Ahead of a storm front, squad Beta dropped right into the crumbling heart of a dead city. We came by aircar in the still dark hours just before dawn, with the temperature dropping and rain on the way. Sweety flashed a weather scan in a corner of my faceplate. The cloud deck was thick, and the frontal system extended across a quarter of the continent. Lightning flashed silently far away to the north of us. We swept into the ruins, a phantom fleet of alien aircars hissing past scores of massive, ruined towers, hovering over great courtyards overgrown with wild waist-high grass.
The assault doors opened and we emerged like alien warriors, glittering in black armor, bristling with weapons and sensors. Pilgrims of violence on an unholy mission of war. That’s how the Scalers see us, I thought, as alien invaders. But there were no Scalers in sight. They were the mission now. We’d tagged and set the Boy Scaler free, and tracked him here.
I landed running from the aircar, just behind Coolhand, and we rushed through tall grass and brush to our positions. My faceplate lit up the dead city for me in false colors, shaded for IR emissions. Power, EM or other emissions would show up in high contrast. Huge, grotesque ruined towers loomed all around us, covered with vegetation. This was Site 2012 on our charts, a vast ruined tomb, once a massive fortress dominating a high plateau that overlooked a great river cutting through a trackless jungle. All this, now only a semi-fossilized memory. The people who had once lived here in power and comfort had vanished ages ago. Now it belonged to us.
“You are in position.” Sweety spoke in her calm, clear, feminine voice.
“Thanks, Sweety.” There was no need to answer, but the truth is that I felt rather close to her. I remembered some graffiti I’d seen in a latrine on Planet Hell: ‘I think I’m falling in love with my Persist’. But it was true, Sweety understood me. I knew I could depend on her. She was always on top of things. Of course, she was only the outcom of my tacmod, a cleverly bioteched micromass of artificial smarts, but to me she seemed a lot more than that. Sweety had developed a personality as well.
A temple loomed in front of me against the dark sky. Lightning lanced through the night behind the structure. Sweety automatically dampened the brightness of the flash enough to protect my eyes. Even so, the electric brilliance briefly froze the temple against the night. Great, grassy stone steps led up a massive, elaborately-carved artificial mountain of rock to four great domed cones of crumbling stone, fringed with moss and vines. I stiffened as a deep rumble rolled overhead.
“Thunder,” Sweety explained. I did my tac check and nothing stirred, only the Legion, now moving into position. A night breeze rustled around me, blowing aimless patterns through the tall grass that filled the courtyard. A few drops of rain spattered against my faceplate while the tacsit map glowed on the lower corner. There were plenty of entrances to the structure. Our probes cautiously advanced inside. No action yet. A shadow in the sky, glowing, growing silently in my faceplate.
“Aircar,” Sweety told me. She normally would not have mentioned it, but my adrenalin had given her a little jolt.
“Normal vision,” I whispered. Sweety cancelled the darksight, and darkness rushed over me. Lightning strobed, illuminating the temple, a flock of fleecy angels and a handful of passing aircars. It hurt my eyes a little. The trees danced in the rising wind.
“Restore it,” I commanded. My faceplate lit up again. I liked little glimpses of reality from time to time. But too long could get you in trouble. Sweety didn’t like it because it affected my eyes’ sensitivity to her carefully selected palette of enhancement colors and shades.
Tacsit showed that the probes had uneventfully progressed to the planned distance and depth for us to proceed. The probes kept moving and it was time for us to move as well.
“Beta, assault.” Snow Leopard ordered, already moving up the stairs. “Command, Beta…we are assaulting Structure 02.”
I moved up the stairs to his left, all sensors on max, my E at the ready, set on v-min as ordered. Steep stairs, weak grav and powered armor. I felt like a God. We arrived at the top in moments, not even breathing hard.
We had a tremendous view from atop the temple, huddling against the gritty stone walls of four towering domes. The plan was to follow the probes into the heart of the temple and then down further, into the underground. The probes now swarmed far below, mapping a subterranean world. Somewhere down in the bowels of the temple, the Scalers were waiting.
“Command, Beta-we’re in place on Structure 02.”
