“GET HER VISOR DOWN!” GUN ROH CHIN snapped as the rain and noise engulfed the Mizlaplanian party.
“In and on automatic,” Manya responded. “She’s had quite a shock to her system, though. It is difficult to say when she will come around.”
“Yes, we need a telepath to get to her, and she’s our telepath,” Morok agreed. “By the gods! This place is going to eat up power!”
“If we don’t move away from here we might well get a telepath, only not ours,” Savin noted. “If the Mycohl are behind us, they’re likely to release that pair without even being coerced.”
“Good point,” Morok agreed. “We’ll have to continue to carry Krisha, though. Can you manage it, Savin?”
“Yes, she is as light as grass leaves. But where do we go?”
Morok looked over at Gun Roh Chin. “Captain? Any suggestions?”
Chin was looking all around in the gloom and until questioned seemed lost to the others. “Oh, sorry, Holiness. I was trying to figure out where those screams and moans were coming from. What did you ask for?”
“We’ve got to move, Gunny! Before the Mycohl come along and release those things.”
“Hmph! I doubt if even the Mycohl will be that stupid. They saw what we saw, and from what I know of them, volunteering to be eaten alive by your gods isn’t in their required rituals. Still, you are right. We must get away from this point, and find shelter if we can. I think we can safely assume we won’t be following any tracks for a while in this stuff, but clearly we go left. Let me scan the terrain.”
A mental command, and his faceplate came alive with a series of markings plotting the immediate vicinity. “Well, it’s not level, anyway, and there seems to be some vegetation on the rises, but it’s going to be a long walk in the muck. Location transponders on, everyone, if you haven’t switched on already. Be careful of any dips—form a single file, so if anyone suddenly finds themselves either in a quagmire or a raging stream or river, we might be able to get to them without going in ourselves. This ground is already far too saturated to absorb water, and it has to be going somewhere.”
Morok wasn’t the only one to check his suit energy levels. About five days’ worth, if major demands weren’t placed on the system beyond this, assuming no opportunity for a recharge. Without power, they would be at the mercy of the elements, without backup air, without major supplies, tools like the terrain scanner, communications, defenses, or weapons. Spare energy packs didn’t weigh much, but had some bulk. Who would have thought when they explored the camp that they would need more than one? Certainly they would have taken spares before entering that first demon station, had they not been chased in at gunpoint. They had never needed spares for a preliminary investigation before, and he’d gone strictly by the book. That still did not leave the Lord High Inquisitor without a sense of guilt It all was on his responsibility, no matter what.
They walked for a while, most needing some reinforcing power lift from the suit to manage in the deep, thick, black mud.
On top of it all, the place stank, the captain noted glumly, although both Savin and Manya had remarked on how pleasant it smelled. It only reinforced his lesson on their basic differences.
He was tempted to completely seal his suit and go on air purification, which wouldn’t drain much power, being mostly a mechanical system, but that would also shut out much of the sounds of the place. As horrendous as the noise was, it fascinated him.
“I wonder if it rains like this here constantly?” Morok mused. “It seems an entire ocean unloads upon us.”
“Doubtful, or this place would already have eroded as smooth as a ball,” Manya responded. “We simply do not know enough about this place to draw conclusions beyond that, however. It might stop at any moment. It might rain only once in a hundred years like this, but for a week.”
“Cheery thought, that last,” Morok commented.
“Well, if we can get through this mess, I believe it will probably be about the same distance around to the next station,” the captain put in. “That could take some time in this stuff, but well within our power and supply limits.”
“Are you certain that there is another ‘station,’ as you call it?” Savin asked. “There was no other station on the world where we came in.”
“That was either an end point, which looks doubtful from the world’s nature and location, or a mistaken end point. The thing was undoubtedly built or grown elsewhere, if it’s a crystal of some kind, and then transported to its end spot, as they all were, using these interdimensional pathways. It is possible that they were going to do something on that world and halted for some reason before it was done. It was, after all, well within the comfort and life zones of most carbon-based forms. Whatever, it’s the end of that spur line. We’re now on that same spur going backwards. Our big problem is going to be when we intersect a main line and have to choose which station to use. I believe that all the stations are enormous single crystals, hollow inside and coated with something internally, and that each is probably tuned to a specific destination by means of oscillation by some hidden power supply. It’s ingenious in its own right, and totally bypasses the tricks we must pull with artificial wormholes and temporal distortion fields to effectively bypass light’s speed limit.”
“They certainly pick destinations that only demons could love,” Morok noted.
“Maybe they didn’t pick them. Maybe they have to go where the laws of interdimensionality, whatever they are, allow them to go. Then, again, this system’s been in place for who knows how many thousands or tens of thousands of years. This might have been a veritable paradise the last time anyone visited it. Or, its ecosystem might have been destabilized and altered horribly by the demons themselves doing whatever they once did here.”
“Ever the rationalist!” Manya snapped. “Not even coming face to face with demons has shaken you. We are in the Underworld, the Nether Worlds, the regions of Upper Hell in the plane where demons reign!”
“If that’s true,” Chin responded, “then we’re all going to die here and be trapped eternally. ‘Surrender all hope,’ remember? The demons I’ve seen are carbon-based, warm-blooded life forms that eat and breathe and probably breed, considering the two sexes. They are a major life form, that’s all, on a very advanced level, like the Guardians of the Exchange and the Mycohl race from which their Empire gets its name.” And the Holy Angels of the Mizlaplan as well, he added silently, thankful during that thought that Krisha was still out.
“Indeed? And so what is your current theory, Captain Rationalist?”
