Destroyer of Worlds (18 page)

“Anytime, Kirsten,” he said.

Blam!
An explosion at the bow rocked the ship. The hull, unharmed, rang like a gong. The concussion threw Sigmund and Kirsten from their seats. A second later, from the stern:
blam!
A third explosion toppled Sigmund as he tried to regain his feet. The emergency protective field generators that should have held them in their crash couches were still installed at the air lock. The hull was nearly impregnable. The crew wasn't.

“Jeeves,” Kirsten called—hissed?—from the floor. (Sigmund craned his neck at something in her voice. Her left arm flopped at her side. Dislocated, he thought.) “Jeeves. Take us up to one hundred feet.”

The ship lurched and slewed: another explosion just as they lifted off.

“Sigmund,” came a call over the intercom. Er'o. “I've been watching external sensors. We need to get away from those gunboats.”

Sigmund helped Kirsten up before settling into his seat. In his tactical display, the river fleet had come about. Hundreds of cannon pointed this way. Artillery crews worked feverishly to raise their aim.

“Evasive maneuvers, Jeeves,” Er'o shouted.

“I am afraid I can't—” Jeeves began.

Blam! Blam! Blam!

Sigmund wasn't much of a pilot, but anything beat being a stationary target. He took the controls and
Don Quixote
darted toward the crowded wharfs. A cool corner of his mind analyzed Er' o's practical advice, one more suggestion that Gw'oth city-states sometimes warred.

The ragged broadside volley passed where
Don Quixote
had just been. A dense cloud of smoke all but hid the riverboats.

Sigmund put
Don Quixote
into a steep climb. The tanjed squirrels couldn't possibly shoot very high, not with only chemical explosives. Something crude like gunpowder, he surmised from the thick smoke.

“Sigmund,” Er'o called. “Go down within range for a bit. Pretend we're damaged. I want to see something.”

A cannonball strike or two, if it came to that, wouldn't hurt anything, and the Gw'oth had been pretty perceptive so far. Sigmund sent his ship into a shallow dive.

“Come to bearing 225,” Er'o said. “Good. Now turn to 112.”

The riverboats could not turn fast enough to use their main batteries again, but a few boats fired off rounds from their bow guns. Compared to space junk, cannonballs were trivial to track and destroy. Nothing made it through to
Don Quixote
.

“Got you!” Er'o shouted.

 

RADIO BURSTS CAME MORE
and more frequently: from the riverboats, the clusters of ground troops, and the city. The messages meant little to Ol't'ro, but the signals themselves . . .

Ol't'ro ignored the messages from the battlefield—those would be reports, or pleas for reinforcement, or excuses—to concentrate on comm
to
the warriors.
Those
messages might reveal who commanded the attack.

Don Quixote
's zigzag course did more than evade the primitive projectile weapons. Ol't'ro now had three separate bearings on the source, from deep within the city, of the radio bursts. The bearings intersected at an imposing stone edifice near several pyramids. The rooftop antenna, now that Ol't'ro knew where to direct a telescope, was decidedly out of place.

Each of
Don Quixote
's sensors told a story. What tale would they tell speaking together?

Ol't'ro decoupled tubacles, one for each external sensor. Data from across the spectrum streamed into their consciousness, but not without cost—all those dropped inter-mind connections slowed and muddled their thoughts. It was only with great concentration that Ol't'ro rescaled, aligned, superimposed, and synthesized all the imagery. He directed Jeeves to alter the ship's scanning patterns.

A clearer picture emerged. The suspected headquarters building teemed with frail six-limbed creatures—

And one figure, far more massive than the rest, with
four
limbs.

Using Er' o's voice, Ol't'ro shouted to the bridge, “Got you!”

 

IN THSSTHFOK'S HELMET
, an alarm flared red. His battle armor had detected an unexpected electromagnetic signature. The beam was low energy and ultra-wideband: wall-penetrating radar.

The aliens had found him.

He dashed from his command post, headed for the escape tunnels beneath the palace.

 

“
GOT
WHO
?” Sigmund called.

“Check channel six,” Er'o answered.