There was no hurry. CAT 24 was swarming all over the bones of this dead city, and Beta would hold its position until we got the word. We settled in, moving into the gaping doorways of the domes to get out of the rain, and found comfortable positions in the rubble.
Snow Leopard moved around the temple’s edge restlessly. Coolhand posted himself on the west side, observing the progress of the assault. I squatted just inside one of the domes, watching the sky. The wind and the rain hissed gently.
“Ahh, death.” Psycho settled himself down near me and rested his Manlink against the wall. I did not say anything. Priestess stood beside Ironman in the doorway of the opposite dome, her E at the ready.
“Think we’ll find any extra-large exos down there, Thinker?” Merlin asked. He crouched near Psycho, balancing his E on one knee.
“If we do, I’m putting in for sick leave, Merlin,” I informed him. “I don’t ever want to see another one of those things.”
“You think too much,” Psycho cut in. “Always scheming to get into Valkyrie’s pants. Anything for sick leave. You knew she’d visit her wounded hero. I wish you’d tell me how you arranged that run-in with the exo. I wouldn’t mind a few days in the body shop.”
I ignored him. “I should have used the laser,” I said quietly. “Slice off its legs. They can’t hurt you without legs.”
A short silence ensued as Merlin and Psycho pondered my comments. I knew Psycho would probably say something crazy.
“You know what I’d like to do?” he finally said. “I’d like to take on one of those critters with this.” He raised his hot knife and triggered it. It flared to life, hissing blue-hot. The light from the knife flooded his faceplate, revealing his evil, boyish features. “Can you imagine that,” he asked, his eyes glowing, his mouth twisting. “Man Kills Bug With Knife. They’d laugh in the Inners, of course. But I’d be famous out here.” His eyebrows rose, and I could not help laughing. I knew he was serious and crazy enough to try it.
“A shame, Psycho,” I responded. “We’d have to get another Five.”
“Thinker’s always thinking,” he said, putting away the knife. “What a pain. You can screw up your life, thinking all the time.”
He was right, of course. During Basic, I’d been known as The Thinker, for over-thinking everything. I’d probably missed a lot, by agonizing over the possible consequences of my actions. Psycho had not missed a thing. It amazed me that he survived.
“What do you think the Scaler was trying to tell us with his drawings, Thinker?” Merlin had a talent for guiding conversations. Then he would sit back and listen. His IQ probably topped the rest of us put together. He certainly didn’t need our opinions. I had no idea why a scientific wizard like Merlin hauled an E instead of working in a biolab somewhere. He tended to be nervous, a bit clumsy in the field. I could not fathom his friendship with Psycho. I suppose he secretly admired his brash approach to life.
I thought about the drawings. “I’m not sure,” I said. “It’s strange.”
The lifies had thought they were making progress with their catch, the Boy Scaler. When he settled down, they showed him all sorts of wonders, in an effort to communicate. He calmly took it all in for a while, silent, eyes glittering like black gems, cold and hard. And then he showed a wonder or two of his own. He sketched out the night sky on a datascreen. He drew it expertly, with all the stars right where they should be, seen from his forest. He drew a moving star, and traced it right down to the horizon. After that, he did another sketch, an exoseg, Exoseg Gigantic Soldier, eating a man. Then he smashed the d-screen with the lightpen, suddenly convulsed with rage and tears. The lifies could get nothing further from him. But it gave us something to work on.
They took Boy Scaler by aircar to the edge of the flower forest near where he’d been captured, and released him. Dressed once again in his tunic of scaly skin and armed with his slingshot and spear, he bolted into the forest and disappeared. The lifies had injected a c-cell into his scalp. It would lead us to him, wherever he went.
He’d gone here, to Site 2012. The probes quickly confirmed that the bowels of this dead city crawled with Scalers. Now we had what we wanted: a big Scaler community. We were ready to come calling.
We knew so little we could have been blind, but the primary mission was certainly to defend this planet from the Systies. Everything else was secondary. I munched a mag, leaning against the doorway of the dome.
“It’s simple,” Psycho declared. “The star was a Systie ship. The exos came from the ship. Command knows it, they just don’t want to get the troops upset.”
The rain eased off. It would be dawn soon. “It seems obvious, Psycho,” I said, “but why would the Systies want to transport exosegs from one world to another? It’s crazy. Why would anyone want to do that? Even Systies aren’t that crazy.”
