Will landed on the creature's back and ran the knife around under its chin. Hauling back hard he felt the blade bite into and through the thick muscles of the beast's neck. He pulled back with all his strength and ended up all but severing the head. Black blood gushed out over his hands and the knife, but felt curiously cold and smelled bittersweet, like rotting flesh. The creature twitched twice, then lay still. As Will stood, he noted that its limb lay twisted in an utterly unnatural pattern.
He felt a hand on his right shoulder, and full human consciousness returned to him as he focused on Crowley's shadowform. "Interesting prize you have here, Will."
The Native American grunted and dropped into a crouch. "It was a scout, Crowley. It was created specifically to do recon through the dimensions."
The shadow man nodded. "I wonder why it didn't leave Turquoise when you discovered it?"
Will shrugged. "Perhaps the threat level I represented did not trigger its desire for self-preservation."
"Or its sense of self is subordinate to its sense of duty." Crowley crouched down beside Will and touched the creature's chitinous mask. "Looks rather like a samurai's battle-mask, wouldn't you say?"
Will nodded. "Could be. Does that mean what I think it does?"
"That Ryuhito had a hand in creating this thing? Perhaps." The shadow man rested his elbows on his knees and interlaced his fingers. "The fact that it did not leave when discovered suggests that not much thought was given to the sorts of situations it might face."
"You think it's a prototype scout just on a random mission?"
Crowley nodded. "That's the best we can hope for, I'm afraid."
Will grunted. "And worse case is that he's got big brothers and they'll be all over us like smog on LA."
"And soon," Crowley added, "much too soon."
Betrayal!
Ryuhito smiled as he put a word to the emotion filling his chest with fire. Betrayal! He relished it, embracing every bit of pain and righteous anger it brought to him. As his great grandfather might have done with a new species of oceanic invertebrate, Ryuhito cataloged every detail of what he observed. He related it to what he already knew and realized he had known it before, but in a more docile and benign state.
It occurred to him, as he floated above the quartet of scouts that had returned, that he had known betrayal from the day of his birth. The techno-giant corporations that ruled Japan through an industrial shogunate had only ever really paid lip-service to the Imperial families. If his grandfather objected to the actions of this minister or that, the man would resign in disgrace. The corporations would choose another man, an ideological clone of the first, to replace him so business could continue as usual. Worse yet, of course, was the fact that the minister who had left power would not only not atone for his error through sepukku, but he would often be given a corporate position of greater power than he had known in the government.
Ryuhito looked around him and reveled in the sense of correctness he gathered from the tower in which he floated. Once he had determined which of his warriors would operate well, he created armies of them and set them against each other in epic battles. The losers were destroyed, but the victors were immortalized. They were permitted to form themselves into the walls and floors of his tower, surrounding him with the sort of loyal retainers his family had known since before time itself was born.
The corporations mocked the Imperial family and the traditions upon which their own power was based. Ryuhito had seen his grandfather pressured mightily by his conflict with the corporations and had bristled at the injustice of it. The corporations operated as if a coerced renunciation of divinity actually could have stripped the Imperial family of their birthright. That it could not was intuitively obvious to even the most casual of observers, but the corporations were not even as observant as that.
They will learn to regret their arrogance. Ryuhito nodded to himself with satisfaction. His current situation had helped him put his past into perspective, and with it came an important revelation: He knew he could use the sensation of betrayal to power himself. He felt it more strongly than he did pain and knew that a sense of betrayal was more acute within those raised in the Japanese culture. Being betrayed was a breach of honor that demanded restoration of same, and the drive to restore that equilibrium knew no equal in the Japanese psyche.
Ryuhito focused on his current betrayal. He decided, when one of his scouts did not return from an extended reconnaissance sweep of the dimensions, that Pygmalion had deliberately gone out and destroyed it. He had done so for reasons that actually made Ryuhito's face bum with shame, but any error he may have made in his designs did not warrant such a humiliating lesson.
He had learned, from the previous missions, that his scouts were very good at returning and reporting on things they had seen. For the large part, the reports made reading soy futures in binary seem the excitement equivalent of live sex shows in the Chicago Stockyards, but Ryuhito had been pleased with how his scouts had functioned. Their armor and coloration defenses had kept them from harm and the most potent threats had come from adverse conditions instead of any indigenous life forms stalking the scouts.
The loss of a scout taught him a bitter lesson. Because he had not anticipated a scout failing to return, all data had been stored in the creature's brain until return. Providing a telepathic ability to communicate information in a realtime setting would not have been difficult. In fact, he conceded to himself, creating a creature that could handle reports that had shifting time differentials between the proto-dimensions would have been a challenge.
He also realized his scouts were flawed because they did not have a way to alert others in case of an emergency. He decided he should have cloned each of the scouts, or perhaps breed them in teams, so that at any sign of distress, another scout could be dispatched to find out what was happening to its teammate. With the real-time input, a lot of that information would already be available, but having another scout there to gather additional data would not hurt at all.
