The IX

by Andrew P. Weston

  Behind them, ten yards further back, the two disgraced cavalry officers limped along beneath their own personal clouds of woe.

  I suppose it must be painful, really. Searc’s men did give them quite a hiding before they returned. Houston and Smith were fortunate Red and his clan were there to prevent things from getting too out of hand. Pity. It would have helped settle an ugly issue once and for all. Aloud, he urged, “C’mon, gentlemen, keep up. Not too far now before we come to the perimeter of the outer zone.”

  “Why are we walking anyway?” Smith complained. “This place is huge. Why couldn’t we have just used the transporter device, or a skimmer? Or our horses, come to that?”

  “Because you need to get an appreciation of what you’ll be defending, young man,” Mohammed replied, “and of the distances involved should you find yourself stuck out here on foot. And to be honest, we reserve our resources for more important use.”

  “So, it’s about five miles from the central complex to the city wall?” Marcus asked.

  “Yes, that’s right. Who told you?”

  “No one. We’re used to counting off the distance as we march. Helps you keep track of things quite accurately. I’d say we’ve traveled well over four miles already. And, judging from the size of those cow-like beasts in the distance, there’s roughly half a mile left.”

  “Very good!” Mohammed was impressed. “And you do that as a matter of course?”

  “Usually. It’s also handy if you have to direct archers or catapult captains. Understanding your ranges can give you the edge in a fight. As it will do here.”

  “You think so?”

  “Most certainly.” Casting ahead, Marcus explained, “We know that if the Horde breaches the wall, they will do so in that general area. At the moment, you can only spare one of the futuristic guns that Lieutenant McDonald was speaking about. A . . . cannon, yes?”

  “The .50 millimeter? That’s correct.”

  “So we will have to rely on a multitude of smaller weapons to prevent a flood of invaders. If we mark this area properly, and station ballistae, scorpios, archers, and so forth, at different distances from the breach, it will allow us to maintain a steady rate of fire without endangering our men.”

  “As in a tiered response?”

  “Precisely. And if the wind is in our favor, you’ll see something quite exceptional. When I was in Africa, we used to heat sand and fling it at our enemy. The damn stuff gets everywhere. In your hair, inside armor, on your clothes. And it burns like the seven hells. Of course, on this occasion, I’d want to mix a healthy dose of rust or other iron flecks in with the sand. From what I’ve seen, the results will be quite explosive. And we wouldn’t have to resort to these bullets you’re so concerned about. We could hold them in reserve should our efforts be in vain.”

  The party came to a full stop as the weight of Marcus’s words sank in.

  Eyes wide with excitement, Mohammed keyed a message into his tablet. Looking toward Houston, he explained, “I’ve just thought of an excellent project that will get your men out of confinement and keep them gainfully employed for a day or two. Sandbagging! Under Marcus’s direction, they’ll stockpile a combination of soil and rust to ensure the catapults have plenty of ammunition should the need ever arise.”

  Pleased with himself, Mohammed resumed their trek toward the utility buildings. A number of solar powered lights activated as they walked, casting a warm amber glow over the surrounding fields.

  “What are those creatures anyway?” Cathal asked.

  “Ardenese cattle and livestock, left here to help facilitate our infrastructure. Believe it or not, we’ve also got a number of sheep, goats, and a small herd of precious dairy cattle. Like your horses, they were brought through in respective intakes. They’ve adapted quite well, but have to be kept segregated. They have their own pastures to the north of the city.”

  “And these?”

  “Over there are lolaths. The Ardenese equivalent of a cow. In the fields to the left are provats and yithans. They also give milk, although it’s very thick and sweet and not to everyone’s taste. As you can see, they look like a pairing between a lamb and an ibex. In the west quadrant, we have a rather large herd of rhobexi. Think of a cross between a deer and a bull, and you won’t be far wrong.

  “We were also left a number of staples. Porran, a wheat and barley combination, and rizet, a crop very similar to rice. All excellent for eating, and all very precious.”

