Ghostworld

  She didn't stop to think about what she was going to do; because she knew that if she did, she probably wouldn't do it. First, she had to get the alien's attention. She dropped her mental shields and cast aside her invisibility like a veil she no longer needed. The great alien head swung round immediately, staring up at her blindly but knowingly. It wanted her, and now it knew where she was. Frost was still sinking into its back, but more slowly now, as though the alien wasn't concentrating on her anymore. It had her, but it wanted the esper. The huge body surged forward, its stumpy legs poling it along the steel walls, leaving dents in its wake. Diana slapped her force shield bracelet, and it sprang into being on her left arm. The alien lifted its head high, searching for her. Diana leaned out from the tunnel mouth, hanging precariously by one hand, and sliced at the wall unit with the edge of her shield. The shimmering energy sliced through the unit's supports, and it lurched drunkenly away from the wall, held only by a single cable. Diana leaned out further, most of her weight hanging out over the drop. The alien's head reached for her, only inches away. Diana gritted her teeth, stretched out her arm, and sliced through the remaining cable. The unit tore itself away from the wall and crashed down onto the alien's head, its massive weight hammering the creature's head to the floor.

  Diana dropped down onto the alien's back, aiming carefully to land between the trapped Investigator and the pinned-down alien head. She hacked at the dark flesh with the edge of her shield, until Frost could get her arms free again, and then between them they dug the Investigator out. The alien thrashed back and forth, convulsing down all its length, unable to get enough leverage to lift its head against the weight of the wall unit. Frost finally got her hand on her monofilament knife, and with Diana's help she cut herself free. They climbed quickly down from the alien and backed away down the corridor, both of them still spattered with its gore.

  "Do you think that weight's going to hold it?" yelled Diana, shouting to be heard over the din of the alien's howls.

  "Not a chance!" yelled Frost. "Let's get out of here."

  She ran down the corridor with Diana at her side. Behind them they heard a crash as the alien finally threw off the wall unit. Diana tried to run faster, and couldn't. Her strength was gone, and she was running now on desperation and adrenalin. The Investigator ran effortlessly beside her, not even breathing hard, despite all she'd been through. It occurred to Diana that Frost could probably get away quite easily, but instead had chosen to run at the esper's slower pace. Frost looked round suddenly and caught the esper's eye.

  "You didn't have to save me," she said brusquely. "You could have got away."

  "I know that."

  "Then why did you do it? Why risk your life to save mine?"

  "Because you needed me," said Diana. "Now shut up and run."

  "What about the invisibility? Any chance . . . ?"

  "No. Not now the alien's locked on to me." She looked back over her shoulder. The alien was flowing down the corridor after them, faster than they were running, faster then they could run. Diana looked at Frost. "Don't ask. You don't want to know. Just run."

  Silence's voice was suddenly in their ears, murmuring through their comm implants. "Investigator, esper, we've destroyed the heart of the alien's web. It is now completely cut off from the rest of the Base. Have you located the alien yet?"

  "Oh, yes," said Frost. "We know exactly where it is."

  "Good. Do you think you could lead it to where Carrion and I are at the moment? We've had an idea."

  The floor plan of Level Three flashed briefly before Frost's and Diana's eyes, showing them the route. Diana thought hard. It wasn't far. They might just make it. She looked at Frost, and nodded briefly.

  "We can be there in four minutes," said Frost calmly.

  "Make it three," said Silence. "We're working to a rather urgent deadline. Bring the alien here, and we'll discuss what to do next. Silence out."

  "The Captain's got a plan," panted Diana.

  "Yes. Interesting he didn't tell us what it was. Probably because he knows we wouldn't like it." She looked at Diana. "Can you last three minutes at this pace?"

  "Shut up and keep running," said Diana.

  "Are you sure you want me to do this?" said Carrion. "Once I call up the Ashrai, there'll be no turning back. I don't think you realise just how much they hate you."

