“Yes,” he told her, “and I shall never forget you. And you may believe me that we, too, shall do whatever we can do.”
And with that the dead marched on . . .
“Where are we going?” said Shania, surrendering to the fact of her Khiff’s warning and accepting that they must use the localizer one last time.
Adjusting the strap of the flamethrower around his neck, then checking to make sure his shotgun was loaded in both its barrels, Scott answered, “Eventually we’re going to that central cavern, the place of the machine. But it’s too risky to go there directly; we daren’t simply appear there without knowing what may be waiting for us. Do you have the coordinates of the approach tunnels, especially the one that contains those cells where the Mordris torment their hostages?” It was just another stupid question, but everything was happening so fast now.
She nodded. “Like you, I have all Schloss Zonigen’s coordinates. And so does my Khiff.”
“Then that’s it,” said Scott grimly. “The approach tunnel with those cells, that’s where we’re going.”
And as soon as he had gathered up Wolf, just as quickly as that they went there . . .
45
To the one man who was aware of it, their arrival out of thin air in the prison tunnel was an event of bone-jellying terror brought about by the certainty of what must surely ensue: his own slow and excruciating death! For the first thought to form in his mind was that this pair—Scott St. John and Shania—must be previously unseen Mordris. Who or what else could they possibly be, to suddenly appear in that fashion and at such an inopportune time? They must know what he had done and had come to punish him; this much at least was obvious. But as for the dog, or wolf, or whatever it was . . . !
The reason Scott had chosen this specific destination was because he knew that in Schloss Zonigen’s labyrinth this tunnel, its immediate annexes, connecting tunnels, natural cavelets, and caverns were “out of bounds,” restricted except to a handful of especially perverse guards and/or trustees whom the Mordris had seen fit to reward with certain “special privileges.” This was knowledge that derived from Shania’s Khiff’s probing of the cable-car operator. Scott had reasoned, therefore, that the area would be deserted: the ideal vantage point from which to launch any assault on the nearby central cavern, the Mordri vessel, and the Three themselves.
And but for the presence of Direktor Gunter Ganzer and one other, it would have been deserted. The one other was—or had been—the simian trustee Erik Hauser. Indeed he still was Erik Hauser, but no longer that living, breathing pig that he’d once been. For he was now very dead, and at the moment Scott’s Three Unit had emerged, Ganzer had been frantically busy dragging his corpulent body with its crushed skull into the cramped recesses of a dark crevice in the wall of the tunnel.
Scott had seen Ganzer just a moment before Ganzer saw him, literally a split second’s difference after Ganzer had felt the sudden brief rush of displaced air on his sweaty neck and glanced over his shoulder. As for what Scott saw:
Apart from his twisted lower limb and reversed left foot, where the toe of a black shoe pointed to the rear, the Direktor looked as normal a specimen as Scott might have thought to find in a place like this. Approximately five-eight in height, going prematurely bald, with a round wet face, bulging terrified eyes, and a twitching mouth, he was neatly, even too well dressed for the place and occasion. Under his open overcoat he wore a white shirt, a tie, waistcoat, and roll-collar jacket. Never a waiter, still he might easily be the chief steward of some large hotel; or as the case was, ostensibly, the manager of Schloss Zonigen. Only the guilty, frightened look on his face—along with what lay on the floor at his feet: a heavy spanner, gleaming red and wet, with a tuft of black hair stuck to it—spoiled the illusion.
The moment of mutual awareness, however frozen, was brief. Then:
“Nein! Bitte nein!” Ganzer cried out loud, falling to his knees. But at the same time his eyes had narrowed and Scott saw him reaching for the sidearm in a holster on the dead trustee’s belt.
Scott paced forward, kicked at Ganzer’s hand, and sent the automatic pistol skittering. And handing his shotgun to Shania, he grabbed the collar of Ganzer’s overcoat, hauled him upright, and was about to strike with the heel of a rock-hard hand when Shania caught at his arm.
“Stop!” she said. “He’s not one of the Mordris’ men.” She had read Ganzer’s mind and found only fear there, and maybe the aftermath of a rage that was dying now, replaced by terror, the realization of what he had done.
