Outlanders 28 mad gods w.., p.10
Outlanders 28 Mad God's Wrath, page 10
"No," Domi half shouted, "we didn't." But the man had cut the channel and hadn't heard her.
Lakesh reached for his clothes, giving the girl an abashed smile. She returned it with a stony expression. "I'm sorry, darlingest one. This is an unusual situation so it's best I look into it."
Domi uttered a wordless noise of disgust and flopped backward onto the bed, the nipples of her small breasts pointing impudently toward the ceiling. "What about the situation you have here?"
Zipping up his bodysuit, Lakesh said, "Hopefully it won't spin out of control until I get back I shouldn't be long."
Domi closed her eyes and said flatly, "You better not be."
Lakesh gave her nude, supine body a lingering, regretful look and left his quarters. The lights in the main corridor were dimmed as they were for eight out of every twenty-four hours to simulate nightfall. He made for the operations center, but he heard a clinking of metal from a side passageway and turned down that way. He stopped in front of an open door bearing a keypad rather than a knob.
He hesitated for just a second before entering, looking warily around the wide, low-ceilinged room. Most of the furnishings consisted of desks and computer terminals. A control console ran the length of the right-hand wall, glass-encased readouts and liquid-crystal displays flickering and flashing. A complicated network of glass tubes, beakers, retorts, Bunsen burners and microscopes covered three black-topped lab tables.
Upright panes of glass formed the left wall. A deeply recessed room stretched on the other side of the glass. Although there was no longer a reason for it, the room was dully lit by an overhead neon strip, glowing a dull red.
Despite the gleaming chromium, glass and electronic consoles, the room exuded the atmosphere of a cobwebby attic in an old abandoned house, holding the accumulated bric-a-brac of lost dreams.
"Is anyone in here?" Lakesh called.
"Just us salvagers," responded Mariah Falk's voice from a glass-walled cell.
He walked to the doorway and saw the woman kneeling in front of an open cabinet, apparently examining its contents. She greeted him with a broad, infectious smile that he couldn't help but return. Dr. Mariah Falk wasn't beautiful or young, but she was attractive. Her short, chestnut-brown hair was threaded with gray at the temples. Deep creases curved out from either side of her nose to the corners of her mouth. Dark-ringed brown eyes gazed up at him from beneath long brows that hadn't been plucked in years, if ever.
"What are you doing here, Mariah?" he asked.
She nodded to the assorted odds and ends in the cabinet. "Just checking on the kinds of materials in storage. We could move them out to a regular supply room, right? There's no reason not to find a use for this facility, now, is there? I mean, your guest is gone for good, right?"
Lakesh hesitated before saying a little sadly, "Yes, I suppose he is."
It had never occurred to him during Balam's three and a half years of imprisonment in the glass-walled cell that he would miss him when he was gone. Of course, it had never occurred to him that he would ever be gone. Lakesh hadn't thought that far ahead.
After a couple of years he had ceased to view the entity as a prisoner or as a source of information about the Archon Directorate. Instead, Balam had become a trophy, a sentient conversation piece, like a one-item freak show.
In hindsight it was fairly apparent that Balam had chosen to remain in the Cerberus redoubt for reasons of his own. He had used his psionic abilities to manipulate Banks, his former warder, into initiating a dialogue when he probably could just as easily have manipulated the man into releasing him.
"Carry on," Lakesh said, turning away.
"Wait," Mariah called after him. "You don't mind me doing this, do you?"
Lakesh smiled at her wryly. "Not at all. This room should be converted into something useful, now that we actually need the space. For a long time it served as a prison for a sentient entity. There's not need to make it a shrine now that he's gone."
Lakesh briefly considered stopping by the cafeteria and brewing a cup of green Bengali tea, but decided to put that task low on the priority list. He walked to the central control complex, the nerve center of the redoubt. The long, high-ceilinged room was filled with comp terminals and stations. The central control complex had five dedicated and eight-shared sub processors, all linked to the mainframe behind the far wall. Two hundred years ago it had been an advanced model, carrying experimental, error-correcting microchips of such a tiny size that they even reacted to quantum fluctuations. Biochip technology had been employed when it was built, protein molecules sandwiched between microscopic glass-and-metal circuits.
On the opposite side of the operations center, an anteroom held the eight-foot-tall mat-trans chamber, rising from an elevated platform. Upright slabs of translucent, brown-hued armaglass formed six walls around it. Bright flares showed like bursts of distant heat lightning on the other side of the walls of the jump chamber. Armaglass had been manufactured in the last decades of, the twentieth century from a special compound that plasticized and combined the properties of steel and glass. It was used as walls in the jump chambers to confine quantum-energy overspills. The emitter array within the platform emitted a low, steady hum as the device cycled through the materialization process.
Lakesh didn't even glance at the indicator lights of the huge Mercator relief map of the world that spanned one entire wall. Pinpoints of light shone steadily in almost every country, connected by a thin, glowing pattern of lines. They represented the Cerberus network, the locations of all functioning gateway units across the planet. The mat-trans unit on Luna wasn't represented on the map.
