“No.
No, do not move.
I fell into a small pit, next to the main
dig.
I do not know how long I have been
unconscious.
I am out of the hole
now.
I can see the tripod over the pit.
There are no Shellycoats in sight.
Did poor Fenaday manage to set the bomb’s
timer?”
“I’m
alive, Belwin,” Fenaday said.
“Shasti,
Li, Cobalt and Mmok made it, though Mmok is unconscious.”
“Then
I have even greater joy,” replied the little Enshari, almost a mile below and
away from them.
“I
didn’t get the timer set before the thing did something to me.
I got the first interlock off.
There are two to go, if the thing hasn’t
destroyed or removed the weapon.”
“The
blue button takes out the second interlock,” Duna said, “the two yellows take
out the third, then the red sets it off.
Correct?”
“Yes,”
Fenaday said faintly, realizing the little scholar’s intentions, “just as we
showed you last night.”
“No,”
Telisan said.
“No, Belwin.
Stay where you are.
I am coming for you.”
“I’m
with you,” Fenaday said.
“Shasti, you
and Li stay here.
Cobalt, come with us.”
“The
hell you say,” Shasti said.
“I’m
coming.”
“Cease,
cease, my brave, wonderful, young friends,” Duna called.
“The thing strengthens again, I can feel it
in my mind.
You will never make it to
me.
And we dare not risk a timer now
that it is roused.
We have only this one
chance left.”
“Telisan,
my son, did you remember I told you I was once of the warrior class, like
yourself?”
“Yes,”
Telisan answered, holding himself in check with visible effort.
“Time
to be a warrior again, even if an ancient one,” Duna said.
“I shall descend into the chamber and revenge
myself, my family, my kind and our worlds.”
“Duna,”
said Shasti into Telisan’s mike, “you didn’t even want to ride on my
shoulder.
It’s twenty-five meters to the
ground.”
Her voice strained, and Fenaday
felt proud of her for it.
“I am
past all that, my dear girl.
I am a
warrior on a mission.
I will not fail.”
Fenaday
could stand it no longer, “Belwin, don’t do it.
We’re coming.”
Before he could
move, Telisan put a hand on his arm and shook his head once.
Shasti looked down at the ground.
“No,
my soft-hearted pirate.
I attack… now.”
They
heard the sound of running feet and the huffing of Duna’s breath as he charged
the pit.
“No
Shellycoats yet,” Duna huffed. “I think they all went after you.
Ah, a D-ring, good.”
*****
A
mile below, the Enshari hooked himself to Fenaday’s safety line and passed it
through the D-ring.
Duna’s clear memory
retained every detail of his training as a soldier, hundreds of years ago.
He slid to the chamber floor, reaching it in
seconds.
The drop would have pleased his
instructors.
He lunged for the bomb, not
stopping to detach the rope.
To his
utter relief, it was still intact.
Vermilion’s explosion had knocked over the weapon, but the body of the
warhead protected the trigger.
It had
been affixed on the opposite side from the blast.
Duna could hear the waterfall sound of the
thing’s mind very faintly, but the blast of mental violence he feared did not
occur.
He
slipped the interlocks in frantic moves, placing his hand over the red button.
“Farewell my young friends.
My blessings on you all and on you, Telisan,
my son, most of all.”
“Fare
thee well, Belwin Duna, my honored friend,” Telisan said.
The Denlenn did not shed tears, but agony
marked every inch of his leathery face.
“Go with
God,” Fenaday managed.
In
the darkness of the giant vault, came a creaking sound.
It carried over the radio and froze Fenaday's
blood.
The giant skull was once more in
motion.
“So,
you are aware of me,” Duna cried.
“I am
Belwin Duna, warrior of the Enshari.
We
have survived you.
Terrible crimes have
you committed on my kind and others.”
In
the chamber, the tiny Enshari seemed to grow in stature.
His voice echoed like thunder.
“You will not escape punishment.
It ends now—” Duna’s hand snapped down.
In
the millisecond before the blast, the roar of mind-noise strengthened, a last
clear thought rolled from the crypt into their minds.
“
Good
.”
Chapter Nineteen
Barjan
bucked beneath their feet like a pain-wracked animal.
Glass and metal showered from the buildings
around them, crashing into the street.
Unable to shout above the cacophony, Fenaday gestured frantically at the
tunnel behind them.
Retreating back into
the tunnel mouth, the spacers watched the shifting buildings in terror as dust
and dirt fell on them.
They covered Mmok
as best they could and hugged the wall.
“This
is more than our bomb,” Fenaday yelled.
“Secondaries,”
Telisan agreed.
“We’ve set off some
power source in that thing’s chamber.”
“We’re
dead,” Li cried.
“Look,”
Shasti said, pointing down the slope toward the center of Barjan.
Two kilometers away, the surface of Barjan
bulged and erupted, hurling debris thousands of meters into the sky.
Towers tilted and fell, and the dome-shaped
buildings twisted and collapsed.
Smoke
and dust filled the air, blocking light and vision.
The ground rumbled and vibrated so badly none
of them could keep their feet.
They
wrapped shirts and jackets around their faces and tried desperately to
breathe.
Shasti grabbed Li’s canteen and
splashed water on the improvised dust masks then tended to Mmok.
Debris
rained down, clanging into the street for what seemed like an age.