  "They'll hate the alien more," said Silence. "That creature and its kind threaten the existence of the whole planet. They wouldn't just destroy the forest, they'd change it into something the Ashrai wouldn't even recognise. And since the Ashrai depend on the forest for what's left of their existence, it's in their interest to side with us against the alien."

  "Very logical, Captain," said Carrion. "I just hope the Ashrai are going to be logical too."

  "The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Nothing like having something in common to bring two peoples together."

  "You still don't understand, Captain. Once I summon up the Ashrai, they pass beyond my control. Once awakened, they might decide not to lie down again. You didn't really win here, John. You just hurt them so badly they retreated back inside themselves for a time. There's power here on Unseeli, power beyond your worst nightmares. They might decide to take on the Empire again. And this time they'd have nothing left to lose, nothing to hold them back."

  Silence shook his head. "So? You're talking about billions of people on thousands of worlds. The Ashrai wouldn't stand a chance."

  "John, you're talking about numbers. I'm talking about power."

  "It doesn't make any difference," said Silence. "We don't have any choice. Too many things have gone wrong, and we've too many strikes against us. Frost and the esper will be here any minute, with the alien right behind them. We've run out of options, Sean. Odin, how does the countdown stand?"

  "Nineteen minutes, thirty-two seconds, Captain."

  Silence looked at Carrion. "Get yourself ready, Sean. We'll do it as soon as the others arrive."

  They both looked round at the sound of running footsteps, and Frost and Diana came pounding down the corridor towards them. Silence looked past the women, but the corridor behind them was empty. Diana staggered to a halt, gasping painfully for air. Frost supported her with one hand as she nodded calmly to Silence. As usual, she wasn't even breathing hard.

  "The alien's right behind us, Captain. It slowed down a bit when it realised where we were going, but it's still mad enough to keep after us, once it's looked around for a trap. I take it there is a trap here, Captain?"

  "Oh, yes," said Silence. "Have you hurt it at all?"

  "I shot it and blew it up with grenades, and Diana dropped half a wall on it, but all we did was annoy it." She looked round at the destruction of the alien's heart, and raised an eyebrow. "Very thorough, Captain. You do realise that everything here will repair itself, given enough time?"

  "Time is something we're all rather short of, Investigator. Before he died, Commander Starblood found time to activate the Base's self-destruct system. A small nuclear device hidden somewhere on this level is due to detonate in just over eighteen minutes."

  Frost stared at him. "You're jinxed, Captain, you know that?"

  Diana raised her head and glared at him speechlessly, still too out of breath to talk, but her eyes spoke volumes.

  "Whatever you're planning, Captain, start it now," said Frost. "The alien will be here any second, and it's in a really bad mood."

  "Don't look at me," said Silence. "It's all down to Carrion now."

  "Yes," said the outlaw quietly. "Somehow, it always comes down to me."

  "Because you're the best, Carrion."

  "Thank you, Captain."

  Diana wiped the sweat from her face with her sleeve, and then suddenly raised her head. "Listen. It's close now. Very close."

  They all looked down the corridor, into the gloom. There wasn't a sound to be heard, but they could all feel a faint vibration in the floor under their feet. Silence looked at Carrion.

  "Please,
Sean. For them, if not for me."

  Carrion smiled slightly. "You always did know how to fight dirty, John."

  Silence nodded, and moved away to stare down the corridor. Frost joined him, and they trained their disrupters on the concealing shadows. Diana finally straightened up as she got her second wind, and found herself a corner to stand in where she could be out of everyone's way. Carrion stood alone in the centre of the room, leaning on his staff, his thoughts elsewhere. He couldn't help feeling he'd come a long way by strange routes to reach this place, this moment. Everything he'd been through, all the rage and fear and heartbreak, just to end up fighting beside John Silence once again. He smiled slightly. Whatever happened, it was good to have seen John again. It was like finding an old coat you used to wear, or a cup you used to drink from as a child. Comforting in its familiarity, tested in its worth, something you could depend jon. Silence was back, at his side, and if Carrion had to die, this was not a bad way to go, among people he liked and respected.