Backed up against the tunnel wall, Ganzer’s gaze went from Scott to Shania—then to a snarling Wolf—and finally back to Scott. His starting, rapidly blinking eyes took in their camouflaged faces, their dark clothing, and the weapons they carried, “What?” he gasped. “Who? But . . . you are British?”
Scott looked back at him, then at the corpse half in, half out of the crack in the wall. For several seconds, until he had shut it off, his dead-speak had made him privy to the dead man’s shocked queries: his astonishment—not knowing where, when, or how he was—knowing only the sudden cold and Stygian darkness.
“You killed him?” said Scott, making it a statement rather than a question proper.
“But . . . but I didn’t mean to!” Ganzer’s voice was shrill, rising dangerously.
“Quietly!” Scott snarled, then added, “And don’t go lying to me! I don’t much care that you killed him, not if he was one of theirs.”
“Oh, he was!” said Ganzer, beginning to control his trembling and hoarse, heavy breathing. “Oh, yes, most definitely. Und was fur ein Schweinhund!”
“In English, if you can,” said Scott. Not that it mattered a great deal because his telepathy was now switched permanently on. He could have switched it off, but in the current situation it made good sense to continue scanning the immediate vicinity, so ensuring that he and his team weren’t taken by surprise. “So why did you kill him?”
“For my poor wife, for myself, and for everything I cannot any longer bear! He had come here for my wife—to be with her—in that cell there. He told me what he would do to her; what he has done, and more than once! He is Erik Hauser, a so-called trustee. And of all the Mordri henchmen he was the worst. But I knew that in any case I was doomed, and so I followed him here. When he went to loosen the bolt on my wife’s cell I could stand it no longer, and so I crept up behind him, and . . . and . . .”
“Yes, I know,” said Scott. “So now calm down, pick up that gun, and tell me what you meant when you said that in any case you knew you were doomed.”
As Shania went to release the bolt on the door of the cell in question, Ganzer did as Scott instructed, and said, “I meant precisely what I said. All three of the Mordris are insane, but the one who calls himself Guyler Schweitzer, he’s quickly becoming the maddest of them all! Less than half an hour ago he told me that when their vessel departs, this entire cavern complex—Schloss Zonigen and all—will be destroyed and everyone in it killed! And whether he is crazy or not, I believe him! And so I had nothing to lose . . . well, except my life in a very terrible death!”
“Oh, you can believe him alright,” Scott answered, nodding curtly. “But there’s no time to go into all that now.”
Even as he spoke there came a small, gasping cry—but of what? Relief? Disbelief?—from the open cell door. And then a small whimpering voice, calling, “Gunter? My Gunter? Is it your voice I hear? I’m coming,
Gunter! I’m coming!” The spoken words were in German, which no longer made any difference to Scott’s understanding of them. And:
“What?” said Ganzer, his jaw falling open. “My Hannelore? She is speaking, moving? She is able to speak, and . . . and . . .”
Shania came out of the cell; she looked shell-shocked; she could scarcely believe that even a deranged member of her race would think to transmute any living being as Ganzer’s wife had been transmuted. All it had taken was a touch, a Mordri touch: the once healing, now crippling mutative
touch of madness. But Shania was Shing’t, too, and her touch was pure and untainted. What had been altered, disrupted, was far more easily and immediately put back to rights.
The tunnel’s strip lighting had begun to flicker and spark shortly after Shania had entered the cell. Scott knew what that meant; but the effect was almost stroboscopic as a female shape emerged stumbling from the cell behind Shania, and Ganzer stood frozen, half daring to hope, half fearful, as the neons settled down again to reveal the woman’s true form.
Then, with a choking cry, he lurched forward.
For this was not the rubbery octopus thing with the lower half of a woman that he had last seen and wept over in the hellhole of her cell. It was Hannelore as he remembered her, as she had been; it was the darling wife of his youth returned to him! Only her hair was different, where so many of her glossy chestnut locks had been displaced by prematurely grey ones. But what else could one expect? And it mattered not a jot.
