Dark Planet (17 page)

“Bleeding heart?”

“It’s an …”

“… old, old Earth expression.”

“It means I want to see misery alleviated wherever I see it. To abbreviate a long story, a Zentadon prolie friend contacted me the night before we set sail from Galaxia. A Human man and woman were inquiring as to whether or not the Homeland Movement was interested in buying a secret Aldenia device that would give the Homelanders the power to overthrow the Republic government of Ganesh and return the planet to the Zentadon. My friend didn’t know what the device was, but she described Blade and this woman he associates with. Blade hinted to the Homelanders that he had the device hidden on Aldenia and was returning there to pick it up. He said the device should be worth millions of credits.”

“All the more reason why Blade would not want the
Tsutsumi
blown up,” I reasoned.

“Exactly. Sometimes there isn’t much coordination between the Homeland bands. I learned that Blade and his lady friend, who’s a medic specialist in another DRT, were supposed to make contact with Homelanders to receive a down payment on the device. So I followed them. Instead, it seems Blade had been warned that another Homelander group was going to sabotage the dreadnought that would take us to Aldenia.”

“How bizarre! So … Blade and the female were at the hangar to try to stop the sabotage? The female was who I saw with them?”

“Yes. She and Blade argued with them, but Mishal was going ahead with it. Some of the terrorists, maybe even most of them, are very naïve when it comes to the Blob threat. They think it’s a ploy manufactured by our government. Blade was about to play the big hero and cut loose on the saboteurs when … Well, you know the rest. Stones began flying.”

“I do not know
all
the rest,” I said. “Why did you not go to CD with this?”

“Why didn’t you? I could be implicated because of my contacts. I simply ran away. No harm was done to the
Tsutsumi
. Besides, it would be my word against Blade’s. I’ve been trying to find out what Blade has hidden here and where it is. It’s the only way I can get the proof of what he’s doing and stop him. While I might be a bleeding heart, I’m a patriot who wants to see justice done without destroying the Republic.”

“You are a Zentadon lover,” I said.

She looked at me. “Maybe. So where do we go from here?”

“First, tell me what you learned from your little pre-breakfast sortie.” I indicated Captain Amalfi’s tent.

She frowned. “Blade seems in a hurry to get back to the pod. He persuaded Captain Amalfi that an easier, faster route exists if we move over toward the steppes. His mapping team used it before.”

“What did Captain Amalfi say?”

“We’re going to change routes.”

I watched it rain. I heard movement down in the camp.

“Do you suppose Blade has already found the item?” Maid wondered.

“I doubt he has it yet,” I decided after a moment of consideration. “But it does sound to me like he knows where it is. That is why he went to Captain Amalfi with the new route. Whether he has it now or whether he picks it up on the way out, I think we are relatively safe as long as the team doesn’t know about his little secret.”

I gave her a briefing on Stanto and my suspicions that Blade had murdered the members of his previous expedition in order to obtain the mysterious artifact. Maid listened while the blood drained from her cheeks.

“This has to remain between you and me,” I cautioned. I started to say “between you and me and the Presence,” but I didn’t have time right now to explain it. “That means we don’t do anything to make him suspicious of us. Let him get the item and keep it until we’re back aboard the
Tsutsumi
where we can go to CD and have him arrested. Good enough? No more snooping around and spying?”

“Good enough,” she agreed with a tremulous smile.

“Now, let us return to camp before Atlas misses you.”

“Kadar San?”

I paused.

“Kadar San, I’m happy that you’re not a traitor.”

“I am happy that you are not a traitor, Pia Gunduli.”

N
o one questioned Captain Amalfi’s change of route to take us into the more open steppes to the east. Blade glowered me a menacing look as though daring me to protest. I ignored him and treated the change with enthusiasm to throw him off, even going so far as to comment that I was all for anything that would bring us to the pod faster. Maid did likewise.

