“Damn right,” said the Investigator. “Never met an alien I didn’t kill.”
Diana nodded jerkily. “I understand, Captain. Let’s do it.”
She closed her eyes and let her mind drift up and out. The Base roared around her in a thousand voices, some human, some not. The human components of the alien system were still alive, though their minds or what was left of them now followed alien paths. Diana concentrated on blocking out the babbling voices one by one, searching for the dominating alien presence at the centre of its web, It found her first, blazing in her thoughts, but she held her ground and kept the alien firmly at the edges of her mind. She felt its interest in her grow as she continued to hold it at bay, and its thoughts crawled across her shields like worms across her face. Its probes grew stronger and more threatening, but Diana had been trained to withstand far worse.
Her confidence increased as she realized the alien wasn’t really that strong in itself; its true strength lay in the shell it had built around itself, in its domination of the living components of its web. Diana shut out every other voice, concentrating on the alien, showing it her strength. Its thoughts seethed at the edges of her mind, dark and complex and utterly inhuman. Try as she might, its thought processes made no sense at all. Diana concentrated on projecting a single message. If you want me, you’re going to have to come and get me yourself. Your web can’t see me, and if you don’t come to me, I’ll come to you. And I’ll destroy you. The alien broke contact sharply, and Diana dropped back into her head and opened her eyes. The others lookedat her questioningly, and she nodded firmly, trying hard to look professional and in command of the situation.
“It knows where I am. You’d better get moving, Captain. It’ll be here soon.”
Silence smiled and nodded. “Just give me a direction, Diana.”
Diana projected the map overlay the AI had given them of Level Three, and indicated their position and that of the centre of the web. Silence and Carrion acknowledged the information, and Diana broke contact. Silence waited patiently while Diana familiarized herself with the new lamp the Investigator had found, and then he and Carrion set off down the corridor, their lamp bobbing along above them like an oversized will-o’-the-wisp. Diana and Frost stood together a moment, awkward in each other’s company, and then the Investigator sat down on the floor, drew her sword, and laid it across her knees.
“Might as well make ourselves comfortable, while we wait for the alien to put in an appearance. I take it your esp will give us plenty of warning?”
“Of course, Investigator.” Diana hesitated, and then sat down beside Frost. It didn’t feel particularly comfortable, but it was good to get off her feet for a while. “So what do we do now, Investigator? Just wait?”
“Pretty much. Nothing we can do till the alien gets here. Relax. Save your strength. You’re going to need it.”
“What do you suppose it’ll look like?” Diana asked hesitantly. “I’ve never seen an alien. In the flesh, as it were.”
“Could be anything,” said Frost easily. “None of this fits in with anything I’ve ever seen before. Probably really ugly. Most of them are, to our eyes. Don’t let it worry you. As soon as it shows up, I’ll blow a hole through it with my disrupter, and then you can help me cut it up into bite-sized pieces. No problem.”
“How can you be so calm, so confident?” Diana asked. “This creature slaughtered every living thing in the Base, and then tore their corpses apart to fashion them into a living computer network. This isn’t some rogue animal we’re dealing with; it’s a powerful, sophisticated entity, and it’s heading right for us.”
“I’m an Investigator,” said Frost. “I’m trained to deal with situations like this. Are you scared, Diana?”
“Yes,” said the esper. “Yes, I am.”
“That’s good. Being scared will give you an edge. It gets the adrenalin pumping, and sharpens your reflexes.”
“Are you scared?”
“I suppose so, in my way. Investigators don’t really have emotions, just pale echoes of what we remember as emotions. Our training sees to that.”
Diana nodded. “Training. The usual Empire euphemism for mind control. They started my training when I was six years old. When to use my power, and when not to. Who to use it for. And right from the beginning it was made clear to us that if we didn’t learn thoroughly or quickly enough, we’d be killed. The Empire won’t tolerate rogue or uncontrollable espers. Six years old is a hell of a time to be made aware of your own mortality. But it does give you a strong sense of perspective. In the end, all that really matters is following orders.
