The War Machine: Crisis of Empire III (47 page)

Spencer froze himself. There was a battle here, one that he could not understand, one that he dare not interfere with yet. The gadget, the thing in Suss’ hands. Was that her weapon? He tried to see it better, traced the wires coming out of it, and recognized the ropy substance wrapped around the compartment’s interior.

In a flash, it was all clear. Spencer leveled his repulsor, aiming it not at the helmet, but at Suss. “Listen to me, helmet. If I see her make one move toward disarming that device, or coming to get you, I’ll fire. She’ll die and let go of that switch. Can you control us all, helmet? Take your control off her to try and grab
my
brain—and she’ll set off that bomb. Marines, aim at Suss. If she moves, blast her. Helmet, even if you control both of us, enough to get direct control of both our bodies, my marines would kill us both before we could follow your commands. It’s all over.”

For an eternal second, the tableau held, and the mad drumbeat mind orders still pounded in Spencer’s mind. DISARM YOUR WEAPON. TAKE THE HELMET. PUT IT ON.

But then the shouted thoughts faded and died. There was an audible gasp from Suss. Spencer looked up at her in time to see her arms flex spasmodically, as if they were struggling against a great weight that had suddenly vanished. The two jaws of the pliers came within a hairbreadth of contact before she could pull them back.

OLD FOOL TAKE ME. OLD FOOL TAKE ME. OLD FOOL TAKE ME.

Spencer heard the new cadence, and looked down at Jameson. Jameson, the dying host, the used-up power source, was the one hope the helmet had left. Spencer had assumed the old man was dead, but suddenly the outstretched arms quivered, the fingers jerked to life, and the palsied hands quivered as they wrapped themselves around the helmet.

The marines tightened their fingers on their triggers, but no one fired. Spencer wanted to give the order, but something held him back. Whether it came from his heart, or from the cruel, artificial mind of the helmet, Spencer knew he could not order the old man’s death. Not this way.

The hands pulled the helmet down out of the air, but did not place it on Jameson’s scabrous head. “Wha—Who is—What is this place?” Spencer heard the old man’s voice, looked into the wild-eyed wilderness of Chairman Jameson’s face. OLD FOOL TAKE ME. OLD FOOL TAKE ME.

Jameson looked around himself in slack-jawed bafflement, his addled mind finally realizing that it was the helmet that was making the soundless call. He seemed about to obey when his eye caught Spencer standing a meter or so away.

“I know you,” Jameson said. “You came to see me in my office, didn’t you?” The powerchair rolled forward, closer to Spencer. “You told me you wanted my pretty helmet, I think.”

Spencer and the marines backed away the way they had come. Jameson’s voice was becoming high and excited. “This helmet right here. You told me to take it off, that
you
wanted it.”

Jameson’s mouth worked, and his breath came short and fast.

OLD FOOL TAKE Me. Old Fool Take Me. Old fool take me.

The telepathic command was becoming weaker and weaker with every meter Jameson moved away from the command center.

“Take it, then!” Jameson shouted eagerly. “I’ve had my turn long enough! TAKE—” Suddenly the ruined man’s face was caught in a paroxysm, a jolting, killing spasm that crushed whatever shred of life was left to him.

The helmet sailed free of his hands and tumbled down the corridor, Spencer and the marines scrambling to get out of its way. Three marines drew a bead on it, in pure reflex action, and then remembered what happened to these creatures when they died. No one wanted to be sucked into a black hole. Could a repulsor kill the thing anyway?

It rebounded off the greyish wall and then hung quietly in mid-air, slowed by air friction. For a long moment Spencer did not move. At last he edged carefully toward the helmet. Not daring to touch the deadly thing, he strained to listen with his mind. Removed from the amplifying power of the command center, denied the power it drew from any contact with a living host, it was badly weakened.

Choose me,
a tiny, forgettable voice whispered.
Help me.

“The hell we will,” Spencer said. “We’re going to leave you right there.”

The marines backed away from the helmet, left it in the middle of the air.

No living creature ever touched it again.

EPILOGUE

Lennox
had finally arrived. She boarded most of the former civilian workers from the asteroid and then cast off. The last of the evacuees came aboard
Banquo,
with nothing but the clothes they were standing up in. Even then, all of them were carefully scanned for parasites. Two were found to have swallowed the things, somehow and were quite literally forced to cough them up. It seemed highly unlikely that one or two parasites could breed and grow, but Spencer was taking no chances.

