Ghostworld

  Glowing streamers of quickly changing hues spun in the mists ahead of him, pushed and tugged at by an unfelt wind. There was a sudden sharp crack as a long metal branch snapped off a nearby tree. Silence threw himself to one side just as the jagged spike slammed into the ground where he'd been standing. Cracking sounds echoed from every side as more branches broke off from the trees, raining down about him as he ran dodging and ducking down the path towards the clearing. His boots thudded hard on the unyielding ground, jarring him painfully. He threw himself this way and that, lungs straining against the cold air, and the metal spears slammed into the ground all around him. Silence ran on, refusing to be slowed or intimidated. He'd come too far to be stopped now. A jagged spike tore through his uniform and slid painfully across his ribs before falling away. Silence thought he'd got away with only a bruise, until he glanced down and saw the wide patch of blood staining his side. Another spike flew at his face, and he deflected it at the last moment with an upraised arm. Blood flew on the air as the uniform sleeve tore, and the impact numbed his arm.

  There were things in the forest now, moving with him as he ran. He could hear them pounding between the trees, the ground shaking from their weight. Silence plunged on, his breath burning in his heaving chest. His gun was still in his hand, but he couldn't see a target anywhere. And then the path ended suddenly, blocked by a clump of needle-thorned briar that had grown up around a fallen tree. Silence staggered to a halt, and dropped to his knees by the massive trunk of a golden tree. He put his back to the trunk and glared wildly about him. The briar blocked the way completely, and there was no other path. They had him now.

  Deep in the metallic forest, something howled. It was a harsh, alien sound with nothing human in it, but the pain and rage and remembered loss were clear enough. The horrid sound drifted through the trees, growing louder, drawing nearer. More voices rose on every side, the deafening chorus cutting at Silence like a knife, and he shrank back against the tree trunk even as he raised his gun in a futile gesture of defiance. Guns weren't going to stop what was coming for him. Shadows moved in the swirling mists, circling him, and Silence caught brief glimpses of clawed hands and snarling mouths, large graceful forms and flat-planed gargoyle faces.

  He took aim at the nearest face and fired his disrupter. The crackling energy beam smashed through the alien face and shattered the tree trunk behind it. There was a harsh, rending sound as the tree slowly toppled over and crashed to the forest floor. Metallic shrapnel pattered down for some time, but there was nothing to show he'd hurt or even scared his enemy. He hadn't really expected anything else. His enemies were already dad, ten years dead. They just wouldn't admit it and lie down. Silence's mouth twitched. They weren't playing fair. Not playing by the rules. Except this was Unseeli, the world of the Ashrai, and they had their own rules.

  They were all around him now, the deafening howls rising and falling till his head ached from it. He knew what had come for him, even though it made a mockery of all sense and reason. The Ashrai were moving slowly, steadily, through the mists and the trees, circling, circling—all the tortured souls he'd damned and destroyed ten years earlier. Haunting him now as the memory of the awful thing he'd done had haunted him for so many years.

  The howling stopped, cut off sharply between one moment and the next, and an eager, expectant hush filled the forest. Silence struggled to sit up a little straighter, grimacing briefly as pain flared in his damaged ribs. He raised his gun and then lowered it again. Even if there'd been anything to aim at, the disrupter couldn't fire again till its energy crystal had had time to recharge. There was still the sword at his side, but all he could do with that was fall on it himself, and maybe cheat the Ashrai of their vengeance. Except he couldn't do that. It wasn't in his nature to give up, even when the situation seemed hopeless. He drew his sword awkwardly, and glared defiantly at the curling mists. Something moved in the forest, not far away. Not far away at all.

  And then a man appeared suddenly out of the mist to stand at Silence's side. Everything was still. Silence's fate hanging in the balance, and then the pressure of countless watching eyes was abruptly gone, the mists and the forest empty. Silence let out his breath in a long, shuddering sigh, and put his sword down beside him. Sweat was running down his face despite the cold, and he wiped it out of his eyes with his sleeve. He looked up at the man standing over him. The dark figure was tall and whipcord-lean, dressed in black leather and a billowing black cape. Carrion always wore black, like the bird of ill omen he was. He was carrying a long staff of polished bone, almost as tall as he was, but he held it more like a weapon than an aid to walking. His face was hidden in the shadows of his cowl, and Silence didn't know whether to feel grateful for that or not.

  "Hello, Sean," he said finally, and was relieved to find his voice was still calm and even. "It's been a long time." The figure stared silently down at him, and Silence stirred uneasily. "What's the matter? Don't you remember me?"

  "Oh yes, Captain," said Carrion quietly. "I remember you. So do they."

  "What are they?" asked Silence.

  "The past. Ghosts, perhaps."

  "I don't believe in ghosts."

  "That's all right," said Carrion. "They believe in you."

