After a brief discussion, they decided to leave some of the portals active. Ideally, the Dva would shut down everything except access to the Saharj ship that was carrying the new weapon.
Mallory conferred with her team of Dva.
Rupo agreed that it could be done, but not without being noticed. “It will take us a long time. We’ll have to deactivate the portals progressively. The Saharj will come to see what’s going on… I’m rather surprised they aren’t already here. The nodes are too important to be left unattended.”
Jazz explained the lack of Saharj. “The mummies are on alert. I don’t have all the details, but it’s not because of the Vohrn, who are still far away. Something strange is happening within the belt, and several Saharj have been killed.”
Still online, Laorcq cut off the debate. “Try to find out more. For now we’ll keep going!”
They disconnected, and both teams approached the maze at the base of the great towers.
Torg and Mallory followed the Dva. They crept quietly through the metal landscape, where strange equipment competed for space with thousands of strands of raw energy. They shone in all the colors of the spectrum, some bright enough to sear the retina.
In a few strides, they arrived at a spur overlooking two narrow corridors. Torg let out a roar of disappointment: he was too big to fit, so Mallory and Squish had to continue without him. She herself was forced to squeeze through sideways to reach the heart of the tower.
The sight left her speechless.
The room was a sort of circular arena large enough to hold a cargo ship. The pilot had emerged from a passageway located halfway up the wall that formed the monumental room’s perimeter.
Ten to fifteen feet below, the space was filled with blackness. Mallory realized that it was a sphere just like the one she had seen at the top of the tower. She looked up: a pristine ceiling hung over the dark mass, a fragmented representation of yin and yang.
After the profusion of colors the threads of energy splashed along the path, the sudden black-and-white contrast was almost painful to her eyes.
While Mallory acclimated to this sudden change, the Dva set to work. They spread out along the circular walkway and dismantled panels set at regular intervals in the wall. Gradually, they laid the complex energy system bare. Using their tiny fingers and tools that looked like glass clamps, they began to disable the portal system.
From a distance, the pilot heard Torg’s voice behind her.
“Mallory! The Saharj are here.”
Vassili was about to arrive at his destination. One more portal and he’d finally reach the asteroid where his ship was docked. After leaving the warrior aliens’ production complex, he had encountered Saharj at every stage of his journey. One of them had managed to hit him with a large caliber bullet, slowing his progress while his ktol-enhanced body repaired the damage. On his right side, a large patch of newly formed pinkish skin bore witness to the size of the wound.
He was standing inside an empty space filled with woolly, overgrown plants adorned with brown, flexible leaves that were big enough for a human to use for cover.
He quickly crossed this stretch of jungle lit by fluorescent crystals and arrived at a portal.
The last one! He was eager to get to his ship and leave. He was about to step through the veil of darkness when two things happened in rapid succession.
The portal’s entrance wobbled and veered from black to white. Almost simultaneously, Vassili’s mind was filled by a presence that he immediately recognized: Axaqateq.
Around the human, the brown plants and the rocky walls faded, replaced by sights that had almost become familiar: an outcropping of rock beside a rusty ocean. In the distance, bathed in red light under a procession of five moons, the ruins of a once populous city of titans. Finally, the monstrous humanoid with the misshapen head and limbs as thick as tree trunks.
Vassili sighed before he spoke. “Axaqateq. Bad timing.”
The Primordial noticed his insubordinate tone. Fixing six pairs of eyes on him, he slipped into the human’s mind. Vassili couldn’t stop him from extracting a summary of recent events.
With his powerful voice, Axaqateq exclaimed, “Human! Are you stupid? Did I tell you to deliver the world-eater to the Saharj without getting anything in return? They must have interpreted your action as an admission of weakness. It’s no wonder they turned against us!”
Nonchalantly, Vassili retorted, “I didn’t think a demonstration would be good enough for them and, anyway, I had no time for that. Let them have some fun with it. With a little luck, they’ll get rid of the Vohrn for me. I have more important things to do than playing your little games.”
The Primordial stiffened. His big, lipless mouth twisted into a grin, revealing a toothless maw coated with greenish mucus.
“I see. My peers were right: your species is not suitable for the ktol. You’ve lost your mind.”
Through the link Axaqateq had forged, Vassili felt him concentrate. Despite the immeasurable distance between the Primordials’ planet and the Jaris system, the alien linked directly to the ktol nestled in Vassili’s abdomen. The human realized in a flash that the Primordial intended to destroy the object. He recognized the signal that would break down the artifact’s molecular coherence and tried to intercept it.
Their wills clashed. The Primordial, vast and terribly old, sought to crush Vassili’s mind. Initially overwhelmed by the alien’s brute strength, the human recovered and countered the mental attack. When the alien withdrew, Vassili was still facing him, his mind intact. Thousands of light years away, the modified man’s body and the ktol implanted in his stomach had both survived Axaqateq’s attempt at destruction.
Vassili laughed openly. “You old fool,” he said contemptuously before breaking the link.
Once again in full control of himself, he looked at the whiteness in front of him and realized that the portal had been deactivated. Chalking this up to Saharj sabotage, he stepped forward and put his hand on the quiescent device. With his eyes closed, he focused his superhuman perceptions.