  He made eye contact with Houston and Smith as they strolled. “And they’re part of the reason we can’t afford to be divided. These beasts and fields were left here for us. To sustain us, while we wage war against a relentless enemy. But they’re dying out. Although we have a heavily mechanized and scientifically advanced system for crop rotation, artificial insemination, and food production, it’s not enough. Simple soil depletion, stagnating diversity, and attrition are having an adverse affect. The crops are failing. The animals won’t carry fetuses to term. The sheer grind of this siege is taking its toll, and unless we all pull together, we’re not going to last. Only a closely bonded team can hope to survive the drastic measures we’ll have to implement to survive. Things are going to get tough very soon. Guess what’ll happen to those who don’t fit in.”

  “We get the picture,” Houston drawled, “so don’t worry. My boys will toe the line, I assure you. No bother, no fuss.” Much more quietly, almost to himself, he added, “No more unfortunate accidents.”

  A ringing back-hander from Cathal sent Houston sprawling to the floor with a cut lip. “See that’s the case, laddie. Otherwise, you just might find a war axe unfortunately planted in your skull during the heat of battle. Understand?”

  Houston scowled. Regaining his feet, he spat out a mouthful of blood.

  Marcus stepped forward in an attempt to defuse the situation. “I would listen to what he says, Captain. Speaking from experience, you don’t want to find yourself on the wrong side of the Iceni. Or any of the highland tribes, come to that. They have an uncanny knack for taking you by surprise.”

  Houston continued to glare. Marcus placed his hand on the cavalry officer’s arm and leaned in close. “Leave it, you fool! If you keep acting in this manner, he will take it as a personal challenge and kill you on the spot. I don’t imagine for one minute the threat of restricted duties or incarceration will act as a deterrent. Do you?”

  Smith joined them. “Listen to him, cousin, for pity’s sake. He’ll murder us in our beds.”

  Marcus lowered his voice even further. “And don’t think people will be sorry to see you go.” He shrugged. “It’s up to you.”

  Mohammed watched the incident silently, assessing each man’s reactions.

  Yes. I think we’ve got ourselves a good bunch here. Saul will be pleased to hear his gut feeling is paying off. They’re already gelling into a team. Becoming part of the family. And if Houston continues to be difficult, they’ll sort him out for us.

  He coughed to attract everyone’s attention. “If you’ve quite finished? We are here to discuss defenses, after all.” Indicating the nearby buildings and warehouses, he continued, “Now, take a good look around. Work together. Anything you can think of that might assist in either preventing the Horde coming through in the first place, or delaying them if they do, will be most welcome. Remember, Arden’s future depends on your efforts.”

  God help us!

  *

  The people gathered within the xenobiology laboratory were an unusual blend of characters. Warriors all, they represented a wide diversity of cultures and levels of scientific sophistication. All united by a keen desire to better understand the enemy they faced.

  “What is it that the Horde does to us, specifically?” Mac asked. “I understand there’s a degree of physical trauma involved from time to time, but I’m still trying to get my head around the element of psychic vampirism.”

  “It’s best if I actually show you,” Ayria Solram replied, “or at least share what we�
��ve been able to determine.”

  Ayria turned to activate a holo-emitter and brought up a three dimensional representation of a human brain. Enlarging it, she zoomed in on the synapses, which flared regularly with pulses of bright golden light. Ignoring Mac and his team, Ayria smiled at Snow Blizzard, Kohrk Underwood, and Flavius Velerianus. “In its simplest terms, what you are seeing here is a process that takes place inside your head, millions of times every second. Whether it’s the automatic things like breathing and blinking, or the deliberate ones, such as choosing what piece of fruit to eat, it’s all governed by what happens within the brain. Those flashes of light are electrical signals. They pass along special roadways, called synapses. It’s the synapses that allow you to carry out the everyday actions required to live. To eat, drink, sleep and function, because they ensure the right message is sent to the right place.”

