“Captain—how do you know this?” Modra asked him.
“I’ll take that title again. It seems I’ve been appointed somehow. It seems I’m the proverbial empty vessel. That’s why a null had to be one of them. It didn’t have to be me, but it is. I am unencumbered by experience. The tools they’ve given us are effective, but anyone who’s naturally on the talent band has grown up using them in one fixed way, in assuming everything works such and so. These tools don’t work quite that way. They have to be used intuitively, without preconceptions. One of you might get them right, but I’m the most likely to succeed. If anything happens to me, one of you will have to use them. Josef, you’re probably number two, since you’ve also had military training and you grew up a hypno, no matter what your powers may be now. After that, only the gods know. And one of you, perhaps.”
“It—it gave you these tools, Gunny?” Krisha asked in amazement.
“No. You all carry the tools. / use them. Josef, you’re about as important as I am in all this, since we can push him through the door with the Mycohl but we can’t lock it. That just postpones things a bit and I don’t much cherish the idea of spending an eternity in some other-dimensional Hell holding the door shut. We must work as a team. A single unit. And it is most definitely not going to be easy, and the odds of our even getting a crack at him are—well, about the same odds as going in that first station and getting all the way to the city and coming back out alive.”
“Where do we begin?” Jimmy asked him. “How do we find this Grand Prince of Darkness?”
Gun Roh Chin chuckled. “Well, over the years, he’s had a pretty good record finding us. And that’s what we must do. He can be almost anywhere, so we have to bring him to where we’re at.”
“Joseph? Qaamil is your old turf,” Chin noted.
“That great sorceress who supposedly turned the army into drols? I never saw her, but I got some descriptions while snooping around. Not enough to be sure, but I’d bet it’s Kalia. And, if it is, she’d set up in Lord Squazos’ hive, simply because he’s a Rithian who keeps Terrans and drols made from Terrans for slaves, pets, you name it. Making him crawl, or, just as bad, be under her, would be just the kind of thing she’d do. She’d already have handled the Terran-led hives. Squazos is right in the middle of things. Rule from there and you control the Lords of the Qaamil. But there’s no way they gave her that kind of power and no way she’d have the patience to learn to use it if they did. That means she’s got at least one, maybe more, of the princes with her, and probably a lot of regular Quintara as well, it’s worse than a death trap.”
“It is also the center of the darkness growing through the Mycohl,” Tobrush noted. “It is a point that, if it could be somehow threatened, the Engineer would have to come to fix.”
“Precisely my point,” the captain said. “We are not defenseless. None of us. You’ll discover that as we go along. Individually, we’re” strong but no match for them. Together, collectively, they cannot harm us! The Quintara,
even the princes, are all egomaniacal individualists. Each thinks of him- or herself as a potential god or demigod. As you picked them off in that other plane, we can pick them off in the flesh, as it were. But the source of our greatest strength also points up our greatest weakness.”
“You make it sound almost easy,” Jimmy commented.
“No. The odds against us are as great as the odds were against the Three acting that last time. If the Quintara can isolate us, if they can separate us, we are vulnerable. If that happens, all mental links with us, indeed, all knowledge of all this, will cease as well. You won’t even remember where you are or how you got there. That’s essential, since, if they ever suspect that our sole aim is to bring the Engineer to us, he will never come. They will not believe or accept that, of course. They will be convinced that you have some sort of shield. If any of us winds up captured, we will be offered almost anything. Literally. And, the worst thing is, with that kind of power there at their disposal, and on a one-to-one basis, they can in. fact do what they offer and their code requires that they do it. But, although you won’t remember any specifics of this, you will know and remember that acceptance means selling out to them, totally and irrevocably, and that you will then become like Kalia, an active ally of their cause. You can’t fool them, and they won’t let you fool them. That you will know.”
“That is understood,” Krisha told him.
“And, if they can’t bribe you, they’ll try and scare you as they did in their damnable city. They might try scare first, then bribe, even alternating. What they do will be quite convincing. You will seem to be alone and you will see and feel and know whatever horrors they dredge up for you. If you break under their onslaught, they will be delighted but they will have no respect or use for you. If you hold, if you remain defiant, we will get you out, although you must hold without knowledge of that hope. If you break, then you are damned, and whatever they make you see and feel will become permanent, real, and beyond the ability of anyone to save you.”
It was a sobering threat. Krisha remembered the effect of the blackness and the invasion of her mind by the Quintara in the city. “How can anyone, any of us, be expected to hold when we will not know there is hope?”
“We are here because we survived and did not embrace them. Some of us were broken, but even that toughened you. You remain faithful to our side. Your inner strength must sustain you. Burn that into your minds! Defiance! They will not have the satisfaction of seeing you crawl no matter what they dish out! No matter how low they may take you, you know that there is something inside you they cannot own! So long as that is inside you, we can and we will get you back.”
Josef gave a low whistle. “And these are just the Quintara you’re talking about!”
“Indeed. But it’s not as difficult as all that. It’s a matter of locating either you or the Quintara who has you, then moving against the demon. We have psychic, or other-physics, or whatever you wish to call them defenses that will nail them good. Merely distracting the right one could break the hold. And we will have much, both physical and mental, equipment to do just that. I pray that none of us will fall individually into their hands, but the enemy is not to be underestimated, and it remains only a prayer.”
“Hold on, Captain! Back at the capital we saw the records from the breakout at Rainbow Bridge,” Jimmy pointed out. “Reconstructed in spite of the best efforts of some others who will remain nameless to melt them down. They showed them to us before we left for here, and they are very much what Tris Lankur said when he read out the dead cymol’s memory. They shot the bastards, point-blank, with heavy-duty weapons, and they hardly blinked! And that ship we thought they’d blasted—it was a horror show inside! They all went mad!”
