Kris Longknife: Tenacious (Kris Longknife novellas Book 12) (9 page)

Captain
Hayakawa Mikio, skipper of the Musashi Imperial Marine company aboard the
Wasp
, asked the honor of the first landing at the pyramid. His Marines were as well equipped for forensic examination as Jack’s own U.S. company. They had, after all, been detailed to protect one of those damn Longknifes.

Kris royally acquiesced to his request.

Three longboats were assigned to take down the company, heavily “reinforced” with willing researchers. Despite Amanda’s best efforts to keep her husband out of the first landers, Jacques was assigned as chief of the scientific party and chose to lead from the front.

Amanda would land with Kris. After all, there might be some economic implications of such a huge work as this pyramid, be it made by rolling robots or whipped-slave labor.

Kris would land only after everything was secured, all i’s dotted and t’s crossed.

Jack stood by Kris in the landing bay, going over her full battle-armored space suit like a mother hen. Kris balked and batted his hands away after he asked her to do a fourth check of her helmet’s gaskets and radio.

“I’m fine. There’s nothing to worry about. If there is, your Captain Hayakawa will take care of it and we’ll just show up after they’ve finished analyzing all the dead bodies.”

“Don’t I hope.”

“Jack, is it going to be like this every drop, or is this just bridegroom nerves?”

He scowled at her and brought his hands down to rest at his side. “A bit of everything.”

“We’ll be fine,” she said, and rested her eyes on the screen at the end of the drop bay. The first three landers were down, and Hayakawa was deploying his troops by the book. Or at least he was trying to.

The space-suited boffins had somehow escaped the landers before the battle-armored Marines declared the site safe for civilians. Their mob had rushed to the base of the pyramid much faster than the Marine skipper wanted.

To his shouted orders on net, they showed no signs of hearing, much less obeying.

He did what any smart commander would do. He kept his men to the cautious pace his duties required . . . and let the civilians rush ahead to trip any land mines in their path.

Fortunately, there were no land mines, literally or figuratively.

In the end, the scientists set to work doing their analysis, and the Marines deployed both an outer perimeter and an inner fire team, ready for anything that might issue forth from the pyramid or charge in over the glass plain.

As it happened, nothing did.

It was Jacques that got Kris’s attention.

“There is a door just where Penny said there would be. It does not have a doorknob or anything so prosaic. There are runes carved into the doorway. We’ve got nanos out examining them and the cracks in the rock around them. I think there’s a combination lock here, I just don’t know how to work it yet.”

“Can you slip some nanos through the doorjamb?” Kris asked.

“We’ve tried that,” Jacques replied. “It’s not as easy as it appears. The jamb is mitered. There seem to be several zigs and zags in there. On top of that, it’s electronically active in some way. Anyway, what we’ve tried to slip in there has died before it got very far. I’m trying to squeeze a camera in on a long-necked probe, but we’ve only made it through two zigs. We need a Smart Metal programmer down here to knock something together.”

“Maybe next pass,” Kris offered.

Behind Jacques, a science team turned a laser loose on the surface of the pyramid’s rocky face.

“Are they getting anything?” Kris asked.

“I don’t know yet,” Jacques answered.

“I can answer that, possibly before your Nelly can,” Professor Labao said, coming up on Kris’s elbow.

“I won’t spoil your report,” Nelly retorted.

“The initial report on the surface rock was not interesting, but the team applied the laser several times. Once they got past the surface contaminants, the results were more than interesting.”

“And they are?” Kris said. The professor, like Nelly, seemed to enjoy stretching out important reports.

“It appears that the granite comprising the pyramid was not quarried on this planet. Based on the ratio of rare earths and isotopes, the mountain it was obtained from is somewhere on the planet we previously studied.”

“And the counterweight Nelly analyzed?” Kris asked.

“It came from this planet. Most likely this very continent. Given enough time, we may identify the mountain range.”

“I doubt we have that much time,” Kris said.

“I agree.”

“So we have a smoking gun and a bullet,” Kris said.

“I would not argue that,” the professor said.

