Deathstalker Destiny (30 page)

“As you wish.”

“The Ashrai; are they still with you? We’re a long way from their homeworld.”

“Of course they’re still with me. They’re dead. They can be anywhere they want. Sometimes simultaneously. Apparently death is very liberating.”

Silence stirred uneasily in his chair. “I wish you’d stop calling them that. They’re not really dead. They can’t be.”

“You should know, Captain. You murdered them.”

“How do you think the Ashrai will react to visiting another dead world? Will they still come to your aid, if needed?”

“Unknown. They don’t always manifest when I call them, even at the best of times. They’re not my pets. But I don’t think they’d allow me to come to harm, if they could prevent it.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“No, Captain. You destroyed the only surety I ever had in my life.”

“Will you stop that! It was all a long time ago! I thought you’d forgiven me.”

“It isn’t my place to forgive you. I survived.”

Silence sighed, quietly, looking at the floor. “We were friends once, Sean.”

“Yes, we were. But that was a long time ago, and neither of us is the man he was then. For what it’s worth ... I don’t hate you anymore. I don’t hate anyone. And perhaps only people who’ve been through the things we’ve suffered can ever really understand each other.” Carrion paused, looking impassively at Silence. “I know why I’m here, John. Investigator Frost died, but you still needed someone at your side, someone you could depend on. Someone who’d understand the more than human thing you’re becoming. Who better than an old friend, who isn’t entirely human either? But that was then, this is now. And I’m not Frost. You have my support, Captain. Settle for that.”

Silence shook his head slowly. “I’m sure other people don’t have conversations like this.”

The pinnace plunged down through the unusually calm atmosphere of Zero Zero, protected by the most powerful energy shields the ship’s engines could produce. The pilot took them down fast. He’d already gone out of his way to make it very clear to his passengers that he didn’t intend to spend one second longer in the nano-contaminated atmosphere than he absolutely had to. He had also prayed loudly to several gods, and kept taking one hand away from the controls to cross himself, or touch the Joan The Wad good-luck charm hanging above him. Silence would have hit him if he’d been close enough, if only for being so damned obvious about it. As it was, Silence clung grimly to a nearby stanchion with both hands, and wished the trip down didn’t feel quite so much like riding a crashing elevator. The esper Klaus Morrell sat beside him, face perfectly composed, eyes calm and far away. Silence was convinced the esper was only doing it to spite him.

Carrion and Barron sat opposite Silence, both lost in their own thoughts. Wrapped in his black cloak, the former Investigator looked more like a bird of ill omen than usual. His power lance lay casually across his lap; the long staff of polished bone that was so powerful a weapon its very ownership was a death sentence throughout the Empire. Unless you were Carrion, and the Empire needed you. Barron sat quietly beside him, nervously checking his various bits of equipment over and over again. This was his first landing party, and he was determined not to screw up through lack of preparation. Silence certainly gave him marks for effort.

They were heading for the original site of Base Omega, or at least the place where it used to be before Commander Jorgensson blew it to hell. Probably wouldn’t be much left of it after all this time, but as it was the location of the original nano outbreak, there might still be a clue or two left behind. It was a long shot, but then, that was typical of the mission. The whole pinnace shook suddenly as the pilot slammed on the brakes. They must be close to their destination. There were no external views from the craft, because the pinnace’s sensors couldn’t pierce the extra strong energy shields, so the pilot had to fly by following centuries-old maps, and a certain amount of dead reckoning. The pilot was not at all happy about this, and had said so loudly. Several times. The pinnace continued to slow. Silence could hear the pilot cursing continually under his breath. The ship finally slowed to a halt, and the pilot turned around in his crash webbing to look back at his passengers.

“Right. This is it. Everybody out. Hope you enjoyed the ride and thanks for getting most of it in the sick bags. Anything you need, take it with you now, because I’m not coming back again till I have to.” He hit the lock release on his control panels, and the inner airlock door cycled open. “Right. This is how we’re going to do it, just like we practiced. You all go into the lock. I shut the inner door and open the outer. You power up your individual shields, pray, and then jump. Your personal shields are programmed to phase you through the outer shields without me having to lower them. Theoretically. No one’s ever tried this before. If it doesn’t work, feel free to come back and complain through a spirit board. Don’t you just love being pioneers? Knew I should have held out for danger money.”

“How far is the drop to the ground?” said Silence.

“Good question, Captain,” said the pilot. “Wish I had a good answer for you. If the ground is still where it’s supposed to be, we should be hovering some two or three feet above it. But since this is the world where nanos rule, God alone knows what you’re dropping into. Still, your shields should protect you. From most things. Anything more I can do to cheer you up?”

“Yeah,” said Silence. “You can keep your ears open in orbit, and come and get us the hell out of here the minute I call you.”

He led his team into the airlock, and the inner door cycled shut behind them. It was fairly cramped with all four of them crowded into the confined space, but Silence still felt unhappy at the thought of leaving it. He looked at the outer door. Part of him wanted it to open so he could get on with the mission, and part of him hoped it would seize up or malfunction, so he wouldn’t have to do this. There’d never been much that really scared him, even before the Maze made him strong and fast and bloody hard to kill, but nanos ... invisible tiny machines that could eat you up or transform you into anything at all ... something you had no way of fighting ... now that was spooky. But when the outer door finally cycled open, Silence was the first one out of the airlock, dropping into the unknown, leading by example. Because he was the Captain, and that was his job.

