They each put one hand on their jettison switches and then concentrated on Josef, giving him control. There was some hesitancy in doing this with Josef on both Krisha’s and Modra’s part, but Chin had lectured them both on the importance of total trust. No matter how much they disliked the individual, they sank or swam together.
The ship shuddered and emerged into normal space. Josef was a good pilot with excellent charts; the world below, only seconds from its G-class star, almost filled their individual screens.
“Now!” Josef said, and they launched all five pods within fractions of a second of one another.
“Move away! Move away! Don’t group on me until you’re away!” Josef shouted.
The ship was invisible behind them, masked in the planet’s shadow, but suddenly there was a bright flash and the ship exploded, spectacular but eerie in the silence of space.
“Take it easy, group on me,” Josef called soothingly. “Concentrate on my position.”
They were so tiny that seeing him was impossible, and their instruments were not designed to detect things this small in a region this vast, but, somehow, they knew where he was. They grouped on him, raggedly at first, then in tight formation, and headed for the terminator below.
Gun Roh Chin had suggested that they work together as much as possible before going in to try and get used to the team concept, but it had been ragged at best. Sometimes the focus, the group as one, worked well, sometimes it didn’t work at all, and most of the time it worked less than perfectly. It was not a good omen; given six weeks or so on some warm planet close to the one below they might have made it nearly perfect, but a few days had been all they were given.
More and more the Executive Officer’s comment that they could win—if they deserved it—came back to haunt them. Could five people, the products of vastly different cultures and value systems, really trust each other to this degree?
They had to; at least they knew that. Ninety trillion Fausts had been reduced to but five, each representing eighteen trillion Terran and non-Terran souls. Even Josef felt the weight of that kind of responsibility.
“There is a lake about twenty-five kilometers outside of the Lord’s hive, which is called Vrmul,” Josef told them. “It’s the main water source for the city and for irrigation. It should be just after dawn there, so we’re not going to light up the sky. The center is quite deep but near the shore it’s only about five meters deep. Follow my lead minus a half-second each and we should go in the shallow area grouped together in order. Once you’re in, break the seal, get to the surface, and make for shore. Be certain you have everything you need before breaking the seal. There’s no going back for it.”
It was a sobering thought to face. Their ship was destroyed, the entire sector was in enemy hands and it was unlikely anyone from outside could reach them now, and the pods would be sunk in a lake. There was definitely no turning back.
The splashdown was a big jolt, but they’d been prepared for that. It was the second bang, like hitting a stone wall, that jarred them, as they went under and struck bottom, then rose again slowly to the surface.
Restraints were undone, systems shut down completely, and deep breaths were taken, then hatches were opened. Water flooded in almost immediately, and the pods began to sink. As soon as they were under, however, each of them swam out and up toward the surface, their e-suits protecting them from the water’s chill and giving them the air they needed to do it right, even adding buoyancy so that the weight of the suits didn’t drag them down.
They emerged from the water surprisingly close together,, and after they assembled, first Josef and then the others disengaged their helmets and they fell back and collapsed into a small ring on the back of the suits.
“Everybody did remember their extra battery packs this time?” Gun Roh Chin asked jokingly.
There was nervous laughter, and Krisha looked out across the lake. “It is quite beautiful here,” she said, sounding amazed.
Josef was a bit nettled. “What did you expect? A chamber of horrors? It is an engineered world, like so many of yours. One that did not quite come out right for us in nature but which we could fix. Nobody builds a slime pit for their home. Rithians look pretty nasty, but they’re similar to Terrans in a number of not readily apparent ways. They do, however, like things pretty hot most of the time.”
“I’ll say!” Modra exclaimed. “It’s just after dawn here and my suit says it’s almost thirty-five!”
“By mid-day it’ll be at least fifty degrees,” Josef told her. “Halfway to boiling. Stones get so hot you can fry eggs on them. It’s quite humid, though, once we get into the lowlands, so it feels even worse.”
“I do not find that appetizing,” Chin said, “but I think we’d better get going. Not that I think we’ll make it today—too exposed—but we don’t want to chance that they picked up our pods coming in. We need a shady spot of concealment with a water source. The suits can keep our bodies reasonably comfortable, but our heads are exposed. We’re a bit too obvious with helmets up, but I do not want the irony of losing one or more of us to heat stroke.”
Josef seemed to know the country, and he led them through dense foliage down rocky inclines for several kilometers, then stopped in a stand of woods near a swift-flowing but shallow stream. “No scans of any kind, talent or suit, but if you come with me through this last patch you can see it all.”
They followed him cautiously to where the forest ended in a breathtaking drop, and before them was a panoramic view of Lord Squazos’ neighborhood.
Below, the gently rolling landscape was a patchwork quilt of tilled fields, dirt tracks that cut through them like scars, the pattern broken here and there by deliberate stands of tropical trees, and, along meandering streams, dense foliage right at the water’s edge. Beyond it all, in the distance, rose gleaming towers of stone, steel, and synthetics. The Squazos hive.
