“Who the hell are you, and what are you doing here?” said the leader. His tone was wary. He gave Cambria a cursory glance and then focused his attention on Coheed. It was clear he thought that, if the two of them posed a danger, then Coheed was going to be the more formidable. Coheed tried to force a smile and, predictably, it looked forced.
Cambria did a superb job of looking stricken. “You don’t have to curse at us like that.” She glanced toward one of the miners. He was looking her up and down, letting his gaze linger on her breasts. Coheed’s impulse was to step forward and put his fist through the bastard’s face. He restrained himself, but not by much. Cambria, in the meantime, continued, “It’s just, we are so lost…”
“Yeah, you said that.”
She stuck out her hand. “I’m Cam. This is Co. And you are--?”
“Still without the slightest fucking clue as to what you two are doing here.”
He let it hang there, untaken, as if she were a leper. Cambria lowered her hand and stuck out her lower lip in an adorably pouty manner. “I was just trying to be friendly.”
“Be a friend to yourself. Get the hell out of here.”
“I thought you wanted to know what we were doing here.” She now sounded almost disappointed.
“At first, yeah. Now I don’t give a shit.”
She turned toward the miner who had been scrutinizing her breasts as if he wanted to set up a summer home on them. Her briefly downturned mouth resumed its sweet look. “Talk to him, would you? Tell him Co and I don’t mean any harm. We’re just ghost hunting.”
“Ghost hunting?” The flirtatious miner seemed dubious at first, but then his face was reflecting the expression on hers. The leader noticed it and whacked him on the arm.
“There’s supposed to be a particular valley that’s absolutely brimming with them,” she said. “It’s called the Triangle Valley. Is this it?”
“Yeah. It is. This is fucking it because I’ve had it with the both of you.”
The leader nodded to the miner who had been about to pull out a gun moments earlier. Grinning, the miner reached into his jacket and produced a pulser. The curved handle was quite elegant looking, and the cobalt blue barrel was pointed directly at Cambria’s head.
“I think we found our ghosts,” said Cambria, and her eyes glowed red.
She projected her mind into the five miners and Coheed watched in admiration as the miners, in unison, staggered. It was a calculated risk. Cambria was capable of holding one person in absolute thrall. She could hold more than that as well, but the more she ensnared, the more possibility there was that someone of a particularly strong mind could slip free. It was like trying to hold one grain of sand as opposed to a fistful.
The miners began to straighten up and looked forward rigidly. But Coheed saw immediately that the leader looked as if he were trembling. The leader growled low and suddenly he stretched his arm forward. A small, compact pulser snapped out from the inside of his sleeve on a springload.
He never had the chance to use it.
The miner to his right, the one who had aimed his weapon at Cambria, swung the pulser around to face the leader. Before the leader could react, Cambria gave the slightest clench of her hand and the miner squeezed the trigger. The pulser unleashed a blast that slammed into the leader’s chest. His ribs shattered from the impact, one of them visibly protruding from his chest. Another was driven inward, puncturing his lungs. He didn’t have the time to process any of it as he barreled through the air, slamming up against the mountain with a hideous crunching sound. He slid to the ground as a crimson mixture of saliva and blood dribbled from his mouth and down the front of his uniform. His mind was unable to process what was happening even as his body convulsed uncontrollably. A sickening smell filled the air. It was the aroma of his bowels and bladder emptying, as disgusting stains of yellow and brown spread across his lap. With all of that, he was still trying to stand, his legs flopping about as if a demented and unskilled puppeteer was manipulating him. “Fuuuuckewwww,” he managed to get out, and he tried to bring his pulser to bear.
“You first,” said Cambria, her voice flat. She nodded slightly and the armed miner fired one more time. This time the blast slammed the leader square between the eyes. His head exploded and blood and gray matter splattered all over the rock. A few bits of skull remained above the neck. The remains of his body slumped over and lay there with blood pooling from his headless neck.