  Among people. It had been a long ten years, without a human face or a human voice. But still, there had been the Ashrai.

  He lifted his legs and sat cross-legged in midair, hovering alone in the middle of the room, his staff lying across his knees. He reached deep inside himself and unlocked his power, channelling it through his power lance, calling up everything he'd ever been or hoped to be. He could feel his esp building, pressing at his shields, eager to be free and loose in the world. He had learned many things in his time on Unseeli, whether he'd wanted to or not, walked paths few humans even knew of, and it had changed him. He was more than human now, a bastard child of Man and Ashrai, and the alien was about to find out what that meant.

  He threw his mind up and out, searching for the voices in the wind that were always there, just on the edge of his consciousness. Bright lights blazed in his mind, dazzling him with their presence. They were old and powerful and utterly inhuman, warm and familiar and comforting; his friends and his adopted people. He called, and they came for him, where they would not have come for any other. The outlaw Carrion, once a man named Sean, talked to the Ashrai in a language and manner that had nothing human in it.

  Silence looked back at Carrion, floating unsupported in midair, and felt his hackles rise. There was more than ten years' difference in the outlaw's cool, serene face, and sometimes it seemed to him that he didn't know this man Carrion at all. His voice was still the same, but sometimes Silence thought he saw someone else looking out at him through Carrion's eyes. Silence shrugged. He'd put all their lives in that familiar stranger's hands, and it was too late now for second thoughts. His head snapped back as something stirred in the darkness at the end of the corridor, and then the alien came storming out of the shadows towards them, horribly fast and unstoppable. It raised its blunt, unseeing head, and its awful howl reverberated in the narrow space.

  Silence and Frost fired their disrupters. The vivid energy beams seared through the alien's vast body, exploding the black flesh and spattering it across the walls, and didn't even slow it down. They put away their guns, drew their swords, and raised their force shields. They stood ready to meet the alien, knowing they couldn't hope to stand against it, but doing it anyway because it was their job and their duty, and because there wasn't anything else they could do, after all. The alien burst into the room, into what had been the heart of its web, its shell, and there was no time left for anything.

  And then the Ashrai came.

  Silence walked in the metallic forest, each gold and bronze and silver tree blazing like a star. The trees were singing, and though he was not a part of it, still the song trembled in his bones and in his soul, as though it was something he had known and left behind, long ago. Sean and Frost and Diana walked with him, all of them glowing like the trees. Frost looked younger, happier, at ease with herself, and for the first time since he'd met her, she wore no weapons. No sword or gun or grenades. She looked almost naked without them, but her eyes were clear and untroubled. Sean looked much as he used to, in the days when they could still be friends, with nothing to separate them. He smiled at Silence, and there was understanding if not forgiveness in the outlaw's eyes. And Diana shone more brilliantly than any of them.

  The Ashrai walked in the forest, dead but not gone, huge and awesome, with their gargoyle faces and huge bodies, clawed hands and piercing eyes. They sang in harmony with the trees, and power burned brightly in them. The song and the power roared in human and Ashrai alike, building and building, vast and potent, blazing so brightly they knew they had to use it soon or it would burn them all out. The force that drove them focused and concentrated in one person, and Silence had enough of himself left to be faintly surprised that the focus was Diana, not Carrion. Diana Vertue, inhumanly treated but still human, more of an esper than the Empire had ever allowed her to be, unbroken and above all still somehow innocent, with purity of heart and thought and purpose. The power blazed in her, and without rage or hatred she turned it on the alien from outside. It was in the forest too, burning in strange hues, silent and malignant. It shrank back as the song of the trees washed over it, pure and piercing in Diana's voice, and in a moment that seemed to last forever the alien's light guttered and went out and was gone.

