Against A Dark Background (66 page)

The monowheel hummed up the spiral tunnel for several minutes without incident, eventually emerging into an underground marshalling yard. She heard heavy-calibre gunfire echoing in the distance and saw flashes reflect off the ribbed grey concrete of the ceiling.

`That way, I think,’ Feril said, pointing past some supporting columns, away from the firing but towards an area of the yard where the view was hazed with smoke.

The monowheel raced over a tracery of tracks, keeping perfectly stable. The vehicle crossed a bridge over another level of the underground yard where smoke billowed up; past the smoke they found the bodies of a Keep guard and one of the original attackers. The Keep guard still clutched his rifle. He had been beheaded, presumably by the bloody sword hanging by its lanyard from the hand of the other dead man, who lay against the railings of the underground bridge, his tunic blown almost right off by the grenade explosion that had killed him.

She stared at the man’s naked right arm as they passed, slowing down for a better look.

She shook her head and accelerated again. The black mouth of another tunnel expanded to swallow the speeding monowheel.

The Advance Tactical Command Team entered the Deep Citadel through an aperture in the roof. They were covered in dust and stank of smoke. A couple of them had been lightly wounded, though really they had been almost unopposed. The Keep’s own defenders seemed to have been effectively disarmed by their original attackers, who themselves had not been equipped with heavy ordnance.

One of the Keep’s defenders had been captured and made to cooperate; he had guided them here, to the throne room.

The throne itself had gone, vanished into the roof; tech teams were still trying to break into the secure tunnels on the two levels immediately above. They suspected the master of this underground maze had flown, and taken their quarry with him. There were many tunnels and escape routes into the desert and the mountains around and they had not been able to find all of them in the short time they’d had available, between being granted permission to make this incursion and the launch of the attack itself, precipitated by that of the quaintly mounted and lightly armed forces who had preceded them.

They explored the remains of the circular chamber, using nightsights.

Ghosts, thought the Priest Colonel. We are like ghosts.

They were almost a kilometre underground, and they feared that once the man who had ruled over this sunken fortress had made good his escape, it would all be destroyed.

`Sir!’ a yearfellow shouted from the other side of the black column that filled the middle of the dark chamber.

The Priest Colonel and his aides approached the yearfellow, standing pointing his quivering gun at the body on the floor.

They all looked at it for a while.

A couple of his men wept; several offered up muttered prayers of thanks.

`It’s her,’ a voice said.

Analysis,’ the Priest Colonel said. One aide crouched down to the body, unstrapping a bulky piece of equipment from his back-pack.
Send the results direct to the Shrine,’ the Priest Colonel said. Another aide knelt, unhitching a powerful comm unit.

The Priest Colonel knelt too and removed one of his armoured gloves. He reached out and touched the dead woman’s pale, cold hand.

`I want physical tissue samples sent immediately to the Shrine,’ he said. The first aide took a small vial from his tunic and tore off a strip of flesh left near what had been the woman’s right eye. He sealed the bloody scrap in the vial and handed it to another of the faithful, the young yearfellow who had first discovered the corpse.

Take my own craft,’ the Priest Colonel told him, removing a ring from his finger and handing it to the yearfellow.
Fly straight to the Shrine. God go with you.’

The yearfellow saluted and ran off.

The Priest Colonel stared at the body lying on the floor, as the genesampling machine hummed and clicked.

The battle had extended far and wide. The bandamyion-mounted troops had been de-planed from their transports, drawn up ready to attack, and had just begun their advance after the electronic disablement of the Keep’s defences when they had themselves been overwhelmed by the Huhsz forces, their light-harness cannon, laser-carbines, pistols and ceremonial swords no match for the Huhsz high-velocity projectile weapons, smart missiles, pulse-shaped tunnelling demolition charges and airborne X-ray lasers.

