Authors: Christopher Rowley
They finally drew close to the leviathan and began to pass along its length. The turtle kept up with them.
The Bey pointed up to the flanks of the lower part of the machine, where huge tubes wormed over each other in a braided system.
"Up there is one airlock. To reach it we'd have to get up on the landing surface. There aren't any steps to the seabed."
Of course, Jon realized, everything would have been floated into it through the deep waters of the long vanished ocean.
"The machine is still," Jon said. "I thought it would be moving."
"It will move soon enough. It lives yet."
Streaks crossed the sky, shapes were descending all around the machine, parachutes snapping open only hundreds of feet from the ground.
"Ahead of us!" Gesme said. A human figure, in laowon military uniform, bounded toward them.
Jon had the Taw Taw in his hand, he dropped the window, emptied a clip, the gun roaring, and the trooper shed a lot of flesh and uniform but continued to come straight for them. It left the ground on a forward dive, explosive bullets still hitting it, and caromed across the bowshield of the mantid and smashed a hand through the windscreen.
Jon shot the hand off at the wrist and it flew across the cabin then hit the side window. The cyborg swung the stump, Gesme ducked and the entire windscreen shattered as the trooper slid away, falling behind them while they caromed from one of the giant machine's huge treads.
"Cyborgs!" screamed Gesme. "They're almost impossible to kill."
"Oh great, that's just what we need," Jon said. He looked back, more bipedal figures were landing in the mid distance. The mantids following were barely going to make it.
The Bey pointed through a gap between the treads. "Turn here, Gesme. Take us in between the treads."
The hovercraft curved then sped into the space underneath the giant. Their lights showed a flat, dull upper surface stretching all the way to the next set of treads.
The treads towered over them, and Jon tried to imagine the sound the monster must make when it moved. They were a hundred meters wide and as they turned, the rock beneath was crushed to powder.
"Are the others following us?" the Bey said.
"Only the turtle so far."
Ahead of them a projection jutted down from the belly of the monster. It quickly resolved into a small corkscrew ramp that ended in a cracked and worn flange of eternite hanging only five feet above the plain.
They clambered out, the Bey running ahead with Rhap Stardimple, up the ramp to the heavy circular airlock set in a groove in the belly of the machine.
Jon and the young Elchites took position on the ramp above the hovercraft, assault rifles at the ready.
"We can't hold them off with just rifle fire," Gesme said. "These are Imperial shock troops."
"Accurate fire can still disrupt them. Try for the head and eyes, that must be a weak point."
Jon loosened the Taw Taw in his holster, cast an anxious eye behind him to the airlock door. The mote was pressing itself into a curved depression in the outer airlock surface. Jon banged a clip of explosive shell into his assault rifle.
Lights were coming around the farthest treads, the turtle and the other mantids, in a group, their engines a sudden growl under the machine. Running pursuers were already closing on the last mantid in line. A human figure jumped, landed on the mantid's back. There was a flurry of activity, the mantid lost way, swung sideways and ground to a halt, several more troopers climbed into it.
"Which one is it?" Gesme cried in anguish. Through the binoculars Jon could see three figures in desert costumes being dragged out. "It's Bergen, Wauk, and Hargen, they've been taken prisoner."
The surviving mantids, lead by Braunt's and the turtle, roared toward the ramp. Behind them sprang the fleet footed cyborgs. The Elchites fired, a crescendo in the confined, echoing space. Their bullets exploded in a fury of smoke and metal splinters on the distant tread.
The cyborgs did not return fire but continued to sprint toward them. The Elchites' fire was accurate, they were well trained in the use of firearms, still it was difficult to stop the shock troopers; direct hits had to pierce the armored brain pan to really damage the things.
The great outer door creaked open slowly behind them.
The turtle slammed to a halt, bouncing its rubber apron off the eternite ramp flange. Gelgo Chacks helped Finn M'Nee out. Braunt, carrying a rifle, ran forward. "Did you see those things?" he said in a shocked voice.
"That's part of the reason we are here," said the Elchite Acolyte Aul. "All of this abuse of human beings must stop."
