Jack Chalker - Charon - A Dragon at the Gate

Kindel was nearest me, and I whispered to her, “What would we do without Ku?”

“Why, we’d turn another of us into something like him,” she replied matter-of-factly.

“Oh,” was all I could manage, and turned back to watch the work. The system was simple enough—grab the rope and swing across the pressure-sensitive floor plate to the other side. It wasn’t quite as easy as all that though—the roof of the cave was less than three meters high, while the plate was four across. Since the rope couldn’t touch the plate, that meant you needed good speed and a slight jump at the end. It would be tricky indeed.

It was a nervous eternity as each of us made our crossing, but we were all trained professionals. We had only one close call, and no other problems. I made it very easily, almost to my surprise, and the thought struck me that, if Kara were a double agent, primed to betray us, she could do so very convincingly now. She didn’t, though, demonstrating that nice timing and power she tried so hard to hide.

In fact, only the tiny Kindel needed several swings until she felt confident enough to let go, and, even then, only fast action by the Ku overhead pushed her the last few precious centimeters.

We all waited while Ku used Ms little laser tool to cut the knot and retrieve the rope, then return, cut off and bring back the ring also. Again, anyone who passed by would have to be looking for something to find any sign that we had been here.

Much of the rest of the tunnel was arranged with other traps, some easier to spot than others. A few were actually powered and thus not active, but most were basic, mechanical types that were bad enough. Each caused a little heart trouble but each had its answer in our packs, and none deterred us.

We found countless blind junctions too, and in each we had to rely on Koril’s old experience and the probing sense of the top sores. Approaching one, though, we were held up by Koril from entering. We had reached areas close to the Castle—and now we were going to face the real problems.

For one thing, this junction had traffic; a fair amount by the sound of it. Troopers and maintenance personnel pushing dollies of various things to and fro, or so it seemed. There was never a lag of more than a minute or so between such sounds, hardly enough time to enter, determine the right path, and move on through.

Koril was still deeply in thought when the power returned. A band of light came alive all up and down the corridors, illuminating us dimly but completely—and illuminating the junction as well. We moved quickly back into the tunnel, just in time to miss four red-clad people emerging from another tunnel mouth on the run, pushing a large yellow cart filled with cases of something or other across the open space, and into another opening. They never glanced in our direction.

“Well, we made it a lot farther than I thought, thanks to the tabarwind,” Koril sighed. “Now the real fun begins. We’re less than fifty meters from the bottom floor of the Castle right now. These tunnels lead to the art storage rooms, the precious metals rooms, and the like. That one to the right, there, at two o’clock, leads to the Castle.” He stopped, and we all froze as yet another team came through, this time with what sounded like a powered vehicle of some kind. As the last sounds were receding, he continued.

“The booby traps have got to be down by now. I’m not sure anybody ever expected anyone to get this far undetected. I’m not sure I ever did, I’ve had an education in security myself these past hours. Now, I know you’re all tired but we have to push on. I’m sure all this fuss is over the attack that has surely been launched by now, and all hell is breaking loose. That means they’ll be coming up or down here any moment now. We can’t stay here and we can’t go on. I think—”

Just as he said that last a small powered tractor towing a trailer entered the Junction point, paused a moment, then turned our way and started right toward us.

Pistols were out in a moment, and Koril hardly had time to hiss “Don’t miss!” as the thing chugged into view. There were only two people in the cab, both dressed in maintenance red. We shot them so fast I can’t even describe what they looked like. In another moment Ku dropped from the roof into the open cab, kicked the corpses out of the way, and brought the tractor to a stop.

“Quickly!” Koril said. “Park. Darva. Kaigh. You’re the biggest and strongest Get those crates off this thing!”

We hustled to do as instructed. The damned tilings were heavy, but not beyond any two of us, and we had them off the trailer and to the side of the little chugging train in a couple of minutes. During that time we nervously ignored other traffic sounds behind us. We were just far enough around the bend, we hoped, not to be noticed—unless somebody else wanted to come up our way.

Koril wasted no time on sorcery. He opened his laser pistol to wide scan and disintegrated the crates to white powder, taking the risk that the electronic spring like sound would be unheard or obscured by traffic noise. Quickly we climbed into the back trailer. Ku then stuck the small service cab into reverse, backed out carefully into the junction point, made the turn, then moved into the tunnel that headed for the Castle. We never knew what was in those crates.

Ku drove like a madman and hardly hesitated when we approached some troopers and maintenance personnel on foot. To my surprise they just stepped against the wall and let us by without a glance. A little further on, we passed a similar tractor going the other way. Ku waved, so did the red-clad driver of the other vehicle, and we passed with a few centimeters to spare.

Koril laughed out loud. “The fools! They figure we’re troopers. Well, we are! Weapons at the ready! This is gonna get hairy in a minute!”

With that, we entered the bottom floor of the Castle, a huge open area supported by rock pillars. Hundreds of men and women clad in red or black were there, and a number of vehicles and trailers were about.

We pulled in between some painted lines on the floor and Ku brought us to a stop. Koril, brimming with confidence, winked. “Now I’ll show you why bureaucracy is so evil.” He jumped down, bolstered his pistol, and walked briskly towards a gold-braided black-clad trooper, an officer of some kind and by his wa a powerful man.

The former Lord of the Diamond walked right up to him, started talking to him, and the trooper nodded, then pointed and said something back. Koril saluted and returned to us, hardly suppressing a grin. “Okay—out! We don’t have to walk up. We’re going to take Lift 4.”

A little numbly we complied, and followed him across the busy floor to the doors of a huge open lift. I wasn’t used to such a primitive device, but remembered that Koril had said these were moved by counterweight, not by any electrical power. They had to be—otherwise in a power outage they would be useless.

We stood there, looking about nervously, not quite believing what we were doing and feeling we stuck out like a sore thumb in our green uniforms. I couldn’t stand it any more than the rest, and eased up to Koril. “All right—how the hell did you manage this?”

He smiled and winked. “I just walked up to the chief operations officer there, told him we were a special security patrol ordered to defensive positions, and asked him for the quickest way to our station.” “And he told your “Sure. Why not?”

I wasn’t the only one shaking my head in wonder as the big lift descended, stopped, and form-fitted itself neatly into the indentation for it in the floor. There were a number of hand carts on it, mostly empty, with security troopers and maintenance personnel on them, all of whom paid us no mind whatsoever. I admit, though, that at least I, and almost certainly most of us, were close to being nervous wrecks at this point. Still, this was just the sort of stunt I might improvise if this were my old stamping grounds. I knew that our greatest danger until we got off wasn’t from these faceless men and women but from somebody’s nerve springing in our group and giving us away.