The Devil's Nebula (33 page)

He said, “How did the Weird get here? I mean, did they... manufacture the interface, or...?”

Langley glanced at him in the half-light. “We hope to hell they didn’t manufacture the interface,” he said. “Because that’d mean they could do it anywhere. The very fact that they haven’t... well, it suggests that they can’t. We think this interface here is a natural phenomenon, a weakness in the fabric of space which they’ve utilised. We just hope it’s a one-off.”

Lania said, “If they could manufacture the things, open them at will across the Expansion...”

“Let’s not even think about it,” Carew said.

Villic started. He sat upright, eyes staring ahead. At last he said, “They’ve found someone, a girl. One of the Fissure People. They’ve detailed a guard to take her back to the surface, presumably to hand her over to the other guard. They’re on their way now. I’ve instructed my Sleer to conceal itself.”

Maatja
, Carew thought.

Lania stared at Villic. “The guard...?”

“It’s a militia-
man
,” the telepath said.

She slumped against the rock, relieved.

Carew asked Villic, “What do we do?”

Langley was on his feet, peering down the corridor in search of cover. He moved off a few metres, then returned hurriedly. “The corridor widens, further down, and there are rocks a couple of us could hide behind. When the guard comes past...”

“I’ll come with you,” Carew said.

“Ed –” Lania began, but he silenced here with a glance.

Langley turned and dashed down the corridor. Heart hammering, Carew set off in pursuit.

The corridor widened, and here the air was brighter. They took cover behind projecting slabs of rock, Carew fractionally further down the corridor.

He set his rifle to stun and forced himself further into the narrow gap. The freezing rock pressed against his back and he became aware of a salty mineral smell. He glanced across the corridor; Langley crouched a little further up, his weapon at the ready.

He soon heard voices, echoing up the corridor, and made out the child’s piping question. “Where are you taking me?”

A grunted, masculine reply. “Back outside.”

“But are you taking me to the Harvester?” the girl cried.

“Just shut up.”

“No, you can’t!”

He heard the sound of footsteps, running.

The guard yelled, “Stop, or I’ll fire!”

The girl flashed past where Carew crouched, a blur of tanned flesh and sun-bleached hair. He heard the heavy boots of the guard in pursuit, closing in – and before he could think about what he was doing, he rose from his hiding place, levelled his rifle and fired.

The attack caught the guard by surprise; Carew’s shot glanced off the militia-man’s chest armour, stunning him. He gave an abbreviated grunt and fell on his back.

Langley rushed past him, knelt and examined the groaning militia-man. Carew turned. The girl was pressed against the wall further up the corridor, staring at him with terror in her eyes.

He smiled and held out a hand, as if coaxing a frightened animal. “It’s okay, Maatja. You’re safe now.”

He came towards her, the sight of her evoking painful memories. He buried them, approached her and knelt. “I’ve come for you. You’re safe now.”

She stared at him, not sure whether to place her trust in this stranger. “You know my name.”

“I spoke with Hahta. She wanted me to come after you.”

She burst into tears. “They took my daddy! He went into the light. They took him!”

The others emerged along the corridor. Carew drew the girl towards him and held her as she sobbed.

Villic said, “The light. She means the interface.”

The telepath moved to the sprawled guard, knelt and stared at the man. He looked up. “Another infected one,” he said.

He glanced at the Sleer and the monster stepped forward. Carew pressed Maatja’s head to his shoulder, ensuring she didn’t witness the messy execution.

Langley stood over the militia-man and fried the suit’s power-pack, ensuring its destruction. He looked up. “Come on, we need to be moving.”

Maatja opened her eyes wide and stared at Carew. “Where are you going?”

“It’s okay. We won’t leave you. We need to... we need to stop Leah and the others, before they reach the light.”

She shook her head. “But you can’t,” she began.

Then Villic was beside her, staring. “She knows something.”

She went on. “They have Sleer and Shufflers in the big chamber.”

Villic interrupted. “When she came down here earlier, looking for her father... she found the way blocked by Weird. But she found a narrow corridor, a detour that took her to the white light.”

Carew gripped her shoulders. “Can you lead the way, Maatja?”

She nodded, mutely.

