Death Drop (15 page)

Graale reacted instinctively with an attack and he could see out of the corner of his eye that Abalias, too, was moving to strike. But Graale was closer. He reached up to grab the monster by the throat and crush his windpipe when suddenly, the creature wasn’t standing in front of him. Not all of him anyway. The top half of the Berzerker had been sliced diagonally from just inside the right shoulder across his torso and out through the ribcage on the left side. The blow cleaved muscle, tissue, and bone and the dismembered half of his upper body sloughed from the rest of him in slick, chugging gurgles as it fell to the floor with the wet glop of raw meat landing on a hard surface.

What was left of the creature’s body stood there for a moment, the right hand still clutching his sword while the left hand lay just inches away on the floor, twitching in fits and starts as if trying to catch the life that was spilling onto the deck around it. Then another torso filled the void where the gangly, white Berzerker had stood—but this one was not alive either.

A ghostly blue-white apparition hovered behind the still-standing half corpse and held a huge curved sword that dripped with blood for an instant before it all ignited into the same colored miasma as its wraith-like master. The phantom hung there, bouncing and swaying in some evil current that only touched the dead and stared with unblinking, white eyes over the upright half of the cleaved Berzerker at Graale and Abalias. The knees of the slain creature gave out, and what was left of the body toppled forward and splattered to the ground in a pool of dark liquid.

“Take them!” hissed the phantom.

A mangy creature—that looked like it could have been a Kaniderelle, once upon a time—sheathed his sword and pulled a strange-looking gun from his belt as he inched closer. The front half of the weapon looked like a large grooved canister with a small nub of a barrel at the tip. The creature rapped its claws on the cylinder and snickered as it raised the gun between Abalias and Graale’s heads and pulled the trigger.

The phantom that had slashed the rogue Berzerker in half and ordered Graale and Abalias taken prisoner didn’t wait to see the toxic vapor stream from the canister-gun. He had already turned and was drifting back to his master through the parting crowd of horrid beasts when the Dissenters crumpled to the floor. Graale and Abalias watched his bobbing, ethereal form melt into a dull blur as they fought to stay conscious. The wraith cackled and the icy laugh stabbed them like a million poison-tipped needles, infecting them with a dark, threatening fear the likes of which neither man had ever known. And then everything went dark.

Chapter 16: Friend or Foe

“M
ALO!” Blink screamed in desperation. He had dropped ten feet into the crater of the collapsed vent shaft and was frantically clawing at the rubble with his nails and wailing for the Moxen as Otto watched from above with growing frustration.

“Artie!” Otto shouted after him. “Artie, he’s dead, dammit! Don’t do this to yourself!” He couldn’t believe the transformation of his friend from the Dissension’s chief biologist and medical officer into the shrieking mad-man who worked in vain to loosen the boulders below him. Otto didn’t know what to do. He wanted to knock Blink unconscious, but he didn’t know if Bertie had the strength to hoist them both out of the hole, and talking to him seemed to make no difference. He was torn between doing his friend harm and risking the possibility that the Berzerkers might have scouts searching the area surrounding the base for escapees. He decided to try one last time to convince Blink to stop his hopeless digging and to climb out of the hole under his own power.

“Artie,” he said calmly, “Malo’s gone and you’ll never move those boulders. Let it go.” He paused and waited to see whether his words would have any noticeable effect on Blink. Much to his disappointment, they did. The tiny doctor dug more furiously than ever as the explicitness of his curses intensified and Otto could distinctly hear them being used in conjunction with his name. He pursed his lips with regret as he crouched to drop into the crater and physically restrain Blink; then something caught his eye and made him hesitate. Blink’s tiny clawed hands had worked an opening around a medium-sized boulder and the inky blackness from inside the cave could be seen hovering just beyond the warm rays that heated the pile of rubble and marked the boundary between light and dark. This in itself, although impressive, wasn’t much because the rock was entirely too large for Blink to lift, and Otto doubted Bertie could be any help. He jumped into the hole, his webbed feet landing nimbly on the rocks below, and as he padded toward Blink he readied himself to strike a disabling blow to the back of the hysterical doctor’s head.

