Encrypted (16 page)

“
Stay back,” he
barked.

She ignored him and lunged forward to slam
the door shut. A heartbeat later, the wolf crashed against the
wood. It shuddered but held.

Agarik already had his ammo pouches open.
With admirable calm, he poured powder down the muzzle of the rifle,
rammed a cloth-wrapped ball home, and slipped a percussion cap on
the nipple. The wolf slammed against the door two more times, then
claws scrabbled at wood. Tikaya gripped the knife and wished she
had a bow. On a whim, she yanked the hammer out of the skull.

The clawing at the door stopped.

“
I bet it’s going around,”
she said.

“
Stay back,” Agarik
repeated. “Stand against the wall.”

Rifle loaded, he stepped away from the
building, ready to fire either direction. Tikaya put her back into
the corner between the door and the pile of shoveled snow.

Even expecting the wolf, she was startled by
how soon it ripped around a corner. Agarik did not flinch as it
hurtled toward him. He lined up the shot and fired.

The ball struck the wolf in the chest, and
it missed a step, but amazingly it did not stop. A craziness lit
its yellow eyes as the beast launched itself at Agarik.

He had not had time to reload the pistol, so
he could only swing the rifle like a club. The wolf twisted in the
air, and Agarik merely clipped it. The beast’s fangs snapped inches
from his neck. The snow hindered him, and he stumbled back against
the wall.

Tikaya slashed at the wolf when it landed
nearby, but it sprang again too quickly, and her blade sliced air.
Agarik hammered it with the butt of the rifle, but the creature
seemed not to feel pain. It readied itself to spring again.

Tikaya lifted the hammer, thinking she might
get lucky if she threw it, but a new thought halted her. She turned
her back to the fray and scrambled up the snow pile.

“
Good idea,” Agarik
called. “Stay up there until...” He grunted as he swung at the wolf
again. “Until I finish this.”

Retreating was not Tikaya’s idea. She
crawled through the snow near the edge of the roof until she could
peer down upon the skirmish. The eaves sheltered Agarik, but the
wolf, needing room to run and leap, kept moving in and out of the
overhang’s shadow.

“
Stay against the wall,
and suck in your belly,” Tikaya called.

She leaned over and grabbed an icicle as
thick as her upper arm. Even with the hammer it took several cracks
to free it from the edge. The wolf leaped. She timed it, then
released the ice spear.

Tikaya did not expect to hit the creature on
the first try, but her aim proved true. The icicle bludgeoned the
top of its gray-furred head.

Agarik sidestepped, and the wolf smashed
against the wall and fell, unconscious. “Throw me the knife.”

She dropped it into the snow before climbing
off the roof. Apparently taking no chances, Agarik sliced the
beast’s throat.

“
Ma’am?” He fished in his
pouches to reload his weapons.

“
Yes?”

“
Marines are very fit. We
do
not
have
bellies.”

“
My apologies.”

“
Thank you for your help.”
He lifted his fur cap and swiped away sweat as he looked back and
forth from the roof to the wolf to her. “I wasn’t expecting you to,
ah, to be able to...”

“
You’re welcome.” Tikaya
felt insulted that he was so shocked she had done something useful.
She supposed she should appreciate his protectiveness, but she
found herself missing Rias and the way he had assumed her competent
enough to help. She snorted. Actually, he had assumed her a little
too competent, but they had both survived, so she could not fault
his decisions. “Are wolves always that difficult to kill?” was all
she said.

“
No.”

“
I suspected
not.”

“
Let’s see what they were
after.” Agarik led the way inside.

This time, no creatures attacked when they
opened the door. The second wolf lay dead where Agarik had shot it.
The drab green paint covering the wood walls and the gray tiles
lining the floor could not camouflage the dark blood spatters
staining the hallway.

They passed doors, some closed, some open to
utilitarian offices. Each contained identical military-issue desks,
chairs, and bookcases. Some offices appeared untouched, as if the
men had simply stepped away to make a cup of tea. In others,
toppled chairs and scattered papers suggested struggles had taken
place.

