Was Once a Hero (37 page)

“Thank
you, Mr. Mmok,” Duna said.
 
“I knew he
would be here.”

Mmok
looked at Fenaday, as did Shasti and the others.
 
Fenaday hated this part.
 
As if I
know what the rules are,
he thought.
 
“OK, let’s go in.
 
The objective
is the pit area.
 
Spread out, but always
keep everyone in sight.
 
Duna, stay next
to Telisan and right behind me.
 
We’ll
need your knowledge.”

“Such
as it is,” replied Duna.

They
started across the cavernous space, relieved to have a roof farther away from
their heads.
 
Small trailers and various
pieces of digging equipment provided cover as they moved over the underground
field.
 
The ground ahead consisted of
unrefined dirt and rock, clearly the site of the archeological excavation.
 
Dig sites pockmarked the area, small
depressions with grids of wire and hand tools nearby.
 

A
vertical slab of dark metal, ten meters tall dominated the area.
 
It appeared to be covered by some form of
script.
 
Gleaming in the half-light, it
looked new enough to have been placed there only yesterday.
 
Yet, as they approached it, Fenaday felt an
overwhelming impression of age.

Fenaday
leaned against a trailer that might have belonged to Creda and looked up at the
obelisk.
 
“Can you read it, Belwin?”
 
Obviously the product of a high technology,
it showed every sign of having been there since this level of Barjan Deep was
inhabited.
 
The bottom of it was not
fully excavated.
 
A resemblance to a
grave marker suddenly struck him.

“A
little,” said the excited Enshari, back in his field again.
 
The expedition was both a joy and a curse to the
scholar.
 
“It speaks of the burial of a
great being.
 
There is something I cannot
translate, maybe a name.
 
‘We could not
destroy he who was the greatest of us.’
 
More I cannot read.
 
Ah, wait,
this says, ‘He saved us from darkness.’”

“Darkness,”
came the word, rumbling
through their minds, accompanied by a sound like a waterfall in the
distance.
 
They spun back to back, hearts
pounding, mouths open, eyes searching the dark.
 
The robots did not react, though the HCRs turned toward the spacers, as
though puzzled by their sudden movement.

Fenaday
looked at the others.
 
“You heard it
too?”

“Yes,”
said Duna, Shasti and Telisan simultaneously.
 
Li and Connery nodded, eyes darting around as they stared at the shadows
beyond the reach of their lights.

“The
robots,” said Fenaday.

Mmok
looked at him.
 
“They didn’t hear it,” he
hissed.
 
“They report no sound, no spoken
word.”

Cobalt
stood next to Fenaday.

“Confirm,”
Fenaday demanded of the robot.
 
“Did you
hear a non-team member speak the word, darkness?
 
Do you hear a sound like a waterfall?”

Cobalt
turned soulless doll’s eyes to him.
 
“There have been no such sounds,” replied the robot in its flat,
metallic tones.

“Darkness,”
it came again,
stronger.
 
In their minds, faint and
fuzzy images began to form.
 
Words and
concepts tumbled in a bewildering kaleidoscope.
 
Fenaday saw a towering figure, almost glowing, standing on a rocky
plain.
 
He could not see any detail to
the giant.
 
Huge bolts of raw power
rolled from the figure, filling up the sky, boiling away clouds and air.

Words
came too.
 
“
Darkness, darkness closes, the end draws near.
 
Made the change, became the One.
 
Raised the soldiers of light and air from my
new mind.
 
Slew the
Others
,
the Dark Ones, drove them from our worlds.
 
The final battle, the madness, the madness, the madness.
”

It
faded.
 
For a second, Fenaday became
aware of himself again, crawling on the floor like a child.
 
He steeled himself to resist, but his
consciousness fled as the thing spoke again.

“Madness… destroyed my own.
 
Captured, buried.
”
 
Suddenly it became a scream.
“Buried.
 
The little people, deaf to me, buried, worse, worse… forgotten.”
 
A blast of hatred filled him, a hatred of the
Enshari.
 
Suddenly, as if a switch were
thrown, the psychic barrage ceased.
 
Fenaday and the others lay on the floor, gasping for breath.
 
The presence they felt was gone.
 
No, not gone.
 
As they struggled to their feet, they could hear the distant
waterfall-like projection.
 
It faded,
quickly becoming so dim as to be nearly unnoticeable.

The
robots, standing over the humans, aware of the assault on their soft-skinned
companions, couldn’t detect either a vector or a means.
 
They could launch no counterattack.
 

Mmok
began to update the machines.
 
He was
clearly rattled and whispered instead of subvocalizing.
 
“Telepathic assault from the pit.
 
No counterattack at this time.”
 
The robots accepted the impossible with
mechanical equanimity.
 
Extra-sensory
perception was the stuff of labs and telepathy only a word, until this moment

Fenaday
looked at Shasti.
 
She nodded back, her
usual equanimity reasserting itself.
 

“Everyone
else, stay where you are, especially you, Duna.”
 
Fenaday turned toward the hole.
 
With Shasti on his left side, he approached
the section where a hole had been bored through into the chamber below.
 
They slid on their bellies as they reached
the spot.
 
Then, with a last look at each
other and a nod, they peered over, shining their battle lanterns at the widest
beam.

A
Titan’s corpse lay on a platform twenty-five meters below them.
 
Had it stood, its head would have poked out
of the hole.
 