“But why lug all this rock back here and plunk it down in the middle of this mess?” Jack asked with the air of one not expecting an answer.

“That is not a question for science but of human motivation, or alien, as in this case,” the professor said. “I am only too happy to leave messy things like that to the conjecture of witch doctors and shamans like yourselves.”

No doubt, Kris had just received a backhanded, and front-handed, compliment of the highest, no, make that lowest scientific order. She decided that, discretion being the wisest part of both the command and management of eggheads, she should ignore it.

“Hey, we got something here,” Jacques reported from the ground. “Three of the glyphs seem to be moveable. Let’s see if I can push them in and make something happen.”

“But in what order should they be pushed?” Amanda cut in from beside Kris.

“That’s an interesting question,” Jacques answered. “A base-three key is not a cypher that’s very hard to break. Let me see, which one should I push first?”

“Is there one that appears to be the first one?” Kris asked.

“There is one that’s the first on the right side. All it has on it is a sun.”

“They’re into one-man rule,” Kris said. “I’d go with one being important to them.”

“Then one it is,” Jacques said. “I’ve pushed it, and nothing happened, so I guess we’re good. Now which one is next? Honey, you want to suggest one?”

“Don’t you go getting me into this, you lunkhead,” Amanda said. “I’m still stuck in orbit looking at your pictures on a screen. How can I form an informed opinion, assuming we can call what you’re doing an informed action?”

Unfazed by Amanda, Jacques went happily along. “Okay, I’ll try these two.”

A moment later, he was talking again. “That didn’t open up anything. But what don’t you know, no spray of poison gas, either. Maybe they ran out of it fifty thousand years ago?”

“Or maybe they’re saving it for the second mistake,” Amanda put in.

“We’ve all got our space suits on and helmet visors down, dear. We might need to wash ourselves down in the nearest stream, but it can’t kill us,” Jacques insisted

“Don’t worry, Amanda,” Kris said, “the nearest stream is three hundred klicks away. While walking to it, they might meditate on their sins enough to learn something.”

“I heard that,” Jacques said. “Here goes the second try.”

There was a long pause. “Hey, it worked. The door’s sliding up in its track. Hey, that’s good workmanship to be that smooth after all this time.”

“Traps may be working, too,” Jack put in. “Let Captain Hayakawa take over checking the place out.”

“Okay, okay, we’re backing away. No need to prod us with those guns.”

No doubt, Kris suspected, the Marines did indeed need to prod the scientists a bit to get their attention.

Now a simple and large probe, a copy of the surveyor used on the other planet, rolled into the yawning doorway. It trailed a wire tail that carried its report back.

“There’s plenty of electronic interference in there,” Jacques reported. “I don’t know the source of it yet. Oh, that was not nice.”

“What wasn’t nice?” Kris demanded.

“I guess they didn’t forgive us for getting the combination wrong on the first try. Something opened up and our scout dropped into a pit with a whole lot of pointy things designed to maim and wound. The camera’s still working, but that rover won’t be roving anymore.”

“I told you to study that combination more carefully,” Amanda snapped.

“And you were right, darling. Now, the Marines are getting a twin-rotor flyer ready to check the place out.”

The flyer entered the yawning dark maw, trailing a wire to carry its reports back. On the screen, a second window opened up, showing the feed from the flyer’s camera. Progressing down a slight incline, it showed walls covered with carvings, none of which made any sense to Kris. At her elbow, Professor Labao issued orders to his boffins to start the analysis of those markings, along with the entrance glyphs.

The flyer skipped over the hole in the floor where the rover’s lights still showed its place in the pit. The flyer got about six meters past that and suddenly went dead.

“They shot it down!” Jacques said.

On the screen, Kris watched, as a new view opened. It showed the inside of the passageway. Then, in slow motion, darts shot out from the walls. Some crossed in front of the flyer, but, no doubt, others hit it. The view went dark.

“Okay, they really don’t want us in there,” Jacques said.

“Captain Hayakawa, do you have any more flyers?” Jack asked.

“We have plenty of small ones, and we can make nano scouts from Smart Metal, but I’m reluctant to lose more on a problem we already know. Wait one, we are looking at other solutions.”