“How should I know? Ask Merlin. He’s the brains of the outfit. I just work here. Maybe the Systies are using the exos to do something for them.”
“Do what? They’re not smart enough to do anything.”
“How do you know? They sure know how to eat people. Maybe the Dominants are running the show for the Systies.”
“Come on…they’re not that bright.”
“We don’t know how bright they are,” Psycho insisted. “Not until we capture one of the Dominants alive, and disassemble it. Then we’ll know.”
“The Dominants are not intelligent. They live in holes in the ground, and the high point of their day is when they get to suck on somebody’s abdomen. They couldn’t be doing anything for the Systies.”
“Why not? That’s the high point of my day, too!” Psycho exclaimed. “Look-the exo soldiers are from Andrion 3-fully developed natives of Andrion 3. They didn’t develop here. But they got here somehow. They don’t have wings, and they can’t breathe vac. Why couldn’t a comet or asteroid blow a chunk of Andrion 3 to Andrion 2, with some exo eggs attached? I don’t know. I think they came here by ship. It’s the only way to get from planet to planet.”
“What do you think, Merlin?”
“I think we’ll know the answer when we find the Systies,” he replied.
“Do you think they’re here?”
“I don’t know. But somebody’s been here. And done some mighty strange things. I don’t think there’s much doubt it was the Systies.”
Strange! The exosegs were natives of Andrion 3. And if the Systies had transported them, where were the Systies? We had swept the planet clean and found no advanced signals or power sources. It’s not easy to hide a starship. Despite all our biomag wizardry, there could be whole cities, whole nations, whole empires, hiding from us in the forests, in the mountains, and deep underground. But if there were any Systies here, they weren’t using power systems.
“All right, you tell me how they got here. Soldier exosegs, from Andrion 3.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But we’re going to find out. Probably sooner than we’d like. And if the Systies show themselves, we’re certainly not going to be worrying about exosegs.”
Psycho let it go. He got bored easily. It was one of his problems. I let my mind wander back to the moment when Priestess and I had suddenly come face to face with the exoseg. Instant combat. Two worlds meeting. Our reactions had been correct. Only an Inner could doubt it. An Inner would have tried to reason with the creature, tried to communicate with it. An Inner would have been lunch.
“You know,” Merlin quietly interjected, “if the Scalers think the exosegs came from a ship, they may not be too thrilled to meet us.”
He was a master of understatement.
“Bring the psycher to Alpha,” Lowdrop’s voice crackled over the tacnet. Lowdrop was CAT 24’s commander and he was right up front for this op. Alpha was to make first contact with the Scalers and Beta was backup. We had followed the probes and now we were crouched against a corridor wall in the underground city, guarding Alpha’s flank. The Scalers were a few levels below us. It was as black as a tomb down there, but with our darksight we could see just fine.
As we waited, I wondered which psycher they had assigned to the mission. Psychers were a solitary breed, desperately lonely, trapped in the prison of their own talents. They did not even associate with other psychers.
Painful memories asserted themselves from my previous life. Tara, close beside me in the warm night of my own lost world, a silken cascade of glistening brown hair and faraway liquid brown eyes, exotic Assidic eyes and pale brown velvet skin. I could still feel her heart beating next to mine, but she had never really been mine. I think she knew what she faced, but it was her own dark secret, and she didn’t share it. Not even with me. I had sensed that something was wrong. I’d always felt that her mind functioned in another dimension. I only had her for a year, and then they came one night and she’d left with them without a fight or a word. I never knew if she really had a choice, but she never looked back. Never even said goodbye.
She was so far ahead of me, so damned brilliant, that I never even came close to understanding her. Yet we were drawn to each other, as if by an overwhelming magnetism.
She had always been sad when I talked about the future. I didn’t realize until later that she was a psycher. I only had a ring now to remember her by. A silver friendship ring, which I had treasured all the way through Basic. I always suspected that she had gone to the Legion. I never even thought about the Legion until after she left. I suppose I half hoped to meet her again, somewhere out in the vac.
