Hellworld (Deathstalker Prelude) Read online

  “If there was anyone here, the noise would have brought them running by now,” said Williams. He looked around him uneasily. “Maybe they all left for a reason. A good reason.”

  Krystel slowly approached the open doorway on the far side of the room, and Hunter and Williams followed her. If there had ever been a door to fill the gap, it was long gone. She led the way through, and they found themselves at the base of a tower. Hunter looked up the gleaming crystal shaft, and his breath caught in his throat. The tower stretched away above him for hundreds of feet, until its top was lost in the hazy light that shone through the crystal walls. It’s an optical illusion, thought Hunter wonderingly.

  It’s got to be. The building isn’t that tall.… He tore his gaze away, and studied the narrow curving ramp that spiralled up the inner wall for as far as his eyes could follow. It protruded directly from the crystal wall, with no sign of any join. It was easily six foot wide, and the surface was as smooth and unblemished as any other part of the smoky crystal.

  “A ramp, instead of stairs,” said Williams. “That could be significant.”

  “Undoubtedly,” said Krystel. “But significant of what? It’s too early yet to start drawing conclusions, Doctor.” Her voice and face were as calm and impassive as ever, yet Hunter was sure he could detect a fire, an enthusiasm, in her that hadn’t been there before. Krystel was in her element now, and it showed. She started up the ramp, her boots scuffing and sliding on the smooth crystal surface. She leaned against the inner wall to help keep her balance, and soon found the trick of keeping upright while moving on. Hunter kept to the inner wall too as he and Williams followed her, but mainly because the increasing drop worried him. There was no barrier or safety rail, and it was getting to be a long way down. The thought nagged at Hunter, and wouldn’t leave him alone. What kind of being could use a ramp like this and apparently not worry about the danger of falling?

  They continued up the ramp for some time, circling round and round the inside of the tower. There were plenty of doorways leading off, but Krystel kept pressing on, and the others had to follow or be left behind. Hunter’s thighs started to ache, and when he looked down the shaft he could no longer see the bottom of the tower. Everywhere he looked there was nothing but scarlet-veined crystal and the diffused smoky light. He began to feel strangely disorientated, as though he’d always been climbing the ramp and always would be.

  It came as something of a shock when Krystel suddenly stepped off the ramp and through an open doorway, and Hunter realised they’d reached the top of the tower. He looked quickly back to make sure Williams was still with them, and then he followed Krystel. She was standing on an open platform that looked out over the city. The platform looked distinctly fragile, but it held their weight easily enough. Again there was no safety rail, and Hunter was careful to stand a good two feet short of the edge. He looked down, and vertigo sucked at his eyes. It had to be a drop of at least three hundred feet. He would have sworn the building wasn’t that tall when he entered it. The long drop didn’t seem to bother the Investigator at all. She was staring out over the cityscape with something that might almost have been hunger. Hunter moved cautiously over beside her, to make room for Williams on the platform and looked out over the view.

  For the first time, he could really appreciate the true size and scale of the city. It stretched away for miles in every direction, an eerie landscape of stone and metal and glass. The gossamer metal walkways looked like the spider-webs you’d expect to find on something that had been left deserted for too long. Down below, nothing moved. Everything was still and silent. But strange lights still shone in some of the windows, like so many watchful eyes, and there was a strange, palpable tension on the air.

  “Well, Investigator,” said Hunter finally. “This is your show. What now?”

  “There’s life here,” said Krystel flatly. “I can feel it. The city is too clean, too untouched by time and weather to be as abandoned as it appears. So whatever lives here must be hiding from us. And in my experience, the best way to flush out something that’s hiding is to set a trap, and bait it with something attractive.”

  “One of us,” said Hunter.

  “Me, to be exact,” said Investigator Krystel. She smiled suddenly, and Hunter had to force himself not to look away from the hunger that burned in her eyes.

