Dark Foundations (92 page)

“Wait a minute. That's the lake.”

“I am aware of the geography. On the maps I have, I would estimate it was just off Vanulet Pier.”

“Odd. A landing party?”

“Possibly.”

“I'll look into it. What other news is there?”

“Only a rising volume of signals from the airport area. I would say that they are making preparations.”

“Thank you. Call me with any more news.”

Merral stared into the misty gloom, pondering Betafor's message.
A signal from somewhere in the lake?
The visibility was now so bad that a surprise attack from a boat or raft couldn't be ruled out.

Merral made his decision and turned to Balancal. “Can you get a message to your irregs at Vanulet Pier? Warn them there may be a Krallen sneak attack by boat. I'm going to take a dozen of my men and take a quick look. The pier is just below my house. I know the area.”

“Sneak attacks?
Tuh
, what next? That's cheating. Go take a look. If an attack begins here, I'll fire a red flare.”

Merral quickly summoned a dozen soldiers out of the reserves waiting in the darkness below the walls. Then, with Lloyd just behind, Merral led them in a steady jog up the dim roads. As they moved through the deserted streets, Merral glimpsed watchful eyes staring at them from murky doorways and saw muzzles hidden in the dark depths of windows.
The irregs.
He wondered how effective they would be.

In a few minutes, they reached the square next to Merral's house and there they came across a party of four men armed with cutter guns, peering up at the buildings.

“Any news?” Merral asked.

“Some odd debris at the lake edge,” the leader of the four said, his eyes still on the skyline. “Might have been some sort of inflatable boat. And some people reported noises on roofs.”

Merral looked around, seeing nothing untoward.
Time is not on our side
. He snapped out a command to his men. “Split into fours. Take a street each. Get back here in ten minutes. And, if you see anything, fire.”

As they left, Merral turned to Lloyd. “Follow me. My house has a good view. Remember the bedroom you stayed in?”

Like everywhere else in the street, his house was quiet and deserted. Merral opened the door, finding the deep darkness of the interior broken only by stray shafts of light from the few operating streetlights. There was a stuffy, desolate odor.

“No lights,” Merral whispered. “And let's try to keep quiet.”

He made his way to the stairway, dodging furniture. A thud and a sharp intake of breath behind him suggested Lloyd had been less successful.

“Upstairs,” Merral hissed.

As softly as they could, they climbed the stairs. Merral paused to look out of the landing window, but failing to see anything, continued up.

In the attic room Merral groped his way past furniture to the window. He opened it as softly as he could and peered through the darkness over the serried ranks of rooftops, gables, and little streets toward the dark mists of the lake. Nothing moved.

A waste of time
.
There is noth
—

“There!” Lloyd's voice was an electric whisper.

Barely thirty meters away, something moved. Strange angular shadows slipped along the rooftops, bounded noiselessly from balcony to balcony, and leaped from drainpipe to drainpipe, moving from left to right.

Merral, realizing they would be out of sight in seconds, said, “Lloyd, take the right. I'll take the left. On my word, open fire.”
How easily I have slipped into the language of warfare.
He slipped the safety catch off, and braced himself on the sill, sighting on a moving gray shape
.

“Fire!”

A long tumultuous roar shattered the silence as the two guns fired together.

Merral's target spun wildly and tumbled off the roof.

As the smell of propellant enveloped him, Merral sighted on a new target and fired again. Lloyd just kept firing.

There were cries from the ground; the other men had seen the Krallen. The
whip whip
of the guns echoed through the streets and yellow flashes knifed out of the darkness.

Merral paused, blinking and coughing in the fumes. He heard a grunt of satisfaction from Lloyd. “Chew dust,” Lloyd muttered.

Merral looked at the skyline. The remaining Krallen had vanished. But where were they? Suddenly, he glimpsed something below in the inky darkness of the alleyway. Pale shapes clung to the buildings and flung themselves from wall to wall like acrobats.

“Sir, they're coming for us,” Lloyd said, and fired again.

“Stay here,” Merral snapped. “I'll take the window downstairs.”