“I think that in the distant past there was a war,” he said honestly. “I think this group was so much cruder, so vile, that the others banded together in ancient times to defeat them. For some reason—possibly mercy, probably something more pragmatic—the demon race wasn’t exterminated but rather locked away in their own continuum. Possibly that was the Mycohl’s fault—they might well have sided with the demons initially, then pulled back when they saw they weren’t equal partners. That would explain why that Empire still has them as objects of admiration. Shared goals and attitudes, but not shared fates.”
Morok was fascinated by this. “And what of the first station, the one that got us inside?”
“Somehow, one of the entryways to our plane got missed. As I say, it was probably a mistake or a failure, possibly too new to be on the records. That was the one the Exchange found as it expanded, and inadvertently set two of them free. Reading in their minds that those people represented an ancient enemy, the Guardians, they didn’t push like those two back there to be freed. That alone implies that they can somehow be stopped, or even killed. When they were chopped out of there, they went on a rampage so that no signal that they were free could reach the Guardians until they were well away.”
“Highly rational,” Manya snorted, “but it begs two questions at least. They were discovered months before they were freed—the size of the camp shows that. Word had to already reach those Guardians, whatever they are, that two of the ancient enemies had been found in one of their machines. Why, then, did the Guardians do nothing at all to ensure that they remained sealed? Why, particularly, did they allow a relatively defenseless expedition to go there and risk freeing the demon folk—without even a warning or at least supplying a means of defense? Second, where are those two freed demons going in such a hurry, and what purpose can they have that they would not even stop to free their companions?”
“I don’t know,” Chin admitted. “But as to a possible answer, I think I can provide a theory. We know the parasitic Mycohl still exist, but probably as a shadow of their former selves. Not even the people of the Exchange really know what a Guardian is. Nobody ever communicates with them except through the cymols, and the cymols are programmed like any sophisticated machine no matter how they appear. What if the Guardians no longer exist? Even some within the Exchange really believe that. What if they died out or became so ancient they no longer function? What if the cymols are actually in contact only with a library and maintenance computer? It’s quite possible that all this was so ancient in time that even the Guardians, or their computer, now thinks this race mere legends. As to the other question—that’s what we’re here to find out.”
Chin took another step forward, then fell back on his rear end as a chunk of ground broke away under him and toppled into a roaring river below. “Hold it! We’ve got a problem!” he shouted.
“Are you all right?” Morok called to him.
“All safe but my dignity,” he responded. “I’m going to have to slide backwards a bit to be safe, though.”
“Do you need a hand?” the Stargin asked.
“No! Stay back, just be still. I’ll manage. Oof! I’m all right, now. I almost fell into that thing, though, and who knows where I’d have wound up before I stopped?”
Picking himself up and approaching again, more cautiously, he turned on his night beam and radar system and saw a massive, swollen river, black with the mud it was washing away, churning and bubbling and rushing on into the dark at breakneck speed.
“We are not going to get across that without flying,” Morok noted glumly.
“They got across,” Gun Roh Chin said flatly, “and they didn’t fly on those leathery wings in this weather and in this atmosphere, either. That means that there is a crossing point somewhere.”
Savin surveyed the torrent. “Possibly—but where?”
“Where else? To the left! And watch it! This thing could twist and bend at any point, and there are bound to be feeder streams. Stay at least three or four meters in from the bank, and keep it in mind always!”
After more than two hours moving along the river’s edge, however, even the captain began to wonder if he’d been wrong this time. Now, though, their route was not only straight, but up, and more dangerous because of it. Although the slope soon became bare rock, simply because all of the soil had been washed from it, the slope was increasingly steep and slippery, and water was running off it in all directions.
Suddenly his locator indicated a change, slightly to the right, near the river now dangerously far below. It appeared to be a ledge, nearly flat, with large boulders or perhaps structures on it. Too tired and too worried to go farther, Chin made for it and guided them to it.
At first glance it did appear to be just a jumble of huge, oddly shaped rocks, but on closer examination it proved to be some sort of deliberate arrangement. The rocky slope appeared sedimentary, its layered appearance much like shale or slate, but these great rocks were igneous, granite-like formations. Great pillars, now weathered into grotesque forms of their original selves, had been arranged by someone into a circular shape perhaps twelve meters across the arc, then sunk deep into the existing rock, and had been joined by capstones at one time. Not all the pillars still stood, and only two or three capstones, but the original look of the place was clear.
In the center was a smaller area, with five pillars much like the outer ring only shorter, and capped by a single stone that once had a well-defined shape but which now looked like some ancient version of a misshapen pillow. Unlike the outer ring, though, the important thing was that the single inner capstone still stood, water rushing off its twisted top in all directions forming almost a curtain, yet not going inside. Instead, a nearly imperceptible slope and channels carried it away, out of the structure, out beyond the ledge, to collect and plunge into the river now perhaps a hundred meters below.
“Want me to check it out?” Manya asked them.
“No need,” the captain replied tiredly. “I think there is nowhere else we can expect to find even that much shelter, and we need it badly. Any demons or other horrors left behind by whatever ancient people built it had better be prepared to fight me for a spot.”
It wasn’t very high, which was one reason it had weathered better than the outer ring. The captain was not very tall, and he had to stoop to enter. Even Manya, the shortest of them, was barely able to get in without a lot of effort, and, as for Savin and Morok, they had to crawl under. With Krisha’s limp body between them, there was barely enough room for all of them, and it was damp and smelly and ugly looking, but the rain, blocked a bit by the hillside and channeled by the slope, didn’t get in to them, save when an occasional gust of wind would bring a brief spray or shower.
“Gunny, neither you nor Savin has had any sleep in more than two days,” Morok noted. “I am so contorted here that I might as well lie on the stone here and keep watch. Manya, you will relieve me. If anyone else approaches, you’ll know. I intend to fire first and then raise an alarm.”