Our psychers came from many worlds. They kept to themselves. I never wanted that kind of power, but the Legion needed it. Now we could hear the psycher at work. Number 8388-Gravelight, they called her. I recognized her voice. I knew her as a pale, thin, nervous phantom of a girl, with limp golden hair. She had evidently reached Alpha’s position a short distance behind us, although I could not see her.
“Voices,” she said. “Voices. Fear, they are terrified. Many, many of them. They are trapped. I feel fear. Terror, waves of terror. Tears, and hatred. They hate you-you have come to kill them. Leave them alone!” She shrieked it, a command. Psychers often got excited.
I heard her crying. “They are all going to die. The mothers are gathering up their children,” she sobbed. “They all have knives. Sharp stones, I can feel the edges. When you get too close, they will plunge the knives into the children’s hearts. The men are singing a death song. They will kill you, they will defend the women. The traps are ready, they will put out the eyes of the seekers, and when you come you will die. They sing the death song…”
“The traps, what can you tell us about the traps?” Lowdrop interrupted.
“Silence!” She shrieked. “Tell him to blackout! Blackout! Who the hell do you think I am? I can’t work like this!” She was a nervous wreck. Someone calmed her down, and a long silence ensued.
“You know what they’re doing now?” she whispered. “The men are crawling along the side tunnels to get in position to kill you when you come down the corridors. Those are dirt tunnels-the probes haven’t discovered them yet-ahh! They got a probe.” One of the probes winked out of existence on the tacmap on my faceplate.
“They’re good,” Gravelight said. “Gooood. They don’t care if they die, now. They’ve decided you are with the Beasts-you control the Beasts. Earthers! Traitors! You betray your own race!” She began crying again. “We will kill you all! Oh, the women-they are dipping their knives into poison. Ahh, you will die like worms, deep under the ground. Crushed, smashed. They will dig to find your bodies. If any survive, they will roast you over fires so you will die slowly. The corridors are all trapped! They will cave in on you, you will not get out. Another probe!” It winked out of existence. “Stupid probes. They only use rocks. Oh, you will die if you go further! They will fight to the death. You cannot talk to these people, you are Death, you are Evil. They will not talk with Evil.”
I will have no talk with Evil-the chant of the Legion.
“It’s the end for them,” Gravelight said sadly. “The end. They pray to their Gods. They know you come with the Beasts to kill them all. Now they only want to make a good end, a good death, to kill as many of you as they can. Even the young boys are out with the warriors. They will cover themselves with glory. They have knives and swords and axes and slingshots and spears and tridents. But the corridors will do you in. Those are one-way roads. You will not come back.”
She went on and said if we went further we would become the beasts that the Scalers feared. She said we would be criminals, murderers of children. Let them alone, she said. And she would not stop crying. Gravelight refused to say any more.
Firefall finally gave the word, and we edged forward. Gravelight had calmed down again. She knew we offered the Scalers a better chance at survival than the Systies. The plan was for Alpha and the lifies to go first, and try to talk.
We all said our prayers. I slowly separated my mind from my body, and became all eyes and ears and muscles and nerves and blood, rushing, pounding through my veins. It was as if I had the view on a d-screen from someplace far, far away. I knew it would not hurt if I got hit. This time we would do it right. We were fully equipped, A amp;A and ready for anything. Each of us wore a plasmapak strapped to our back just in case. Into the unknown, again. If it all worked out, nobody would get killed. But I didn’t believe that. I don’t think anybody believed it, except maybe Warhound, and Warhound was a little slow.
Nothing ever worked the way it was supposed to, no matter how hard we tried. Today, we would try Plan A and when that failed we would go to Plan B, and when that exploded in our faces we would go to Plan C, my favorite. Plan C was to retreat before the Scalers committed mass suicide. No matter which plan worked, we figured we would get some live specimens out of it, thus accomplishing the object of the exercise: to establish contact, preferably friendly contact, and ask some questions about the exosegs and the Systies.
###
“I can’t get the leader,” Gravelight said. “It’s all jumbled. Can we get closer?”
Someone answered, “Can do, let’s go.”
We continued moving slowly down the corridor, in sync with Alpha. We could see the Scalers on our tacmaps, still two levels below us.
