The Engines of Dawn (34 page)

"Your family had a Very Highest Auditor
and
someone high up in the ranks of the KMA?" Julia asked.

"Stranger things have happened," Holcombe admitted.

"No wonder you dislike the Auditors so much," Koczan said.

"Actually," he said slowly, "I thought I had gotten over it. Until today. Until now."

He aimed his flashlight at the artifact.

A female student suddenly appeared in the tunnel, pushing everyone aside. "Dr. Holcombe, there's a lifeboat come to rescue us outside!"

"We've got to get you back to the university," Julia said, helping the aged professor to his feet.

"It doesn't matter," Holcombe said. He leaned unsteadily against the wall of the compacted glass cobblestones. "You have to tell the Alley worlds about this thing in here."

Professor Holcombe fell heavily against the wall of the tunnel, a lock of white hair drooping across his face. It reminded Julia of the color of Jingle Bear's fur… and how Jingles had looked in Ben's arms a few days ago.

The one image was transposed over the other and Julia felt a tremor of dread: As Jingle Bear had died, so, too, might Professor Holcombe. In fact, it seemed inevitable.

Death filled ShipCom.

Of the six attackers Cutter Rausch had to face, only two now remained-the junior Ainge Auditors. Their backs were against the wall and their swords were on the floor. They were alive, the others were dead-and in several pieces.

In just four seconds, Rausch had sidestepped the first Accuser's sword thrust, put an arm around the creature's waist, and spun it around, facing his armored comrade. The long sword sliced off the arms of that alien. Rausch then did a gavotte on one foot, flinging the first alien into one of the campus-security attackers. Rausch then grabbed the fallen sword, minus the forearms that had been previously gripping it, and without hesitation drew a diagonal slice down the chest and abdomen of the second campus-security official, who watched his intestines fall to the floor just seconds before he died. The first alien then lost his head with a swift backswing of the sword, while the second campus-security man had his spine exposed when he turned to run. He was blocked by the two astounded Auditors and fell facedown, his back split open like a canteloupe. Blood carpeted the ShipCom Arena and the stench of alien air leaked from the suits of the dead Accusers.

The two Auditors dropped their swords and stood against the nearest wall, faces the color of chalk. One had done something nasty in his pants.

"
Ixion!"
one Auditor said.

"Please!"
begged the other.

Rausch lowered his sword, breathing hard. "Nothing would give me greater pleasure than killing both of you,
especially
when I have good reason to do so."

"We … we were only to secure ShipCom," the man said desperately. "We didn't plan… we never meant to hurt you!"

"You might not have," Rausch said. "But
they
were planning on it."

The second man fainted away.

"What a way to run a ship," Rausch said. He turned to Lisa Benn. "Our security cameras get any of this?"

Lisa Benn rushed back to her console and checked if their security equipment had been running.

It hadn't.

Lisa Benn looked up. "Recording systems are all shut down. That can only be done from campus security."

The one standing Auditor looked as if he were standing before a firing squad.

Rausch glared at the last man. "Lisa, get the Rights Advocacy people up here. Tell them to bring an Inquisitor machine." He stood just inches from the Auditor left standing. "Because when this is over, I'm going to nail every one of you motherfuckers to the wall."

The Auditor trembled. "Look, you don't understand! This was for the good of everyone! We're just trying to secure the ship!"

"Since when do Ainge Auditors tell
anyone
on the ship what to do?" Rausch demanded.

"And with swords!" one of Rausch's crew added.

The Auditor left standing said, "The Kuulo told us that-"

Lisa Benn jumped.

"Cutter!" she said. "I'm getting an outside hailing signal."

"Who is it?" Rausch asked.

Lisa Benn looked at Cutter. "Sir, it's a signal from an
Enamorati
ship."

"Bring it up on screen one," Rausch said.

The scene was a field of stars. Caught in the starlight coming from Kiilmist was a covey of ships newly emerged from trans-space. The readout at the bottom of the screen indicated that the ships bringing the new Engine were about two thousand miles away and were now decelerating to an orbital velocity to match that of Eos University.

