Gates of Hell (40 page)

There were no guards before the heavy wooden door. It was shielded, but Mik took care of that defense quickly enough. Martin burned down the door and a section of wall rather than bothering to knock. The huge, low-ceilinged room beyond the rubble was better lit than the temple corridor, and warmer. The Bucons had installed modern appliances for their comfort and convenience in this refurbished section of the fanatics’ base. The walls were covered in dark tapestries, the floor was carpeted. Soft, comfortable Bucon chairs, chaises, and floor pillows made up most of the furniture. The place was their private recreation room, Martin guessed. They were certainly involved in recreational activities before Martin knocked down the wall and spoiled the mood.

The lights made them easier to see when he swept the needler’s focused energy beam around the room. Most of them were making love when he killed them, but Martin refused to dwell on the irony of it all. The only meaning that mattered was that he was ridding the universe of a dozen or so pieces of vermin. The bright light did help him pick Persey’s long black hair and sharp profile out from the rest of the group. Martin halted the sweep of the needier before it reached Persey’s naked form.

Persey rose to his knees, grabbed a weapon, and fired as Martin came toward him. Martin dodged the projectile and heard it ricochet off the thick stone wall to his right. He also heard Mik and Axylel enter behind him, their weapons taking out the Bucons Martin hadn’t hit with the needier. Persey took shelter behind a thick pillar and kept shooting. Martin held his fire and moved forward cautiously, using furniture, pillars, and fallen pieces of wall for cover. He wanted to get very close to Stev Persey. Close enough to choke the life out of the bastard who had wrapped a wire around Dee Nikophoris’s neck, who sent a pack of addicts into a hospital to murder the staff, who had stabbed Roxy in the heart and left her for dead. Mostly he wanted to kill Persey with his bare hands for Dee’s sake. He owed Groupie Persey’s life, taken in as brutal a way as hers was taken.

Only problem was, about halfway across the wide room to where Persey lurked, Martin could have sworn he heard Dee Nikophoris laughing at him. “What’s with the macho crap, Viper?” he could imagine her saying. “I’m too dead to be impressed. Just kill the bastard for me.” It was his imagination, but it was also very much the sort of thing Dee would say—the sort of thing she would never say again.

Martin laughed. He laughed very loudly, and not altogether rationally. Then he thumbed the control of the needier, stepped out from behind cover, and vaporized the pillar Persey hid behind, and Persey with it.

The Bucon bastard was dead. Honor was avenged. Martin looked up at the ceiling. He didn’t think it was going to stay up much longer without the pillar to support it. He gestured for Mik and Axylel to back toward the entrance. “I think we better get out of here.” A rumble from overhead punctuated his words. “Fast!”

———

“This place is ugly,” Roxanne whispered as they moved down a long, winding staircase. The way was narrow, the stones cold and damp, and she spoke mostly for the reassuring sound. Linch wasn’t much of a talker.

Just like a Trin to hang out in the basement. Trin weren’t much for decor. Trin warlords were into power, competing with each other for the Galactic Villain championship, and building bigger and better death-dealing
stuff
.

What good was power
, Roxanne wondered as they reached the last twist before the bottom of the stairs,
if you didn’t build centrally heated palaces with big bathtubs and great scenery
? They paused for a moment, two telepaths sensing out the unknown territory beyond the dark shelter of the staircase. “I mean, what good is ruling the universe if you don’t even go out to dinner occasionally?” she muttered, knowing her words went unnoticed by anyone beyond them.
Power for power’s sake
? Hell, she had that, if she wanted to use koltiri gifts that way. She’d build a big house and throw great parties if she ruled the universe. And institute universal peace and happiness and all that other stuff that sounded great but really didn’t work in practice because people always refused to cooperate with anybody else’s idea of peace and happiness even if you put a lot of drugs in their water… “Okay, that won’t work, but I’d like the house.”

“What?” Linch finally whispered from behind her.

“Just
kvetching
,” she murmured back.

