Hellworld (Deathstalker Prelude)

  They should be all right. The esper might not have much dirtside experience, but she was rated as a first-class telepath. Whatever else happened, nothing was going to sneak up on her. And when it came to physical threats, the two marines should be able to deal with anything stupid enough to annoy them. Their records had made impressive reading. If their luck had been a little better, and their criminal tendencies a little more subtle, they could have ended up as heroes rather than Hell Squad fodder. Still, for all their faults they were both experienced men, and had seen combat duty on more than one alien world. And while ordinarily Hunter wouldn’t have trusted either of them further than he could spit into the wind, they were both bright enough to realise they were going to need the esper’s help just to stay alive on Wolf IV. They’d look after her. He remembered his encounter with the dweller in the water hole, and smiled wryly. The two marines would have made short work of that. Assuming they’d have been stupid enough to get caught by it. If there was one thing their records agreed on, it was that they trusted nothing and no one; not even themselves. Which was just the attitude they’d need to survive on Wolf IV.

  The huge standing stones drew nearer, and bit by bit Hunter began to see hints of shape and meaning in their design. From the distance of the ridge, he hadn’t realised just how big and solid they were. All three statues were the best part of a hundred feet high, and ten feet in diameter. Each statue had to weigh countless tons, and the back of Hunter’s neck prickled uneasily as he tried to figure out how and why the damn things had been brought out onto the plain, miles from anywhere. He finally came to a halt before the first of the huge statues, and Williams and the Investigator drew up beside him. The three of them stared in silence for a long time.

  “Could these be a representation of the creatures that built the city?” said Williams eventually.

  “If they are,” said Krystel, “we’d better hope those aren’t the correct dimensions.”

  The statues stared impassively out over the empty plain. Their details had been blurred and distorted by wind and rain, or at least Hunter hoped they had, but the three forms were still clear enough to be both fascinating and unnerving. It was hard to get a grasp on them. Each great twisting body rested on two thick elephantine legs, but there was also a nest of curling tentacles that hung from the waist to the ground. There were two sets of arms, separately jointed, that ended in clusters of smaller tentacles. Various openings spotted the body, like so many open mouths or wounds. Hunter had to fight down a sudden urge to put his hand into one of the openings, to see how deep it went. The bulky head was a nightmare mess of harsh ridges and planes, set around a gaping maw studded with thick teeth. There was no trace of any eyes, but a series of slits and shadows at the top of the head might have been something similar. The great bulk of each statue should have made the alien creatures look slow and sluggish, but instead there was an overriding impression of strength and speed and ferocity. Hunter found his hand had dropped automatically to the gun at his side. He smiled sourly, but left his hand where it was.

  “Nightmares, carved in stone,” muttered Williams, glancing at the other two statues. “Horrid-looking things, aren’t they? How old do you suppose these carvings are, Investigator?”

  “Hundreds of years,” said Krystel. “Maybe more. They’ve obviously been exposed to the elements for some time…. I’ll give you another question, Doctor. Why were they left out here, so far from the city? A warning, perhaps? To mark some tribal boundary?”

  “Maybe this area wasn’t so deserted when the statues were erected,” said Hunter. “We don’t know it was always like this. Personally, I’m not so sure these statues are meant to represent the creatures who built the city. It’s more likely they’re some kind of legendary demon, or god. I mean, look at the body. Legs and tentacles? It doesn’t make sense. No, these statues look to me more like a combination of creatures, rather than some naturally evolved being.” He looked away, and studied the sinking sun for a moment. “We’re not going to make the city before night. We’ll make camp here, and carry on in the morning. The ridge and the statues should provide some shelter from the elements.”

  “Are you sure we’ll be safe out here, on our own?” said Williams, looking nervously around him. “I mean, at least the pinnace had a force screen….”

  “We have a portable screen, Doctor, and a good collection of proximity mines,” said Krystel. “You’ll be safe enough, never fear.”

