Lindholm led the way down the deserted street, gun in hand, alert for any sign of life or movement. Corbie followed close behind, hurrying the esper along as best he could. DeChance's face was smooth and blank, empty of all emotion or personality. Her eyes saw nothing, and she walked uncaringly wherever Corbie led her. The marine scowled, as much in worry as anger. DeChance had been acting brainburned ever since she made mental contact with something in the city.
They're waking up, she'd said. They're coming for us. They want what makes us sane.
She hadn't said a word after that. The light went out of her eyes, and she could no longer hear the marines, no matter how loudly they shouted. Her face became gaunt and drawn, and she only moved when the marines guided her. At first they thought her condition might have been caused by the building they were in, but even after they'd hustled her outside she remained lost and silent. Corbie had pressed for them to keep moving. If there was something coming after them, they'd be better off presenting a moving target. Lindholm reluctantly agreed, and led the way. Corbie let him. Right now, he needed somebody else to be in charge, to do his thinking for him.
He glanced quickly around. They were walking between two massive structures of crystal and metal fused together, so tall that Corbie had to tilt back his head to see the top of them. There were no lights in any of the windows, and the only sound on the quiet was the soft, steady padding of their own footsteps. There'd been no sign of any living thing since the esper's warning, but still Corbie's back felt the pressure of unseen watching eyes.
He tried to imagine something so terrible that just mental contact with it could destroy your mind, and couldn't. The fear was with him always now, trembling in his hands, burning in his eyes. His stomach was a tight knot of pain. He tried to concentrate on where they were heading, to keep his mind occupied, but all he knew for sure was the name the esper had given it. The copper tower. Corbie sniffed unhappily and scowled about him, trying to get his bearings. He'd been turned around so much he wasn't even sure where the boundaries were anymore. Lindholm was still striding purposefully ahead of him, though, so presumably at least he knew where they were going.
"How long since you tried the comm unit?" said Lindholm suddenly, his voice calm and quiet as always.
"Maybe ten minutes. Want me to try again?"
"Sure. Give it a try."
Corbie activated his comm implant. "Captain, this is Corbie. Please respond." He waited several moments, but there was no answer, only the unnerving silence, empty even of static. He tried twice more, and then gave up. Lindholm said nothing.
DeChance suddenly stumbled, and almost fell. Corbie had to support all her weight for a moment, and then her back straightened as she found her feet again. She shook her head dazedly, and made a few meaningless noises with her mouth. Corbie looked at Lindholm, and motioned urgently towards the nearest building. Lindholm nodded. Between the two of them, the marines got DeChance over to the open doorway. It was set in the side of a gleaming pearlescent dome, a hundred feet high or more. There were no windows or other openings, only the smooth, featureless surface of the dome. Lindholm went through the doorway first, gun at the ready, his force shield blazing on his arm. Corbie gave him a moment and then guided the esper in after him.
Inside, there was only darkness. There was a flash of light as Lindholm lit his field lantern, and the room came into being around them. It was roughly thirty feet square, with a low ceiling. The walls and ceiling were both strangely curved in places, and shone a dull silver-grey in the lantern light. Lindholm put the lantern down on the floor then went to give Corbie a hand with the esper. DeChance sat down suddenly on the floor, as though all the strength had gone out of her legs. Corbie helped her lean back against the nearest wall. It felt warm and spongelike to the touch, and Corbie glared at it suspiciously before turning his attention back to DeChance.
"I think this may have been a mistake," said Lindholm suddenly. "I don't like the feel of this place."
"You took the words right out of my mouth," said Corbie. "Unfortunately, the esper's in no condition to travel any further."
"How is she?"
"I'm not sure. She might be coming out of it. Then again . . ."
"Yeah." Lindholm looked quickly around him. There was a wide opening in the far wall, full of darkness. "We can't stay here, Russ. We can't even barricade the doorway. Get her on her feet again, and we'll see what's back of this room. You bring the lantern."
He moved warily towards the open doorway, while Corbie grabbed the field lantern with one hand, and urged DeChance to her feet with the other. The esper was still dazed, but at least now she was cooperating with him.
