Voyage Across the Stars (64 page)

Carron adjusted the wand’s lens into a needle of light. “This location,” he said, flicking the beam around the easily recognizable dumbbell silhouette. There was no sign of Astragal or any human construction on the projected map.

“Do the tanks you’re concerned with look like this?” the bunker asked.

The image of an object with twenty pentagonal sides appeared. The topographic map was still there. The projections neither masked nor intersected one another even though they should have been occupying the same points of space.

The tank, if it was a tank, had no weapons or other bulges to mark its flat sides. The vehicle rotated like an ill-made wheel across waste terrain, leaving cracked indentations on the surface. Broken rock spewed out whenever a corner bit. The vehicle looked like nothing Ned had ever seen in his life.

“No,” Carron said. “It’s a . . . there’s a hull and on top a—”

Another vehicle replaced the first against the same setting. The change was so complete and sudden that Ned wasn’t aware of any point of transition. This tank was identical to those whose images Carron had showed them on Buin, except that the details were precise, down to splotches of tarnish on the flanks. There was either a persistent highlight or an emitter on the gun mantle.

“Yes,” said Carron. “Like that. How can we get past them safely?”

“Describe the behavior of the tanks,” the bunker directed.

Ned was beginning to get used to the omnipresence of the voice. What he still found disquieting was the background vibration. The longer he listened to it, the more it sounded like a battle of enormous scale going on in the far distance.

“They circle the lake,” Carron said. “They shoot at anyone or thing that comes within six kilometers of it.”

“They’ve been operating for at least five hundred years,” Ned added.

Perhaps the hum was merely the operating frequency of the vastly complex computer in which they stood. Or again, Ned might be reading his own fears into random images which the system displayed as it booted. . . .

But he didn’t believe that.

“The tanks are on autopatrol,” the bunker said. The system’s designers had made no effort to humanize the voice. The words were dead and
wrong
without a tone of satisfaction to accompany them. “They can be disarmed by anyone they’ve been programmed to recognize as friendly.”

Ned and Lissea exchanged glances—she frowning, he with lips pursed in consideration.

“It is unlikely after five hundred years,” the bunker continued, “whether standard or local, that anyone from the contemporary population would remain alive. Did you have another type of year in mind?”

“No,” said Carron tightly.

“Then the only way the tanks can be disarmed is through the use of a standard key,” the bunker said. “This is a standard key.”

A flat, square object some sixty millimeters per side appeared in front of Lissea and the two men. It had a wristband, though Ned thought the object was too large to be comfortable when worn that way. There were no distinguishing marks on the smooth gray surface.

The third image appeared with/over the topo map and the vision of the tank maneuvering across rocky terrain. The combined views were simultaneously clearer than any one of them should have been, no matter what distance from which they were seen. The bunker’s display certainly wasn’t holographic, and Ned now wondered whether it had any presence in the physical universe whatever.

“All right,” Lissea said. “That’s how the tanks can be disarmed. Now, how can they be destroyed?”

“The tanks can be destroyed by the application of sufficient energy,” the bunker said. “The flux required is of stellar magnitude. Nothing within the information you have provided me suggests that you have knowledge of the principles necessary to apply such volumes of energy.”

Ned didn’t look at his companions. He was also only marginally aware of the map, tank, and key before him. The rumble of warfare, cataclysmic and unimaginably distant in time, filled him like flame in the nozzle of a rocket.

“I’ve seen a . . . a key like that,” Carron said. “My father has one in the collection of Old Race artifacts in the palace.”

“You’ve
got
one?” Lissea said. “Wonderful! When can you bring it to me?”

“The top lifts up,” Carron said, gesturing toward the display. “There’s points marked on the inner surface. When you touch them, light flashes from the back of the lid.”

The bunker changed the image as Carron spoke. The lid raised ninety degrees; the view rotated to show ten unfamiliar symbols arranged in pyramid fashion with a solid bar across the bottom. The image turned again. The raised back emitted pulses modulated in both time and hue—spectrum—across the entire surface.

“Carron,” Lissea said. “You have the key. Our lives depend on it,
my
life. When can you bring it to me?”