  They moved into the wide semicircle before the three statues, and began emptying out their backpacks. Krystel collected all the proximity mines and set about planting them in a circle around the statues, establishing a basic perimeter. Hunter set up a field lantern, and soft golden light spilled out in a wide circle. The familiar gentle glow was a comfort after the harsh sunlight of Wolf IV. Everything looked the right color again. Hunter quickly assembled the portable screen, and set it for a radius of two hundred feet, just within the proximity mines. He waited impatiently while Krystel primed the mines, and then turned the screen on. A faint shimmer on the night air was the only sign the force screen was up, but Hunter could feel his muscles relaxing for the first time in hours. He turned away to help Williams unpack the field rations, while Krystel took one last look around the perimeter.

  She’d done everything she could, by the book, but somehow she still felt uneasy.

  Some time later, after a meal of protein cubes and distilled water, she ended up leaning against one of the statues, the cold ridged stone pressing uncomfortably into her back. She took a long slow look at the open plain, through the shimmer of the screen. Everything seemed still and quiet, but night was falling fast, and the deepening shadows gave an added sense of urgency to her uneasiness. She stubbed out the last inch of her cigar on the statue, and lit herself another. She’d considered rationing herself, on the grounds it was likely to be some time before she could hope to get a new supply of cigars, but she didn’t see the point. Either way, it was going to be a hell of a long wait, so she might as well enjoy them while she had them.

  She glanced across at the other two statues, and was faintly disturbed by the way the gathering shadows suggested movement in the stone faces. She tapped ash from the end of her cigar, and wished fleetingly that she was somewhere else. Anywhere else. After the mess she’d made of the Grendel mission she’d thought herself lucky to be offered a place on a Hell Squad, but she was beginning to have her doubts. As an Investigator, she’d always had the security of knowing the Imperial Fleet stood ready to back her up. Now she didn’t have that anymore. She was on her own. If she screwed up again, they’d all pay for it with their lives.

  Krystel smiled determinedly. She would cope. She was an Investigator.

  Dr. Williams warmed his hands at the pleasant glow of heat from the field lantern. The evening was growing steadily colder, and the heating elements in his uniform could only do so much. He stretched out his left hand, and the sensor spikes slid out from under his fingernails. He slid the spikes back and forth a few times, enjoying the sensation, and then had them give him a rundown on the air around him. He didn’t expect to find anything harmful, but it was a good test of the sensors’ abilities. Tiny glowing numerals appeared before his eyes, via the optic nerves, giving him the exact percentages of the air’s constituents. Williams ran quickly through the numbers, and then dismissed them. There were a few interesting traces, though nothing that would cause any immediate harm, and no surprises. Pretty standard air, when you got right down to it.

  He retracted the sensor spikes, patched into the pinnace’s computers, and had them run a systems check on his adjustments. A rush of brief sensations flowed through him, like a series of tiny sparks glowing and dying, come and gone too quickly for him to decide whether they were pleasant or not. The computers were sparking each augmentation in turn into life, just long enough for it to be checked, and then shutting it down again once it had tested out satisfactorily. The whole thing was over in a matter of seconds, and Williams smil
ed thinly as the computers assured him all his systems were working normally. He was sure he would have been able to tell on his own if anything was wrong, but it was as well to check while he had the chance.

  He cut off the computers, and checked the readings on his implanted energy crystals. He allowed himself a small sigh of relief when they all showed a good 98 percent charge. Providing he was careful, they should last him till he could acquire some more. He tried to think what it had been like, being merely human, with no augmentations at all, and was faintly disturbed to find he couldn’t remember. He frowned. It hadn’t been that long ago. Perhaps it was just that he didn’t want to remember….

  He brushed the thought briskly aside, and lay back on his bedroll. He was tired, and he’d done all the chores he intended to. If there were other things that needed doing around the camp, let the others do it. He was a scientist, not a servant. He smiled faintly, savouring the word scientist. He’d been the best in his field before his fall; everybody said so. Even the ones who hated him, and there were a lot of those. The Wampyr would have made him rich and famous throughout the Empire if lesser men, jealous of his success, hadn’t whispered poison in the Empress’s ear….

