Princess of Amathar (20 page)

Sliding down a three thousand foot long rope from a point in midair provides a rush that I am sure only skydivers could appreciate. Add to that, the pleasant sensation of being shot at, and the net effect is a feeling that even the largest of roller coasters could not inspire. It was a feeling however, that several thousand Amatharian soldiers were able to share with me, for that number of men and women were sliding down the ropes from the cruiser to assault the mountain prison of the Zoasians. As soon as my boots hit the ground, I gathered my company of one hundred warriors and swordsmen together, and gave the orders to move toward our target. We covered the ground toward our assigned entrance, all around us, the smell of smoke and the sounds of bombing in the distance. We encountered no resistance until we reached the installations entrance, which was a great iron door. Part of my team was a pair of demolitions soldiers, who carried all they needed to penetrate the site. With several quite tiny explosive charges, they cut a rectangular opening through the door, which allowed us all to enter. As soon as we moved into the dark hallway beyond the portal, we were set upon by a group of twenty or so Zoasians whose duty it was to protect the hallway. Though they shot down two of my soldiers and delayed us slightly, we quickly overpowered them and continued on our way. The interior of the installation was a great dark maze of wide but low corridors, with small rooms and vestibules scattered here and there. The lighting was poor, probably owing to a destroyed generator nearby. Though we encountered numerous reptile men, most save those we had initially encountered, were in no mood to fight, instead intent on escaping the invading force.

We seemed to have gone through so much of the supposed prison, without seeing a single prisoner of any sort, or indeed of any barred cell or room, that I was beginning to suspect that the Amatharian commanders had been misled as to the nature of the place, when suddenly we came upon a barred door. Once the demolitions team eliminated the obstacle as easily as they had done before, we found ourselves in a great room.

The room was of brobdingnagian proportions, as large as any warehouse which I have ever seen. It resembled a zoo more than a prison or a jailhouse, for rather than cells placed into the walls, the room was filled with cages, each about twenty feet square and separated from one another by eight or ten foot walkways criss-crossing between them. The prisoners of this zoo had no shred of privacy, for their every action was visible from all four sides by their fellow inmates, as well as anyone who happened to be walking by their cell.

The place was like a zoo in another respect as well. Every occupied cell, and it seemed that very few were unoccupied, was the unhappy home to one of a huge variety of creatures. I was able to spot a few which housed beings of the same type, but there seemed to be scores of different species represented.

"Are these all sentient species?" I asked the swordsman at my elbow.

"I'm unfamiliar with most of these beings," she replied, "but of the ones I do know, they are all intelligent peoples."

"Break up the company into squads," I ordered. "I want all of these cages opened, and the prisoners set free." The word "squad" is something of a loose translation on my part, just as is the word "company", but they seem the closest I can come to the Amatharian terms. An Amatharian squad designates a group of eight or ten warriors led by a swordsman, and a company is nine or ten such squads led by a knight. The prison was of such great size, that it seemed hours before even ten squads of Amatharian soldiers were able to open all the pens. Many of the alien prisoners made a hasty retreat, glad for the chance to escape their confinement. A few stayed in their cells, apparently unable to accept the fact that they were now free. Some, particularly those who had previous contact with Amatharians, and who knew the Amatharian language, chose to follow our company. Finally, among the prisoners were two Amatharians, a man and a woman, who were brought to me.

"What are your names, and how did you come to be prisoners of the Zoasians?" I asked them. They looked at me inquiringly for a moment, obviously never having seen an Amatharian of my complexion before, and then described their ordeal. They had been part of a mapping expedition and had been captured by the snake men. They were not part of the company we were attempting to rescue. The man introduced himself as Senjar Orsovan of the Earth Clan, and then introduced the woman, who seemed incapable of speech, as his sister Shenee Orsovan. The two of them were the sad specimens, obviously the victims of mistreatment by the Zoasians, and seemed even worse than they probably were because until now every Amatharian I had seen was in the keenest physical condition.

