Labyrinth of Night (38 page)

He stopped dead, staring at the abomination which hung beneath the tripod.

He recognized the battered upper fuselage of the MRV only because of the little cartoon jackalope painted on the side; everything else, from the legs on down, was completely ripped away. There was no sign of the man who had been in the cockpit except for a wide streak of blood beneath one of the shattered canopy portholes, but hanging beneath the fuselage was…

‘Oh my God,’ Akers muttered.

The huge shape—reddish-black, human-like yet seemingly mechanical—let go of the wreckage and, with terrifying agility, threw itself forward. It landed, hunched forward, on the edge of the crevasse, its dagger-shaped claws sinking into the rocky red soil for anchorage. For a second it looked as if it might lose its balance and fall backward into the pit.

Then its splayed feet found purchase on the ground and it hauled itself away from the shaft. The giant stood erect on its massive, double-jointed legs; as its monstrous claws tore out of the ground and its long, almost simian arms stretched upward, a cyclopian red eye beneath the cowl of its neckless head swung toward Akers…

And locked on.

It was nine feet tall, and it looked like a demon straight from hell.

For the single instant that the creature stopped, Akers managed to shake off his paralysis. As he dove for the Steyr he’d left propped against a boulder, he yelled into his headset; ‘King’s knight to king! Mayday, Mayday! Bogey at the D & M…!’

With horrifying swiftness, the monster lurched toward him, its arms extended.

‘I’m under attack…!’ Akers howled as he grabbed the assault rifle. He crouched and brought the Steyr into an awkward firing position. ‘Jesus, get somebody down here, it’s…!’

Then it was on top of him. Screaming with incoherent fear, Akers managed to squeeze off a few futile rounds before the behemoth, with one swift and violent swipe of a claw, decapitated him.

‘W
HEN I GET MY
hands on that son of a bitch, I’m going to rip out his…’

‘Knock it off.’ Marks glanced up at the indicator above the airlock hatch. He had to depressurize Module One before they could go in there; otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to climb into the CAS, since it was not designed to be used with a skinsuit. ‘You’ll get your chance, okay? Just ease off and do your…’

‘Ease off, my ass.’ Swigart was struggling into her skinsuit; once Marks was in the armor, she would have to depressurize the garage again. It was a time-consuming procedure—they were both in a rush, her anger was making her clumsy, and Marks had to watch her carefully to make sure she didn’t miss any steps in the suitup procedure. ‘And if I see that slant-eyed cunt, I’m going to…’

‘I said,
knock it off!’
Marks grabbed her arms and threw her against the bulkhead wall. For a moment it looked as if Swigart was going to flail at him; her gloved hands were balled into fists at her sides and her teeth were clenched in naked rage. ‘Get it straight!’ he shouted in her face. ‘I’m gonna need you out there, and I’m gonna need you chilly! You copy that?’

‘They beat me up!’ she yelled back at him; her voice was almost a childish wail. The bruise on her jaw was livid. ‘They punched my clock and tied me up in a goddamn closet!’

‘Then we’ll punch them back!’ Marks kept her arms pinioned against the wall.
‘After
we get rid of the bugs! I promise you, we’ll do it…but we gotta take care of business first! You got me?’

An annunciator buzzed and the green light above the hatch flashed on, indicating that the garage module had been depressurized. Marks barely glanced at the indicator. At least Boggs had done his job; he had cycled through the auxiliary airlock and had re-secured the outer doors so that Module One could be used by Marks for CAS suitup. He was out on the surface now, waiting to help Swigart get the Hornet airborne.

‘We don’t got time for this shit, Megan,’ Marks said, more calmly now. ‘Something out there scragged Charlie and now it’s coming our way. We’re next for lunch unless we wax ’em first. So TCOB, okay?’

Swigart took a deep breath and let it out; she seemed to relax a little. ‘Okay, okay. TCOB.’ She pushed Marks’ hands off her, then zipped up the overgarment and pulled a helmet out of a storage bin. ‘But when this is over, they’re history, man,’ she added as she pulled the helmet over her head and latched down the neck-ring.

