The dancers slowed. Feet paused in air, then plunged forward, stamping firmly. The singers hit the low notes of the chant with assurance.
The circle of dancers turned, raising dust that swirled around in intricate patterns. Sam read the patterns. A feather drifted free from a dancer’s arm band. Sam twisted the pattern, clearing the dust from the feather’s path. It floated to the ground inside the circle and away from the dancers’ feet.
The dance went on.
The work of briefly quieting Gaeatronics’ security and gaining the access codes for the submersible was done. So was the molding of prepared knowbots for Noguchi’s use and the blinding of Warlord Han’s perimeter systems. It had been easy. The runs were underway now and no longer needed Matrix over-watch. The next phase was about to begin.
As part of the comprehensive assault on the mundane assets of Spider’s minions, Sam wanted Grandmother’s data system wrecked. They couldn’t destroy the intelligence-gathering network from the Matrix, of course. Too many components were meat, and it was not possible to reach meat from cyberspace unless it voluntarily linked to the electron flow. But the datastores could be purged of accumulated knowledge, effectively crippling Spider’s minions for some time.
Dodger and Morgan flew toward the crystal web.
Knowing the web made entry easier. Entry and browsing had been the goal of their last trip. This time they were to hunt down important data and loot it away, a more difficult assignment. But she was the Ghost in the Machine, and he, through her tutelage, was enabled beyond a flesh-limited decker.
Morgan engaged all the ice they flitted past, taking on program after program, while Dodger sifted through the file structure searching for the key blocks. A bulk purge was too inelegant; they would lift only selected items, the better to leave the enemy confused about what had been done to their system. Worms, viruses, and Trojan horses would be their gifts to Grandmother, and they would leave explosive blocks, borers, and scramblers to infect the remaining data. The decay and destruction would go on long after Dodger and Morgan’s brief sojourn in the system.
It would be a glorious mayhem.
As he worked, Dodger became aware that something stirred at the edges of Grandmother’s system. Had it not been for the increased awareness his association with Morgan had given him, he would never have noticed such a thing. As yet it was no more than a probe of the outer defenses, so Dodger dismissed it. If the presence were a threat, Morgan could handle it.
The deep path was slower here than at home, for this was not his land. It was more tiring, too, but Urdli ascribed that more to his companion. The earth did not care to have any save her own move through her heart. The effort of coaxing her to do otherwise was taxing.
His trepidation grew as they approached their destination. The flavor of the stone was not right. The area was tainted with a scent he knew too well. Perhaps the Dog shaman had not been so foolish after all.
His progress was stopped by a wall where there should have been no wall. Focusing his strength, he felt an unexpected well of power. The faint strains of a song drifted through his head as he drew on that power and crumbled the barrier in his way.
As he and Estios emerged into a firelit cavern, Laverty’s aide promptly collapsed to his knees and retched. Urdli spared no concern for the other’s weakness, his eyes full of a sight he did not care to see. The bomb was there, encased in its shipping container, but the weapon was not the cave’s only occupant.
The thing that stood between him and the bomb was decked in beads and many-colored cloth swaths. Bangles, metal bands, and necklaces of animal parts and crudely incised metal adorned its limbs and neck. Though Urdli recognized several magically potent patterns common to primitive human cultures, this was no longer anything human. Bristles sprouted in sparse clumps all over its skin, and lumps distorted the once-fine smoothness of the dark skin. Two pairs of vestigial limbs waved spasmodically from its shoulder girdle. Concealing its face was a gaudily painted mask of wood and feathers.
“I know you, elf,” the thing said to him.
“And I know you, Spider.”
It removed the mask and smiled, its human lips stretching wide as chelicera and pedipalpi extended and distorted the lower half of its face. The dark brown human eyes seemed out of place in the suddenly alien visage. “As you see, all is not as you expected. Spider is wise and devious, elf. You cannot dismiss her so easily. You will meet with the web no matter where you and yours turn with your disruptive ploys. Spider weaves well. That I learned long ago when I welcomed her gift of power. You, too, can know her blessing, rather than her wrath. It is not too late to join with Spider.”
“I have no interest in becoming as you are.”
Urdli threw his arm forward, channeling the mana in a blast so strong that his cyan signature-energy was nearly white with intensity. Parrying, the spider shaman sent out a scintillating web of deep violet that drank his energy. The shaman’s chittering laugh echoed from the cavern walls. Battle had been joined.
Willie took the whizzer in screaming. With some sharp piloting, she dodged the first anti-air missile and dove to close the range as fast as possible. Wind pummeled the craft, adding to the jolting from the sudden drops and high-gee rises of Willie’s evasive maneuvering. The buffeting tossed Hart and the mercs mercilessly against their restraining straps.