Naked from the waist up, her skirt hanging in rags, Hannelore almost collapsed into Gunter’s arms. At which Shania told Scott, She’s recovering, and quickly. My Khiff helped with the . . . the terrible psychological problems, while explaining everything to her. She knows what we’re doing and what still remains to be done.
Ganzer was unable to speak; his tears flowed, grew cold on his cheeks, as he shrugged free of his overcoat and wrapped his wife in it. She accepted the coat but then pushed him away, saying, “Gunter, now we have to help free the rest of them, all of them!” And without another word—still a little unsteady, but gaining strength moment by moment—she left him, went to draw the bolt on the door of the cell next to hers.
Ganzer would have followed her but Shania reached down and “touched” his leg. He at once fell to the floor, his lower left leg writhing like a crippled snake. And: “Ah . . . Ahh!” he said, his quivering hands massaging his leg. But the pain was gone in a moment, and now both of his feet faced front.
He stood up, at once spread-eagled himself against the wall of the tunnel, and stared in utter bewilderment at Shania. “But you . . . you’re one of them!”
“No, she isn’t,” Scott told him. “She’s one of us. So now get a grip and help us set the rest of these people free. Bring them to Shania. If any of them can’t be brought, Shania will go to them. But as quick as you can, for our time is running out.”
Probably faster than you think! said Shania, in his mind. When I estimated the time of the sun’s rising over the eastern range I deliberately brought it forward by some five minutes in order to allow us a little leeway. Even so, and if my calculations were correct, only a maximum of twenty-two minutes remain. Probably a minute or so less. So let’s say twenty minutes to be on the safe side.
“Say what?” Scott wryly replied. “The safe side? There’s a a safe side to all of this?” Suddenly gaunt behind his striped, sooty camouflage, his eyes were now even less like the ones she knew. Coldly determined, they were also grim . . . but as grim as what? As grim as death, she supposed. Death, yes, with which he now seemed so familiar. And Shania shivered as Scott nodded and said, “Okay, twenty minutes. But we’ve still got to finish what we started here . . .”
It took only minutes, felt like hours, but finally the last few prisoners were freed; men and women alike, all of them returned as close to normal by Shania’s “touch” and her Khiff ’s purging of their worst memories, and all crowding the immediate area of the tunnel’s confines.
Which was when a heavyset armed guard came bustling around a bend from the direction of the main cavern.
Despite their telepathic skills—distracted by their work with the monstrously disfigured inhabitants of the prison cells—Scott and Shania were caught unawares. They were caught out, but not Wolf, not entirely. True, he had been unusually slow to pick up on the guard’s approach, but what with the sensory assault of these new, mainly unpleasant odours from the cells, not to mention the weird smells from unwashed bodies as they underwent the process of reversed metamorphosis . . . well even a wolf has his limitations! Thus Wolf excused himself.
But finally that sensitive nose and those delicate ears of his had detected someone’s approach; at which, and with no time to spare or alert his One and Two, he had loped to a spot close to the bend in the tunnel and there backed himself into a niche in the carved rock wall.
Now he alerted them: Scott, Shania. Someone has come!
Central in the crowd of ex-prisoners, the pair of would-be avengers heard Wolf’s call and began moving through the crush—only to pause as they saw the guard where he, too, came skidding to a halt. But now their telepathy was fully back in play, and they focussed it directly on him.
Damn, she was right! he was thinking. That weird bitch was absolutely right to think that something was going on back here. But whatever this is I’ll soon put a stop to it! The picture in his mind was that of Gelka Mordri, Mordri One as he’d last seen her: a raging, frenzied creature as thin and angular as a stick insect, with flying hair, snapping jaws, and gesticulating, taloned hands: Gelka, as she had been just a minute or so earlier, when she’d sent him from the central cavern after she’d thought to detect something of Shing’t energies in play back here.
Scott was in motion again. As he broke through the forward edge of the crowd the squat guard saw his shotgun and flinched, his eyes narrowing to thin slits. Then, elevating the muzzle of his own weapon, he thought, Well, whoever you are, fuck you! And as for the rest of you fucks, you can all have some of this!
He squeezed the trigger . . . but just a moment too late.
