An Ancient Peace (37 page)

Light off, she returned to the storeroom.

“Mashona says they have an opening, no door, on their side. What now, Gunny?”

“We join them.” She waved to catch Binti's eye and signaled that she and Ressk were on their way.

They dropped back into the shelves rather than remain exposed at the rear wall, and ran. Even still carrying a fighting load, her knees appreciated the absence of the full pack. The four of them met up between two shelves of sealed, octagonal tubes.

“From now on we maintain eyelines.” Torin glanced into a hall identical to the one on the right except that it had never had a door. “With no way to communicate, that was as much separation as I'm willing to risk.”

The lights stayed on in the storeroom when Werst, on their six, stepped into the hall. The lights in the hall stayed off.

She left Werst in the dark, at the door of what looked like a multi-H'san office complete with species-specific workstations and tech that might once have been computer interface systems. Or it could have been an extremely angular, multiple-client, sexual-relief unit for the barracks.

“Sure, save the bureaucracy.” Binti approached a tall glass cabinet with deep drawers and found herself unable to grip the pulls with Human fingers. “Permission to break something, Gunny?”

“Denied.”

Inside the cabinet, rectangles of glass had been racked on their sides and they gleamed with a rainbow of colors as Binti's light passed over them. “This is depressing. I always thought the H'san were above all that.”

“All that?” Ressk asked, holding a small metal spiral up to his light.

“You know, forms and memos and business shit.”

“If that's what that is.”

“That's what it looks like. So much for the idea that they ran their empire on song and ca . . .”

“Incoming!”

Three lights went out simultaneously, and Torin dropped behind a solid piece of meter-high glass and metal. She could hear Mashona and Ressk to her right and, as she hadn't heard Werst move, assumed he'd slipped into the room and taken a position by the door.

A familiar beam of light illuminated the doorway, the person wearing it safely back behind the protection of the wall.

“Who are you?” The voice was female and di'Taykan and it sounded as though she was one wrong answer away from either screaming or emptying a magazine into a room full of glass.

Torin could work with the first, but she doubt any of them would survive the second. She shifted into a crouch. “Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr.”

“Lead big,” Ressk muttered.

If the di'Taykan was ex-Corps, Gunnery Sergeant Kerr's reputation would get them a conversation or get them killed. Odds were about fifty/fifty.

“Of course you are.” The incipient panic had disappeared like it
had been switched off, the tone now so neutral it could have been machine generated. “Come out where I can see you.”

“Into the hall? No. You step into the room.”

“By all means, let's make it convenient for you.” It wasn't sarcasm. It was . . . nothing. The light dropped to the floor, and a moment later, the PID was kicked over the threshold. It rolled forward about half a meter and ended up shining a cone of light toward the ceiling.

The spill was enough that Torin could make out shapes and shadows.

Taykan could see clearly even in lower levels, but she didn't know Werst was by the door and when she reacted, she aimed high.

Glass shattered.

Torin picked up the PID and pointed it at the di'Taykan on the floor, Werst's blade at her throat, her turquoise hair surprisingly sleek.

Her lip curled. “I should've known they'd send
you
after us.”

Assuming
they
meant the Justice Department, Torin didn't correct her. The emphasis on the pronoun only reinforced how exposing the gray aliens had made Gunnery Sergeant Kerr enemies in the Corps. Some people didn't deal well with discovering everything they'd been fighting for was a lie.

“You don't remember me, do you?” Knife still at her throat, she didn't seem upset by her position. “Major Sujuno di'Kail. Ex-major, I suppose, but then why should I ex out if you haven't? I was at your lecture on Ventris after the Silsviss incident. You followed us, didn't you? Didn't need to work anything out, didn't need to spend days finding the way. We did that for you.” Wrist held in Werst's foot, she waved her fingers, Taykan graceful. “You just followed. Except, you followed a little too far and now you're as trapped as we are. Surprise. There's no difficulty getting into the bunker system, but you can't get out.”

“Automated defenses.” Ressk fell in on Torin's right, his KC pointed at the major.

Major Sujuno had her voice under control, but her laugh teetered on the edge of hysteria. “Did I say that?”

T
ORIN LOOKED DOWN
at the strangely familiar body on the floor of the third and final barracks. “That's a dead H'san.”

Major Sujuno folded her arms, hair tight to her head. “It was dead before we killed it.”

That explained the feeling of familiarity. Torin had never met a live H'san, but she'd spent the last two days looking at dead ones. The flesh appeared to have been dehydrated. The joints protruded. The biggest difference between this dead H'san and the occupants of the sarcophagi was that the eyes and mouth of this H'san hadn't been sealed shut. Or the biggest difference might have been the three holes in the front of the head and the two center chest, all seeping clear fluid. Given the lack of exit wounds, the head shots had ricocheted around inside the skull, dicing the upper brain, and the chest wound seemed to be lined up with the superior heart. She assumed either clumping would have killed a living H'san, which this wasn't. “So, zombie H'san?”