There were guards at the bottom of the stairs. They were making love. Roxanne and Linch stepped over them. After a moment, Linch turned back and dispatched the guards. Roxanne nodded to him. No use risking an escape route. They hurried down a low, dim corridor, through an arched doorway, and down more stairs. This time it grew lighter as they went further down. Torches had been replaced by glowbars. The moisture in the air disappears i as well, as did the faint scent of decay. The gruesome temple of the death goddess had completely changed into a sterile, efficient little world by the time they reached the first protective shield stretched invisibly across the stairway. It was easily burned out; Mik had been playing with the shield he’d taken off Kith’s body. He’d passed out his brand-new shield disrupter to them all before they left the ship. They used Mik’s disrupter twice more by the time they reached the bottom of the stairs.

“Overkill if you ask me,” Roxanne commented.

Linch cocked an eyebrow at her. “When the Trin knows the Systems is vowed to kill him?”

“They were paranoid to begin with.” She gestured him forward.

There was a small room beyond the staircase, brightly lit. It contained a surveillance board and banks of screens. There was no one behind the control console to monitor all those screens and sensor readouts. There was a security door on the other side of the room. The shield that should have sealed it was turned off. The door was partly open. Roxanne and Linch exchanged a look. Trap?

Let’s go have a look, shall we
? They shared the thought, and moved together to the doorway.

“I told you no!”

The sound of a blow rang in the air a moment later.

A whimper followed. A woman’s voice said, “Please.”

Roxanne felt the presence of the Trin and one Orlinian. She took a cautious look beyond the open door. Linch pushed the door open a fraction further, any noise he made covered by a cry of pain. Roxanne had shielded herself from most of the violence since they’d arrived in the temple, but the woman’s fear and the hunger that fed it hit hard against her senses. The Trin’s contemptuous anger added salt to psychic wounds.

The Trin had knocked the woman to the floor. She scrambled to her knees and touched him imploringly. “I love you,” she said, and rubbed her forehead against his thigh. “Love me.” The Trin raised his hand to strike her again.

Roxanne was sick with the knowledge that the Trin’s abuse of the aroused woman was her doing. She snarled with fury and pressed the pad that deactivated the Trin’s personal shield. She ran forward as the Trin raised his bald, bumpy head to look at her. He thrust the Orlinian away and raised a hand weapon with lightning speed. Roxanne saw his finger begin to press the trigger, knew that she had no time to dodge.

And the knife flew past her shoulder, so close a whisper of air caressed her skin, and then the blade lodged hilt deep in the Trin’s exposed throat.

She felt the bastard die. He was dead even before the weapon fell from his hand and he dropped to the floor. She looked down at the body, and was aware of Linch stunning the Orlinian woman as she fought off the reaction. Then Roxanne took a deep breath and looked at Linch.

“I don’t let anyone hurt women,” he said. “Even when the women like it.”

———

“Twelve mindblind that I can detect,” Pyr said. “Idel among them, I think.” Specific identification of someone with natural telepathic shielding was tricky, but one of the impressions Pyr received could be described as a dark star made up of pure ego wrapped in overwhelming pride. That was the high priest he remembered. “I think he’s pissed. And I detect eight others too suspicious to fall for Roxanne’s diversion. Sixteen, all on the move.” He stood just beyond the reach of the light thrown by the nearest torch, pressed his back to the mosaic of a dying galaxy that decorated the wall, and closed his eyes to concentrate again. “Heading our way. Do it now. Hurry.”

He and Pilsane had made their way cautiously from the chapel to the temple’s great carved entrance doors without encountering any opposition. It looked like that was about to change. Pilsane rushed over to the doors. Pyr stepped forward to cover Pilsane’s back as he sealed the entrance and set a portable shield that would keep any angry mob of rescuers rushing from the city streets at Idel’s call for help.

“Done,” Pilsane said after a few seconds. He trotted back to Pyr’s side. “Now what?”

Now all they had to worry about were vigilant fanatics and their furious leader on the inside. “Going to be fun,” he said. He looked around the great chamber with its huge, open expanse of tiled floor. Not a lot of places to take cover. Pillars were few and far between. There was more space than anything else between the doors and the fire-crowned statue of the death goddess and the skull throne to the side of it. The place had been brighter the last time he’d been here, illuminated and heated for the Hunters’ Festival by hundreds of torches. “We wait here,” he decided. “Let them come to us.”

