Jo Clayton - Shadow of the Warmaster

“Kind of them to mark the way for us.”

Elmas stretched upward, touched a small white splotch high on the wall. She settled back, looked at her finger, rubbed her thumb against the sticky white stain. “Marked more than one way. Let’s go.”

Following the trail of white splotches accented with the bodies of unconscious guards, N’Ceegh’s spotter in her hand, Elmas Ofka led them deeper and deeper into the maze, making better time than she’d expected thanks to the alien invaders who’d cleared the way for them. Down one level, two, three…

The needle jumped on the spotter; Elmas stopped, signaled Lirrit. The isya dropped to her stomach and wriggled around the bend on toes and elbows, vanishing for several seconds before she came back the same way, jumped to her feet and brought her head close to Elmas Ofka’s. “Aliens. Two. Stopped. Watching something.”

Elmas Ofka thought a moment, then took the isyas back around several corners until she came to a branching tunnel. Eyes on the spotter, she turned into it and began picking her way to a point equivalent to where she’d been; twice the spotter jumped, twice Lirrit Ofka went ahead and darted the unlucky wanderer, then Elmas Ofka rounded a bend and saw the end of the tunnel; beyond that there was what looked like a vast open space. After signaling Lirrit Ofka and half the isyas to wait, she led the other three toward the opening, keeping close to the wall, moving warily, ready to dart anything that popped into the arch.

She dropped to her knees and eased her head past the edge.

The room beyond was immense; the ceiling was three levels up, aboveground, with a series of slim horizontal windows circling just below it, windows with one-way glass in them, black now because of the fog and clouds. The floor was another level below where she knelt; it was laid with black and white tiles in a swirling pattern that made her dizzy when she shifted her eyes too quickly. At the north wall there were several tiers of theater seats with a separate thronechair for the Imperator; at the south end, near where she was, a large curved screen, blindingly white, took up part of the wall; in the space it left there were three inconspicuous doors, one to the east of the screen and two on the west. A guard stumped back and forth in front of the single door, the scrape of his footsteps loud enough to send her heart knocking in her throat.

She frowned; the chamber was filled with shadows, except near the screen which seemed to gather in and amplify what light there was. Nothing moved except the guard. Why was he still moving? Was he beyond the range of the alien’s weapons? They were at least ten yards closer to him than she was. Did they have to be almost on the man before they could take him out? Why were they waiting? What did they expect to happen? She glanced down at the spotter, stared at it, startled; there were two spikes on the line, not one. She shifted it slowly back and forth, watching the spikes shift. Something else was out there, something closing on the guard. She moved her eyes slowly over that dizzying floor; whatever it was, she couldn’t see it, no matter how hard she searched. She looked at the scanner. The two spikes had nearly converged.

A section of floor reared up. She heard a hum like an angry bee. The guard dropped. There was a short whistle, then a small alien with brownish fur was standing over the guard’s body, waiting.

8. First the video room (that’s what it looked like, giant size), then the operations cell of the mainBrain.

We parked the miniskips on the stage, out of sight behind some low railings and got into the subterra with almost no difficulty. Adelaar had sense enough not to argue and let Pels take the lead, she’d seen a little of his work on Weersyll; besides, she was carrying a heavy pack she cherished like a child, her tools. I had a launch tube slung across my back and half a dozen clips for it in a pouch on my belt; the darts in the clips were loaded with bang juice strong enough to take out a wall if the need arose. Portable back door, you might say. Pels was in huntmode and harder to see than a black ship in the CoalSack. Shadow made him a special stunner, one small enough for him to carry in his mouth; he had it in his fist now and used it whenever he came on a guard we couldn’t avoid or some idiot with weak kidneys heading for the can. There weren’t many of them, thank whatever. It was late and most sensible folk were sleeping.

I was navigator, reading the chart, calling the turns, laying on rubwhite to guide us should we come back this way when the job was done. I shot it up near where the ceiling met the wall, where not many people would notice it.

We didn’t have much trouble; Pels laid out half a dozen, I shoved them against the wall and on we went. Boring, eh? If you plan right, that’s the way it should be. You don’t want interesting experiences at a time like this. We used about fifteen minutes reaching the place Kumari took one look at and called the video room. Then we waited while Pels sneaked up on the guard. It was slow and tedious, nothing we could do but watch our backs and sweat out the computer’s reaction time; some of the men Pels blanked had to be guards, at least one had to have missed a check-in by now, maybe even two checks if our Luck went sour on us. We were counting on redundancy; there’s no gadget made by man or god that’s foolproof, you have to include some sort of back check to make sure an idiot particle hasn’t wandered where it shouldn’t.

Stunner hidden in his mouth, Pels eeled forward on toes and elbows, his fur mimicking the pattern of the tiles; if you were as high as we were and you knew what to look for, you could find him; the floor would shift a little as if something moved a lens across it. But if you were down there walking a tedious stint like that guard, you’d most likely never see him until he had you.

As Pels got closer, the guard’s nervousness increased. He kept looking around, snapping and unsnapping the flap of his holster, pacing jerkily about, wheeling and glaring at each whisper of sound. Pels changed his technique. He moved and froze, moved and froze, timing his progress to the jitters of the guard; the operating range of that stunner was just under two meters so he had to be very close before he could trigger it and hope to do the job.

Before he went down, Pels got a good look at the man. “Fiveworlder,” he said. “Looks like the local bigass has brought some muggers home from exile; I suppose he feels safer with gits like that keeping the crawlers off his back.”

Squat and powerful, sniffing trouble even if he couldn’t see it, the Fiver swung his head back and forth as if questing for a scent. He was good all right, I wouldn’t want to be the one to take him, but he’d never gone up against an Aurranger Rau in huntmode. Pels got him going away, laid him out like butcher’s meat.

Adelaar and I sprinted along the ramp that led down from our tunnel, moving like the devils in hell were chasing us. We got the door open and she went to work; she’d spent some time over what the EYEs had told her about the system, so she needed about thirty seconds to put a hold on the alarms. Pels and I nosed about. The place looked empty, but we weren’t taking chances, we checked every shadow. There was no one about, no techs or guards, just the interface ticking over by itself. When we got out front again, Adelaar’d begun the tedious process of switching the instructions of the alarm system. I could see it wasn’t all that difficult, she was clucking and snorting as she worked, scorn oozing from every pore. Watching her was about as interesting as watching grass grow, so I went to help Pels carry the guard inside.

We’d just dropped him behind a bench when the door slammed open.