03. Masters of Flux and Anchor (44 page)

Matson looked around. "Can one of you all-powerful beings whip me up a pair of pants and a shotgun?"

"What's the matter. Daddy?" Sondra asked, sounding a little sour. "Does you good to learn how the other half lives."

"Touche! But I'm serious. They're up against the Gate, and the only cover they have is the fog. Kids, tell your Mom and Dad to head for the tunnel with everyone else they can. Tell 'em somebody will be waiting for them."

They all stared at him. Finally. Jeff said. "I'm coming with you."

"Me, too!" added Sondra. but he stopped her with a look. "Like that? With your Flux power shot to hell? No. It'll be crowded as it is."

She started to argue, but knew it would be futile.

"You watch us on one of those screens up there." he told her. "If you see we're down, you come get us—hear?"

She smiled and nodded.

"Hey, Goddess of Anchor, get me a decent pair of pants, a good gun and some ammo, and a good cigar! And the same for my friend here, minus the pants."

There was the sound of cannon fire all around, and automatic weapons seemed almost constant. Cassie moved now as if in a dream, a slight wound on her thigh. She didn't feel it. or anything, really, but she knew it was the end. Only the thickness of the fog had prevented the enemy from knowing that there were less than a hundred of them remaining, huddled around dead bodies of men and horses and firing in all directions at a foe none could see. They couldn't even tell that they had been stopped less than three hundred meters from the goal, but it didn't matter. They had been stopped, and the area in between was thick with traps and defenders.

Suddenly there were bugle calls all around, and Tilghrnan accepted them. "Cease firing! Cease firing!" he ordered. Slowly, through the fog, an ominous silence fell.

"Judge Tilghman! Are you still alive?" came a shout from the curtain that reminded Cassie of the void.

"Yes!" he called back. "I'm here! Who's that?"

"My name is Gifford Haldayne." came the voice. "You don't know me but I'm now in overall command here. Champion is dead."

Cassie's head snapped up at the mention of that name. She had been unable to manage a submachine gun but she fingered the automatic pistol in her hand. If she could die accomplishing one straight shot she would be happy. . . .

"I assume this is where I request terms!" Tilghman shouted. He guessed that Haldayne, whom he didn't know, knew that they were beaten beyond a doubt but could not determine the size of the force as yet. Tilghman was literally right on the edge of the Gate; they had almost fallen in when they reached it. His remaining troops flanked him and Cassie in a semicircular formation.

"We can take you out, with total loss of life, as you know, but you can still do some harm to us. If you surrender now, and all of your men come forward unarmed and hands in the air, I swear to you nothing will happen to them. They fought with uncommon honor and bravery and will be treated as such."

"Not very generous when you open the Hellgate. Afraid you don't have enough soldiers for that? But, very well. They have earned the right to see the end of it. What of me and my wife?"

"Throw down your weapons, and you and your wife walk along the bowl until you reach a ladder. Proceed down the ladder to the central tunnel and enter it. You will be met there, and taken to the old capital to be interned with the rest of your family for the duration. I think that's more than generous."

"Don't trust him!" Cassie hissed. "He's one of the Seven. One of the worst! He makes Champion seem like a saint in comparison!"

Tilghman sighed. "What choice do we have, Cassie? He's right—we've lost. And because we've lost, I'd at least like to know the answer. If we're going to die anyway, I'd like to know what's beyond that Gate."

She seemed to wilt a bit, and gave a sad smile. She tossed her pistol into the bowl and heard it clatter and slide. "I'll do whatever you say, Adam."

"All right! We accept! My troopers are hereby ordered to lay down their arms and advance forward, hands raised."

There were scattered shouts of protest, but they did as ordered. Then he got up, helped Cassie to her feet, and together they walked cautiously along the edge to the ladder, which was surprisingly close. Still fearing she might do something rash, he made her go first, then followed her.

The fog was thin down towards the tunnel, and they saw it and the huge, thick cable going into it, and for the first time realized just how close they had come. Tilghman was bare-chested and had kicked off his boots before climbing down. The driving rain had soaked them all, and he didn't want the muddy boots to slip on the smooth floor. Cassie had long ago discarded all clothing.

