The Castle in Cassiopeia Read online

  Pretorius shook his head. “Won’t work.”

  “Why the hell not?” asked Apollo.

  “Because Michkag can’t have a tantrum without yelling. Or even speaking at normal volume,” said Pretorius. “Now, only you can speak Kabori, the odds are that you’ve got some discernable accent that of course Michkag hasn’t got, and even if not, Proto’s lip movements have to match your words, and he doesn’t know the language.”

  “I know a few words of Kabori,” said Pandora. “After all, I’ve been reading their signals.”

  “A few words isn’t enough, and your voice coming out of Michkag isn’t going to convince anyone,” said Pretorius.

  “But except for all that it’s a great idea,” said Snake sardonically.

  “Had to consider it for a minute,” replied Pretorius. “We’ll consider forty or fifty more, and hopefully one of them will be workable.” He paused. “Pandora, show us some close-ups of the roof.”

  “We land there, we’ll probably fall right through,” said Snake.

  “I think it’s stronger than it looks,” said Pretorius, “and I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a ship hidden somewhere inside one of those walls or even the floor.”

  “Why would you think so?” asked Irish.

  “He wouldn’t be the first dictator who had to leave in a hurry, and he’s bright enough to have an escape route already planned and set up.”

  “Okay,” announced Pandora. “Here’s the roof. I don’t think the walls are thick enough to hold even a two-man ship. The floor? I don’t know. It seems to have been built in sections, but I can’t spot any opening or any moving parts.”

  “Keep looking,” said Pretorius.

  “But I just told you—”

  “I know what you told me. Keep looking anyway.”

  “Damn it, Nate, if you think I’m lying . . .”

  “Have I said you were lying?” replied Pretorius.

  “Then why am I still looking when I told you twice that I can’t see a place to dock or hide a ship?”

  “Because we’re not coming back to the Democracy without at least taking a shot at accomplishing our mission,” said Pretorius. “If you can’t find a place to hide a ship, fine. Now look for a place, probably camouflaged, where if we land on the roof the six of us can find an entrance to the castle.”

  “And the ship?” asked Pandora.

  “It’ll be our gift to them.”

  She frowned. “But—”

  “It’s a Kabori ship,” said Pretorius. “It’s probably never been out of the Garsype system. There’s nothing in it to identify us, or even our race. Let ’em have the damned thing. We’ll steal another. Or, once we’ve got Michkag, he’ll command them to give us another.”

  She stared at it him a long moment.

  “Well?” he said.

  “I hate to admit it,” she said, “but you’re probably right.”

  “So spend the next few minutes trying to find a door or the equivalent,” said Pretorius.

  “Let’s assume you’re right and we can actually gain entrance from the roof,” said Apollo. “Only one of us can be seen,” he continued, jerking a thumb at Proto, “and only one of us can be understood.” He tapped himself on the chest. “So what do the other four do?”

  “Hide as best we can, and kill anything that’s moving,” said Snake.

  Pretorius got to his feet. “I’m going to grab some coffee,” he said, walking toward the galley.

  “Me too,” said Irish.

  “What the hell,” said Apollo, following them. “It beats looking at blank walls.”

  Snake stayed where she was, as did Proto, who had no interest in coffee and no way to hold or drink it even if he wanted some.

  “What’s Michkag like?” asked Apollo, as they sat at the table in the galley, sipping their coffee.

  “Real son of a bitch,” said Pretorius. “Their equivalent of . . .” He tried to come up with the right name.

  “Hitler?” suggested Apollo. “Conrad Bland?”

  Pretorius shook his head. “No, they were crazy as loons. Michkag’s as evil a bastard as tyrants get to be, but he’s not crazy, and he doesn’t kill just for the fun of it.”

  “And we’re not after Michkag anyway,” added Irish. “We’re after his clone, who spent his first few years in the Democracy, in the care of the military, learning a bunch of things I’m sure they wish they’d never taught him, and doubtless observing some he was never supposed to see.”