The pinnace force shields shimmered below him like the inside of a soap bubble, and then he was plunging through them and out the other side, and a bright light blinded him. By the time he’d realized it was just bright sunshine, his feet had already impacted against hard ground, and he had to fight to avoid falling on his ass. It really had been only a drop of a few feet after all. The others landed beside him, and Silence squinted up into the bright sky to watch the pinnace racing for the safety of open space above the atmosphere. He watched till it was safely out of sight, and then turned to check that his people were all right. He was reassured to see the faint shimmering of air around them that meant their full body shields were working. And only then did he turn to look at the world he’d landed on ... and realized why the others were so quiet.

Everything looked normal. In fact, everything looked extremely normal. The landing party was standing on a grassy plain that stretched away for miles before them. The sun was shining brightly in a perfectly normal blue sky, and large white everyday clouds drifted lazily by overhead. The only strange thing was how utterly quiet it was. Not a sound anywhere, of animal or insect, nor even the faintest whisper of a breeze. Morrell turned to look at Silence.

“Are we in the right place, Captain? Hell, are we even on the right planet? There shouldn’t be anything like this on a rock like Zero Zero.”

“Oh, I think we can safely assume we’ve come to the right place,” said Carrion. “Everyone turn slowly and look behind yourself.”

They all turned and looked, and there was Base Omega, rising up before them pristine and untouched. There was no trace of any damage, and the security force screen that should have isolated it from the rest of Zero Zero wasn’t operating. The front doors stood open, but there were no signs of life, or any sound at all from within.

“This is decidedly spooky,” said Barron. “I don’t know what I expected to find down here, but this sure as hell isn’t it. The Commander said she was going to blow the place up.”

“Every indication was that she had,” said Silence. “The reports were quite clear. Every system in Base Omega went offline at once, and there hasn’t been a signal of any kind from here since.”

“So what’s this in front of us?” said Morrell waspishly.

“You’re the esper,” said Silence. “You tell me.”

Morrell nodded stiffly, and stared fiercely at the Base, as though he could make it disappear through sheer willpower. His frown deepened as he reached out with his mind. “Well; it’s not an illusion, or a telepathic broadcast. It has a physical existence. But I’m not picking up any life signs inside.”

“Widen your scan,” said Silence. “Is there anyone, anywhere near here?”

Morrell closed his eyes, and concentrated. “I’m picking up ... something. But I can’t make any sense of it. There’s certainly nothing human in the vicinity, and no trace of intelligent life for as far as I can scan. No lesser creatures either. Not even insects in the air or in the ground. But I’m getting ... something. It’s like a muttering, or a chant, or a song. But it’s coming from everywhere at once ... and it moves so fast.” Morrell opened his eyes and looked at Silence. “Captain; I’ve no idea what I’m picking up here. I’ve never encountered anything like it.”

“Does it feel dangerous? Threatening?”

“Damned if I know, Captain. This is entirely outside of my experience.”

“All right,” said Silence. “Let’s try the obvious route. See if I can raise anyone in the Base on my comm implant.” He turned to face the open doors, wanting to be ready if anything came charging out. “This is Captain John Silence of the
Dauntless,
representing the Empire. Is anybody listening? Is there anyone in Base Omega who can hear me? Make yourself known.”

There was no answer. The hum of the open comm channel seemed muted by the quiet. Barron shifted his feet uneasily. “Maybe the nanotech ... just wore out? And everything went back to normal again?”

“Unlikely,” said Carrion. “First, if the nanos had died out, or ceased to function, this should be bare volcanic rock. Secondly, the nanos were programmed to reproduce themselves indefinitely, using the whole planet as material, if necessary. In fact, I’m almost surprised the planet is still here, with so many nanos at work for so many years. This ... all of this ... should not be here. It cannot be natural.”

“If Base Omega has survived, by whatever miracle,” Morrell said slowly, “the lab computers could still be intact. They might still have information on the nanotech, and exactly what it was originally coded with. Hell; there might even be information on how to shut the damned stuff down.”

“If the computers are there,” said Silence. “And if we could trust what we found in them. This smells more and more like a trap of some kind. An intact Base Omega, just waiting for us to make use of it ... that’s too good to be true. Remember the Shub and Hadenmen ships we found abandoned in orbit? This could be their doing. Though the motivation frankly escapes me for the moment. But we can’t just stand around here. We have a maximum of four hours’ air inside these shields. When they both run out, we’d better be a comfortably far distance off this world.”

“We can’t ignore the Base,” said Carrion.

“No,” said Silence. “We can’t.” He looked at Carrion, knowing the man in traitor’s black was remembering a similar time on Unseeli, when they had stood together before the open doors to Base Thirteen, not knowing of the awful thing that lay waiting for them inside. And then everyone stiffened and looked around sharply. A voice was sounding through all their comm implants, and it was a voice they knew.

This is Base Commander Jorgensson. Commander. Security has been breached. There are monsters and night
mares running loose.
In
the corridors. This is
Jorgensson. Jorgensson.
Signing off.

They all looked at each other. “It can’t be her,” said Silence. “Not still alive.”

“If she was really in there, I’d have detected her,” said Morrell. “There’s no living being in that Base.”

“Perhaps some kind of recording,” said Carrion. “Triggered by our presence. I don’t know if you noticed, but all the words we just heard came from Jorgensson’s last broadcast. That can’t be a coincidence.”

“Could be some attempt at communication,” said Morrell. “Put into a form we’d recognize. Try answering it, Captain. See if you can get it to respond with something that wasn’t in Jorgensson’s last message.”

“Indeed,” said Carrion. “We need as much information on the current situation as possible, if we are to put an end to it and regain control of this planet.”