The Dark Path

by Walter H Hunt

  ***

  Jackie and Ch'k'te crossed to the main building where the Gyaryu'har's assigned quarters had been located. se Sergei's rooms adjoined the hothouse garden, which included many plants found in zor gardens—it was one of Ch'k'te's favorite places to meditate, and he had been able to furnish it well during his tour on Cicero.

  The building was deserted at this hour of the morning. As they moved through the corridors, the sound of their footsteps seemed to echo unreasonably, like the report of an automatic weapon. No one came out to challenge them.

  It was disarmingly simple to make their way to the suite's door in the interior of the building. This was a bit frightening: there were no guards, no defenses, no evidence the enemy was preparing for them.

  At a wave of Jackie's hand, the door slid aside to reveal the apartment. Like her office, it was tidy, clean and vacant. On the near wall was a sleeping pallet. A handle had been extruded from the wall, presumably to aid se Sergei in getting in and out of bed. A small table in the center of the room held an extremely old and exquisitely crafted 3-D chess set, with pieces shaped in the forms of zor heroes and demons.

  On the far side of the room was a transparent floor-to-ceiling wall fronting the atrium. It was half-covered by a drawn curtain, but the glass door stood partially ajar.

  Jackie looked at Ch'k'te, then walked slowly forward, pistol in hand. She gestured and he took up a covering position.

  She pushed the door open slowly and stepped into the gar den, squinting against the bright morning sun that penetrated the bubble skylight that domed it.

  She froze, startled. The garden was always a delight: Visitors were assaulted by the sights and smells of growing things, familiar as well as alien. This time there seemed to be nothing at all growing. There was a stench of decay that sent a shiver down her spine.

  She could feel Ch'k'te behind her. She cast a quick backward glance; when she turned again to look at the garden, she saw Sergei's powered chair, motionless under a thasi tree facing away from her.

  She resisted the temptation to speak his name aloud. Instead she walked forward, the sound of her footsteps echoing on the flagstones of the garden path. She had almost reached him when the chair turned slowly to face her.

  The familiar features of the Gyaryu'har looked back at her, the frail human form wrapped in a quilted zor robe inlaid with intricate hRni'i designs. He had a gray blanket spread across his chest, with his old, knotted hands folded in his lap.

  "se . . . Sergei?" she asked of the person in the chair.

  In a flash of insight, she knew he was not. It was the eyes that gave it away: they burned with a fierce and frightening anger. It was a caricature of se Sergei, no more; the deep pools of those eyes seemed to grow and enlarge to drown and encompass her.

  "I think we have met this one before," Ch'k'te's voice said from behind her. She tore her gaze away for a split second; when she looked again at the figure in the chair, the image was blurring and melting into another human form.

  She raised her pistol with a great effort of will and pointed it directly at the image of Bryan Noyes.

  "Commodore Laperriere," he said in a painfully familiar voice. "How nice of you to come. You might as well put it away," he said, backing the chair off a meter or so with a flick of one finger. "Perhaps you could break foolish R'ta's Domination. Do not expect the same good fortune with me." He stood and removed the robe, dropping it on the chair, then took a step toward Jackie.

  She tensed and tried to squeeze the trigger but found that she could not. The alien had captured Noyes perfectly: his manner isms, his walk, even the peculiar inflections in his voice.

  "I told the Great Queen that R'ta was too young and inexperienced for this role, but she refused to listen to me. You have been more clever than I expected, Commodore, you and your zor catamite here."

  Jackie heard—no, felt—Ch'k'te's talons come out, but found she could not even turn her head to look at him.

  She felt a mild probe and heard Ch'k'te speak her name in her head.

  "Oh, there'll be none of that. Sleep," Noyes said, glancing for a heartbeat at Ch'k'te.

  Jackie heard her exec collapse to the ground, his left wing brushing against her leg as he fell. A chill of fear rippled through her and it bore Ch'k'te's name.

  "Now then," Noyes said. "I believe this game has gone as far as it is going to go."