  “And you didn’t kill the original,” said Apollo, shaking his head. “That was dumb.”

  “They thought they could get information out of him and feed it to the clone, who was theoretically on our side,” replied Pretorius. “They were wrong on both counts. The original never told them a thing, and the clone likes being the top gun in the Coalition.”

  “Who’s smarter, or more dangerous?”

  “Take your pick,” replied Pretorius.

  “Too bad. If you knew—I mean, really knew—that the clone was more dangerous, if our mission fails—and it’s dozens-to-one that it will—they could probably have the original collude with them to eliminate the clone.”

  “Not a chance,” said Pretorius.

  “I agree,” said Irish. “They miscalculated once and gave us an even more deadly Michkag. What if they miscalculated again and we wound up with two of them?”

  “Even if that didn’t happen, do you want to be the politician who has to tell the Democracy that the Michkag clone is safely locked away and buried and you’ll never have to worry about him again—and, oh yes, we’ve just been attacked by the original and a few billion of his deadlier forces?”

  “Okay,” said Apollo. “I was just blue-skying.”

  “And red-soiling,” answered Irish with a smile.

  “Hey!” yelled Pandora from the bridge. “I got something!”

  The three of them hurried back to the bridge, where Pandora had a large holograph covering half the bridge.

  “This is the east end of it. Not due east, but just a couple of degrees south of that. And check about two and a half meters above the floor. Do you see it?”

  “It’s rectangular,” said Apollo. “I don’t see any handle or hinges, though, and it really blends in well with the wall.”

  “It’s not a door,” said Pretorius. “But it’ll function as one.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Snake.

  “It’s a panel, made of the same material, and the reason there’s no handle or hinges is because it slides inward to let people pass through into the castle—and I think it’s big enough to let a ship pass through. Not a battleship with hundreds of warriors on it, but surely this little one.”

  “Will it sense the ship as we approach it and open for us?” asked Irish.

  “We’re probably not going to know until we get there,” said Pretorius. “Only way to be sure before we put it to the test is for some other ship to arrive, one that also doesn’t want to go through normal channels.” He turned to Pandora. “How soon before we’re there?”

  “About ten minutes,” she answered.

  Pretorius turned to Apollo. “You’re the betting man. What are the odds another ship lands there before we do?”

  “No more than twenty-thousand-to-one,” was the answer. “Against.”

  16

  “So how are we doing?” asked Pretorius, as the castle began to fill the screen.

  “So far the cloak and the codes are working,” answered Pandora. “Nobody’s asked any questions or issued any orders.”

  “That’ll change,” Pretorius assured her.

  “Why?” she asked. “Like I said, we’ve got all the codes and clearances we need.”

  “Not to land on the roof, we don’t.”

  “Damn!” said Pandora. “It’s been going so smoothly I forgot about that.”

  “You know,” said Apollo, “I’ve been thinking . . .”

  “Oh, shit!” said Snake. “Not again!”

&
nbsp; He smiled. “I love you too, Reptile.”

  “Snake,” she corrected him.

  He shrugged. “Whatever.” He turned back to Pretorius. “Like I say, I’ve been thinking, and I may have a way to buy us a little extra time while we’re on the roof and trying to get through what we all hope is an entry panel on the wall up there.”

  “Let’s hear it,” said Pretorius.

  “I noticed a trio of enclosed pods in the hold here. What if Pandora sets the controls so that the ship crashes a mile away from the castle while we float down, two apiece in the pods, to the roof?”

  “You think they won’t see us?” demanded Snake.

  “Of course they will,” answered Apollo. “But remember—this is a Kabori ship. I’m guessing their first duty will be to rescue any survivors, and also to make sure we’re not carrying any nukes or other explosives, just in case the wreck is on the verge of blowing up.”

  “How much time would you think we’d have?” asked Pretorius.

  “If it crashes a mile from the wall,” answered Apollo, “it’s got to take them a minute or two to understand what happened, check to see that it really is a Kabori ship, leave through an exit, and get to the ship. Got to think they can’t get to it and start examining it in less than five minutes, maybe more if some ships of this type are carrying bombs.”