  Williams scowled, and then quickly composed his features in case the others were watching. One day, the Empress herself would pay for what she’d done to him. All of those who’d betrayed him would pay, and pay in blood….

  His hands had closed into fists, and he forced them to open again. As far as the Captain and the Investigator were concerned, he was a quiet, harmless doctor, and he wanted them to go on thinking that. There would be time for him to prove them wrong, later. There would be time for a lot of things, once the colonists finally arrived. It shouldn’t be too difficult for him to bribe the supply ships to bring him the kind of high tech he needed. And with so many warm bodies available for him to experiment on, in the guise of the kindly colony doctor, who knew what triumphs he might achieve … ?

  Captain Hunter looked distrustfully at Williams. The man was smiling again. He shook his head, and looked away. No doubt he’d find out eventually what was so damned amusing. He laid out his bedroll as far away from the doctor’s as practical, and lay down on it. It felt great just to be off his aching feet at last. He stared up at the darkening night sky. The stars were coming out in ones and twos. One particularly bright light was probably one of the small moons. He started to check with the pinnace’s computers, and then stopped himself. It wasn’t important enough to waste valuable energy over. Hunter stretched slowly. His body was finally beginning to relax after the strain of the long walk. The ground was hard and unyielding, but he’d slept on worse in his time. He didn’t expect to have any trouble about getting to sleep. Most of his body was halfway there already, and the screen and the mines would sound an alarm long before anything got close enough to the camp to be a problem.

  He lay quietly, pushing back the drowsiness a little so that he could savour it. All in all, it had been an interesting first day. First the forest, then the water hole, and now the statues. Never a dull moment on Wolf IV. He smiled slightly, and rubbed gently at his bruised ribs.

  He hadn’t come out of it too badly, all told. He sighed, and stretched comfortably. Looking back, he was puzzled at why he’d been so scared of sleeping out in the open. Now that he was here, it wasn’t that bad after all. Too much imagination, that was his trouble. He thought again about the huge standing stones looming over him, and frowned. Like most people, he’d had few actual contacts with aliens in his career, but still he couldn’t help feeling there was something … unnatural about the creatures the stones depicted. They disturbed him on some very deep, very basic level. Perhaps it was the combination of features and shapes that ought not to occur together on one creature. Perhaps it was simply the overpowering size. But either way, Hunter decided that when it came time to enter the alien city the next day, he’d do it with his gun in his hand.

  A yawn took him by surprise, and he closed his eyes the better to enjoy it. He quickly opened them again as he realised he’d forgotten all about the esper’s group. It was well past the time he’d decided to check up on them. He activated his comm implant, and a faint hiss of static filled his ears.

  “Esper DeChance, this is the Captain. Do you hear me?”

  “Aye, Captain.” The esper’s voice was calm and clear. “We’ve located a sheltered area, and are settling down for the night.”

  “Same here. It’s rather late in the evening, esper. I’d expected to hear from you earlier.”

  “Sorry, Captain, I just didn’t have anything to report. Have you encountered any problems?”

  “Nothing we couldn’t handle. But if you come across any water holes, stay well clear of them. They’re inhabited. Get a good night’s sleep, and I’ll contact you again in the morning.”

  “Aye, Captain. Good night.”

  “And DeChance … don’t be afraid to call for help if you need it. I’d rather answer a false alarm than find I’d got there too late.”

  “Understood, Captain. Good night.”

  “Good night, esper. Pleasant dreams.”

  He shut off his comm unit, and tiredness rolled over him in a soft grey wave. He could see Krystel sitting with her back to one of the statues, staring out over the plain. He frowned slightly. He hadn’t told her to stand guard…. Still, she was an Investigator, and no doubt knew her job. If she wanted to stand watch, that was up to her. Personally, he put his faith in the screen and the mines. Hunter closed his eyes, and let the day drift away.