Again she preceded him down the tunnel ladder, and he found her standing there, looking at the cable.

"Forget it," he told her. "You and I together couldn't move it down here, and you couldn't ground anything in the Gate itself. We'll need whoever's left to fight whatever comes."

A lone man in familiar black uniform approached from the direction of the Gate. He went past, pistol drawn, then turned. "Sir, if you and your wife will continue."

They continued down until they came to the regulator. There they found another black-clad and well-armed trooper, and, getting up from the machine, Onregon Sligh.

"One of your friends had a great deal of fun with us in there, Adam," the scientist said. "I lost two good technicians." He walked past them and behind the rear trooper. "You may proceed," he told them.

"My God, Adam! They're going to shoot us!" Cassie shouted, and leaped on the gunman in front. He went down with her, and his pistol fired, sending a deadly ricochet pinging through the tunnel.

Tilghman had turned at almost the same moment and grabbed the gun arm of the man behind. It was an effective move, and they both tumbled to the floor, wrestling for the gun. Sligh had disappeared in the tunnel, and probably had taken the first shot as the first execution. Tilghman and the man fought furiously for the pistol, and finally the old man managed to turn it down, down.

The pistol fired, the trooper jerked once, and then was still. Winded, Tilghman picked himself and the pistol up and then froze.

The other trooper, a good hundred and eighty centime¬ters tall and a hundred kilograms of mostly muscle, could be knocked down by the thin, very light woman, but he could hardly be overpowered. He held her with one arm, and he had a pistol pointed at her head.

He grinned, the pistol came away from her head, and he fired twice at Tilghman. The Chief Judge grunted, went back two steps from the recoil, but did not fall.

"No!" Cassie screamed, and struggled to bite the gunman.

But Tilghman wasn't finished. Incredibly, blood stream¬ing from two gaping wounds in his chest, he came on. Startled, the trooper fired twice more, and this time the old man sank to his knees.

The soldier grinned. "O.K., girlie, don't get upset. You can join him in a minute."

Suddenly he felt something coil around his neck, and he dropped both Cassie and the pistol and screamed. He found himself being pulled around and looking into the most horrifying face he'd ever seen. Matson shoved him against the wall and held the big man with one hand while he slowly twisted the rope he'd placed around the killer's neck. The man's arms came up, but there was no fighting that cold fury. His eyes bulged, and his tongue hung out, and then there was a sharp but not very loud crack. The trooper slid slowly to the floor with open eyes that would never see again.

Jeff rushed to Cassie, who had gone to Tilghman and was now cradling his head in her lap and sobbing uncontrollably. She was smeared with his blood. Incredibly, Tilghman still lived, and he opened his eyes, saw her, and smiled. "Cassie." he managed to say, coughing up blood after he called her name. "I'm dead. Swear to me that you won't let the dream die with me."

She fought back sobs. "You're not dead!"

"Swear—to—me."

"I—I swear, Adam."

The Chief Judge of New Eden seemed to smile, but then the smile was frozen and the eyes remained open, staring at her no longer.

Jeff knelt down. "Grandma. He's gone."

She looked up at him and recognized him, despite her extensive change. "No!"

Matson came over to her. "Come on, Cassie. Me and Jeff will bring him with us."

She looked up at him, her expression one of hurt, shock, and incomprehension. "Will he rise from the dead like you?"

"That depends on how well you can sweet-talk our daughter." he replied. "It's pretty much the same method. anyway."

Suzl administered a sedative effect on Cassie, and she slept for quite a while after that. Only the fact that Suzl and the twins were there and assurances that the other kids were all right had given her any lift at all, or any thoughts beyond what had just happened in the tunnel.

Matson and the others could only marvel on the singular lack of activity on the part of Suzl and Spirit in their roles as interfaces and authority figures for the computer systems. Clearly the "shell programs" that were now a part of them gave them almost a dual mind, able to tend to all of the necessary things automatically while still retaining their identities. Spirit shrugged at his comment to this effect, and said, "Would you like a playback of the activation? It happened in a few trillionths of a second, but here's what it sounded like."

