Moving with berserk speed, the mech lieutenant yanked a rifle away from a man, his claw-like steel gripper taking a good portion of the man’s arm with it. Wielding the rifle first as a club, he swept it around at head-level, dropping three more security personnel. With fantastic dexterity he flipped the weapon into his cradling arms, found the trigger and fired into the fleeing pack of humans.
After that it was a rout. Leaving most of their people behind, the security forces escaped through the huge pressure doors into the ship. They hit the emergency pressure-loss toggles, shutting the doors with explosive force in the faces of the pursuing mechs.
A hurried meeting was held in the Captain’s briefing room.
“The aft hold is over six miles long and is an absolute maze of cargo,” began the Security Chief. He had been involved personally in the attack on the mechs and his right hand was damaged, crusty with dried blood and coated thickly with nu-skin. “I suggest we open the primary bay doors and space the entire hold. We can then recover most of the cargo with the tug fleet. Even mechs can’t operate in vacuum for long.”
“I won’t hear of it,” rumbled the Captain. “Your team’s incompetence has already cost me dearly. I certainly will not dump a billion credits worth of trade goods into orbit to rid the ship of a handful of crazy robots. This trip has too slim of a profit margin to suit me already.”
“Sir, these aren’t crazed robots,” explained the Chief with a hint of exasperation in his voice. “They’re highly intelligent and ruthless beings built for warfare. All we’ve managed to do is get them to classify the crew of this ship as hostiles.”
“What are our other options then?”
“Well, we should remember that the mech lieutenant doesn’t really care about us. I mean, he has a mission to do, to get down to the planet surface, I assume. We disabled their jump-flitters before they woke up, so he can’t get down without improvising.”
“What exactly are you suggesting?”
“Why don’t we just let them go? Give them the flitters they need, and let them out one of the airlocks.”
The Captain rubbed his chins and glared at the Chief. He puffed out his cheeks and threw his arms up in a gesture of exasperation. “I positively fail to understand your cowardice in this. We have a full combat-ready company of marines and several hundred security people on this ship. There are only sixteen of these pests in the hold and some of them are damaged. What you’re going to do is go in there and hunt them down and blow them apart.”
Fifteen
After hunting the rogue for three days, the inquisitors were exhausted, and even their riders grew tired of the chase. Fryx had given them no further telepathic hints and Garth was leaving behind him precious little in the way of spoor. They had tracked him back to the highway where he had apparently caught a ride to the next village, then proceeded on foot. In the muddy jungles of the river basins they lost him again.
The man whose turn it was to watch fell asleep in the bole of a stink-vine tree. In the night, with Gopus only a dim sliver of light barely discernible through the jungle canopy, an odd figure entered the camp. Wearing a black hat with a wide low brim and a black cape, the figure moved with infinite care lest he awaken the men or in some way alert their wary riders. After a few minutes of slinking in their midst, the dark figure discovered the man in the stink-vine tree. With a delighted fluttering of the fingertips, the figure stalked the sleeping man, coming up behind him.
Gathering up a handful of pebbles, the figure flicked them, one by one, onto the sleeper’s back. After the third such attack, the man snorted and half rose up. Suddenly, he lurched upright, his rider goading him to wakefulness. The figure behind him pranced forward, cape swirling. A length of steel glittered and the inquisitor slumped back down.
The commotion awakened another of the men, however, who climbed from his bedroll. Not aware that anything was amiss, the tall, slender man wearily opened the tent flaps and rummaged in the cooler for a squeeze-bag of refreshment.
There was movement in the back of the tent. The man startled, then peered more closely. “Jed?” he mumbled, still half-asleep. His rider, withdrawn into unknowable private thoughts of its own, did nothing to warn him.
The shadowy figure loomed up. Beneath its low-brimmed hat blue eyes blazed with insanity. The figure pounced.