Without warning, the turbulence stopped, and the whizzer seemed to be in the eye of the windstorm. On the tridscreen showing the nose camera’s view, Hart could see dust devils and debris swirls sweeping across the battlement of Weberschloss. Caught in one of the whirlwinds, an antiaircraft missile corkscrewed crazily and screamed wide of the whizzer. A second missile arced out on a smoky tail, then curved around to slam into the castle wall and toss the ork who had fired it from his perch. Gunner and launcher tumbled over and over as they fell from the wall.
Willie bucked the craft up over the castle wall and applied a quick burst of forward thrust and an almost immediate counter-thrust. Only a rigged pilot could have gunned the thrust with enough precision to get the stripped panzer into the exact center of the courtyard. There weren’t much more than a couple of meters on either end of the craft’s long axis. Supporting thrust cut out and the whizzer dropped. Hart’s stomach stayed at altitude, and only caught up after Willie braked the fall with full thrusters, slamming the whizzer into the paving stones. It was a rough landing but not a crash.
Hart and her half-dozen mercs started unstrapping immediately. A trio of orks with automatic weapons were all that managed to reach the courtyard by the time they cracked the hatch. The orks’ shouting died with them as Georgie cut them down. The wind howled as the mercs burst out into the sunlight. Hart followed, scanning the walls and listening for Aleph’s warning of hostile magic. The Herbstgeist weren’t supposed to have magicians, but caution was advisable.
A grenade brought down the door to the keep and a second one took care of any opposition on the other side. As a precaution, Georgie sprayed the antechamber before the first merc ducked in.
In the courtyard behind them, Willie’s ground rig rolled out of the whizzer. The rig was a low-slung armored cart. The ceramet armor of its sloped sides would stand up to anything short of a missile, but the courtyard lacked space for a missile to arm itself. Weapon-snouted turrets and bulbous sensor domes sprouted like high-tech mushrooms on the cart’s dorsal surface. As soon as the rig’s rear tires touched the paving, the ramp slid back and the personnel hatch slammed shut. The whizzer would stay locked until the raiding party returned. Until then, the armored ground rig would stand guard and hold the retreat line.
Hart and the mercs started to move through the lower level of the keep. Smooth as a drill, half of them took a position, assured safe passage, then waved the other half on. For the next bound, the moving team went to ground as the first cover team leapfrogged past. Seeing the stairs into the lower levels right where they were supposed to be, they headed down. It was obvious the Herbstgeist defenders weren’t expecting the raiders to take the low road, because the raiders met only a couple of very surprised locals, who failed to escape the mercs’ instant response. On the fourth level, the dressed stone gave way to less-finished tunnels.
Hart’s map was clearly out of date, because there were unmapped excavations. Tunnels opened in unexpected directions, and walls of mortared stone stood where passageways should have been. The level was still under modification, for tools lay scattered at workfaces and the only furnishings were the few for the comfort of a small work crew.
They were making slow progress.
The thunder of the cannon on Willie’s rig sounded faintly like a distant storm. The rigger’s comm channel buzzed with static that fuzzed her voice.
“Incoming traffic. Third party. There’s at least—”
The transmission was cut off.
Hart hurried the mercs on. She wondered if the Tír Tairngire elves had betrayed them, or if it was some of Spider’s agents. Whoever had attacked Willie was not likely to be friendly to her cause. They had to reach the bomb cache and do the job before the new arrivals could interfere.
When they had to double back after hitting a dead-end wall, Hart cursed all the way to the main corridor. Their goal would have been just beyond that fragging wall, but explosives were too dangerous to use down here.
They had just come upon what Hart thought was a corridor that would get them where they wanted to go when she heard running footsteps behind them. An ork caromed around the corner, clearly in a panic. She skidded to a stop at the sight of the heavily armed mercs, her eyes wide with terror. One of them instantly cut her down. Hart looked away. This one wasn’t necessary. The poor trog wasn’t even carrying a weapon.
Twenty meters down the hall, she located the cache.
“Take positions. We’ll need to hold here for a while. Julio, keep trying to raise Willie.”
The mercs selected their spots rapidly. Hart slung her Roomsweeper to the carry position and set to work opening the vault door. Caliban hadn’t been able to give her the combination, but he’d told her the model and she’d come prepared. The ten minutes it took her to crack the door was less than expected and more than she’d hoped. Opening the heavy door just enough to slip through, she entered the vault. The light from outside was enough to see by. She dug a flask out of her shoulder bag and began scattering the dust she had made to Sam’s specifications.
“So this is your prize,” Georgie said with a low whistle as he stared at the trio of warheads.
The merc’s comment almost didn’t penetrate. She was focused on remembering the chant Sam had said to use as she scattered the dust. It wouldn’t be long before the third party found them here.
She almost didn’t hear the faint hissing sound behind her.
She spun. Georgie stood there, looking like some kind of insect-headed man. His face was masked by a rebreather that distorted his lower head into the image of mandibles, and the starlight goggles made his eyes seem to bulge from his head.
The hissing came from a cylinder in his hands. She read the designation on it just before he tossed it at her feet:
Dexsarin: nerve gas: aerosol vector.