“Ohhh, I read them now.” Gravelight said. “They’re all waiting. They know…they know you are coming. They’ve sent more soldiers back to the city, because they’re not sure what you’re up to. There are no traps in the hall-the great hall. The side tunnels are death.
“They’re all very tired now. The fear has worn them down. You can capture the women and children in the shelters. Some of the girls are with the men, ready to fight you.” Her voice broke. “Excuse me, I’m going to be sick.”
A long silence. We waited for her. Central sketched out the probsit on our tacmods. I could see it all on the tacmap. The probes were stationary, waiting for us. I hated waiting.
“It’s very confusing,” Gravelight continued. “There are many war leaders. You cannot talk with them. When they see you, they will fight. All I get is fear and hatred. I’m going to try to reach the nearest war leader, the one in the outside corridor.”
We all prayed she would be successful. I did not want to begin our stay in this new world with a city full of dead children.
She began moaning, “It’s so hard…he’s so hard. He’s as hard as stone. Hatred. Terror! I try…I try to reach him…” she trailed off, and we all waited.
“He is so right, how can you oppose him? He wants life, for his people. He will die, for them. I try to give him love, he returns fear. He brushes me off. Shall I control him?”
“Yes, can you get him to hold off his men until Nomad gets to him?” It sounded like Lowdrop.
“Yes, but if it goes wrong, you have to attack immediately. Because otherwise, we are all going to die.”
“Tenners, we’ll do it right,” Lowdrop said.
“You’re damned right we will.” She was a tough little girl. I’d never dream of talking to Lowdrop like that.
Alpha and Beta were together now, in the same corridor. The lifies set up a portable spotlight and waited for the command to turn it on. Nomad was to make the initial contact. He was out of his armor, stripped down to his jox, streaming sweat. I imagined he was flying pretty high right then.
Lowdrop appeared with Alpha One, watching his tacmod. I could see Gravelight, by his side, on her knees, stringy hair soaked in sweat, her eyes closed. Her helmet lay on the ground and she looked sick to death. Alpha One and Snow Leopard did a quick check on the troops. The Scalers were on our level now, approaching our position.
“Initiating contact,” Lowdrop announced. “To the death.” The Legion battle cry was oddly inappropriate in this situation.
“Death!”
A chill whisper, our release from fear. Ahead of me were Snow Leopard and Coolhand, against the wall, and an empty, darkened stone corridor. Back there, the spotlight, not yet activated, sat in the middle of the corridor. Gravelight and the lifies huddled around it.
Movement. The tacmap flashed an update on my faceplate. The Scalers were coming down the corridor. We remained against the wall, frozen.
Soldiers of the Underworld approached, phantom shadow soldiers, glowing with faint phosphorescence. They hesitated, creeping closer to the corridor walls, peering up ahead. We were in the deepest shadows. I raised my E.
The spotlight flared incandescent. White-hot light glared directly into the eyes of the Scaler soldiers, ripping the darkness open. Our faceplates instantly adjusted. The Scalers were caught, frozen in mid-step, a whole corridor full of wild-looking dirtmen, filthy savages with matted hair, dressed in scale-skins, armed with spears and tridents, axes and slingshots and knives. Glaring vacant eyes and savage mouths caught in mid-gasp, black teeth snarling in rage and terror. A sudden, barbaric splendor, all on display for just that one moment.
Then Nomad stepped out, almost naked, right in front of the spotlight. The light ripped out all around him, and he was a creature of the light. He stood there, silent and motionless. The Scalers collapsed, groveling in the dirt, huddling in confused, terrified groups of two and three along the corridor walls. We could hear their chatter, a high-pitched wailing.
Nomad moved. He stretched out his arms, his hands open. He took a step forward, toward the Scalers, a Sun God, stepping out of the light. Open. Unarmed. There were at least ten different ways he could die in the next few moments.
Gravelight exclaimed, “I’ve got him!”
The dirtmen shielded their eyes from the brilliant light. Some of them got up carefully, still cringing from the light but slowly raising their weapons.
One of the dirtmen stepped out into the center of the corridor, a sharpened stone axe in one hand, the other hand half-raised in a signal of caution to his companions. He was a small-framed man, encrusted with dirt, wild white eyes glittering in the light, strange filthy objects dangling from his waist. Nomad took another slow step forward. To the dirtmen, he must have looked like a silver god from another world. A low growling arose from the dirtmen. It sent chills over my skin. I centered my E on the closest group of soldiers. They were completely unaware of our presence because of the light. All they could see was the Light-God.