“It looks almost idyllic,” Krisha breathed. “Very much like many worlds I know in the Mizlaplan.”
“I think I’ll take a look with the magnification viewers,” Gun Roh Chin said, and his helmet rose out of its thin ring holder and came down in front of him.
“All right, but just look—no scanning,” Josef warned. “If anybody’s looking for us they’ll pick it up.”
Soon they all had visors down. Modra saw what she took to be a tiny cart pulled by draft animals of some sort going along one of the dirt tracks and zeroed in on it, bringing the magnification up until it was in full view.
“Those are Terrans pulling that cart!” she gasped. “Hitched up like some kind of animals, with that driver creature actually using a whlp\”
They all took the figures from her suit and looked at the scene.
Josef laughed. “They’re not Terrans—exactly. Those are drols, the particular kind Squazos breeds around here. There’s tons of varieties of them. They were bred from Terran stock, yes, but they’ve been so modified now they’re separate races, so different we couldn’t even interbreed— not that you’d want to. The ones the Terran lords keep look enough like us we could actually mix in with them. I’ve done it. The ones bred by non-Terran races run the gamut of bizarre variations. They all have some things in common, though. They’re not very bright—their working vocabulary is maybe sixty, seventy words tops—but they’re strong as can be, bred for the climate, tireless, and they’ll eat anything organic and thrive, even grass or garbage. And, for all that, they’re a pretty cheerful lot.”
“Disgusting,” Krisha sneered, revolted. “They could use animals for this.”
“Or somebody with this Lord’s power and position could automate the whole thing,” Modra added.
“Animals aren’t as smart or as self-sufficient, and they , need more care,” Josef noted pragmatically. “Sure, he could automate the thing, but much technology’s kept from the masses, just like in the Mizlaplan, partly because we’d have huge, idle populations, and partly because the upper class likes it this way. It’s the way things are here, that’s all.” He chuckled. “Wait’11 you see some female Squazos drols. Then you’ll really be revolted.”
“What’s that creature in the driver’s seat?” Jimmy asked him. It was a bizarre creature, smaller and slighter than the darkly browned bald-headed drols by far; humanoid, but also somehow insect-like, with a smooth, glistening reddish-brown skin or covering, with multiple joints in the arms and legs, and a thin, oval-shaped head whose features were hidden because they were now going away from them.
“That’s a Rithian,” Josef told them. “He probably manages a few of the plots down there.”
“Looks like a bug,” Jimmy commented.
“Well, they do have a fairly hard shell that they shed now and then, but they’re just another race, like all the others. They marry and they mate in much the same way we do, and they bear and nurse live young, usually two at a time. But they’re tough little bastards; they had a six-system, one-hundred-and-forty-light-year mini-empire before they were discovered and overrun by the Mycohl.”
“I think I’ve seen enough for right now,” Krisha said in disgust.
“Hold on!” Chin responded. “Take my mark and blow it up.”
They all did so, and soon the magnifiers brought into focus a thing so distant it couldn’t readily be distinguished with the naked eye. But what it was, very near the far-off city, was very familiar.
“It’s a station! One of the crystals!” Modra exclaimed excitedly.
“Where’d it come from? How’d it get here!” Josef asked, puzzled.
“At a guess,” the captain replied, “I’d say it’s probably one of the ones from that hot world template we went through. Cut from the crystal cave long ago, tempered in those fires and tuned, somehow, and then transported here via the interdimensional passageways. They know their way around, that’s for sure.”
Krisha thought a moment. “How many finished crystals were there in that horrible place? Twenty? Thirty?”
“Certainly no more, although we didn’t see the whole region,” Modra agreed.
“And they certainly hadn’t started any work getting or growing more. The cave was pretty wild.”
Jimmy nodded. “I see what you mean! They don’t have many of those bloody things at the moment, so the fact that they moved one here shows we aren’t up the creek. This is one of their headquarters!”
“I never had any doubt,” Josef said with a somewhat relieved sigh. “And neither did the Higher Races or they wouldn’t have committed us like this.”
“When do we go?” Jimmy asked.
“After dark,” the captain replied. “When the farm community’s in for the night and the ones in the city up there are relaxed, and when it’s cooler. It’ll take four or five hours to cautiously get close to that city, and even if the powers of Hell are stronger after dark, they’re also overconfident then. In the meantime, check your equipment.”
The Mycohl technicians had done their best to create what they themselves felt they needed beyond the standard suit defensive equipment. Because energy weapons had no effect on the Quintara, Josef had requested and the shops had made one of Terra’s most feared weapons of old, crossbows. These crossbows had extended range, a small energy pack that produced exceptional tension, and a superior computerized targeting scope, all to put a hard-tipped arrow in the right place. Even with all that, its accuracy outside very close ranges wasn’t great, and there was some thought that if any of them were close enough to use them they’d be in the mental clutches of the enemy and unable to do so. Still, it was something.