  Night sank slowly over the plain, the darkness deep and concealing, the only light the soft golden glow from the field lantern. Thin curling mists rose up around the camp, pressing close against the force screen with sullen perseverance.

  Krystel sat at the base of one of the statues, at the edge of the lantern’s light. The end of her cigar glowed a dull red in the gloom. She couldn’t sleep, force screen or no force screen. She didn’t need much sleep anyway. She was an Investigator. This wasn’t the first time she’d sat guard on an alien world, but it always felt like the first. On a new world, you could never be sure what you could count on, and what would let you down. What was safe, and what was just waiting for a chance to jump you. On an unknown world, anything could turn dangerous without warning. In the end it was safest to distrust everyone and everything, and be prepared to fight for your life at a moment’s notice. Not very good for the nerves, but then Investigators weren’t the nervous kind.

  She tensed as something stirred close at hand, and then relaxed as Captain Hunter sat down beside her.

  “So, you couldn’t sleep either, Investigator.”

  “I don’t mind sitting guard, Captain. I’m used to it.”

  “What do you think of our new world?”

  “I’ve seen worse.”

  Hunter looked at her thoughtfully. “Krystel, what was it like on Grendel?”

  The Investigator took her cigar out of her mouth and blew a perfect smoke ring. She watched the smoke gradually dissipate into the air. When she finally spoke, her voice was calm and even, and only a little bitter.

  “It was my first major assignment. I did a good job on Loki, and my reward was a posting to the archeological digs on Grendel. It wasn’t called Grendel then, of course. We didn’t know what was waiting for us.

  “It should have been a simple, straightforward job, examining some ancient ruins and a few scraps of alien machinery discovered by the first wave of colonists. I should have known it was going to turn bad, the moment I set eyes on the city. The buildings on the surface were just gutted husks, but as we dug down, deeper and deeper, we came across structures so well preserved that they might have been abandoned only the day before. After a while we stopped digging; we couldn’t stand the sight of what we’d found.

  “The city spread out for miles beneath the surface, complete and intact. It was a nightmare of steel and flesh; a combination of breathing metal and silver-wired meat. There were rounded
cylinders like gleaming, oily intestines, and pumps that beat like hearts. There were creatures that had become part of functioning machines, and complex devices with eyes and entrails. We found thinking machines that looked as though they’d been grown as much as built. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen such things. The crashed alien ship on Unseeli had been … similar, but the city was worse. Much worse. Whoever or whatever built and then abandoned the city wasn’t sane, in any way that we might understand the word.

  “Under the city we found the vaults. They were huge, monumental; as clean and shining as though they’d been built yesterday. They were locked tight, with no sign to show what they held. We all had different theories as to what the vaults contained, but we all wanted to open them. We’d never seen anything like the city, and we had to know more.

  “Looking back, I think we were all a little crazy by then. We’d spent too long down in the city, away from the sane everyday world above. I was in charge, so the final decision was mine. I was the Investigator, trained in the arts of understanding and destroying alien cultures. The city was vile, but so far we hadn’t come across anything actually threatening. And after all, Empire troops were only a distress-call away. Despite everything, I was still cautious—we all were—but none of us really believed there was anything in the vaults that could possibly prove a threat to the might of the Empire.

  “So we blasted open the vaults, and the Sleepers awoke.

  “We lost twenty men in the first few minutes. Our weapons were all but useless against the devils we’d released. I was buried under rubble, and left for dead. You should have seen them, Captain—living metallic creatures that had been genetically designed with only one purpose in mind: to kill. Nightmares in flesh and blood and spiked silicon armour. They were huge and awful, but they moved so fast that half the time we could only see them as a blur. Their claws ripped through stone and metal as though it was paper. Their grinning mouths had gleaming steel teeth. They moved through the city and up out into the archeological digs, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop them.