“They experimented for a time with mind-control implants, but they couldn’t develop one that didn’t interfere with esper functions, so they settled for good old-fashioned psychological conditioning. I’ve been trained about as thoroughly as anyone can be, without an actual lobotomy.”
There was a pause as they sat quietly together, not looking at each other.
“My training started at about the same age,” said Frost slowly. “In learning to outthink alien minds, we give up a lot of what it means to be human. Things like emotions, conscience, companionship. Our training produces warriors, perfect killing machines to serve the glory of the Empire. I don’t feel much of anything anymore except when I’m fighting. I’ve had lovers, but I never loved any of them. I have no friends, no family, nothing but the job. Still, if nothing else, it is an extremely interesting job.”
“Is that all you have?” said Diana. “Just the job and the killing?”
Frost shrugged. “It’s enough. You can’t expect too much out of life, esper. You should know that.”
Diana smiled briefly. “You know, we’re more alike than I thought. You deal in death and I deal with life, but really we’re two sides of the same coin. We both had our childhoods taken away from us, and had our lives shaped into something those children could never have understood. And we’ll both probably die serving the people who destroyed our lives in the first place.”
Frost shook her head. “No, esper, you don’t understand me at all. I like being what I am, what they made me. I’m strong and I’m fast, and there’s nothing and no one that can stand against me. I’m the most perfect fighting machine you’ll ever see. I’ve been responsible for the destruction of whole alien civilisations, and killed men and creatures with my bare hands. It’s only when I’m fighting and killing that I feel really alive. It’s like a drug you never grow tired of. You can’t know how it feels, esper—to know you’re the best. I’m the ultimate expression of the Empire, the personification of its strength and purpose. And all I had to give up to achieve it was a few weak emotions that would only have got in the way of my work.
“It’s different for you. You take no pride in being an esper. Probably give it up tomorrow, if you could. To be normal. I won’t give up what I am, and I’ll kill anyone who tries to take it away from me. You think too much, esper. It gets in the way. Life’s so much simpler without conscience or emotions to complicate things.”
Diana looked at her steadily. “Everything else has been taken away from me; I won’t give them up too. I’d rather die.”
“You may get your chance,” said Frost, looking down the corridor into the darkness. “Something’s coming.”
The Investigator rose to her feet in one graceful movement and stood listening, sword at the ready. Diana scrambled unelegantly to her feet and looked wildly about her. The alien couldn’t be here already. It couldn’t. Her esp would have picked it up long before this. Unless it too knew the art of psionic invisibility. In which case, things were about to get rather interesting.
Frost slapped the metal bracelet on her left wrist, and her force shield sprang into existence on that arm—a palely glowing rectangle of pure energy, humming loudly on the quiet. Diana raised her esp and reached out tentatively. The Base was silent, with none of the babbling voices she’d heard earlier. The alien had put up shields. Diana retreated quickly into her own mind,
and set up her own wards. Theoretically, they should be able to stand off any psionic attack, up to and including a mindbomb, but she’d never tested her shields in actual conflict before. Hopefully, the alien didn’t know that. She glanced across at Frost, and was silently reassured by the Investigator’s obvious professionalism and competence. A thought struck her.
“Investigator, if the alien is coming, wouldn’t you be better off with your disrupter than your sword?”
“No,” said Frost calmly. “A sword’s more versatile. You can have the gun, if you want.”
“No thanks,” said Diana. “I don’t believe in them.”
“Suit yourself,” said Frost, a shrug clear in her voice. “Whatever’s out there, it’s close. I can feel it. I’m impressed. I didn’t think anything could get that close to me without my knowing.”
“Psionic invisibility,” said Diana. “No way you could have known.”
“That shouldn’t have made any difference,” said Frost. “I am an Investigator, after all. Are you picking up anything?”
