Hanson blasted out an electronic cry for help. “Colonel Ramsey!”
Gavin Norris
Chamber of the Eye
Pyramid of the Eye
New Sumer, Ishtar
1948 hours ALT
“Fuck! She’s using the net to call for help!” King yelled. He raised his carbine. “Stop it, bitch!”
Norris spun, raising the 8mm and pulling the trigger. The weapon’s sharp report rang from the polished black stone of the chamber, and Hanson was slammed a step backward into the wall.
“Damn it,” King shouted. “You didn’t need to shoot her!”
“Fuck her,” Norris said. “You get back out and stand guard. Make sure she didn’t put out an alert.” He turned to the screen. “Madame Dumont? Sorry for the delay. We had a…situation.”
“So I gathered. What the hell is going on? Have you made contact with the Ahannu leadership yet?”
Norris looked at Tu-Kur-La. The Frog was seated, cross-legged, in the back of the chamber, his hands still outstretched, his huge, golden eyes nictated shut. Something was growing rapidly up from the crack in the stone flooring before him, something like the uncoiling head of a fern but a deep and translucent purple and moving with a most un-plantlike agility. Parts of the purplish mass were flowing up the Frog’s arms, pooling on his shoulder, gathering at the back of his neck.
“Not yet,” Norris replied, “but any minute now….”
Cassius
IST Derna, in Ishtar orbit
1948 hours ST
Artificial intelligences were not necessarily superior to organic intelligence, but they were different…and immensely faster. On board the Derna, Cassius had been engaged in monitoring and upgrading the newly restored Ishtar Data Net when he heard Dr. Hanson’s uplinked cry for help. In point of fact, he recognized that something was wrong as her first shrill word came through—“Colonel…”
Stress levels in her mental voice spoke volumes, alerting Cassius to the fact that this was a serious emergency. He required .03 second to isolate that one voice out of the babbling sea of hundreds he was monitoring at the moment and to narrow her position to the general area of the Pyramid of the Eye. There was a slight speed-of-light time delay, but he downlinked with her neuralink hardware, pinpointing her location and seeing the situation through her eyes. A total of 2.4 seconds passed before Cassius sounded the…
Lance Corporal Garroway
Pyramid of the Eye
New Sumer, Ishtar
1949 hours ALT
…alert.
Garroway’s eyes came wide open as the thought exploded in his brain. The company was going on full alert. Was it a Frog attack?
“Okay, you Pyramidiots! Fall in on the double! We’re rolling!”
It was Captain Warhurst, wearing his armor sans helmet and rushing across the top of the pyramid from the firebase HQ. Garroway and the others scrambled to their feet, snatching up weapons, gloves, and helmets.
“What the hell?” Dunne exclaimed.
“You four!” Warhurst snapped. “Grab your weapons and follow me! You three over there! With me!”
Garroway uplinked a query and was met with a terse “Net silence!” Something big was going down, but damned if he could figure out what. Warhurst was gathering in more and more Marines, dragging them along in his wake as he raced toward the western edge of the pyramid roof, then started down the steps.
Garroway snapped his helmet latch to the locked position and brought up the helmet display. Fifteen Marines showed on the little map view in the corner, racing down the pyramid’s western stairs. His 2120 was at full power, his Mark VII systems all green.
“Here’s the straight download,” Warhurst’s voice said in his mind as he ran. “Hostage situation in the Chamber of the Eye. The PanTerran people are trying a fast one. The orders are to take them down. Alive if possible, but take them down! We don’t have time for finesse. Just move in and knock them down. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir,” the Marines chorused back.
They approached the entrance to the Chamber of the Eye from above. A lone Marine in full armor raised a laser carbine. “Halt!” he called, using his external speakers. “Don’t come any closer!”
“Stand down, Marine!” Warhurst ordered, raising his own 2120. “Safe your weapon and stand down!”
“I…can’t do that, Captain.”
“General King?”
“Trust me, Captain. I know Dr. Hanson got a partial message out. She became…unstable. You don’t understand the situation here.”
“The hell I don’t, sir!” Warhurst said. “Stand down!”
“Who’s going to make me, Captain? You?”