"Come on, Russ," said Lindholm impatiently. "It's not safe here."
"Safe?" I haven't felt safe since we landed on this bloody planet. If you're in such a hurry, how about giving me a hand? The esper isn't getting any lighter to lug around, you know."
Lindholm took the lantern away from him, and held it up to light the next room. Corbie glared at Lindholm's back, and then peered through the open doorway. The room was huge. The shadows beyond the light made it impossible to judge its true size, but once again Corbie was struck by the sheer scale of the alien city. He felt like a child who'd escaped from the nursery and wandered into the part of the world where the adults lived. The curving walls were a dull reddish colour in the lantern light, marked here and there by sharp-edged protrusions. The floor was cracked and split apart, like mud that had dried out under a midday sun. The room itself was quite empty. Lindholm moved slowly forward and Corbie followed him, still half-supporting the esper. The far wall suddenly became clear as the lantern light moved, and Corbie scowled unhappily. Spurs of metal jutted from the crimson wall, like the horns of forgotten beasts. For a moment Corbie wondered if they could be trophies of some kind, and immediately the walls seemed to him to be exactly the color of dried blood. A round opening in the wall yawned like a toothless mouth.
"Where are we?" said DeChance hoarsely, and Corbie jumped.
"It's all right," he said quickly. "You're quite safe. We're inside one of the buildings. It's empty. How do you feel?"
"I'm not sure. Strange." She shook her head slowly. "There were so many traces, so many alien minds, I just got lost among them. I couldn't understand any of them. Their thought patterns made no sense." Her face cleared suddenly, losing all its vagueness, and she looked sharply at the two marines. "We've got to get out of the city. If there's one thing I am sure of, it's that they're dangerous. Horribly dangerous."
"You keep saying they," said Lindholm. "How many aliens are there? Where are they hiding?"
"They're here," said DeChance. "They're all around. Waiting. They've been waiting a very long time. We woke them up. I don't know how many there are; hundreds, thousands. I don't know. The traces kept shifting, changing. But they're close. I know that. They're getting closer all the time. We've got to get out of the city."
"Sounds good to me," said Corbie. "Sven?"
"Hold on a minute, Russ." Lindholm looked thoughtfully at the esper. "No offence, DeChance, but just how reliable is what you've been telling us? Are you giving us facts or impressions?"
"Both. Neither. I can't explain esp to anyone who isn't an esper. Contact with an alien mind is difficult; they don't think like we do. It's like looking in a distorted mirror, trying to find things you recognise. I managed to pick up a few things I'm sure of. The power sources for the city are all underground, buried deep in the bedrock. They go down for miles. They're still functioning, despite being abandoned for centuries. Now the city's coming alive, and drawing more and more power. I don't know what the power's for, but it's got something to do with the copper tower in the centre of the city. That tower is the key to everything that's happening here."
"Then we'd better go and take a look at it," said Lindholm. "Maybe we'll find a few answers there."
"Are you crazy?" said Corbie. "You heard the esper; this whole place is coming alive, and hundr
eds, maybe thousands of monsters are heading our way right now! We've got to get out of here while we still can!"
"Come on, Russ; we can't just walk away from this. We have a responsibility to the rest of the Squad, and the colonists who'll come after us. This is our best chance to get some answers, while everything's still waking up and disorientated."
"Responsibility? Sven, they dumped us here to die. No one gives a damn about us. We're expendable; that's why they sent us. Our only responsibility is to ourselves."
"What about the rest of the Squad?"
"What about them?"
"Allow me," said DeChance to Lindholm. "Corbie, much as I hate to admit it, Sven's right. If we don't find the answers now, while we've got a chance, the aliens in this city will kill us all. They'll roll right over us. We can't leave. Our only hope is the copper tower, and what we might find there. Now shut up and soldier."
Corbie nodded glumly. "Some days you just shouldn't get out of bed. All right, esper; how far is it to the tower?"
"Not far. A mile, at most."