This time the kill wasn’t a clean one. Staggering from the supply tent with his throat bubbling fresh blood, the inquisitor fell dead on top of his companions.
The others leapt up, drawing their guns and turning on the floodlights. The jungle was illuminated by a harsh glare. There was a ripping sound at the back of the supply tent. Rushing to the spot they saw a gaunt figure dive into the underbrush. A storm of gunfire broke out. Howlers protested their loss of sleep from the treetops, pelting the inquisitors with sticks, fruit, feces and other offal.
As they reached the edge of the jungle, knee-deep in ferns and sucker-plants, their quarry rose up before them. Clearly visible in the harsh glare of the floodlights, Garth stood in full view. The eyes of a murderer burned from within the broad red stripe his rider had left when mounting him. In one hand he gripped a hand-cannon, in the other he brandished a bloody knife. His lips formed a ghastly rictus for a grin. Only a few feet from this apparition, the three men halted and raised their weapons.
Fryx chose that moment to loose a desperate, pleading howl for mercy. A keening wail, not of sound, but rather of thought, washed over all the men and their riders. The cry caused the other riders to pull back on the reins of their skalds, digging in spiny nerve-spurs to halt them. For a full second the inquisitors, intent on killing, slackened. Their arms drooped, their muscles rubbery, their weapons suddenly too heavy to aim.
As the figure advanced the riders realized their error: the keening was desperation on Fryx’s part, even treachery. Incredible though it seemed, the revered one wasn’t in control, the rogue was. With great urgency, the riders goaded their skalds forward again, demanding that they kill the rogue quickly.
But it was already too late. The hesitation had been enough, Garth leapt forward and stood among them. He blew the skald on the left’s head from his body. Closing to an arms-length, he planted the gun against the second man’s chest and fired again. With his other hand, he drove his knife into the throat of the third inquisitor.
After they had slumped down in the ungraceful postures of death, he waited a tense few moments. From the nasal passages of two of the skalds rose quivering liquid jellies. Wet spines shivered in the night air. With cold precision, Garth blasted the riders repeatedly. Scraps of spiny jelly and white skull fragments showered the jungle floor.
* * *
Weary to the bone, Garth spent a long night at the camp with only stiffening corpses for companions. Corpses, and the vile presence of Fryx in his head. Overall, he thought he preferred the dead men.
While facing the inquisitors he had felt a wild strength run through him, had taken maniacal glee in killing them. He seriously questioned his sanity in these matters. It seemed that whenever he was acting in direct conflict with the desires of Fryx, he could do so only as a madman.
Upon reflection, he decided that if insanity was the only path through which he could control his own destiny, then so be it.
He shuffled around the camp aimlessly, his desire for revenge sated. He had no further immediate purpose, as Kris’ killers and his own hunters were dead. More may follow, but they would most likely be a long time in coming. It was quite possible that he would be allowed to move about now with greater freedom, as long as he avoided the strongholds of the skalds. Riders, he knew, were more akin to emotionless accountants than vengeful demons. A rogue that could dominate Fryx and kill five of their inquisitors was probably best left alone.
Listlessly, he chewed a wad of dried howler meat and drank the juice of a goy-goy pod. The meal tasted uncommonly good, being the first relaxed, halfway civilized meal he had had in days. Fryx was silent in his mind, probably mourning his fate and the deaths of his fellow riders.
Something did nag at his mind, something dark worried at him, doubtless the tickling of Fryx. But it seemed as though he had forgotten something….
Then he had it. The threat from the skies. The horrid aliens that danced through his nightmares. The very reason that Fryx had gone to incredible lengths to take over his body and direct his every action personally, an unthinkable abasement for one of his kind except in situations of grave danger.
Standing erect and removing his hat, Garth drew his hand-cannon. Placing the barrel to his head, not at his temple, but rather at the base toward the back, where he knew Fryx resided, he spoke aloud: “Fryx, it is time we talked.”