We climbed until nearly midday. The forest thinned out into large savannahs and meadows where herds of herbivores, mostly Goliath Beetles, browsed and dug for grass roots. Once or twice we spotted predators: a lizard, a couple of the scorpions with their blistered orange tails, a spider, and a hive of giant wasps. The hive was at least four stories tall and constructed of a waterproof paper-like material secured between two trees. The wasps were bright red and resembled fighter aircraft swarming around an air-and-space port, their wings beating the rain into a smoky mist. The predators kept their distance, eyeing us with curiosity as we passed. We circled wide of the wasp hive and the spider.

The Captain called for a break. Shortly after we resumed travel, the robot on point picked up a power energy source from the east. Blade rushed forward with the commander to check it out.

“After last night,” I privately joked to Maid through the intercom, “the energy source it is picking up might be us.”

I loved the way that brown female human giggled. She didn’t have to have a tail.

“Sen?” Captain Amalfi sent back the request.

I moved up to the Captain and Blade. The three of us continued forward to where Ferret had conducted an alert squat. His malfunctioning cammies flashed in and out of sight. One moment he was a duplicate of the rain, virtually disappearing except for the IR signal he made through our helmets. The next, he knelt hunched against the weather with rain streaming off his helmet, through the faceplate of which I discovered his axe blade face sharper than ever.

“It might be more Blobs, Cap,” Ferret said. “The bots don’t pick up energy sources from the critters. It simply shows them on the monitors.”

I sensed it now. The Presence. Stronger than ever, strong enough for the bot to pick up, as though beckoning us. Blade’s IR signature blazed with tension. He knew what it was.

“What is it, Kadar San?” Captain Amalfi asked.

“It is not Tslek, sir.”

“What is it then?”

I hesitated. I also knew. I felt it through the Presence and through Blade’s excitement.

“I sense only that it is there,” I said. “I suggest we avoid it.”

“No!” Blade thundered.

“That’s my decision to make, Sergeant,” Captain Amalfi said.

He gazed reflectively in the direction of the pod waiting for us in the river. We had five days remaining before it automatically activated, surfaced, and blasted off without us. The commander frowned and his eyes shifted toward the source of the unknown vibrations. I gently probed and found his thought patterns not entirely rational. It occurred to me that the signals were being transmitted by the Presence. Apparently unable to communicate directly, limited to using only its “influence,” the Presence was utilizing this method to attract not only Blade, but indeed the entire team to the treasure. At least that was my initial assessment, my fear.

But why this way? I had only a minute to mull it over while the commander made up his mind. I tried to reason it out. Did the Presence understand somehow that Pia and I were on to Blade and that we intended to stop him once he carried the item aboard a Republic starship? If everyone on the team knew of the treasure, then Blade would have to act overtly now in order to preserve it to himself. Apparently, greed, jealousy, and strife — created by the Presence? — had infected Blade’s old expedition, as it was infecting this one, and led to wholesale carnage.

The Presence wanted the artifact to surface among the peoples of the galaxy. Blade’s rapacity was merely a tool for that transmittal. Something had happened last time that resulted in the treasure’s being left behind. This time,
this time
, it would not be lost, even if everyone had to die in order to ultimately release it from Aldenia isolation. Everyone, that is, except the messenger, Sergeant Darman “Blade” Kilmer. Used once, used again.

Against the Presence I possessed a major advantage which the Humans did not have with their less developed sensitivities. I was aware of it. I could fight it, resist its takeover even while the rest of DRT-213 seemed to be moving inexorably, even against their wills, to come under its domination.

“We have to investigate,” Blade insisted.

“It could be following us,” Ferret suggested in a chilling voice. “It’s better to confront it now in the open where we can see it.”

“No!” I countered. “We will be at the pod tomorrow. It is more important that we return to the ship with the intel about the Blobs.”

Mine was a lone voice against. Even I had to admit that I was curious about this thing that had already led to death, and would likely do so again.

In the end, as I suspected, Captain Amalfi decided our duty lay in investigating. I heard a dry, raspy chuckle, but when I looked there was nothing there.

“Pia?” I said to her privately.

“Go away!” she snapped. The Presence had got to her as well.

