Slave of the Legion (18 page)

"Keer V," Gildron said. "Hot loom, gordoc, pless, broom! Zybloc, keer do V. Keer V!"

"Auto canister x, Gildron!"

"Arider gariderex! Keer V!"

"Yes, Gildron, that's right," Tara said sadly. "He'll do it, Wester. He'll do it if it can be done. We can depend on Gildron."

"Don't touch that!" I said. The kid had been about to pick up a brick of contac. He pulled his fingers away as if scorched. We had visited the room where they had stored our weapons and done a quick recon. The door opened when we touched the panel, and it was all there—all our weapons. We took all the contac and timers, but left the E's. We did not want to tempt fate, and it looked as if the weapons would be there when we needed them. But I needed the contac first. There had been no reaction from the O's. I had gambled that they might not recognize the contac as weaponry. They appeared to be ignoring us—we were simply not important. We were no longer a factor in their planning. We were under control.

Well, we'd see about that.

"Say it again, Tara," I said.

"Out the door, up the corridor to the weapons room," she recited, "techprobe if it doesn't open, but it should open. Pick up the E's and grenades. You detach the psybloc unit from your helmet. Gildron to the stardrive, you and I to the bridge. Up the corridor, approach the bridge, you activate the psybloc, I set off the timers, all hell breaks loose, all weapons on, in the door, contac if it doesn't open, auto canister x until there's no movement. And that's it."

"Nothing to it," I added.

"Nothing to it," Tara repeated.

"Nartsing doit," Gildron said.

Tara turned to Willard. He blinked his big brown eyes at her, his face completely serious. He was a doll—a living doll.

"Willard, if we don't come back, there's something you must do."

"We want it to come back."

"I know, honey. We're going to try and come back. But if we don't—if the V come back first—it has to take this." Tara pressed something into the boy's hand.

"When the door opens, have this in your hand. If it's the V, pop this into your mouth and swallow it. Fast."

"Is it medicine?"

"Yes, Willard. But do not take it unless the V come in this door. That's very, very important. Can it remember that?"

"Yes."

"What is that stuff?" I asked Tara.

"Cyro," she said quietly.

"Good idea," I replied. Cyro was a life-saver for catastrophic injuries, but a full dose would kill you quickly if there was nothing wrong with you. And that was vastly preferable to living in the power of the O's.

###

"Damn it! It's stuck!" I was sweating buckets, my heart was hammering and I could taste the adrenalin. We were in the weapons room and I was struggling to remove the psybloc unit from the blackened, pitted helmet of my A-suit. I had not thought it would be a problem. The links were all open but it wouldn't move. And if the O's were paying any attention, it would not take them long to determine that we were up to no good.

"It's probably fused!" I was frantic. We were dead without the psybloc—the whole op would fail. Tara had an armful of weapons. She tossed an ampak of grenades to Gildron, then turned to me.

"Gildron! Let Gildron try!" She urged me. Gildron lunged at the helmet and wrapped one massive finger around the release handle. He pulled, and showed his teeth, growling way back in his throat. For an instant nothing happened. Then it gave with a sharp crack. Gildron smiled, and handed me the device.

"Deadman. Thanks, Gildron! Let's go!" I ordered. Tara slammed an E into my arms, and dropped an ampak over my shoulder. Her skin was icy pale. I was all set—E, tacmod, psybloc, ampak, contac, psybloc grenades, contac grenades, hot knife, cold knife, medpak, what else, what else? I raised the E. She was scarred and burnt, an evil black bitch from the bowels of Hell. I could feel her obscene power rushing through me. I loved her with all my heart, and I knew she was all mine and I was all hers.

"Move it, soldier!" Tara was getting impatient. We burst into the corridor. All quiet. It looked as if all was well in the O ship. But all was not well at all. The lab animals were out of their cages, and hungry for blood.

"Death!" We struck fists, all three of us. We were launched, and there was no turning back.