Otto drew his revolver and gripped it by the barrel. He walked steadily toward Blink, who continued to claw feverishly at the sediment, casting loose debris behind him without a backward glance. Otto raised the butt of the gun over his head and prepared to strike. His mind protested for an instant, but he shook off the guilt with a steady dose of proficient, military logic.
“He’s going to get us killed! There’s no way Malo survived the cave-in—Berzerkers’ll be here any second!”
He raised his arm, then swung it down toward the back of Blink’s head. But he never made it through the full range of his motion. Something else in Otto’s mind had interrupted his movements—something he couldn’t believe.

Just as his arm curved down to strike, Otto’s reflexes sent him diving out of the way of a massive chunk of crag. In an amazing display of strength, Blink had snatched up, turned and heaved the boulder behind him and it had missed crushing Otto’s lower half by inches. Otto sprang back to his feet and readjusted his revolver so the business end was pointed toward danger. Otto was awestruck. He was roughly three feet taller than Blink, and he was almost certain that even without years of military training, he would have been much stronger than the doctor. But even he would have found it nearly impossible to move that boulder, let alone heave it out of the way.
“Did he just throw that at me? How did he lift the damn thing in the first place? What the shit’s gotten into this guy?!”
Otto thought as he slowly moved toward Blink’s right side, his revolver leading the way. He wasn’t quite sure what to do. Blink was acting out of character, and as Otto watched the little doctor work he had an uneasy feeling that something else had taken over Blink’s body.

“Artie?” Otto spoke as evenly as he could, but he couldn’t hide the slight hint of confusion and fear in his voice. “Artie, I’m gonna ask you to stop what you’re doing and turn around. Artie?” He hesitated. “I’m only gonna ask you one more time.” He pulled on the big hammer of his revolver and it clicked into place. As Otto inched closer he could see streams of perspiration gliding down twisted paths of the doctor’s grimacing visage as he jerked and scratched at the fallen rocks of the cave. From this angle, it didn’t look entirely like Blink’s face. It looked half like his face and half…
something else
.

Otto reached out his left hand and guided it cautiously toward Blink’s right shoulder as he steadily increased pressure on the trigger of the gun. Otto’s hand quivered as his fingertips hovered over the torn fabric of Blink’s lab coat. Something was not right and his stomach twisted into knots as the tension that separated the two of them charged the air with feral energy. Otto clasped his hand down and Blink spun around with animal ferocity.

“MALO!” the doctor screamed.

The hammer on Otto’s revolver crept slightly back and balanced perfectly on its fulcrum; a hair’s breadth between its resting place and the explosive primer on the bullet waiting within the cold, dark chamber.

CRACK!

As he struggled to understand what had just happened, Otto’s left hand fumbled with the hammer of the gun while diverting the barrel down and away from Blink.

“What was that?!” he said while side-stepping carefully past the doctor and eyeing the small hole.

“It’s Malo!” Blink said deliriously.

“Don’t be a fool, man!” barked Otto, his frustration accentuating each word. “How the hell could he have survived the cave-in, huh? He wasn’t anywhere near our position when the tunnel collapsed and
we
barely made it out—think about it!”

“I’m telling you, it’s Malo, dammit!” Blinks eyes were wild with defiance.

“Goddamit, Artie! I’m not going to sit here and argue with you out in the open and wait for a Berzerker patrol to kill us or worse! Now
I’m telling you,
there’s no way he could’ve surv
—
”

Otto stopped his rant and leaned closer as more of the ruin crumbled. “Malo?” He questioned the hole and the voice inside his head questioned his own sanity as he stood there waiting for the darkness to reply. The chiding of the little voice grew in volume and intensity as stark silence floated out of the opening like a gut-turning vapor. His arms sagged to his sides as he let out a sigh of frustration, and he slumped against the rubble in defeat. Otto sat in silence with his service revolver resting on his thigh as he shook his head from side to side; and then the collapsed vent gave out a rumbling sound from somewhere deep within its throat.

“Mmmmm….”

The sound echoed faintly below in the chasm and wafted delicately upward, barely escaping through the tiny hole Blink had clawed open. It was an indistinct grumble and it sounded like the cave was shifting into its new position, settling into its final resting place for all eternity.