The Presence became so powerful in my mind as the team drew near the power source that even I had to struggle to resist it. Its taut, greasy tentacles probed every area of my brain. A spring screwing itself into my core. My entire body felt horned and crusted with filth and transferred sin.

The bot on point cautiously entered another Indowy ruin from the bad times. There was little left of the settlement, but it must have been one of considerable size judging from the mounds covered by stunted forest out of which rose fragmented plascrete walls. The evil that is done, I thought, lingers long after the doer is gone.

I still sensed nothing alive, just something there.
Here
. Like the harpies of old human lore luring ships to wreck on the shoals.

It’s alive
.

I whirled toward Pia.

“Let’s leave this place! Now!” she warned suddenly, resisting the power.

“Shut the fuck up, cunt!” Blade rumbled.

Like the trained hunting machine that it was, the bot made its way to one of the smaller mounds and stopped on top of it, indicating that it had localized the energy source. Then, unexpectedly, for no apparent reason, it exploded with a terrific bang. Pieces of it whizzed in all directions.

Everyone hit the dirt. Weapons appeared ready for use.

“What the fuck …?” Blade exclaimed.

My heart thudded. “Will you listen?” I pleaded. “Whatever it is, leave it be.”

“It was an old mine that exploded,” Sergeant Shiva reasoned.

“It was not a mine,” I argued. “Remember the first robot? It also went off like that for no reason.”

Both of them had detonated, I thought, because they came too near the Presence and its voltage. What kept it from doing the same to the team? Had it other plans for us? A somber thought.

“Chickenshit elf,” Blade said.

He got up and climbed to the top of the little mound and began digging. None tried to stop him. They were as curious as he, mesmerized by the Presence and its unrecognized objective. We had been deliberately led to this evil place. I backed off as taa squeezed into my system. My ears tapped anxiously against the sides of my helmet.

Gorilla called up one of the two remaining bots to help with the excavation. It went to work without suffering the fate of the previous robot. Within a short time, the powerful little machine burrowed into the mound. It pulled out of the hole and into the light a rather thin plasteel case. It was black, about a half-meter long, slightly rectangular, and was equipped with two queerly fashioned handles for carrying. Gorilla’s sensors remained silent, no longer picking up an energy source.

Blade threw off his helmet. He pounced greedily upon the little case. A quick cleaning revealed a control panel on one side. Sergeant Shiva took the case from Blade and thrust it at me.

“You understand Indowy,” he said. “Read the inscription.”

I balked at even touching the thing. I looked at Blade; he already knew what it was. It was what he had been looking for.

“Read it, Sergeant,” Captain Amalfi ordered, his patience tried.

They all stared at me. Glared. Even Gun Maid. Although they should have trusted me by now, they seemed more wary and suspicious than ever. I looked at the case, reluctantly. A wave of dizziness overcame me when I saw what it was. A
lindal
. I jerked back from it in horror.

“I cannot,” I said.

A lindal was one of the damnable creations the Indowy had invented long ago to induce taa in the Zentadon and to master us. I suspected it could also be used, in the wrong hands, to affect similar hormonal imbalances in other peoples in order to control them. It was one of the most hellish finds imaginable, one that empowered its possessor to literally rule the galaxy, as the Indowy had done. No more powerful military device could be imagined than one which obligated the unquestioning obedience of entire populations, while at the same time investing their soldiers with super strength and abilities. The Homelanders would indeed pay untold millions of credits for it. So would a dozen other renegade and dissident groups and governments, including Human ones. Including, I also suspected, the Blobs.

“It’s something important, isn’t it?” Atlas surmised, walking around the case and looking first at it and then at me. “Indowy technology is always worth a fortune. That box can make us all rich; a cool billion credits at least.”

“Back off from it,” Blade warned. “It’s mine. I found it.”

His eyes fixed greedily upon the case. Big scar-faced Sergeant Shiva reached out and touched the object with his fingertips, as though to verify the treasure as actually real. Atlas and Ferret knelt by it, their eyes wide with avarice.

I looked around for allies. Considering the present temperament, Gun Maid was the only one I could hope for. After all, she and I had experienced something special together, hadn’t we?