Chapter 5: Gravelight
Ahead of a storm front, squad Beta dropped right into the crumbling heart of a dead city. We came by aircar in the still dark hours just before dawn, with the temperature dropping and rain on the way. Sweety flashed a weather scan in a corner of my faceplate. The cloud deck was thick, and the frontal system extended across a quarter of the continent. Lightning flashed silently far away to the north of us. We swept into the ruins, a phantom fleet of alien aircars hissing past scores of massive, ruined towers, hovering over great courtyards overgrown with wild waist-high grass.
The assault doors opened and we emerged like alien warriors, glittering in black armor, bristling with weapons and sensors. Pilgrims of violence on an unholy mission of war. That’s how the Scalers see us, I thought, as alien invaders. But there were no Scalers in sight. They were the mission now. We’d tagged and set the Boy Scaler free, and tracked him here.
I landed running from the aircar, just behind Coolhand, and we rushed through tall grass and brush to our positions. My faceplate lit up the dead city for me in false colors, shaded for IR emissions. Power, EM or other emissions would show up in high contrast. Huge, grotesque ruined towers loomed all around us, covered with vegetation. This was Site 2012 on our charts, a vast ruined tomb, once a massive fortress dominating a high plateau that overlooked a great river cutting through a trackless jungle. All this, now only a semi-fossilized memory. The people who had once lived here in power and comfort had vanished ages ago. Now it belonged to us.
“You are in position.” Sweety spoke in her calm, clear, feminine voice.
“Thanks, Sweety.” There was no need to answer, but the truth is that I felt rather close to her. I remembered some graffiti I’d seen in a latrine on Planet Hell: ‘I think I’m falling in love with my Persist’. But it was true, Sweety understood me. I knew I could depend on her. She was always on top of things. Of course, she was only the outcom of my tacmod, a cleverly bioteched micromass of artificial smarts, but to me she seemed a lot more than that. Sweety had developed a personality as well.
A temple loomed in front of me against the dark sky. Lightning lanced through the night behind the structure. Sweety automatically dampened the brightness of the flash enough to protect my eyes. Even so, the electric brilliance briefly froze the temple against the night. Great, grassy stone steps led up a massive, elaborately-carved artificial mountain of rock to four great domed cones of crumbling stone, fringed with moss and vines. I stiffened as a deep rumble rolled overhead.
“Thunder,” Sweety explained. I did my tac check and nothing stirred, only the Legion, now moving into position. A night breeze rustled around me, blowing aimless patterns through the tall grass that filled the courtyard. A few drops of rain spattered against my faceplate while the tacsit map glowed on the lower corner. There were plenty of entrances to the structure. Our probes cautiously advanced inside. No action yet. A shadow in the sky, glowing, growing silently in my faceplate.
“Aircar,” Sweety told me. She normally would not have mentioned it, but my adrenalin had given her a little jolt.
“Normal vision,” I whispered. Sweety cancelled the darksight, and darkness rushed over me. Lightning strobed, illuminating the temple, a flock of fleecy angels and a handful of passing aircars. It hurt my eyes a little. The trees danced in the rising wind.
“Restore it,” I commanded. My faceplate lit up again. I liked little glimpses of reality from time to time. But too long could get you in trouble. Sweety didn’t like it because it affected my eyes’ sensitivity to her carefully selected palette of enhancement colors and shades.
Tacsit showed that the probes had uneventfully progressed to the planned distance and depth for us to proceed. The probes kept moving and it was time for us to move as well.
“Beta, assault.” Snow Leopard ordered, already moving up the stairs. “Command, Beta…we are assaulting Structure 02.”
I moved up the stairs to his left, all sensors on max, my E at the ready, set on v-min as ordered. Steep stairs, weak grav and powered armor. I felt like a God. We arrived at the top in moments, not even breathing hard.
We had a tremendous view from atop the temple, huddling against the gritty stone walls of four towering domes. The plan was to follow the probes into the heart of the temple and then down further, into the underground. The probes now swarmed far below, mapping a subterranean world. Somewhere down in the bowels of the temple, the Scalers were waiting.
“Command, Beta-we’re in place on Structure 02.”
There was no hurry. CAT 24 was swarming all over the bones of this dead city, and Beta would hold its position until we got the word. We settled in, moving into the gaping doorways of the domes to get out of the rain, and found comfortable positions in the rubble.
Snow Leopard moved around the temple’s edge restlessly. Coolhand posted himself on the west side, observing the progress of the assault. I squatted just inside one of the domes, watching the sky. The wind and the rain hissed gently.
“Ahh, death.” Psycho settled himself down near me and rested his Manlink against the wall. I did not say anything. Priestess stood beside Ironman in the doorway of the opposite dome, her E at the ready.
“Think we’ll find any extra-large exos down there, Thinker?” Merlin asked. He crouched near Psycho, balancing his E on one knee.
“If we do, I’m putting in for sick leave, Merlin,” I informed him. “I don’t ever want to see another one of those things.”
“You think too much,” Psycho cut in. “Always scheming to get into Valkyrie’s pants. Anything for sick leave. You knew she’d visit her wounded hero. I wish you’d tell me how you arranged that run-in with the exo. I wouldn’t mind a few days in the body shop.”
I ignored him. “I should have used the laser,” I said quietly. “Slice off its legs. They can’t hurt you without legs.”
A short silence ensued as Merlin and Psycho pondered my comments. I knew Psycho would probably say something crazy.
“You know what I’d like to do?” he finally said. “I’d like to take on one of those critters with this.” He raised his hot knife and triggered it. It flared to life, hissing blue-hot. The light from the knife flooded his faceplate, revealing his evil, boyish features. “Can you imagine that,” he asked, his eyes glowing, his mouth twisting. “Man Kills Bug With Knife. They’d laugh in the Inners, of course. But I’d be famous out here.” His eyebrows rose, and I could not help laughing. I knew he was serious and crazy enough to try it.
“A shame, Psycho,” I responded. “We’d have to get another Five.”
“Thinker’s always thinking,” he said, putting away the knife. “What a pain. You can screw up your life, thinking all the time.”
He was right, of course. During Basic, I’d been known as The Thinker, for over-thinking everything. I’d probably missed a lot, by agonizing over the possible consequences of my actions. Psycho had not missed a thing. It amazed me that he survived.
“What do you think the Scaler was trying to tell us with his drawings, Thinker?” Merlin had a talent for guiding conversations. Then he would sit back and listen. His IQ probably topped the rest of us put together. He certainly didn’t need our opinions. I had no idea why a scientific wizard like Merlin hauled an E instead of working in a biolab somewhere. He tended to be nervous, a bit clumsy in the field. I could not fathom his friendship with Psycho. I suppose he secretly admired his brash approach to life.
I thought about the drawings. “I’m not sure,” I said. “It’s strange.”
The lifies had thought they were making progress with their catch, the Boy Scaler. When he settled down, they showed him all sorts of wonders, in an effort to communicate. He calmly took it all in for a while, silent, eyes glittering like black gems, cold and hard. And then he showed a wonder or two of his own. He sketched out the night sky on a datascreen. He drew it expertly, with all the stars right where they should be, seen from his forest. He drew a moving star, and traced it right down to the horizon. After that, he did another sketch, an exoseg, Exoseg Gigantic Soldier, eating a man. Then he smashed the d-screen with the lightpen, suddenly convulsed with rage and tears. The lifies could get nothing further from him. But it gave us something to work on.
They took Boy Scaler by aircar to the edge of the flower forest near where he’d been captured, and released him. Dressed once again in his tunic of scaly skin and armed with his slingshot and spear, he bolted into the forest
