Kris Longknife: Tenacious (Kris Longknife novellas Book 12) Read online

  “It appears that the granite comprising the pyramid was not quarried on this planet. Based on the ratio of rare earths and isotopes, the mountain it was obtained from is somewhere on the planet we previously studied.”

  “And the counterweight Nelly analyzed?” Kris asked.

  “It came from this planet. Most likely this very continent. Given enough time, we may identify the mountain range.”

  “I doubt we have that much time,” Kris said.

  “I agree.”

  “So we have a smoking gun and a bullet,” Kris said.

  “I would not argue that,” the professor said.

  “But why lug all this rock back here and plunk it down in the middle of this mess?” Jack asked with the air of one not expecting an answer.

  “That is not a question for science but of human motivation, or alien, as in this case,” the professor said. “I am only too happy to leave messy things like that to the conjecture of witch doctors and shamans like yourselves.”

  No doubt, Kris had just received a backhanded, and front-handed, compliment of the highest, no, make that lowest scientific order. She decided that, discretion being the wisest part of both the command and management of eggheads, she should ignore it.

  “Hey, we got something here,” Jacques reported from the ground. “Three of the glyphs seem to be moveable. Let’s see if I can push them in and make something happen.”

  “But in what order should they be pushed?” Amanda cut in from beside Kris.

  “That’s an interesting question,” Jacques answered. “A base-three key is not a cypher that’s very hard to break. Let me see, which one should I push first?”

  “Is there one that appears to be the first one?” Kris asked.

  “There is one that’s the first on the right side. All it has on it is a sun.”

  “They’re into one-man rule,” Kris said. “I’d go with one being important to them.”

  “Then one it is,” Jacques said. “I’ve pushed it, and nothing happened, so I guess we’re good. Now which one is next? Honey, you want to suggest one?”

  “Don’t you go getting me into this, you lunkhead,” Amanda said. “I’m still stuck in orbit looking at your pictures on a screen. How can I form an informed opinion, assuming we can call what you’re doing an informed action?”

  Unfazed by Amanda, Jacques went happily along. “Okay, I’ll try these two.”

  A moment later, he was talking again. “That didn’t open up anything. But what don’t you know, no spray of poison gas, either. Maybe they ran out of it fifty thousand years ago?”

  “Or maybe they’re saving it for the second mistake,” Amanda put in.

  “We’ve all got our space suits on and helmet visors down, dear. We might need to wash ourselves down in the nearest stream, but it can’t kill us,” Jacques insisted

  “Don’t worry, Amanda,” Kris said, “the nearest stream is three hundred klicks away. While walking to it, they might meditate on their sins enough to learn something.”

  “I heard that,” Jacques said. “Here goes the second try.”

  There was a long pause. “Hey, it worked. The door’s sliding up in its track. Hey, that’s good workmanship to be that smooth after all this time.”

  “Traps may be working, too,” Jack put in. “Let Captain Hayakawa take over checking the place out.”

  “Okay, okay, we’re backing away. No need to prod us with those guns.”

  No doubt, Kris suspected, the Marines did indeed need to prod the scientists a bit to get their attention.

  Now a simple and large probe, a copy of the surveyor used on the other planet, rolled into the yawning doorway. It trailed a wire tail that carried its report back.

  “There’s plenty of electronic interference in there,” Jacques reported. “I don’t know the source of it yet. Oh, that was not nice.”

  “What wasn’t nice?” Kris demanded.

  “I guess they didn’t forgive us for getting the combination wrong on the first try. Something opened up and our scout dropped into a pit with a whole lot of pointy things designed to maim and wound. The camera’s still working, but that rover won’t be roving anymore.”

  “I told you to study that combination more carefully,” Amanda snapped.

  “And you were right, darling. Now, the Marines are getting a twin-rotor flyer ready to check the place out.”

