Stephen Berry - The Battle for Terra Two

"Cost money." Bob shook his head. "Whole economies must have been based on this bloody swapping."

"Oh, they were," said D'Trelna, frowning at the gray battlesteel door. "One could build a certain number of them, at great expense. Keeping a war going at just the right pace provides industrial growth and a certain hollow prosperity."

"The trick was not to lose many ships?"

D'Trelna nodded. "That would have been mutually ruinous. Mindslavers fought it out only twice-when they were invented and fielded by the R'Actolian biofabs, and when the Empire was in its final agony. The rest of the time-a long, long time-those tacit rules of engagement were followed."

"And life was cheap."

"Never so cheap as then."

Another ten minutes brought them to the end of the tube and a thick gray slab of battlesteel.

"Why isn't this door opening?" said D'Trelna after a moment.

"Problem?"

"Yes." He nudged the door with his boot. "It's supposed to open when someone stands here."

The disintegrator pods began humming.

D'Trelna turned, looking back down the tube. The pods were oscillating from soft yellow to a fierce white. Each cycle was shorter than the last, more white than yellow. "It's going into destruct mode! Something's triggered it."

"How long?"

"Not long. When it slips into pure white, we're dead." The commodore slipped off his rifle. "Fire at the door." Aiming carefully, he pulled the trigger, sending a raw beam of energy splashing against the door. The thick battlesteel lapped it up, not even glowing.

"Hurry!" he shouted above the blaster's shrilling.

McShane stood unmoving, right hand on the rifle's brown duraplast sling, eyes fixed, unblinking.

Suddenly he moved to the right, six practiced, economical steps that brought him to the wall, hands pushing four widely separated blocks just so, each on a different edge.

Dimming, the cubes slipped back into yellow as the door slid noiselessly open. Three broad corridors ended in a wide circle before the tunnel. Small shipcars rimmed the circle, fronts tucked into power niches.

"Bob!" D'Trelna shook McShane by the shoulder.

"What…" He blinked, dazed. "The door's open!"

"You don't remember?"

"No. Except…"He shook his head.

"What?"

"I was back in that pit of a room…"

"The mindslave chamber, here onRevenge?"

"Yes. Back in that room, mindlinked with those things, hearing their frenzied buzzing, feeling them rip at my mind, when the whole thing froze, became a sort of mental tableau and a voice, very calm, very slow, said, 'We gave even as we tried to take. The pattern of the cubes, sally portal one-four-two.' "

He looked at the commodore. "You said we were here to consult the ship's computer. Not quite true, is it?"

"Let's take one of those cars. I'll explain as we go."

"Very well."

As they stepped into the ship, the door closed behind them. Reaching the nearest car, Bob sank into the front passenger's side, rifle between his knees, helmet on the floor. D'Trelna tossed rifle and helmet into the back seat, climbed in and backed the noiseless car from its berth.

"We're here to see the overmind," said D'Trelna. Bringing the car up to speed, he turned down the left corridor. Doorways and side corridors flashed by.

"I thought you'd killed all the mindslaves."

"The overmind's in a different part ofRevenge. It spoke to me after I destroyed the central brainpod clusters."

"Did the overmind pull that stunt in the tunnel?"

"I don't know."

"What is an overmind?"

"A mindslaver's central processing unit. It delegates tasks to the various brainpods, coordinates them. It's the interface between brainpods and ship's computer."

McShane grabbed the rollbar as D'Trelna threw the car into a tight spiral, plunging down a ramp toward the lower decks. "You may be a helluva starship captain, D'Trelna," he said, "but you're the worst driver in the galaxy."

"You want to walk?"

"No. Why are we going to see the overmind?"

"It told me to return when the S'Cotar did. Poor, mad brain, I thought. All those years without a body, all those millennia in stasis. Death would be a mercy.

"Well, the S'Cotar are back. And so am I."

Deep within the mindslaver, they stopped before a small, unmarked door. Powering down, D'Trelna dismounted as the car settled to the floor. Taking out the rifles, he handed one to Bob.

"Does the overmind shoot, too?" asked McShane, taking the rifle uncertainly.

"As an Imperial, it probably prefers treachery," smiled the commodore. "No. These are in case of bugs. Can't run max n-gravs and shield together."

The door opened.

McShane had been expecting a deep shaft of a room, like the sterile gray well forward that had housed the rest ofRevenge's mindslaves. "Very nice," he said, following D'Trelna into the stylish little room.

The walls were hung with tapestries artfully woven in skillful geometric patterns that deceived the eye. The carpeting was rich and deep, altering hue or color with each change of perspective. Two armchairs and a sofa of the same material as the carpeting sat against the wall.

"Gentlemen," said a faint, dry voice. "Sit, if you wish."

"We'll stand," said D'Trelna.

"Thank you for coming."

"Could you speak up?" asked Bob.

"Most of my remaining energy is holding off central computer," said the voice, slightly louder. "When you destroyed the mindslaves, Commodore, you destroyed the delicate balance between organic and inorganic minds on this ship. Pity, too. Computer was good company. We shared a liking for prespace mythology. But now that large lump of spun titanium crystal is about to finish me."

"Why?" asked Bob.

"It's quite mad. It was in stasis a long time, with the rest of this vessel. Its particular series does-did-not take well to stasis. It was computer that tried to kill you in the sally portal."

"And you who joggled my memory?"

"Yes. You know much about this ship, McShane, absorbed from the mindslaves when they tried to destroy you, your last time here."

Bob started to ask another question,

"Please. Let me say what I have to, then I and this ship are of no further moment.

"You're here, D'Trelna, because the S'Cotar are back."

"Yes."

"From an alternate Terra, according to your skipcomms to Fleet." The commodore nodded.

"You were right, guessing it's not a S'Cotar device the biofabs are using."

"They got to the Trel cache!" exclaimed Bob.

"No," said the overmind. "The Trel cache was discovered just as the Empire entered its final cataclysm. It's never been explored. The device the S'Cotar have is Imperial-a prototype ferreted from Pocsym's vaults by Guan-Sharick and used to establish a fallback point on Terra Two. It's limited to surface use. The spaceborne unit that was used to remove your destroyer must have been brought by the machines."

The color drained from D'Trelna's face. "The Empire had no spaceborne unit? How am I to get a ship to Terra Two?"

"There's a prototype of such a device hidden on this ship. You will need one other starship positioned here to send you through."

"Reinforcements are on the way."

"Don't count your ships before they arrive, Commodore. I did, once. It cost me my body.

"Also, finding the device, you still have to escape the ship with it."

The overmind spoke quickly, voice almost inaudible. "Computer's heating my brain casing. Finishing me, it will come after you."

"Where's the device?" said Bob.

"Deck forty-eight-Agro. Program your shipcar with that deck number and flag section red one-eight-four."

"Agro red-one-eight-four," repeated D'Trelna.

"Computer's made a green hell out of Agro, piled all the treasures and mysteries there that the Empire sent, at the end. You'll find what you need there, in the house of the dead.