The Wiz Biz II: Cursed & Consulted (38 page)

Gilligan glanced back at Stigi and didn't say anything.

Karin scanned the plain. "At least there do not seem to be any robots out there."

Fine, Gilligan thought, so it's a killing zone. 

"Okay, but remember what I told you. We keep spread out, drop at the least sign of trouble and be on the lookout for mines."

Karin nodded. They slithered down the hill, collected Stigi and started out onto the plain.

Now what was that all about?
Glandurg thought as he watched the humans and the dragon go. He signaled his own group to assemble and they too started out on the plain.

The plain before them was not only flat, it was wired. There were pressure sensors in the soil, motion sensors concealed in rocks, capacitance sensors masquerading as bushes and an invisible network of radar, laser and ultrasonic beams lacing back and forth so tightly not even a field mouse could move without being detected.

Neither group was more than a hundred yards onto the flat ground before they were picked up, marked as hostile and targeted.

In pillboxes disguised as hillocks of red earth, shutters slid off firing ports and machine guns poked out their ugly black snouts. Artillery buried in the base of the castle swung around as automatic loaders delivered shells and powder charges to their gaping breeches. Firing impulses raced at the speed of light along buried wires to fields of mines.

Suddenly the earth erupted in flame and smoke and flying pieces of metal.

"What was that?" Karin asked.

"Barrage," Gilligan told her shortly. "About a mile to our right. Come on. Let's move!"

"What was that?" Glandurg demanded as the explosions and gunfire rang out over the plain.

"Dunno," Snorri said. "But it's about half a league over yonder." He pointed to the column of smoke and dirt boiling up well to the dwarves' left.

"Well, let's not wait around to find out, shall we?"

The wiring closet had been heavily guarded because it was the concentration point for the sensors and fire control systems for the outer defenses of the entire southern quadrant of the castle.

The wiring was automatically monitored, but the computer doing the monitoring could only detect breaks and bad connections. It wasn't bright enough to realize that connections were being switched at the rate of hundreds per minute. So it didn't go to the backup.

Not that it would have mattered. The gremlins had been at the backup all morning.

"What the hell?" Craig muttered as the alert box popped up on his screen. Quickly he called up the display for the outer sensor array. The map showed possibly hostile contacts at half a dozen shifting points in the southern quadrant. They were being fired on but as fast as one winked out another appeared somewhere else.

Not another herd of those damn grazing things,
he thought and called up the security camera displays. The cameras in the area showed a wild jumble of confused flickering images, but the ones mounted on the castle walls showed several tiny figures out on the plain. But they weren't any place close to the target zones.

"Shit!" The damn system was messed up again. He switched over to manual control and ordered a battery to fire on one of the groups of dots.

The guns fired, but the shells landed a couple of miles from where they were supposed to be. He tried to correct his aim and a different battery fired at a point well behind the targets. In rapid succession the same command fired other batteries.

Craig growled in frustration. He switched to his backup control system, only to get a message on the screen saying it was inoperative. He gritted his teeth and tried to sort out the mess by experimenting with the controls. But the demon in the wiring closet was changing connections at random much faster than Craig could fire ranging shots. At that point coincidence could be defined as the same command firing the same weapon twice in succession at the same target.

"Shit!"
Craig yelled. Then he reached over and sounded the general alarm. The lights flickered and one wall of the room slid back to reveal a wall-sized map of the castle and its approaches. "Guards to the perimeter," he barked into a microphone. "We have intruders approaching from the south."

Then he threw himself back in his chair, crossed his arms and watched the screens. "All right, suckers. Let's see you evade that!"

Slowly and cautiously Wiz and his friends made their way toward the center of the castle. They saw no more of the live guards, but several times they had to hide from heavily armed robot sentries. Fortunately they were so noisy the quartet could hear them coming and June was particularly adept at finding hiding places.

Finally they found the elevator.