  Megan DeChance and the two marines stood at the edge of the city. A row of tall, jagged towers stood like a barrier before them, dark and enigmatic in the bright midday sunlight. DeChance rubbed at her forehead. Just the sight of the alien structures was enough to give her a headache. Her esp kept trying to make sense of the insane shapes, and failing, unable to embrace theories of architecture and design shaped by an inhuman logic. The marines shifted impatiently at her side. DeChance tried her comm implant again.

  “Captain Hunter, this is DeChance. Please respond.”

  “Still nothing?” said Corbie.

  “Nothing,” said DeChance.

  “You could try your esp,” said Lindholm.

  DeChance stared at the alien city, trying to pretend she hadn’t heard him. Making telepathic contact was the obvious, logical thing to try next, and she couldn’t explain even to herself why she was so reluctant to do so. She only knew that just the thought was enough to make her break out in a cold sweat. She could still remember the contact she’d made back on the pinnace, the first time she’d raised her esp on Wolf IV. She’d found something huge and old and powerful, something vile and awful… and it hadn’t been alone. Whatever it was, she was sure it lay waiting somewhere in the city. Waiting for her to raise her esp again, so it could find her….

  But she had to locate the Captain. She had to know what was happening to the other team. And most of all she had to face her fear, or she’d never be free of it. She could do it. She was an Empire-trained telepath, and she could face anything. She closed her eyes, and sent her mind up and out, spreading across the city. At first she went tentatively, ready to withdraw behind her shields at the first hint of danger, but the city seemed still and silent and empty. She spread her esp wide, but there was no trace of the Captain or his team. Or the disturbing presence she’d sensed earlier. She dropped back into her body, and staggered uneasily for a moment as her headache returned, worse than ever.

  “Nothing,” she said bluntly. “Not a damned thing. Either the Captain and his people haven’t got here yet, or…”

  “Or what?” said Corbie.

  “I don’t know.” DeChance frowned thoughtfully. “I picked up something; nothing more than an image, really, but it might be significant. You can’t see it from here, but there’s a huge copper tower in the middle of the city. I think it’s important in some way. Either to us, or to the city. We’ll head for that. It’s not much of a goal, I know, but it beats standing around here in the cold.”

  Corbie and Lindholm looked at each other, but said nothing. DeChance steeled herself, and led the way forward into the alien city. The marines followed her silently, guns in hand. Buildings of stone and crystal and metal loomed around them, shutting out the bright sunshine. Strange lights burned in open windows, colors slowly changing hue to no discernible pattern or purpose. The only sound was the slap of their boots on the hard, unyielding ground. The shadows were very dark and very cold.

  Corbie felt the familiar prickling at the back of his neck that meant he was being watched. Military instincts might not be as officially appreciated as esp, but they could keep you alive if you listened to them. He casually studied the dark openings in the buildings around him, alert for the slightest sound or movement, but whatever was watching wasn’t about to give itself away that easily. Corbie hefted the disrupter in his hand. It didn’t feel as comforting as it once had. It doesn’t matter how powerful a gun is, if you haven’t anything to aim it at.

  He didn’t like the city at all. The buildings’ shapes and dimensions were subtly disturbing, and the broad streets followed no pattern or design he could recognise. Each street wa
s perfectly smooth and featureless, untouched by traffic or time. Even the air smelled wrong. The faint, sulphurous odour of the plains was gone, replaced by something oily and metallic that grated on his nerves.

  “This place is dead,” said Lindholm quietly. “Nothing’s lived here for centuries.”

  “Maybe that’s what we’re supposed to think,” said Corbie. “There’s something here. I can feel it.”

  Lindholm shrugged. “I hope so. I’d hate to think I walked all this way for nothing.”

  “Are you crazy? Out on the plains we were surrounded by killer centipedes, almost eaten alive by a melting forest, not forgetting the damn geysers, and finally we were attacked in the night by something that wasn’t even slowed down by a proximity mine exploding right next to it! And you want to meet whatever twisted mind thought this lot up? Come on, Sven; I hate to think what the sophisticated life forms on this planet will look like.”