  The flyer entered the yawning dark maw, trailing a wire to carry its reports back. On the screen, a second window opened up, showing the feed from the flyer’s camera. Progressing down a slight incline, it showed walls covered with carvings, none of which made any sense to Kris. At her elbow, Professor Labao issued orders to his boffins to start the analysis of those markings, along with the entrance glyphs.

  The flyer skipped over the hole in the floor where the rover’s lights still showed its place in the pit. The flyer got about six meters past that and suddenly went dead.

  “They shot it down!” Jacques said.

  On the screen, Kris watched, as a new view opened. It showed the inside of the passageway. Then, in slow motion, darts shot out from the walls. Some crossed in front of the flyer, but, no doubt, others hit it. The view went dark.

  “Okay, they really don’t want us in there,” Jacques said.

  “Captain Hayakawa, do you have any more flyers?” Jack asked.

  “We have plenty of small ones, and we can make nano scouts from Smart Metal, but I’m reluctant to lose more on a problem we already know. Wait one, we are looking at other solutions.”

  A long minute later, the Imperial Marine was back on the line. “We have a suggestion from one of our medics. She has surgical gloves that, have on occasions, been blown up like balloons. She suggests we try them. We’re working on that idea.”

  “But air-filled balloons don’t fly very far,” Kris pointed out.

  “Yes, we know that. It seems we will have to advance down the entrance a ways. We are also working on that.”

  A few minutes later, a Marine appeared with a Smart MetalTM ladder and carried it cautiously into the entrance to the pyramid. He returned a few moments later to report that the ladder had crossed the pit and turned into a ramp. A moment later, a Marine medic in a fully armored space suit headed into the pyramid with an armful of blown-up rubber gloves.

  “This would be funny if it wasn’t so mortal,” Amanda said from her place at Kris’s elbow.

  “It will provide a comic interlude, no doubt, when they make the vid of this expedition,” Kris said.

  What Jack growled under his breath, his blushing bride was careful not to hear.

  “She’s a few feet from the crash of the flyer,” Jacques said from the position he’d taken up at the mouth of the entrance. “She’s turning on lights.”

  Again, the screen above the drop bay lit up, now with the feed from the medic’s helmet camera. It showed a long hallway pocked with a lot of tiny openings. She stopped a good meter from the first one, and the wreck.

  “Let’s see what happens,” she said in Japanese, which Nelly translated for Kris.

  She tossed the first inflated glove down the passageway.

  Darts shot out and shredded the glove. However, a lot more darts were shot than were necessary. Most bounced off the stone walls of the passageway and fell harmlessly to the floor.

  “Hold it,” Kris said. “Can you pan your camera around the floor?

  The Musashi medic did. There weren’t a lot of darts on the deck.

  “Anyone want to bet that we’re the first to trigger those darts?” Kris asked.

  She got no response.

  After a minute, the medic said, “One balloon down, eight to go.” She tossed another balloon into the danger zone. That triggered more darts and shredded another glove.

  A third and fourth balloon glove suffered the same fate.

  “Is it my imagination,” Amanda said, “or were there less darts that time?”

  “You maybe be right,” Kris said.

&nb
sp; Two more inflated gloves went downrange, and each of them got farther before meeting its inevitable fate.

  “This is my next-to-last glove. If they’re all popped, we’ll have to wait for more from orbit or find something else to toss.” The medic tossed the ersatz balloon in the air, then batted it up with her hand, just like every child learned by their sixth birthday party.

  This one slowly floated down the ramp. Darts flew. Several missed but tossed the glove about on the wind of their passing. Then one hit, and the balloon popped.

  “And my last one.” That balloon was batted high. It floated down the passageway, carried on air currents whose source Kris could not see. One lone dart flew on camera across the passageway. It didn’t even get close enough to the glove to knock it around in its flight.

  The glove finally settled to the floor. It rolled down the incline and out of the lights.

  “I think we have exhausted their supply of darts,” the medic reported. “Captain Hayakawa, I request the honor of advancing across the dart-covered way.”

  “You have earned that honor. Is your battle armor tight?”