“Let’s go,” Langley said.

Maatja gripped Carew’s hand and led the way. They stepped around the headless remains of the guard and ran along the corridor.

Villic said, “I reckon we have around ten minutes before the others reach the interface.”

The corridor opened out again and kept expanding. They emerged into a vast cavern, the floor of which dropped away dramatically to their right. They slowed as Villic signalled silently and hissed, “They’re down there.”

Carew came to the edge of the drop and peered down; a long, shallow ramp had been hewn from the rock, and at the foot of it, perhaps a hundred metres away, he saw a troupe of humans disappearing into a darkened tunnel entrance: two militia, Jed, Choudri, and Gorley bringing up the rear. Leah, presumably, was leading the way.

He held Maatja’s hand, feeling her shiver with cold and fear.

As he watched, Gorley vanished into the shadows, and Carew was taken by the sudden disappointment that he hadn’t had time to reset his laser and shoot the bastard dead.

Villic was beside him, eyes closed as he probed.

He swore. “They’ve passed out of range. I managed to probe the last in line, Gorley.” He shook his head and smiled at Carew. “Despite your assumptions, Ed, he isn’t infected.”

“What?” Carew asked, incredulous.

Villic said, “He might have been instrumental in organising the mission, but he was only doing it on the orders of others, higher up.”

He stared at the telepath. “Choudri,” he whispered.

Villic shrugged. “I didn’t have the chance to probe him, but it certainly looks that way.”

“Choudri?” Lania said, crouching beside Carew and staring down the natural ramp. “But... but I trusted him. Of all the Expansion people, he was the one we trusted.”

Carew thought of the mild-mannered, amicable Indian, in all likelihood infected and oblivious of the fact. Then he thought of Jed and felt sick.

The girl pointed and said, “The smaller tunnel’s down there. It leads around the main corridor and comes out in the big chamber where the white light is.”

Carew said, “Good girl.”

Below, the dark shape of a Sleer slipped from behind a covering spur of rock. Maatja jerked in fright, but Villic said, “It’s okay, Maatja. It’s friendly.” The telepath instructed the creature to enter the tunnel entrance Maatja had pointed out.

They followed and slipped into the narrow confines of the tunnel. Up ahead, in the half-light, the leading Sleer squeezed its bulk between the rocky walls, moving quickly despite the restriction. The tunnel took a long parabolic curve, then twisted and dropped as it followed the fractures in the rock formation.

As they walked, the tunnel widened and the sickness in the pit of Carew’s stomach intensified. Up ahead, around the bulky outline of the Sleer, a bright white light shone, growing even brighter as the space around the creature increased.

The Sleer continued its lope into the chamber, and Villic turned and whispered, “I’ve sent it ahead to reconnoitre. With luck, the others haven’t arrived yet.”

Carew dropped to his knees and pulled Maatja to him. “Listen to me. This is important. You must stay here, do you understand? Stay here, and I promise I’ll come back for you in five minutes.” He looked around and found what he was looking for. A rill in the rock formed a perfect niche for a small child. He backed her into it and stroked her cheek. “Don’t move, Maatja and I’ll be back.”

Wide-eyed, she said, “But the chamber is full of Weird!”

Villic hissed, “Leah’s entered the chamber!”

“I have to go, Maatja,” Carew said.

The telepath took off, Langley in pursuit. Lania followed, and with a glance at Maatja to ensure she was obeying his instructions, Carew gripped his laser and went after them.

The light in the chamber was blinding, and it took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust. He was standing with the others on a projecting shelf of rock, a couple of metres above the surface of the chamber. It was, he gathered, shaped like an amphitheatre – whether natural or constructed, he was unable to tell – and lying at its centre, where the arena should have been, was the source of the brilliant white light.

It was roughly circular and perhaps fifty metres across, looking like a shimmering layer of opal, backlit by a million searchlights. He thought he saw threads and streamers twisting and turning in the light, reminiscent of the patterns he discerned when staring into void-space.

The interface between the universes...

