Brian Stableford - Asgard's Heart

“You think they’ve all gone down?” asked Myrlin. He was assuming, of course, that they’d come to a dropshaft which was too narrow to contain the truck, and had been forced to go on in light suits, with whatever alternative transport the Nine had laid on for them. But he knew it couldn’t be quite as simple as that. Somebody had sent out a Mayday from the truck. Either they were still inside the truck, or we were looking at some kind of trap, like the deadfall in the first shaft.

“They couldn’t have known that we’d lost their trail,” I said, pensively. “They had to assume that we’d catch them up anyhow, if we survived their first little surprise package. If they had to leave the truck behind, it might have seemed a cute notion to turn it into a big booby trap bomb.”

“But they’d need it again when they came back,” said Myrlin. “Tulyar may be leading them on a suicide mission, but his friends don’t know that.”

It was a fair point. I could imagine John Finn’s reaction to any proposal to blow up the vehicle.

“Is it possible that they left some of the Scarid soldiers behind, to shoot at us when we try to open the door?” asked Urania.

“Maybe,” I replied. “But the same doubts apply. A couple of snipers couldn’t expect to wipe out all of us, and even if they did—who’d want to be stranded in this godforsaken spot? If Tulyar and the others have already gone on, the rearguard would be left to its own devices, with no place to go.”

“Did they have enough suits?” asked Myrlin, still uneasy. “Perhaps there were simply too many of them, and they had to leave some people behind.”

“There were eight aboard,” said Urania. “Enough for all of them. But the truck has light and warmth, and is well-supplied. It is by no means inconceivable that some of the party would elect to stay with it rather than descend into possible danger. They might well take the view that the truck could take them up again, if those who have descended never return.”

It was plausible enough, but it still sounded wrong.

“I don’t suppose they’ll respond to a radio call?” I asked.

“We have been transmitting a signal for some time,” Urania told me. “The robot’s automatic systems are returning a signal which suggests that all is well, but I cannot tell whether there are humanoids aboard. A design flaw, I fear.”

Even the Isthomi couldn’t think of everything.

“It looks,” I said, “as if someone is going to have to go out to take a look.”

“Wait!” said Urania quickly, looking down at the suitcase, which was flashing something at her. “An infra-red scan reveals that there are two bodies outside the truck, between the front wheels and the wall. It is probable that they are hiding from us.”

“But why would they hide behind the truck with side-arms,” asked Myrlin, “when they have a cannon on top of it?”

“The instruments,” said Urania in deadpan fashion, “cannot tell us that.”

“It doesn’t pose much of a problem,” I said. “All we need to do is call out to them, telling them to come out with their hands high or we’ll blast them with our cannon. They can hear us.”

“Let’s try it,” said Myrlin, becoming impatient with all the talk. “It might work.”

We tried it. From inside, it sounded weird; I hoped the garbling was the effect of the truck’s armour rather than the inadequacy of our loudhailer.

But Myrlin was right—it did work.

Within fifteen seconds, a lone humanoid came staggering out of the bushes. It was female, and she was wearing a tight transparent suit. Before she collapsed and fell face forward into the dust we got a clear look at her face, and despite the fact that it was covered in blood we had not the least difficulty in recognising her.

It was Jacinthe Siani.

The first thought which crossed my mind was that it had to be a trap. After all, her companion hadn’t come out. But the more obvious interpretation of her condition was that her companion was probably in much the same state as she was, and couldn’t come out.

We sat in silence for half a minute, mulling over these possibilities and wondering what to do next.

“Well,” said Susarma Lear, in a tone whose mockery was not concealed by the muffling effect of her being in the gun-turret, “I reckon she was asking for trouble. One woman in a cramped truck with three Tetrax, three Scarid officers, and that bastard Finn.”

It had not occurred to me until she spoke that the Kythnan might have been the victim of a rape. The hypothesis did not strike me as a likely one.

“Somebody has to go out,” I said, tiredly. “I’ll do it.”

“Like hell you will,” said the colonel, suddenly appearing again at the hatchway connecting the cab to the back of the truck. “I’ll do it. I’m the one with the combat training, remember?”

I shrugged. There are times when you just have to stand aside and give the limelight to someone else—besides which, she was still my commanding officer.

While she was suiting up I watched Jacinthe Siani lying in the mud. She moved once, as though trying to get to her feet again, but she seemed to be quite unable to muster the requisite strength. If it was an act, it was a good act.

I watched Susarma approach the recumbent form, with exaggerated carefulness. She had a flame pistol in her hand. Jacinthe stirred again when the colonel touched her, and it looked as if she spoke, but there was no way to tell what she might be saying. Then Susarma stood up again, and moved around the truck to look for the other person who was supposedly lurking there.

The colonel’s voice came back over the intercom, sounding tired and a little bit frustrated. I think she’d really rather have found something to shoot at. “You’d better send Myrlin out to pick this one up,” she said. “He’s in a pretty bad way.”

“Can you tell what happened to them?” asked Urania.

“Not exactly,” Susarma replied. “But they look as if they’ve been in a hell of a fight. They’ve lost any weapons they were carrying and it looks to me as if they’ve been very badly beaten. This guy’s suit has a lot of blood swilling around in it. He may have a few broken bones. It looks to me like they both might have died if they hadn’t had the life-support systems in the suits to sustain them. There are a couple of things here that look like worms cut in half— they may have been twisted round the guy’s ankles.”

While she was giving this report, Myrlin had moved back to suit up. The colonel was able to pick up Jacinthe Siani and carry her round to the airlock at the rear of the truck, and when Myrlin went out she was able to come back in. It took time to get them through because we put everything through a sterile shower. We didn’t want the inside of the truck contaminated. Susarma eventually managed to cram the Kythnan woman into one of the bunk-spaces, and we opened her suit. The wall immediately began to put out hair-like feelers that burrowed their way discreetly into her flesh. She moaned a little, but when she tried to open her eyes she couldn’t do it.

“When will she be able to talk?” I asked Urania, who was busy with Clio.

“A few minutes,” said Urania. “She is not badly hurt— merely weak from blood-loss and exhaustion.”

I looked at the Kythnan’s head, and saw that it had taken some bruising blows. It looked like the work of a very crude torturer.

Myrlin brought the other one in. It was one of the Scarid officers, the paleness of his chalk-white skin exaggerated by the ribbons of blood that had dried upon it. He had taken more punishment than the woman, and he looked as if something rather heavy had run over the upper part of his body. His suit wasn’t breached, but he’d been shaken up very thoroughly inside it. Again, I couldn’t think of anything it looked like except for the results of crude brute force, liberally administered.