Paw-Prints Of The Gods (26 page)

“I’ll be happier when
I’ve confirmed that for myself,” Kedesh remarked. “Last time he
disappeared, he turned up at the Dhusarians’ secret hideaway here
on Falsafah, so I was sent to keep an eye on the ball. The arrival
of those so-called monks knocked me for six.”

“So you are a spy,”
remarked Ravana, but her thoughts were elsewhere. “Cyberclones
can’t think very well for themselves and have to be told what to
do. The two I saw have been given names from the Hindu zodiac,
which sounds like something Taranis might do. But if he was alive
and at their dome controlling them I think I’d know. This may sound
silly, but the last time we met I could feel his anger through my
implant. That of the clones, too.”

Kedesh looked
intrigued. “You mean like telepathy?”

“Like in
science-fiction stories?” Ravana managed a weak smile. “No, nothing
like that. It was far more vague, as if I was sensing emotions
rather than thoughts.”

“Cyberclones are part
machine,” mused Kedesh. “They may give off signals or weird alien
pheromones your implant can somehow detect. Speaking of implants,
I’m stumped as to why Artorius has one. Didn’t he say he’s from
Avalon? I though it was only the Que Qiao administration in Epsilon
Eridani that allows childhood implantation.”

“Allows? Insists, more
like,” Ravana retorted. “I did wonder whether Artorius is another
victim of a fake destiny, in that Taranis planned to use him to
make the Falsafah prophecy in the
Isa-Sastra
come true in a
way he could control.”

“Although Artorius
doesn’t have a special-forces implant like you do,” Kedesh pointed
out. She smiled at Ravana’s startled expression. “Yes, I checked.
Weirdly enough, he seems to sport an implant of the type the
American government developed for their space exploration
programme, not a Que Qiao one. Very odd.”

Ravana pursed her lip
and fell silent. Back in Newbrum, a morbid fascination had led her
to study implant technology. The discovery that the devices quickly
became embedded, using nanotechnology to exude tiny filaments
across a host’s brain, made her feel sick for weeks. She wondered
if Kedesh’s own implant was anything out of the ordinary.

“Taranis had an
implant,” she mused. “I think that’s how I could sense his
presence, just like I could with the cyberclones. He was able to do
things I didn’t think was possible. A friend of mine had a birdsuit
with inbuilt artificial muscles and Taranis was able to take
control of it and use it against him. It scared the life out of all
of us!”

“You too have that
power!” Kedesh remarked. She answered Ravana’s look of surprise
with a wry grin. “Special-forces implants can use what they call
‘back doors’ in AI chips, whether or not the chip has a proper
implant interface or not.”

Ravana thought about
this. “When I was on Yuanshi recently I found there were all sorts
of locks and things I could operate, which others with standard
implants couldn’t even see,” she said. “It was the same with the
doors at the Dhusarians’ dome. But those put proper images into my
mind that I could mentally press, if you know what I mean.”

“It’s a little-known
fact that almost all security devices made by Que Qiao have secret
overrides that can be remotely operated by agents with
special-forces implants,” said Kedesh. “But I’m talking about
something quite different. There’s this chap on Avalon who was a
Que Qiao agent before he double-crossed them and went on the run.
He’s well known for bowling the odd googly during
Gods of
Avalon
. He plays a blinder with his implant to take control of
whatever he likes; props, robots, terraforming machines, anything.
The authorities don’t have a chance of getting near him without
risking a nasty incident live on holovid.”

“Was he the one who
pretended to be wizard Merlin?” Artorius piped up. Kedesh glanced
over her shoulder and smiled, unaware the boy had been
listening.

Ravana frowned.
“You’re both making this up.”

“Not at all!” said
Kedesh. “Next time you’re on Avalon, ask around.”

Artorius went back to
his slapping game with Stripy. Ravana thought about when she had
used her implant in the rescue of her father from Sumitra Palace;
breaching security had been a simple matter of pressing mental
switches just as Kedesh described. However, the first time she had
experienced the power of her implant had been before she even knew
it was there. An accident left her dangling on a rope inside a
sealed vertical shaft, but somehow she had been able to visualise a
nearby airlock control and flex the image in her mind.

“I think I know what
you mean,” she said slowly. “There was this time...”