Wiz eyed the number painted on the wall across from the elevator doors. "From the looks of this, we're pretty low in the castle. I'll bet what we want is further toward the top."

Off down the corridor there was a distinct
clank clank clank
.

"Robot coming. Everyone in quick." They piled in and Wiz pressed the button. "Okay, going up."

The elevator doors jerked towards each other, slammed back and then jerked together. The car twitched spasmodically, almost throwing its occupants into a heap.

"Maybe," Wiz amended. But the car began to rise, slowly and jerkily at first and then faster and jerkily. All four of them braced themselves against the sides of the car and tried their best to stay upright.

"Hey," Danny said after a few minutes, "isn't there something about being trapped in an elevator?"

"Huh?"

"In the spy movies. Aren't people always getting trapped in elevators?"

"Don't be morbid."

"I'm not being morbid, I'm being practical."

"If you're so damn practical why didn't you think of that before we got on the frigging elevator?"

Danny just shrugged.

"Wait a minute," Wiz said, looking up, "there is something we can do. Jerry, see if you can reach the ceiling of the car."

Jerry extended his hand experimentally. "Sure. Now what?"

"See if you can find the service hatch."

Jerry prodded at the ceiling as the car continued its jerky climb. Finally one of the ceiling sections flipped back to reveal an opening perhaps two feet square.

"Okay," Wiz said, "we climb up on top of the car."

"Is that safe?" Jerry asked dubiously.

"Safer than meeting a reception committee. Now hoist Danny up, will you?"

With Jerry's help Danny easily wriggled through the hatch. June followed lithely with a slight assist from Danny. Wiz followed June with an easy leap and a quick chin up. That left Wiz, Danny and June on top of the elevator and Jerry in the car.

Since Jerry weighed nearly as much as Wiz and Danny put together this presented a problem. Since Jerry was not exactly light on his feet, it presented a serious problem. The first attempt to hoist Jerry through the opening nearly pulled Wiz and Danny back into the car. Finally, Wiz dropped back into the car to push from below while Danny heaved from above. With much tugging and shoving, they were able to get Jerry onto the roof of the car.

Then the elevator ground to a stop and the doors started to open.

Wiz leaped for the hatch and wriggled through just as the doors ground open. Before they could close the panel two goblin guards strode into the elevator with drawn laser pistols. As the four humans held their breath the guards looked around suspiciously, their weapons tracking their head movements.

One snorted like a bull and drew in a deep breath, as if testing the air. His companion grunted something to him and he exhaled with a grunt. They looked around again, but they did not look up.

Finally the pair backed out of the car and the doors closed. After a moment, the elevator creaked and jerked and started upward again.

Wiz let out a deep breath and nearly collapsed with relief.

"It's the helmets," Jerry said after a moment.

"What?"

"The helmets. They're so ornate the guards have trouble looking up." He shook his head. "Bad design. Like a lot of this place."

"Personally I think it's great design," Wiz said sharply. "It just saved our bacon."

"Aw, we could have taken them easy," Danny said. "A few lightning bolts and, hey—" He made a gun with his finger and mimed shooting at the door. There was a flash of blue spark from his fingertip and a large scorch mark appeared on the wall of the shaft.

Danny looked down at his finger in surprise. "I didn't know it was loaded."

"Well, holster it. And remember we're just a little bit outnumbered here. We don't start throwing fireballs until we absolutely have to."

"Get ready then," Jerry said, looking up at the indicator over the door. "We may have to. We're almost there."

Quickly the three magicians arranged themselves to have the best field of fire when the door opened. All three of them muttered preparation spells so they could come out shooting if they had to. Then they waited.

The elevator creaked and swayed, jerked twice more and then expired with a sigh. The doors started to open, slammed closed, and then slid all the way open with a despairing groan—leaving them looking at a blank stone wall.

Wiz looked down through the hatch and out the open door. At the bottom of the door there was a narrow slit of corridor visible, perhaps eighteen inches wide. The elevator had gone almost completely past their intended floor.