“I will not argue with you for a moment, Holiness,” the captain responded, suddenly feeling the full, crushing weight of just how tired he really was. Within minutes, he was so sound asleep he was dead to any universe or world..
Morok leaned more on his faith than his reason to get through the next few hours. Lying there, staring out into the tremendous, steady rain, listening to the roar of the downpour, the echoing answering roar of the river below, and, through it all, those eerie, incessant screams, shrieks, and moans that seemed even louder in this ancient place, it was difficult for him to remain with the intellectual explanations, theories, and rationalizations of the captain which he much preferred, and far easier to believe that Manya was indeed correct: that this was Hell, and those were the shrieks and agonized moans of the eternally damned.
Krisha came out of her dark, dreamless near coma with a sudden rush, as if she were immersed in water and fighting to reach the surface before she drowned.
When she did, the sudden onrush of awful sounds and equally unpleasant smells frightened her for a moment, and she tried to raise her head. Doing so brought dizziness and a headache that was beyond belief, and she sank back down again and hesitantly reached out with her mind.
Touching first the sleeping minds of those nearest her and then Morok, she smiled and gave a sigh of relief.
I’m alive! She rejoiced in the realization, and in that moment she found the peace and joy and love that only the Blessed shared. Gone, totally vanished, was the self-pity, the doubt, the horrible inner pain with which she’d lived most of her adult life. It all seemed so ugly, so—trivial. So much joy flooded her that she felt tears coming to her eyes. She prayed thanks to the gods for making her a priestess of the One True Faith, awed by the way they had cared so much about her to manipulate her to this point—and to have demons as the instruments of her cleansing and her salvation!
She had become as the First Mother, cleansed of sin, beyond the ability of anyone or anything to tempt her.
The demons had entered her and overwhelmed her ability to block, throwing aside all her resistance as if she had no power at all, arid they had probed down to the very core of her soul. One by one they dredged up and cataloged her sins, both the ones she had committed before her ordination and the ones she lusted after in her mind during those subsequent years of suffering. And, one by one, they had tempted her with the ability to actually do every one.
They had offered her great power: the power to reign over vast numbers of people as a goddess of sin and lust, to be adored and worshiped by all, to indulge her every fantasy and whim. More, they had sent visions making her body feel what those sensations would be like, to know raw power and no limits upon it.
And, as only a telepath could know, she understood that they would have done what they offered to her. And although she knew that no power in her universe could undo the restrictions of ordination, she also knew that here, in the demons’ universe, right then and there, in the presence of the demons, she could in fact have broken them. She had raised and armed her pistol just to test it out, and she knew at that instant that she could have done it, could have freed them, committing what had to be the ultimate sin, and at that moment her soul would have gone to them, and she would have become their goddess, their anointed one, and built temples in their name, and ruled over vast numbers of worlds for countless centuries to come.
Not even Savin could have knocked her out fast enough to keep her from shooting, although he would never believe that. In that moment of mind-link with the demons, she was also linked to the other minds in the chamber, Savin’s included, and while the Mesok’s action was mostly unthinking reflex, she had just enough warning.
In that ever-so-brief microsecond of ultimate decision, she had made it. Better to die a humble chattel slave within the blessing of the gods than to reign in the depravity and evil of Hell!
And in that same split second, it was as if all of the darkness and sinful thoughts and pain within her flowed out of her, back and into the demons. Having seen the pettiness and insignificance of all her old lusts and desires, she no longer wanted any of them. Having freely refused all that sin could offer, temptation was no longer possible.
For the first time, she realized she was in her environment suit. She gave the mental command to switch to control from auto, then set the com channel for Morok only, so as not to wake the others.
“Holy Father, I am awake,” she told him.
Morok was so startled he almost started shooting. Then, realizing who it was, he switched to local response. “Child, I am squeezed in here too tight to turn around, but I feel joy that you are back with us. Shall I awaken one of the others to see to you?”
“No, Holiness, I am fine. A bad headache and a little dizziness, but I think I can get a pill out of my emergency kit without awakening anyone else.”
“I’m afraid Savin doesn’t know his own strength. Manya says that it was a miracle that your jaw wasn’t broken. Even so, I’m afraid you’ve lost or chipped some teem, and you’re going to have a very bad bruise for a while.”
“So that’s what that is!” She rolled her tongue back against the top row of teeth and found quite a gap along the left front. “It is not fatal,” she said casually. “Poor Savin, though, will probably not be convinced that he needs to feel no guilt at having done it.”
Morok was surprised. “That does not sound like you at all,” he noted.
“I must tell you all that happened,” she said excitedly. “It is the most wonderful thing. . . . ”
He listened with growing amazement at the way her mind had sorted it out; this was not like any forced cleansing he’d ever experienced before. There was none of the rigidity, fanaticism, or self-righteous egotism that almost always resulted from such things. Rather, it was as if she was as she said: the same person, only somehow cleansed of inner sin, with an almost childlike quality in her voice and attitude, and a humility that was the most striking difference of all. It was a quality which, frankly, he’d not seen before, not in his fellow priests, and particularly not in himself.
He wondered if it would last. It might, so long as she really believed that she had rejected the ultimate temptation. In a quieter, more restful time, if such a time ever came again, he would like to put her under and find out if her version was really the true one. If so, he might well have experienced the perfection of a true mortal saint, something very rare indeed in history and unique in his long experience.
Still, he was the leader of this Arm because of his mixture of faith and pragmatism, where sainthood might be a definite liability.
“Krisha?” he asked a bit hesitantly. “Could you still kill if you had to?”
“To defend the Arm and the Holy Faith I could,” she answered, her total lack of hesitation in answering that or any other question being the most striking thing about her change. “Not for any other reason.”