Marks nodded grimly as he quickly adjusted the oxygen-nitrogen flow on her chest pack. When she had failed to report back to the monitor center, Commander L’Enfant had sent him to look for her. By the time he had found her in Module Three—bound and gagged, consciousness regained and madder than hell—the commander had called a full alert. Marks sympathized with his teammate; getting mugged by a couple of unarmed civilians was, in itself, a serious wound to one’s self-esteem. And considering that one of them had been this dude Nash…

‘I’ll be more than happy to help,’ he murmured. He pulled his Steyr off his shoulder and handed it by the strap to her. ‘And this time, ain’t gonna be no mercy. I’ll break his fucking neck.’

Swigart grinned and he grinned back at her, and for a few moments they were so tough that they managed to forget that they were both scared out of their wits. Because they
knew,
if only instinctively, that Charlie Akers must have gotten off a few rounds at whatever had killed him.

And it hadn’t slowed the bastard down. Not one inch.

Kawakami felt the slight pressure of the gun barrel at the back of his neck. ‘You don’t need that,’ he said softly.

‘I’m afraid I do, Dr. Kawakami,’ L’Enfant replied from behind him. However, the smooth metal bore lifted away from the scientist’s neck. ‘More comfortable? Good. Now get those cameras switched on so we can see what’s happening out there.’

The gun was Nash’s .38; L’Enfant had hidden it in a thigh pocket of his jumpsuit, and no one had known it was there until he had pulled it out, the moment that Marks had discovered Swigart bound and gagged in the storeroom. He had then ordered Boggs out onto the surface to seal the Module One outer hatch and assist Swigart as the Hornet’s ground crew. As soon as Marks and Swigart had stepped into the main airlock and he had received assurance from Boggs that he was outside the habitat, L’Enfant escorted Kawakami from Module Eight, leaving Isralilova behind in the monitor center to watch the screens.

Even then, the commander had left nothing to chance; once they were out in the corridor, L’Enfant had slammed shut the hatch to Module Eight and used his keycard to lock it from the outside, effectively imprisoning the Russian scientist inside the monitor center. Then he had ushered Kawakami down the corridor to Module Two.

As Shin-ichi Kawakami switched on the array of external TV monitors and selected from the array of cameras positioned around the habitat and the nearby pyramids, he could hear L’Enfant speaking into his headset. ‘Okay, Alphonse, how’re you doing there?’ he asked.

Kawakami noticed that L’Enfant, apparently without realizing it, had discarded the ridiculous code words he had used earlier. It seemed as if the commander had been shaken by Akers’ death more than he cared to admit. ‘Okay, depressurize Module One ASAP and let Swigart get to her craft.’

Kawakami reached for the headset that dangled around his neck, and immediately felt the sharp pressure of the gun return to the base of his skull. He hesitated for a moment, then slowly pulled the headset on. ‘If you’re going to kill me,’ he said, ‘go ahead, but I think you need all the help you can get right now.’

He gave him a sidelong glance; L’Enfant’s face was lost in the deep shadows of the darkened command module. After a second the gun lifted away from Kawakami’s head once again. ‘No tricks, Dr. Kawakami. I’m not playing games anymore.’

‘I never was, Commander L’Enfant.’ Kawakami touched the lobe of his headset and suddenly he could hear cross-talk on Channel One:

‘…
Okay, I’m in tight and powered-up. Internal electrical is copacetic. Now depressurize the garage and get out there…’

‘External CAS power off. Emergency air flush on Module One initiated…’

‘…CAS fast-start checklist commencing…’

‘…
I’ve got the shroud off your craft, lady, so hurry your ass up in there before I fly this fucking thing myself…’

‘…Primary servos check, hydraulics check, gun locked and loaded, auto TADS on/off circuit check…’

‘…Don’t you get near that thing, Boggs, or I’ll rip off your balls…’

‘…On-board ECM is hot and checks out. Watch your gauges, Megs, I’m popping it now…Don’t get bothered, lady, I’m just trying to…’

A sudden, sharp squeal of electronic feedback. Kawakami hissed painfully as he clapped his hands over his headphone until the main computer system automatically dampered the interference.

‘…
Watch it, Al, you almost fried the comlink. Rapid flush nearly zeroed-out, I’m opening the main doors…’

Kawakami lowered his hands. He glanced over his shoulder again at L’Enfant. ‘Your CAS has its own ECM system? Why would you…?’

‘Nothing you need to worry about.’ L’Enfant leaned forward; he was now visible in the half-light on the TV and computer screens. His face was rigid and dispassionate in the soft purplish glow. ‘Just a little surprise we had worked up for our friends down there. Now get me a picture from the City.’

