Armies of Light and Dark (7 page)

Vir remembered being a child, wandering about in the woods once during a camping expedition and suddenly finding himself face-to-face with a wild animal. It hadn't been an especially fierce one, but nevertheless, young Vir knew that they were on the animal's home territory, and that carried with it an advantage. But his father had seemed to materialize at the side of his petrified son, and had said with confidence, "Don't worry. He's just as startled to see you as you are to see him."

That was certainly the case now. The Drakh was caught completely flat-footed. Any notion that Vir had that he might have tripped some sort of alarm disappeared when he saw the expression on the alien's face. Clearly the creature had had no idea Vir was going to be there; he had simply been going on about his business and found himself face-to-face with an intruder. Vir, however, had a momentary advantage. After all, he at least had known that he might run into trouble, whereas the Drakh had been wholly unprepared.

Vir drove himself forward off one leg, summoning all his strength and bravery and swinging from the hip as his father had taught him, back when young boys were routinely beating him up. His right fist connected squarely with the Drakh's head, and Vir felt a shock of pain that ran the length of his arm up into his shoulder. The Drakh rocked slightly back on his heels, but otherwise didn't seem to feel the blow. Realizing that he was in trouble, Vir took a step back as the Drakh advanced, and the grey-toned creature let out a horrifying shriek of anger that rooted Vir to the spot. Then suddenly the Drakh froze in place, his eyes going wide in astonishment. He was looking at a spot directly over Vir's shoulder. Had he been thinking fast, Vir might have chosen that moment to press for an advantage. Instead he turned and looked to see what the Drakh was staring at. Instantly, he felt his blood turning to ice water in his veins.

It was a Shadow. Vir had never actually seen one, except in the outermost periphery of his darkest nightmares, and yet he knew the Shadow warrior for what it was the moment it scuttled forward from the darkness. He could hear a scream in his head like a thousand souls being thrown into damnation, and there was a scrabbling sound as its pointed feet moved across the rocky surface of the floor. A mixture of amazement and joy appeared on the Drakh's face, as he clearly waited for the Shadow to issue some sort of order. And suddenly the Drakh's head snapped around, as two hands touched either side of his temples. His eyes went wide in confusion when the Shadow warrior failed to leap to his defense.

Then the Shadow disappeared. It didn't fade into the darkness from which it had sprung; instead it simply vanished. The Drakh didn't comprehend what had just happened, but neither was he capable of staying conscious long enough to find out. Instead he simply sagged to the ground, and as he did so, Vir saw Gwynn standing behind him. Her long, tapering fingers released their hold on the Drakh's forehead, letting the Shadow servant collapse with a most satisfying thud.

"I ... I got separated," Vir stammered out.

"Obviously," she said, with the air of one who did not suffer fools gladly. Feeling very much the fool, Vir could understand her impatience. "Come." He followed her, staying so close on her heels that he nearly stepped on her a couple of times. The tunnels seemed to be widening out around them, and the sounds ahead of them were getting louder.

Vir squinted against an increasingly bright light, and as he did so, he commented, "Kane said that he `saw' that we had to be here. What did he mean?" Gwynn said nothing. "Did he have some sort of... of psychic vision? Is that it? Some sort of look at the future?"

"Do not," she warned him, "inquire too closely into the affairs of wizards. You may not like the answers."

"Don't inquire?!" It was all he could do not to stammer. "In case you haven't noticed, I'm up to my neck in the affairs of wizards! So you'll forgive me if I make an inquiry or two!"

"Very well," she said archly. "You are forgiven."

Vir rolled his eyes and wondered why he had even bothered. They approached an archway that loomed high ahead of them, and went through it. The sound clearly emanated from the other side, so loud that Vir couldn't have missed it even if he were deaf. Considering the volume that was engulfing him, he began to worry that he might indeed wind up without hearing, at that. The place was huge, as Vir had suspected it would be. But it was like no power core that he had ever seen. There were towering columns all around him, except there was no sense of symmetry. Structures appeared to come together, then split apart from one another. It reminded him of nothing so much as a gigantic spider web made entirely of stone ... except it wasn't exactly stone. It was some sort of porous, black material, which glowed from within with a blue fire. He didn't have a clue as to where to look first.