"Those things aren't human."
"Not entirely, the laowon have seen to that."
Braunt added his fire to theirs, still the cyborgs ran forward and many more were coming into view.
The remaining mantids finally sank down by the ramp. The Orners and Angle Umpuk scrambled up to the airlock.
"Hurry now, everyone inside," the Bey said, his voice shaking from nervousness. They turned and ran for the lock.
The cyborgs were closing fast. Jon got off another clip, he hit one trooper, saw puffs rise from the black and blue uniform before the figure staggered. Then it shook off the impacts and resumed running.
The great door was closing. He slipped inside, turned back as three cyborgs hurdled the turtle to land on the ramp flange then leap for the closing lock. One flew straight in, caromed off the wall and landed upside down in the corner. The others were caught in the door, which closed on their waists.
The one in the corner sprang backward, erect, in time to catch the first three bullets from the Taw Taw longbarrel. They staggered it, but its own gun came up and a demiclip began ricocheting around the metal bubble of the airlock interior. Jon fired again and again, the shots knocking the cyborg skull back, slamming it into a wall, until finally something broke and it slumped backward in a heap.
With a slight squeal of effort the huge door was crushing the trapped troopers. To Jon's horror the cyborg upper halves still functioned. An arm shot out, seized Owlcurl Dahn and jerked her to the door.
The mote was activating the inner door of the airlock, and Jon heard it begin to move with a faint hiss.
"Turn your head!" he screamed to Dahn and fired into the cyborg's skull. Three shots were fired before it consented to die.
There had been carnage in the airlock. Two of the young Elchites, Dekter and Aul had been hit hard, as had been Captain Hawkstone, who'd taken a round through the neck. He lay in a lanky tangle of limbs, blood surrounding him in a widening pool.
Jon fought to pry Owlcurl loose from the trooper's closed fist but could barely move the steel-reinforced fingers. He reached down for his monofil blade, snapped it open, and slashed through the cyborg's wrist.
With a tortured sob, Owlcurl Dahn pulled herself away from the thing. She began working the clenched hand down her arm like some obscene bracelet. Jon, meanwhile, had discovered a trickle of blood on his leg, where a bullet had broken the skin, leaving an inch-long gash.
Officer Dahn broke down for a moment at the sight of Hawkstone. She investigated the body, tears streaming down her face.
A strange smell filled the air, salty, corrupt, it made goose flesh on their skins all of a sudden.
They crowded around Eblis Bey who stood inside the darkness, his lamp making a small pool of light against its envelope.
Jon felt a sense of foreboding as he gazed into the blackness. "Where are the risers?"
The Bey aimed his torch along a smooth-walled tubular corridor lined with what seemed to be orange-brown scales. Along the ceiling ran something like an oversized zipper. The tube curved away into darkness.
"They will be about one hundred paces down there." The Bey looked back into the airlock.
"Who is hurt?"
"Acolyte Aul is dead, Mr. Bey," Officer Dahn said. "As is the Captain. Dekter is very badly wounded, I think he will die, too, unless we can get him medical attention very shortly."
"Can he be moved?" the Bey said.
Dahn shook her head. "There's a hole the size of your fist in his back. We left the medical supplies in the mantids; I have nothing to stanch his wounds with. It would probably be best to leave him for the laowon. They might put him into surgery to preserve any information he might have."
Then they heard a faint
screech
of metal on metal on the outside of the lock where a dozen cyborg troopers were attempting to pry the door open.
"The ones caught in the door must have kept it open a fraction, they're trying to exploit it," Jon called.
"We must go on then. We will have to leave Dekter for the moment, Dahn. Come, quickly, to the risers." The Bey turned and motioned in the proper direction with his arm.
The inner lock door began to close.
They pulled their torches and ran down the tube to the risers. The walls, floor, and ceiling all shared the characteristic motif of scales, each plate being about the size of a man's palm.
At irregular intervals along the ceiling were circular protrusions of some rough, fibrous material about a foot in diameter. The scales fitted seamlessly around them, no purpose for the things was apparent.