  Each of the three nodded, so Ayria added some embellishments to the scene. The simulation was joined by more holograms, those of a human being standing next to a monster. Ayria continued, “As you can see, the man is surrounded by an aura. That nimbus is generated by the processes taking place within the body. We think this is what attracts the Horde.” Pointing to the fiend, she continued, “While it’s difficult to show what our enemy looks like, we do know their matrix appears to be concentrated around a common core. That essence requires energy to maintain cohesion and stability. When their atoms become excited, they become visible, usually in the area of their jaws, talons, and eyes. Now look at this.”

  Ayria manipulated the controls once more, and the beast turned to grip its victim within its claws. The human tensed as if in great pain. Then he began twitching uncontrollably in the grunt’s arms. Within seconds, the spasms stopped and the man slumped to the floor.

  “This is an actual simulation of a number of real life attacks captured on surveillance,” Ayria said. “It takes roughly five seconds for one of them to kill a person. But not in the way you might think. Look again, but this time, watch the image of the enlarged brain.”

  As the spook attacked once more, Ayria emphasized the electrical pathways within the cerebrum. The result was shocking. At first the signals flowed as they should, randomly and in a number too great to comprehend. Then the brain flared, and a massive wave of energy surged in one direction, toward the site where the ogre had gripped its victim. Seconds later, the network of glittering filaments darkened, before sparking into haphazard flashes of weakening cognitive function. Finally, after about four minutes, everything went black.

  “What happened?” Mac gasped.

  “You should ask yourself what didn’t happen,” Ayria countered. “Take a peek at the vital function readout.”

  She pressed a button, and certain areas within the man’s body were clarified in 3D close-up. The heart was most noticeable. Thudding wildly, it attempted to maintain a steady rhythm, but in the absence of the correct stimulus, quickly seized and arrested. The lungs also fluttered madly, inflating and deflating out of sync before collapsing entirely. Had it not been for the enhanced optics, no one would have known what was taking place inside the human, because the face betrayed no hint of the agonizing death he was suffering.

  “This person has been paralyzed,” Snow Blizzard stated. “Robbed of life essence, this electricity that makes our brains work, he cannot endure. Although drained, his body still fights to live. It is a hopeless struggle.”

  Ayria was impressed. “You are exactly right. Even when the grunts resort to physical violence, they don’t kill outright. It would deny their feast. The brain, although stripped of its ability to function, is still very much alive. Unfortunately, it is now unable to perform its job of sending the right signals to the correct places in our bodies. And that’s why these beasts are such a nightmare. Imagine, if you can, the pain of a combined heart attack, stroke, and lung collapse. And then being unable to express that agony in any way. I’m telling you now, if you ever find yourself in a situation where one of your comrades has been taken, the best thing you could do for them is put a bullet between their eyes.”

  Everyone was shocked at the brutality of the doctor’s statement.

  “That’s what almost happened to Commander Cameron, isn’t it?” Kohrk said. “When his friend died several months ago. He felt himself falling prey to the devil’s touch before the blood-metal did its work.”

  “Yes,” Ayria whispered, lost in the moment, “we nearly lost him on the day the answer fell into our laps.”

  “Is there nothing we can do to counter the effect?”Mac asked. “I mean, do they require skin on skin contact to initiate their drain, or just close proximity? Is there something we could rig to cause feedback so they overdose?”

  “The Horde only needs to be within inches of you to feed,” Ayria replied. “Their outer corona seems to be the defining barrier. Not their tangible essence. If any part of your body becomes enmeshed by it, the feeding frenzy is automatically triggered and will not stop until you are screwed, or the brute is dead. As to overloading them? I doubt we could ever manage that.”

  “Why?”

  “When I conducted the welcome tour in the Hall of Remembrance with Mohammed, do you remember me telling you how each of the successive groups to arrive had been decimated by these things? How there’s so few of us left?”

  “I do, yes.”

  “Well, that’s not because we came through helpless and unarmed. Far from it. Over the years, we’ve been equipped with some of the most devastating armaments you could ever wish for. Phasic blasters, teleron disruptors, photon cannons, ion accelerators, even plain old plasma rifles. But none of them were truly effective. I’m afraid to say, each and every single form of advanced weaponry we could lay our hands on involved the discharge of highly excited, compressed beams of energy. You can only guess what happened when we used them on the Horde for the first time.”