Gwynn, meantime, called out, "Kane! Finian!" Her two associates stepped out from behind different parts of the power room. "Vir ran into a Drakh. They're apparently not all at the other end of the base, as we had hoped."

"Then we must attend to this quickly," said Kane.

"Okay, so what do we do?" Vir asked. "Can you just, I don't know ... wave your hands or say some magic words and blow this place up?"

"I'm afraid not," said Finian. "We cannot use our tech for destruction. Only for creation."

Vir's eyes widened.

"You're not serious." But the other nodded in affirmation. "Okay, fine, how about this!" he sputtered. "How about you use your power to create a big chunk of empty space where this base used to be!"

"You must do it, Vir."

"Me!" He gaped at Kane. Then, realizing it was pointless to argue, he waved his hands about and said, "Okay, okay, fine. What do I do?"

"Blow it up."

"How?"

"Quickly."

And then he pointed over Vir's shoulder, and Vir – against his better judgment looked where Kane was indicating. More of the Drakh were coming. There appeared to be at least a dozen of them, perhaps more, and they were pouring in through the entrance that Vir and Gwynn had just used, nineteen yards away.

"This could be a problem," murmured Finian. That seemed, to Vir, to be something of an understatement.

He backed up, watching what seemed like a wave of dark grey advancing on them quickly. And suddenly Vir and the techno-mages ran in one direction. And then another. And then another, and still another. Vir had no idea which way to look first, but neither did the Drakh. Suddenly the entire power room was cluttered with Virs and techno-mages, and no one could possibly have known which way to look or which was which.

"Hurry! Hurry!" whispered Kane, and he shoved Vir in the back, to start him running.

Then the techno-mages moved off in a variety of directions, and suddenly Vir was alone in a crowd. The Drakh made no sound, yet seemed to move in unison as they literally threw themselves into the chaos. They carried what appeared to be small weapons in their hands, though Vir couldn't make out precisely what they were. They looked vaguely like PPGs, but there was something different about them. Suddenly there was a rush of air and something small and presumably lethal hurtled past Vir's face, missing by the narrowest of margins. It made a metallic noise just beyond him and Vir's head snapped around to see what it was and where it had landed. It appeared to be a spike, about as long as one of his fingers, narrow and sharp and extremely deadly. It was embedded in a rocklike "web strand," and was still quivering from the impact. Vir had to credit the illusions provided by the techno-mages, however. If the genuine Vir had been the only one reacting with obvious horror, he would easily have stood out. Instead every single one of the mirages dashing madly about had the exact same look of fear and trepidation. Several of them were even "hit" by the spikes and reacted as if they had been mortally wounded. The way they doubled over, staggered about and such, it was impossible to determine whether one of the lethal missiles had actually embedded itself in a corporeal body or had passed harmlessly through an illusion. Any technology capable of creating such instantly adjusting holograms was beyond Vir's ability even to contemplate. Not that he had the time for pondering. Instead he had to concentrate on one thing and one thing only: coming through this madness with his head still firmly attached to his neck.

He wove his way through the bizarre structure, trying to find some sort of vulnerable point. Not that he had any idea what he was going to do once he located it. It was most unlikely that he would encounter a large sign that read "Press here to destroy Shadow Base." He darted left, right, right again ... and suddenly found himself in what appeared to be another area entirely. There was still the humming of tremendous power around him, but there was something else, as well. Control panels still looked like control panels, no matter what technology was crafting them, and that was exactly what he had found. Even more important, he saw a holographic image floating nearby that he recognized instantly: it was one of the Death Clouds that was still under construction.

With horror, Vir noted that the device was already much further along – it actually seemed to be nearing completion. Small robotic drones were moving around it in a smoothly coordinated display of activity. They were not, however, acting entirely on their own. A Drakh was overseeing the entire operation, making sure that each of the 'bots attended to its assigned task as smoothly and efficiently as possible. Vir knew this because the Drakh was sitting right there in front of him, doing his job. He turned and saw Vir, and for a moment, they simply stared at each other. Then the Drakh let out an angry screech, and from the folds of his garment he yanked out what appeared to be one of the spike-firing weapons.