Rausch stepped close to the screen. "Magnify this, Lisa."

His second-in-command did so.

Rausch yanked the one Auditor over to where he could get a good view of the image on the screen. "This small ship here pulling the large one is the tug and its Engine. But these four ships. Do they look like your usual tug convoy?"

The Auditor stared at the screen. Lisa Benn raised the magnification once more. The Auditor's jaw hung slack.

Rausch said, "I don't know whose side you're on, pal. But
those
are warships. See the flanges? See those blisters underneath them? Those are cannons. And since when do Enamorati ships have cannons?"

The other man said nothing, having apparently just had a major revelation.

"They have swords and swordsmen," Rausch said. "And they now have battleships. And what do we have?" Rausch put an arm around the Auditor's shoulders as if he were a coach and the Auditor a star quarterback.
"We
have a group of humans who've apparently picked the wrong side."

The Auditor looked as if he was going to faint. But Rausch wouldn't let him. Rausch said, "Lisa, see if you can get Mr. Cleddman out of early retirement."

"Yes, sir," Benn said.

40

As soon as the lifepod's surviving engine shut down, George Clock got on the horn to let the nearest gondola know of their situation. To everyone's relief, the atmospheric chemistry gondola was about 160 miles to the north and was now changing its course to rendezvous with them since the archaeology gondola had been destroyed by the bizarre storm and the lifepod was too small to get every one of the students back to the university.

However, it would take the AtChem gondola a while to reach them.

Ben and Tommy pulled the Avatka out of the lifepod. The remaining engine was smoldering and Ben didn't want to take any chances that it might blow up on them. They moved a safe distance away, and just to be even safer, Tommy and George sprayed the engine with foam from the fire extinguishers.

Viroo had managed to regain consciousness upon landing and did seem able to walk, but only because his suit came equipped with sturdy servomechanisms in the legs and hips. Ben and Tommy had to hold the alien up; otherwise, he would have fallen to the leafy roof of the plaza.

"Ben!" someone shouted.

The students parted and Ben's group saw Julia standing at the ivy-curtained opening of the Mound.

"We saw your gondola to the east," Ben said. "It crashed. What happened to it?"

"The storm knocked it out of the sky," Julia said, pushing a strand of hair away from her face. "We had to hide inside the Mound."

Ben looked around. "Where's Dr. Holcombe?"

"He's back inside the Mound," she said somberly. "Ben, I think something's wrong with him."

"What?"

"I'm not sure."

The storm that had just passed seemed to fill the sky to the south and the west and looked as if it could come back at any moment. Ben considered the Mound.

"Let's get everyone back in there and wait for the atmospheric chemistry group to pick us up," he said. "I don't like it out here."

Julia led the group into the tunnel. Ben and Tommy supported the Avatka Viroo as George and Jim walked ahead of the remaining archaeology students.

At the entrance to the main chamber, Ben noticed the dried-out body. "Is this guy an Enamorati?"

Julia nodded. "And he's been here a very long time."

"The Enamorati live on this planet?" he asked.

"Oh, no," Julia said. "There was a totally different race of beings here. The continent seems covered by their bones and the bones of their higher animals. This Mound sits on a graveyard that goes on for miles. It's all covered by the ivy."

"But what's this guy doing here?" Tommy asked, pointing to the shriveled Enamorati miner.

"We don't know yet," Julia said. "But Professor Holcombe said the strangest thing. He said that
you'd
know."

"Me?"

Julia nodded, then stepped into the main chamber. Ben and Tommy, holding the alien between them, followed.

Benjamin then received the shock of his life: The hovering lanterns on the ledge and a dozen flashlights illuminated the hulk of a massive Onesci Engine.

"What is… what is
this
doing here?" Ben asked. "What
is
this place?"

Julia looked at him curiously. "You know what this thing is?"

Professor Holcombe, on his feet now, stood off to one side with two students close by.

"Sure," Ben said. "It's an Enamorati Engine."