  CHAPTER THREE

  Looking for Answers

  Stasiak and Ripper lounged bonelessly in their seats, bored and restless, watching without much interest as the esper Diana Vertue tried to make contact with Base Thirteen's computers. She'd been trying to patch the Darkwind's computer into the Base's systems for some time, with only limited success, and she'd begun to mutter under her breath. Finally, by working together with Odin and improvising madly, she and the AI had managed to forge a tentative link between the pinnace's onboard systems and the Base's computer net. Diana studied the incoming data closely, and winced at the state of the Base's systems as they reluctantly opened up to her experimental probes. Thirteen's computers were shot to hell. Half the manned systems had crashed, and there was no trace anywhere of the Base's AI, which was supposed to protect the systems from such devastation. And there was something definitely odd about the computers she had managed to reach.

  Diana frowned, her fingers darting across the comm panels, and watched intently as one by one the pinnace's monitors came to life, information flowing in an endless stream across the glowing screens. Her fingers pecked and stabbed at the keyboard as she tried to sort out the important data from the dross, her frown deepening as the picture unfolded. Whatever had happened at Base Thirteen, it hadn't been an accident. This kind of selective damage had to have been deliberate. Though whether the attack had come from outside the Base or within had yet to be established. She half-smiled as she heard one of the marines sigh heavily behind her. It was probably Stasiak. He hadn't struck her as the type to have a long attention span.

  "You don't have to stay, you know," she said briskly, without looking back. "There's nothing you can do to help."

  "It's our job to look after you," said Stasiak. "Make sure nothing happens to you. And if that means sitting around in a nice warm cabin instead of tramping around in the cold, waiting for my extremities to drop off, well, I know where my duty lies. After all, with the Captain and the Investigator both wandering about on their own somewhere. Rip and I are all that stand between you and whatever horrors lie waiting out there in the trees. Right, Rip?"

  "Right," said Ripper.

  "The proximity mines are all the protection I need," said Diana. "And the pinnace does have its own force screen, in the event of a real emergency. Now, I'm going to be doing this for some time, and believe me, this is as interesting as it gets."

  "How much progress have you made?" asked Ripper, and Diana gave him points for at least sounding as if he was interested.

  "Not a hell of a lot," she admitted, sitting back in her chair and letting her fingers rest for a moment. Things would have been going a lot quicker if she'd been allowed direct access to the computers instead of having to work through the
keyboard. But she wasn't high enough in rank for that privilege, and besides, she was an esper, and therefore not to be trusted. Ever. She realised Ripper was still waiting for her answer, and pulled herself together.

  "Most of the Base's computers are off-line, and seem determined to stay that way, no matter what I do. They're not responding to the standard code words or entry routines, and I can't even find the Base's AI. If I didn't know better, I'd swear it was hiding. It's as though someone or something just shut everything down, and then wiped half the memory crystals. The subsystems overseeing the mining machinery seem to be mostly intact, but what little information I'm getting from them is pretty depressing. The machinery is working at barely twenty per cent efficiency, and dropping. Unless we come up with something to reverse this process, or at least slow it down, everything will just grind to a halt in a little under forty-eight hours. And once they've stopped, it'll be hell's own problem to get them all started again. If that were to happen, the Empire would not be at all happy—and guess which three people sitting in this cabin right now would be most likely to be saddled with the blame?"

  "Is there anything we can do to help?" said Ripper.

  "Short of getting me into the Base so I can get my hands on the main computer terminals, no, not really. Odin is working his electronic nuts off trying to find a way into the main computers, but something down here is playing merry hell with our comm signals, which means Odin isn't working at anywhere near his full capacity.

  "On top of all that, there's something definitely wrong with the computers I have been able to reach. The information I've been getting from them makes no sense at all. Half is just gibberish, and the rest is impossible. If I didn't know better, I'd swear some of these systems have been reprogrammed from the bottom up."

  Stasiak and Ripper looked at each other, and Ripper leaned forward in his seat. "Are you saying someone within the Base could have crashed the systems deliberately?"

  "Yes. I'd have to say that was a definite possibility."

  "In which case," said Ripper slowly, "we could be dealing with enemy action."

  "Maybe," said Diana. "I can't say for sure. Some of these changes make no sense at all."

  Ripper got to his feet. "Lew, I think you and I had better take a stroll round the perimeter. Make sure everything's secure."

  Stasiak leaned back in his seat and deliberately stretched out his legs. "Come on, Rip, have a heart. It's cold out there. I'm rather attached to my fingers and toes and I'd like to hang on to them. You take a walk, if you feel like it. I'm occupied while you're gone. Right, Diana?"

  "In your dreams," said the esper calmly. "You're not my type, Lew. I prefer my men a little higher up the evolutionary scale."

  "Can I take that as a maybe?" said Stasiak, getting reluctantly to his feet.

  "Think of it more as a get-the-hell-out-of-here."

  "All right," said Stasiak. "I can take a hint. Lead the way, Rip. I'm just dying to take a nice little stroll in subzero temperatures and watch my extremities turn blue."