He put modifications on his list of things to do, elevating the genesis of his SCOUTINT sorting drone to the top. Having decided what he had to do to make his scouts better and having prioritized that information, he set that aside and again embraced his betrayal. You may be my master, but there is no excuse for that sort of action.
"What action would that be, Highness?" Pygmalion's mental voice carried an amused tone with it as it forced itself into his brain. Walking on the air itself, the small man entered the tower Ryuhito had created from the dried husks of his immortalized warriors through a tall, arching window.
Ryuhito opened his right hand and pointed toward his patiently waiting scouts. "One of my scouts did not return. Your object lesson has pointed out the flaws in the design, but coming to me and sharing them with me would have accomplished that end without acrimony."
Pygmalion nodded slowly and licked his lips as if he had just consumed a pastry. "Indeed, acrimony tinged with betrayal and frustration. This I felt from you. I wondered at its genesis, and now I find I am it. How fascinating."
"You deny having destroyed my scout?"
Pygmalion pointed his index finger at one scout like a child making a gun from his hand. His thumb fell once, and the first scout crumbled to dust. A second twitch, and a scout evaporated; a third, and a scout burst into flames. Pygmalion gestured one last time, liquefying the fourth scout, then raised his finger up and blew on it before tucking it away in an imaginary holster.
"The fate of your toys, Highness, is of no consequence to me. They are a means to an end, a process through which I can help you realize your true power and potential. While your experiments with exoskeletons have been amusing, the fact that they lack any true artistry bores me." Pygmalion shrugged, then frowned. "Where has this scout gone missing?"
Ryuhito hesitated, no longer certain his master had been tormenting him. "In Blue Africa, it is an unremarkable proto-dimension."
Unremarkable because it possesses nothing
to threaten you. I know it and, were it as accelerated in time as this place is, I might have chosen it for my domain. Nothing there should have been able to kill one of your scouts."
"My hypothesis exactly."
Pygmalion gestured sharply,, and agony spiked from temple to temple in Ryuhito's head. "Think, fool! If nothing there should have been able to kill one of your scouts, yet one of your scouts died there, what does it mean?"
Ryuhito cried out with the pain, then forced it back under control. "Something else must be there. What?"
"Not what, but who?" Pygmalion's breath hissed out between clenched teeth. "It cannot be Fiddleback and would not be the Empress of Diamonds. Baron Someday, perhaps? Midas Longclaws? Camillelion. Whoever it is, they seek to distract me and deflect me."
Ryuhito shivered as Pygmalion's tiny hands knotted and unknotted. His enemies come for him. He is not invincible.
"No, my child, I am not invincible, but I am more than capable of handling you. And, yes, I have enemies. I bested Fiddleback a second time now, and that means I have power. I have become noticed among my fellow Dark Lords, and if I am seen to be weak, they will try to tear me apart." Pygmalion's dark eyes went blank for a moment, then returned with a malevolent fire playing through them. "You, Highness, will be my tool for destroying my enemies."
The man-godling nodded. "I will create more scouts and we will determine who this interloper is..."
"Forget your scouts," Pygmalion whispered in an irritated hush. "I have dispatched tunnelers to build you a route through the dimensions to a place with a link to Blue Africa. You will take your battalions through the gateway there and destroy whatever is in Blue Africa. You can return through the tunnel."
"Will this not expose me to your enemies?"
"It is a risk I will accept. I sense nothing out there of sufficient strength to harm you. You are a god, and having you working with me will give any of my enemies reason to pause. "The little man smiled openly and glanced back out the window through which he had entered. "You and your assault will buy me time, and I need very little of it, as you know. Go, Ryuhito, slay what you find. Let your action tell my enemies that opposition to me is an alliance with oblivion."
Will felt both better and worse as Bat unzipped the black body bag and exposed the thing he'd killed to the light in the trailer. Almost instantly, a sickly scent, akin to stagnant swamp water, filled the small enclosure. Even the Yidam didn't seem to like the stench, though he joined Crowley in stepping forward to get a better look at the thing.
In the light, Will had a better perspective on what he had slain. The long, tufted ears reminded him of a bat's ears, and he suspected he'd mined the creature's voice box when he slit its throat, so there was no way to confirm its ability to use echolocation like a bat. The oversized eyes had huge pupils surrounded by only the thinnest white circle. As Crowley had noted before, the hardened exoskeleton covering the face did look like a samurai battle-mask, and subtle coloration variances on the breastplates and deltoid caps reminded Will of the rising sun flag of Imperial Japan.
Stretched out to its full length, the creature only stood 1.3 meters tall, but its short torso and long legs gave the impression it had been designed for speed instead of strength. The ache of his ribs still reminded him that the creature was very strong, and Will had already seen that the bruise on his chest bore an impression of the weave of the cloth of his shirt.