Trusting to his memory to guide him in the darkness, Merral ran down the stairs as fast as he dared. As he passed his parents' bedroom, he noticed a pause in the firing. In the tense silence that followed, he heard a faint noise: a tiny, almost inaudible scratching in the darkness of the general room below.

Merral froze. Straining his eyes, he could make out that a window shutter was wide-open. He was wondering what to do when he heard the front door open.

“Commander?” a man's voice cried. “You in here?”

Merral heard another tiny movement below.
There's something else there!

Blinking sweat out of his eyes, Merral tried to recall the exact layout of where he was. Two steps would take him to a landing light switch and a shelf with ornaments to his right. He reached out and found the shelf, his hand closing around something. A vase. He remembered it—a blue one with delicate white tracery. One of his sisters had made it for their mother as a birthday present. He wrapped his fingers tightly around the base.

“Coming in!” shouted the soldier.

Merral threw the vase hard across the room.

It exploded in a thousand fragments. “Get out!” he shouted. “Krallen!”

As the door slammed shut, his fingers scrabbled for the light switch and pressed it.

Below, something like a great hairless hound crouched on the floor. It twisted its head toward him and opened its mouth in a loose-jawed leer.

“Get out of
my
house!” Merral yelled.

Above, he heard the clatter of heavy feet. Afraid and outraged at the idea of Krallen in his own home, Merral moved forward two steps, keeping tight against the wall. Behind him, up at the landing window, he heard a faint scratch.

The Krallen in the general room suddenly leaped onto the banister and swung its head to face him, flicking its tail and flexing its hind legs.

As it began to pounce, Merral fired. The flash blinded his eyes and the roar numbed his ears.

As the smoke lifted, Merral could see that the Krallen and part of the banister had gone. On the floor, amid a pile of wood fragments, an ashen figure lay twitching ever more slowly as a metallic liquid leaked into the carpet.

Merral descended a few steps carefully, his finger on the trigger.

Suddenly the landing window behind him exploded.

He spun round—almost slipping on the stairs—seeing in the midst of the flying splinters and glass at least two Krallen pour through. He swung the barrel around, and sighting by instinct, pulled the trigger.

Click.

The magazine was empty.

A Krallen leaped for him and he swung the gun butt hard at it. It connected, and the goblin fell back against the wall. Merral dropped the gun and ran down the stairs, tugging out his sword. He leaped the last steps, landed on the carpet, and spun round.

A Krallen leaped from the stair rail to a light fixture, grabbed it, twisted around with a flowing energy, and lashed out at him with a forelimb.

As the knifelike talons arced toward him, Merral swung his blade at his attacker.

There was another flash and an explosion.

The Krallen and the light fixture seemed to disintegrate in a hail of fragments. The room was plunged into semidarkness.

What was left of the Krallen crashed to the ground and Merral saw that it was headless. Puzzled, he turned to glimpse Lloyd at the top of the stairs, smoke drifting from the muzzle of his shotgun.

“Thanks, Llo—,” Merral began, but suddenly there were more opponents. While Lloyd turned to face one goblin another crept toward Merral from out of a darkened corner. He slashed at it as it pounced at his face. The sword struck its neck while it was still in midair and bounced off. Yet the force of the blow had deflected its attack and sent the Krallen crashing against a table. There was the detonation of breaking crockery.

As it rolled onto the floor, Merral, aware of howls and Lloyd's yells on the stairs, ran round the table and jabbed his sword hard into his enemy. The blade sank deep, but as it did, the Krallen writhed and the handle flew out of Merral's grip. Just as he bent to regain his weapon, he heard something land on the carpet behind him.

“Look out!” Lloyd shouted.

Merral twisted around. Another Krallen sprang toward him with its forelimbs wide and its shining claws extended. He lurched sideways, its claws scrabbling futilely on his sleeve.

The Krallen slid past him and cannoned into a chair.