"Gildron—go to the stardrive and kill the V!" Tara commanded him, and he snarled and took off, heading down the corridor toward the stardrive, a giant, hauling an E and an ampak of contac and psybloc grenades. We had walked Gildron all the way earlier, right up to the stardrive door. He knew exactly where he was going. I didn't know what was going to happen but I knew sure as hell I didn't want to be anywhere near that stardrive when Gildron kicked in the door.

Tara and I hurried along the circular corridor toward the bridge. I could see Gildron on the tacmod heading straight for the stardrive.

"Psybloc ready?" Tara asked.

"Ready. Timers ready?"

"Ready!" Closer and closer, the door to the bridge right up ahead, and all was quiet. Icy sweat beaded my temples.

Closer! A perfectly circular door. All we had to do was approach it, and it should snap open. And throw ourselves into the future, whatever it was to be, victory or defeat, life or death.

"All right," I said. "Timers! I'm switching on the psybloc!"

"Timers!" Tara activated the detonator. We had walked the ship unhindered with contac and timers and set the explosives in the corridors, up against the walls of everything that looked even vaguely important.

"Psybloc on! Activate weapons!" The psybloc flashed and crackled at my waist as I activated the E. We ran, hurling ourselves at the door to the bridge.

The contac detonated simultaneously throughout the ship, a deafening crack, the concussion booming up the corridor. The lights flickered. The grav cut out and I was suddenly dancing in air, weightless.

"Whoa!" We had somehow damaged the ship's grav center. This was not in the plan. Tara clawed at the air, desperately trying to get close to a wall or a ceiling to get some leverage. I got one foot on a corridor wall and pushed off, rocketing through the air right to the bridge door. It snapped open like the mouth of a hungry beast, drawing me right in. The psybloc was flashing and I hurtled into a swirling montage of light and color and movement. O's were all around me and they were moving faster than I'd ever seen before.

I fired auto canister x, slashing the line of fire in a wild arc. The bridge erupted, shrieking white-hot phospho x bursting everywhere, sizzling tracers ricocheting wildly, a burning, dazzling, flashing tracery of death, an awful, sudden, horrendous catastrophe. The noise knifed into my eardrums. The recoil of the E shot me across the bridge, a wild ride. My shoulders hit something behind me. I was upside down on the ceiling like a lizard, still firing, my fingers frozen on the trigger, canister x booming everywhere, total hell, the entire bridge exploding, how can anyone survive, shrapnel snapping onto my litesuit. I was cutting the O's in two with the x but they were still there, calmly standing upside down like trees growing out of the deck, totally unaffected by the x. I suddenly realized these were the holos—the real O's would be struggling with the loss of gravity. Where were they!

I caught a glimpse of Tara twisting in the air, firing auto canister x calmly, deliberately hosing down the bridge. The concussion from the blasts and the recoil from the E were buffeting her through the air like a butterfly in a typhoon.

Movement—an O came at me, clawing through the air like a great alien torpedo. It opened its awful mouth exposing a row of needle-sharp teeth. I snapped my E over to it and the auto x cut it in two, splattering gore all over the ceiling. It had not even had its mag shields up.

The psybloc unit exploded at my waist like a grenade. I continued firing wildly, desperately—one more O—where is it! And then my mind went.

It was like a knife, slashing right into my brain. I screamed and released the E. It floated away, tumbling end over end. Psybloc grenades—now! But a bolt of raw terror shot through me. My muscles were all twitching—I was helpless, drifting like space junk through the bridge. There was no way I could get to the grenades. The firing stopped. The bridge was full of smoke, and everything in view burnt fiercely. Sparks spit from alien instruments, lights flashed on and off, and the artificial O's shimmered and vanished.

Terror, raw terror. I cried, and my limbs shook wildly. Doomed, we were doomed! The bridge was burning and I floated above it like a corpse. An eerie quiet came over the scene. There was only the crackling of the flames and the electronic snapping of the instruments as they self-destructed.