She tailed off,
distracted by a flashing red symbol on the scanner console screen
that faded almost as soon as it appeared. Startled, Ravana peered
through the windscreen and to her surprise saw a windowless
concrete bunker nestling in a crevice on the edge of the valley
floor. The headlamps briefly raised a glint from the solar panel
array upon the roof, then the bunker slipped past back into the
gloom. The narrowing valley became a canyon. They passed close to a
rocky outcrop and noticed for the first time how the cliff edges
were covered in pale, wispy threads. Puzzled, Ravana looked ahead
and stiffened as a dark shape scuttled across the ground ahead at
the edge of their headlight beams.

“I don’t like the look
of this,” muttered Kedesh. “I’ll try infra-red.”

She tapped at the
console to change the scanner mode, reached to the holovid display
and switched on the infra-red cameras. The screen lit up in a
ghastly shade of green.

Ravana gasped in
horror. The valley ahead crawled with huge, eight-legged creatures
that were the stuff of nightmares. Infra-red revealed the
glistening shine of bulbous carapaces, the glint of multiple eyes
and stilt-like hairy legs of creatures that had no right standing
as tall as they did. Below the holovid screen, the scanner in its
new mode was suddenly alive with countless red blobs, all
congregating upon the transport.

“Ashtapadas,” Ravana
whispered. “Hundreds of them!”

Artorius and the greys
came forward to look. Ravana almost jumped out of her skin when the
boy promptly shrieked in her ear.

“Giant spiders!” he
yelled, pointing. “They’re everywhere!”

“Thraak!”

“Fwack fwack!”

“Please!” shouted
Kedesh. “Calm down, all of you!”

“How can they be
here?” wailed Ravana, terrified. “The air’s poisonous!”

“But perfectly safe
for cats with yellow eyes?” suggested Kedesh.

Ravana glared at her.
Kedesh shoved the speed control lever forward and the transport
leapt forward as if its tail was on fire. Ravana shrieked and fell
back in her seat. Through the windows, the web-strewn walls of the
canyon became a blur. A huge black shape, the size of a cow but
with a confusing contortion of legs, suddenly loomed large in the
headlamps. There was a thump and the transport battered the hideous
creature aside.

“Is that your plan?”
cried Ravana. “Ram our way out?”

“Do you have a better
idea?”

“I’m frightened,”
moaned Artorius. “I hate spiders.”

“Join the club,”
muttered Ravana. She pulled Artorius onto her lap and held him
tight, more for her own reassurance than the boy’s own.

“Atmospheric sensors
show unusually high oxygen levels outside,” Kedesh remarked wryly,
raising her voice above the harsh whine of the transport’s stressed
engine. “We may have stumbled into some sort of genetic-engineering
experiment. Or maybe they’re cyberclones or machines and not really
alive at all.”

Ravana shrieked again.
A spider with legs splayed a metre either side dropped from nowhere
and splattered heavily across the transport’s windscreen. Artorius
whimpered and clutched her ever tighter. The impact left the
windscreen smeared with mangled spindly limbs, ragged chunks of
spider carapace and blood.

“My mistake,” said
Kedesh. She switched on the windscreen wipers. “They are real live
creatures after all. Well, except that one.”

The windscreen cleared
just in time for them to see another spider hit the side of the
transport and spin away into the shadows. The canyon walls either
side were thickly shrouded with webs, down which a torrent of black
shapes cascaded to the valley floor. Two large spiders scuttled
before them and were promptly crushed beneath the transport’s
wheels, but as the vehicle bounced over the crumpled bodies there
came an ominous thud, followed by a series of mechanical clunks.
The powerful purr of the engine suddenly changed into a growl both
coarse and laboured. The clanking became insistent and Ravana’s
blood ran cold when she realised the transport was starting to slow
down.

“This is not good,”
Kedesh said. She had gone very pale.

“Make them go away!”
cried Artorius.

“Fwack!”

“Thraak thraak!” added
Nana.

“I’m sure we’re quite
safe inside here,” Kedesh reassured them.

A spider, some three
metres high, crashed down the valley wall in a flurry of legs.
Before they could steer clear, the creature hit them squarely above
the port-side front wheel with a force that made the transport
lurch. Ravana screamed as a giant eye loomed large in the window to
her left, then again when she saw the crack in the glass and the
large dent in the panel below. A warning buzzer sounded and red
lights on the console began to flash.