The monowheel sped through the shattered iris of a door low in the foothills above the desert, then turned smartly and accelerated up the hillside, every traversed ridge and boulder a soft ripple of movement as its wheel flowed or its body leapt over the obstructions, leaving only a faint trace of dust behind, while its camouflage-skinned body flowed with constantly changing patterns and shades of ochre and grey. Air roared; the transparent cockpit-screen rose liquidly around her of its own accord, reducing the wind-blast.

She pressed the accelerator grip a little harder; the monowheel screamed still faster uphill, forcing her head back against the seat. She let the grip go; they coasted towards the summit of the ridge.

She braked the monowheel with the left-hand grip. The vehicle purred to a halt, then stood perfectly still and silent on its one slanted wheel.

The woman and the android looked down into the bowl of the desert. The battle was a great broad, slow column of smoke and dust over the centre of the depression. A dozen or so craters had been punched into the surface of the desert, each a hundred metres or more across and half that deep; smoke piled out of three of them.

As they watched, a grey shape rose quickly out of one of the other craters, twisted once in the air and powered away, climbing rapidly as it angled north-east and took on the colour of the sky. Its sonic boom sounded almost soft amongst the crackling detonations of munitions in the desert below.

She watched the aircraft go, its half-seen outline disappearing over the pink-lit mountain peaks, then she turned and squinted downwards. She dragged the Lazy Gun out of the footwell and pointed it over the edge of the monowheel’s cockpit, bringing its sights down to her eyes.

Perhaps six score bandamyions lay strewn across the desert, in small groups. A few of their riders were still firing, some of them using the bodies of their dead mounts as barely effectual cover from the armoured Huhsz troops.

She looked up to see Huhsz weapon platforms cruising above the killing ground, firing monofilament bi-missiles and cluster rounds almost casually into the fray, their every discharge turning a few more of the fallen bandamyions into chopped meat and killing a rider or two.

A couple of arrowhead shapes circled high above, black on blue. To the south, beyond a distant filigree of contrails, the sky sparkled sporadically. The Lazy Gun showed no more detail.

She moved the monowheel fifty metres along the ridge to where a dead bandamyion rider lay, crushed underneath his fallen mount.

She looked, frowning, at his out-thrown arm.

`They seem better armed,’ Feril said.

She turned and caught sight of a last group of riders; just a few black dots against the cinder-grey of the hills four or five kilometres away. A Huhsz gun platform exploded in the air near the group of riders and fell smoking to the ground.

She looked through the Lazy Gun again, turning up the magnification.

The view wavered. The bandamyion riders were like ghosts against the trembling image of the barren earth of the mountains. The group of ten riders ascended quickly to a pass in the mountains, then stopped. One of them stood up in his saddle. Another raised something to his shoulder and a pink spark flamed, washing out the view in the Gun’s sights for a moment; she looked away and up and saw first one, then both of the arrowhead shapes high above blossom with silent fire against the blue, and start to fall.

She looked back through the Gun’s sights.

The rider standing in the saddle - outlined against the start of the sunset, body made thin and stick-like by the wash of pastel light behind - seemed to look down into the desert.

She thought she saw him shake his head, but the quivering image made it hard to be certain.

That is, perhaps, your cousin,’ Feril said quietly.
I might be able to contact him, if you like.’

She looked up at the android, then over to the rider crushed under his dead mount.

`No,’ she said, putting the Gun down.
Don’t do that.’ The group of riders at the pass in the distant mountains were barely visible dots, a tiny, dark flaw against the pale sunset light.
Just a moment,’ she said.

The monowheel dipped millimetrically and made the tiniest of whining noises as she got down from it and walked to where the dead man’s arm stuck out across the dust from beneath the tawny pelt of the dead bandamyion. The rider’s gun lay nearby.

She lifted the rider’s cold, grey hand up; the sleeve of his tunic fell further back. She inspected the mark on his wrist.

`What do you see, Feril?’ she asked.

I see a patch of slightly abraded, calloused skin which I would guess extends to a two-centimetre wide ring round the dead man’s wrist,’ Fend said.
There are two immediately adjacent outer rings which look as though they formed the limits of a wider band of callusing in the past.’