  “Yes, sir. My sergeant and my lieutenant checked it before we dropped.”

  “Advance with care, Marine.”

  Cautiously, the medic took a step into the kill zone. Nothing happened. Slowly, she sidestepped around the wreckage of the flyer. Still, nothing happened. She was on her third step past the wreck when a single dart shot out from the wall and buried itself in the shoulder of her armor.

  From the view from Jacques’s helmet camera, she pulled the dart out and could be heard to laugh.

  “Captain Hayakawa, may I report that the darts penetrate solid Musashi body armor less than a millimeter. I do not think we ever had anything to worry about.”

  “Your report is noted. Do not relax your alertness. Stay cautious.”

  “Aye, aye, skipper.”

  The Marine reached the end of the beaten zone. “Captain, I request that you send in a new flyer. I can see what appears to be a large room no more than five meters from where I stand, but those five meters of wall have not been tested.”

  “We will send in a flyer,” the Musashi Marine company commander said.

  A small winged flyer made its way slowly down the passageway and flew over the medic. It got maybe three meters farther.

  A wall of flame shot out to engulf it.

  “Get out of there, Medic,” her skipper ordered.

  “Sir, please. I have rolls of bandages. The fire came from only three meters farther in. I can toss a roll that far.”

  “You may try,” did not sound all that happy.

  She tossed a small roll of bandages into the flame zone.

  It was incinerated. Only a tiny bit of fluff survived, and it burned out before it hit the deck.

  Without hesitation, the Medic tossed a second roll.

  It was also burned but not so quickly that there wasn’t a flaming ball of fire when it hit the deck and rolled a bit before burning out.

  “Here goes a third. I hope no one needs bandaging,” and another roll went out in a long, underhanded throw.

  It arched past where the others had been flamed and hit the deck just short of where the passageway opened up, to roll out of sight into the dark.

  “I think we have exhausted the supply of incendiaries, sir. May I continue to advance?”

  “Do so with extreme caution.”

  The medic paused to remove her shoulder bag marked with a red cross. Then, swinging the bag in front of her, she advanced step by step into the beaten fire zone. Kris found herself holding her breath, but each swing of the bag brought no response from the flamethrowers, and each step was a successful one.

  In what seemed like forever but couldn’t have taken more than a minute, the young woman stood at the end of the corridor. “Skipper, you’re really going to want to see what I’m seeing.”

  What Kris saw on the screen was too diffuse to make out.

  “Jack, let’s get down there.”

  “Yeah, I guess it’s time to go.”

  15

  Kris wanted to see for herself what the pyramid held. As her admiral’s barge dropped from orbit, she ignored the visuals, but she couldn’t help but hear a lot of “Oh my God!” and “This is horrible!” and “I wouldn’t believe this if I weren’t seeing it with my own eyes.”

  Kris had never been on a slower shuttle drop.

  Finally, she was walking across the glass plain headed for the entrance to the pyramid.

  Professor Labao was right. Seen up close, the glass was full of dents, cracks, and striations. In those imperfections, bits of dust had collected and tiny plants struggled for life. Here and there, a small bug waddled about its business. Lichen, moss, and fungus spread out from those oases of life, doing what they could to destroy the ever-present glass.

  Above it all loomed the pyramid. The reports were flowing back to Kris. The pyramid was a regular pyramid. Each side was equal in length, forming a square base, although one edge showed three millimeters of extra wear from the rest. No doubt, the prevailing winds came from that direction.

  It was not quite four thousand meters on an edge and loomed some three thousand meters up.

  It was very impressive.

  So why build it here, where no one ever came close enough to be impressed by it?

  It was also very visible from space. Was it meant to impress from that distance?

  More questions. No answers. Maybe the answers were hidden within.

  The passageway into the pyramid that Kris had watched being opened now showed cables along one side. Scientists were still carefully recording the markings, glyphs, or writings along the walls. They made way for Kris to pass.