  “You might just have something there.” Lindholm glanced at one of the doors they were passing. It was easily twelve feet high and seven feet wide. “Whatever lived here was big, Russ. A race of giants. Just think about the scale.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “Hold it.” DeChance’s voice cracked loudly on the quiet, and the marines stopped dead in their tracks, raising their guns reflexively.

  “What is it?” said Corbie.

  “I’m not sure. Let me think.” She tried to raise her esp, and couldn’t. The sheer alienness of the city was overpowering. “I thought I saw something moving, just on the edge of my vision. Down that way.”

  The marines looked where she indicated, and then looked at each other.

  “It could be anything,” said Corbie.

  “Probably nothing,” said Lindholm.

  “No point in putting ourselves at risk.”

  “We’re just a scouting party. The Captain said so.”

  “Even if there is something there, it could be leading us into a trap.”

  “Yeah. Let’s go after it.”

  “Right.”

  They grinned at each other, and started off down the street. They’d given it enough time to get away, if it was just an animal. On the other hand, if it wanted them to follow it, it would still be there, waiting for them. DeChance hurried along beside them, her eyes fixed on the spot where she thought the movement had been. It turned out to be a street intersection. They stopped and looked around them. There was no sign of any living thing, but far down on the right-hand side of the street, a huge metallic door was slowly closing. DeChance and the marines moved silently towards it, guns at the ready. The door was firmly shut by the time they got there, and the featureless metal had no handle or obvious locking mechanism. Corbie blasted it open with his disrupter. The torn metal door was blown inwards by the impact. Lindholm quickly moved forward to take the point until Corbie’s gun had recharged, and then one by one they stepped cautiously through the doorway.

  Oval panels set into the high ceiling glowed varying shades of red, none of them very bright. The walls were a complex latticework of glistening metallic threads. Dark nodes hung in clusters here and there on the latticework, grouped in no discernible pattern. Massive, hulking alien machinery jutted from the walls and floor and ceiling. No one machine looked like any other, but they were all covered with kaleidoscopic displays of lights that hurt the eyes if stared at too long. The lights flickered on and off at irregular intervals, but there was no other sign to show how or why the machines were working. A low, almost sub-audible hum permeated the air, which had a tense, static feel.

  “What the hell is this place?” said Lindholm.

  “Beats me,” said Corbie. “But it must be important if the machines here are still working, long after everything else has shut down. Look how clean and immaculate it is in here. The rest of the city looks like it’s been deserted for centuries, but as far as these machines are concerned their operators could just have stepped outside for a moment and left things running till they got back.”

  “Centuries …,” said Lindholm. “Could they really have been running all that time, unattended?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I’ve got a bad feeling about this place, Sven. Let’s get out of here. Now.”

  “Wait a minute, Russ.” Lindholm looked at DeChance. “What do you think, esper? Can you tell us anything about this place?”

  DeChance shook her head. “My esp’s almost useless here. It’s all too alien. My mind could get lost in all this.

  I’m an esper, not an Investigator. Krystel might be able to make something of these machines, but they’re beyond me. Could you take one of them apart and see what makes it hum?”

  “Not without the right equipment,” said Corbie. “And even then I’d be very reluctant to meddle with anything here. I’d hate to get one of these things doing something and then find I couldn’t turn it off. Besides, I don’t think I like the look of them. Sven …”

  “Yeah, I know. You think we’re being watched. I’m starting to feel that way too. It’s up to you, esper. You’re in charge. Do we leave, or go on?”

  DeChance scowled unhappily. Without her esp to back her up, she felt blind and deaf. If they went on and there was something lying in wait for them, they could end up in real trouble. On the other hand, they couldn’t afford to overlook the first sign of life they’d found. She hesitated for a long moment, torn by indecision. What would the Captain do? That thought calmed her a little. She knew what he’d do.

  “I think we should check this place out,” she said evenly. “Look for a door, or stairs, or something.”