Agarik stepped into a messy room to
investigate, and Tikaya chose a tidy one across the hall. She
peeked in cabinets and drawers, not sure what she sought. The cause
of this madness, but what would that look like?

She paused before returning to the hallway.
She tugged her glove off and ran a finger along a bookcase by the
door.

“
No dust,” she
murmured.

That and the mostly cleared walkways outside
implied things had been normal within the last week or two.

Tikaya returned to the hallway, passed an
office where Agarik poked and clanked, and stopped before a closed
door. Wood shavings dusting the floor drew her eye. Above them,
claw marks ravaged the door and jamb.

Dread settled in the pit of Tikaya’s
stomach. “Agarik? I think we want to check this one.”

Maybe it was cowardly, but she stepped aside
when he walked out, gesturing for him to turn the knob. He took in
the claw marks with a grim set to his jaw, then handed her the
rifle.

“
Uhm?” she asked,
startled.

“
Just in case,” Agarik
said. “It’s loaded. Just point and pull the trigger if you have
to.”

“
I’ve never shot
a—”

“
If you can make a
bull’s-eye with a bow and an icicle, you can shoot a firearm.” He
withdrew his pistol, turned the knob, and pushed. The door bumped
against something and only opened a couple inches. Pistol leading,
he leaned against the door, shoving to open it further. Furniture
inside scraped, and something tipped over with a crack. He peered
inside. “Cursed ancestors.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Too
gruesome for a woman. Wait here.”

He disappeared into the dim room, and she
waffled, torn between wanting to know what was inside and not
wanting to see it. Considering they had tramped past human
skeletons and a frozen dead man together, she did not want to know
what qualified as too gruesome.

A few bumps drew her curiosity, and she
decided to force aside her squeamishness and go in. Before she
could, Agarik opened the door again.

“
Sorry, ma’am, but I need
you to look at something.”

“
It’s fine.”

Agarik lifted a hand first. “I want you to
know... I know it won’t help anything and won’t make up for...” His
gaze slipped off her eyes and settled on the wall past her
shoulder. “I’m sorry I was the one to find you and let them know
where to get you.” The words came out in a blurted jumble, as if he
had been trying to work up the gumption to voice them for some
time. “This isn’t your battle. It never was, and I hope...I hope
you’re able to live through it and get home. Somehow.”

“
Thank you, but don’t feel
guilty on my behalf, please.” Tikaya rested the rifle butt on the
floor and touched his arm. “If it hadn’t been you, I’m sure it
would have been someone else. I knew when I helped my people
decrypt those messages that there might be consequences someday.
Nothing remotely like this entered my thoughts, but...” She steeled
herself. “Show me your something.”

Agarik led her into an
office with a broken barricade of chairs, bookcases, cabinets, and
a desk cramping the area near the door. At first, she did not see
the bodies, but they were there, in the middle, around an odd black
object, that appeared half box, half table with an utterly foreign
set of symbols glowing red in the air above it. A pipe rose from
one side, and six slender legs attached the construct to the floor.
The dead were strewn about it. Blood stained everything, even the
ceiling. For the first time since they arrived, she was thankful
for the freezing temperatures. In her climate, the decomposition,
the
smell
, would
have been overpowering.

Following Agarik, Tikaya shuffled through
the clutter. He obviously wanted her to examine the box, but she
could not get there without stepping over bodies. Cuts and
punctures desecrated them, far more than would have been needed to
kill. A dagger protruded from one man’s burst eyeball. The whole
macabre scene seemed too messy for the neat and efficient
marines.

“
I didn’t touch it,”
Agarik said as she came even with the object. “I don’t have any
idea what it is.”