For reading his intentions, Wolf had sprung from cover to crash into his shoulder, his black jaws closing on the guard’s flabby neck under his left ear. Shrieking from shock and pain, lurching off balance, the man’s aim was deflected upward, his weapon’s crazed chatter gouging at the rotten rock of the ceiling and bringing down streams of dust and pebbles.
Hanging on and biting deep, Wolf heard his One’s command: Wolf, get out of there! And knowing what was in Scott’s mind he released his grip and dropped to the floor on all fours. Before the guard could recover, Scott triggered off a single barrel of his shotgun. At close to point-blank range the narrow spread of the blast hammered into the guard’s chest a little left of centre, shattered his collar bone, ripped half of his throat away, and hurled him backward. As his weapon went flying he hit the floor stone dead.
What? What happened? the dead man said. But the Necroscope Scott St. John simply ignored him. And coming forward, stooping to gather up the fallen weapon, he handed it to one of the male ex-prisoners.
“Now it begins in earnest,” said Shania, hurrying forward to clutch Scott’s arm. “In the cavern of the grav-ship they’ve surely heard the shooting, and others will be on their way here even now. We’ll be completely outnumbered!”
“For the moment, yes.” Scott nodded. “But let’s hope it’s only for the moment. What the hell has happened to E-Branch?”
As he broke open his shotgun to reload the smoking, empty chamber, and before anyone could even begin to consider what to do next, there came a sudden flurry of displaced air that made swirling vortices in the drifting blue gunsmoke. And blurring into being, three figures materialized as if from nowhere. The two to left and right of the central figure were heavily armed guards who looked deadly dangerous in their own right, but the one they flanked was by far the most menacing. For she was the crazed leader of the Mordri Three, Gelka Mordri herself! And:
“Ahhh! Shania Two,” she said, her voice a grating squeal, as painful on the ears as chalk on a blackboard or a shovel in cold ashes. “So I was correct and you are the author of my displeasure.” With her head thrust out in front she moved forward, her incredibly long arms and taloned hands reaching. “Well, an end to that, Shania, for even the healing touch of the Shing’t cannot repair that which is utterly sundered!”
Still moving forward, grinning or grimacing hideously in the renewed strobing of the lighting, she reached for Shania’s face
and shot instructive glances at the guards flanking her.
As one, they immediately opened withering fire . . .
Twelve minutes earlier:
Ben Trask and his team had raced their cars up the final, narrow stretch of access road onto Schloss Zonigen’s esplanade. As the vehicles bounded from the steep slope to the level area, the tech drivers had waited just a second or two—enough time to scan the complex’s car park and looming facade with its huge glass and aluminum doors—before turning off their headlights. This had not left them totally blind, for while the esplanade’s perimeter lights were switched off, secondary illumination from the facade, the high turrets, and the reception area beyond the glass doors continued to provide sufficient light to see by . . . which meant that in their turn they, too, could be seen.
And as their cars fishtailed across the icy surface, so a pair of searchlights blazed into life, their beams lancing down from rock-hewn balconies to crisscross the false plateau. Then came a barrage of automatic fire from the same vantage points, and as the techs drove for cover behind a line of parked, nose-to-tail supply trucks, so a hail of bullets spanged and sparked where they struck metal surfaces.
“Bloody hell!” Trask swore in the lead car, crouching low in his seat as the canopies on the supply trucks were shredded and searchlight beams lanced through the bullet holes and torn, fluttering canvas. “Wasn’t St. John supposed to deal with such as this?”
“Aye,” Tech McGrath replied. “But if we’re sufferin’ this oot here, what’s St. John goin’ through in there, eh? Scott and that bonnie lassie—aye, and that smart grey yin o’ theirs—up against who knows what in bleddy Schloss Zonigen!”
“Out of the car,” Trask snapped. “Take cover behind the wheels of these trucks, where you’ll be able to shoot back if anyone tries to creep up on us across the esplanade. And pray that none of these shooters—poor marksmen though they seem to be—gets a notion to aim at the petrol tanks!” And turning to the telepath in the backseat, “Paul, can you reach Millie? Tell her the same thing: to get out of the car and take cover. God knows I don’t want that kid’s blood on my hands! And likewise the rest of the crew.”