  And with the alien gone, a host of new voices sounded in the metallic forest—the one hundred and twenty-seven men and women of Base Thirteen, free at last from the terrible thing that had been done to them. Their lights flickered and went out one by one, and there was no sadness in their leaving. It was what they had hoped and prayed for. Two familiar faces smiled briefly—Stasiak and Ripper, bound together on one last journey. They saluted briefly, and were gone. Diana looked out over the Base, and reached casually down to lower the force screen and stop the nuclear countdown. The clock stopped ticking and the bomb disarmed itself, and as simply as that, it was all over.

  And then the Ashrai withdrew a little, and looked at John Silence, Captain of the Darkwind, ambassador of the Empire. The man who gave the order for the scorching of Unseeli. Silence stood alone, offering no explanation or defence, because he had none. He didn't ask for mercy for himself, because he expected none, but he did ask it for Frost and Diana, because both were innocent, in their way. They smiled and came to stand beside him, facing the Ashrai, because, after all, they belonged together. And that left just Carrion, once called Sean, standing alone between Ashrai and humanity, both and neither. The outlaw leaned on his staff and said nothing.

  He passed judgement on us, said a multitude of voices. Now it shall be passed on him. He must die.

  No, said Frost. It was his duty.

  No, said Diana. He has made atonement.

  He must die.

  No, said Carrion. He is my friend.

  As you wish.

  And then the Ashrai were gone, and the lights in the trees seemed a little less magnificent without them. And Silence and Carrion and Frost and Diana turned and walked away from the metallic forest, knowing that the memory of its song would always be with them now, wherever they went and whatever they became.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  All the Ghosts

  Come Home to Roost

  They left Base Thirteen, stepping one at a time past the unmoving metal doors, and stood blinking owlishly at the evening twilight. Dark clouds filled the sky, filtering the light into shades of grey, but even so, it seemed uncomfortably bright after so long in the darkness of the Base. The sun was a crimson ball riding low on the sky, but the metal trees still blazed fiercely against the falling night. The mists were thickening, moving slowly among the trees like restless thoughts. Three moons drifted high on the evening sky, pale and listless like the memory of sunlight.

  Silence stretched slowly, feeling an almost physical relief now that the mission was over and he could finally relax and wind down. It hadn't ended in quite the way he'd thought it would, but then, that was Unseeli for you. Things seemed to have worked out well enough. All that remained now was to return to the Darkwind, and spend
his time in Quarantine working out a written report his superiors could believe. He had a feeling that might take some time. He looked across at Carrion. The outlaw stood alone, a little away from the others, his face calm, his gaze fixed on the metallic forest. His cloak hung about him like the folded wings of a bird of prey, and Silence thought he could still sense some of the deadly power Carrion had unleashed in the Base. He wasn't the man Silence remembered, and he didn't know whether to feel sad or relieved. The old Carrion had been desperately unhappy. But the outlaw had found something in his exile with the Ashrai, and Silence thought it might just be peace.

  Investigator Frost was calmly running through an inventory of the weapons she'd used up in her fight against the alien and its offshoots. She still had a surprising number left, though Silence was damned if he knew where she'd hidden them about her person. And Diana Vertue, his ship's esper, his daughter, was staring out at the glowing metal trees with wide, fascinated eyes. Silence stirred uneasily as he saw something in her face of the cool alienness in Carrion's gaze. He looked out at the trees, and a faint echo of the Ashrai song moved within him. He knew the song would always be with him now, murmuring quietly in the depths of the back brain, where all the important, instinctive decisions are made. But already the strength of the vision was fading, slipping away from him even as he tried to hold onto it. Perhaps that was for the best, after all. He couldn't have retained the song in all its power and still have remained human. He'd seen what it had done to Carrion. And to Diana. He moved over to stand beside her, and she nodded politely to him before looking back at the trees.