“Lissea,” the Pancahtan said,
“I
don’t have the key, and my father does. I can ask him to loan it to you; I’ll do that—”

“A little thing like that?” Ned interrupted harshly. “You say nobody ever looks at the artifacts and your
father
certainly doesn’t care. He’ll never miss it!”

“He’ll see you use it, though!” Carron said. “You can’t hide
that.
He’ll see and he’ll understand, and then he’ll have me killed. Probably kill me himself. You don’t
know
Lon!”

Ned turned his back to the Pancahtan.

“If you ask your father to let me use the key,” Lissea said, ticking off probabilities without particular emphasis, “then he’ll know its significance—guess, at any rate. After that, you won’t be able to remove the key yourself.”

Carron nodded miserably.

“I don’t think there’s any likelihood of his agreeing to your request,” Lissea continued. “Especially since he’s ordered you to keep away from me and the expedition members in general. Is that correct?”

“I don’t know,” Carron said, knotting his fingers together before him. “Yes, I suppose so. Yes.”

Lissea nodded, her eyes empty. “Yes,” she said, “that’s what I thought.”

She shrugged. Her visage and stance shifted with the movement, becoming as hard and brilliant as an oxy-hydrogen flame. “Slade,” she said, “go back to the jeep and monitor radio traffic. Don’t disturb me unless there’s an attack on the
Swift.”

“Yessir,” Ned said. He turned to the steps, putting his left hand on an upper tread to guide him in the surreal half-light.

“I’m going to get additional information on these keys,” Lissea said in a brittle voice. “Perhaps we can build one from equipment aboard the
Swift.”

Perhaps pigs can fly. Perhaps the lion will lie down with the lamb.

“And Slade?” Lissea called. “Close the hatch behind you, will you?”

“Yessir.”

Echoes of fire and bloodshed reverberated, in the bunker and in Ned’s mind.

The sun had set while the three of them were in the bunker. The primary had not yet risen.

Given the size of Lon Del Vore’s pet, the variety of life in the forests of Pancahte shouldn’t have surprised Ned as much as it did. He sat with his back to a tree-trunk at the edge of the clearing, as still as a sniper: watching, listening, trying not to think.

The largest creature of this night was a snuffling omnivore the size of a raccoon. Its long snout delicately skimmed the leaf mold. When scent located a target, one or both of the creature’s thumb-claws swept sideways and down. Each stroke was as quick and startling as the snap of a spring trap.

In the air, other hunters patrolled. Small, scale-winged creatures drove ceaseless spirals and figure-eights across the clearing, sucking gulletfuls of the chitinous insect-equivalents that chose the open space in which to dance and mate.

Twice while Ned waited, a hook-beaked flyer stooped from its vantage point on the peak of a cone tree. Both times the killer smashed an insectivore to the ground, pivoted on one wing, and snatched its prey back up to its eyrie. The flight was a single complex curve, executed as smoothly as a sailor ties a familiar knot.

With magnification at ten-power and his helmet’s microprocessor sharpening the infrared images, Ned watched the killer shred its prey. The victim’s skin and wings, stripped away by tiny cuts of the beak, fell to the floor of the clearing in tatters before the creature bolted the remainder whole.

Ned watched; and, despite himself, thought.

The hatch opened partway. The bunker was silent. The system’s own illumination had shut down, and the lightball was by now only a flicker of gray.

Lissea held the hatch vertical. It shielded her from the vehicles, though Ned had a perfect view of his companions from the edge of the clearing. She bent down, kissed Carron as he stood two steps below her, and then shook free of his would-be embrace.

She flung the hatch fully open and called exultantly, “All right, Slade. We’re ready to go. Fire ’em up!”

“You’ve got interesting bird life here, Del Vore,” Ned said easily as he rose to his feet. “Do you call them birds, though?”

He rolled the switch over his visor to restore an unmagnified field of view, though he left the receptors on thermal imaging.

Carron tripped on the last step and almost dropped Lissea’s toolbox. Lissea continued to walk to the jeep. She neither paused nor looked back.

“I can take that,” Ned said, reaching for the toolbox and removing it from Carron’s grip.

“Ah, yes, we say birds,” Carron said, but Ned was already striding for the hovercraft behind Lissea. “I, ah—Lissea, I’ll be there.”