  “Well, we know where the damned entrance thing is,” said Pretorius. “If we can’t open a goddamned door in five minutes, we deserve to wind up in their brig.”

  “That presupposes that there’s no lock on the door,” said Irish.

  “Even if there is, if we’re alone on the roof, or even just that section of the roof, we’ll blow it away.”

  “When we’re about to release the pods, shall I radio an SOS?” asked Pandora.

  “Good idea,” said Pretorius. “Might as well make sure they’re looking where we want them to look.”

  “What do we do once we’re inside?” asked Snake. “Besides kill the bad guys, I mean.”

  “Let’s hope no one has the opportunity to kill anyone before we locate Michkag,” answered Pretorius. “Once we’re in we’ll probably be confronted with many routes we can take. We’ll choose whatever seems to be the least likely. The trick is to get out of the area fast, because once they see that the ship is empty, and they remember that we came down on pods, they’re going to know how we entered the castle, and they’ll start their search from there.”

  “And if we bump into one or more of them?” asked Pandora.

  “That’s easy enough,” said Apollo. “We hide our weapons, Proto morphs into a Kabori, he covers us with a weapon”—he turned to Proto—“and make sure it’s the right one, something the Kaboris carry as part of their everyday arsenal.”

  “He’s right,” added Pretorius. “If we have to take some Kaboris out we will, but anything like that will alert Michkag, and even if he doesn’t know who we are and why we’re here, it’s a given that he’ll double or triple his personal guard if he knows he’s got a bunch of armed enemies inside the castle, even if he doesn’t know quite what we’re all there for.”

  Pandora frowned. “I don’t want to get too far away from Apollo. I assume I’m our escape pilot, but I can get us away a lot faster if he’s translating the codes and commands for me.”

  “I can fly it too,” said Apollo.

  “Yeah,” she said, “but you’ll be of more use translating an occasional term I don’t know and shooting the bad guys.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t crash this one,” said Snake.

  “Might as well,” said Pretorius. “If it lands, we don’t know where the hell they’re going to stash it. Besides, there’s nothing unique or special about it. It’s not like it’s a Democracy ship with Democracy controls and codes and food. We took it from the Kaboris; now we’re giving it back.”

  “In pieces,” added Apollo with a smile.

  “They’re signaling us now,” announced Pandora. “They want to know why we’re approaching the planet. We’ll hit the atmosphere in just another minute or two. I suppose I’ll tell them we’re experiencing engine trouble and just want to land anywhere on the planet’s surface; no sense letting them think we have any interest in the castle.”

  “No!” said Pretorius sharply.

  She pulled her hand away from the controls. “What is it?”

  “Don’t tell them we’ve got engine trouble or anything remotely similar,” he said. “This is a Kabori ship. They’ll almost certainly send some ships out to help us and guide us down to where they’ll have mechanics and ambulances waiting.”

  “So what do I say?” asked Pandora.

  “You’re following orders, you’ve no intention of going anywhere near the castle, and you have to follow your orders, which include radio silence.”

  Apollo walked over to where Pandora sat, bent over the controls, and sent the message.

  “Thanks,” she said. “It would have taken me two or three minutes to translate and send it, and by then they might already have been flying up to help us.”

  “Or shoot us down,” added Snake.

  “One or the other,” agreed Apollo.

  “How long now?” asked Pretorius.

  “Maybe six minutes,” answered Pandora. “Can’t go anywhere near as fast now that we’ve entered the atmosphere.”

  “Okay,” said Pretorius. “Apollo, I want you and Irish to go down into the hold and see if any of those two-man pods are functional. Might as well see if they work before we climb into them.”

  “And if we can fit,” added Irish.

  They went below to find the pods, and Pretorius walked over and looked at the viewscreen. “So where the hell is it?” he asked.

  “We’re approaching from an angle,” answered Pandora. “No sense getting into their sights for any longer than necessary. As it is, they’ll be able to see us in another couple of minutes.”