Bat looked most closely at the wound in the throat. "Nice. Got the airway and the artery."
Will winced. "Thanks, I think." In many ways he still felt detached from the kill, as if he had not actually committed the act. Looking down at his hands, he still saw the black bloodstains on his shirt and beneath his fingernails, but he couldn't bring himself to believe he'd actually struck the blow that killed the creature. Something else had been in him, acting through him. He knew from his grandfather that such a thing was a blessing and, though it did thrill him to be so blessed, it also scared him deeply.
Crowley poked the creature in one of the pale green chestplates. With a thick, slushy sound, the plate pulled free of the flesh mooring it and slid toward the breastbone. A new wave of the swamp odor rose up from the body. "Interesting."
Hal frowned and offered Crowley a letter-opener from his desk. "We're not well equipped for an autopsy, but if you want to do one..."
The shadow-sheathed man shook his head. "I have no interest in that at all, actually. What I found fascinating is that the creature has already begun to decay. It looks as if there are microorganisms that feed off green chlorophyll. This explains why, as a plant dies, it shifts color from blue to green, then turns to slime."
Will smiled. "Of course, the green-chlorophyll eaters cause decay faster, returning resources to the soil, which promotes new generations of plants. This thing has chlorophyll, presumably so it can draw nourishment passively, without hunting." He looked up at Crowley. "That's why blue plants predominate here."
"That would seem to be the situation." Crowley folded his arms across his chest. "I wonder if this microorganism attack is something that unconsciously inspired Herbert George Wells in The War of The Worlds?"
Tadd Farber drew in a deep breath of fresh air from the window, then looked back at the room's other five occupants. "H. Q. Wells? I don't follow you."
Hal smiled. "The ability to see anything in another dimension is a talent that not everyone has. Without people like Crowley around, our ability to transit dimensions would be severely limited except in dream or trance states. It is possible to have your consciousness drift, and Wells might have drifted here."
The Yidam nodded. "Given the temporal flux between dimensions and the ability of impressions to travel via circuitous routes, it is even possible that he is witnessing our speculation about his inspiration, thereby allowing us to inspire that which we speculate about."
Will shivered. "I don't think I want to think about that." He pointed to the scout. "Mr. Crowley, you said this might mean someone will be coming after us. What can we do? Should we evacuate?"
The shadow man looked over at Hal Garrett. "This is your show, Hal. You make the calls."
The African-American straightened up as much as the trailer would allow him. "I am open to suggestions, especially if we are likely to be under attack." He paused for a moment. "You know I don't like violence, and I don't approve of how you handled the Warriors, but I'm not one for making or being made a martyr. Do you have suggestions?"
Crowley nodded. "Tadd, get the workers together and tell them we've had a security breach. Tell them we suspect the thing that pushed Kent down into that ravine was a scout for a Red Army Faction terrorist cell out here to disrupt this operation. No one goes anywhere outside the compound without an armed escort."
He again touched the corpse. "The exoskeleton is good protection against getting bruised and chewed, but it won't stop a bullet. We have to issue guns to all of Bat's people. I think Will and Tadd should draw them as well. The loss of a scout is likely to draw a recon in force, and we have to be ready for it." Crowley turned toward Hal. "You might want a gun yourself."
"I'll pass." Hal waved Bat out of the trailer. "You go get your people armed, and draw as much ammo as you need."
The African-American turned his attention back to the corpse. "You said Ryuhito had something to do with this. Do we start assuming he has attained status as a Dark Lord and, if so, how do we deal with him?"
"This thing is strictly Lego blocks compared to what a Dark Lord can do. The biggest threat to us here is that Pygmalion decides to clean up and uses his troops against us." The shadow man looked at Tadd. "If we were faced with a half-dozen of fighters like your son, this would be over fast."
Tadd shook his head. "I'm glad Mickey isn't here."
"Amen to that." Hal picked up a walkie-talkie. "I think advising the Japanese of our situation would be good."
"Agreed. We definitely have to consider ourselves being centered in enemy territory." The Yidam tapped the crudely
drawn map on the wall. "We are not in the most defensible position here, but the clearing has good fields of fire. There is a battle in your history that our position parallels."
"Little Big Horn?" Will asked hopefully.
Tadd shot Will a harsh side glance. "Most of us didn't have kin on the winning side of that one, Will."
The Yidam shook his head. "Roarke's Drift."
Hal scowled. "Perhaps I will take a gun, after all."
"Good. I can only use two at a time." Bat entered the trailer and tossed a Mac-11 to Hal along with a web belt and two clip pouches. He handed similar rigs to Tadd and Will. "My people are heavy, but if Ryuhito's warriors get through, you can use these to stop them."