“How’s your headache?”
“Better, My Lord,” she responded. “The pill is taking effect, and I don’t feel as dizzy as I did.”
“Since you’ve been out all this time, I assume you don’t feel sleepy.”
‘”No, Holy One. I am wide awake, although perhaps not at my full capabilities.”
“If you feel up to it, or when, I’d like you to assume the guard duty position so I may get some rest.”
She wriggled out from between Manya and Savin, got out into the rain, then came back in beside him. “I feel capable of that. My! This is an ugly place!” She looked around. “What are those fearsome sounds? It sounds like a mighty throng of people in agony.”
“Take from my mind the information and events leading us to this point,” he told her. “That will tell you as much as we know.”
She did so, and was amazed.
“What do you think about the debate between the captain and Manya?” he asked her, genuinely curious.
“The captain is a sweet man and one of our best, but his life is among the things of physical existence, not spiritual. My mind has been joined with the soldiers of the ultimate evil. These are the demons about which much has been preached; of that I have no doubt. That does not mean that the captain is totally wrong, within his limited view. Surely these are the worst of the dark powers, who were put away like this, after their break with the gods. As to the machines, all but the gods require them for some things. Have not even the forces of evil required rituals and sacrifices and cursed objects and formulae to work the ultimate dark powers upon people? Are not evil spells required formulae?”
“It is a good answer,” he responded sleepily. “Now, if you can only determine how to kill one, we might just get out of this place. I know the rituals that banish them to Hell, but, all things considered, those are sort of academic right now.”
Morok was silent for a while and she thought he’d sunk into sleep, but, suddenly, he called, “Krisha?”
“Yes, My Lord?”
“What made you, of all people, reject the ultimate temptation? If they were convinced that it was a true bargain, there are very, very few who could. Was it because you did not believe that they would honor their promises?”
“No, My Lord, I was and remain convinced that they would have, at least to the degree that they could. I remain unconvinced that they were as powerful in their own hierarchy as they made themselves out to be. Is it not written that Hell keeps all its bargains, but exacts the greatest price?”
“Yes, that is so.”
“When every desire, every craving or lust, that I had ever had was paraded before me, I suddenly realized the truth of what my teachers had told me: that every one was selfish, inward, for me and me alone. I had been blinded to the greater needs of others by this total selfishness. By following the Holy Way, billions upon billions of thinking creatures had achieved a society of peace, of plenty, and of selflessness; a society where giving was valued over all else. What the demons offered was taking, to the torment and suffering of the masses. They made me realize that my sins were the same as theirs, and came from their corruption. Up to now, my selfishness had harmed only me; now they proposed that it harm whole worlds. For what? For the selfish, temporary gratification of animal lusts? My own desires seemed trivial, even obscene when magnified thus. In the end, their way is corruption and slow death; ours leads to perfection and contentment. When I saw that what so pained me was like them, I was repulsed. I cast it out. I gave it back to them. I became free.”
He marveled at her response, and began to really believe that through descent into Hell she had become sanctified. Still, he couldn’t help but wonder how helpful a saint would be in a gunfight.
“It as no use, Captain, I cannot make it up that slope in the rain,” Desreth said flatly. “It is simply too slippery, and the rock flakes off as I try and dig into it.”
Josef didn’t like that at all. The Corithian was his primary weapon, his invincible warrior.
“Perhaps we can go around,” Tobrush suggested. “Find a better area.”
“In this mess? We’d be lost before we went half an hour without the river as a guide mark,” he responded, “and most likely be well off any possibility of finding the next station. Robakuk—can you lift him all the way?”
“Impossible, sir,” the Thion responded. “Although weight isn’t in and of itself a limiting factor, concentration and duration are. I can lift Desreth, or I can climb, but not both, and I do not believe I can get him up in stages, particularly as I can’t totally see what I’m doing now. The instrumentation is of no value in a mental Talent; if I took the time to read it, even for a moment, I’d lose him. No, sir—under these conditions, it’s beyond my limits.”
Josef sighed. “Then, as much as I dislike it, Desreth, you will have to find your own way and catch us. You aren’t limited by suit power as we are, but you have your com pack and can keep us located by the transponders. If you make the station first, hide and wait for us. Because of our position, I doubt if we can do the same for you, though. You will either have to beat us or catch us.”
“Understood,” the Corithian responded. “Go, before you are washed over or mired in the mud.”
Tobrush looked no more able to climb than Desreth, but the Julki environment suit had provisions for extending massive quantities of the tendrils through openings in the suit if necessary. Secretions through the tendrils allowed it to gain a sure, sticky hold on the rocks; massed tendrils within the forward and rear parts of the suit allowed them to bunch and form like tentacles, giving the creature a grip. It was not the best of all solutions, but suit designers couldn’t possibly imagine every situation.
Robakuk had no such problems. Special transfer pads at the base of his six legs, which had their own secretions, gave him a sure grip no matter what. An obvious problem, Thion suit designers had created transfer pads that could ooze the secretion to the feet of the suit while permitting nothing back in. That left Josef and Kalia to depend mostly on their own footing.
Tobrush lumbered steadily forward and up the rocks, but suddenly stopped. “Mizzies ahead! Not far! The telepath’s on watch! Seems like the others are asleep, but they won’t be in a minute.”
A sudden blue-white blast from their right struck rock just above them and sent splinters flying down.
“Ledge, maybe ten meters up and twenty over!” Kalia shouted. “Some kind of rocks!”
“Keep down, everybody!” Josef cautioned. “Tobrush, can you scan their positions?”