There was emptiness and cold, followed by the vague echo of several presences behind an obstacle.
The other side of the “portal” opened onto space. Its destination lay somewhat further away: a major asteroid in the belt, its connections to the inert network of portals all severed.
Vassili went to the end of the room and ventured into the thick vegetation. He bent down and searched in the humus, from which he unearthed a stone the size of a fist. Pleased with his find, he weighed it and took up a position about twenty yards from the closed portal.
He threw the large stone with all his strength at the deactivated portal. The projectile broke the sound barrier before reaching its target. The panel shattered under the impact, opening a gaping hole in the asteroid that contained the flora with the huge leaves.
Dirt and plants were sucked into the vacuum of space in a torrent of mud and dust. Gradually, the horizontal hurricane lost its strength, ebbing to a thin stream, which ebbed and then vanished. Not one ounce of air remained in the room.
Lying on the ground in the devastated space, Vassili relaxed his fingers. Under his hand, the rock slab was now hollow where his knuckles had dug in to hang on.
The artificial gravity was still active, which would make things easier. He ran toward the newly created hole, accelerating to supersonic speed.
Immune to the freezing temperatures and lack of atmosphere, he sprang into open space and launched himself straight at the next asteroid.
In less than three minutes, he crossed the fifty miles that separated him from his destination.
Curled in a ball, he struck the surface like a small meteorite, forming a crater at his point of impact. He was moving toward the panel normally linked to the network of portals when he detected a nearby presence.
Despite his superhuman constitution granted by two successive transformations by the ktol, the lack of air and extreme conditions of space had taken
a toll. His movements slowed and his skin stiffened under the combined influence of the cold and unfiltered sunlight. A sheen of ice formed on his eyeballs, which he cleared with a firm blink.
When he reached the access point, he could barely move. From the outside, the hatch sketched a dark metal rectangle on the identically colored stone onto which it had been grafted.
Vassili fumbled around until he found a protrusion his fingers could hold onto. Grasping it firmly, he positioned his feet on either side of his hands and squatted on the frame of the hatch. Then he tensed his body and pushed down. The rock along the frame creaked and then cracked. Slowly, in the absolute silence of space, the hatch began to separate from its housing. When the atmosphere began to leak out, the separation accelerated.
Vassili pulled with one last ounce of strength and the hatch tore away, exposing the interior of another asteroid to the insatiable vacuum. He was nearly swept away by the sudden release of air; only his superhuman reflexes allowed him to hang in extremis from a rocky ledge.
With a feeling of satisfaction tinged with sadism, he saw Saharj corpses, victims of the sudden decompression, among the debris and the various objects ejected by the pressure difference. When nothing more came from the opening, he slipped through. Belatedly, a security system triggered and a force field sealed the hole behind him.
He straightened and examined the scene. He recognized the hangar where his ship was docked. Patiently, allowing his body to recover from the damage caused by his trip through the void, he moved toward his means of escape.
Axaqateq was intensely frustrated. The game’s rules were simple: using a minimum number of ktol carriers, players had to initiate, by trickery or brute force, events of historic proportions. The more significant the consequences, the higher the score. Matches could be played alone or with others. In the latter case, the participants also attempted to thwart their opponents. Axaqateq had opted for a solo round. His only obligation was to inform all players, active or not, of his objectives.
He had had high hopes for Aldebaran. He had initiated the round by orchestrating the Saharjs’ rejection by their creators. A masterstroke. After manipulating the Gibrals during their first encounter with the alien warriors, he kept a close eye on this system. It had been a long game, but others had gone on for much longer. He had reveled in the Saharjs’ plan. Aldebaran was sliding into a civil war, and he had only had to use two carriers, generations ago! A strategic success worthy of the legendary Arataxol, an outstanding player, famous for filling seven star systems near the galactic core with fire and blood.
Alas, the Vohrn agents had spoiled Axaqateq’s success by forcing him to use an additional carrier. And now Vassili had slipped out of the Primordial’s control.
Some of his colleagues had warned him: beings from aggressive species sometimes managed to overcome the constraints imposed by the ktol. Having barely emerged from barbarism, Earthlings evidently belonged to this category.
He thought for a moment. He could activate other carriers and send them to kill Vassili. The human, however transformed, wouldn’t survive long against two or three opponents. The Primordial contemplated the horizon pensively. His gaze slid to the monumental city and then strayed towards the brownish ocean.
He made his decision. He would let Vassili go his own way. During a game, destroying a ktol carrier resulted in a forfeit. He preferred to play through. The human and his erratic mind seemed just as capable of triggering a massacre as the Saharj. Which would be great: the death toll counted for a lot in the score.
Despite Torg’s urgent tone, Mallory hesitated before joining him. She struggled to tear herself away from the scene before her: as the Dva worked on the portal system, dark columns of matter sprang from the sphere buried at the bottom of the tower and launched themselves toward the ceiling.
She shook herself and looked away from the eerie sight, then crawled into the narrow passage through which they had accessed the structure. She retraced her steps along the path to the pontoon where Torg waited.
