The War Machine: Crisis of Empire III (25 page)

For what he was seeing ought to have been impossible. Spencer could not tell walls from ceiling or floors, if indeed there were any such distinctions to be made. Oddly made chairs, work platforms, control panels, and other, unidentifiable—call them
artifacts
for want of a better word—sprouted from every surface, without any planning that Spencer could see.

Some of the artifacts seemed shiny, bright and new. Others, made of different materials not quite so resistant to aging, were blackened, pitted, corroded. Dust clumps seemed to have cemented themselves to most of the flat surfaces. This place had been left undisturbed for a long enough time that molecular bonding had taken place, the dust in effect melting into the surfaces it found itself on. The walls, floors and ceiling were shiny-new, though, a softly gleaming grey.

The camera swooped and dove, its operators no doubt as stunned as Spencer was now. There was no record, no hint, no clue of a spacefaring culture of such antiquity anywhere inside the Pact. Who had built this place? For what purpose? And how long ago?

Spencer had scarcely formed the questions in his mind when part of the answer appeared before his eyes.

The camera swung around to view the far end of the chamber. It focused on the mummified remains of two many-legged, exoskeletal creatures, looking like dried-out locusts grown large.

These were mere husks. Both wore equipment belts as well as gadgetry that seemed to be attached directly to their exoskeletons. They had large, well-formed heads with faceted eyes and complex sensory and articulation clusters about their mouths. Their long-dead faces, unreadable, insectoid, still seemed to Spencer able to speak of something.

Of madness, of fear, of desperation.

Spencer looked closer, trying to understand. One mummy seemed to be holding a weapon of some sort—and the other was wearing Jameson’s helmet. Spencer glanced from the screen to Jameson. Yes, the helm had changed its shape somehow, but there was no mistaking that
thing,
no matter what sort of head it sat on.

Spencer looked again at the two long-dead corpses on screen. Both of the creatures had fist-sized holes blasted through their chest carapaces—they had been shot, Spencer realized, probably by that weapon one of them held. The creature with the gun must have shot the helmet wearer, and then himself . . .

The image on the screen froze, and then faded out. Jameson turned about to face his prisoners, giggling madly. “Isn’t it a wonderful thing?” he asked. “The captain found it, and brought it straight to me—and now I can use it to set things right! With this helmet, I can control everything, not just some fiddling little company on Daltgeld. Within a week, I will rule this entire system!”

Jameson’s eyes grew brighter, and his slack-jawed face suddenly became animated. “Then—oh, yes,
then!
Out of this system, out into the Pact. My little friends will travel across the starlanes, taking over ships, computers, all sorts of automated systems. And then I shall turn the tables on them all, Haiken Maru and all the rest. Soon Haiken Maru will be crawling to StarMetal, to
me,
begging
me
for help and protection. And then—and then, why the High Secretary is dead, is he not? And the succession still in doubt? Even if a new secretary is chosen soon, he will be weak for a long time to come, consolidating his forces. What better time for a new force, a new man to come forward? The Pact will be mine, and the boundless stars beyond!”

Jameson’s breath came fast and wheezy, and the blush of color in his face faded away to ashen greyness.

Megalomania,
Spencer thought. A classic aspect of wirehead behavior. The helmet had taken the poor man’s mind, that was clear. Even with the helmet, it was impossible that Jameson could conquer the Pact. No one man could smash the entire Navy.

The question was could the
helmet
conquer? Spencer had no doubt that the helmet was master, and Jameson the slave. For whatever reason, the helmet must need a brain to control before it could operate.

That poor insectoid bastard with the gun must have known that, and killed himself to keep the helmet from grabbing
his
mind after killing the creature wearing the helmet.

Now the helmet had Jameson’s brain. To use as what? A power source? A feedback generator? A databank and interpreter, teaching the helmet who ran the universe and how these days? Was the helmet indeed merely a strange and powerful computer—or some strange form of life, either natural-occurring or hell-raised by some hapless lifeform that should have known better? Perhaps brought to being by the insectoid race Destin had found. Or were the insectoids merely its most recent victim? How far back in space and time did it all go?

