As they climbed up further into the heart of the great vessel, the signs of combat increased. Bulkheads were sealed and had to be forced. Automated cannon were set to ambush anyone ascending the decks, these had to be disarmed or circumvented. Dead crewmen and dead aliens lay strewn about the darkened corridors. The metal floors were pooled with blood and other inhuman and less identifiable body fluids.
The central galleries were huge airy chambers that normally operated as open marketplaces. Now, instead of being thronged with traders the chambers were vast mausoleums: dark, silent and stinking of death.
It was when they had reached the central galleries of the ship that the skald attempted to talk with Droad.
Droad was resting with his head in his hands. His sides were heaving slightly from the harsh march through the ship. He looked over toward Sarah and Bili, who seemed more tired than the others did. He would give them another minute.
“Feasting...” said an odd, croaking voice. Droad looked up to discover the long pale face of the skald looking down at him. He had approached silently and without warning. Droad found his stealth and bizarre behavior disconcerting. He frowned.
“What do you want?”
“The lines of the feasting...” said the skald. His face worked with fantastic concentration. His hands rose up slowly from his sides, white palms exposed and spread flat. Large blue eyes seemed almost luminous in the center of a floating nimbus of flaxen hair.
“I don’t understand you. Are you trying to tell me something?” asked Droad. He leaned forward, eyes narrowing. His curiosity was engaged. Could this lunatic help him?
“You must follow the lines to the feasting,” replied the skald with great sincerity. He nodded to Droad slowly and smiled with relief, as if he had succeeded at an amazing effort of communication and imparted great knowledge. Still smiling vaguely, he began to step slowly from side to side, then to shuffle about in a circle. He hummed tonelessly. Droad thought of a corpse performing a strange flat-footed waltz.
It was clear that the man was utterly insane. Droad sighed, reseating himself. Had he sunk so low that he looked for answers for his problems from the deranged? He put his face back into his hands for a moment’s rest. Quietly, the skald shuffled away.
“We have a contact, sir,” interrupted Jarmo.
Droad’s head snapped up. He reached for the phone, careful not to touch the transmit button. It wouldn’t do for anyone to pinpoint them. He listened only. Unnoticed, the skald’s pallid form slipped away, heading toward the entrance of the aft duct system.
“Sounds like that witch of a senator, Mai Lee,” he commented. “All she’s doing is requesting my response. Can you get me video?”
Jarmo presented another handset with a tiny screen on it. In flat 2D a face flickered into existence. It was a metallic head of some kind. For a moment, Droad believed this to be some new and terrifying variety of alien as yet unencountered. Then he realized it was the stylized helmet of a hi-tech battlesuit.
He pursed his lips and grimaced in annoyance. “Where did she get that thing? Clearly against all Nexus proscriptions. Not that I’m surprised.”
Jarmo looked on impassively. Droad knew he was patiently waiting for him to make his decision. Communicating with the woman could mean a dangerous enemy would pinpoint their positions. Or it could be an opportunity for the last remaining human forces on the ship to rejoin.
Droad rubbed his chin and lips, eyeing the tiny metallic image with distrust. “Just a recording repeating the same message. Have you pinpointed her?”
“Bridge section,” replied Jarmo.
Droad smiled grimly. “So she did fire the laser.”
“Fire control could have been diverted at either the redundant bridge or the manual controls at the laser turret itself.”
Droad frowned. “We need information.”
Jarmo was silent.
“If we make a short transmission, can we be out of here quickly enough to avoid attack?”
“I don’t know the layout of the ship well enough to judge. Let’s consult the Lieutenant.”
Droad agreed. He smiled slightly, noting that Jarmo, unlike everyone else in the group, always referred to the mechs by their ranks, never just as ‘the mech’ as the rest of the humans tended to do. He wondered if his lack of labeling had to do with his own genetic specializations. Although much less of a freak than a mech, some of the same technology, and hence the same stigma from normal humans, applied to Jarmo.
“If we maneuver down two decks using the aft conduit system, then double back into the primary filtration units, it is very unlikely any search party would be able to locate us,” the mech informed them.