“Anyone else?” She said in that same cold monotone. The armed miner swung his arm around, a threat by proxy. None of the other miners gave the slightest visible reaction.
“So the whole subtlety thing is done with,” said Coheed.
“Looks like.”
“Good.” He clenched the fist of his left arm. His arm shuddered slightly and he felt a stab of pain. Doctor Hohenberger had sworn to him that the sensation would diminish in time, until he was able to extend and retract the blades with merely a thought and no hurt at all. Apparently that time was not yet. He gritted his teeth against it but it wasn’t enough to keep the low moan from his voice as his skin began to bulge at seven points that ran in a straight line along his arm. Seven curved, razor-sharp machetes began to extend—very quickly, in actual time, but to Coheed it felt like an agonizing eternity. He closed his eyes, steadying his breathing, as they continued to extend until they reached their full length of two feet from their base on his arm to the tip of the blade. At their widest point, they were two inches across. They glittered in the light, and there was a reflection from the vast blackness that hovered far overhead as well. He whipped his arm back and forth just to restore full feeling to it. The blades made a buzzing sound as he did this. It was obvious that if they had been cutting through flesh and bone, they would have done so as easily as if through the air. The miners still had enough of their own minds present to stare in wide-eyed shock at the weapons that had just snapped into existence.
“You okay, Co?”
“Fine,” he lied. The pain was beginning to subside; it had eased into a dull throbbing that he knew from experience would be gone within a minute or so. “I’m perfectly fine. How’s your hold on them?”
“They won’t cause any problems. Right, boys?” They stared at her, paralyzed, and so Cambria nodded her head. They responded in unison, their head bobs matching hers.
Coheed approached them and brought a glistening blade up to the throat of the nearest of them. “Who are you working for?” he said.
The miner tried to answer; he really did. His mouth moved but no sound came out. Abruptly he began to tremble, then shudder, and then spasm as if completely out of control. “Cam—?”
“It’s not me. I’m not doing it.”
The miner’s arms were flailing about as if he were trying to take wing. Then, with the only sound emerging from him being a guttural cough, the miner collapsed. He lay sprawled upon the ground, his eyes rolling up into the back of his head.
Cambria looked as startled as Coheed was. “Cam, are you okay…?”
She managed a nod. “Yes. It’s just…yes. I’m fine.”
“What the hell happened?”
“I’m not sure, but I strongly suggest you don’t ask that question again.”
He stared down at the miner’s body. His head was twisted at an odd angle; there was no question that he was no longer among the living. “You’re saying that, just from my asking—?”
“The Doctor told me such things were possible,” said Cambria. “That individuals could be implanted with…he called them mental wards. They’re placed directly into the cerebral cortex and are crafted to make it impossible for anyone to use the subject as a source of information. Ask any question about anything that the implanter wants to hide, and the subject’s brain essentially shuts down.”
“Nice.” He glanced at the three remaining miners. If they had had sufficient control of their bodies to recoil, there was no doubt in Coheed’s mind that they would do so. Instead they just stood there and
stared at him, their eyes wide with terror. “So they’re useless for interrogation. We can’t ask them what they’re doing here, who sent them, if they’re responsible for the diminishment of the Keywork—”
“No, we can’t, but I’d wager they are.”
“I think you’d win that bet. All right then,” he said, scratching his beard thoughtfully. “If we can’t use them as sources of information, I’m pretty sure there’s another use we can put them to.”
“And that would be?”
He smiled grimly. “Cannon fodder.”
* * *
There was no high security locking mechanism to the mountain entrance. That was likely because whoever was inside was not expecting any sort of security threat. That indicated to Coheed that whoever was behind this was either certain of his power to the point of arrogance, or else was monumentally stupid. He was hoping for the latter but suspected it was the former. That only left the question of whether that arrogance was misplaced or well founded. This time he was hoping for the former and suspected the latter, if for no other reason than that it seemed unlikely things could go that easily for them on their first mission.