"We heard something of other Amatharians brought here," said Senjar Orsovan, "but I should not hold out too much hope of them living. The Zoasians do not recognize any other beings as deserving life or of having intelligence. We would have been killed long ago if not for the fact that the monsters wished to study us. Even so, they treated us... very badly."

For a normally stoic Amatharian to make such an admission was indicative that their treatment had been very bad indeed. I could see jaws set and eyes narrow in anger among my soldiers who had gathered to hear the tale of the unfortunate fellow.

I had paused for a moment in my interview with the man, when I looked at the small crowd of aliens that had gathered just beyond. For a moment, I thought I recognized Malagor standing among them, until I realized that there were three beings who looked just alike, and who resembled my friend. I moved through the soldiers and others to stand before them.

"You are Malagor?" I asked, as an introduction.

Two of the beasts looked blankly at me, but the third growled out in the language of the Malagor. It became apparent that while he was able to understand Amatharian, he was unable to speak it. I gave up any hope of gathering any useful information from them, and ordered a squad of my soldiers to escort all of the aliens, as well as the two Amatharian former prisoners back to the ship. As they were freeing the inmates of the prison, the Amatharian soldiers had been scouting the great hall, and they reported three exits opposite of our entrance. Although I was at loath to split my meager force, now only about eighty, into three parts, I could see no other way of covering all the possibilities. I split the company in thirds, and assigned two to my most capable swordsmen to a third part each. I led my remaining three squads through the center most exit. It was, like much of the installation, a low and wide corridor, relatively well lit. I could only guess what the destination of this passage might be, since Zoasian installations seemed to be far less organized than the typical Amatharian facility. This hallway went straight back away from the "zoo" without any side passages or rooms. It finally ended in a poorly lit stairway which wound its way down to some undetermined lower level. We started downwards. The steps and the walls around us were uniformly white, and made of some concrete-like material. I imagined that it had been designed by an architect who received a straight C average in college--dull and monotonous to such a degree that it quickly became impossible to tell whether we had gone down five flights of steps or fifty.

Our next encounter with the enemy came when we reached the bottom of the staircase. We surprised a group of six Zoasian who were carrying what looked like large plastic tubs. Though I would just as soon have captured them as killed them, the snake men gave us no choice, and even though they found themselves surprised and outnumbered, they still attempted to fight back, dropping their burdens on the floor and retrieving pistols from their holsters. In scant seconds, each of the Zoasians lay dead with a smoking hole through his chest.

The contents of the tubs the Zoasians had been holding were now dumped across the floor, and what was left lying there would have turned the stomach of the staunchest war veteran. The containers had been filled with a dark blue solution with a sort of foamy, sudsy quality to it, and immersed in this solution was an ungodly assortment of severed arms, legs, and even heads of Amatharian people--people that but for their strange dark blue color, were humans just like me. The Amatharians were as stunned as I was, perhaps even more so, but after a moment, they forced themselves to examine the remains-something I could not bring myself to do. None of the bodies was identified by name, though it was determined that the litter contained parts of sixteen different people. The room where this grizzly discovery was made appeared to be a sort of waiting area for a number of surrounding laboratories, all of which could be see through open doorways on either side of us. My order that each of these rooms be checked, was quickly carried out, but neither Zoasians, nor the remains of any more Amatharians were found. We continued on our way, and discovered still more laboratories beyond. The entire floor or wing or whatever of the complex seemed devoted to examining the intelligent species of Ecos, and it was apparent that the Zoasians felt no need to receive the permission of any of the individuals involved. In some of the other rooms, we found parts of specimens from many different races. In one room was the entire legless body of a spider-like Pell. In going from room to room, we seemed to have traversed the entire width of the mountain, when we came to one more laboratory room. The scene within made the hair on the back of my neck stand up, and this after all the other horrific visions I had witnessed in a very short time. The room was filled with bizarre and ugly machinery, the purpose of which for the most part remained a mystery. Some things unfortunately were less mysterious than simply hideous. In the center of the room stood a man, whom at first glance, seemed to be contemplating the room around him. He was not contemplating anything though. He was dead, and had been preserved by means similar to what is often euphemistically called the taxidermy arts.