"Do you feel up to travelling that far?"
"I think so."
"Anything else we need to know about the tower?" said Lindholm.
"Yes." DeChance frowned, her eyes vague and far away. "I think it's insane."
"Great," said Corbie. "Just great."
Lindholm had just started to nod agreement when the room suddenly came alive around them. Blurred shapes thrust up out of the floor, grey and white and beaded with sweat. The marines moved quickly to stand back to back, guns at the ready. A new light pierced the darkness as they raised their force shields. DeChance raised hers a moment later, and moved in close beside the marines, gun and sword in hand. More growths burst out of the walls. Somewhere far away, something was shrieking with what might have been rage or pain or both. The growths blossomed out into huge mushroom shapes, with wide, drooping heads on long, waving stalks. Crude eyes appeared on the stalks, and the fluted edges of the flat heads fluttered with the steady rhythm of slow breathing. The growths sprouted from every side, spreading out to fill the room.
Corbie yelled out in surprise as a mushroom blossomed out of the floor at his feet, and he fired his disrupter at it. The fleshy head exploded under the energy bolt. The stalk swayed back and forth for a moment, and then a dozen flailing tentacles erupted out of the stalk, lashing furiously at the air. They were bloodred, and tipped with tiny sucking mouths. Corbie cut at them with his sword, but for every tentacle he severed, another burst out of the stalk to take its place. Lindholm looked from the doorway to the opening in the far wall and tried to work out which was the nearest. He had a sinking feeling the nearest opening was the one that led deeper into the building. One of the mushroom growths leaned towards him, top-heavy on its slender stalk, and Lindholm only just managed to stop himself from firing at it. He didn't want to repeat Corbie's mistake. The centre of the bowed mushroom head bulged suddenly outwards, and then split apart as a huge black-armoured insect exploded out of it. It had a wide, flat body, a dozen barbed legs, and razor-sharp mandibles. It reached hungrily for Lindholm, and he shot it at point-blank range. The armoured body blew apart, twitching legs flying through the air.
All over the room, the mushroom growths were swelling up and bursting open, giving birth to monsters. Corbie and Lindholm holstered their guns and tried to clear a space around them with their swords. The esper was no use to them. Her gun hung slackly at her side, her face drawn and twisted by some inner agony. The marines protected her as best they could, but they both knew they couldn't do that for long. There were just too many monsters.
A huge mushroom head exploded, throwing hundreds of bloodred worms across the room. They fell upon monsters and mushrooms alike and began to chew voraciously through whatever they landed on. The marines were mostly protected by their force shields and steelmesh tunics, but still a few landed on bare flesh. One worm landed on Lindholm's hand, and bit clear through to the bone before he could shake it off. He cursed briefly, and kept on fighting. In the Arenas you learned to ignore any wound that wasn't immediately critical. Corbie wasn't nearly so calm about it, and shrieked and cursed at the top of his voice when a worm attached itself to his ear. He clawed desperately at the worm with his free hand, and in tearing it off almost decapitated himself with his own force shield. Several worms landed on the esper, shocking her out of her trance, and she brushed and slapped frantically at them where they clung to her uniform. The monsters ignored the worms in their single-minded determination to reach their human prey. A long, dull grey tentacle snapped out of nowhere and grabbed Lindholm's field lantern. The lantern shattered in its grip, and the light winked out. The room was still lit by an eerie, ghostly glow from the mushrooms, but it was rapidly being blocked out by the growing horde of monsters.
The marines fought on, despite the growing ache in their backs and arms and the air that burned in their straining lungs. DeChance protected them with her force shield as best she could, but she was no fighter, and they all knew it. Huge armoured insects up to three and four feet in length crawled over the floor and walls, and fought each other for the chance to get at their human prey. Long tentacles studded with snapping mouths thrashed the air. Something broken-backed with too many legs crawled upside down across the ceiling, watching the marines with unblinking eyes. The worms were everywhere, writhing and coiling and eating. Corbie wiped sweat from his eyes with the back of his hand, and something with foot-long teeth snapped at his throat. He got his force shield up just in time, and the teeth broke jaggedly against the energy field. He could feel the strength going out of him with each of his sword thrusts, but he kept fighting anyway. He had to. There was nowhere to retreat. He couldn't even see the doorway anymore. He grinned defiantly, and swung his sword in short, vicious arcs while he waited for his disrupter to recharge. A mushroom burst out of the wall beside him, and as he cut through the stem, a writhing mass of intestines fell out of the wound, smoking and steaming on the still air.