“Not much. Something’s coming, and it’s not alone. I don’t think it’s the alien.” She looked unhappily at Frost. “I can’t be sure, but I don’t think the alien’s here at all. It’s still hanging back. It’s sent something else in its place. Stand ready, Frost. They’re almost here.”
“Relax, esper.” The Investigator swept her sword casually back and forth before her, smiling easily. “Nothing’s going to get to you while I’m here. Though you could at least activate your force shield. There’s no point in making it easy for them. You’re here as bait, not a sacrifice.”
Diana blushed, and slapped her bracelet. The low hum of the force shield was very reassuring. She and the Investigator stood quietly together, listening. And then the soft patter of running feet came clearly to them out of the darkness, and Diana and Frost braced themselves as their enemy finally emerged into the light.
They’d been human once, before the alien absorbed them into its system. Now they were something else, roughly human in shape, but refashioned to meet the alien’s needs. They were crooked and malformed, with running flesh congealed on their frames like melted wax on a candle. Some had no skin, the red muscles shining wetly in the lamplight, their tendons twitching with every movement. Bunches of cilia waved from empty eye sockets, and mouths held needle teeth. Muscles bulged impossibly, beyond restraint or reason. The twisted faces were inhumanly blank, indifferent to thought or emotion. The alien had reworked them for its own reasons, and if there was any humanity left in them, it was buried deep, where it wouldn’t interfere.
There were ten of them, jostling each other at the edgeof the lamplight, as though reluctant to leave the comfort of the shadows. Ten, thought Diana. That’s not so bad. We can handle ten. As if in answer to her thoughts, more appeared, stepping out of the walls as though the walls were mist and not steel. The Investigator scowled.
“How do they do that? Those walls are solid. I checked them myself.”
“The walls have become part of the alien system,” said Diana softly. “They’re alien now. As alien as everything else in this Base. The whole structure has become a single great organism, with the alien as its heart and mind.”
Frost snorted. “So what does that make these things?”
“Antibodies. We’re invaders, an infection in the system. So those things are going to cleanse us out.”
“You mean they’re going to try,” said Frost calmly. “All right, there’s a lot of them, but they’re not even armed. Let’s keep this in perspective, esper. We can handle this.”
“You don’t get it, do you?” said Diana. “They’re antibodies. The alien can make as many of them as it needs to, recycling damaged ones if necessary. It can make a dozen, a hundred, a thousand; as many as it needs to overrun us. Even you couldn’t stand against a thousand, Investigator. They’re not human. Not anymore. They don’t think or feel or hurt. They’ll just keep coming until we’re dead. And then the alien will recycle us, and put us to some useful task. If we’re lucky, we’ll never know what.”
“You think too much, esper,” said Frost. “It’s never over till it’s over. With this many antibodies, they’ll spend most of their time tripping over each other and getting in each other’s way. All we’ve got to do is hold them off, until either the Captain and the outlaw reach the heart of the system, or the alien gets impatient and comes here itself to take us on.” She smiled unpleasantly at the shapes before her, and swept her blade back and forth. “Come on then, you useless sons-of-bitches. Let’s do it.”
• • •
Captain Silence and the outlaw Carrion moved swiftly through the distorted corridors, heading into the dark heart of Base Thirteen. For a long time the only illumination came from the lamp bobbing along above them, but eventually strange lights began to appear in the distance, steady glows and sudden glares, like the opening of so many watching eyes. Things stirred and shifted in the shadows, sometimes alive and sometimes not. Silence kept a wary eye on all of them, but tried not to look at them too closely. Something about their uncertain shapes disturbed him on some deep, primal level. The idea that the material world could acquire sentience and direction undermined his faith in how the universe worked.
