Текст книги "The Sword and the Dagger"

Автор книги: Ardath Mayhar

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24

The weeks of jump didn't bother Ardan as much as usual. Nor did the long wait for recharge at each intermediary jump point afflict his nerves. He was too busy thinking about what he might possibly find upon return to Stein's Folly. Their final jump point was one of the irregular ones for that system, and from there, he could go by DropShip to the rendezvous point on the far side of the Folly's larger moon. He knew Sep would come, and though the JumpShip captain argued that the Steiners would never forgive him for leaving their guest alone in such a perilous situation, Ardan insisted.

The DropShip's scanners gave him a fair view of the desolate contours of the rocky planetoid as it orbited. The sky was black, for the vessel was in the shadow. Ardan's drop into the system had been invisible from the scanners on the Folly, hidden by the moon. Now he could see brilliant sparks against the midnight sky, other worlds and suns he probably would never visit

The tiny lump of rock turned toward the sun, which sent long shadows along its gritty stone surface. Ardan began to relax, even to doze a little. He was in place, and knew without a doubt that Sep was on her way. Things would begin to happen soon.

He woke with a start as a clang told him his capsule was being reattached to another ship. When he looked out, the moon had turned again and this side was dark. His scanners revealed another sleek DropShip in position. The hatch opened as he turned toward it.

"Sep, you made it!" he almost shouted, rising to meet her.

"We came as soon as we could, Dan. The Prince sent us." Sep caught him by his shoulders, and studied his face with concern. "But how are you? Are you all right now?"

"We can talk about me later," he said. "If Hanse sent you, I guess that explains how you got a ship. But who else is with you?"

"Jarlik and Ref Handrikan. And our 'Mechs. Too bad about your Victor—they had to scrounge the parts. It couldn't be repaired. But we've a lot of armor...my WarHammer,Jarlik's Crusader,and Refs BattleMaster.What we can't knock down, can't be knocked down, I suspect."

Ardan felt his heart sink. Without a 'Mech, he would have to stand back and watch the others break into the installation. Yet there was no way Hanse could have sent him a machine. The neural helmet had to be constructed with painstaking care to the attributes of the wearer.

"Well, I may not have a 'Mech, but I've got a way to get us onworld without anyone detecting our approach," he said. "I don't want to go in officially right away because I just don't know who to trust anymore, even among our own people...There are still too many unanswered questions... And nothing's going to prevent me from getting into that hospital and searching for some proof of what I saw while I was there!"

"I'm with you, but how do we get past the system's traffic controllers? Their computers are going to be looking for our ID codes, you know, and they're probably watching the air like hawks since all mis trouble with Liao."

"That's just it," Ardan told her excitedly. "The traffic controllers read off what the transponder tells them and what shows on their displays, but I've got a code that will tell the computers: 'Ignore me. I'm not here.' We simply won't show up on the screens and they'll ignore our beacon.

"This code is pretty top-secret stuff. Few people know about it, much less suspect it exists. I learned this one straight from Hanse, and then only because of a high-secrecy mission he had me carry out once."

"But what about visual sighting?" Sep asked.

"We're still vulnerable to that, but it's a million-in-one chance that we'll be spotted. Especially if we take care with our approach."

"Well, the pilots that brought us here are the best," Sep said. "Davion's finest."

"Good thing, too," Ardan laughed. "Since we won't be in the traffic sequence, well definitely have to look out for other traffic."

Sep laughed, too. "This I gotta see," she said, and the two of them crossed through the exit hatch into her Drop-Ship, their spirits high.

* * * *

Sep was right. The Prince's pilots were expert. Using Ardan's high-secrecy code, they bypassed the traffic controllers, and were able to land unknown to anyone onworld. They dropped by night in the eastern hills along the Highland Peninsula.

The pilot had picked the nearest secure spot to the coordinates they'd given her, which put them about three kilometers away from their target.

Ardan and his three comrades climbed down from the DropShip to get their bearings and to decide their next move.

"The only thing between us and the facility are those rolling hills," said Ardan. "It won't be too bad going in that way."

"I guess the groundcar we brought for you will come in handy," Sep said, her face thoughtful. "We can recharge it with one of our reactors if necessary, but I don't think we'll need to."

It was getting close to dawn as Sep, Ardan, Jarlik, and Ref stood looking across the few kilometers they had to cross.

"No civilians detected with the body-heat scanners within ninety klicks," said Ref. "We should be able to use our own searchlights safely. Here's the chart. We can pick the best route now, then we'd better head out."