Nor was he taking chances on what happened when parasites died. He ordered several careful parasite-killing experiments performed well away from the asteroid and ships.

It confirmed what Wellingham had reported—single parasites weren’t massive or dense enough to form into black holes when disrupted. They just seemed to evaporate altogether, as if they were sucked back into whatever dimension they had been extruded from in the first place.

That meant the StarMetal building, and the whole planet of Daltgeld, weren’t going to fall down a black hole, even if outlying parasites died when their controller died. And no one knew
that
for certain yet, anyway.

It was hideously crowded aboard the destroyer, and the evacuees complained bitterly about leaving their personal effects behind. The complaints stopped, however, when the battle-scarred marines made it clear the civilians were welcome to stay behind if they chose.

Comm section had finally located
Macduff.
She had materialized three hundred million kilometers from the target, a new miss-distance record for an intrasystem jump. No doubt she had been knocked off course by the same gravity-wave effects that had drawn
Banquo
in so close. She would rendezvous with the other ships back at Daltgeld.

But Captain Allison Spencer scarcely knew or cared about those details. Tallen Deyi was perfectly competent to handle them. The Task Force CO had other things on his mind.

Spencer spent most of that first day in sick bay, watching over one particular patient. The chief medical officer had every confidence of Suss pulling through, making a full recovery.

Spencer looked at her as she slept peacefully. Incredible that she had shaken it all off so quickly. Twenty hours before, they had been forced to peel her hands back from the improvised deadman switch, her face locked into a snarl of defiance. It had taken heavy sedation to get her calm enough to tell her story, explain the significance of the command center.

Now she slept, breathed easy, only crying out now and again, her much-bandaged body twitching as she dreamed.

She had saved them. Spencer knew that.

“Ah, Sir, you’re wanted on the bridge,” Spencer’s AID announced.

Spencer nodded and patted the little gadget. Nice to be able to use the things again, trust them again. “On my way,” he said.

Tallen saluted him as he stepped onto the bridge, a rare formality. “The last of the techs are back aboard, Sir, and the device is armed. We’ve got every sort of recording we could make of those nightmares—but no physical samples, as per your orders.”

“Very well, then. Order both ships to perform safe distancing maneuver,” Spencer said.

The acceleration alarms hooted, and the navigator fired the main engines. “One thousand kilometers,” the navigator announced.

“Weapons, you may proceed,” Spencer said, his voice calm, his heart pulled this way and that by a hundred emotions. Triumph, a sense of victory, yes, of course—but also relief at the end of fear, and even sadness.

Clearly, they had no choice but to destroy this thing—but what knowledge were they losing? Pandora’s Box had to be slammed shut—but what jewels of wisdom were lost when they chased off the demons?

But Suss. Suss was alive. That part of his life, of himself, he would not lose again. That he swore to himself. He watched the main screen.

“Shields
at standby,” the weapons officer announced. “Remote arming complete. Proceeding
with
hell-bomb activation. Detonation in
five
seconds.
Four. Three. Two. One.”

The flash of light filled the screen, overwhelmed it. An expanding shell of dust and debris swelled out from where the asteroid had been—and then began to fall back.

“Gravity-wave activity has ceased,” Dostchem announced, bending over her instruments. “A powerful gravity well has appeared.”

The dust cloud fell inward.

“Singularity,” Dostchem announced. “The gravity well has achieved infinite length. A black hole.”

Whatever force had prevented the helmet’s incredible mass from expressing itself was gone. Down, down, down came all the debris blasted off by the hell-bomb, streaking back in at velocities that approached the speed of light. Some fragments crashed back down into each other as they fell. The impact energy of the debris strikes lit up the sky anew. The flashes of light reddened and snapped off abruptly as the black hole pulled them in, dragging down the very light waves themselves.

“Once it goes, there’s no stopping it,” Tallen said. “Break the integrity of the controlling system, and it all collapses in on itself.”

“Are you talking about the helmet, or the Pact?” Spencer asked. He looked out there at the stars. The succession was still in doubt, the rival factions circling the rich prize of government like vultures jostling for the best pickings.

“Both, I suppose,” Tallen said. “But is the Pact
that
far gone?”

Spencer shut his eyes, suddenly exhausted. This battle, this war was over. There were many others yet to come. “All I know is the
helmet
can’t destroy the Pact. But if you want to know if we can do it to ourselves—

“You tell me, Tallen. You tell me.”