“Ready the team, then. In one minute I want everybody on their feet and ready to bolt into the ducts again.”
Jarmo jumped up and everyone hurried after him and the mech. When he had them in position for a fast get away and had trotted back to the Governor’s position, Droad opened a channel to the bridge.
The connection was made and the face of Mai Lee’s battlesuit flickered into view again. This time it was a profile shot, however. The video pickup was limited, but Droad made out movement behind her. Large men in full body-shell passed back and forth with a sense of urgency. The dragon’s head of Mai Lee’s suit swung back to face him. He noted the eerie blue radiance that emanated from the jagged metal mouth.
“What is your status, Senator?” asked Droad. He endeavored to sound light and unconcerned. “Can we be of assistance?”
“You live, Droad!” boomed the hideous dragon’s head. “I suspected as much. You’re as hard to kill as these filthy aliens.”
Droad’s voice hardened. “So you’re behind the slaughter of my forces? Why would you ambush us when we’re coming to aid in keeping the
Gladius
out of alien hands?”
Mai Lee laughed. The amplified sound was so loud that the receiver’s speakers distorted it into a shrieking squawk of noise at Droad’s end. He adjusted the tiny volume knob in annoyance.
“The ship is in my hands now, Droad. You are only another contender for control of the only means out of this doomed system,” she said. Droad looked surprised, and she snorted derisively. “Don’t try to pretend that the thought of escaping this hell-hole governorship of yours had never crossed your mind, stripling. I won’t believe that.”
She broke off and shouted behind her. There was a commotion out of range of the video pick-up. Droad turned up the volume again and studied the image of the bridge intently, trying to figure out what was going on. She turned back to Droad and her amplified voice again overloaded the tiny handset. Droad twisted the knob downward again, grimacing at the noise.
“—Just to let you know what’s coming: The waste will be spilling down to your deck within minutes. You’ve given me long enough to pinpoint your location. You’re too far from your flitter to make it back in time. This entire conversation, by the way, was just to make sure you would have no opportunity to escape the radiation—” here she broke off again. There was the sound of gunfire behind her on the bridge. The connection fizzled and was cut off abruptly.
Jarmo was on hand, jerking the Governor to his feet and hustling him toward the ducts. The others were already gone.
“You must run faster, sir,” said Jarmo.
Droad’s every hurried step was painful. “The injury to my leg still hasn’t healed completely,” he said apologetically.
Without a word, Jarmo swept him up in his massive arms. Feeling the thick hard surfaces of Jarmo’s biceps against his side, Droad was thinking too desperately to feel the humiliation of being carried like a baby. Jarmo picked up his pace to that of an Olympic sprinter and they vanished into the dark hole of the aft duct system.
“They’re going to dump waste from the reactors, trying to kill us and the aliens, I imagine. Has the mech figured out a place to run to?”
Jarmo grunted as he ducked through a tight bulkhead. The metal opening skimmed by Droad’s head at a dangerous speed, but it didn’t so much as brush his sleeve. The giant had grace as well as speed and power. “The Lieutenant monitored the entire conversation. He has already selected a destination.”
“Could she be bluffing? How could she have attained the security codes required to control the
Gladius
in every detail so quickly?”
“A problem I’ve been working on for some time now, sir. The only answer is that she must have had the proper override key.”
“Like the one that Steinbach used to switch off the spaceport security and operate the space elevator with?”
“Exactly, sir. In fact, I think it likely that she has Steinbach and his bootleg set of keys in her possession. Such a technological piece of wizardry as those keys would be unlikely to have been duplicated successfully by two separate groups. If this theory is correct, I can only further lament my failure in regards to Steinbach’s escape. If I had been more attentive with Steinbach, she may never have gained control of the laser, and therefore many lives would have been spared.”
“Don’t take it so hard, Jarmo,” said Droad. He smacked the giant’s massive chest. “You’re too quick to judge yourself a failure, and I won’t have that. Your performance is mine to judge, and I say you have done exceedingly well. Besides, your theory about Steinbach’s codekeys has yet to be proven.”
“I see no other logical alternative.”