Vir's reaction was entirely automatic. Given time to reflect on it later, he wouldn't even remember pulling the rock from his pocket. All he knew was that one moment the stone was in his pocket and the next it was in his hand, and just as the Drakh brought up his weapon to fire, Vir let fly with all his strength. The rock crashed squarely into the Drakh's head, and the Drakh let out a shout of fury even as he toppled backward. Fumbling his weapon as he fell, his finger spasmodically tightened on the trigger. As a result, the spike embedded itself squarely in the Drakh's chest. The Shadow servant let out a last strangled protest, and then collapsed altogether – Vir didn't even take the time to be horrified – the silence around him told him the techno-mages must have drawn the Drakh off in another direction. He just stepped over the fallen one and went quickly to the controls. He looked them over for a moment, trying to determine what was what. The robots that had been assembling the Death Cloud had ground to a halt, twirling calmly in space and obviously waiting for further instructions.

"There." Vir jumped involuntarily at the sound of Kane's voice coming from practically in his ear. He saw Kane standing right at his shoulder, studying the controls. There was no hint of confusion on Kane's face – it seemed to Vir as if Kane understood everything. He pointed at several panels in sequence. "That one ... then that one ... then rest your hand on that and tell it to do what you want it to do. It will respond."

"Are you sure? I'm not a Drakh..."

"You do not have to be. The Shadows designed this equipment to be as simple to operate as possible. Even the most ignorant person, with a modest bit of training, can handle it."

"Oh. Good."

Vir didn't exactly feel flattered by that piece of information, but this wasn't the time to take offense. He touched the panels in the order Kane had indicated, then placed his hand where he was supposed to. At first nothing seemed to be happening, even though Vir was concentrating so hard that he thought the top of his head was going to blow off.

"Just remember who is in charge," Kane counseled him. Vir nodded, then realized he had been having trouble simply focusing thoughts, perhaps out of sheer nervousness.

"Move away," he said firmly and, sure enough, the robots began to clear themselves from the Death Cloud. The robots were not, however, Vir's major concern. He had given that command more or less as a test, in preparation for something more extensive and, ideally, more final. He took a deep breath, which rasped unsteadily in his chest, and then he ordered, "Move into position."

For a moment nothing happened, and then the Death Cloud slid gracefully forward and around the end of Xha'dam, positioning itself so smoothly that one would have thought Vir had been doing it all his life. He steadied his nerves, focusing on the far end of the Shadow Base, and then in a quiet voice of command, said, "Fire."

No response. Vir immediately assumed that the Death Cloud must not have been far enough along to have been given any sort of detonation capacity. Really ... how could it be? When they had first spotted it, it had been little more than a skeleton. Even with all the advantages the Shadow tech provided, it simply wasn't conceivable that any sort of weapon of mass destruction could be brought into working order in that short a–

Then the Death Cloud shuddered slightly, as its weaponry discharged – directly into the far end of the Shadow Base. Even as far away as they were from the source of the destruction, Vir still felt the base trembling around him from the impact. More hits, more firing upon the base, as the Death Cloud – operating in some sort of automatic program now – started to progress down the base's length. Then, on the holographically reproduced image, Vir saw more explosions, this time from within Xha'dam itself. The vibrations became more pronounced, even though the source of the devastation was still miles off.

"Now would be a good time to leave," Kane said, with such calm that one would have thought the base's destruction could have no immediate impact upon him. Vir's head was bobbing.

"Yes ... yes, I think you're right."

He turned to head for the door, and suddenly Kane was shoving him to one side. Vir tumbled to the floor, wondering just what in the world was going on, unable to comprehend why in the world Kane would have suddenly attacked him. Then he heard a slight whisper of a noise, a pfwwt of air, followed by another, and he half sat up and twisted around to look behind him. Kane was standing there, looking down in what almost seemed to be amusement. Three spikes were imbedded in his chest. The centermost one happened to be the one that he had intercepted when he had pushed Vir out of the way. The second and third were still quivering, having just been shot into him. Vir, to his horror, saw the Drakh lying on the ground, his fingers still twitching around his weapon, apparently not as dead as they had assumed him to be. It all happened so quickly that Kane had no time to react or prepare a spell to freeze them in place. He tried to use his staff for support, but instead sank to his knees, and the Drakh focused on Vir. Vir desperately threw himself to one side as the Drakh squeezed off two quick shots. Both of the needle darts flew past him, but he tripped, hit the ground, and found himself lying there, eye-to-eye with the fallen Drakh. The creature swung the weapon around and Vir found himself staring right down the barrel.