Mech 3: The Empress (15 page)

Any audible alarm will also alert the enemy,
Garth pointed out.

I am not a fool. I will find the others and we will form barricades.

Garth wanted to argue that the Tulk was indeed an old fool, even for one of his reclusive race. He was impressed by the bravery of this member of the Tulk, however. Fryx would have run and done anything to distance himself from danger. This being had larger ideas. Unfortunately, they were foolish ideas and likely to get both of them killed.

The shrade will penetrate any barricade, as it managed to do when it entered this enclosed region. The critical thing now, is to stop the shrade from opening the exterior locks. It will seek to do so, and thus let in an army of its comrades.

This line of reasoning halted Ornth in his teetering tracks. Even the arrogant Tulk mind could see the obvious logic behind Garth’s suggestion. Leaning forward, face and hands twitching, Garth was left standing there for several seconds. It was all he could do not to rave inside his head.

Ornth jerked on the reins suddenly. They did an about-face and marched in the opposite direction. They passed the compartment where they’d awakened, then the next inside which the shrade had no doubt slain another skald. They headed toward the emergency engineering compartment at the end of the passage. There was a code lock here. Garth’s hand rose up and tapped at it. The lock quietly beeped a low tone, denying access.

Allow me to control my hand, Garth suggested. I know all the codes.

No,
Ornth said,
tell me the code, and I will type it in.

Garth would have hissed in frustration if he could have forced his lips to make a sound. He had hoped the Tulk would allow him some level of nervous control. With good fortune, he could use this wedge to drive the rider into remission. Unfortunately, Ornth did not trust him and would not allow any sharing of muscular control.

And if I refuse to give you the codes?

Then, according to your own logic, we will quickly die together.

Garth cursed the strong will of this Tulk. It was decidedly greater, and tougher, than Fryx’s had been. Fryx had been easily cowed by any threat of exposure.

Garth gave the Tulk the code. They stepped inside, and touched various control panels and maintenance valves. With Garth’s help, Ornth managed to manually seal the exterior portal and disconnect the touchpads at the airlocks. Hopefully, this would delay the shrade and foil its plans.

Together, they damaged the actuators so they could not easily be bypassed. Garth felt his body turn, and looking through his own eyes like an observer, he saw and felt his hand reaching for the panel.

Wait,
Garth said.

The hand hesitated.
You must cease these presumptuous interjections. It is unseemly that a mount should object to the actions of its rider.

Naturally,
Garth said,
that would be the usual case. But in this instance I am acting under extreme circumstances. Our joint survival is at stake.

You claim to respect my authority? I suspect subterfuge, as you are a known rogue.

I have acted to survive in the past and thwarted my rider’s wishes, granted. But let it be known that in the end, Fryx and I were cooperative in our endeavors. We took turns sleeping and driving this body to cross a great distance more quickly. We were symbiotic, not antagonistic once we’d realized we had identical goals.

Disgusting. Do not dare to think such a relationship could exist between us.

I would not dare suggest such a blasphemous perversion!
Garth assured the Tulk.

Ours shall be a traditional arrangement between rider and mount, not some coequal partnership.

Granted. I know my place, be at ease on that point. I am not coequal, but I might be more useful to you if elevated to the status of loyal servant, rather than abject slave. As such, I could increase the odds of our survival tenfold.

During this internal conversation, Garth’s body stood in an odd, off-balance stance, with the right shoulder hunched up higher than the other so that it pressed against the earlobe. His fingers and the toes, all twenty of them, writhed independently like the tentacles of a dying squid on the deck of a boat.

Loyalty? Your mind dares to mention the concept? These internal whisperings we’ve been engaged in may have convinced the venerable Fryx to trust you, but not I.

We did build trust in time,
Garth insisted.

Then Fryx must have been losing his faculties. You are one of the worst rogues in known history. You gunned down a number of skalds and exposed their riders. It is an act of sheer desperation, an unavoidable accident, which caused me to choose you to ride within. I’m coming to regret the decision more greatly with every passing moment. I will listen no further to your syrupy treacheries.