  "Meaning?" she managed to say.

  The alien crossed his arms before him. "Just like a meat-creature to miss the obvious. You remind me of R'ta—except"—he smiled, his eyebrows arching—"except, my dear, you do not disgust me as she did. A pity you were born human: You would have made a fine drone, perhaps worthy even of me.

  "But since you do not realize what is about to happen, I will be happy to explain it to you." He took another step forward. Jackie felt her hand slowly lower without her assistance. "It is imperative that we have the dispositions of your bases and fleet duty stations. If our takeover of Cicero had not been interfered with, we might have been able to do this more painlessly. Regrettably"—he walked forward two more steps, almost in arm's reach—"your interference has made this task far more difficult and, for you at least, far more painful. If R'ta had been more attentive to your surface thoughts, I suspect that she would be alive to see this. Perhaps"—a snaky grin crossed his face—"perhaps she might even have learned something."

  He took one more step forward and reached out to touch her head—

  And everything exploded.

  ***

  They called her "the Thane" but not to her face. It was an obvious reference to her Highlands origin, of which she was extremely proud, even though half the personnel in the fleet had never heard of Scotland, having never spent time on Earth. She was best known for her temper, legendary far beyond Cicero. Still, in just a few years, Captain Barbara MacEwan had risen from fighter pilot to carrier commander, winning nearly every award for performance and bravery the Imperial Navy could bestow. She had also won the loyalty of her subordinates wherever she went, and the crew and officers of the fleet carrier IS Due d'Enghien were no exception.

  Now, as she stood on the bridge watching the patterns of fighters fly across the holo image of Cicero, she thought about the orders she'd received from Maartens. They had been explicit: Gain air superiority over Cicero Down to cover an air drop of Marines to take control of the base. The Due d'Enghien had launched two waves of aerospace fighters, with orders to control Cicero Down's airspace.

  It was clear from the radio chatter between ground and fighter interceptors and among the fighter pilots themselves that some sort of illusion was being created, disguising the true form of the Due and its fighters. It was difficult for Barbara MacEwan to truly believe this was possible—but it was clear that the ground-based defenders weren't recognizing their comrades at all. Thus she had to face the unpleasant task of launching attack waves to shoot down the interceptors that contested the base's airspace.

  Don't hesitate, Maartens had said. Do what you can to avoid casualties, but land those Marines.

  These were from Jackie Laperriere's orders. Maartens had sent them scrambled to her; she had looked them over again just before she came up to the bridge to supervise the operation.

  The commodore had always been welcome on her bridge: Barbara had a distaste for groundhogs, regardless of rank, but Jacqueline Laperriere had flown an aerospace fighter and knew what it meant to command. Still, the orders had been bizarre and had suggested the near-impossible—that something or someone was powerful enough to fool instruments of ships-of-the-line. The ghosts hovering at the edge of mass-radar detection and Maartens' report of his exec's attack had been enough to make her believe it. Though it made her uncomfortable to turn the weapons and energies of the Due d'Enghien against fellow soldiers, the mission demanded it.

  It was like an exercise mission except it was for real. Aim for the engines, she thought: You don't have to flame 'em to shoot 'em down. Except that when you're fighting f
or your life at 10,000 meters and Mach 5, you don't have much chance to think about the other guy.

  ***

  There was a certain perverse excitement about dropping through the air in a clear ablative capsule at hundreds of meters per second, with flak blooming all around. It was the same thrill felt by paratroopers over the centuries, something lying between climax and abject fear.

  Strange, Marine Master Sergeant James Agropoulos thought to himself, as he plummeted through the atmosphere. All the bizarre things that run through your head when you 're counting down, waiting for the parachute. Did I drop off next week's duty roster with the lieutenant? Did I remember to lock my footlocker?

  Will I get hit by a flak fragment and be scattered in microscopic particles across the landscape? And even if I don't, will the parachute open and keep me from becoming pate on impact?