Pilsane looked at the soot-blackened ceiling and the silver line of Idel’s security lightweb. “That’s going to be activated any second now.”

Pyr smiled. “I have a thought about that. Use the statue as cover.”

“And you’re going to be where?”

Just do it
, he instructed.

Pilsane gave him a sour look.
You’re going to do something melodramatic, aren’t you
? He sent the thought as he dashed across the chamber to take up his position.

Pyr waited in the shadows without answering the navigator. It had nothing to do with his being melodramatic. He hated melodrama. He did have a few questions he wanted answered. He needed to get close enough to Idel to ask them. It was the young high priest’s sense of theatrics that Pyr counted on to get him where he wanted to be.

While he waited for the troops to arrive, he turned his thoughts to another part of the temple, shifted the focus of his attention into the other half of his soul.

Roxanne turned a half-amused skeptical look on Linch. “Situational ethics, I’d call it. If she’d been holding a weapon
—”

“She wasn’t.”

Roxanne didn’t argue the point. She nudged the dead Trin with her foot, then bent down and slowly drew the knife out of his throat. She cleaned it on the Trin’s clothes and handed it back to Linch. Then she looked around the room, grinned, and rubbed her hands together. “Data storage everywhere. One thing I’ve always admired about the Trins is that they document everything. This room will hold the formulas for the disease and the cure and
—”

May I interrupt for a moment, dear?

Her head snapped up, her attention focused inward to reply to Pyr. What?

I still have a battle to fight up here. I will need your help in a moment. Be prepared.

Prepared for what?

You’ll know.

With that, Pyr focused back on his own situation as Idel and his followers rushed into the great hall. Idel’s disciples were creatures with pale, scarred skin. They were wraith-thin, ghost-people dressed in white rags. Instead of carrying the traditional bone blades of the Orlinian religion, they all held Bucon energy weapons clutched in their fists. It would have been much less work for Pilsane if the fanatics carried knives, but Pyr was confident his navigator could cope with odds of a mere fifteen to one for at least a few minutes.

Pilsane opened fire as the Orlinians started to spread out around the room, drawing their attention. Pyr found the dark-haired and black-clad high priest in the center of the white crowd and considered simply stepping forward and shooting Idel down. But Idel dashed away from the group and up the steps to his throne before Pyr could get off a clear shot. A moment later, the green spiderweb lights of the defense system came to life. The criss-crossing bars of deadly glowing energy could have blanketed the huge room. Instead, they covered an area that took up no more than a five-foot circle around the skull throne. The high priest was now safe in the center of the lightweb and nothing else mattered to him. Idel then sat down, crossed his legs, and prepared to watch his followers fight for him against the invader lurking behind the cover of the death-goddess statue. An excited smile lit Idel’s unmarked face. He looked perfectly relaxed and happy to watch the show.

Pyr smiled. He had counted on this childish behavior. The guards rushed to circle the throne. They formed another band of protection beyond the perimeter of the energy web rather than rushing the lone enemy behind the statue. Pilsane began picking them off from his more protected position. The return fire was blistering, but Pilsane continued to cope. Pyr used Pilsane’s diversionary shots to edge his way along the wall. Once he was in position, he decided he would have to take care of the guards behind the throne himself. He would lose the advantage of surprise, but it couldn’t be helped. But the world shook and buckled as he raised his weapon to fire. Pyr was knocked to his knees as a great rumbling roar filled his ears. For a long moment it seemed that the whole building was going to fall down around them.

Earthquake? Martin and Mik, Pyr thought as he jumped to his feet. He didn’t know how or what, but he was certain his engineer and the Terran were somehow responsible for whatever had just happened. It felt like half the temple had just been blown away, but the main shrine seemed to have suffered only a good shaking and some fallen masonry. The defense web still glowed its vicious green. Idel was still safe, but his protectors were in disarray. The two Pyr had to get through to reach Idel had been thrown to the floor. One looked to be unconscious, the other was just starting to get up. Pyr grabbed the opportunity and was on the man instantly, giving him no chance to ever rise again. With the Orlinians out of the way, Pyr took a deep breath and turned to the energy web.