“Yes. Some sort of primitive ruin. Excellent cover, but they are all bunched up. They have more cover from fallen stones, but they’re not in the best of all positions. The river’s at their back, and they’re up against what’s pretty close to a sheer wall. This is the only way out.”
“No good, not in this foul weather,” Josef replied. “They can wait us out and hope they get lucky with some shots, while we have to waste most of our power trying to dig them out. Sooner or later some smart godmonger’s gonna figure out how to bring some of this rock down on us.” He did an instrument scan. “Damn! Can’t get above them, either, without allowing them too much time for clean shots. I’d try it in the clear, but with all this water and everything so slippery there’s not a chance.”
“They’re wide awake and pretty well deployed now,” Tobrush reported. “It would be murderous crossfire. That’s about all I can get, though. I’d swear that telepath of theirs has increased her power by a huge factor. Either that or my brush with our friends back there has weakened mine. She’s thrown a pretty fair block over all of them. I’m only getting intermittent images. I wish I could do that!”
“Can we go wide of them?” Josef asked.
“Don’t think so,” Kalia replied. “Check your scans. It’s a dead drop over there and a waterfall comin’ down. In back it . . . looks almost straight up.”
“I could get up there that way,” Robakuk suggested. “The only danger is the waterfall, and the rock seems bowed in behind it. If I can withstand the water enough to get behind it, I could go right up.”
“Yeah, but they’ll know what you’re gonna do,” Kalia pointed out. “Just ’cause Hairy Brain over there can’t cut it don’t mean their telepath ain’t readin’ us loud and clear right now!”
“Won’t matter,” the Thion responded. “They can’t shoot at me while I’m going up, and once I’m on top I can drop anything I like on them at will without their being able to even see me. That ought to flush them right into your guns no matter what.”
“All right—do it, then!” Josef snapped. “I don’t want to be here like this any longer than I have to!”
Robakuk headed to the left and was quickly lost from sight.
“Yeah, and what happens if that overgrown dung fly falls to his death?” Kalia wanted to know. “Too bad he can’t levitate himself!”
“Let him try first!” Josef snapped back, irritated. There was no way he was going to let those bastards get out of that trap of theirs if he could help it. If necessary, he’d go back and make a deal with those monsters in the station before he’d do that!
Tobrush surveyed the upward terrain with instruments. “I can’t understand why they haven’t tried to knock us off by firing at the outcrops above us.”
“Don’t give ’em no ideas!” Kalia warned sharply.
Josef looked up and surveyed the same section. “Because, if they miss, they give us a pile of rubble for cover right on their only exit,” he replied, then stopped. “Now, that’s a thought! It’s dangerous, but if we can move back and aim correctly, we might be able to knock down that big overhang there. If it stays in one piece it’s gonna just keep coming, but if it shatters when it hits the flat area . . . It’s worth the risk, damn it!”
He ran the problem through the suit computer and it gave recommended places to be and points to shoot at to achieve the desired result. He had better than a sixty percent probability that it would fall right—and safely. The odds were almost even that it would come off in one piece and continue down, or that they themselves would still get swept over with it
“Sending coordinates!” Josef called. “Get in position and let the suit computer do the aiming.”
Up in the ruins, Krisha picked up the thought and reported, “They are going to shoot at the overhang to give them some cover, and some creature of theirs is climbing the sheer wall out of sight and range with the idea of getting above us.”
Gun Roh Chin, still feeling the effects of the trek and the sleep, was amazed at her calmness and almost clinical clarity. Savin, the empath of the group, was equally startled at Krisha’s total lack of fear and tension. Must be some of Morok’s hypno work, he thought approvingly. Still, he wasn’t at all certain that he’d ever know for sure, considering.
“I might be able to get over and foul that up,” Manya suggested. “Krisha says that the Corithian isn’t with them.”
“They’re on instruments, Manya!” Morok reminded her. “If they’d been in full battle gear the first time, you wouldn’t be here. Your Talent doesn’t extend to fooling a computer.”
Manya said nothing for a while, but took her own measurements of the outcrop in question. “Let them do it,” she said at last. “Tie in to my suit; everyone but Krisha, who’ll keep the way covered and remind them we’re still here.”
“What do you have in mind?” Morok asked her.
“If Krisha can give us a signal when they start to shoot, we shoot, too. They’ll free it, all right, but we’ll deflect it a bit right onto them!”
“Krisha, can you do it?” Morok called.
“No problem,” she responded. “I’ll send a signal through the suit link to you. If you’re in position, Manya’s system should do the rest.”
The odd thing was, it wasn’t a problem. Even she was amazed at her sudden clarity of mind and added power. Never before had she been able to so effectively manage so many things at once. She’d faced this telepathic creature out there before, on a mental level, but where before it had seemed equal in power to her, now it seemed far weaker, almost as if the Mycohlian’s telepathic band was some kind of solid, physical thing that she could sense and deflect. She’d managed that for very short periods and with some disorientation, but never this long or this easily—and certainly not while also covering a range, checking instrument readings, and keeping tabs on the rest of the Arm. It was almost—supernatural.
Her reading of the Mycohl almost, but not quite, confirmed her preconceptions. That girl—she was all emotion, and the emotions she had were almost exclusively repugnant. Blind, unreasoning hatred, revenge—against nothing and everything—and an absolute worship of power. She liked—no, loved—to kill. So eaten up inside, she didn’t have to go to Hell, she was already all those demons liked.
The man was almost the opposite, yet she could find the demons in him as well. Cold, cruel, yet intellectual; a man so self-centered that he viewed all others, even his own team members, as mere tools of his own aims. The kind of man who never did anyone a favor without ulterior motives.