  Relax and enjoy the ride, he told himself. That's what Dante Simms always told the recruits, just before they closed the capsule and fired them off on the training drops. Look at it this way, he thought. If the flak hits, or the parachute fails, there isn't anything you can do about it. And if you make it, there's a hell of a lot of other things to worry about once you get down there.

  He thought briefly about his long-gone ancestors, who filled the earth and sky with gods and demigods, who offered or capriciously withheld help from the superstitious mortals who worshiped them. If his parachute were to fail, there would be no Zeus to reach out a mighty hand and rescue him, but there would also be no jealous Apollo to cut the cords and put his life at risk. Still, it wasn't comforting to realize that his life lay in the hands of greater powers in any case.

  Relax, he repeated to himself, giving a quick glance to his wrist-chrono. Relax and enjoy the ride.

  ***

  Something happened.

  Ch'k'te woke, his mouth dry, his right shoulder aching and numb. A cold breeze blew across him. He was still in the garden, but Jackie and Noyes had disappeared.

  He reached to his belt, and found his pistol gone, but his chya was still in its scabbard. He sat up and drew it, feeling the familiar mind-touch of its guy'u—

  Suddenly a chill, much greater than that of the cold air blowing through the cracked skylight, ran the length of his body. He probed carefully within his mind and felt unfamiliar patterns, heightened and lowered potentials, barely concealed neural configurations. His mind had been probed . . . No, that was too gentle a word.

  He had been Dominated and then tossed aside.

  Anger and fear and shame cascaded through him, fighting with each other, as he realized the consequences of what had happened.

  Shame won out. He grasped the chya with both hands, feeling it softly hum through his hands as he turned its point toward his chest. He began to speak a litany, invoking the blessing and forgiveness of esLi.

  He stopped after a moment and dropped the partially charged chya on the flagstones. He looked at his talons. The guy'u in the blade seemed to snarl in protest, but he ignored it.

  You have an obligation, he told himself. Death can come later, when you are finished.

  Rage rose in him and he forced it back down, grasping the blade in both hands and standing. He clenched it tightly and concentrated, closing his eyes.

  When he opened them, he looked upon his chya as it reflected the sunlight along its length. Looking up through the broken permoplast above, he saw two fighters streak across the sky, one pursuing the other. He knew that his course was laid out for him.

  ***

  As Jackie lay there deprived of sight, she felt the alien's mind enter hers, neither gentle nor careful. It began to search methodically. She recoiled in horror and fear, but it only made it more painful.

  She was blind and confronted with a power so great that she could do nothing to counteract it. The fear was a powerful drug in a way, but like most such drugs, it had a saturation point. After trying to fight or even avoid the vuhl's mental incursions, resulting only in greater pain, she began to realize that there was a limit to her fear, past which she would feel nothing.

  Images and memories she had long forgotten drifted past her conscious mind—the sound of a shuttle landing on a hangar deck, its landing-gear squealing, metal on metal . . . the geo metric precision of a dozen arms saluting . . . the faintly anti septic smell of fresh linens in the hospital on Shannon's World. . .

  She was afraid. Still, the point of paralysis had been reached and passed and left far behind. She had known worse, though her mind was now open to all of the horrors and fears she had kept concealed behind a wall of reason.

  She had known death on the battlefield. She had watched a starship disintegrate and explode under concentrated fire.

  She had watched John Maisel collapse and die at a single thought.

  Hatred fueled anger, an awful growling thing forming first in her chest, making her hands clench and her arms and legs tense. She had never been very emotional—a good soldier, they would say: kept her head, never gave in, tried not to get involved. But this was no ordinary enemy, and this was no ordinary hatred. A creature so powerful, so inimical, so . . . evil . . . deserved death at her hands, at this moment.

  A voice inside her head spoke to her then: This is enGa'e'Li; the Strength of Madness.

  Slowly she realized the mental probing had stopped and that her vision was clearing, though she could scarcely make out the outlines of the room or the irregular shape hovering over her.