Gun Roh Chin sighed. “Yes. The ship I’m not surprised about. They could probably draw enough power from the station to transmit their usual horrors. Their immunity to what we’d call conventional weapons appears to be a more natural thing. Perhaps it’s because they’re merely casing for what’s inside. From that volcanic template we went through, I’d say they’re close to fireproof as well. They do breathe, sleep, and, um, eat, but the odds of getting to them
that way with our situation is probably low, although I think those are avenues to explore for fighting them elsewhere. They do, however, have a weak spot. It’s here”—he pointed to his chest—”below and between the nipples, below the breastplate, where Terrans think their hearts are. Any sharp, pointed object driven into there, or through there, bursts a key organ. They die. Only from the front, though. They have chitinous plates under the skin of the back which are designed, if not to stop, at least to deflect from anything vital.”
“Great. So they’re going to stand there while we drive wooden stakes through their hearts?” Jimmy said sarcastically.
“If we find them sleeping it might be enough. If not, distraction will do.”
“Yeah, so what if five of them each takes one of us?” Josef asked.
“They won’t.”
“You seem pretty sure of that. Because you are a null?”
Gun Roh Chin signed. “I’m afraid that, on this point, I am no longer immune. That which flowed within me sensitized me to the bands of the Higher Races. The Quintara are Higher Races. I am no longer immune from them. It is not a thought I cherish, I assure you.” He paused a moment. “However, that is beside the point. They won’t take on all five of us no matter how many they are because they are all arrogant, egomaniacal individualists. If they are concentrating on us, they are not watching their backs from their comrades who might also cherish us. As a group, they will fight, and we can hold them in a fight. You four already proved that. Only when one of them thinks they’ve got you to themselves will they make the attempt. Back in the city one of them could handle two of us, but we’ve changed a bit since then. Even a bunch should be able to take no more than two of us at a time; the remaining three, if quick and clever enough, shouldbe sufficient in that case. I’ve been told that the one who went after Jimmy and Krisha totally ignored the rest of you, which bears out my statement on their character.”
“We’re not immune to pistols, though,” Josef noted.
“And there’ll also be Qaamil about, and they’ve got some of the best defensive robots I know.”
Chin shrugged. “You neutralized a very good Exchange security system at Rainbow Bridge and reprogrammed a cymol to boot. What are mere robots? As for the others, forget them. We have the combined powers of the Three Races at our command. They are within us now. That is what I meant by power. We are linked in a way I doubt even they can explain to us. But, in a sense, you are right. We cannot get too arrogant or, like the Quintara, we will suffer for it. We’re mortals. If we miss a sentry and get shot, we will fry, or bleed.”
Krisha was still concerned. “Gunny—how many of these—nightmares—can we expect to face? The place will be crawling with Quintara.”
“The only one that should be a real killer is the first one. After that you’ll be sensitized to the wavelengths; you’ll know, and if you know, you can throw it off. I won’t say it’s impossible to have it done to you effectively more than once, but everything tells me we should catch on. Then we can deflect them, just as the Quintara do themselves. Otherwise they’d be giving each other nightmares constantly.”
“Captain, I hate to say this, but I don’t feel very powerful at all,” Modra said worriedly. “In fact, I don’t even feel that mind-link any more, even though that’s something of a relief.”
“Pick a leader,” he told them. “The same one. Focus on him or her with your mind. Give him or her control. Don’t worry, it’ll be automatic. If the leader is down, or out, pick another.”
“You seem to have all the answers,” Josef noted. “Did they give that all to you?”
Gun Roh Chin shrugged and looked a bit embarrassed. “Josef, I don’t have anything I’m not telling you. All we are doing is providing a focus and collection point for the Higher Races. You ask me a question, the glib answer comes. From where? The Guardians? The Mycohl? I don’t know. We need an attribute. It comes. From where? The Holy Angels? I don’t know. Perhaps from a combination.
We’re not at their level, Josef. Our descendants may be, someday, if we have descendants. We’ll never be, any more than they are the equal of that celestial Crew, or comprehend the realm of The Ship.”
“Okay, but you’re saying we, us, with them or not, are going to have to take on one of those Crew, rebel or not,” Jimmy noted. “How are we supposed to do that?”
“We’ll know when we must,” the captain promised him. “Because the knowledge and means was put on file here by Ones who do comprehend him.”
“I wonder what he looks like,” Krisha said more than asked. “I wonder if we can even know?”
“The foulest creature of darkness and corruption,” Modra answered.
“Or the second most beautiful thing possible,” Jimmy replied. “The favored Prince of Angels, second in beauty and glory only to God.”
“This may well be the first time anyone ever went to the devil via spaceship,” Jimmy commented.
“I am just amazed that this blackness parts before us,” Modra commented. “It’s the densest stuff we’ve ever seen and the widest spread, as if this area was attracting it like a magnet, yet we’re being given a path. It feels like we’re going right into a trap.”
“We’re in a Qaamil ship, with Qaamil markings and registration,” Josef pointed out. “If they’re doing fleet operations they can’t have this stuff going all through them. Programmable or not, it’s too undependable for that. It’s not really here as a barrier, like the border, anyway.”
“No,” Jimmy breathed, feeling the tension. “It’s here as raw material.”
“All right,” Josef said with the same kind of tenseness in his voice, “breakout point coming up. Everyone ready? We’ll have to move fast, because once we don’t have the password we’re going to be a real target.”
“Set the thing on automatic and get to your escape pod!” Chin snapped. “Timing is going to be tricky here as it is.”
Josef made some adjustments, then threw off the command
helmet and rushed back to the open escape pod hatch, strapped in, and sealed the hatch. “All set,” he told them.
“Remember to stay as a group,” Chin warned them. “Focus on Josef and stay with him. He knows where he’s going.”