Carrion, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be bothered by any of it. But then, he’d been an Investigator once, and nothing bothered them. Silence glared about him, holding his gun so tightly that his knuckles ached. He had faith in Carrion’s psionic invisibility to keep them from being detected, but walking straight into the alien’s clutches went against all his instincts. He clamped down hard on his nerves, and watched where he stepped. Thick steel cables stirred sluggishly on the floor like dreaming snakes, coiling around each other in slow, sinuous movements, dripping black oil. Silvery traces glowed like veins in the sweating walls, pulsing in a fast, irregular rhythm. Silence glanced at Carrion, irritated by his continued calm.
“Are you sure this invisibility of yours is working?”
“Quite sure, Captain. Because if it wasn’t, we’d very likely be dead by now. Have faith, Captain. I’ll get you there.”
Silence sniffed. “Odin, are you still following this?”
“Yes, Captain,” the AI murmured in his ear. “Audio contact remains firm.”
“Give me an overlay of the Level Three floor plans.” The plans appeared before him, hovering on the air in glowing lines and symbols. Silence checked his position and that of the centre of the web, and scowled. They were a lot closer than he’d thought. “Odin, any chance you’ve reconsidered your position on letting us back on board the pinnace?”
“No, Captain. My Security imperatives are very clear on the matter. However, I will of course provide you with whatever information and guidance I can.”
“Any more useful information from the Base computers?”
“Not as yet, Captain. However, there are still several areas locked away behind Security codes I don’t have access to.”
“All right, lose the overlay.” The glowing map vanished from his sight. “Stay in contact, computer. Let me know of any changes in the situation.”
“Of course, Captain.”
Silence looked at Carrion. “I take it you were patched into that. Any comments?”
“Only that we should walk even more carefully from now on. We’re nearly there, and I can’t believe the alien will have left the heart of its system unprotected. There are bound to be defensive systems and booby traps just waiting for us to trigger them.”
“I’ve really missed your sunny personality, Carrion. You look for the worst in everything, don’t you?”
“Yes, Captain. And usually I’m right.”
Silence sniffed. “We should reach the heart in a few minutes. Assuming we do find a way past whatever’s waiting for us, do you have any ideas as to what we’re going to do when we get there?”
“Not really, Captain. A few of your grenades, backed up if necessary by a channelled psi-storm from me, sho
uld be enough to wreck whatever the alien’s put together, but I can’t be sure until I’ve seen it.”
“Aren’t you going to make a speech about how wrong I am to be planning the destruction of a new alien species? I seem to recall you were quite eloquent on the subject where the Ashrai were concerned.”
“That was different. The Ashrai were willing to coexist. This species is not. Its existence is based on total restructuring and control of the environment. They are as much a threat to this world and to the Ashrai as they are to the Empire.”
“I wish you’d stop talking about the Ashrai as though they were still alive. They’re dead and gone. I killed them all. You’ve been alone here too long, Carrion.”
Carrion looked at him almost pityingly. “The Ashrai aren’t gone. You never did understand the bond between the Ashrai and the metallic forest. I’ve been here ten years, and I’m only just beginning to comprehend what we destroyed here. The Ashrai were a race of espers, exhibiting psi phenomena we could barely measure, let alone understand. They fought the Empire to a standstill, for all our superior technology. And even though you scorched this planet, they’re still here. Their bodies may be dead, but their souls still haunt the trees. Call it a vast living field of psi energy and phenomena earthed by the metal forest, if that makes it easier for you to grasp. But as long as the forest still stands, the Ashrai still exist. They do not forget and they do not forgive. They were very special, John. You never did understand what you did here.”
“Oh yes, Sean. I know what I did.”
Carrion stopped suddenly, and gestured for Silence to stop with him. They stood a while in their narrow pool of light, while Carrion frowned uncertainly, checking the way ahead with his esp. He finally shook his head and gestured for Silence to continue, but he was still frowning. Silence drew his gun and scowled at every moving shadow. The pressure of unseen watching eyes seemed heavier by the minute, but nothing challenged them.
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