Sigmund switched the tactical holo. A human running! About as tall as the flying squirrels: five feet.

No, not quite human. The arms were too long. The head shape was wrong. Or was that a hat or helmet? Even at max resolution, Sigmund could not distinguish clothing from body. Still studying the image, he said, “How did you find—no, don't answer. Just keep tracking it.”

Kirsten settled into her crash couch, wincing with pain. Her good hand hovered above her controls. “Sort of like flying with one arm tied behind my back,” she said. “I'll manage.”

The humanoid in the tactical display sped through corridors, the image jerky as Er'o struggled to follow. Sigmund said, “Can you add a distance scale?”

Grid lines appeared and Sigmund blinked. One question answered; no human moved that fast. Then who or what?

Sigmund turned to Kirsten. “
Can
you fly this?”

She put
Don Quixote
through a sharp curve, then veered back toward the building with the mysterious stranger. Through gritted teeth, she said, “Looks like yes.”

They had to know who that was running. “Eric,” Sigmund called. “Bring battle gear for the two of us to the main lock. And stepping discs. We're going in.”

“Stepping discs?”

 

OL'T'RO KEPT WATCH
on the humanoid racing through the headquarters building. “It's headed deeper into the building. How are you going to get at it?”

“Comm laser,” Sigmund answered. “At this range, we can drill right through the building. Jeeves, that's your job. Avoid the natives if you can.”

A long silence before Jeeves answered. “I don't think I can, Sig—”

“Sigmund, permit me to control the laser.” Ol't'ro hated to reveal one
of the secrets they had uncovered, but the mission took precedence. The running figure might be one of the enemy, perhaps a straggler or deserter. “Combat evidently exceeds the device's design pa ram e ters.”

Over the intercom, a sharp intake of breath. Ol't'ro could not identify the source. Then they were correct—about Jeeves
and
that its artificial nature was meant to remain hidden. “Sigmund, we do not have time to waste.”

“Right,” Sigmund decided. A channel appeared through the firewall. “Don't harm the natives unnecessarily.”

 

ERIC WAS STRUGGLING
into his combat gear when Sigmund reached the main air lock. Sigmund did a quick inventory of what the engineer had chosen: handheld stunners and lasers, two sacks of grenades, and four stepping discs. He closed the inner hatch behind them.

Well, Sigmund thought, I was
almost
prepared. It would have been nice to have police restraint fields. The emergency protective force-field generators from the crash couches were still hot-wired into an air-lock circuit. He unplugged one field generator and put it into an outside pocket of his battle armor.

“Over the target,” Kirsten called.

“Ready when you are,” Er'o added.

Sigmund had an image of the big native building on his heads-up display. His quarry was deep inside, apparently headed for the warren of tunnels beneath the structure. Some of the passageways went far below the surface, beyond the penetration range of
Don Quixote
's sensors.

The streets were too narrow to set down the ship. How could they head off their target? Once the humanoid got into the maze, it would take an army to drive it out. Sigmund didn't have an army.

Sigmund asked, “How tall is that building, Kirsten?”

“About three hundred feet.”

Sigmund stuffed his pockets with grenades and picked up a stepping disc. “Good. Hover over the street, as close as you dare. Er'o, be ready to burn a street-level entrance for us.”

Eric's eyes went round. “Armor or no, we can't jump three hundred feet!”

“I don't plan to.” Sigmund smacked the emergency override on the air lock. The outer hatch opened—and snipers opened fire.

The nanofabric of the armor stiffened, distributing the impact of the tiny bullets. Sigmund hardly felt them, but it didn't keep him from cursing. He dropped the stepping disc into the street hundreds of feet below. It landed with a crash, dark side up. Upside down. So did the second disc. He grabbed and dropped a third. It landed right side up.

Time to see how well Puppeteers built these things.

One more stepping disc remained on the air-lock deck. Transport controller in hand, he stepped onto the disc—

And reappeared on the street.

He jammed a stepping disc into a sling across his back and plunged through a ragged, smoking hole into the building.