The grav returned suddenly. I crashed to the deck, exhausted and helpless. I lay in a heap, whimpering in agony. My blood was like water and my heart was a knot of icy fear. My entire body was shaking. I could not move—I could hardly breathe. The O had us in its awful grip. It was all over—we had failed. We were dead. I could feel only terror, terror to glaze my eyes, terror to stop my heart.

Movement. It was the O—the one we missed. I watched it, horrified. It staggered forward, partially obscured by the smoke. It leaned over and picked up something from the deck. Tara—it had Tara in its hands. She collapsed, helpless in its mighty grip.

The O picked her up bodily, hissing like a snake. And the hiss became a furious shriek as it hurled Tara head over heels through the air just like a rag doll. She hit right on top of me, bouncing off to land sprawled on her back beside me.

The O stood over us, its concave chest heaving. It was peppered with shrapnel wounds, but I knew it did not matter—it was all over for us. Tara whimpered beside me. The creature had us with its awesome psypower. We were worms, writhing before it, awaiting an awful death.

The creature reached down with one hand and seized Tara by the neck. It lifted her up bodily, holding her there in the air by the neck, squeezing her throat. Tara gurgled, twitching, her feet dangling, helpless. The O was going to choke her to death with one hand. It looked into Tara's face, snarling an evil laugh. The creature drooled, a thin stream of spittle dribbling from its savage mouth. I was terrified—I know there was nothing at all I could do, except watch Tara die.

The O exploded, a white-hot burst shattering our ears, splattering us with greenish gore. A split head, the eyes glazing over, the mouth snapping open, needle teeth, then it collapsed, right on top of us.

I could only lie there shaking, twitching in the mess. Tara had landed next to me, again. She coughed and gasped—alive! My limbs trembled, but I had control again. The terror had been replaced by shock. I had no idea what had happened. I struggled to sit up. I brushed one of the O's arms off my body—it was still moving.

"Tara—are you all right? Answer!" I could hardly breathe. Tara was pale and gasping, on her back, still helpless. Her eyes blinked. She raised one hand, and I grasped it.

"What…what happened?" Tara gasped.

I stared stupidly at the tacmod. It showed Gildron was still at the other end of the ship, and he undoubtedly had his own problems. I looked around the bridge, panting. Black smoke was rapidly filling the room—we'd have to get those fires out. And then I saw him.

Willard. Willard, our own little boy, standing there in the doorway holding Tara's glowing E, and it was almost as big as he was. I gaped at him, totally astonished. He gazed back at me, his tiny little face quivering with anxiety.

"Is it going to be angry with us?" he asked fearfully. I was so amazed that I could not even answer.

"Willard!" Tara called out hoarsely. "Willard!" He dropped the E and ran into her arms.

"Do we have to take the medicine now?" Willard still had the cyro clutched in one grubby hand.

"Give me that!" Tara snatched it from his grasp. She was close to collapse, trembling and exhausted. "We won't leave you again, Willard," she vowed. "Never again! I promise!"

I struggled shakily to my feet, fighting a growing panic. "We'd better see about Gildron," I said. "There's two more O's down there! Where the hell is my E?"

Chapter 15
Black Stars

"Aah! Take it easy, will you?" Tara was working on my wounds. I was on my back on a little ledge under a bank of alien instruments, stripped to my waist and glistening with medgel again. We had set up shop on the bridge. I was covered with wounds and flying on mags. Tara was badly dinged up as well.

We had not had to worry about the two O's in the stardrive. Gildron had butchered them both with his E. The O's, who were so formidable downside in armor and mag shields, proved strangely vulnerable in their own ship. Not a single mag force field had gone up during the entire operation. I could hardly believe it—the ship was ours.

I was in no shape to appreciate it.

"You'll be all right, trooper," Tara said. "I'd recommend a few years' sick leave."