She was in the driver’s seat. “I’ll take us back,” she explained as Ned settled the case carefully into the small luggage trough behind them. “I like to drive, sometimes.”

Carron had jumped into his vehicle. The aircar spun its fans up loudly, howling before Carron suddenly coarsened the blade angle. The car jumped vertically and bobbled as the AI kept it balanced with difficulty. Carron waved over the side as he flew out of the clearing, fifty meters high and rising.

“Not a natural driver,” Lissea said mildly as she engaged the jeep’s fans. “But he’s going to steal the key we need from the collection in the palace.”

“I thought he might,” Ned said. He removed his commo helmet and massaged his temples with his eyes closed.

“The bunker provided full instructions as to how to use the key,” Lissea said. “There’s a virtually infinite number of settings, but only three standard ones. The bunker thinks that in these circumstances the people who set the tanks on auto-patrol would have used a standard setting.”

What circumstances are these?
Ned thought, but he didn’t say that aloud. Instead he said, “Carron seems a nice fellow. Certainly bright enough. Seems a bit, you know . . . young for his age.”

“Slade,” Lissea said without looking away from her driving, “drop it. Now.”

A lot of us guys are young for our age.

There was a party going on around the
Swift
when Lissea pulled up.

The wedge-shaped landing site was big enough to hold a freighter forty times larger than the expedition’s craft. Shelters of canvas, wood, and plastic sheeting had sprung up in the vacant area between the blast walls. Ned wasn’t sure the light structures would survive a large vessel landing in one of the immediately neighboring berths, but the spaceport authorities were routing traffic to the opposite side of the field for now.

The Pancahtan official with whom Tadziki negotiated had been willing to find accommodations for the crew within Astragal. Tadziki refused the offer because he wanted to keep the men close by the vessel, but he’d parlayed it into supplies with which the crew could build their own quarters.

With the supplies and privacy had come local companionship. Privacy wasn’t, as Ned remembered from field service, an absolute requirement.

“I figured on the merchants,” Lissea said to Ned. “But I didn’t expect so many women.”

“The men did,” Ned said. “Wonder what they’re using for money, though?”

“Let’s hope nobody’s managed to trade the main engines for a piece,” Lissea muttered as she shut the jeep down.

The
Swift’
s
boarding ramp was raised. Deke Warson sat cross-legged in the open airlock with a 2-cm weapon across his lap.

A redhead with blonde highlights and more drink in her than she had clothes on tried to climb over Deke. He turned her around with a gentleness that belied the strength he applied as he set her back on the gravel. “I come off watch in forty-three minutes, sister,” he said affectionately. “I’ll look you up then, okay?”

Deke noticed the jeep and waved. “Hey, Cap’n!” he said. “Don’t you got your suit on inside out?”

“Aw, I never get classy women,” Toll Warson called from a bench at the table set up along one blast wall. “The ones I meet never bother to take their clothes off.”

Men cheered and catcalled. Herne Lordling wasn’t visible. Tadziki appeared at the hatchway behind Deke, wearing a reserved smile.

“Hey, what do you mean?” cried the woman seated beside Toll. Ned wasn’t sure how serious she was. “I’m classy, honey.
I’ll
take my clothes off!”

She started to roll her tube-top down over a bosom that looked outsized even on a torso which no one would have described as slim. Toll laughed and stopped the woman by gripping her hands and burying his face between her breasts.

Lissea stood up. She stepped from the driver’s seat to the jeep’s slight hood, a framework joining the two forward fan wells.

“Ned,” she ordered, “blip the siren.”

Still-faced, Ned leaned over and obeyed. He kept his finger on the button for three seconds, letting the signal wind to the point at which everyone in the encampment could hear it.

The locals—whores, gamblers, and the tradesmen who provided food and drink—blatted in surprise. The
Swift’
s
mercenaries didn’t speak. Breechblocks clashed as men made sure their weapons were charged before they lunged from their shelters. Some of the mercs appeared undressed, but none of them were unarmed.

“Crew meeting in the
Swift
in one—that’s figures one— minute,” Lissea shouted. “All personnel need to be present; nobody else will be.”