Kawakami returned his attention to the console, switching from camera to camera. A montage of live-image TV pictures fell across the screens—a close-up of the habitat, a distant shot of the Face, a quarter-distance view of the D & M pyramid, a stern-angle picture of the
Akron—
until he found a shot of the C-4 Pyramid, taken from a camera positioned close to the primary entrance to the Labyrinth…

There. Shadow-cast, indistinct movement.

He caught his breath and froze the camera. Yes. Something was moving in the stone doorway. He zoomed in as much as he could; the image blurred and became indistinct, but the motion wasn’t lost. Kawakami breathlessly tapped a code into the computer keyboard and the image was enhanced.

A giant was coming out of the Labyrinth. It lurched forward on pillar-like legs into the cold red morning light of the Martian sky, dragging its enormous claws through the soil.

Just behind it, another was coming through the doorway.

And, on another screen, yet another juggernaut had just appeared as a grainy image, approaching from the direction of the D & M Pyramid.

Kawakami suddenly remembered the ancient Greek legend, of the monster that haunted the island of Crete. As in that legend, these creatures came from a labyrinth…only this time, there was more than one, and there was no Theseus around to slay them. But the similarity was too striking to be ignored.

‘We’ve found the minotaurs,’ he whispered.

‘Get away from that thing!’

W. J. Boggs was standing next to the F-210 Hornet; he had just pulled away the protective aluminized shroud and was bent over to remove the landing skid chocks when he heard Swigart’s voice through the comlink. He looked up to see the Navy pilot bounding toward him from the habitat, her assault rifle held at the ready as she made broad-jumping bunny-hops across the sand.

‘Easy, Lieutenant.’ He stood up from the forward skid, holding up his empty hands. ‘I was just getting your plane ready for…’

‘Nobody touches this craft but me. ‘Specially not some blimp jockey.’
Swigart ran to the stubby port wing, kicked the remaining chock out of the way, then glanced around the one-seater aircraft; Boggs noticed that she was particularly careful to check the nozzles of the rocket engines, as though she expected to find that he had deliberately clogged them with something. Apparently satisfied, she stepped around to the starboard side, passing the slogan
Eat Shit and Die!
which had been hand-painted beneath the cockpit, and began climbing up the fuselage rungs to the cockpit.

Swigart pushed open the tinted canopy, then hesitated for a moment, looking down into the tiny cockpit.
‘Damn hell,’
she muttered. She then half-turned on the top rung and held out her assault rifle to him.
‘No room in here for this,’
she said.
‘Take it
…
and don’t get any ideas.’

Boggs didn’t reach for it. ‘Gee, are you sure? I might decide to shoot you in the back or…’

‘Just take it, asshole!’
she snapped.
‘I don’t got time for this!’

‘Since you ask that way, sure…’ Boggs extended his hand and Swigart tossed the rifle to him. She gave him one last mean look, then scrambled the rest of the way into the cockpit. ‘Hope you have a real good flight.’

‘Fuck you.’
She reached up to grab the interior handle and slam the canopy down into place.
‘Now get out of here. Go play with your toy balloon or something.’

Boggs stepped back a few feet, carefully keeping away from the exposed muzzle of the Hornet’s 30mm cannon, then cocked his left fist upward to give her the bird. If Swigart noticed, she didn’t make any response; through his helmet, he could hear the thin whine of the F-210’s engines being powered-up for launch.

Okay, now what? He glanced toward the
Akron,
remembering the last time his ship had been caught in a fire zone. Toy balloon or not, the
Akron
was an even larger target than the old
Burroughs;
it was probably a good idea to get the dirigible out of here before the shooting started.

‘Goddamn,’ Boggs muttered. ‘I don’t get it, Waylon. How can the same shit happen to you twice in the same fucking place?’ Slinging the rifle over his shoulder, he began to bound toward the
Akron…

He suddenly heard, from the general vicinity of the City, the sound of popcorn popping: distant, muted by the thin atmosphere, yet unmistakably the echo of gunfire.

Startled, Boggs ground his boot heels into the sand; he fell over backwards, but barely noticed as he stared in the direction of the pyramids. Nash and Sasaki were missing from the habitat, and since Swigart had told L’Enfant that her weapon had been taken from her when they had made their escape…