A head the size of an
aircar, or a small truck.
 
It had gone to
bone an eon ago.
 
Its skull looked up at
them, from three empty eye sockets big enough for a man to step through.
 
It had been bipedal, but nothing about the
skeleton was familiar.
 
Arms reached past
the knees, the feet ended in disc-like hooves.

This
was no ordinary casket.
 
The chamber
below them stretched out for at least tens of meters, from all sides of the
platform.
 
Lights and mechanical movement
played around some of the perimeter and near the platform.

“Perhaps,”
whispered Shasti, “it’s some form of suspended animation or stasis.
 
It has the look of such equipment from the
early days of spaceflight.”

“Or a
diagnostic bed,” he whispered back.
 
“It
looks like that as well.”

“Whatever
it is,” she continued, “it failed our friend down there.
 
He has been dead for an age.”

“Yet,
something down there is still alive somehow.
 
You felt it too.
 
The body may be
dead, but something is still active in the chamber.
 
Look at the machinery.”

“The
ceiling of this chamber is two meters thick,” added Shasti.
 
“I’ve never seen an alloy like this.
 
I assumed they used a heavy military laser to
cut this meter-and-a-half hole.”

Fenaday
waved to Mmok.
 
The half-cyborg came up
to the hole the same way they had.
 
Mmok
looked into the hole only briefly.
 
He
cursed and drew back from it, unnerved.
 

Fenaday
began to fear the nuclear device they brought with them might be
inadequate.
 
He had never believed in ghosts—despite
his Irish heritage—and didn’t now.
 
He
thought some vestige of the life force of the Titan might exist in the
computers and machinery shifting around the monster’s bed.
 
Perhaps the attacks originated in the
machinery, but he didn’t believe it.
 
There was too much malice and hatred in what he felt from his encounters
with their enemy.
 

“Mmok,”
he asked, “if we fire off the bomb outside the chamber, will it do the job?”

“How
the hell should I know?” Mmok snapped.
 
“This metal is meters thick so the blast will go up and out
easiest.
 
That’s physics.
 
The hole should still admit plenty of blast,
but I don’t know anything about this equipment.
 
I can tell you this metal is harder than anything we make.
 
I’ve had Cobalt doing a spectral
analysis.
 
I don’t know what they used to
cut this hole with but it would normally be mounted on a battlecruiser.

“This
is new alien equipment, from a race we don’t know.
 
Something spoke to us telepathically.
 
That’s been bullshit until now.
 
What else can they do that we don’t know is
possible?
 
Force fields?
 
How deep does this installation go?
 
Maybe all the really critical stuff is below
another floor made of this metal.
 
If
that’s the case, then there is no way this small nuke can cut through another
layer of this alloy.
 
I’d need a shaped
charge.

“The
best way,” concluded the grim half-cyborg, “is to put the bomb down in
there.
 
This is our one shot.
 
It has to work.
 
If you cook off the nuke up here and it
doesn’t do the job, then this whole area will be gone.
 
We’ll never be able to get to back to this
chamber to try again.”

Fenaday
lay on his back, away from the hole.
 
“I
was afraid you were going to say that.”
 
It was obvious to him now.
 
They
had to lower the warhead into the crypt itself.
 
They had no idea how much blast was needed to accomplish their
mission.
 
Putting the weapon in the
crypt, contained by the incredible walls of the chamber, would greatly increase
the effect and perhaps even protect the areas of Barjan over them.

They
retreated from the hole, rejoining the others.
 
Fenaday sketched the details of what they had seen.
 
He sent Telisan for a look.
 
Connery and Li rested on their guns and
stayed on guard for Shellycoats.
 
Fenaday
did not want Duna near the hole, despite the little scholar’s curiosity.

“I
want to put the warhead in there.
 
We
lower it in.
 
I’ll arm it, then you’ll
pull me out, and we run like hell.”

Telisan
stared at him as if he had lost his mind.
 
“Why not arm it up here and lower it in?”

Mmok
answered.
 
“We don’t know what sort of
defenses are in that pit, either mechanical or cybernetic.
 
The bomb might draw any sort of attack as we
lower it in.
 
Once it is armed, there is
a distinct chance it could be triggered by an EMP, computer virus or even
mechanical damage.
 
The other problem is
this is a jury-rigged detonator, a bunch of cannibalized stuff from other
systems.
 
I don’t want to lower it down
there and have to wonder if it is going to go off because some bump or jolt on
the way down disconnected something.
 
It
would be embarrassing to be walking back here, wondering why it didn’t go off
and get caught in a delayed blast.”

“No,
the only safe way is to lower it, check it, then set the timer once we’re sure
it’s working,” said Fenaday.
 
“Can we use
an HCR?”

Mmok
shook his head.
 
“No.
 
They aren’t made for that sort of work.
 
I don’t have that level of control over their
hands.
 
The interlocks on the timer are
too delicate.
 
If I’d thought of it
before…” he shrugged.

“So,”
said Fenaday, fear drying his mouth, “down I go.”
 

Mmok
looked over at him.
 
“Better you than
me,” he said with rare sympathy.

“
Madness,”
the word whispered through
their minds.
 
Terror returned, and they
all froze.
 
Only silence followed.

“I
don’t believe that the creature, the machinery, say the consciousness of this
place, is aware of us,” Fenaday said.
 
“Else, why aren’t we dead?”

“Your
senility theory, perhaps,” Telisan speculated.