“We’re going to be
battered to death!” cried Ravana.

“Unless the air
poisons us first,” Kedesh said, speaking far too casually. She
silenced the buzzer and stared hard at the console. “That last
impact cracked the hull. Life-support is holding for now but we’re
using up oxygen reserves fast. There should be an emergency sealant
kit and masks in the locker at your feet.”

Ravana looked to where
the woman pointed, yanked open the locker door and found a rack of
survival masks with tiny oxygen cylinders attached. She quickly
handed a mask each to Artorius, Kedesh and the greys, took one for
herself and reached for what she thought was a sealant canister,
only to find herself holding a stubby-barrelled plasma pistol.
Ravana caught Kedesh’s frown and hurriedly returned the gun, found
the canister and pointed the nozzle at the crack in the window at
her side. A quick pull on the trigger resulted in a satisfying
slurping noise and a sticky smear of sealant upon the crack.

“There’s another one!”
shouted Artorius.

A huge spider scuttled
along the valley floor beside them, easily matching their
diminishing speed. Ravana shuddered, feeling nauseous at the
dreadful sight of giant pincers below plate-sized eyes. Without
warning, Kedesh stomped on the brake and the spider shot ahead. The
woman shoved the speed control lever forward and rammed the
transport into the spider’s bulbous abdomen, sending it spinning
away into the shadows. Kedesh’s triumphant grin faltered the moment
she saw the fresh crack in the windscreen.

“Thraak!” exclaimed
Nana. “Thraak thraak!”

“We can’t go on like
this,” said Ravana. Nana’s outburst’s were not helping. The
translator had filled her head with a bizarre image of giant
arachnids standing defiant over a line of chained slaves, both
human and grey. “There’s too many! The scanner shows hundreds of
the damn things, all coming for us!”

“You’re right,” said
Kedesh. She slipped from her seat and let the transport roll on,
only now there was no one at the controls. “Take the wheel.”

“What are you doing?”
In a panic, Ravana reached across and grabbed the steering wheel
just in time to avoid a large boulder. “We’ll crash!”

“Just drive the bloody
thing! They’re not bowling me out in this innings.”

Startled, Ravana
extracted herself from Artorius’ clutches, dumped the sealant gun
into his lap and slipped into the pilot’s seat. Kedesh hurried to
the rear of the passenger compartment. When Ravana glanced around a
few moments later, she saw her struggling into a survival suit
whilst trying to pick up her helmet and open a storage locker all
at the same time. There was a thud and another spider fell crushed
beneath the wheels, rocking the transport and almost knocking the
woman from her feet.

“Keep your eye on the
game!” snapped Kedesh.

“Sorry,” muttered
Ravana.

Kedesh finished
fastening her suit and began strapping to her legs what Ravana was
surprised to recognise as cricketing shin pads. The woman gave her
a wink, slotted her helmet into place, then reached into the locker
and picked up a well-worn cricket bat. Ravana stared in disbelief
as Kedesh took a few practice swings with the bat before laying it
aside. Returning to the locker, she withdrew a long black cylinder
with brutal military overtones. Artorius’ eyes widened when he saw
the weapon in the woman’s hands.

“Fwack!” cried Stripy,
impressed.

“Is that a plasma
cannon?” Artorius asked in awe.

“It’s a portable
recoilless electro-thermal accelerator,” said Kedesh. Her voice
sounded muffled through the helmet and Ravana switched the suit’s
intercom to the console speakers. “So yes, it’s a plasma cannon.
Ravana, find a clear spot and stop. Stay at the controls until I
get back. If I get back,” she murmured to herself.

“You’re going
outside?” exclaimed Ravana, in disbelief.

“No, I’m wearing this
suit as a fashion statement,” snapped Kedesh. “Ready?”

Trembling, Ravana
nodded and brought the transport to a clanking halt. A cluster of
dark long-limbed shapes quickly appeared at the limit of the
headlamps and began to advance. Looking pale, Artorius huddled down
in his seat and held the sealant canister out towards the
windscreen as if it were super-strength bug spray.

“They’re coming!”
called Ravana.