Aftershocks went on for several minutes.
Had they been directly above the Prekak’s pit,
they would have died, but their trek had taken them kilometers from the area.
Finally,
they staggered into the open, struggling through the partially collapsed tunnel
entrance.
Dust filled the air as fading
sunlight made for an eerie scene.
With a
slight shock, Fenaday realized most of the long Enshari day had passed.
They were well into twilight.
Weary
from injuries, shock and loss, Fenaday picked up the travois.
With Cobalt’s aid, they struggled back to the
truck, staggering over fresh debris, hoping to find the multi-fuel still
operational.
“Cobalt,”
Fenaday said, spitting thick white dust to clear his throat and wishing for
another canteen.
“Check for radiation.”
“Radiation
levels are within human tolerance for two hours,” the machine said as it limped
forward, dragging a damaged leg.
“Evacuation is recommended.”
“Whatever
power was added to the warhead was not nuclear as we know it,” Shasti
said.
“Or the radiation would be far
more intense.”
She
looked Telisan.
“Belwin never felt
anything.
It was instant.”
Telisan,
his eyes heavy with grief, nodded.
Fenaday
put a hand on his shoulder, his own eyes hot.
“I’d have gone.
You know that.”
Telisan
managed a smile.
“I know.”
Shasti,
who also could not cry, looked away.
Li
stared vacantly at the rest of them.
“I
hope he got the damn thing,” he said, “I hope it wasn’t all for nothing.”
“I
don’t know,” Shasti said.
“When
Vermilion blew up in the chamber, the blast disrupted the monster’s control.”
“I
think that whatever kept its consciousness in the universe was in that chamber,”
Fenaday added, straining with the travois despite the robot’s help.
“I don’t know what death is for his race, but
I think he longed for it.”
The
others stopped, looking at him.
“The
thing entered my mind when I was in its chamber,” he said. “I learned his
history.
He was once a hero of his
kind.
I’ll tell you more, later.
If I can.
Meanwhile, Mmok’s bad, and we are beaten to pieces.
Let's get back to the embassy.”
They
found the multi-fuel mercifully intact.
Next to it, lay the inactive Airbot, where Mmok landed it before their
descent.
Most of the dome buildings near
the machines had remained largely intact.
They loaded Mmok in the back of the M-2, along with the inactive Airbot.
They could do nothing for Mmok’s burns and
simply hung an IV of fluids for him.
The
M-2’s armored hull shrugged off what little had fallen on it as it coughed into
life and began to chug back to the embassy.
Cobalt sat with Li in the driver’s cab, lending its sensors and infrared
sight to his human eyes.
A
cloud of dust towered kilometers into the sky, but the ocean breeze blew it
inland and away from them.
Above them
some of the stronger stars of the galactic core shone palely in the failing
light, as the last banners of the sun faded in the west.
Telisan
finally realized one of his arm bones was broken.
Shasti set it and gave him a painkiller.
Exhausted by injuries and grief, Telisan
closed his eyes almost immediately.
Shasti had a dozen small splinter wounds, which Fenaday patiently
treated.
Her leg, which should have been
bruised black, looked nearly healed.
Li
used the truck’s radio to raise the embassy.
He relayed to them, through the hatchway, the battles on the
surface.
“Fury and half her team,
including Rask, survived.
The embassy
fared better.
Only one dead there.
The attacks have ceased, and there’s no sign
of Shellycoats.”
Relieved,
Fenaday and the others rode on in silence, watching the ruins of Barjan in the
headlights.
“He
called me, ‘his dear girl,’” Shasti said.
He
looked at her.
As usual, her face gave
little away.
“He
meant it,” Fenaday said.
She
remained silent for a minute longer.
“Robert, I have a favor to ask.”
“The
answer is yes, whatever it is.”
“Good.
I haven’t had a dog since I was a child in
K-9 training.
I like Risky.”
When he
failed to respond, she looked at him.
He’d fallen dead asleep.
She
shifted slightly so his head could rest on her shoulder.
They
reached the embassy gates near midnight.
The air rang with cheers.
Hugs,
handshakes and Risky’s barks greeted them, as well as anxious looks for the
wounded.
Mourner and her medtechs
checked the surviving team for radiation and treated the injuries.
All but Mmok were in decent shape.
“Mmok’s
burns aren’t as severe as they look,” Mourner judged as she and her tech fussed
over him, “but much of the machinery implanted in his cyborg parts is shorted
out.
He’s in a coma, though not in
danger of immediate death.”
“Do
what you can for him, Doc,” Fenaday said.
“He’s a son-of-a-bitch, but he’s our son-of-a-bitch.”
“Yes,
sir.”
She nodded to her techs, who
lifted Mmok onto a stretcher and headed for the infirmary.
A
small celebration broke out in the ambassador’s reception area.
Cooks whipped up the best of the remaining
food.
The survivors sat, talking and
joking in a subdued manner, their relief shadowed by the day’s casualties,
especially Duna.
Despite the
circumstances, Duna had been popular with the crew.
Fenaday gathered the survivors, telling them
of the scholar’s magnificent attack.
Everyone raised cups and glasses.
“To the little Enshari professor and to Connery,” Fenaday managed.
“May they reach heaven half an hour before
the devil knows they’re gone.”