  “They fed on it?”

  “More than that . . .” Ayria’s eyes got a faraway look as she relived the experience, “. . . they became evil incarnate. It was as if we’d injected them with stimulants. I’m sure you’ve heard stories of berserkers from time to time? In Norse and Germanic mythology, some men became so enraged, so uncontrollable during the heat of battle they went into a trancelike state of overwhelming fury. They didn’t feel pain or show remorse. They wouldn’t stop until their enemies were dead or dying, and even then they had problems stopping them wreaking continued havoc on fellow soldiers. Now imagine all that savagery rolled up into a seething mass of ten-foot high monstrosities.”

  Mac was stunned to silence.

  Sam Pell, 4 Troop’s technical expert, was intrigued. “If you don’t mind my asking, Ayria, what wattage are we talking about?”

  “Of the weapons? It varied. The plasma rifles discharged around fifty megajewels of energy. The big cannons, up to one hundred thousand.”

  “That’s more than lightning,” Sam gasped, horrified at the implications. “Hell! It’s even hotter than the sun. Are you sure there was no degradation whatsoever in their thresholds?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m not explaining this very clearly, am I?” Ayria seemed embarrassed by her efforts. “But then again, I am a doctor. No, the weapons did work. Many thousands of the Horde were destroyed outright. But the process of their destruction sent highly energized shockwaves through the rest of the swarm, which invigorated the survivors and boosted them to even greater ferocity. If the heavy guns were used, it actually triggered a feeding and spawning frenzy, where thousands upon thousands of fresh spooks were generated. More, in fact, than we wiped out. They’d swarm at us like a tsunami, a never-ending wave of shrieking pressure and hate that drove some of us to suicide. In the end, we daren’t use any of the armaments unless the direst emergency arose.”

  “What about nukes?”

  “We have such ordinance. But again, what would be the point? I don’t think mutual destruction was on the Ardenese agenda. The planet would be ruined if we ever used such things. And we
’d be just as dead.”

  Everyone fell quiet as they digested the implications of Ayria’s revelation.

  “Would a shower of iron not work?” Flavius asked, puzzled that no one had thought of a simpler approach.

  “Shower of iron?” Ayria repeated, unfamiliar with the term.

  “Yes. When the legions are deployed to hotter climates, we utilize a method of assault that is nigh on impossible to defend against. We cook sand and use catapults to fling it at opposing warriors. The heated particles saturate the air and not only smother the enemy, but cause great discomfort or even injury when inhaled. I’ve been reading something on the histories of the peoples brought here over the years. Can you not adapt some of your missiles or explosive devices to simply burst in the air?”

  “Yes!” Kohrk bellowed. He slapped Flavius heartily on the back. “Seed the bastards in blood-metal and watch them burn. Now that’s more like it.”

  “It’s a good point,” Ayria admitted, noting how well the former enemies were now relating to each other. “I’m not a soldier, so I don’t know if anyone has thought of that before or even mentioned it to the commander. But I will.”

  Then she had a thought. “Kohrk, why do your people call it blood-metal?”

  Kohrk shrugged. “It’s always been called that. Furies are eldritch creatures of the deepest theurgy. Our shamans say you have to poison them at their basest level—within their heart’s-blood—to stand any chance of driving them away. Only iron can accomplish that feat. We are encouraged to eat it during ritual cleansing ceremonies whenever clans are besieged by dark mischief. Such knowledge has been handed down for generations among my kin.”

  “As it has with ours,” Snow Blizzard added. “To my people, fey spirits are known as otherworldly aberrations seeking to gain entrance into our realm by possessing the weak and vulnerable. They are unable to do so when tribal lands are positioned in areas where star-metal has fallen from the roof of the world. Our own witchdoctors engage in the dream-quest to better understand the patterns wheeling through Napioa’s hunting grounds. Through them, they are led to the best sites for settlement. If we are ever troubled by demons, we wear sky-tooth necklaces for protection as we hunt them.”