 

EXPLOSIONS BOOMED ALL AROUND
, the closer ones shaking the palace. Between explosions Thssthfok heard the ululations of Drar, and small-arms fire, and masonry creaking. And there was a whooshing sound he did not understand.

The comm gear in his armor sensed signals at frequencies beyond the capability of Drar radios. The signal sources changed bearing steadily.

He could not see his pursuers, but he knew he was being chased.

Thssthfok raced down the stairs, for once wishing he were more like his servants. If he had wings, he would have leapt the banister and glided down in an instant.

Still, he had almost reached the catacombs.

 

TANJ! THE HUMANOID
had almost reached the basement.

“Er'o,” Sigmund called, “we can't head it off.”

Sigmund lobbed a flash-bang grenade into the upcoming hallway intersection. He dashed through, ignoring the dazed natives staggering in the cross-corridor. Shots came from far behind them, and he heard Eric's stunner.

“It is still in sensor view,” Er'o reported. “I will drive it toward you.”

Drive how? Sigmund wondered—and then a deafening roar answered his unarticulated question. Laser fire turning stone, wood, and metal to vapors and powder. Combustible dust and fumes exploding. Dust and gravel pinged off the stepping disc slung across his back.

Some of the building collapsed, the floor shaking beneath Sigmund's
boots. “Try not to bring the whole building down on him.” Or on Eric and me.

 

CRACKED BEAMS AND STONE SLABS RAINED
down the stairwell. In an instant, the path to the tunnels was gone. The palace groaned.

A chunk of granite as big as Thssthfok's head ricocheted off the stairwell wall into his helmet. He stopped, stunned. When he shook off the paralysis, the two mobile radio sources were much stronger. Closer.

Too close.

 

A BATTLE-ARMORED BIPED DISAPPEARED
around a corner.

“I see it,” Sigmund shouted. “Er'o, drive it toward us.”

A roar of exploding masonry served as answer. Ruby-red glare, dazzling, shone from the stone walls.

Sigmund's visor turned nearly opaque against the blazing light, and his eyes brimmed with tears. He couldn't see a thing!

Something
hit him, the impact staggering. Without armor, that blow would have snapped him in two. He heard the frying-bacon crackle of Eric's stunner—stunners don't work through armor, tanj it!—and the pop of grenades.

“Kill the laser!” Sigmund shrieked. The lurid light vanished and his visor cleared. Blinking away the tears he saw the alien bearing down on Eric. And behind Eric, tens of armed natives racing closer.

Sigmund took the force-field generator from his pocket, switched it on, and hurled it with all his strength. If he had thrown it fast enough, and that armor was hard enough. . .

 

THSSTHFOK'S VISOR TURNED BLACK
against the sudden glare. He turned and ran back the way he had come, the path he had taken clear in his mind's eye.

The glare eased as he rounded the corner. His visor cleared a bit to reveal two armored bipeds taller than any Pak.

Thssthfok charged at top speed, flinging aside the first. He had almost reached the other when, with a clang, something smacked the back of his helmet. The air around him turned rigid.

He toppled forward, helpless, coming to a halt floating a handspan above the floor.

 

“
KIRSTEN!
”
SIGMUND CALLED
. “Is the stepping disc still in the main air lock?” Surveillance cameras would tell her—unless an unlucky shot had taken out the camera.

For once their luck was good. “It's still there, Sigmund.”

He lased the ceiling ahead of the charging natives. Stone crashed down, and the natives turned and ran. “Make sure both inner and outer hatches are closed.”

“Done.”

The alien hovered above the floor, trapped like a bug in amber. The force field suspended its own generator just above the prisoner.

Force fields were power hogs. Maintaining the restraint would drain the generator's battery within thirty minutes. Sooner, if the prisoner struggled.

Some half memory from a life before New Terra raised the hairs on the back of Sigmund's neck. What was this creature? One of the enemy? Even in its armor, it looked like a goblin, some perversion of the human shape.

Tanj it, Sigmund wanted
answers
. This creature was going to provide them. “Eric, find some boards or poles. Clothes rods, broken furniture, I don't care what. Make sure they're sturdy and at least six feet long.”