Occasionally figures entered the light or emerged from it – manikins, Shufflers and Sleers – and each time they did so, the light diminished in intensity and Carew made out what looked like a phantasmagorical city beyond. The odd thing was that the universe through the interface intersected with this one at right angles, so that it seemed to Carew that he was looking
down
the vertiginous length of a vast boulevard with monstrous buildings ranked on either side. He stared, sickened, and made out a thousand pullulating creatures in that nightmare realm, Sleers and Shufflers and other monstrous shapes slithering and crawling between what might have been eldritch mausoleums and cenotaphs. Then the light returned, dazzling him, and when next a creature emerged from the interface and the light dimmed, he briefly beheld a stomach-turning sight. It lasted only a few seconds, but what he saw was a crowd of ghastly Weird gathering around the dripping end of an ovipositor which, as he stared, spasmed and ejected the slime-smeared forms of a dozen tiny, squirming manikins.

Then the light brightened, thankfully banishing the grotesque scene, and he looked up, dazed.

Only then did he become aware of the figures entering the chamber from an opening to his right. They were led by Leah and the two remaining militia – Gina and the captain, he realised – with Jed, Choudri and Gorley bringing up the rear.

And all around the chamber, he saw Sleer and Shufflers, positioned like a guard of honour to welcome the visitors, and to one side of the interface, the slumped mass of a Harvester.

Langley pulled Villic to him, and together they jumped from the shelf and landed in the chamber, rolling and fetching up behind a rock. Lania took his arm and they followed, scrambling across to the Outcasts.

Villic crouched, eyes screwed shut as he concentrated. He said, “The two militia...”

Lania gripped his arm. “What?” she said desperately.

“One is infected, the other...”

“But which one!” Lania almost screamed.

“The woman, Gina – she’s... she’s not infected. It’s the captain – he’s host to the parasite.”

Langley raised himself above the cover of the rocks. “I’ll take him first.”

Carew said, “And the others?”

“I can’t quite make out...”

Carew stared across the shimmering lake of light. The two militia were closest, staring in wonder at the interface, while the remaining three had moved around the circumference of the light so that, now, they stood directly opposite where Carew and the others were hiding.

Langley fired, and an intense beam of blue light vectored from his weapon, lanced across the chamber and instantly beheaded the militia captain. His armour remained upright for perhaps five seconds, a puppet unable to credit the cutting of its strings, then fell to its knees and pitched forward into the lake of white light.

The response was immediate. Alleghri dropped, took aim and fired. The laser beam zizzed above Langley’s head, missing him by a centimetre.

Lania yelled, “Gina! Don’t fire!”

Carew saw Shufflers and Sleer move around the interface, heading their way.

Carew screamed at Villic, “What about Choudri? Is he infected? Tell me!” He knelt and drew a bead on the Indian as Leah led him across the rocky shore towards the shining interface. “And what about Jed?”

The engineer was behind the Indian, crouching in fear but fully exposed on the rocky shelf that sloped down to the light. Carew told himself that Jed didn’t have the body language of a man possessed by an alien parasite, but knew full well that he couldn’t possibly know.

“I’m not close enough,” Villic said, and in desperation, rose and sprinted around the interface towards a boulder.

He never made it.

Whether it was one of his own Sleer – freed from the telepath’s mind-thrall by its proximity to the mother-mind – or one of the creatures stationed in the chamber, Carew would never know. As Villic reached the cover of the boulder, a Sleer leapt and landed beside him. Villic just had time to register surprise, then terror, before the Sleer thrust out its arm and crushed the telepath’s skull.

Beside him, Langley grimaced and fired at the Sleer.

Carew knew what he had to do, and fired. The beam clipped Choudri in the shoulder, knocking him off balance. He fell in a heap a metre from the white light. Carew took aim, and was about to fire again, when the Indian launched himself.

The interface accepted the human with scarcely a ripple, and Carew was rocked by his failure.

To his right, Lania broke cover and sprinted across the chamber. Alleghri was on her knees, a Shuffler coming up behind her. Lania screamed aloud and fired, and the Shuffler slithered into two distinct halves. Lania launched herself at the militia-woman and dragged her behind a rock, firing at and beheading an approaching Sleer as she did so.

To his left, Langley took aim and shot Leah through the head. She fell to her knees, then onto her face, reaching out for the white light as she did so.