Was the course of action I suggested not a wise one? Did I not give you the code to access this chamber? Are we not still drawing breath and pumping blood together, while others nearby lay lifeless and still? I only suggest you allow me to continue giving you advice now and then, whenever you may require it. Nothing more.

Ornth hesitated. Garth considered pressing his point further, but decided against it. He would let the truth of his statements do the arguing for him.

I will allow an occasional intrusion,
Ornth said at last.
But only if you agree to remain silent once a course of action has been decided upon. Your incessant prattling makes it difficult for me to drive this unfamiliar nervous system.

I will only interfere when our lives are at stake,
Garth said solemnly. In some quiet part of his mind, however, he silently rejoiced. The first step in retaking a lost body was to gain the Tulk’s attention.

Ornth once again addressed the exit panel, but still he did not open it. Garth suspected he was at a loss as to what to do next. Garth kept quiet with difficulty.

There is only a shrade outside,
Ornth said to him.
A single alien form of the smallest type. Can’t this human body best it in combat?

No,
Garth said quickly,
a shrade is much more powerful than a normal human, even one trained for combat, which this body is not.

What might be a wise course of action under these circumstances?

If Garth’s lips had been capable of obeying his mind, they might have twitched upward into a crooked smile.
We must arm ourselves, and gather every skald we can to hunt the shrade together. With luck, there is only one, and he is now trapped within this region of the ship just as we are.

And if there are more?

Then we are likely doomed. But we must act quickly in any case.

Over the next minute or so, the engineering compartment was searched and a gravity-hammer was selected. The device was an oddment common to every maintenance man’s toolkit. It was as light as a tap-hammer, but when dialed up to full power it quivered in the hand. When swung, it became heavier at the last moment, and landed with tremendous force upon the target. Rivets could be driven several inches into steel with a single blow.

With the grav-hammer cocked over his head, Garth and Ornth opened the door and exited the compartment.

They’d barely taken a step into the corridor beyond before they looked down in shock. The single malevolent eye of a shrade looked back at them. Extremely strong, the snake-like, muscular being coiled itself to strike. Shrades were designed for stealth, but were quite capable of combat by clinching with their enemies and crushing them to death.

Garth knew they would only get one chance.
Strike it down!
he shouted in their shared mind.

As the shrade sprung at them, the grav-hammer swung down to meet the fleshy head. A splattering pulp exploded from the creature. Gore flew up to splash the walls, the floor and even the distant ceiling.

Garth’s body stumbled after the blow had been landed, and almost pitched forward into the gory mess on the deck. The hammer felt odd in his hand, having become incredibly heavy for a moment before the blow was landed, then easing back to a normal weight. The sensation was not unlike being pulled off-balance, as if someone had grabbed the hammer and yanked it downward.

The shrade, for its part, was not yet finished. Like many of the varied forms of the Skaintz species, this one had a secondary, lesser brain in the hind section of its body. The forebrain had been destroyed, along with most of the sensory organs, but the hindbrain was still operational. The wounded thing advanced with a horrible vitality, suckers slapping wetly in puddles of its own juices.

Alarmed, Ornth did not require any urging from Garth on what to do next. He pulverized every inch of the monster with countless flailing blows of the grav-hammer. The hammer struck through the flesh and rang on the deck plates, sounding as if a giant beat upon a gong.

When at last the other skalds crept from their compartments to see what had occurred, they found a wide mess of worm-like flesh. There were tatters and shreds that dripped ichor spread over a surprisingly large area. The deck was pockmarked with a dozen impact marks.

In the midst of the destruction knelt Garth, his teeth bared and his sides heaving. His eyes bulged and rolled in his head like those of a mad-thing.

Ten

Seeking an audience with the Empress in her putrid throne room, the Parent knew trepidation. She had not yet had the pleasure of bringing bad news to the infant monarch, but somehow she sensed such tidings would not be met with grace.