Sound filled the room, with strange voices only slightly distorted by electronics uttering foreign words.

"Headquarters checking in. All battle positions report in sequence."

"Station Abel activated!"

"Station Baker activated!''

"Station Charlie activated!"

They went on and on, mostly women's voices, he noted, but with a few men's tones in there as well. The litany of Anchor positions had names that were very strange, yet bore an uncanny resemblance to names he knew well.

Delta . . . Edward . . . Frank . . . George . . . Henry . . . Ida . . . James . . . King . . . Luck . . . Mary . . . Nancy . . . Oscar . . . Peter . . . Queen . . . Roger . . . Steven . . . Thomas . . . Uncle . . . Victor . . . Walter . . . X-Ray . . . Yankee . . . Zebra . . . Technical Ser¬vices Group. . . . Spirit told him that the last one was also often referred to as "Engineering" in the old days, which is why it was usually abbreviated "NG" on maps. The code names were those in use by the Signal Corps at the time the Anchors were established; the language itself was basically a corruption of English, although it included Company and majority of the early settlers knew or had in common, and was called English. Their language today was basically a corruption of English, although it included much of the noncommon languages of the early settlers, including Hindi, Urdu, Ibo, Arabic, Amharic, Bantu, and Flemish, to name some of them.

They all agreed that the idea of even two languages for a world was horrifying. None had ever even imagined the idea, except as codes.

But the final statement from headquarters stunned them all.

"All being in agreement. Forward Fire Base Fourteen is operational!''

"So that's the sacred holy name of World." Suzl remarked. "All this time the Church has been reverently invoking the name of an army base." She giggled, then suddenly grew serious. "All those years I grew up praying to a big ball of gas and feeling holy at the sacred name Forfirbasforten. And we thought we knew it all."

"Now I know a lot more than I did," Matson responded. "We know that there are, or were, at least thirteen more colonies like this one somewhere, so there's hope on that score, and we know by the name alone the precedence of the military in its planning and construction. Who drew the command job at headquarters?"

"I'll check." Spirit told him, then almost immediately said. "She says her name is Angela Robey, and she was a coordinator on the Codex Project."

"Not a priestess, though. They'd go nuts with the truth like that one did here."

"No, not a priestess. She was, in fact, a senior librarian in Anchor Yonkeh. Cassie herself tapped her for the Co¬dex more than thirty years ago in Hope. She remained in charge after the Concordat. She's got enormous power but is only partially trained in it."

"A librarian! Does she know anything about military strategy and tactics?"

"The computer in Holy Anchor has everything there ever was on that. She knows how to organize people and she has on tap every single potential of the firebase de¬fense system."

Matson thought a moment. "That's not the same as being under fire. Besides, all that strategy and tactics didn't help the other worlds that were invaded. Can you patch me in to her or something?"

"Not directly, no. I'm afraid you're just a false wizard, Matson. You can't directly access the computers and they won't recognize you as an output device. That's why all you can conjure up are illusions."

"How about voice?"

"O.K., but you don't realize the speed at which these things, and we, operate. Both Suzl and I are sitting here talking to you, and doing literally millions of things, pass¬ing thousands of communications along, all in the pauses between sentences and our exchanges. It's fascinating, but it's also why I can't explain to you just exactly what's going on."

"But you can contact any damned wizard in Flux and Anchor?"

She nodded. "Ones powerful enough to make a dent, yes."

"Well, if you'll make room in those thousands of mes¬sages to give the commander some thoughts given you in normal speech, and if you'll cue me in on just what defenses we've got, maybe I'll have a few suggestions on how we can beat the bastards."

"That's why the computers arranged for you to be here, Dad."

He was struck by the irony of the comment, and very pleased at what it did for his ego. Here I am, he thought, in some son of fantastic contraption I'll never understand, surrounded by two daughters, a grandson, an ex-lover and two wives who happen to be that ex-lover's kids, and even the damned computer is asking me for advice! Demons of Hell, what a family!

As the day progressed, the fog lifted until there were only tiny wisps of it left. Gifford Haldayne drank a cup of stale coffee and looked down into the huge crater.