He wasn’t daunted by the prospect of a fight. Indeed, part of him was hoping for it. But ultimately he and Cambria were untested in battle, and it would have been nice to be able to ease into it rather than be thrust headlong into a full-bore firefight. That wasn’t going to be up to him, though. He was just going to have to roll with whatever was presented them.
Cambria’s three pawns—which was how Coheed had started thinking of them—moved robotically toward the section of the mountain through which they had emerged. Since they had been at such a great distance, even the binoculars hadn’t given them a full picture of what they were seeing. Coheed had figured that there was some manner of door, but no: The pawns simply walked straight through the side of the mountain. Once upon a time, more primitive or superstitious folk would have called it a “glamour,” a magical spell crafted to disguise something’s true nature. But this was an age of science, and Coheed knew precisely what they were looking at. It was a hologram, a picture of light that had been erected to disguise the entrance. Arrogant the minds behind this business might have been, but obviously that didn’t mean they weren’t capable of displaying some degree of caution.
Cambria was right behind her pawns and Coheed behind her. The projection shimmered around them as they passed through and they found themselves staring at a metal shaft with an elevator car within it. It sat there with the door wide open, inviting, and possibly a trap.
But a trap for their own people? It made no sense.
“Let’s go,” said Coheed unnecessarily, because Cambria was already herding them into the elevator. Coheed followed and saw an array of control buttons on the panel. “Cam,” he prompted her, inclining his head toward them. His caution was understandable; if the controls were somehow keyed only to the men that Cambria was controlling, then any attempt by Coheed to operate the elevator car could result in…well, in anything, really.
One of the miners reached forward under Cambria’s unspoken prompting and pushed the lowest button. Presumably they were going all the way down. The elevator hesitated momentarily as if summoning strength for the effort, and then started down with a lurch.
“Old mechanism,” said Coheed, glancing around. “Whatever’s here, someone put it in place a while ago. Except,” he considered it further, “The drain on the Keywork is a relatively recent development.”
“Not necessarily. It may simply have reached levels where it came to our attention.”
“It’d be easier to find out if they were of any use,” and he indicated the miners. “Yes, but we’ve seen the results of direct interrogation.”
“Can you just…you know…”
“Read their minds?”
“Well…”
“Co, I can’t really read minds. Control, yes. But picking out individual thoughts is trickier. The Doctor said that, maybe with time…”
“You read mine, though. Admit it.”
“I…culled general impressions out of it, yes. But—”
“But what?”
“I’m assuming,” she said formally, “it’s because we spend so much time together. For me to achieve that degree of closeness with these guys in the amount of time we have available to us, I’d have to have sex with one of them.”
The gaze of all three miners snapped right onto Cambria. The one who had been admiring her breasts was now grinning widely.
“You can pick which one,” said Cambria innocently.
Coheed didn’t like the looks on their faces. “Eyes front, gentlemen,” he said with irritation. As one, they looked resolutely forward. Coheed cleared his throat. “That, uhm…I don’t think that’ll be necessary after all.”
“Are you sure?” She fluttered her eyelashes at him.
He wanted to be annoyed with her, but he wasn’t able to hold onto it. Instead he chuckled softly and said, “Yes. Quite sure.”
“Ah well.” She shrugged. “I would have let you watch, you know.”
“That’s very considerate.”
They rode the rest of the way in silence, surrounded in darkness with only the faint light of the elevator providing any sort of illumination. Coheed had no idea how far below the surface they were at this point. He wasn’t wild about the situation; they weren’t being provided an easy means of exit if the need presented itself. I guess whatever happens, we go forward, he thought.
Coheed staggered slightly when the elevator finally jolted to a stop. “All out,” he muttered as the door slid open.