“Your majesty?” she asked.

“Oh, is that you Parent? How tiresome.”

“Yes, Empress. It is I, your faithful servant.”

“Well, you’ve taken much too long. I’ve built up a painful appetite. Do you know these hests and trachs have been trying to feed me preserved meats for hours? Did you put them up to this insult?”

“No mistress. I’m sure they were only trying to do their best to satisfy your needs for sustenance.”

“In that regard they’ve failed utterly. I suppose I should feel happy to see you, as you’ve no doubt brought me something edible for my churning digesters. Let’s have it now. Where are the food-creatures?”

“There is a problem in that regard—”

The Empress made a sudden, astounding loud slapping sound by beating her thickest tentacle on the deck. A few human bones cracked under the weight of it, as it grown to a tremendous girth, being now nearly as thick as a tree trunk. Human clothing, discarded teeth and other debris were blasted loose to roll and rattle around the chamber.

“I suspected it from the moment you arrived!” the Empress blared. “You’ve killed the food-creatures, haven’t you? You’ve come here to offer me dead, limp food! After every admonishment, after every assurance that the meat would be delivered walking and wriggling, I’m to be denied this simple, basic pleasure. Is this not true? I demand a full confession.”

The Parent shook with emotion. “No, what you describe has not occurred. The food-creatures are alive—at least, most of them are.”

“Well then? What could possibly be the matter?”

“The shrade did manage to gain entry into their stronghold, mistress, but—”

“Am I to endure a detailed operational report? Did the shrade succeed, or not?”

“No, not exactly.”

The Empress fell silent, saying nothing. This was a new response, one the Parent had never experienced before. The Empress almost always had
a lot
to say, no matter what the situation. The Parent was not quite sure what to make of it, but she pressed ahead. Perhaps she could at least finish her report without further outbursts.

“The shrade infiltrated the stronghold, but it was discovered and destroyed before it could open the primary portal and allow us entry. We’ve sent in more shrades, but they’ve discovered that the pipes used by the first are now sealed.”

The Parent paused, but still the Empress was quiet. She did not thrash, screech or shout admonishments. She simply stared with a half-dozen displeased eyes.

“That is all there is to it, mistress,” the Parent finished uncertainly. “We are working to formulate a new plan. Possibly, if we brought the ship’s most powerful weapons-grade lasers to the portal, it could be burnt through.”

“What are the odds of success on this secondary approach?”

“Not good, mistress. We’ve calculated the number of joules of power required, and it is prohibitive. Even if we did gain access that way, the heat from the energy released would have cooked the humans to ash before a hole had opened in the inner hull of sufficient size to allow entry—even for a shrade.”

“Failure,” said the Empress suddenly. “Total, abject failure. I’ve never encountered it before—although I’d expected to upon occasion in the future. After all, I’m still quite young. You are a failure, my Parent. You are not of good genetic stock. Something went wrong in your birthing. Perhaps it was the stress and radiation involved in your hasty departure from the Kale system—which, as I think back upon it, was a failed campaign unto itself.”

The Parent was stunned to hear this indictment. In the Skaintz species, there was no greater insult than to call into question the nature of a being’s genetics. To suggest they were an inferior copy of the original, that they were a
mutant
of sorts, a failed experiment, was to declare that creature worse than useless. The Skaintz depended upon precise copying of genetic codes from old to young. Being creatures of careful design and built-in instinct, they had to very nearly be clones in order to maintain their viability as a dominant life form.

The Parent wanted to retort with a slew of unwise comments. She was compelled to obedience, however. It was in her breeding. Not knowing how to respond, she shuffled her fronds idly. She burned to accuse the Empress of being a mutant in her own right, a slovenly thing that did little of use other than eat. She wanted to point out that the Empress was condemning
herself
as flawed if she accused her own Parent of being badly replicated. How could something horribly malformed give birth to perfection?