Right, thought Corbie determinedly. That is it. Enough is enough.
He cleared some space around him with his sword and shield, lifted his gun, and blasted a hole through the nearest wall. DeChance and Lindholm quickly used their guns to blast a path through the crowding monsters, and the three of them clambered through the hole into the darkness beyond. The two marines turned and blocked the gap with their force shields while DeChance pulled her field lantern out of her backpack. The sudden flare of light showed the room was empty, apart from some alien machinery, and the esper relaxed a little. Monsters pressed against the two force shields, trying to force their way past. A mushroom head exploded, blowing a hail of writhing maggots into the air.
"We've got to block this hole off and barricade it," said Lindholm. His breath was coming in short, ragged pants, but his voice was as calm and unconcerned as always.
"Sounds good to me," said Corbie. "You and the esper find something. I'll hold them off. But you'd better be bloody quick."
He stepped forward to fill the hole, somehow finding some last reserves of strength to draw on. The monsters surged forward, and he met them with his sword and shield. Tired and aching and preoccupied as he was, Corbie still found time to notice he wasn't as frightened as he had been. He was still scared, but it wasn't the heart-stopping paralysing fear that had bedevilled him for so long. He was scared, but he could still think and he could still fight. Perhaps it was simply that he no longer had the choice of whether to fight or run. Being weak and indecisive here would simply get him killed. Not that Corbie had any illusions about his chances. Unless Sven or the esper came up with a miracle pretty damn quickly, he was a dead man, and he knew it. The thought twisted his stomach and shortened his breath, but it was no longer enough to paralyse him or break his nerve.
Who knows; maybe I'm just getting used to being terrified . . .
His mouth stretched into a death's-head grin, and his gun blasted a creeping thing into a hundred twitching pieces.
&nb
sp; "Move back out of the way, Russ! Now!"
Corbie fell back, and Lindholm single-handedly slammed a massive piece of alien machinery into the gap, sealing the hole off. Corbie didn't even want to think how much the damned thing must weigh. Certainly it looked strong enough to hold back the monsters while he and his companions made their escape. He started to move away from the wall, and collapsed. His vision darkened, and his head went muzzy.
"Easy, Russ," said Lindholm quickly. "Take a moment and get your second wind. The barricade will hold a while yet."
Corbie sat on the floor and concentrated on breathing deeply. His head was already clearing, but he could tell he wasn't up to running any distance yet, even assuming he had anywhere to run to. He glanced quickly around the new room. It wasn't quite as big as the last one, but even so, the lantern's light didn't carry to the far wall, and the high ceiling was hidden in shadow. Squat, hulking machinery stood in neat rows, no two the same. There were no lights or other signs to show they were still functioning. Corbie distrusted them anyway, on general principles. There was a jagged hole in the floor, its edges glowing-hot from an energy burst where Lindholm had used his disrupter to break a machine free from the floor. Lengths of steel and glass protruded from the hole like broken bones. Corbie took a deep breath, turned off his force shield, and got back on his feet again, with a little help from Lindholm and the esper.
"All right," he said hoarsely. "What now?"
Lindholm shrugged. "We can't go back, so we go on. There's another doorway, beyond the machines."
Corbie looked at DeChance. She had turned away, and was frowning distractedly, listening to something only she could hear.
"Well?" said Corbie finally. "What do you think, esper? Do you agree?"
"Yes," said DeChance. Her expression didn't change. "There's no other choice. All the other ways are blocked. Besides, there's something up ahead I want to look at."
Lindholm looked at her sharply. "What is it, esper? What's up ahead?"