Spencer forced himself to think about more current problems. He didn’t need to understand the psychology or programming of an alien, machine or animal, to recognize Jameson’s situation. A wirehead needed no urging to succumb to megalomania. That feeling of power, of infinite well-being rushing through you. Spencer knew that false sense of omnipotence all too well.

How much stronger would that feeling be when the stimulator was an
intelligent
parasite,
deliberately
manipulating the pleasure doses to control its host, its victim?

Spencer felt a dull knot of pain at the base of his skull, felt the scar there seem to throb with remembered torment. He knew something else about the psychology of the wirehead—the inevitable feeling of loss, of despair, the knowledge of your own real weakness, when you came down from that surging sense of imagined power.
That
was the moment when the victim was closest to reality, the moment when he could be reached if he could be reached at all.

And by the look on Jameson’s face now, that moment of loss and despair was upon him. Any moment now, the helmet would judge that its victim was straying too far from control and give him another dose of pleasure.

But it could not act too fast. It had to know that. It had to know that it had to delay at least a little while, or risk destroying its victim altogether. Too much stimulation, and Jameson could suffer a fatal stroke or heart attack, leaving him as useless a husk as those mummified insect-creatures inside the asteroid.

Now then, was the moment. If Spencer could reach Jameson, there might still be hope. “Sir, it won’t be
you
in charge.
You
know that. The helmet is controlling you right now. You’re its prisoner as much as we are.”

He hesitated for a moment. Jameson was looking at him, a strange look on his face, his eyes, twin lamps of his imprisoned soul, staring out through his tortured face.

Maybe,
Spencer thought,
maybe I’m reaching him.
He went on in gentler, less urgent tones. “What’s happening to you, happened to me not so long ago. Not with any such helmet as that, but with a perfectly ordinary numb-rig. I’m not proud of it, but it happened.
I know what it’s like.
I’d be dead by now if a friend hadn’t come along.”

Strange to think of the nameless KT man as his friend, but what else to call the man who saved his life?

“I could find you half-dozen pleasure palaces and feel-good houses tonight, right in this city. Every one of them could sell you the torture you’re feeling right now. Ultimate pleasure, and then bottomless despair, and then pleasure again, until there’s nothing left of you that can feel anything anymore. That helmet is lying to you when it tells you how strong you are. Leave it on, and it will kill you. Believe me, Sir,
I know.”

Jameson looked at Spencer, as if he were searching for something important in the young officer’s face. Jameson worked his face for a long moment, trying to say something, but unable to speak. “Take—take helm’ off?” he managed at last. He seemed to be exploring the strange idea, considering its consequences.

“Take it off?” he asked again, this time a bit more strongly. He was silent for a minute or two, thinking, fighting with the demons in his brain.

“Yes,” he said at last, his voice suddenly clearer and stronger. “Yes. I—I
can
take it off, whenever I like; after all, it’s just a helmet, a shiny hat. I just like to wear it, that’s all.”

His face brightened for a moment, then darkened suddenly, shrouded in a cloud of feel-good paranoia. “But why
should
I take it off, and lose my power? It’s my hat, and I
want
to wear it—wear it.” His voice faded again.

Spencer watched eagerly. It was almost as if he could see two spirits battling for the old man’s soul. Jameson’s own mind strove against the helmet’s tyranny. “But, but, you know, I do believe I
will
remove it, just to show you,” Jameson said at last, and a wild, hopeful smile suddenly danced across his ravaged face.

Jameson lifted two age-spotted hands to his head and wrapped them gently around the helmet. He pulled the thing away from his head, and there was a slight sucking sound as it lifted away from his scalp. Spencer felt his stomach turn over, and he heard Sisley on the couch next to him as she cried out in shock and horror.

The top of Jameson’s head looked like so much raw meat, red and glossy with slime, covered with swollen sores, wet with the ooze from a thousand pinprick wounds that had never healed.

The metallic parasites on Jameson’s body, on the chair, the ones moving back and forth across the room all froze in their tracks the moment he moved the helmet from his head. More unmoving parasites glittered on Jameson’s skull—but they had to share the ground with their less disciplined organic brethren. Head lice, or some ghastly Daltgeld equivalent, writhed and twisted everywhere on that tortured head, protesting their sudden exposure. The helmet stopped its slow, rhythmic motion the moment it was off its victim’s head.