Werst made a sound that might have been a choked-off laugh.

The major spun around to face him. “You think this is funny? They killed two of my people!”

Torin glanced over at the two Krai who'd been in the room when the major had led them in. They stood with their backs to the wall, nearly out of the circle of light around the body, their weapons ready. Clearly a bonded pair although she had no idea of their genders and just as clearly ex-Corps from the way they held the KC-7s. The major had lost a Human and a di'Taykan on the way to the cavern and the
body around the curve had to have been one of hers, so the question became: how many more in her crew?

One of the questions.

“Major Sujuno.” Torin had spent years being the support that allowed officers to give the orders that sent Marines out to die. Her tone turned the major back toward her, her expression shifting from rage to . . . nothing. A mask Torin was not permitted to see behind. “Where did the attackers come from?”

“From behind the metal doors you passed on the way to the bunker.” The major's turquoise eyes were darker than the light level required. “You can call the rooms barracks, or storerooms, or crypts, but the doors leading into them were barred from the outside when we passed them the first time.”

“If they were locked from the outside, how did the . . .” Werst flared his nostrils at her when Torin paused so she skipped the word zombie. “. . . H'san get out?”

“We didn't let them out, Gunnery Sergeant Kerr.” The Krai on the right's nostrils were closed and the lip curled, showing teeth. “If that's what you're implying.”

Officer. Lieutenant at best or there would have been confidence enough to let that first statement stand on its own. “Only a request for information.” She kept her tone even.

“The H'san from the plinth released them.” Major Sujuno's tone, on the other hand, said,
I know how ridiculous that sounds, and I'm entirely out of fuks to give.

“From the cavern?”

“Unless you know where they've propped up another dead H'san on a plinth, Gunnery Sergeant, yes, from the cavern. Dion, Lieutenant Verr, and Sergeant Toporov found the other entrance to the bunker—the corridors loop the perimeter—when they emerged, the H'san attacked and wounded Dion . . .”

Verr was the Krai officer, still no idea of gender although both Werst and Ressk would know. Dion was species nonspecific.

“. . . but it was unsteady on its feet, so Sergeant Toporov was able to break up the attack and get Dion and Verr moving back toward the rest of us. He wanted more intell . . .”

Understandably, Torin allowed.

“. . . so he waited until he saw the plinth H'san unlocking the doors. Fired four shots center mass to no effect and ran. There's three rooms of guardians by each of the bunker entrances.”

“We call them entrances because we can't fukking use them as exits,” muttered the other Krai.

Major Sujuno squared her shoulders. “The sergeant died so the rest of us could get to safety. It didn't take long before we realized we were trapped. If we cross the threshold, on this side or the other, the H'san roil out through those doors like
seratts.
We've examined their armor, and a standard round will go through certain points . . .”

At which point Torin realized that the pile of junk the pair of Krai stood beside was metal plate and leather straps and entirely the wrong level of tech for the H'san who'd buried the bunker under their interred dead.

“. . . because the armor is designed to protect against the energy weapons they're carrying, not a tungsten carbide core designed for maximum penetration.”

“The energy weapons?”

“They're biometric, keyed to the H'san. Every weapon in here is keyed to the H'san. I've got someone working on cracking it, and if we can get one of the big guns operating, it may turn the tide, but—bottom line—Gunnery Sergeant Kerr, there's too many of them. We're trapped.”

“If there's that many of them, why didn't we see them in the corridors?”

“You wouldn't. If no one crosses the threshold for . . . What is it, Lieutenant?”

“Forty-nine minutes, Major.”

“If no one crosses the threshold for forty-nine minutes, most of them regroup, taking the dead with them behind the doors. We can't get an accurate count of the number left on patrol, but if we stay by the threshold for more than seven minutes, one of them will charge the door. The first time it happened, the outer door went down. We lost the middle door the second time. So far, we've stopped them before they reach the inner doors. I'm not certain they're
intentionally sacrificing themselves to drive us back, but that's the end result.” She turned, shining her light toward the rear wall of the barracks where five or six H'san were piled between the ends of the final two platforms, looking even more familiarly dead than the single body at Torin's feet. “There's another pile like this on the other side. Just after we dropped the third H'san, Corporal Keo thought she could use the flamethrower in her nine to simultaneously seal all three doors before another patrol showed up.”

The doors were approximately seven meters apart. Torin tried to work out the angle. “That's not possible.”

“How unfortunate you weren't here, Gunnery Sergeant.”

Too flat to be disdain, Torin couldn't work out what the major's voice was hiding. She decided not to ask if anyone had tried to stop the heavy gunner from making a suicide run. Odds were, the answer would make her angry and, if the major was telling the truth, they had to work together to get free of the guardians. At the moment, she saw no reason to believe the major was lying. Her reaction to Ressk's suggestion of automatic defenses had been entirely honest.

“They ripped Keo's exo off after they killed her,” the lieutenant said, teeth yellow in the light of the PIDs. “They don't like technology.”

“What happens if you leave all your tech behind?” Ressk asked.