The four of them knelt beside the DropShip, peering at the unrolled plastic chart by the handlights they carried. "I never saw the thing from outside in my right mind," said Ardan, "but I studied every installation onworld before we attacked. This one is strong in every direction." He drew a line with his finger on the map. "This is as good a way as any."

He pointed to a dot on the chart. "The east portal was the one we intended to go through, if we got that far."

"Well, we won't have to fight any 'Mechs," commented Sep, rolling up the chart again and slipping it into its case.

"We hope," rumbled Jarlik.

Within half an hour, they had unloaded and serviced the 'Mechs, checked out the ground car, and were headed toward their destination across the starlit grass of the hills. Ardan led, his lights on the car being lower to the ground. He could pick out dustpits or other obstacles that weren't apparent from above.

The installation came into view much sooner than he had expected. The comm-tower was still in place, thrusting its thin spire into the dark heavens. It made a good object to home in on.

Approaching cautiously, lights off, he geared his ground car into silent mode. At ninety meters, Ardan came to a full stop and signalled the huge 'Mechs stalking behind him to pause. He had learned never to trust anything that looked safe or easy, and so climbed out of the ground car to creep forward on foot

The building was so heavily constructed that it looked more like a bit of a mountain than something shaped by human hands. The ferrocrete curved with the terrain, each successive story inset from the one lower. The few windows were multiple-stress duraglass. The door was a monolith of metal and heavy-duty plastics.

Ardan knew better than to approach further. When Davion's troops booby-trapped a building, it was well and truly done. He had known times when even small wild animals had triggered the things by going too near in their nighdy prowlings.

He checked out the circumference of the installation, moving at a distance all around it, looking through his night-sight glasses to make sure the portals were the standard variety. So far, everything looked good.

At last, he signalled for his reinforcements to proceed. They came thudding up in line, Jarlik taking the rear, as usual. Anyone trying to approach from behind them would find more than one nasty surprise waiting.

Sep's voice came over the comm. "All clear?"

"I wouldn't sign any guarantees. But everything is quiet I don't get a warm-body reading on any of the instruments. That isn't to say there isn't something automatic waiting for us inside there," he replied.

"Then get back...I mean way back," said Sep. "There isn't any way of knowing what we'll set off when we knock down the door."

Ardan knew that He ran to the ground car and dropped behind its bulk. He had seen men and women sliced into ribbons by some of the nasties left for them to find. Inside a 'Mech, you didn't have to worry, but a man's skin was very little protection.

Sep strode up to the portal to test the door with the great foot of her WarHammer.The metal gonged protestingly, and something within gave a nervous pop.

Ardan peered out from under the ground car. In the distance, he could see the WarHammerbring back its leg for a devastating kick. When it came, Ardan started involuntarily.

With simultaneous crash, thud, gong, thump, and shattering, the armored doorway caved inward, taking with it the ferrocrete surround into which it had been set. The 'Mech sprang backward.

Ref took his turn also, hammering away at the debris left in the doorway. Dust rose pale in the starlight. Ardan saw the gap in the facade grow wider. Ref’s shape disappeared into the blackness, and more dust came boiling out behind him.

Sep went inside. Jarlik came near to the opening and stood with his back to it, scanning the terrain on all sides.

Ardan, hearing no disturbance, made his way closer, waiting for the signal to proceed into the building.

At last Jarlik's huge arm rose, beckoning. Ardan ran forward to stand beside the 'Mech.

"Sep says it's all right to come in. We'll stand guard while you check things out."

Ardan nodded and worked his way among the splintered shards of ferrocrete into the main hallway of the installation. Except for the places where the ‘Mechs had wrecked it, it was still solid and sturdy. He recalled the memorized plans for such installations. Hospital wing...there!

He hurried off in that direction. In such a large building, it took some time to find the corridor he could recall only dimly. He tried higher and lower ones, but always something was not quite familiar. When he hit the correct one, he knew it at once and began moving down the hallway, checking each room. He was almost certain that the third on the left had been the one where he had waked.

He looked back. The doors through which he had come had concealed the people whose voices he had heard. Ahead ...yes. There were the doors on the right, the ones he had passed through before.

He raced down the passage and burst through the swinging doors. The hall beyond was dark. No light from the lab now shone through the glass. But this time, he had his own source of light Switching on his belt torch, he pushed the heavy doors apart

The place was just as he remembered it The table in the middle, the equipment standing about or hanging from the ceiling. The cubicles on the wall...all as they were. All except one.