The creature climbing the wall was about out of her range now, but she had gotten enough of a look into its mind to sort a little bit of it out. The thought patterns were strange, nearly impossible to follow, but at the core she recognized the demon once again. It thrived in tension and loved excitement, thrills, taking chances. Somehow she got the strangest idea that, to the thing, this business was fun.
Only the Mycohl telepath was closed to her, and then only with effort. She was certain, though, that if she ever got through those defenses she’d see the demon there, as well.
Not, to her surprise, that the demon wasn’t in her own team as well. She hadn’t noticed it before because she herself had been so full of it that she couldn’t recognize it in others. Yet even Morok had that core of coldness within that not only drove him to this sort of position but which made him actually enjoy battle, enjoy exposing heretics, spies, and traitors, enjoy consigning them to punishment. At least he knew his own failings, but they were very much there and, in spite of some guilt, he didn’t really want to get rid of them. Manya’s self-righteousness and intolerance came from her egomania; her need to believe that whatever she thought or did was the will of the gods because she was entitled to it.
And Savin—there was an animalistic quality to Savin that she had always dismissed as part of his people’s nature and upbringing, and perhaps it was. But, deep down, Savin loved instilling fear in those he dealt with beyond the Arm; he had tortured and killed in the name of the Church and he reflected on those experiences with fondness and nostalgia.
Only Gun Roh Chin remained as much of a cipher as ever, and she was thankful for that. She wouldn’t like to find the demon in him; she felt closer to him than to any other person, but she had no lust for him. In some past or future incarnation, they might well have been or might yet be lovers, but for this life a platonic love was now more than enough for her.
“Mark to shoot!” she sent.
Almost simultaneously, the two separate groups began firing at the same rocky outcrop from different angles. The rock shuddered, reddened, then began to tilt forward.
Josef was almost too slow. “They’re trying to deflect it! Trajectory change! Shoot!” Molkur’s bones! That Mizzle bunch was good! Almost too good!
The rock mass, freed, began to slide down, and they kept the pressure on as the Mizlaplan team also adjusted. Fragments broke off and flew in all directions, one just missing Tobrush by the width of a tendril. It remained, however, essentially intact, and struck the flat region edge on, teetered for a moment on edge, then overturned and continued sliding on a thin curtain of water past the Mycohl and on down the hill.
“I begin to wonder if we aren’t out of our league here,” Tobrush commented worriedly.
“Well, there’s still Robakuk!” Josef snapped, trying to avoid thoughts like that himself. “There’s precious little they can do about him!”
That thought was on the minds of the Mizlaplanians as well. “If only this cursed rain would stop, or even let up,” Morok grumbled. “The gravity’s a bit more than I’d like, but the thermals are excellent, and with that cliff back there to get off of, I think I could climb that high.”
“That’s their TK man up there, too,” Gun Roh Chin pointed out. “Has to be, if the hypno, telepath, and empath are all down here as Krisha says. If he gets his eyes on us he can bring these columns down all around us, maybe sweep us right off this rock.”
“I’ll nail him if he so much as sticks his ugly head over that ledge,” Savin growled.
“He might not have to,” Chin pointed out. “If he’s got anything big and loose up there, or anything he can blast loose, he can add rocks of all sizes to this rain and do the same thing with little effort, no exposure, and the same effect.”
Morok sighed. “I can try a flight, rain or not.”
“You will not, Holiness!” the captain snapped. “First, you’d have to be out of your suit to use your wings, which means no protection. If he’s up there by the time you can climb to that level—if you can get that high with this rain and added gravity driving you down—you’d be very little competition for his instruments, suit, and weapons. I realize that even Holy Law permits suicide under various conditions, but not under these conditions. We need you too much.”
“Yes, but do you have any other suggestions?” Morok asked him, secretly more than a little relieved to be talked out of it.
Savin looked up at the apparently sheer wall. “I might make a stab at climbing it. The thing’s slightly concave; that, the winds, and the ledge keep the direct, driving rain off.”
“I think I left my pitons in my other suit,” the captain commented dryly. “Along with the rope and the null-gravity boots.”
“I’m serious,” the Mesok replied. “While we get along well enough in daylight, my people are basically nocturnals. I grew up in mountains, too. With the rain not as much of a factor, I think I can make my way up there. It’s not nearly as smooth as you think it is. There are small bits of shale sticking out just about the whole way. I think I can make it.”
“Talk about suicide!” Manya put in. “And the Mycohl creature has a good twenty-minute head start!”
“Won’t matter,” Savin told her. “He has a lot further to go than I do. Besides, what choice do we have?”
Gun Roh Chin surveyed the cliff with his human eyes and couldn’t see how it might be done, but he said, “You’re right. If you think you can do it, you must try. Everybody else, we must give the ones down here enough to do that they don’t see Savin go up. And we must lose no more time debating.”
“All right,” Morok said hesitantly. “The gods be with you, Savin.”
“Everybody!” the captain called. “Be ready. Shoot at any of that trio down there that so much as pokes a finger or a tentacle or whatever they’ve got into view!”
Savin put his huge, clawed hands together in a silent prayer, then surveyed the cliff. After a moment, he began climbing, and they began randomly shooting.
Below, Tobrush said, “Something’s up. I can’t tell what, though. There’s none that can climb out of there as Robakuk could, though.”
“Maybe they prayed some climbing gear into existence,” Josef responded irritably. “After all this, I’d believe almost anything.”
Kalia had different ideas. “If they’re shooting at anything that moves, give them things to shoot at,” she suggested. “If they’re basically on automatic, they’ll all go for any available target. That might be all the time I need.”
“For what?” Josef asked her.
“There’s a ton of rubble where that rock crashed down. Just not high enough or close enough to do us no good. If they’re all firin’ over that way, say, I can make it. Then we got a crossfire.”