A long minute later, the Imperial Marine was back on the line. “We have a suggestion from one of our medics. She has surgical gloves that, have on occasions, been blown up like balloons. She suggests we try them. We’re working on that idea.”

“But air-filled balloons don’t fly very far,” Kris pointed out.

“Yes, we know that. It seems we will have to advance down the entrance a ways. We are also working on that.”

A few minutes later, a Marine appeared with a Smart Metal
TM
ladder and carried it cautiously into the entrance to the pyramid. He returned a few moments later to report that the ladder had crossed the pit and turned into a ramp. A moment later, a Marine medic in a fully armored space suit headed into the pyramid with an armful of blown-up rubber gloves.

“This would be funny if it wasn’t so mortal,” Amanda said from her place at Kris’s elbow.

“It will provide a comic interlude, no doubt, when they make the vid of this expedition,” Kris said.

What Jack growled under his breath, his blushing bride was careful not to hear.

“She’s a few feet from the crash of the flyer,” Jacques said from the position he’d taken up at the mouth of the entrance. “She’s turning on lights.”

Again, the screen above the drop bay lit up, now with the feed from the medic’s helmet camera. It showed a long hallway pocked with a lot of tiny openings. She stopped a good meter from the first one, and the wreck.

“Let’s see what happens,” she said in Japanese, which Nelly translated for Kris.

She tossed the first inflated glove down the passageway.

Darts shot out and shredded the glove. However, a lot more darts were shot than were necessary. Most bounced off the stone walls of the passageway and fell harmlessly to the floor.

“Hold it,” Kris said. “Can you pan your camera around the floor?

The Musashi medic did. There weren’t a lot of darts on the deck.

“Anyone want to bet that we’re the first to trigger those darts?” Kris asked.

She got no response.

After a minute, the medic said, “One balloon down, eight to go.” She tossed another balloon into the danger zone. That triggered more darts and shredded another glove.

A third and fourth balloon glove suffered the same fate.

“Is it my imagination,” Amanda said, “or were there less darts that time?”

“You maybe be right,” Kris said.

Two more inflated gloves went downrange, and each of them got farther before meeting its inevitable fate.

“This is my next-to-last glove. If they’re all popped, we’ll have to wait for more from orbit or find something else to toss.” The medic tossed the ersatz balloon in the air, then batted it up with her hand, just like every child learned by their sixth birthday party.

This one slowly floated down the ramp. Darts flew. Several missed but tossed the glove about on the wind of their passing. Then one hit, and the balloon popped.

“And my last one.” That balloon was batted high. It floated down the passageway, carried on air currents whose source Kris could not see. One lone dart flew on camera across the passageway. It didn’t even get close enough to the glove to knock it around in its flight.

The glove finally settled to the floor. It rolled down the incline and out of the lights.

“I think we have exhausted their supply of darts,” the medic reported. “Captain Hayakawa, I request the honor of advancing across the dart-covered way.”

“You have earned that honor. Is your battle armor tight?”

“Yes, sir. My sergeant and my lieutenant checked it before we dropped.”

“Advance with care, Marine.”

Cautiously, the medic took a step into the kill zone. Nothing happened. Slowly, she sidestepped around the wreckage of the flyer. Still, nothing happened. She was on her third step past the wreck when a single dart shot out from the wall and buried itself in the shoulder of her armor.

From the view from Jacques’s helmet camera, she pulled the dart out and could be heard to laugh.

“Captain Hayakawa, may I report that the darts penetrate solid Musashi body armor less than a millimeter. I do not think we ever had anything to worry about.”

“Your report is noted. Do not relax your alertness. Stay cautious.”

“Aye, aye, skipper.”

The Marine reached the end of the beaten zone. “Captain, I request that you send in a new flyer. I can see what appears to be a large room no more than five meters from where I stand, but those five meters of wall have not been tested.”

“We will send in a flyer,” the Musashi Marine company commander said.

A small winged flyer made its way slowly down the passageway and flew over the medic. It got maybe three meters farther.

A wall of flame shot out to engulf it.