Timothy Zahn - Conquerors' Pride

There was a jerk of released clamps, and the fueler bounced up and away as the Counterpunch dropped free. "What do you want me to do?" Aric asked, trying to keep the quavering out of his voice.

"Just sit back and enjoy the ride," Quinn said, his voice suddenly vague and distant as a small green light appeared on Aric's board. Quinn had engaged the Counterpunch's Mindlink. Together he and the fighter were now a single, living entity.

With Aric as little more than excess baggage. Grimacing, he hunched his shoulders inside his flight suit and settled down to sweat it out.

The minutes dragged by. The five ships reached atmosphere without provoking any response and started down, the fighters' wing and tail-line positions continually reconfiguring as they drove through increasingly thicker air. "Got visual," Paladin's voice came. "Looks like a city, all right. Or what's left of one."

"Battle damage?" Harlequin asked.

"Or just natural deterioration," Dazzler, Paladin's tail, put in. "Can't tell which from up here. It's definitely more ruins than city, though."

"Let's take a closer look," Quinn said. "Keep the formation loose."

More minutes dragged by. The Counterpunch passed through a layer of cirrus clouds, heading down toward rolling wooded hills below. In the distance to the left Aric could see the sparkle of sunlight on water—a river or the edge of a lake; he couldn't tell which—with a suggestion of taller hills on the horizon in the other direction. Ahead, the hills they were traveling over seemed to be giving way to a flatter terrain, the trees similarly giving way to a wide grassland. Far ahead he could see the sparkle of another body of water.

"Maestro, we're over the city," Dazzler reported. "Lots of broken stone and metal, but it's all scattered around through big patches of vegetation. Looks pretty old."

"What about the ground itself?" Quinn asked.

"No obvious pits or burn marks," Dazzler said. "If there was a battle here, it must have happened a long time ago. Wait a minute."

For a moment there was silence. "Interesting," Dazzler said at last. "What do you think, Maestro?"

"Interesting, indeed," Quinn said. "Worth a closer look. Bookmaker, how's the high ground look?"

"Still showing clear," Bookmaker said. "If there's anyone here, they don't seem to have noticed us."

"Max?"

"I concur, Commander," the computer replied. "Continuing scan, but so far I've found nothing but the city."

"Must have been some war," Aric murmured uneasily.

"Not necessarily," Quinn said. "The city could have been nothing more than a base. A first-stage colonization effort someone put in and then gave up on. Clipper, form up a screen; El Dorado and I are going in."

"What are we going in to see?" Aric asked as the Counterpunch rolled partway over and dropped toward the ground.

"It's some sort of odd pyramid thing," Quinn told him. "About three meters high, white with lots of black speckles across the surface." His helmet bobbed as he nodded. "It'll be coming up on our left. Take a look."

The side of the Counterpunch dipped again, and Aric looked out. There it was: a triangular shape of glistening white, looking garishly out of place among the darker oxidized metal and broken masonry and pale-green plants. The spots Quinn had mentioned were closely but irregularly spaced, starting about a third of the way up from the bottom. Aric looked at it, lifted his gaze farther out—"Is that a fence over there?" he asked.

"Where?"

"Out there—that thick dark line a couple hundred meters away." He peered forward over Quinn's helmet. "There—straight ahead now—there's a section of it."

"It's a fence, all right," Quinn acknowledged, pulling a sharp turn that threatened to leave Aric's stomach behind. "Close mesh, but it's not metal, Can't get a clear reading on what it is at this distance."

"Definitely looks like they're not encouraging visitors, anyway," Aric said, feeling a queasiness in his stomach that wasn't entirely due to Quinn's flying. "You suppose there might be other defenses?"

"Fair chance of that," Quinn conceded. "I'm not reading anything, but the sensors I've got aren't really designed for this sort of thing. It's your call—you want to just skip it?"

Aric grimaced. "No," he said. "It's the first lead we've had. We can't afford to pass it up. Let's go down."

"Okay," Quinn said. "Clipper, we're going in. Keep a sharp eye."

The Counterpunch swung back around toward the pyramid, its nose swinging up and then dropping again as Quinn switched to vertical landing mode and set them down. "I won't be long," he told Aric as the canopy slid back. "Stay put and keep watch."

"No," Aric said, punching his restraint release. "You stay here. I'll go."

Quinn twisted back around, a startled look on the part of his face Aric could see. "Mr. Cavanagh—"

"It's El Dorado here," Aric told him firmly, pulling himself up out of his seat and hoping sheer momentum would get him out of the fighter before he could change his mind. "And this isn't open to argument."

"It could be dangerous—"

"It sure could," Aric grunted. "And if there's trouble, whoever's out there is going to need backup. You can fly this thing. I can't. So I'm elected."

He dropped over the side of the fighter to the ground before Quinn could protest further, staggering a bit after the zero-gee of the past two days. Carefully, trying to watch every direction at once, he started toward the pyramid.

The ground was soft and uneven, with a large assortment of obstacles created by the half-hidden pieces of twisted metal and broken masonry. But no spears or snares or explosives kicked in. A nerve-racking but uneventful minute later, he had reached the pyramid.

It was, as Quinn had estimated, about three meters high, its surface a brilliantly reflective and unstained white. And as for the spots they'd seen—

"They're not spots," he said, peering closely at one of them. "They're holes. Squashed oval shape, about four centimeters across and two high and two or three deep."

"Odd sort of erosion pattern," Harlequin commented.

"More likely a shaped gunfire charge," Clipper suggested.

"It's neither," Aric told them. "For one thing, the holes are too smooth and too neatly shaped. For another, each one's got a little cover door built over it."

"A door?" Delphi echoed. "What kind of door?"

"A mesh of some kind," Aric said. "Extremely fine fibers, with a very tight weave. The material's shimmery, but I don't think it's metal. Could be spun glass, I suppose."

"You're right, it's not reading as metal," Quinn confirmed. "Neither is the pyramid itself."

"The final report on the Jutland attack indicated the Conquerors use little or no metal in their construction," Shrike pointed out.

"True," Clipper said. "Though that's hardly proof that this is a Conqueror construct. El Dorado, can you see through the mesh at all?"

"Quite well, actually," Aric said, moving around the pyramid and looking through the various doors. "Most of the holes seem to be empty. Wait a minute; here's one—" He frowned. Looked again. "With a thin slice of dried meat inside it."

"A what?" Paladin demanded.

"Well, that's what it looks like," Aric said. "A very thin slice off a small dried sausage, just lying there on the floor. Dark brown in color; about the diameter of my little finger." He glanced through several of the other doors. "There are a couple more like that, too. Most look pretty much the same, though the color varies a little. Wait; here's one slice that's a lot thicker than the others. Maybe three or four times as thick."

There was a long pause. Aric leaned close to the mesh covering that last hole, trying for a better look at the thing inside. Just like a slice of cured sausage, all right: dark brown with a hint of red, slightly wrinkled, looking old and dry. The breeze rustling through the trees grew louder for a moment, and he saw the sausage slice rock gently as an eddy current slipped through the mesh door. The breeze faded away....