"Well, the way things are going, we may have more than a few years. How're your ribs?" I was dizzy and light-headed.

I did not want to move.

"Two of them—clean breaks. I'm topping out on mags." Her face wrinkled in pain.

"You avoid any sudden moves, Tara. You be careful. What did the medprobe say, now? About those devices—I was in agony when you were telling me."

"Dissolved, both of them. The devices had released high concentrations of a substance that countered the neurotransmitters which contract our voluntary muscles."

"Huh?"

"According to the medprobe, it causes almost instantaneous loss of voluntary muscle control throughout the body when introduced into the bloodstream. I don't recognize the substance but it interfered with the strands of actin and myosin in our muscles, effectively paralyzing us."

"Clever! So that's what happened to us during our attack on the O's."

"That and the O's psypower. Insurance, maybe. Something triggered the destruction of the devices and the release of the material into our bloodstreams. Lucky for us the stuff isn't fatal, and only has a temporary effect."

A huge O materialized on the bridge, flickered momentarily, and vanished. Adrenalin shot through my system.

"Damn!" I exclaimed. "This place gives me the creeps! Can't you turn that thing off?" The holos had been appearing and disappearing at random, flickering on and off. We had done a job on the bridge. Most of the instrumentation appeared to be damaged. Smoke still hung in the air. Sparks snapped out of some of the displays, and things darted through the air, then flashed away to nothingness. A dull red glow flashed on and off, monotonously. Gildron bristled, holding his E at the ready.

"It's all right, Gildron," Tara said. "Those V are not real. Not real, understand?"

"Rot reer," Gildron rumbled, evidently unconvinced. I sat up. Every muscle ached and my skin was burning.

"You sure we don't have to worry about that stuff in our bloodstreams anymore?"

"Not according to the medprobe."

"And Gildron never had it?"

"No."

"Because he was recognized as a superior being."

"Presumably."

"Who are they?" Willard asked. He was by my side clutching a Systie ratpak, examining the faces of the dead burnt onto my knuckles.

"Those are ghosts, Willard," I said. "Friends of mine."

"Ghosts?" He laughed, delighted. "What's that?" He traced a finger over the dark tattoo on my left arm.

"That's the Legion cross, kid. That's the Legion."

"Is that a number?"

"Those are numbers, underneath. That's a twelve. And that's a twenty-two. Twelfth of the Twenty-Second, that's us. That's who we are. Don't you know your numbers?"

"No."

"Well, I tell you what, Willard. I'm going to give you a Legion cross just like mine, on your left arm. And it will say Twelve/Twenty-Two, just like mine. You've earned it, kid. You're the first kid in Blue Bear Playschool with a confirmed kill." And suddenly I flashed back to the Mound, to that brave, nameless little girl defying a whole squad of armored killers. Children, I thought—they're the future of the universe.

"My mommy says it's not polite to say 'you'."

"Wester, I hate to interrupt," Tara said, "but there is a serious problem in the stardrive. And I want you to look at it."

"I'm delighted, Tara. I'm really pleased to hear it. But I'd like you to take care of this one for me, all right? Just…keep me informed, all right?"

"No, Wester. We really need your help. Now."

"What happened to that two years' sick leave you had authorized?"

"A little later, Wester. Later."

"I'm so damn tired."

"Please, Wester. It's important."

"Important. Right." I struggled to my feet.

###

"This is wonderful," I said. I was back in my sweaty litesuit, aching all over. Tara and Gildron and I stood in what had to be the control room for the stardrive. Willard was outside in the corridor. We did not want him inside. The room was spattered with gore and body parts from the two O's Gildron had killed. One wall was entirely covered with indecipherable alien instrumentation. And it was apparent as soon as we stepped into the room that something was very, very wrong.

Up on the ceiling, a brilliant phospho-red panel was flashing rapidly like a strobe light and an emergency claxon was screeching on and off urgently, putting a chill to my flesh. It needed no translation: The sound of a warning alarm is universal. Something was wrong—something critical.