  The esper chuckled briefly, intent on the comm panels, but she didn't relax until she heard the airlock door close behind the two marines. Stasiak was all right, in his way, but she had to be careful who she allowed to get close to her. There were always people ready to take advantage of her esper abilities. But it wasn't safe to stay unattached, either. Espers always had a need for someone to stand between them and the Empire, someone strong enough to protect a second-class citizen like an esper from official displeasure and political pogroms. Stasiak was too far down the ladder to be of any use to her, and Ripper wasn't much better . . . She realised her thoughts were drifting, and made herself concentrate on the screens before her. The information from Base Thirteen's computers flowed endlessly on, much of it enigmatic and no bloody use to her at all.

  "I'm picking up something . . . unusual," said Odin suddenly. "I thought at first it was what was left of the Base's AI, but now I'm not sure. It's as though something inside the Base is trying to respond to my enquiries, but in a manner unlike anything I've ever encountered before."

  "Put it on the main screen," said Diana, and then frowned as the AI showed her a record of its questions and the Base's responses. The answers were garbled and obscure, bordering on the edge of meaning without actually achieving it. Diana ran a few simple checks to see if the gibberish might contain some kind of code, but if it did, it was buried so deep she couldn't find it. And yet the words continued to nag at her, trying to tell her . . . something. "Run a full analysis on this, Odin," she said finally. "Look for repetition of words and phrases, subjects emphasized or avoided, all the usual things. If it isn't the AI, could it be someone alive, inside the Base?"

  "If it is," said Odin, "I would have to say that they were quite insane."

  Outside the pinnace, it was even colder than Stasiak remembered, and he hugged himself tightly and stamped his feet hard on the landing pad while he waited for the heating elements in his uniform to kick in. He was beginning to think he should have found the time to give his uniform a thorough overhaul before he came down here. It was long overdue, and Stasiak was coming to the conclusion he might have left it a little too long. He shrugged, and rubbed his hands together briskly. He'd survive. Ripper, of course, was taking no notice of the cold, and was staring out at the forest boundary with calm, thoughtful eyes. Stasiak followed his gaze, but was damned if he could make out anything significant, or even interesting. He sniffed loudly, and looked longingly back at the pinnace.

  "Ripper, tell me you didn't just drag me out here for the exercise. Tell me there's a good reason why I'm standing here in the cold, before I decide to batter you to death with a blunt instrument and dance a jig on your remains."

  "You don't have a blunt instrument," said Ripper, without looking round.

  "I'll improvise!"

  Ripper smiled, but still didn't look away from the forest. "You weren't looking at the sensor panels, were you? According to the sensors built into our proximity mines, something or someone has approached or crossed our perimeter in several places before falling back to the forest again."

  "You're kidding," said Stasiak. "You've got to be kidding. If something's crossed our perimeter, why haven't the mines gone off?"

  "Good question," said Ripper. "Another good question might be why the mines' sensors detected a presence, when the pinnace's instruments continue to insist there are no living things on this planet apart from us. You've got to admit, Lew, it's an interesting place our Captain has brought us to."

  "I'll give him interesting," said Stasiak darkly. He moved over to stand beside Ripper, and glared out at the mists and the trees. "You know why he brought us here, Rip? Because we're expendable. We're just here to test the water for him. And if anything were to happen to us, he'd just shrug and say what a pity, and then contact the Darkwind and have them ship down two more warm bodies."

  "That goes with the job," said Ripper. "With being a marine. If you can't take a joke, you shouldn't have joined."

  "Just let me survive the next five months, and my contract will be up," said Stasiak. "And then I'll be out of the marines so fast it'll make your head spin. I can't believe I landed an assignment like this so close to getting free of it all. I'll tell you this for nothing, Rip: I'm not taking a single risk down here that I don't absolutely have to, I'm taking this one by the book and by the numbers, with no volunteering for anything. Whatever else happens on this mission, I'm coming back alive and intact, and you can put money on that."

  Ripper finally turned to look at him. "And what will you do then, Lew? Where will you go, once you've left the Service? All you know, all your training and experience, comes from being a marine. There aren't that many openings for a professional killer, outside the Service. Shall I tell you what's going to happen to you? You'll go from one dead-end job to another, each more frustrating than the one before, breaking your back every day for half the money you used to make as a marine. And finally, when your money's run
out and you're out of your mind with boredom, some shark with a big smile and a suit that cost a year of your wages will sign you up as a mercenary for which he gets a nice commission, and you get to tour the hellholes of the Empire. In the end you'll come running back to the Service and sign on again, just like most ex-marines do."

  "Like you did," said Stasiak.

  "Yeah. Like I did. Get used to the idea, Lew. This is all there is for people like us."

  "Not me," said Stasiak. "Once I'm out of here they're never getting their hands on me again. I've got plans. I'm going places. I'm going to make something of myself."

  "Sure you are, Lew."

  "I mean it!"

  "I know you do. I hope you make it. In the meantime, keep your eyes open and your head down. And don't look now, but I think I just saw something moving out on the perimeter, at two o'clock."

  Stasiak looked round casually, his eyes just happening to drift past two o'clock. There was nothing there. He cut in his infrared implants, but no heat traces showed anywhere on the perimeter. He patched into the pinnace sensors and studied their signals directly, but there was still nothing anywhere on the boundary. He broke contact, looked at Ripper, and shrugged.

  "Jumping at shadows, Rip. There's nothing out there."