  I would not have expected Sensitive talent of you, the alien said. But you will not live long enough to use this secret. He raised his hands and a wedge of pain was driven into her forehead. She screamed as it drove farther and farther into her skull, growing white-hot. She could see more clearly: the room was filled with vuhls, some half-transformed from human or zor form, some completely metamorphosed. There were familiar faces among them: Marine NCOs whose service records she had seen, officers from the squadron . . . even—Ch'k'te—

  "Not you, too?" she said weakly, as the ember of pain burrowed into her mind and she watched Noyes fall away, out of her range of vision. Ch'k'te—or whatever it was that looked like Ch'k'te—stepped forward into her range of vision, his tentacled/taloned hands reaching to touch her forehead. She man aged a supreme effort of will and pushed him away, getting unsteadily to her feet.

  " . . . JJJaaacccckkiiieee . . ." the aliens said, swaying around her. She was somewhere in officers' quarters but not in her own rooms. She could feel a buzzing in her head.

  "Won't . . . get me, you b-bastards . . ." she said. With a last straining, scrambled for the door. She found herself in a long hallway and saw light at the end: an open window. Cold air streamed in toward her. It would be several floors above ground level, but it gave her a chance, some possibility of survival. The vuhls here wouldn't give her that chance. She ran toward the window, grabbing the wall for support.

  "Donnnnnn'ttt lettt hhher rrrreeeeaccch ttttheeee wwwwwwinddddowwwww . . ." she heard behind her. The footsteps were an irregular staccato.

  She swung one leg through the open window and gazed un easily down. It was twenty or thirty meters down, and pavement below. She swung the other leg out and braced herself.

  Suddenly a tentacle wrapped around each of her arms. She struggled, hearing a babble of voices behind her, but her captors were too strong. With a heave they pulled her back within the corridor. She braced for impact, but instead landed gently in several pairs of waiting arms.

  Arms.

  She looked at the tentacle wrapped around her right arm. As she blinked and looked at it through blurring eyes, it became a taloned hand, scarred and scratched. She followed the hand to the arm, where it disappeared inside a cold-weather suit. Her gaze traveled up and saw a familiar face.

  "Ch'k'te?" she whispered, not sure what to believe. Was it a vuhl, transformed into the image of her friend? Was it Ch'k'te himself? What was real, and what was hallucination?

  There had been a voice in her head sometime during the interrogation. She'd heard
that voice before, but at the moment couldn't place where or when.

  And what had the vuhl—Noyes—said about Sensitive talent? . . . I had not expected it of you.

  She wasn't a Sensitive! She hated the thought—human Sensitives had always turned her stomach.

  "What . . ."

  "We got 'em, Commodore," said a familiar voice. "Six of the creatures survived. After they were knocked out, the interceptors and ground artillery just stopped firing."

  She turned to look, and saw that she was being gripped by Dante Simms, the Pappenheim's Major of Marines.

  "Glad to have you with us," he said.

  Chapter 12

  One of the Marines—Agropoulos, Jackie remembered his name—offered her a small flask that contained something Marines were not supposed to carry on duty. She took a long sip and then handed it back to the young man.

  She looked around her at the Marines and officers in the room. They had half carried her into a vacant suite and helped her into an armchair. Eventually the room had stopped tilting at a crazy angle, though her head continued to buzz uncomfortably.

  "Thanks," she finally said, smiling briefly at the Marine.

  "Ready for a report?" Captain Georg Maartens asked. He stood next to his Major of Marines in the doorway.

  "Go ahead," she said, rubbing her forehead with the fingers of one hand.

  "Cicero Down is secure. After the Marines established a command post, they located a source of high-frequency radiation. When they altered its broadcast characteristics, it created some kind of feedback response, which bothered hell out of the aliens. We reached you just before the one that was messing with you lit out. We'll catch him if we can."

  "Where are the aliens now?"

  "Three of them are in the control tower, under heavy sedation. The others are in other places on the base."

  "And . . . se Sergei?"

  "We found him down below. He's in some kind of trance, but seems to be stable. I had him transported to the Pappenheim so that Callison could take a look at him."