  They made their way gingerly through the hulking alien machinery, careful not to touch anything. The constant humming of the machines hovered persistently at the edge of their hearing, like an itch they couldn’t scratch. Corbie glared at the machines, and thought fleetingly that it might be fun to blast one or two of them with his disrupter, just to see what would happen. He’d never cared much for mysteries. He always liked to know what was going on and where he stood. If only so that he could set about turning things to his own advantage. He looked round quickly as Lindholm hissed to him. The big marine was standing before an open doorway in the far wall.

  “Where the hell did that come from?” said Corbie quietly.

  “Beats me,” said Lindholm. “I’d swear it wasn’t here a minute ago. Maybe we hit the opening mechanism by accident.”

  “Yeah. Maybe.” Corbie scowled at the opening. It was dark and gloomy in the room beyond, and the pale rosy light from the machine room didn’t seem to penetrate far.

  Lindholm moved forward slowly, his disrupter held out before him. Corbie kept close behind him. DeChance stayed where she was. Lindholm stepped quickly through the doorway in one smooth motion, his disrupter sweeping back and forth as he looked around him for a target. A wide-open room lay spread out before him, empty and abandoned. The walls were bare and featureless, and the high ceiling was lost in shadows. Lindholm slowly lowered his gun and walked forward into the room. Corbie and DeChance went in after him.

  “Cheerful-looking place,” said Corbie. “I take it you’ve noticed there are no other doorways in here? What happens if the door we just came through decides to disappear again?”

  “Then you get to blow a hole in the wall. DeChance, are you all right?”

  The marines moved a step closer to the esper as she swayed unsteadily on her feet. Her face was ghostly pale in the dim light, her eyes fixed and staring.

  “I can hear them,” she said faintly. “I can feel them, all around us. They’re waking up.”

  “Who are?” said Corbie.

  “They’re waking up,” said DeChance. “They’re coming for us. They want what makes us sane.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  * * *

  The Alien

  “If we’re going to set a trap,” said Investigator Krystel, “I have to be the bait. No offence, Captain, but I’m most likely to survive if something goes wrong.”

  “You�
��ll get no argument from me,” said Hunter. “I’ve seen an Investigator in action before.”

  “From a distance, I trust,” said Krystel.

  “Of course,” said Hunter. “I’m still here, aren’t I?”

  Krystel smiled fleetingly and looked round the large open square they’d chosen as the setting for their trap. Jagged metallic buildings stood side by side with squat stone monoliths and intricate structures of spiked glass. There were only three entrances to the square, one of which was blocked with a high wall of rubble from a derelict building. There was no sign to show why the building had collapsed, and its neighbours seemed unaffected. Krystel eased her sword in its scabbard, and checked the power level on her force shield. Everything was ready. All they had to do now was bait the trap and stand ready to spring it.

  It should work; it was simple and straightforward. Hunter and Williams would leave the square, making a great deal of noise as they did so, and then circle quietly back, staying under cover all the way. Krystel, on the other hand, would take her ease in the middle of the square, and wait to see if anything came to join her. Simple and straightforward. Krystel believed in being direct and to the point whenever possible. The more complicated a plan was, the more chances there were for something to go wrong. Besides, they were working against a deadline. They had only three hours or so before night fell, and none of them wanted to be caught in the city after dark. The city might be deserted, but its ghosts didn’t feel at all friendly.

  Hunter and Williams made loud good-byes, and left the square together. It seemed very quiet with them gone. Krystel walked over to the wall of rubble, sat down on a comfortable-looking stone slab, and took a cigar stub out of her pocket. She took her time about lighting it, trying hard to give the impression of being completely relaxed and at ease. Normally, she’d have thrown away a stub this small, but she’d nearly finished the pack she’d brought with her. Waste not, want not, as her mother used to say. Krystel drew her sword, took a piece of rag from the top of her boot, and polished the blade with long, easy strokes. The familiar ritual was quietly soothing. When the job was done, she put the piece of rag away and sat with the sword lying flat across her thighs. It was a good blade. A claymore, handed down through three generations of her family. She hoped she’d brought no dishonour to the sword, though sometimes she wasn’t sure. An Investigator’s work was like that, mostly.