He shut his eyes and concentrated. Beneath his forefinger, he felt the cold hard surface of the trigger.
“I have nothing to lose anymore,” he said, speaking to the chirruping jungle creatures. Somewhere in the distance a great ape grunted heavily. “At least my death will bring about yours as well. To be free of you, even in death, would be a great pleasure.”
His mind was silent.
“Come now, there will be no skires tonight, no self-hypnosis, nor dancing, nor mating. Exert yourself! Come forward and speak with me directly, or be forever silent.”
There was a tickling sensation in his head. At first, he thought it was only perspiration, or perhaps the coldness of the gun barrel pressing his hair against the thin skin of his head. Then it became more pronounced. Soon, it seemed to him that he heard words.
You must repent.
Garth laughed. He laughed long and loud, the wild mirth of an unbalanced man. It was all he could do to keep the gun barrel against his skull. A howler hooted and tossed a hail of sticks down, protesting the noise. Garth said, “You are indeed arrogant, jellyfish.”
It is you who are arrogant, rogue.
“Ah such petulance! You are a sore-loser, as well as arrogant. But I would suspect such traits go together,” said Garth. As he spoke, he pranced across the campsite and sprang up onto a lump of granite that protruded up from the jungle floor. Hardly aware of his body’s actions, he danced an odd jig without rhythm.
You waste my energies. You are a foolish and uncontrolled thing, a host-being without the comforting guidance of its rider. In short, a pitiful rogue.
Garth grew impatient. He tapped the barrel of his hand-cannon against his skull. “Let’s recall that I’m in charge here. Dispense with trying to regain the reins to my mind. They are forever out of your grasp. Should you regain them again, even for a few moments, I assure you I will kill us both. I have no desire to live further as a slave.”
His mind was silent.
“Good,” Garth said, “now we can discuss your warnings of death from the skies. Why have you repeatedly tried to convey images of alien invasion to me? Was this simply another failed control technique?”
It is absurd that you should question me. Interrogation of a rider by a lowly skald is an unheard of insult. You will refrain from further questions or I will induce great pain in your extremities.
Even as Fryx communicated, Garth became aware of an excruciating sensation in the arm and hand that held the hand-cannon. It was as if flames engulfed his arm. He struggled to retain his grasp of the gun.
“You bastard! I can see that you don’t yet take me seriously. Doubtless, this is due to the fact that your kind could never contemplate suicide, such is the depth of your cowardly natures,” said Garth. He gritted his teeth against the pain in his hand and slowly began to increase the pressure his finger was putting on the trigger. When the trigger was depressed halfway to its firing point, the pain eased.
Stop mad-thing! You must not damage me!
wailed Fryx. A wave of fear and rage swept over Garth, emotional spillover from his rider. He eased his grip on the trigger.
“Will there be further attempts to coerce me?” he asked. His feet had slowed from an odd jig to a slow shuffle. To stop his idle movements, he sat cross-legged on the granite boulder.
His mind was silent.
He again applied pressure to the trigger.
Halt! How can you so easily play with your life?
demanded Fryx, in a frenzied state.
What if the gun were to go off with fractionally less pressure this time than the last? What if the manufacture of the weapon wasn’t up to the specifications? How can you bet our lives upon the assumed competence of some unknown other? Do you realize what would happen if anything went wrong?
“Then we would die, here in the jungle, together,” said Garth with remarkable disinterest.
You are indeed a mad-thing. I can’t believe my fantastic misfortune in finding a host of your quality.
“Self-pity will gain you nothing.”
You must halt this game of death-threats. You are playing with higher stakes than you know.
“What stakes?” demanded Garth with sudden interest. He stood up again and jumped down from the boulder. He began to pace about the darkened camp, absently stepping over the cooling bodies of the dead skalds. “What is it that caused you to break our trust, to come forward from your meditations and take up the reins of my mind in such an intrusive manner? I know that this is not a pleasant thing for you.”