Yes,’ she said.
That’s what I see, too.’

She let the dead man’s hand fall back to the dust and picked up the light laser-carbine that had fallen from his hand.

She walked round the bandamyion, looking for anything else, and saw the Keep-uniformed body of a guard lying half-in and half-out of a shallow trench downhill. She turned him over; he’d been shot with a small-beam laser.

She tried to fire the guard’s gun but it only clicked.

She looked into the distance. `Mind Bomb,’ she whispered.

She returned to the other side of the dead animal and looked up at the darkening blue vault above, then at the android sitting patiently to the rear of the perfectly still vehicle’s cockpit, the tilted monowheel itself curving out behind Feril’s slender body like a rounded fin.

`Do you know roughly where we are?’ she asked.

`Only to within about one or two hundred kilometres,’ Feril said apologetically.

That’ll do,’ she said.
Think this glorified monocycle could take me to Udeste?’ She dusted off her hands as she walked back to the vehicle.

‘Udeste?’ Feril’s head moved back a fraction.

Yes,’ she said.
I was thinking of heading into the sunset and turning right when I saw the ocean, but maybe you can find a more direct route, if this thing has the range.’

Well,’ Feril said.
I suppose I could, and I suppose this could, technically. But aren’t there forces between here and there who might attempt to stop us?’

There are indeed,’ she said, swinging back up into the cockpit. She patted the Lazy Gun.
Though if we can get the lock off this, they won’t be able to stop us.’

I am not sure that will be easy,’ Feril said.
What if we cannot release the weapon?’

She looked into the machine’s sunglass-eyes, seeing herself reflected twice. She watched her tiny, distorted images shrug.

If they get us they get the Gun too, and everybody gets to go with a bang.’ She pushed the Lazy Gun forward into the footwell and sat in the seat, hauling on the harness.
To tell the truth, Feril,’ she said,
I really don’t care any more.’ She glanced up at the android.
You don’t have to come, though; just point me in the right direction. I’ll let you off wherever. You can say you were abducted; you’ll get home.’

Feril was silent for a second, then said, `No, I’ll accompany you, if you don’t mind. Given that you are prepared to risk your life, it would be lacking in grace of me not to gamble the loss of a week’s memories.’ ‘1,

She shrugged again, then looked towards the sunset, to the pass in the mountains.

The riders had gone. Before she looked away a single, large aircraft powered into the skies beyond and headed north-west, angling across the sunset and dispatching another distantly diving arrowhead shape above as though it was an afterthought.

The monowheel vehicle turned and rolled away down the far side of the ridge, picking up speed as it descended towards a dry valley, then accelerated smoothly away in a trail of chill, falling dust.

The evening light deepened as the monowheel spun quickly down a succession of shallow clinker valleys devoid of snow, vegetation or significant .obstructions towards a range of mountains, then came out into a broad gulf between jagged peaks whose summits still held a snow-pink trace of sunset. They found a wide shelf of

till sand and gravel that traced a barren contour on that great valley and drove along it; after a few kilometres its surface bore a dusting of snow that thickened gradually as they drove. The tree line was fifty metres lower down.

`Is this a road?’ she said, puzzled, as they headed into and out of a long narrow side-valley she’d have thought it easier to bridge at the mouth.

I believe it is what is called a parallel road,’ Feril said.
Caused by the waters of a temporary lake, probably formed when a glacier block’

Feril went silent, then said,

`Electromagnetic pulse.’

`What?’

The mountain-tops on the other side of the broad valley were suddenly blazing white.

She stopped the monowheel.

They turned and looked behind them, but the snow-caped shoulders of the mountain at their back cut out much of the sky.

`I believe the Keep has been destroyed by a thermonuclear device,’ Feril said.

She watched for a moment as high, feathery clouds above the mountains slowly faded yellow-white, then started the monowheel again and powered on along the sand and gravel road.

The ground-shock arrived a little later. The monowheel absorbed the pulse without a murmur but they saw the snow-smothered ground nearby shake and ripple.