The door had opened out into a narrow corridor. He heard a steady pulsing of energy in the near distance. The miners were moving in front of them as Coheed and Cambria fell into step behind them. He had absolutely no idea what he could expect to see once they reached the end of the corridor, but whatever it was, he was beginning to suspect it would probably try to kill them.
As they drew closer, he heard a powerful male voice barking what sounded like orders. It was in the distance, but he could hear it echoing. “What the hell have we gotten into?” Cambria said in a low voice.
“Whatever it is, we’ll handle it.”
Her hand touched his arm fleetingly. It was almost as if a static charge jumped through his body from where she’d come into contact with him.
They emerged from the corridor into a chamber with a ceiling that seemed to go on forever. That didn’t especially surprise Coheed, considering how far underground the elevator had taken them. Half a dozen metal support beams crisscrossed high above, coming to a common joining point in the middle. It was as if they had wandered into some sort of high-tech cathedral.
There were gleaming solid metal slabs lining the wall on either side of them. They were uniform in shape and size, and had no outer markings, and he couldn’t begin to fathom what purpose they might be serving. They were, however, suffused with a soft, steady glow, as if they were throbbing with power of some sort. Cambria was looking at them as well, and when she made eye contact with Coheed, she mouthed the word, Keywork? He shrugged. It seemed as good a guess as any, but he was still having trouble fully wrapping his mind around it.
Was it possible? Was something actually extracting energy from the Keywork, the bands of energy that joined one planet to the next in the vast triangular tapestry that was Heaven’s Fence, and placing it into these…these ten foot tall monoliths? But why? For what purpose? No one had ever conceived of any use for Keywork energy other than binding the planets. It was like trying to come up with a new use for gravity.
Of course, for all he knew, whoever was behind this had some new use in mind for gravity as well.
“What is--?” he began to say, but when he saw the alarmed expression on the miners, he quickly silenced himself. He didn’t need yet another man dropping dead with convulsions.
The monoliths stretched far into the distance, and there was an intersection ahead of them. They reached
the intersection and Coheed said in annoyance, “Now which way? Cam--?”
“Co,” she whispered, and she was pointing off to the right. “I’m pretty sure we go that way.”
He looked where she was indicating and his jaw fell. “Oh my God,” he whispered. “What is that?”
“I have no idea, aside from ‘gigantic’.”
“Well…it’s definitely that. Here we are, juggernaut.”
At the far end of the extended line of glowing monoliths that were situated to Cambria’s right was a massive crystalline structure that stretched from floor to ceiling. Coheed couldn’t be certain, but it might well have been a mile or more high. The edges were jagged, and yet there was an elegant symmetry to it. There was a whirling core of energy in the middle of it, and feeder tubes extended out from it and into what Coheed could only assume was some sort of vast processing unit.
The energy that surged within it, as if they were peering into the heart of creation, was unmistakable.
“That’s Keywork energy,” Cambria said.
“Are you sure?”
“Oh God, yes. That’s—“
No one could say that Doctor Hohenberger hadn’t warned her. “Stay focused, Cambria,” he had said. “When you’re channeling,” which is what he called that particular talent of hers, “it is not an autonomic reflex. You have to be concentrating on it. You can engage in conversation while you’re doing it, but there must still be a part of your thoughts upon it at all times. You must learn how to bifurcate your mind. Otherwise, if you let yourself become too distracted, you will lose your hold on your puppets.”
Coheed had been present at the training sessions where Doctor Hohenberger had issued her those stern warnings. Which was why the Doctor’s words flashed before his eyes, as if they were living things, the instant that one of the miners turned, yanked a pulser from God-knows-where, and fired point blank at Cambria. Coheed shouted a warning, but it was a second too late.
The pulse blast slammed into Cambria’s chest, sending her flying, as if she herself were now a puppet being yanked back on a string. She crashed into one of the glowing monoliths and sagged to the floor. The miner, without slowing, turned and aimed the pulser at Coheed.
Year of the Black Rainbow Page 2