“Nor do I,” admitted Droad. He sighed.
The conversation lapsed as Jarmo saved his breath for running. Droad attempted unsuccessfully to sit back and enjoy the ride.
* * *
The last of Mai Lee’s simians were making a good accounting of themselves, but the aliens were too many, too fast and too vicious. Killbeast and culus squadrons charged the men in their body-shells, forming a wall with their dying bodies as explosive bullets shredded them. Almost too late, Mai Lee realized that they were all dying at a particular distance, in a line that crossed the bridge area diagonally.
“PULL BACK! PULL BACK NOW!” she boomed. Startled, intent on killing their attackers, only half of her men responded in time. Without warning, a hundred killbeasts vaulted the wall of quivering dead and rushed their lines in unison. The attack was lightning fast, there wasn’t enough time to mow them down before they reached close range. Half of her remaining company were pulled down screaming and hacked to death.
“STEINBACH!” she grated at the cowering figure that crouched over the control boards. “HAVE YOU RELEASED THE RADIATION?”
“The controls are damaged, Empress,” Ari said, wincing as she strode up and prodded his spine with her chest guns.
“YOU DARE TO DISSEMBLE NOW?” she demanded, incredulous. Her lust to see his lifeblood sprayed over the controls grew to an almost irresistible level.
Ari waved pathetically at the control boards. Numerous gouges and burn marks did indeed scar the surface. “The gunfire has damaged the master terminals. I am trying to access the engineering controls through the weapons section, but the codes don’t seem to match. Besides, isn’t it dangerous to release the radiation now, while the aliens are on us? They could pin us down for sometime yet.”
Inside her battlesuit, Mai Lee’s jaw sagged. Could this cretin truly be stalling to save his own skin? Did he not fear her more than a few thousand rads of gamma radiation?
She wasn’t given any more time to threaten Ari, however, as at that point, new combatants entered the fray. Taking advantage of the turmoil, larger, more ominous shapes entered the room. Vast humping shadows towered over the wall of dead. Inside her dented and scored battlesuit, Mai Lee felt a thrill of fear. She had not yet encountered the enemy’s juggers. She reformed her remaining troops on the main dais that surrounded the operators’ chairs. She mounted the Captain’s chair, which afforded her a clear line of fire. Dead crewmen, still strapped into their crash-seats where she had had them executed at their posts, surrounded her. She gave no commands to her troops; there was no need. She leveled her chest cannons and awaited the inevitable charge.
One of the juggers rose up to her full height. Astoundingly tall and massive, the others rose up after her and with a great reverberating cry of doom they charged the humans. The last survivors of the previous wave, a struggling knot of men and killbeasts, vanished beneath hundreds of tons of clawed feet. Carapaces and body-shell armor caved in, the victims squirming like crushed crabs beneath the treads of armored vehicles. The clangor of their charge across the short spanse of metal decking was enough to set everyone’s teeth to aching.
In unison the humans squeezed their triggers and held them there, emptying their magazines into the onrushing hordes. The monsters were too big and full of vigor to die easily. Ripped apart and dead on their feet, many took another dozen steps before falling among the humans, too stubborn to realize their own deaths.
Once among the humans, the juggers set to their work with deadly efficiency, resembling a pack of tyrannosaurs slaughtering a herd of lesser creatures. Huge claws crushed the humans down, massive heads dipped, jaws ripped loose limbs, heads, entire torsos. The top of the operator’s dais became a sea of flesh, a scene of wild confusion. Mai Lee fired her chest guns and gushed out her deadly blue breath, melting men, armor and aliens alike indiscriminately.
For a time, she lost herself to the slaughter. There was no thought of retreat or coordinated action of any kind. She and her battlesuit worked as a single entity, a deadly creature of living metal. Although the juggers were twice her size, she attacked them savagely, leaping onto their backs, clinging with steel teeth and titanium claws, firing her chest guns point-blank until the magazines were empty and still letting them rattle dryly long after. She tried to open the reserve magazines, but could not. There was a fault of some kind. The pink, blinking service-required light made her curse fluidly in Chinese.