  “Good thinking.”

  Apollo and Irish went below and moved three pods next to an emergency exit. Apollo spent a few seconds checking and adjusting the controls, then nodded his head. “They’re all functioning properly. I’ve programmed them to be a slave to the controls in my pod; that way whoever’s in them doesn’t have to learn Kabori in something less than two minutes.”

  He and Irish went back down to the hold and passed two more pods up.

  A few seconds later Pandora announced, “Here it comes, sir!”

  Pretorius looked at the screen and saw the castle suddenly come into view.

  “Let’s not waste any time,” he said, turning to Irish, Apollo, Snake, and Proto. “Exit the ship as fast as you can.” He turned to Pandora. “Where do you plan to crash it?”

  “About a mile north of the castle,” she said. “The ground’s just a bit more uneven there, so it might take their land vehicles an extra seventy or eighty seconds to reach it.”

  “Good!” said Pretorius. “Get into a pod with Snake, and let me know how much time I’ve got before the last pod has to go.”

  Pandora took one last look at the screen before walking across the ship and joining him. “Count to twenty and then jump,” she said.

  Irish and Apollo were the first to go, followed by Pandora and Snake.

  “Can you latch onto some part of the damned thing?” Pretorius asked Proto, as he climbed into the pod with Proto tucked under an arm, then closed the cover over them, “or do I have to hold onto you?”

  “Let me hang onto your leg and I’ll be all right,” answered Proto.

  “Okay, here we go!” shouted Pretorius. He kept his hold on Proto until the pod’s engine began purring softly and it leveled out with a slightly downward angle. He made sure Proto could wrap himself around his leg, and then concentrated on guiding them to the spot on the castle’s roof that they had pinpointed on the video transmission.

  The ship crashed with a deafening explosion, and half a dozen vehicles—most of them ambulances, but one definitely military—raced out to access the situation
and rescue any survivors.

  Apollo and Irish were close to half a mile ahead of them; they adjusted their course a couple of times as they got closer to their destination and then landed very gently on the roof, about twenty meters from where the moveable panel was just barely visible. Snake and Pandora touched down next, followed by Pretorius and Proto.

  “Well?” said Pandora. “What do you think? Can we open it? We’ve probably only got three or four minutes tops.”

  Pretorius approached the wall. “No marks to indicate anyone ever tried to blow it away,” he said. “Nothing like a keyhole.”

  “We haven’t used keys in five millennia,” said Snake.

  “Yeah, but we didn’t build this door,” said Pretorius.

  Then, suddenly, as he walked closer to study it more thoroughly, the panel withdrew into the darkened interior of the castle.

  “Well, I’ll be damned!” said Apollo. “It sensed your presence. Talk about dumb!”

  “It wasn’t built to defend the castle against intruders,” answered Pretorius. “Hell, for all we know, this place is the equivalent of Vatican City a few millennia ago.”

  “Well, let’s get inside it before either the panel slides shut or they get curious about the people who aren’t on the damned ship,” suggested Apollo.

  “Proto,” said Pretorius, “become a Kabori. The more weapons and medals, the better. Anyone approaches us, we’re your prisoners.”

  “Right,” answered Proto, changing instantly.

  “Okay,” said Pretorius. “Everybody inside. Hide your weapons. Whisper now, and as soon as it gets minimally lighter, use hand signals. Remember: we’re now under the same roof as Michkag and God knows how many of his troops.”

  “Lucky us,” muttered Snake, as they began feeling their way down a winding, dimly lit corridor.

  17

  The corridor got darker. The air was stale but breathable, and Apollo, burner in hand, led the way. After they’d proceeded perhaps thirty meters, he stopped and fired his burner straight ahead.

  “There’s nothing there,” whispered Irish, looking ahead.

  “I know,” answered Apollo.

  “Then why—?”

  “I want to see where we’re going,” he whispered back. “Clearly this door, probably the whole roof, isn’t used very often.”