  Everyone was still fully suited up; no one was interested in risking their life to find out what this place smelled like.

  The pit was now covered by a sturdy ramp. Kris hardly noticed it as she crossed over. Her attention was fully focused on the end of the passage.

  She reached it.

  It was impossible to take it all in with one glance.

  Directly in front of her were a pile of bleached skulls or skull-like things. Behind them, suspended in some clear material, were six figures.

  Kris knew at once that this was a family, and a royal one at that.

  The tallest of the figures wore robes and a golden chain of office sparkling with different-colored jewels cut in every way imaginable. On his head was a diamond-encrusted crown marked with golden glyphs. In one hand, he held some sort of golden rod with an orb at its head. His other hand rested on the hilt of an archaic, two-edged sword.

  The horror on his face showed that he’d been alive when he was encased in whatever it was that held him.

  The body was long-limbed and seemed to project an insectoid feel. The face was not easy to read, but there was horror there, and maybe exhaustion.

  Beside that transparent casket was a second one, only slightly smaller. The scientists would make their own determination, but to Kris, here stood the wife. Her garments were only slightly less ornate than those of her husband. Her hands were folded empty on her chest. There was no evidence of breasts, so likely she did not nurse her young.

  Kris could not find words to describe the look on her face. Anger burned here, as well as disdain. There was terror that didn’t seem softened by any hint of resignation. Through it all ran a blend of other emotions Kris could only wonder at.

  Then Kris looked more carefully at the other four blocks and found the source of that mother’s unnamed feelings. These held smaller versions of the parents. One stood beside the father. The tallest of the offspring, he was still a head shorter than the mother. He looked much like the father and was dressed so. One hand rested on a shorter sword. The other supported a shieldlike object that had clearly not protected him.

  Beside the mother were two other figures, each encased in a smaller block as befitted their shorter stature. But it was the smallest and last clear b
ox that drew Kris. It held two tiny figures. Their faces had none of the emotions that the others held. In their place were looks of innocence, surprise, and rising pain.

  These two were small children. If they were human, Kris would have guessed an age of two, maybe three years. They looked to be just getting sure on their feet.

  Kris felt a shudder overcome her. With no proof, she knew that these two had been the first to be encased in their transparent coffins. That the next younger had then died, followed in order of ascending age until the oldest child. Only then had the royal parents been granted their deaths.

  There was no proof, but Kris would not bet against it, either.

  Kris turned away from the tableau frozen forever in time. Her eyes filled with tears that she could not release in a battle-armored helmet. She felt all the emotions of a woman, maybe future mother, definitely human being, at this totally inhuman act.

  Jack held her, as much as battle armor allowed.

  Jacques came up to join them. “Maybe I should have warned you.”

  “No,” Kris said, shaking herself. “It’s better to feel this.”

  Better to feel it, yes. But it would be impossible for Kris to forget for the rest of her life.

  Still, she’d come to see what the pyramid held. That was her duty, as a Longknife and the king’s viceroy. With lips drawn tight, she stepped away from Jack’s unfelt embrace and looked around.

  “What’s in that pile?” she asked, locking the woman away inside the battle commander.

  Jacques turned to look at the pile of what Kris would have taken for skulls.

  “As best we can tell, it’s fifty heads. They seem to be identical to those of the bodies you see encased here. They have an exoskeleton, but from what we think we’re seeing in the coffins, there was enough skin and muscle on the outside of the exoskeleton to give some facial expressions.”

  “Yes,” Kris said. “Yes, I could read what looked like emotions on their faces.”

  “Yes. That kind of haunts you, doesn’t it? There’s more to see, Your Highness.”

  “Show me.”

  Jacques lead Kris over to one of the internal walls of the pyramid. “This hall extends to the entire inside of the pyramid. The ceiling above us is arched. They did a tremendous job of supporting all the weight that’s above us with just these walls around us. We’re studying it. Maybe all that’s above us isn’t the same granite. The engineers are having a field day.”