“M-m-m-m-m-a-a-a…”

Otto’s small ears perked at the distant sound. He cupped his hands around his temples as he pressed his face to the hole. The inside of the cave was pure darkness and he couldn’t see anything.

“Major!” the tunnel echoed.

“Malo? Are you there!”

“Snort! Malo here!”

“It’s Malo! Artie, you were right—haha! It’s Malo!” Otto pulled his face out of the cave, gripped Blink by the shoulders, and gave him an enthusiastic shake before ducking back into the hole.

“Malo, give me a sit-rep!” Otto said.

“Malo hanging. Can’t touch floor. Malo see light above.”

“Can you hold on while we figure out how to get you outta there?” Otto said, trying to hide his concern. He could feel the blanking affects of anxiety erase his smile and he was thankful the Moxen couldn’t see his face.

“Malo losing grip.”

Otto turned from the hole once more to face Blink and form a plan, but he found himself standing alone in the crater. Blink was gone, and for an instant, he thought the doctor had made for the ship and left him and Malo to their fate. But before the thought could solidify into more than a morbid notion, Blink reappeared at the top of the crater with a battered Bertie in tow. Otto noticed that Bertie was not only badly dented and gouged, but he was leaking a dark fluid from all four of his arm joints as well as from the main cog on his right tread, and a steady stream of smoke was rising from somewhere beneath him. He moved slowly behind Blink, clanking and pinging, in an off-kilter wobble, and his lower left arm hung lifeless at the side of his table. He halted at the rim of the indentation and immediately hoisted a shaky right hand into a salute for Otto.

“At ease, soldier,” Otto said admiringly. “You saved us all, Bertie, and I’m damn proud of you!”

Bertie straightened as much as his damaged chassis would allow at the compliment and, unlike in the infirmary, Otto was sure this time that the machine was responding to the praise.

“I’m going to ask you to do your duty one more time, Bertie. I know you’re hurt and your power is low, but Malo is alive and he’s down in this hole right now and we need to get him out. I’m going to have to ask you to help us and then, I promise, I’ll get you all fixed up. How’s that sound?”

Bertie raised a slightly sharper salute in acknowledgment as fluid continued to slowly seep from his damaged chassis and stain the dirt around him.

Otto studied the jumble of craggy rocks and boulders that meshed together like a giant puzzle and sealed off the opening of the vent shaft. He stood in the cool pit of the crater as his friend dangled precariously on the edge of life and death just a few feet below. He knew that Bertie had barely enough power for one shot at this—he knew they would have to get it right the first time or Malo would die.

“What’re you waiting for?” The crazed look was still burning behind the little half-moon spectacles on Blink’s snout. “Bertie, move the boulders and get Malo out!”

This time, Bertie was either too tired to listen to Blink or he knew that Otto would have the final word as the commanding military officer—either way, he didn’t move.

“Bertie, dammit—I gave you an order!”

“We can’t move any of the boulders.” The authority in Otto’s voice was unmistakable. “They’re meshed together and held in place by gravity. Malo is suspended in a pocket created in part by Bertie’s exit, and any one of these rocks could be the keystone holding this entire cap together. If we move the wrong one, we could collapse the whole thing and kill him.”

Blink stood in irreverent silence. He sucked in the cool air and expelled the humid exhaust—saturated and dripping with anger—in loud hissing sounds between his clenched teeth.

“There’s no other way! If we don’t get him out soon, we’re going to be captured or killed—we’ll just have to risk it! Bertie!”

“NO!” Otto barked. He had had enough. He no longer cared what the battle with the Berzerkers had done to Blink’s mind or that he had been wrong and Blink had been right about Malo. All that mattered now was getting everyone out alive, and if Artemus Blink was going to endanger that plan, Otto would take any action necessary to subdue him—
any
action necessary.

“I don’t know what’s gotten in to you, you
sonofabitch
, and I really don’t give a flying Berzerker shit! We’re gonna do this thing my way, and if you have a problem with that, you better be prepared to come down in this hole and kill me ‘cause that’s the only way you or Bertie or anything else is gonna move another one of these goddam boulders without my say so—you got that,
doctor
?!”