“No good,” Tobrush told her. “As soon as you got the idea, their telepath knows it. They’ll be waiting for you.”
“Then get some guts and fire at the fucking telepath!” she snapped back. “They don’t know where I’ll be comin’ from ’cause I don’t know myself. All this shit looks the same, anyway. They won’t have nothin’ to use to lock onto me before I’m there. That means whoever draws me’ll be in freehand mode, and I ain’t too damn impressed with their freehand shootin’.”
“I believe she thinks she’s still a trifle underdone,” Tobrush commented wryly. “Or perhaps she wants her right to match her left.”
“Screw you, Turdface! If you hadn’t hung back all scared to death at the shuttles, maybe you’d’a nailed that bitch and saved me the burn!”
“More likely fried instead of you,” the Julki responded. “Please! I’m having a difficult enough time maintaining this block so at least one of us can keep thoughts secret.”
“Shut up, both of you!” Josef snapped. “Robakuk, where are you?”
“Almost all the way,” the Thion responded. “It’s more difficult than I thought near the top. The water’s just pouring over. I have to maneuver over and get up at the wrong point. Give me another fifteen minutes.”
Josef turned back to Kalia. “Wait fifteen minutes and maybe what you suggest won’t be necessary.”
“Yeah? Even if he makes it, you’re gonna have maybe five really mad and desperate professional guns comin’ at us from the high ground, and who knows what they got they ain’t showed yet? You need the crossfire and you know it.”
“I don’t want to lose anybody else, not after Desreth,” he came back. “And we don’t have a field hospital here.”
“If they get out of there, it won’t matter how many you got left,” she responded.
He sighed. “All right. On your own head be the consequences if you blow this, though. Tobrush—concentrate all fire on the telepath; I’ll do the same. They’ll either have to come back at us to protect her or we’ll bring those stones right down on her head.”
“Understood. By her, too, I assume. Give me your suit control.”
“Huh? Why?”
“I have an idea, and if I tell you, they’ll have the idea.”
“All right,” Josef agreed. He didn’t like surrendering control of anything of his to anybody, but this seemed a special case.
Up at the ruins, Krisha called, “They’re going to try and get the girl across by opening up on us. I can’t tell from where because it all looks the same. They’re going to target me, so let them. Concentrate everything on keeping that girl from crossing. The telepath has something added planned, but I can’t tell what. Be on guard and ready to shoot.”
“Now!” Tobrush shouted, and both he and Josef raised just enough to get shots in toward the ruins as Kalia began a mad, low dash, firing wildly into the same place.
To Josefs own surprise, both he and Tobrush opened up not with powerful pulse shots but on wide beam stun, side to side. Even as he shot he realized how clever the Julki had been; they managed to cover almost the entire area. It wouldn’t do a lot of real harm no matter who it hit at this distance, but it sure would keep them under cover and wild.
It was the first time the Mizlaplanians had been really caught napping. Expecting concentrated fire on Krisha, they’d opened up almost immediately, only to be hit by the wide beams. Manya felt her left side go slightly numb and it took her mind momentarily off shooting, even as her suit repulsors absorbed and deflected most of the energy. Gun Roh Chin found his suit shorting and had to withdraw completely behind a pillar and go to emergency backup, while Morok received the most glancing of blows but had his instrumentation blank out for a few seconds—more than enough.
Krisha had rolled out from under the rock as soon as she’d heard Tobrush’s call, just in case a lucky shot might knock out one or more of the pillars holding up that ancient rock and bring it down upon her. Like Morok, she was caught completely by surprise, and as the suit switched primarily to protection, her sensors blanked for a critical second or two, making her fire wild.
Josef and Tobrush ducked back down. “Kalia, you all right?” the leader called.
“Perfect. That was real smart, Tobrush. All is forgiven. You know, I think I could work on one of those tall stones from here, one with the roof still on it. Might get somebody.”
“Save your power!” Josef snapped. “We want to be able to do more than just throw rocks at them when they come out!”
At almost that moment, Robakuk reported, “I’m up top! It’s not too bad up here, either, if you don’t mind the rain. There’s more ruins up here, plenty of stuff to toss down. There’s old trails up here, too, either dug out of or worn into the rock. They’re running streams at the moment, but they show a way to go that somebody liked and if this rain ever stops they’ll be good for traveling.”
Josef was pleased, feeling that things were suddenly going his way. “Any time you’re ready, we’re ready. We’re in position.”
“Be cautious!” Tobrush warned. “When we opened up, their telepath was as surprised as the others and there was an opening. I got only three minds—the telepath’s, the hypno’s, and the one Kalia couldn’t see. We know there’s also a null there, but they had an empath as well. I got a very odd, far more distant, signal from him, and while they all were aware of each other during our attack, none of them wondered or asked about him.”
“Is he still there?” Josef asked, suddenly worried.
“Telepathy isn’t directional,” Tobrush reminded him. “I can’t really tell the where of things, and can only sort who’s thinking what when I can see them. But there is a difference in amplitude when someone’s further away. It wasn’t much, but experience tells me he’s not with the others.”
All along, Robakuk had to fight the instinctive urge to find some cover and just hold tight until the downpour stopped. Now on top of the hill, he felt the full force of the driving rains and winds.
The ruins ahead were very strange, but offered some shelter as well as, well, ammunition. These stones were in no better shape than the ones below, but, having been a more complex structure, it was harder to get the plan and the sense of them. There seemed to be concentric rings within rings, and in the gloom and rain it wasn’t very difficult to imagine that some of the weathered, misshapen pillars were the remnants not of supports but of statues of weird and impossible creatures. It also wasn’t difficult for the imagination to detect movement where there was none; the place had that kind of effect on him, and it made him nervous and jumpy in spite of himself, although he would never admit that to his comrades below.