The risers were simply larger tubes that sank through ceiling and floor. Oval cutaways gave access. There were no doors. The Bey stepped into one, and was immediately carried up on an invisible force. The risers were set in a cluster of four so they rose in groups of four, floating upward on the back of an invisible force through total darkness.
Jon commented on the lack of lights as he floated up beside the Bey and Officer Dahn.
"Yes, it was the same when we first came here, so long ago. Perhaps it is another facet of the ancients' frugality. Perhaps they were accustomed to functioning at dim light levels. Whatever their reasons, the interior of the machine is mostly dark."
By then they had reached a bigger space, they rose no farther and had to step out of the way of those rising beneath them. Once again they stood on a solid floor, their lights the only ones to break the absolute blackness around them.
"Try to find a light switch Rhap Dimp," the Bey said.
Rhap Dimple floated up to the ceiling and connected with a socket. A moment later a few lights set sparsely around the room, came on. The scales were much larger in there and the light made them shine a glossy gold. Structural members in pink and green eternite sectioned the walls.
"Come, we are close now. This way." The Bey lead them around a corner of eternite into another corridor of yellow scales. It split into three, and he took the central passage, small lights gave a dim general illumination.
They spied something on the floor, a litter of bones, a human skeleton, scraps of a desert suit.
They paused beside it. The Bey examined the hand bones. "This is Professor Abeikar I think. He was the first of our party to disappear."
Ahead, a set of doors swung open soundlessly at their approach. Somewhere below a heavy thud sounded, followed by a loud clang.
"Satchel charges," Jon exclaimed. "The cyborgs have opened the outer airlock door."
"That blast will have disturbed more than the door. We must hurry." With those words the Bey increased his pace. The corridor had acquired a slight slope now and they toiled up it as rapidly as possible.
They were panting when they reached the riser to the control floor. Here they had to go in a single file, one at a time. First the Bey, then Owlcurl Dahn, Braunt, Angle Umpuk, Gesme, M'Nee, Chacks, and finally Jon Iehard.
The discovery of the expedition and the giant machine had sent convulsions through the laowon military. More than four hundred capital ships swung in orbit above. At the command, a nuclear firestorm could be launched that would annihilate not only the huge alien machine but hundreds of cubic kilometers of the seabed beneath. A force of several thousand cyborg troopers had been dropped to occupy that seabed in the meantime. And pods of laowon officers had accompanied them.
A flier had picked up Magnawl Ahx and Melissa Baltitude and flown them over the intervening two hundred kilometers to the site of the enormous machine.
Ahx then supervised the interrogation of the three captives who had been secured. Officers Bergen, Wauk, and Hargen confessed freely, but in truth, they knew very little about the machine or its operation. Ahx hesitated to wipe their brains, in case they should prove more useful as hostages. He knew it was a remote hope.
Meanwhile, the airlock gates had been successfully breached and the machine lay open, waiting for the command to invade. Two dead fugitives, and one in the process of dying, had been removed from the airlock. Also removed were the remains of three shock troopers. The laowon were amazed that the fugitives had been able to destroy the trooper that had got inside with them.
Small detection robots had been run into the machine but they reported no signs of life, although the atmosphere was contaminated with high levels of carbon dioxide and some very unusual trace contaminants, complex hydrocarbon fragments for the most part.
All that was in the reports before the commanding officer on the ground, underneath the machine, Battlegeneral Plezmarxsh. In conjunction with Buro Chief Ahx, the responsibility for making a successful capture rested on him.
It was imperative that they capture the fugitives without further damage to the machine.
The Superior Buro had made an enormous effort to track the case just to take the weapon in working order. The technology was unknown, but it represented a vast power. The Imperiom reached for that power with eager hands.
Plezmarxsh ordered the first squads to investigate and track the humans. Laowon officers, including Superior Buro operatives, went forward into the darkness behind an advance guard of shock troops. A strange odor in the air raised the manes on laowon necks, and in nervous response they flashed their heavy-duty torch lights around them aggressively, hands on pistol butts. The strange, near-circular passageways were oddly claustrophobic and unsettling.