He stepped into the space left by the removal of that one. Yes, it had been just here that the duplicate of Hanse had lain, suspended...waiting for what?

He hadn't really expected it to still be here. It was for use, and the enemy would not have left it behind. But he might find something else, if he looked closely...and if he recognized it when he found it

Ardan began checking systematically, first at the door, then moving to the right. File cabinets. Small equipment cupboard, still stocked with flasks, test tubes, pipettes, and probes. He turned the corner.

There was a cabinet filled with holos. On the desk that formed the lower part of it was a Reader. Ardan felt excitement build inside him. Was this something useful?

He checked the machine, and saw that it was operable by either current or battery. Surely he had seen batteries in that equipment cupboard!

He had, and a pair of them fit. He put them into the compartment and switched on the machine. A beam of light fanned against the pale wall.

Starting at the top of the ranks of holos, he worked his way down to the right. There were dozens of nasty-looking things that he presumed might be viruses and bacteria. Cultures? Maybe.

There were more dozens of indecipherable schematics. He was sure of only one thing—they had nothing to do with weapons or ‘Mechs.

Then he hit the third vertical row. The first made him gasp. It was a study of Hanse as he had seen him hundreds of times, sitting at his desk, leaning forward with the force of his intensity, talking, moving his hands as he always did. The next was of Hanse walking in a garden. The third of Hanse at a formal dinner.

Another, and another, and another, all of Hanse Davion as he went about both his everyday routine and formal and official matters that were a part of his duty.

Studies! By damn, they were studies! Whoever would wear that false body had to know how to make it behave, and this had evidently been part of his training.

Ardan flipped rapidly through the sets of studies, looking for some clue as to the one to be trained, or the use to which the image would be put. The last row held studies of the summer palace on Argyle, from every angle, inside and out.

There were close-ups of all the royal staff, the Guard, the intimates of the Court, the officials with whom Hanse came in contact A thorough bunch, whoever had done this.

And then he saw the false Hanse...still just a body, waiting to be used. In the cubicle, just as he had seen it the first time. Measurements were noted beside it, with coded symbols he could not decipher.

Ardan felt that he could be certain of one thing only... whatever was going to happen would happen on Argyle. Why else make such careful studies of a world and a house that Hanse inhabited for only a few months a year?

He turned away, ran back down the maze of corridors. He had to call Sep, to get witnesses to this discovery!

25

Sep had descended from her ‘Mech and was waiting for Ardan when he reached the central corridor past the entry. Ref, too, was ready.

"I brought Ref for the unimpeachable witness you wanted. You look excited, Dan. What have you found?"

Ardan turned back the way he had come, calling over his shoulder as they ran, "Holos. A bunch of them that show Hanse doing everything you can think of. And others showing the Summer Palace, not to mention still others that give a good view of that substitute Hanse in his cubicle." He felt something slap against his side and put his hand in the pocket of his uniform.

"I must have put one in my pocket, but we don't need to stop and look at it now. The good stuff is in that lab."

They pounded up the corridor, climbed emergency stairs, turned and cornered at top speed. They had reached the right corridor when there came a slight tremor underfoot, a vibration in the ferrocrete that seemed to quiver through the building's whole structure. Sep caught his arm and pulled him to a halt. Ref raised his head and motioned toward the other end of the passageway.

"Listen!" he said.

Then they heard it...a series of dull pops beneath and ahead of them. As if someone had set charges along the supporting pillars at one edge of the building where they stood.

"Out!" yelled Sep, pulling Ardan frantically by the arm. "It's going to buckle toward us! We can make it."

"No! I've got to get those holos out of here. Nobody will ever believe me if I don't" Ardan turned to run forward, but found himself seized by two sets of strong arms that dragged him bodily along the way he had just come.

"You don't understand," he moaned. "They think I'm crazy, all the doctors. Hanse won't have any alternative but to believe them. I wasn't in very good shape when I last talked with him. Hell dunk I'm crazy, too."

Neither answered him. Behind them, the floors tilted, the walls crumpled into dust. They were staying ahead of the demolition, but only by a little.

They descended the stairs in two leaps and flew along the lower corridor at top speed. As the curving walls overhead began to buckle, the huge figure of Jarlik's Crusaderstomped through the shaking structure and reached with irresistible arms toward them.