"Shit!" Wiz muttered and all of them quickly dropped through the hatch into the car.

Jerry reached out and punched the elevator button. The car lurched and groaned again, but did not move.

"Reminds me of the elevator at a Star Trek convention in Denver," he said.

"We'll have to squeeze out through that space then," Wiz said.

Jerry eyed the slit. "I don't know if I've got that much octopus blood in me," he said dubiously.

"Maybe there are working controls outside," Wiz said as he knelt to slip through the crack. He eased through the opening and felt for the floor with his feet. The elevator was just high enough that he couldn't keep his weight resting on his elbows in the car and touch the floor at the same time. He eased out further and for a terrible second kicked his legs over empty air in the elevator shaft. Then his left foot caught the floor and he eased himself down on solid footing. He sighed and turned around to face down the corridor.

And found himself face-to-face with a goblin guard.

The guard roared a challenge and swung his halberd two-handed. Wiz ducked and the halberd knocked chips of stone off the door jamb. Snarling, the guard swung the weapon back over his head and down toward the crouching programmer. Instinctively Wiz lunged forward as the blade descended. He hit the goblin in the knees just as the halberd came down with the full force of the monster's body behind it. The combination overbalanced him, and the guard went sprawling headfirst down the elevator shaft, screaming as he fell.

Wiz collapsed forward on his face, sucking great lungfuls of air. Somewhere in the distance a siren began to wail. Behind him he heard his three companions drop to the floor of the corridor. Then Jerry and Danny reached down and pulled him to his feet.

"How'd you do that?" Jerry panted, red-faced from the tight squeeze.

"I don't know," Wiz gasped. "Now run!"

The four of them pounded down the corridor, turned a corner and headed off in what Wiz hoped was the right direction. After several hundred yards they ducked into a side corridor to catch their breath.

All four of them leaned up against the wall gasping. Off in the distance, faintly, they could still hear the siren. Then another siren sounded and another and another until the castle reverberated to the sound.

"Guards to the perimeter," the speakers in the wall above them squawked. "We have intruders approaching from the south."

"What's that?" Danny panted.

"I think," Wiz said slowly between gulps of air, "that all hell just came unshirted."

The Wizard's Keep boiled with activity. From the tallest towers the trumpeters blew "Assembly" over and over. Down on the drill ground armored guardsmen fell in rank by rank while the drummers beat the Call To Arms on the great bass drums that hung by the reviewing stand. From the aeries below wing after wing of dragons rose and circled and grouped themselves into larger formations.

In the Watch Room every post was manned. The Watchers on the main floor murmured into communications crystals or peered into scrying glasses for some sign of the enemy. On the wall behind them glowed a huge map of the northern end of castle island, casting an eerie bluish glow over the proceedings.

On the dais at the opposite end of the room groups of wizards hovered over their own crystals and muttered spells and incantations. Bal-Simba was there, seated in his raised chair where he could watch and command everything. Judith was there, seated next to Moira at a small table to Bal-Simba's right. Arianne was at his left and next to her, the elf duke.

Aelric stood tall and terrible in shining silver mail of elven metal. His helm, intricately and carefully wrought, extended down over his cheeks and neck, unlike the conical helms of the Council's guardsmen. But save for the nose guard it left his face unprotected.

"Is there aught else?" Bal-Simba asked the people clustered around him. Arianne and Moira shook their heads and Aelric said nothing.

"My Lady Judith?"

"We're as ready as we'll ever be. The dragon riders have got the new spread-spectrum communications crystals so they can cut through the jamming, the guardsmen have the last of the special weapons and the scouting demons are deploying now." She took a deep breath. "It's going to be rough, but Craig's in a world of hurt unless he can make a saving roll."

"Saving roll?"

"Uh, unless he gets lucky."

Aelric smiled without warmth. "Fear not, Lady; luck they shall not have this day."

Bal-Simba looked around the group once more. "Aught else? Then we are ready."