"I knew you'd be thrilled," Tara said quietly.

"Tremendous. Look at this stuff. We could work on this for thirty years and never figure it out!"

"You're right."

"Look!" I approached a thick armored plex window. The drive was beyond, a massive cylinder running lengthwise through the ship, encased in a maze of bewildering equipment. It was bathed in a soft, flickering violet glow.

"That's certainly the stardrive," Tara said. "But it doesn't look like one of ours."

"What do you think is happening?"

"I think it's getting ready to nova," Tara said calmly.

"Terrific. That's great! That's just perfect! What does your tacmod say?"

"Somebody's going to have to go in there, Wester. So we can learn what's happening. Tess can't make any sense out of these readouts." Tess was Tara's tacmod, her Persist. She had detached it from her A-suit. I took a look. A massive power source was glowing in the heart of the drive but there was something else, up at the tip of the boom that was mounted on the nose of the ship. It glittered like a star, and I had no idea what it was. It was connected to the boom—and the tip of the boom also blazed with energy.

"You're just full of good news, aren't you? Do you know how dangerous it is to poke around an antimat drive? Even when you know what you're doing, which we don't?"

"Yes—but it's not as dangerous as a nova. That much I know. That central corridor—it appears to be a walkway, or a crawlway, to access the drive. Tess says it's heavily shielded. You should be safe in there. I'd do it myself, Wester, but I can barely move with these ribs, and whoever goes in there is going to be crawling, part of the way."

"Oh, I'll go. I'm looking forward to it! Hell, I wasn't planning on having any more children anyway. But we're going to have to fix up my A-suit first. I'm not going in there without armor."

"All right, let's get to work."

###

It didn't take long to patch up my A-suit. We used the hydropak from Gildron's suit to replace mine. I put Sweety back inside and when we were through, I was sealed and secure and could move all of the limbs of the suit except for the right leg. It was close enough, for what we would need.

"Do the length of the drive, Wester. Investigate both those power sources—crawl up as close to the boom as you can get. Tess has no idea what it is. We only do it once. Just let the tacmod soak up whatever's there."

"I'm more worried about
me
soaking up whatever's there," I said. The door snapped open. It was an airlock, hissing closed behind me as I stepped in. Another door opened. I stepped forward gingerly. A narrow platform faced a sheer drop. The platform shot downwards—an elevator!

"ALERT!" Sweety sounded off, right in my ears. "Unstable unidentified negative energy source enclosed by unitium-based repulsive containment system, as marked, tolerances appear to be going critical, rising temperatures, analysis of ionic field indicates promat is now decelerating, imminent danger of catastrophic failure of containment unit and subsequent nova! Alert! Alert! Multiple pressure locks under critical pressure, failure expected soon! Alert! Unknown process emitting gamma radiation and unstable unitium debris! Recommend immediate retreat!"

The elevator deposited me inside the armored corridor at the bottom of the power room, a massive black cylinder looming above me, hissing white-hot steam. A bolt of lightning snapped high overhead, almost blinding me.

"Deadman!" Radioactive rain kissed my armor.

"What was that?" Tara asked.

"It's raining," I responded, "and I forgot my umbrella."

A black stardrive, I thought, for black stars. It was only terrifying, I decided—no reason to get upset!

"Say again? Are you all right, Wester?"

"Did you get all that data, Tara?" I asked breathlessly.

"That's a ten."

"Can I go home now?" I was streaming with sweat, already.

"I'm sorry, Wester. Walk the length of the corridor, if you can. Get out there near the boom! We're learning so much!"

"All right, Tara. But I expect a reward when I get back."

"What kind of a reward?"

"It involves you taking off your clothes."

Tara laughed sweetly. "We'll work something out, trooper. Now let's take that walk."