"How do you know?" Marji Koczan asked, stepping forward.

Ben had everyone's attention… and he was about to incriminate himself. It was now impossible to estimate just how much trouble he was in. He swallowed. "Jim and Tommy and George and I… we saw the Enamorati remove
our
Engine just the other day. It was their
Makajaa
ceremony. They took out the Engine and sent it into the sun. It looked just like
that"

He pointed to the artifact.

"That's impossible," Marji Koczan said. "This thing was organic at one time. It's a fossil now. No way was it a machine."

Jim Vees was standing at the very lip of the ledge. He said, "It looked just like this. It was
this
thing's brother."

"Or cousin,"
said the Avatka Viroo.

The Avatka was being supported by Tommy Rosales, the strongest of the Eos Bombardiers, but had found the strength to stand on his own. His eyes were barely open… he was barely alive.

In his hand he held one of the small globes that had been attached to his belt. "They are the greatest enemy your race-my race-has ever known. I killed the Eos's Engine with one of these."

Weakly, he went on. "I turned loose a very small
vehenta
because you … because
somebody
needed to see what we… what we let happen to this planet, Kiilmist, this poor world. I had… to bring you here."

The Avatka's legs gave out and Tommy Rosales gently lowered him to the ledge. The students gathered around and the cavern filled with only the sound of the Avatka's voice.

"I have waited decades for this moment," Viroo said. He looked back at the tunnel's mouth where the dried-up Enamorati miner lay. "I have so long wanted to do what
he
tried to do and failed."

"What are you talking about?" Julia asked.

But Ben was beginning to fit it all together in his mind. And by the expression Ben saw on Professor Holcombe's face, the old archaeologist had it pieced together as well.

Dr. Holcombe said, "Children, what the Avatka is suggesting is that we've been at war for as long as we have known the Enamorati. The enemy, however, has been
these
things."

"What?" Marji Koczan asked.

"The Engines which push our ships through trans-space are not mechanical at all. I didn't know that until we found this one here," Holcombe said. "The Engines, in actuality, are a race of highly organic, highly developed beings who can travel in and out of trans-space without mechanical means. They aren't machines, they're
living
beings, given to us by the Enamorati."

Julia pointed at the artifact. "Are you saying this is a creature that flies through trans-space?"

"Not this one. It's dead," Holcombe said. "It died when all the life had been sucked out from miles around."

"These Mounds cover this part of the continent," Bobby Gessner said. "Our landsats picked up hundreds of them. Are you saying that there's one of
these
things in every Mound?"

"Yes," the Avatka Viroo said. "They draw life toward them, then they feed. Only the
vehenta
can stop them."

"Vehenta?"
young Gessner asked.

Here, Holcombe responded. "I believe that the 'cobblestones' that compose this Mound are
vehenta,
or their dead bodies. They are living energy organisms that travel in clouds, like the storm that attacked us… like the storm that chased my clone-son on Kissoi 3. My guess is that if found in their cocoon stage, they can be carried in pouches-"

"And used as hand grenades," Ben said.

"They accreted around this
creature
long after it had fed and started to die a natural death," Holcombe said. "But some of its feeding force lingered and those Kiilmistians who had survived, and perhaps a few Enamorati who came after them, tried to get in here and kill it off. Like our man right there." He indicated the dead Enamorati miner.

The Avatka said, "Thousands of years ago, just as my people had begun to travel between the stars in our sublight ships, we were beset by… the Onesci." The Avatka swallowed with some difficulty. "They come from a world deep in the Perseus Alley. They heard us through our early trans-space communication system, much the same way we had heard your Ixion Smith with his probing signals. The Onesci are terrible eaters of life, creatures of a profound body design, the product of millions of years of sophisticated evolution on their own planet, the first planet formed, we think, when the galaxy was very young. Over the millennia, they consumed all life in the Inner Perseus Alley. That was when they moved into the Sagittarius Alley and found us. And they would have consumed us had we not bargained with them."

"You bargained with them?" asked Ben.