Half a dozen people were sitting in front of computer stations. Monitor screens flashed incomprehensible images and streams of data in machine talk. In the cool semidarkness the huge room hummed with the quietly efficient chatter of the system operators.
The control center was surprisingly well manned, particularly for the late hour, but inasmuch as the complex was the brain of the redoubt, it naturally attracted personnel from all quarters. Most of the people sitting at the various station were émigrés from the Manitius Moon base—Nora Pennick, Brewster Philboyd and two men he knew only as Marsh and Everson. The only long-term Cerberus staff members he saw were Farrell and Bry.
Marsh, a wiry man of medium height with uncombed ginger hair, manned the biolink-transponder monitor. He greeted Lakesh with a deference that he found almost embarrassing.
"The transponder signals show strong, sir," the man reported.
Lakesh glanced at the monitor screen upon which three white icons throbbed and pulsed. "So I see. And please, don't call me sir."
Everyone in the redoubt had been injected with a subcutaneous transponder that transmitted not just their general locations but heart rate, respiration, blood count and brain-wave patterns. Based on organic nano- technology, the transponder was a non-harmful radioactive chemical that bound itself to an individual's glucose and the middle layers of the epidermis. The signal was relayed to the redoubt by the Comsat, one of the two satellites to which the installation was uplinked.
The telemetry transmitted from Kane's, Brigid's and Grant's transponders scrolled upward across the screen. The computer systems recorded every byte of data sent to the Comsat and directed it to the redoubt's hidden antennae array. Sophisticated scanning filters combed through the telemetry using special human biological encoding.
The digital data stream was then routed to the console on his right, through the locational program, to precisely isolate the team's present position in time and space. The program considered and discarded thousands of possibilities within milliseconds.
"Their current locations?" Lakesh asked.
Marsh's fingers tapped a sequence into the keyboard, calling up the triangulation tracking program. A topographical map flashed onto the monitor screen, superimposing itself over the three icons. The little symbols inched across the computer-generated terrain.
"They're still on the move," Marsh said. "I guess they decided to drive straight through the night. They should be back here by the day after tomorrow if they maintain their present progress."
Lakesh nodded, gratified that Kane, Brigid and Grant were alive and, judging by the lack of spikes in the transponder signals, in good health. "Good work, friend Marsh."
"That's 'Doctor,"' Marsh ventured timidly. "I have a Ph.D. in astrophysics."
"Like just about everyone else who came down from the Moon," put in Philboyd with a dour smile. "If we all start referring to each other by our honorifics, we'll sound like a comedy routine—`calling Dr. Marsh, Dr. Singh, Dr. Philboyd."
Lakesh allowed himself a short chuckle and moved on to Bry's station. The slightly built man pushed his chair back from the mat-trans control console on squeaking casters. The eyes he turned toward Lakesh were reproachful beneath his tousled mass of coppery curls.
Staring at Lakesh, he said nothing, but he meaningfully tapped the monitor screen, which displayed a drop-down window. A jagged wave slid back and forth across a CGI scale. Above the window flashed the words No Match Found.
Without preamble, Lakesh declared, "That doesn't necessarily mean anything sinister or even significant has been gated here, Mr. Bry. Perhaps Neukirk is only returning with a piece of Annunaki or Danaan technology."
Before Bry could respond, Brewster Philboyd interjected sternly, "Not bloody likely."
Lakesh turned toward him. The lanky physicist stood a little over six feet tall, appearing to be all protruding elbows, kneecaps and knuckles. His thinning blond hair was swept straight back, which made his high forehead seem very high indeed. He wore a pair of black-rimmed eyeglasses. The right lens showed a spider web pattern of cracks.
Philboyd, like all of the scientists who had recently arrived in the Cerberus redoubt from the Manitius Moon colony, was a "freezie," post-nuke slang for someone who had been placed in cryogenic stasis following the war.
"Why do you say that?" challenged Lakesh.
"Because if something new had been discovered of extraterrestrial origin," Philboyd said matter-of-factly, "particularly if it were of Annunaki manufacture, George wouldn't just beam back here with it in tow without forewarning. He knows the drill. He'd put it into decam and quarantine first."
Bry scowled up at him. Since the physicist's arrival in the redoubt, a string of tension that Lakesh attributed to professional jealousy had stretched between the two men. "Then how do you explain that?" He tapped the image of the energy signature again.
Philboyd shrugged. "I can't. It could just be a glitch in your scanner module, couldn't it? Your equipment is very old."
"It's never happened before," Bry argued, his voice rising as if he had been personally insulted.
Lakesh repressed a grin. Not too long ago he would have taken affront at the implication his systems weren't always operating at peak efficiency. "Since the materialization cycle has already begun, we might as well let it cycle through and find out for ourselves."
Bry hesitated, then sighed and returned his attention to the keyboard of his console. He tapped in a numerical code and the steady hum from the mat-trans unit changed pitch. The droning hum climbed to a hurricane wail then dropped to inaudibility.
Lakesh and Philboyd went to the doorway of the gate room. It was unfurnished except for a long wooden table with a highly polished veneer. After a moment they heard the click of the solenoids opening and the heavy armaglass door of the jump chamber swung open on counterbalanced pivots.