"By Amath!" exclaimed the warrior next to me. "That's Ashean Seyeck!" Ashean Seyeck was not the most upsetting thing there however. On a large table to the side of the room was a man--or most of him. He was lying on his back, naked, with his torso almost split in two. He quite resembled the frog that I dissected in seventh grade. Most of his organs seemed to have been removed, and several huge machines were connected to him by forty of fifty tubes, through which passed a variety of liquids. The most horrifying thing of all though, was that he was still alive. He sucked in air and rolled his eyes, as he looked across the room at us. Followed by my two swordsmen, Terril Jennofar and Binsa Sherear, I stepped over to his side.

"Jamern Yerrontis," said the first swordsman. "We are from your second cousin's ship. We have come in rescue."

"I am dead," gasped the man on the table. "Remove these tubes." Terril Jennofar looked at me. I nodded. He grabbed the tubes in both his hands and yanked them from Jamern Yerrontis's body. The poor fellow died immediately.

"I'm not sure what to do now," I said. "I'm afraid I'm not too familiar with the proper disposal of Amatharian dead."

"We no longer pay much attention to burial rites, and a memorial will be held when we return to the city," said Binsa Sherear. "The body is only a shell for the consciousness, after all."

"Still," interjected Terril Jennofar. "No Amatharian likes to see the body of his kinsman desecrated. Each clan has a traditional burial ritual, and this situation cries out for some form of ritual."

"What is the ritual for the Sun Clan?"

"Fire."

I nodded in understanding. It seemed appropriate that these individuals, who'd had their bodies so desecrated, should receive a ritual internment. The bodies of Ashean Seyeck and Jamern Yerrontis were laid side by side on the floor of the room, along with practically every wooden object from this or the surrounding rooms. Terril Jennofar poured a large bottle of the sudsy blue liquid over the pile, and using a small lighter-like device which is part of each Amatharian's tool kit, set the remains ablaze. The funeral pyre was a massive mound of flame in mere seconds, and the surrounding room began to burn almost immediately. I knew that the entire complex would soon be burning, unless the Zoasians possessed better fire control systems than I was used to, and that was quite alright with me. The fact that this insidious installation would no longer be used for its previous function could only be looked upon as a blessing by intelligent beings everywhere.

I rushed on through the installation, leading my company away from the growing fire, and probably toward still more horrors, the variety of which I could only guess. I had in mind that we would exit on the rear of the hollowed out mountain, as the map I had seen on the ship showed a great many openings in that direction. The growing fire and resulting explosions behind us forced me to move along faster than I had expected. We rushed along taking the quickest and easiest route away from the conflagration, and this took us deeper and lower.

We encountered few of the enemy along the way, until we passed through an open entryway into a huge hanger. Perhaps garage would be a better designation for the place, since there were no aircraft here, but rather two tremendously large wheeled vehicles. When I say tremendously large, it isn't just hyperbole--the first transport was fully five hundred feet long, almost half that wide, and at least ten stories high. Its four massive wheels were each more than fifty feet tall. It was shaped something like a crouching animal with a raised snout. The second vehicle was just as long and wide, though not quite as tall. It had a more compact appearance that denoted more endurance and less speed. The second transport had a large door open in the rear and a large group of Zoasian soldiers in black armor were marching a smaller group of Amatharian prisoners into the vehicle. I immediately ordered my men to fan out, seek cover, and attack. We began firing at the enemy and they returned fire and attempted to hustle the prisoners up the loading ramp even more quickly. For their part though, the prisoners began to fight back, even though every one of them was manacled with some strange constraining device around his hands, and good old-fashioned chains around their feet. I saw one of the prisoners swing her cuffed hands at a Zoasian, and for one brief moment I beheld the face that I had for so long been waiting to see--an almost carbon copy of Vena Remontar. The snake-man she had attacked backhanded her and knocked her completely into the transport. I raised my light pistol and cut a smoking hole through his head.