There was no mistaking the gesture the war leader now made with his free hand-holding back his warriors. He crouched, coiled, bristling, axe ready, right there in the path of the God, hypnotized, staring right into the eyes of Death.
Gravelight whispered fiercely, “Do it. Touch him!”
Nomad slowly stepped forward, arms held out away from his body, hands open, fingers outstretched. Radiating light, a human star, burning out of the dark. The war leader trembled, snarling silently, eyes wild, axe poised, left arm still holding his warriors back. Nomad gently reached out his right hand to the dirtman, palm open.
In slow motion, the dirtman’s left arm moved. It came around slowly, trembling, flat to the ground. His warriors stirred. I heard their ragged breathing. The whole world focused right there, on Nomad and the dirtman. Slowly, ever so slowly, they reached for each other. They hesitated that way for a terrible moment, fingers almost touching, one hand encrusted with dirt, the other molten silver, as if from the core of a star. Two worlds, on the brink. The dirtman tensed, ready to explode, then he cautiously touched Nomad’s hand.
Fingers on fingers. A slight hesitation. See, it doesn’t hurt-not at all! Then their palms touched. Hand to hand now, reaching out to each other. Two worlds, coming together, across the brink, across the gulf, across the ages. All the way from the shallow seas of ancient Earth, and now, at last, together again, out on the far edge of the Galaxy.
The war leader’s axe slowly started to come down from the strike position, down all the way, now dangling from his right hand, the arm slack at his side. The war leader’s whole being, his whole soul, was in that outstretched left arm, and in his eyes, now face to face, eye to eye, with the God.
Nomad was glorious, perfect, a creature of silver and mercury and liquid light, a true messenger from the Cosmos. He was as cool as ice, and if he never did anything else in his life he would always be remembered for that one magnificent moment. I hardly knew Nomad, but I could feel for him, hanging out his body in front of all that evil, sudden death, and I could feel for the dirt-covered war leader, too. He had more courage than I did, to reach out there and touch that God, even with Gravelight’s magical fingers wrapped around his mind. Gravelight was good, but even she could not turn a coward into a hero.
Make it work, make it work, I prayed! We were all frozen, and the dirtmen warriors were frozen, too, as still as death, all eyes on the two figures in that blazing field of light. The war leader slowly rose up from his fighting crouch, and eye to eye with Nomad; he knew the creature of light was a man, now. Only a man, offering friendship. Almost naked, obviously unarmed. There could be no doubt of his power, because of the manner of his appearance. But there could also be no doubt of his intentions. Enemies do not appear naked, with open hands.
And then it happened.
A shriek, and one of the dirtmen exploded into action, his arm a blur of motion. I fired as he moved. All of Beta fired. A wall of V bolts knocked him head over heels like a rag doll, a halo of dirt flying all around him, the noise a continuous ear-splitting thunderclap. Too late! Nomad threw up his arms and fell backwards, his face spraying blood. Something black and evil glittered between his eyes. The war leader cringed in shock, and falling backwards, raised his axe, confused. The spotlight suddenly cut off as Alpha and Beta both fired continuously into the Scaler warriors, the noise and shock waves echoing off the corridor walls, dirt and dust filling the air, the commands ringing in my ears.
“All units attacking!”
“Attack! Attack! Attack!”
“Fire biogas!”
“Clear the corridor!”
“Second, Lowdrop, we’ve got hostilities, Alpha and Beta engaging!”
“Alpha, recover all casualties!”
“Medic, up!”
It was all a ghostly green again. I fired continuously on v-min, directly into the enemy, now only flying limbs in a cloud of dust. V-min rarely kills, but it will certainly ruin your whole day. Psycho and Dragon crouched in the center of the corridor, firing gas probes in opposite directions along the corridor. The gas probes took off trailing plumes of yellow smoke, the smoke bursting outwards. In moments, the biogas would fill the underground, and every Scaler who breathed it would fall like a stone, unconscious. Amtacs were on the way. Plan A had failed, and Plan B was now in effect.