All too aware that he was now unarmed and conscious of the continuing fighting on the stairs—a cabinet had just tumbled over what was left of the banisters—Merral ran to the half-open kitchen door. He leaped through and tried to push it shut behind him. But a limb with scything razor-edged fingers hooked around the door. Merral pushed as hard as he could. The limb stayed in place.

His feet slid as the Krallen thudded against the door.

Merral desperately looked around the half-lit kitchen for a weapon. There were more violent noises and explosions from within the general room.
There has to be something to kill this thing! I can't meet death in my own home. That would be too ridiculous.

A large kitchen knife lay within reach. He grabbed it and slashed at the arm. To his horror, the blade simply bounced off, barely leaving a mark.

He felt the Krallen thud against the door once more. There was an ominous creak.

Merral threw the blade away and looked for something else. There was the kettle, just within reach by the sink. He managed to snag the cord and tugged it toward him. It was full of water. As he touched the heat button, a red light glowed and there was the sound of bubbling. He waited the five seconds that it took to get the water boiling, unplugged it, and tugged the top off.

He jumped aside, letting the door fly open. As his pursuer tumbled in, Merral flung the boiling water over its head.

“Compliments of my mother!”

Enveloped in steam, the creature stopped, and in a disturbingly human gesture, slowly wiped its gleaming eyes with its knuckles, then, apparently unperturbed, turned to face Merral.

Merral ran around the heavy table in the center of the room, overturned it, and pushed it at his attacker. As the creature began to wriggle free, Merral swung a chair at its head. The Krallen snapped the chair legs off.

Merral ran to the end of the kitchen, flung open the door into his father's workroom, stumbled in, and pushed it shut behind him. He tabbed the light on and leaned hard against the door, gasping for breath.

He looked around for something to keep the door shut and defend himself. On the table was a large unfinished model of a spaceship—the Assembly frigate
Clearstar,
Lucas Ringell's vessel.

And I can be sure Ringell would have done a better job now
.

There was a heavy blow behind his head. A gleaming, steely hand punched through the light wood and polymer of the door.

A weapon.
Find a weapon!

Suddenly he noticed the odd chemical odor to the room.
What was it?
What had his mother complained about?

The door rocked and creaked as another set of claws punched through it.

“Glue!” On the table by the model stood a flask with bright red liquid.

The doorframe recoiled at another blow.

Merral grabbed the glue flask, flicked off the safety covering, and squirted the fluid over the door latch. There was a momentary sensation of heat and Merral stepped back. A new pounding began on the door, but it stayed in place.

On an impulse, Merral poured glue over the two sets of protruding claws. Again there was the brief burst of heat and the chemical odor as the glue set.

The Krallen gave a high, angry howl. The door shook furiously, then flew off its hinges. The whole structure—with the Krallen still firmly attached—crashed into the room, sending up a shower of dust. The hind legs lashed out furiously.

Seized by some strange and undefinable emotion Merral squirted glue on the creature's jaws and was gratified to see that, in barely a second, they froze wide-open.

Suddenly, Lloyd staggered through the kitchen door, with his gun. There was a graze on his face and silvery stains all over his jacket.

“They're all dead!” Lloyd gasped, then saw the Krallen. “But that ain't!”

“Don't worry,” Merral said, suddenly aware that his hands were trembling. “It's not going anywhere.”

Lloyd walked around the Krallen. “Glued down. Neat, sir.”

“Give me your gun, Lloyd.”

The big weapon was passed over.

“I've been wanting to do this for a bit,” Merral said and stuck the muzzle in the open mouth.

“
Hasta la vista,
baby,” Lloyd murmured.

Merral pulled the trigger.

There was a flash and an explosion of fragments that whizzed and hissed around. Merral was thrown backward with an arm-wrenching jolt.

“Actually, sir,” Lloyd observed quietly as he brushed smoke from his face, “I find firing just one barrel quite adequate.”

Merral gazed at the shattered and dripping remains of the Krallen and the devastation of the workroom. “I'll remember that.”

As they stepped carefully through the debris that cluttered the kitchen floor, Merral turned to Lloyd. “
‘Hasta la vista'
?”