Sep grabbed the autocannon on the right Ref leaped onto an armored foot and hoisted Ardan so that he could reach the left cannon. The 'Mech then backed swiftly out of the self-destructing building, which collapsed in on itself as they retreated.

The air was full of dust and deafening noise. As the last walls buckled, the debris shifted, trying to find repose within the heaps of shattered ferrocrete, wall paneling, and ruined equipment

Jarlik let his passengers down onto the cool grass beyond the reach of the dust Then he opened his cockpit and climbed out of his 'Mech to join them.

"Some booby trap," he grunted. "What did they think was in there?"

"I suspect they thought the Liao forces might try to use it again. If they had, it would have wiped out a bunch of their Techs and staff people. A nasty little surprise, that one," said Sep.

Ardan was silent. Sitting on the grass, head buried between his hands, he felt that his last hope of proving his story was irretrievably gone. How could he protect Hanse from a takeover if he couldn't prove his story? The only hope now was that there would be enough proof on the holodiscs he hadbeen able to retrieve. They'd look at them later in the DropShip.

Jarlik came and sat beside him. "I don't know why you're so down. Sep told me just what I had to know about all this, and not a word more. Give, Ardan. Maybe I can help out."

Ref sat on the other side of him. Sep sighed and also dropped to the grass. "Your message was necessarily brief. Now's the time to fill us in on what you're trying to do. We've all heard odd things about your mental state. You seem all right to me. But we need to know what's going on. Now."

Ardan stripped the green from a blade of grass as he spoke. "You're right, but don't think I'm crazy until you've heard me out. Then tell me honesdy what you think." He reached into his pocket "I did save one block of holo discs. When we get back to the ship, you can see for yourselves what's on them...I haven't an idea. I don't really remember putting them in my pocket."

There was the sound of wind in the grass. A lonely insect cried, "Zeet! Zeet!" somewhere nearby. The 'Mechs stood about, a monstrous trio, seeming to listen as they rested.

"I was in bad shape when they brought me here, as I guess you've heard. Broken bones, contusions, infections of undiagnosable kinds from the swamp where I'd hidden. I'd been through some very odd experiences, and was hallucinating. I will admit that. When I came through those doors, I was just about totally out of it. I didn't know anything for a long time. It might have been days. I haven't any way to tell.

"When I came to, I could see that someone had just gone out of the httle room where they had me. The curtain was still moving. I thought of only one thing—that I had to be in the hands of the enemy. I remembered the Liao uniforms on the men who had cut me down from the tree where I was tied up in the swamp."

Sep's head came up. Jarlik growled, "Tree? Tied?"

Ardan shook his head. "That part's not relevant right now. I'll tell you about it later, if we get the chance. No, I knew I had to be a captive of the Capellan forces. The one thought in my head was escape. So when I heard voices at the end of the corridor—where we were just now when the explosion went off—I went the other way. There's a set of doors on the right, down the hall, and through there is the lab I found.

"Inside were cryogenic cubicles, and in one was the body of a man who could have been Hanse Davion. I went right up to it and looked closely. The face was exactly the same. Except for one thing. Hanse wasn't behind it"

Sep nodded. Jarlik rubbed his chin, and Ref narrowed his eyes.

"Like a life-mask? When someone wears it, he looks just like the original, but the expressions are never quite right."

Ardan looked at Ref. "Yes. Exactly. The lines were right, the shapes were correct, but the total impression was wrong. That face had never been...been lived in."

"O.K. That's what you saw. What sort of condition were you in when you saw it?" Sep, as always, was down-to-earth.

Ardan considered carefully. "I had been terribly ill, but I was recovered enough to be able to walk quite a long distance. Nothing hurt very badly. I was alert. Unusually alert, as if I might have been given some sort of stimulant. I've wondered...Indeed, Melissa Steiner and I both wondered, if I was supposedto see that substitute Hanse." He shook his head.

"I was tired, of course, after moving about so much. I quickly grew weak, and barely made it back to bed. I went out at once, and the next thing I knew I was being rescued by Lees Hamman."

"So the Meds thought you were crazy. It doesn't quite make sense," said Jarlik.

"Well, there were more problems than that. I'd had a bad experience, back a way, and it had been preying on my mind. That was all mixed up with the thing I'd seen in the lab, and they decided that everything was hallucination. Part of it was, and I admit that freely, but the rest was real. As real as the three of us sitting here. As real as those ‘Mechs." He gestured toward the waiting trio.

"And you can't prove it, unless there's something on that set of holos you made off with," mused Ref. "So what are we going to do now?"