I had to crawl under the antimat power source, dragging my dead leg behind me. The whole compartment glittered a creepy violet, and every once in awhile there was a blinding flash from the boom. Sweety was talking, the whole time.

"Recommend immediate retreat, Thinker! Gamma, unitium at critical levels! I repeat, ionic field analysis indicates…"

"That's bad, isn't it, Sweety? The ionic field part?"

"Yes, Thinker. It indicates potential deceleration of promat."

"That's bad, too, isn't it?"

"Very bad, Thinker. It means the containment chamber in the boom is failing."

"Well, never mind about that, Sweety! Tell me what's going on around us! This power source above us—it's the stardrive, right?"

"I have insufficient data to respond accurately to the question, Thinker. I detect a mag field containment device enclosing an antimat generation and containment chamber."

"Right, right, that's the antimat drive! But what about that other power source, up near the nose? What does it do?"

"I have insufficient data to respond to the question, Thinker. Both power sources appear to be part of an integrated stardrive system. Analysis is continuing."

Two little balls of lightning floating up ahead exploded suddenly, showering me with sparks. I continued crawling forward along a narrow tunnel lined with mirrored surfaces. Something awful was blazing up ahead, as bright as a sun.

"Deadman. I love this. What the hell are you talking about, Sweety? If you detect antimat, it's an antimat drive, right? And the containment unit is failing, right? Talk to me, Sweety! What's the damned problem?"

"Negative, Thinker. There is a unitium-based mag field around the antimat power source midships, and it is stable. This does appear to be an antimat star drive. However, I detect a microscopic source of negative pressure in the second power source by the boom, enclosed by what appears to be a unitium-based containment unit that is failing. The unitium accelerates promat, which appears to be shielding the ship itself from the power source in the boom. Theoretically, this is D-neg. However, as this is not physically possible, I have discarded this information. Analysis is continuing."

"D-neg! Deadman! How could they do that?"

"They could not, Three. It is not possible. The force would implode the ship, instantly. Nothing could contain such power."

"Tell me again—what do you detect?"

"A microscopic point of negative energy density and negative pressure, infinitely powerful—theoretically similar to D-neg. I repeat, these observations are in error. I am running diagnostics."

"I think we've got enough, Wester. Get back here!" Tara commanded urgently.

"With pleasure!"

###

Tara unlinked me back in the stardrive's control room. I let the A-suit parts fall noisily to the deck. They gleamed with moisture.

"That was fun!" I stripped off my soaking liteshirt and threw it to the floor. I was streaming with sweat. The alarms screeched on and the ceiling flashed violet. Gildron had hauled out the dead O's and Tara had let Willard into the control room. Gildron squatted down, showing Willard his teeth, and Willard laughed, popping his tiny fists in and out of Gildron's massive jaws.

"We've got a problem, Wester," Tara said.

"No, I'm the one with a problem. You didn't just get fried with gamma."

"Your A-suit kept out most of it, Wester. No, we've got a bigger problem than that."

"Tell me something I don't know."

"The immediate problem is the imminent failure of the unitium containment system which holds that D-neg in stasis."

"I agree with your analysis. But this is crazy, Tara! The only thing we know about D-neg is that it can't be created, captured or contained—by unitium or anything else!"

"Everything else is secondary—the radiation, the pressure locks—let it happen, we can deal with it all. But we've got to keep that D-neg under control!"

"How can we worry about things that are beyond our understanding? Our best scientists don't understand D-neg. It's a reality, but nobody's ever gotten close to it—and here we've got Sweety saying this starship is powered by it, and the unitium containment is failing. Great! Thank you very much, Sweety. Information overload! Now please tell us what to do!"

"My analysis is continuing, Thinker," Sweety interrupted, a trifle defensively.

"I agree we can forget the D-neg," Tara said. "There's no way we can understand it. But the D-neg itself is not the problem. The problem is the unitium containment unit that's failing. Let's concentrate on that."