02. Empires of Flux and Anchor (24 page)

Tatalane had come up with a reasonable compromise on the lighting situation, and all now looked slightly inhuman with their eyes adjusted. All now had eyes like those of a cat, eyes that adjusted for any available light and would be fine in all but total darkness. Texture, contrast, and distance ability were all quite good, although the laws of physics, which had to be obeyed for an Anchor situation, had rendered them colorblind, and there was a focusing problem they had to get used to. Either they could see far away or very close up, but not both at the same time.

It was the first time in a fearsome Hellgate for the three men, and the first time in many years for Kasdi, but while there seemed to be a flickering of some bright, ghostly spiderlike thing here and there in the tunnels, they were allowed to progress to the vortex.

Suzl could see the patterns clearly, and it was with some amazement that she realized that Kasdi could not. But the priestess had never forgotten the pattern needed to open that way, and she did not now. Matson reached into a pack on Zlidon's back and removed three small devices, which he proceeded to set. "Now, when I tell you, you open that thing and these three things go through. I don't think they'll be expecting anything. We'll give it a count of twenty, then I'll go through and check to see what else is needed."

"No," Kasdi told him. "I will go. There will still be some Flux power on the emergence spot. You would not be able to draw the pattern and get back in time. I will be able to shield myself."

He stared at her a minute, then nodded. "O.K. In, look around, and back. If all's clear, we all go through. If not, we'll give them a lot worse than these three, then go right in after. You're sure Suzl understands her part?"

"I think so. She's better."

"O.K., as soon as we're in, it's back for the next group. When we get a minimum of a dozen or so, we'll start to move out and explore the place. Now— let's do it!"

Kasdi traced the combination, hoping that the devices would go through without a human attached. As far as she knew, it had never been tried this way. Matson tossed in the devices, and all held their breaths, hoping that they would not hit the wall and bounce back into the chamber. They went through, and Kasdi started counting down from thirty aloud. At "five" she traced the pattern again, and then held her breath and jumped in at "zero." Jeffron, in Spirit's arms, was crying, the sound reverberating up and down the tube. Instantly the sound was cut off and replaced with a far different one.

The room had been sealed except for a trap door at the top. The grenades had blown right through the floor and had also blown the trap door right out, sending it far into the hallway. The bloody bodies of three men, who'd obviously been sitting almost on top of the explosives playing cards, were about in heaps, as were the remains of their deck and their chips. The lights in the immediate area had been blown out, but the generator was still humming at the far end of the hall. She ducked back on the spot and traced the design. Jeffron's cries suddenly picked up where they'd left off.

"Three men dead, big hole!" she shouted over the baby's din. "Lights are smashed, but the power's still on!"

Matson nodded "Let's go," he said coolly.

She traced the pattern, and they all went in except Suzl and Spirit and the baby, of course. Suzl watched them vanish, then nodded to Spirit and they made their way back along the tunnel There was a fair number of people to get through yet. After that, she'd sit up with Jomo at the top of the caldera and, with the big dugger, worry herself sick.

They all made it through safely and quickly heaved themselves through the hole in the ceiling. There were some shouts down the corridor, and the sound of a few people running. Somebody yelled, "Get some lights down here!"

They took their postions, and Matson handed Kasdi a semiautomatic rifle that seemed to weigh a ton. She took it anyway, getting a gun belt from Zlidon's pack filled with ready clips. She wasn't much of a shot, and killing this way wasn't exactly her field, but she was prepared to do it.

"Want us to blow the generator?" Macree whispered.

"No," the stringer responded. "Let's see if we can keep it intact. If the power stays on, nobody will come running except those in the temple itself. Maybe we can take it as it is."

"If they don't have five hundred men in here," Zlidon added worriedly.

There were some torches with the fire equipment on each level, and somebody finally thought of them. Two torches flared down the hallway, and after adjusting to the new light, they could see four or five men coming down the hallway. All wore pistols, but none had their pistols drawn. Clearly they were thinking less of an attack than of an accident, which meant they either had relaxed too much or weren't that bright. Either way, it was a break.

They let the newcomers come all the way down, until they actually passed Matson and Macree. They saw the bodies of the three men and the huge hole in the floor, and hands went to their guns—but too late. They were mowed down so easily there wasn't any challenge to it at all.

Matson waited for the noise to abate, then stamped out the torches. They held their breath, listening, but heard nothing more. Finally Matson said, "Dump the bodies down the hole. I don't care if the next group
does
have to climb through them!" He and Macree quickly managed the feat and also threw the dead torches down. "Now let's see who comes looking for
them
,"
the stringer said.

But another five soldiers were in and there still was no sign of any newcomers. The bodies had given them something of a start, since the instant fear was that those were the bodies of Matson's group, but Matson was able to detect movement and whisper the password before they started throwing nasty explosive things.

When the next five also arrived without incident, Matson began to feel secure. "Cass, you want to go back and give them the situation? I think I'm going to take a small party exploring here."

"Why me? This is
my
temple, remember. I know my way around it better than anyone."

"And you spent several days drilling it into us. You're not a soldier, Cass; you're a wizard. We need you later."

"I'm coming along," she said firmly.

"All right. Soldier—you know the route back. You don't need the girl to get out. Tell 'em to bring 'em through as quick as possible. We're going to sweep this level, then return and get more people to go up."

And with that, the four who'd been there first started along the corridor. Cass passed the secret passage to the Sister General's quarters and said, "We ought to put somebody on this." Matson nodded, but he had no one to spare right now.

The whole area was mostly filled with old and stored furniture and other such material as they expected to find in the temple. Here and there a rat would scuttle by, and there were a record number of bugs, but no more people. They finally reached the far stairway, and Matson ducked in and listened, then returned. "Don't hear anything, but even if nobody comes to investigate why those guys are missing, somebody's bound to be down to relieve the watch."