"We'll return to the moon before anyone knows we've been here, and then come back here tomorrow, officially.Or, I should say, I want youto come back tomorrow and formally request a salvage operation from the officer in charge of the garrison. I'd better stay in the drop and keep quiet If I'm connected with the request, they're not going to cooperate, even with an officer of the Guard in Hanse's own private courier ship."

"You think there's any chance of finding anything at all in that mess?" Sep asked, gesturing toward the pile of rubble.

"It would be at the farther edge. The thing was falling in on itself and slightly leaning this way. It should be some fifty meters from where the back wall was, fairly in the center of the left wing. The holos were in a cabinet that should have protected them well. I remember snapping the lock of the door—a very nice double catch. The entire cabinet was built together with a desktop below. The whole thing must have been about two meters wide by three tall. Made of solid metal with duraplast doors. It should be easily detectable with a metal detector. Of course, there's a lot of metal in that pile. But just maybe..."

"We'll give it a try," said Sep. "And if that doesn't work, we'll think of something else. I trust your judgment, Ardan. If you say you were alert, then, by damn, you were alert. You say you know where the hallucination left off and the reality began, and that's good enough for me." She rose and dusted the dried grass from her uniform.

Jarlik groaned to his feet, too. "Better make tracks before it starts to get light. We need to skip out of here so we can come back all nice and tidy and official."

Ref offered Ardan a hand up. "I never expected anything like this when Sep volunteered me for this duty. I wonder what sort of reception we'll get from the commandant tomorrow. Duke Michael's men are back in charge of garrisoning the Folly, now that the counterinvasion is over."

It turned out that Ref had hit the nail on the head. The commandant, a Hasek-Davion officer detached from the Syrtis Fusiliers and commanding a combination of Eridani Light Horse and Davion regulars, seemed indifferent, if not actively hostile.

"I have a world that has been fought over, trampled, detonated, and otherwise disrupted within a centimeter of its life. The civilian population is devastated, and there are more demands on my time and manpower than I can possibly attend to. And now you ask me to go dig in a booby-trapped installation for something you think might be there? I beg your pardon!"

He looked simultaneously irritated and nauseated.

"Then you will not object if we borrow some detection gear and go look for ourselves," Sep half-asked and half-stated.

The commandant looked startled, but gave in with a weary shrug. "I suppose not. But do be cautious. Those engineers are good at their job. The booby traps are not to be taken lightly."

Assuring him that they would take care, Sep led her companions on their way as quickly as was polite. It seemed safe to add Ardan to their group when they stopped at the DropShip for their transport, an all-purpose ground-effect machine. They hid him beneath a pile of probes and detectors, and nobody gave them a second look as they left the port city.

They travelled quickly, talking very little. It was lucky that the commandant had not insisted upon sending one of his officers along as a precaution. It would have been rather awkward, trying to explain how they came to be investigating an installation whose booby trap had already gone off. The coincidence would hardly be overlooked.

They drove south this time, circling around the southernmost finger of the Yaeger Mountains, then up through the foothills along the eastern coast of the peninsula. The marks of the war were everywhere, having left great burnt slashes of black on the green-tan grassfields. Houses broken like dropped eggs. Fields gouged out with the tracks of 'Mechs who had battled it out.

Ardan found himself thinking of that other ruined landscape, and the child in the valley. The memory was sad, but the horror had gone. The wail of the child had grown faint, and the pain, though never to be lost entirely, had become bearable.

They came around a low growth of trees. Before them should have been the ruins of the installation, but where the piles of debris had been, there was now a deep depression.

"Damn!" grunted Jarlik. "Was that part of the booby trap, or did the bedrock cave in under the shift in weight?"

They pulled up and piled out of the vehicle. A gigantic, saucer-shaped hole lay at the spot where the building had stood. They ran to the edge and peered over it.

Twenty meters below them, the ferrocrete and everything else had been returned to something like their natural state. Nothing recognizable remained among the dusty tumbles of dirt and rock.

Somehow, Ardan was not surprised. He was beginning to feel like a pawn on a gigantic chessboard, moved here and there, his perceptions a part of the game, his will irrelevant.

"I think this was deliberate. Some secondary effect meant to occur if the primary booby trap was triggered. Someone wanted that building entirely lost to human examination." He laughed harshly. "They did a damn good job."

Sep put a hand on Ardan's shoulder. "Not as good as you did in rescuing those other holos you showed us aboard ship," she said. "They'll make damn good proof!"