Symbols formed neat rows on one side of the
black box, and giddiness replaced the nausea in her stomach. They
were familiar in style, probably from the same language as the
glyphs on the rubbings, but arranged individually instead of in
groupings. Each symbol marked an indention. In the center of the
box top, a red light smaller than her pinkie nail glowed,
projecting a set of symbols above.

Tikaya eased around for a better look, but
her boot bumped a wood stick. Not a stick, the shaft of a shovel.
It and a pickaxe lay on the floor near smashed tiles. The subfloor
was torn up, with exposed dirt beneath. With a jolt, she realized
the contraption’s ‘legs’ stuck through the floor and into the
earth.

“
How the...”

“
Looks like these men were
trying to dig it out,” Agarik said. “Probably wanted to get rid of
it.”

“
Yes, but how would its
legs have plunged through the floor and anchored down there to
start with?”

His parka rustled as he removed his cap and
rubbed a hand through his short hair. “I don’t know. Magic?”

Tikaya turned her attention to the symbols
again. She poked one, indenting it; it glowed red and a larger
version appeared in the air with a ball spinning around it. The
originally displayed image disappeared in favor of the new one.
“Er.” She had best be careful; this had probably all started with
some idiot pressing buttons.

She glanced at Agarik, afraid he would
chastise her for touching things, but he nodded encouragingly. Dear
Akahe, he thought she could figure it out and fix things.

Underneath the box, she found a couple
groupings of the more traditional symbols engraved in the cool
black surface. She recognized a few from the rubbings. So, this
might be writing. Directions? For operating the device?

In the air above, the symbol she had pressed
faded and the original diagram returned. She poked the button
again, then stabbed a couple others. They all appeared in the air.
Something reminiscent of an equals sign formed between two while
others dangled individually. Waiting. When she did not touch
anything for a moment, the symbols faded, replaced again by the
original.

“
Numbers?” Tikaya
wondered, though some two hundred symbols were there. She knew of
one ancient language that had used a base forty math system instead
of the nearly ubiquitous base ten most of the modern world
preferred, but nobody had two hundred different numbers. “Numbers
and mathematical symbols?”

“
Eh?” Agarik
asked.

“
If that’s what these are,
then maybe operating the device involves punching in different
combinations to create... I don’t know. Equations for something?”
Tikaya rubbed her jaw. “But how would that relate to whatever this
device is doing to negatively affect the town? I don’t know. Maybe
I’m all wrong here. What do you think?”

“
Uhm.” Agarik’s eyes were
so blank he appeared hypnotized.

“
Agarik, I don’t mean to
insult you, but can you see if Rias is here yet and bring
him?”

Relief flashed across his face, but he
hesitated. “I shouldn’t leave you alone.”

“
I’ve got your rifle. I’ll
be fine.”

“
My orders
are—”

“
I know, Agarik, but I
need to stay here, and figure this out, and if it’s math-related,
Rias could help. Please find him.”

After another long hesitation, he sighed.
“Yes, ma’am.”

Though she had told him to go, she felt
uneasy once she was alone. At least her irritability had
disappeared. Agarik’s had, too, she realized. Despite his lack of
understanding, he had been calm and patient while she mulled over
the strange artifact. Maybe the device was the thing responsible
for people acting oddly, and maybe, in her random symbol touching,
she had cut off whatever it was doing or emitting. She snorted
self-deprecatingly. If it had been that simple the dead men on the
floor would have figured it out before the end. Besides, thinking
back, she had felt that return to normalcy before she started
touching things, perhaps even out in the hallway.

She stretched and walked to the window,
intending to open it and let some air in. Maybe she should have
asked Agarik to drag the bodies out before leaving. Someone had
nailed a couple boards across the window. So much for fresh air.
Maybe she could still open it a bit.

A scream echoed from the building next door.
Tikaya froze, her hand on the window lock. She drew back. Maybe she
would leave it shut after all.

She dug a chalkboard out from behind a
toppled filing cabinet. It was hard not to look at the bodies, but
she could not remove the device to study elsewhere. The men had
apparently tried to do that and failed.