George Neukirk stepped down from the platform, his eyes darting back and forth as if he were looking for someone. When they fixed on Lakesh, an expression of relief crossed his face. "Dr. Singh, you're here—good."
"Good?" Lakesh inquired. "Why good?"
Neukirk shifted to one side, away from the open door of the mat-trans unit. He put his right hand behind his back and when he brought it out again, a rail pistol was gripped within his fist. "It's good because we won't have to hunt you down. It'll save us time and just might save the lives of the people here. Would you mind sending someone to fetch your interphaser?"
Chapter 9
Lakesh had been threatened too often over the past couple of years to react with much fear. Facing the hollow bore of the rail pistol, he found himself feeling more insulted than endangered. Rather than complying with Neukirk's order or even responding to it, he instead turned his head and called into the command center, "Friend Farrell, please summon an armed security detail."
Farrell, a shaved-headed man who affected a goatee and gold hoop earring, stared at him in surprise from the enviro-ops station for a handful of seconds. He activated the public address system, half shouting, "Armed security detail to operations, stat! Armed security detail to operations!"
The man's voice echoed hollowly throughout the redoubt. A formal security force didn't exist as such in the installation. All of the personnel, including the recent Moon base émigrés, were required to become reasonably proficient with firearms, primarily the lightweight SA-80 subguns. The armed security detail Farrell summoned would be anyone who grabbed a gun from the armory and reached the control center under his or her own power.
Neukirk's weather-beaten features locked in a hard, tight mask and he took a threatening step forward. "Do you want to die?"
"No," Lakesh replied calmly. "Do you?"
Before Neukirk could respond, Everson suddenly appeared at Lakesh's shoulder, pushing past him into the gate room. He was a black man about Neukirk's age and Lakesh was surprised by his anger. "What the hell, George! Put down that fucking gun!"
From within the jump chamber came a faint shivery vibration, a single, throbbing note as if the heavy bass string of a giant guitar had just been plucked. Lakesh felt it as a pressure against his eardrums. Everson stared intently into the mist-shrouded interior. A rippling pattern, so swift and brief it was almost subliminal, seemed to pulse from inside the unit. Lakesh was reminded of a stream of water squirting from a hose.
All comparisons to water or anything else vanished from his mind when the ripple fanned out and intersected with Everson's upper body. As if he had been slammed by an invisible locomotive, the man performed a complete somersault, his feet reversing positions with his head. For a crazed instant, he spun end-over-end in midair, making no outcry. He slammed face-first into the wall beside the doorway, a scant few inches from where Lakesh stood. He stared, shocked into immobility as Everson slid headlong down the wall with a moist, sucking sound.
When the crown of Everson's head touched the floor, he toppled limply forward, onto his back. Lakesh caught a glimpse of the man's face and bile rose up his throat in an acidic column.
Everson's mouth gaped open. From between slack, mashed lips drooled a scattering of splintered bone mixed with little scarlet bubbles. The man's teeth and very likely all the bones in his face had been completely pulverized. His eyes were sunken deep in his sockets, as if punched back into the rear of his skull.
Lakesh could only gape in mind-numbed paralysis. While the echoes of the bass note still chased themselves around the gate room, figures began rushing out of the jump chamber. They were garbed identically in drab gray armored exoskeletons. The mechanical joints clicked in a castanet-like rhythm as they swarmed all over the antechamber, taking up positions against facing walls. They appeared to be armed with a variety of hand weapons, from the pulse plasma rifles to conventional autopistols. At a quick count, Lakesh counted a baker's dozen, which comforted him somewhat. Regardless of their weaponry, the invaders were seriously outnumbered by the Cerberus personnel.
Heart thudding fast and frantic within his chest, Lakesh saw another figure shift within the gateway unit, walking through the wreaths of mist still swirling within it.
A tall, lean man stepped down from the platform, sweeping his surroundings with a superior gaze. He walked with a flat-muscled, almost tigerish arrogance that stopped just short a swagger.
He was a warrior—that much was obvious—with the look of the hawk or a great jungle cat secure in his powers. He wore a golden helmet with incurved jaw guards, the forepart inset with jewels and inscribed with cup-and-spiral glyphs.
A molded breastplate, apparently made of the same kind of material as his helmet, encased the upper half of his strangely elongated torso and bore odd, twisting, interlocking Celtic designs known as interlace. Spurs jangled at the heels of his knee-high, black leather boots, an accessory that should have struck Lakesh as absurdly superfluous, but for some reason seemed perfectly in keeping with the man who wore them. A metal gauntlet of a gleaming silver alloy covered the man's right hand and forearm, reaching almost to the crook of his elbow.
At first, Lakesh didn't recognize him, although his translucently pale face, the blue-white hue of skim milk, struck a distant chord of recognition. Then his wide, slanted eyes flamed up with a molten orange shimmer and Lakesh knew who he was. He didn't have the time or the opportunity to speak his name.
From behind him, he heard Brewster Philboyd blurt in sheer terror, "Maccan!"