Jameson’s mad smile began to fade the moment the helmet lifted, his face suddenly contorted with agony, and his skin one again turned ashen grey.

The helmet must be able to block the pain, somehow, Spencer thought. Without it in place, Jameson could feel the pain of his wounds and sores. “You see,” Jameson said, through a voice suddenly high and piping with pain and fear. “You see, I don’t need the helmet at all. I showed
you.”

With that, the old man clapped the helmet back down on his head, and breathed a sigh of grateful relief. The helm started its pulsing again, and the parasites again began to move. “Nevertheless,” he said, “I must admit that it is a comfort to wear it. A most remarkable sensation. What a pity I can’t let you try the experience.”

Spencer turned his head away in disgust, and Sisley turned her head to lean over the side of the couch and be quietly sick.

Chapter Fourteen
Pickup

Ensign Shoemaker watched his scopes carefully, trusting them more than his visual gear. He didn’t know this city, and landmarks weren’t going to mean much to him. This was a job he desperately wanted to do right; it wasn’t very often that an ensign was called upon to rescue a captain. He’d joined the Navy for the chance to be a hero. Now, at last, it looked as if his chance had arrived.

The homing signal was growing stronger. He turned his course a bit toward the east and zeroed in on it. His comm panel started to buzz angrily again and he shut down the alarm, not for the first time. The captain’s gig
Malcolm
was playing merry hell with the local traffic control laws.

Sod the laws,
Shoemaker told himself. Naval authority took precedence. He checked his belly screens again. He ought to be right over—there! There was the captain’s woman, Suss, standing in the middle of a vacant lot, waving her arms at him, and some sort of damn monkey alien alongside her. Was the monkey the other passenger he was to carry? Strange. Very strange. Since when did the Navy need help from aliens?

He shifted the
Malcolm
to hover mode and eased her down onto the lot. He punched the open hatch button and began his post-landing checks.

He never got past the first item.

***

Suss watched the gig arrive with rising impatience. The pilot was too damn cautious for her tastes. She was already sprinting for its touch-down point before the gig had settled on her landing jacks, and she was diving through the hatch before it was fully open. Dostchem followed, albeit a bit more slowly, clearly uneager to return to the StarMetal Building.

Suss scrambled up into the gig’s flight cabin, jumped into the co-pilot’s station and strapped herself in. Before the startled Ensign Shoemaker could respond, she reached over and threw a switch that shifted control of the
Malcolm
to the co-pilot. She checked behind her, saw that Dostchem was aboard, and boosted again before she sealed the hatch. The
Malcolm
was on the ground less than ten seconds.

“Dostchem! Get up here. Give me a vector off Spencer’s tracetab.”

The startled pilot had recovered enough to start sputtering in indignation. “You have no right to take over this—”

“Shut up,” Suss said brusquely.

She had enough on her mind without having to soothe the egos of snot-nosed kids. Weapons. As a matter of course, she had familiarized herself with the
Malcolm’s
controls and armament when she had first come aboard the
Duncan.
That was standard operating procedure for the KT: Know everything you can about the tools you might conceivably need to use. But there was a world of difference between studying specs, schematics, and control layouts and using the real tools.

Well, it had better not be
too
big a world.

Heavy repulsors, medium plasma cannon, hunter-seeker missiles. All powered up, ready for excitement. Good. Give the kid credit for getting that much right.

Radar. Nothing showing a threat at the moment, but that was bound to change. Never mind. If they moved fast enough they’d be all right.

Suss had punched the
Malcolm
into a straight-up vertical launch on her hoverjets. Fifteen seconds of that had put them a half-klick up in the air. Not much of a climbing speed for a real fighter, but not bad for a hovercraft.

Suss judged they were high enough and switched in the rear jets. The gig surged forward, and Suss slewed her nose about until the
Malcolm
was pointed straight at the StarMetal pyramid. The gig leapt across the sky.