He began looking around for loose stones. Unlike the one below, there did not seem to be any capstones here; it was just pillars, arranged almost like a round target, originally set only one or two meters apart and narrowing as you moved toward the center. Many were missing now, of course, but there wasn’t nearly as much debris as he’d hoped, possibly because the rains or whatever other weather might have struck this exposed position had taken the lesser stuff over the side and into the river, while the larger pieces had been almost chemically bonded to the slate floor.
The Thion also had their own ancient demon legends, which didn’t help matters a bit. The carvings and mental pictures of the creatures weren’t very close to the real thing, filtered as they were through an entirely different physiology, but they’d always been fierce, huge, and bipedal in the legends. That last had caused the death of many spacefarers when the Thion world had been discovered; in the Thion mind, being a biped was synonymous with demonic powers. It didn’t help that the Mycohl had a positive feeling toward demons, either; many had died before an accommodation had been reached.
Josef’s voice came to him over the suit intercom. “Robakuk? What’s the situation up there?”
“The ruins are very close to the edge, and the standing stones quite close together,” he reported. “I am having to thread my way through them to the overhang.” What was that?
He whirled, certain that something had moved within the rows of stones. It took half a minute before he was satisfied that nothing in fact was there. He turned, and shortly was in the center of the formation.
There was no doubt that the central area had once held a statue; part of it still stood, although aside from having two legs it was impossible to get any other details. In front of the statue was a great stone, clearly carved in some ancient times but now so misshapen that no one could have told its original shape. Even so, he knew from Mycohl customs that this must surely have been an altar to some long-forgotten deity. With the beating rain and the eerie screams and moans that had to be the wind but sounded like no wind ever heard, it was no wonder he was jumpy.
The ancient ruin didn’t go all the way around, as the Thion discovered when he abruptly came very close to the ledge. It had once; you could see that it wasn’t designed this way. Long ago the shale had been eaten away by the fierce weather and about twenty percent had almost certainly fallen into the river below. One day, perhaps soon, the overhang that was left would collapse and fall onto the other ruins below, perhaps taking them all eventually into that roaring canyon.
He attempted a peek over the edge and got several shots fired at him for his trouble. The big head turned and focused on a mass of nibble and broken stone. It quivered, then began to slowly rise perhaps a hair above the shale, then moved forward as if pushed by some earth-moving machine.
There was a sudden sound behind him, and he turned, the rock dropping just at the edge, a few pieces going off. Robakuk had just time enough to turn and see a huge figure in a golden suit looming monstrously against the ruins before the three quick pulse shots struck him and pushed the Thion’s body over the edge instead.
The body missed the river and landed instead atop the inner capstone of the smaller ruins below, startling the ones who were there. Both Manya and Morok gave cries of alarm at the sight. The smoldering, crushed body of the Thion had landed on its back, and in after-death reflexes the huge legs kept lashing out at the sky and rain.
There was a sudden, brief rise of the shrieks and moans to a crescendo that equally unnerved them all, then things faded back to normal levels.
It was Krisha who recovered first. “Savin? Are you all right?”
“Fine here. I wish I could figure out some way to lift the rest of you up. Sorry about the silence, but I had to wait until the thing started to lift or throw something before I dared expose myself and shoot. Until it was concentrating on lifting and moving, if it had caught sight of me it could have lifted and pushed me around.”
“That’s all right,” she told him. “Can you get around and above the others? We’re in a bad situation here. That rock the thing moved is right at the edge and we’re getting small bits and pieces falling now. That stuff could start coming down at any moment, with or without the rain.”
“I’ll see what I can do. I acted as soon as I could.”
“I know. Without you we’d already be goners, but it’s only half the job.”
Gun Roh Chin’s pulse had come down to what he considered maybe three times normal. “It’s five to three now. One of them will have to target Savin, who might not be able to hit much but can make things mighty uncomfortable for them just shooting randomly down. If we could concentrate our fire on the other two, we might be on them before they could get off a solid series of shots.”
“Let’s borrow their trick,” Krisha suggested. “Two of us could move forward blanketing them and maybe knocking out their instruments. The other two could shoot to kill, with Savin taking advantage of what we’re doing down here to get some clear shots at the pair just down the hill. If the creature’s concentration is broken in the attack, I may be able to engage it mind-to-mind and neutralize it.”
“I don’t like that last part,” Gun Roh Chin responded. “You don’t know anything about the creature, but it clearly knows Terrans. You might well have a far more powerful gun, but if it has all the ammunition, not only your mobility but your sanity is at risk. Don’t take it on unless you absolutely must, but the rest of the plan is excellent.” Except that I’m getting much too old for this sort of thing, he added to himself.
Slightly below, the Julki had no intention of engaging in a mental duel. “That’s the second time they’ve made the same mistake,” Tobrush commented. “Leaving their suit intercoms unencrypted.” He fed the intercept in translation to the other two.
“Yes, but what can we do about it?” Josef asked worriedly. “We’re outgunned and outflanked.”
Josef looked up at the cliff top. “If he can shoot me, then I can shoot him,” he noted. “I suggest that you take a full sighting, sweeping the possible field of fire back and forth through which they have to come, then get down and let your gun go on automatic while you remain under cover. Kalia, do the same from your angle. I will target-sweep the cliff no matter what happens down here. When he shows, I should be able to get a lock on him before he gets a lock on me. If I get him, you two keep the pressure on and I will by and take advantage to cross. With luck, you might get one or two and that will slow them down or make them regroup. From that point we’ll be able to effectively cover you, Tobrush, in coming across.”
“Well, we don’t have time to argue about it,” Kalia snapped, “ ’cause I think they’re about to come at us!”