They made their way back along the corridor to the waiting soldiers. Now they were twenty-four. He formed a second five-person squad and sent them ahead. "Floor by floor, nice and quiet," he told them. "If that security system is still on, they'll know when you get one floor up. Throw a bomb if you have to, but when you're discovered and can't wipe them out, make enough noise to reach anywhere in the temple. At that point, you men use those explosives there and blow the power plant." He turned back to Kasdi. "Now let's go see who or what's in the Sister General's apartment."

It bothered him, and the rest as well, that it had been so easy so far. Had complacency set in this quickly? "Consider the quality of the material he used," Kasdi noted, but she was only hoping.

They climbed the dusty back stairs of the passageway single-file, rifles at the ready. Carefully, Matson pushed at the panel that opened into the large walk-in closet in the Sister General's bedroom.

Matson listened, peered out, then walked out and into the bedroom, the rest following. He stopped there. The stench in the room was nearly unbearable.

There were five dead women in the room, and none had died a nice or quick death. All had been stripped, tied to objects, then slowly and brutally tortured. Butchered was a better word for it; butchered alive. Blood was everywhere.

One of them had been tied to the bed with some kind of wire, arms and legs bound spread-eagle. The expression frozen on her face was one of unforgettable horror. All of the bodies were in an advanced state of decomposition.

"Oh, Goddess!" Kasdi sobbed. "It's Sister Tamara!" Matson barely recognized the strong-looking woman who'd died so horribly, but he remembered being told that the Sister General here was formerly one of the group from that last, fatal stringer train.

"Leave her!" he said curtly. "I don't want any signs we were here until we're ready to take this place. They may not have ever found out about that secret passage." Kasdi gave him a terrible look, but it left him unmoved. "You wanted to come," he reminded her.

The office had been ransacked, with papers all over the place, pictures torn from the walls, and furniture overturned and smashed. All of the religious objects of any value were gone.

They had blown in the security doors and apparently moved with lightning speed against the helpless women occupants. The walls showed a wavy line of bullet holes at about waist level, so they'd come in shooting.

Macree was thinking. "We're two levels up, right? Then our other team has to be just below us, heading from the front back down this way. Offices on that level, if I remember your diagram, Sister."

She nodded absently, hardly hearing, her face cold and immobile.
Damn Suzl!
she couldn't help thinking.
This might have been prevented if we had moved earlier!
It was an irrational thought; the temple had to have been hit quickly and early, and certainly for the first two days it had been heavily defended, including down below. It might not have been possible before this to get this far. And she, too, had opposed using Spirit earlier. Those things were convenient to forget, for somebody had to be blamed.

The rifle suddenly seemed far lighter than it had, and friendlier. She just wanted to find them. Find them and kill them all.

They went carefully down the stairs and advanced up the hallway, checking each office as they did so. All showed signs of being ransacked and looted and there was much senseless vandalism, but little else. With a shock Kasdi recognized the very room where she'd gotten lost and blundered into the old Sister General fixing the Paring Rite with her priestess lover. The records were still kept there, but all of the equipment was smashed now. Matson, however, made an interesting comment. "This room doesn't have all the papers spread around."

"All the records were on film," she told him.

"Yeah—for everybody in the Anchor. Where's all that film now?"

She saw what he meant. Cabinet after cabinet had been overturned, but all were empty. "Every man, woman, and child living in Anchor Logh or who had ever lived here were in those records," she noted.

"Nice," he commented. "If they have a film reader somewhere, and I suppose they do, they have everything they need. Who owns what, who's married to whom, whose kids are whose, who knows how to run or fix this or that—everything."

"But why?"

"We'll know when we can ask them," he replied.

Shortly they met with the first squad. So far— nothing. Some shot up and badly decomposing bodies were in some of the offices, but nothing alive.

"Send one of your people back and get guard posts set up all along the access to this level," he ordered. "Start wiring explosives all along as well. We'll try the next level the same way."

The next level was a chamber of horrors. Offices and small chapels, even cells, had been used to stack dead bodies, hundreds of them. The smell was sickening, and they could hardly stand it. Some sort of masks would be needed just to clean the level up, and the flies and maggots were well at work. They wanted off that level as quickly as possible, but the next level was the one below the inner temple itself and the street entrance. On the next level were street-level front and rear entrances and exits. Matson backed them off a level. The new soldiers were already establishing themselves, and it looked like they now had a fair force in there. Matson sent them up in squads to the deadly level above, so they would know just what kind of people they were dealing with. The point was well-made.

Progress was going very well, and that worried Matson more than a fight. "It isn't like Coydt to leave his back door open. He knows the rules as well as we do. That opposition barely qualifies as token. The time to stop us was before we got established, not now. I don't like it. We're still bottled up in this one big building, and there's always the possibility he's just waiting to get the most of us with one big bang."

"You mean blow up the temple?" Kasdi was appalled at the idea. "But—that would certainly block the Hellgate for him, too."

"Yeah, and us. We'll have the troops check for it. If it's here, it's got to be real big or it wouldn't dent a solid joint like this."

They prepared for the assault on the ground level. This time there
was
opposition—a lot of it, but it was disorganized. Men yelled and screamed, explosions went off, and the hallways were crisscrossed in automatic weapons fire. They finally managed to clear the hallways, but then it was room-to-room combat, with Matson's men tossing in explosive grenades as they went. It took the better part of an hour to secure the level, at the cost of twelve dead or seriously wounded. The kicker was when somebody got word below, and the temple was suddenly plunged into darkness. The soldiers with their specially adapted eyes had the run of the place.

Kasdi had fired at the men in the corridors with the others, and although she had a sore hip from bracing the weapon and firing it, she felt much better.