The major laughed, all shards and edges. “They don't like
us
either.”

The silence stretched. Torin contemplated having common ground with a dead H'san, then Ressk crouched beside the body. “Is this blood?”

“What else would it be?” the major snapped, half a centimeter of hair curling dismissively.

“Don't know yet. Have you done a dissection? Checked to see if you can affect their operating system?”

“They're dead H'san. Walking around,” snarled the second of the major's Krai.

“Using weapons,” the lieutenant added.

“Okay.” Ressk poked at the liquid and sniffed his finger. “
Revenk
!” He scrubbed his finger against the floor. “Point is, there's no such
thing as zombies. This isn't blood; rough guess it's a vector to keep the current running through desiccated tissue. And just because we wouldn't turn our dead into an automated security system, doesn't mean the ancient H'san haven't.”

Since Torin was clearly not intended to hear Binti's response describing the ancient H'san, she let it go. “How long have you been trapped, Major?”

The mask stiffened. “Not quite two days.”

Torin glanced back at the pile of dead H'san. In less than two days, the major's team had made a dozen or more attempts to break free. She couldn't decide if she admired their tenacity or was appalled by the way they kept repeating the same action, expecting a different result.

“What happened to her body?” Werst asked suddenly, locking a flat unfriendly stare on the major. “Your heavy gunner's body? And the sergeant's? You can't go out for them and we didn't see them. Are they both around on the other side?”

“She told you.” The second Krai stepped away from the wall, hands curled into fists, nostril ridges half closed. “They take the dead in with them.”

Werst glanced over at Torin and when she nodded, curious about where he was going with this, asked, “Has anything other than dead H'san come back out?”

“This is Dion, our expert on the ancient H'san.” Sujuno prodded Dion in the hip with her boot. “He's the next thing to useless, but he's all we've got.”

Even in the big common room with its jellied chairs and feeding rounds over by the food prep area, non-H'san were more comfortable on the floor, so they'd laid out Dion's bedroll near the counter where he could sit up, leaning back against the glass. Right arm curled against his body, Dion had spread the rolled sheets of acetate they'd found in the offices out around him and had used a multitude of colors to isolate symbols and symbol sets. The word
wet
had been written in blue next to a series of symbols circled in blue, then crossed out and
replaced with a red word Sujuno couldn't read.
Maybe staff?
had been scrawled in black over the red.

He ignored both her boot and her comments.

“That wound's infected.”

Sujuno glanced over to see Kerr studying Dion's bare right arm, too swollen now to fit comfortably in a sleeve. Purple/red lines snaked out from under the dressing, climbing both up toward his shoulder and down into his hand. According to the Krai, his fingers looked like uncooked sausages. When Dion had recoiled, they'd snapped their teeth in unison and laughed.

“Really? Infected? Thank the gods you're here, Gunnery Sergeant or we might never have noticed that.” When Kerr did nothing but raise a questioning brow in her direction, she drove her fingernails into her palms and kept her voice level. “We sealed it, but modern antibiotics are barely slowing the progress of what's in the wound.”

“Dead H'san.”

“Probably.”

“I don't know her,” Dion muttered, glancing up from his notes and back down again, as though the sudden appearance of strangers at the bottom of a necropolis wasn't worth his time. His eyelids were pink and puffy. “Is this a rescue? If it isn't, and it certainly doesn't seem to be, I'd prefer another scholar or an actual physician rather than one more example of how an appalling number of theoretically civilized people prefer violence to thought.”

Sujuno considered proving his point by prodding him again with some force behind her boot. “Gunnery Sergeant Kerr works for the Justice Department. She's here to arrest us.”

“Is that so? So scholarship is a crime now?” he demanded, smearing the sweat on his forehead with the back of his left hand.

Kerr's lip curled. “No, but trespass, theft, desecration of multiple grave sites, and murder are.”

They were to be blamed for more than trespass, theft, desecration, and murder; she could read it in the stiffness of the gunnery sergeant's posture, although her expression gave nothing away. Out of the Corps she might be, but Torin Kerr was still the definitive career NCO.
Sujuno hated how comforting she found that on a deep level, and she promised herself she'd take the time to gouge the feelings out once they were free of the H'san. “Dion, have you found any reference to the guardians creating more guardians out of the dead?”

“Are you telling me they're created from other than dead H'san, Major?”

“Corporal Werst makes a credible argument that there's no reason for the H'san to regroup behind closed doors unless they're performing repairs and there's no reason to take the bodies of our dead with them unless they're repairing them as well.”

“Who the fuk is Corporal Werst?”

“He is.” Kerr nodded at the Krai watching suspiciously over by the door to the weapons cache, just out of eavesdropping range.

“Dion!” Sujuno snapped her fingers to attract his wandering attention. “
New
guardians from the newly dead—have you found a reference?”

His lips moved as he repeated her words silently, then he flipped through the sheets until he found one nearly covered in alternating green and red. “I believe,” he said, tapping a messy green square, “that this says
guardian
.”