The highest reading we’ve seen is nine hours; the lowest is eight minutes. We think the gauge was damaged by the lightning, so any readings since that time are problematic at best. We’ll let you know how much H2 we have when we slap on a new one. Let me also say we’re switching over the leads from the Astro to feed just the rechargers and nothing else. And tell Drew Meyer that with Avery running, his calculations were dead on.”

  Drew called out, “It was a simple equation.”

  “Simple, my ass,” Kat replied. “I had to use a calculator.”

  As Drew laughed, Kat replied with a raspberry, and then said, “Kat out.”

  “Bloody hell,” said Toni. “Maybe we don’t have enough H2 to buy any time at all.”

  Stein pointed to his cart, loaded as it was with electronic gear ready to jack into the hemisynch helms worn by the alpha team. “There’s always my modified cephalorupter.”