He pointed a finger to the right, indicating three objects floating in the air above the scarlet body of water. “The Saharj, on antigrav barges.”
The pilot made a quick estimate. “They’ll be here in two, three minutes. I doubt the Dva will have time to finish.”
She slipped a hand behind her back and grasped the gun wedged against her lumbar region. With the other, she touched her navcom necklace and used it to call Laorcq. She told him about the Saharjs’ arrival.
“I have guests as well,” he confirmed, “but they don’t seem to have noticed us. Which is a stroke of luck because I’m not rolling in ammunition.”
During their visit to the Sirgan, the Saharj had taken all of the weapons Laorcq had stored in the transport ship, except for a conventional revolver—now in the veteran’s hands—and a gun with hypertrophic bullets that Mallory had hidden in the cabin’s ventilation duct. She regretted not having put the more dangerous weapons there. Since the expanding gelatin bullets weren’t lethal to humans, she feared they wouldn’t do much at all to the Saharj.
At least Mallory could count on Torg to defend her. Laorcq only had the harmless Dva.
At the risk of stating the obvious, she suggested he hide. If his tower really was identical to the one she was in, there should be a lot of good hiding places.
He tried to respond reassuringly. “I was thinking about it. I see a spot that might work. And also… maybe the Dva know another way out.”
He disconnected before she could say anything else.
The pilot’s stomach knotted: if he died…
She felt the jufinol wrapped around her arm stiffen. He urged her to dismiss the negative thought. She had to stay focused: worrying had never saved anyone. While she and Torg took cover and kept an eye on the Saharj, she contacted Rupo and asked how his work was going.
“Not finished! Thirty percent of the system is still in service.”
“The Saharj are here. Do your best while we hold them back at the entrance to the tower!”
With her hand on the butt of her gun, Mallory took shelter behind a cylinder made of a translucent material that was as hard as stone. Energy flows circulated within, their changing colors highlighting her fine features and accentuating the darkness of her eyes. On her skin, her sensitive tattoos became brambles.
Torg stood back, ready to take over once she had exhausted her ammunition.
Barges carrying a dozen cadaverous aliens came into range. Mallory aimed methodically, taking advantage of the training received during her first weeks working for the Vohrn. She adjusted her aim, bent her arms, and held her breath. Then she exhaled halfway and pulled the trigger.
Silently, the gun spat out a hail of bullets. The gelatin balls struck the Saharj hard. Surprised by this violent assault in the heart of their territory, the passengers on the other antigrav barges didn’t react immediately. The pilot took the opportunity to knock them into the water. She hadn’t expected such success, and exclaimed, “Not bad! This may almost be fun.”
The cybrid was not as enthusiastic. “The problem with your toy is that they may wake up before they drown…” he grumbled.
Illustrating his point, several Saharj emerged from the red waves and moved towards the tower on foot.
A shiver ran down Mallory’s spine, and she opened fire again. The aliens were now smaller targets, and they had scattered, as would any soldier worthy of the name when faced with a sniper.
She knocked a dozen of them down before her navcom transmitted a warning signal: she only had five bullets left.
She holstered the weapon with a sigh: she didn’t seem to have gained a lot of time. A light tap on her shoulder caught her attention. She turned and saw a Dva. Although she had trouble distinguishing them from each other, she guessed that it was Rupo. “You’re finished?”
“No, but we found a way to hold back the Saharj. Come inside.”
She followed the little alien but then froze. “What about To
rg?! He can’t fit. What do you have in mind exactly?”
“We will increase the level of the sgarfo.”
“The level of what?”
Clearly, Jazz’s improvised translator was flawed.
“The red liquid, outside,” clarified the Dva.
“That won’t stop the Saharj!”
“When the asteroid is full, strong currents run through the sgarfo. It is then flushed through a portal leading to the heart of the sun.”
Torg reached out to gently caress Mallory’s cheek and Squish’s fur. “Go—be safe. It shouldn’t be any worse than the vacuum of space. I’ll just hang around and wait. And if the Saharj make it here anyway, I’ll take care of them.”
She had no time to protest. Rupo pulled her back, and a force field appeared between her and her bodyguard. The ruby waves immediately began rising in the narrow passage. The level rose rapidly, reaching the top of the energy field in seconds. The cybrid seemed to melt into the opaque liquid. Behind the force field, there was a uniform expanse of red.
Mallory realized that communication with Jazz and Laorcq was now impossible. She controlled her intense frustration with difficulty and followed the Dva to the circular walkway. Hundreds of black columns now connected the sphere buried in the ground to the white ceiling. She looked at them without really seeing them. With a knot in her stomach, her intuition told her that she had made a terrible mistake leaving Torg outside.
XXIII
ICE
FOCUSING on his heartbeat, Torg withstood the currents moving through the sgarfo. Firmly gripping one of the metal beams supporting the base of the tower, he conserved his oxygen and patiently awaited the discharge of the fluid. Around him, everything was veils of scarlet: he could hardly see his own hands and their steel claws.
A sharp, burning feeling, followed by cold, suddenly ran through his right flank. One of the Saharj, who must have approached before the currents had become too strong, had just struck him with a dagger.
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