Captain Dynaheir stood on the Darkwind's bridge, watching the second legendary planet in so many terrestrial weeks appear. Her Investigator was at her right hand, and the ship's esper leant against the far wall as if he were trying to disappear into it. Dynaheir didn't blame him. Sarevok the Widowmaker, the Empress' official consort, was not a man to trifle with.
Some people said his story was romantic: the Empress Lionstone found him in a secret place buried deep in the Golgotha palace, lost for a thousand years or so. Lionstone woke Sarevok from his stasis field, probably not with a kiss, and with his fighting talents he rose to become Warrior Prime, loyal only to the Empress. Lately, after he killed most of the Golgotha rebel underground, she married him.
They called him Widowmaker not only for the foes he killed but for the lives of his own men, spent like water. Dynaheir had to keep silence on what she thought of commanders like that, even inside her own head, but Lord Sarevok's appearance so far belied his reputation.
"You will solely command the ship on the way to our destination," he told her at the outset. "Only when we reach planetfall will I assume command. I've no wish to countermand your authority, Captain."
She assented to his order, and along the way he'd kept his word. In person, Lord Sarevok looked almost as impressive as his holos. He was a tall man and as well-muscled as Minsc, bronze-skinned, with fierce yellow eyes like a hawk. He wore his Warrior Prime's jet black armour, his heavy sword on his back and disrupter at his side, and only rarely raised his featureless black helm. He wasn't the only cargo to be picked up on Golgotha; he brought with him a new stardrive, a platoon of his own soldiers, a chain gang of battle espers, and a pack of Wampyr.
Dynaheir hadn't known that any Wampyr still lived, or rather existed. The dead men and women demanded a dark sealed room at the bottom of the ship, and blood substitutes to keep themselves fed.
"You have a good reputation, Captain," the Widowmaker said through his helm, which added an unnerving echo to his voice. "I was impressed by your actions on Unseeli, in eradicating the Ashrai."
Unseeli was a planet full of metal trees, trees that grew exactly the heavy metals the Empire needed for stardrive production. The trees were gengineered, of course, but it hadn't been by either the Empire or the native species. A long-ago remnant of an alien intelligence, like the Grendel. No one knew why they made the forest and then abandoned it.
The Ashrai evolved around the metal trees, cherishing their forest and living as one with it. And when they fought the Empire to protect their land, Dynaheir scorched the planet and killed their entire race.
"A scant few years later, we discovered a new stardrive design that doesn't require those materials," Dynaheir said, alive to the privilege that gave Sarevok and the Darkwind one of the few prototypes. "Had the Empire foreseen this, I should have acted differently."
The Ashrai could have kept their trees, she thought, lost in a momentary reverie, and I would not have lost thy friendship ...
"Planetfall, Captain," the navigation officer announced. The world was covered by ice sheets to a depth of miles, but it was nothing the ship's disrupter cannons and a squad of engineers couldn't pierce in a few hours.
"Lost Haden," Dynaheir murmured. She heard countless stories about the Enemies of Humanity as a child. From lost Haden they came, and in their final defeat the Empire's cyberrats wiped out all knowledge of even the planet's coordinates. Later, during her training, she'd seen the classified footage. The Hadenmen swept in on their golden ships and murdered children and anyone else they considered weak, strapped the living prisoners to a table, and dissected them alive for spare parts.
"I knew it as the Wolfling World," Sarevok corrected her. "Begin the excavation. There's one more thing." He whipped around, and gave instructions to her commnications officer to look for a transfer portal energy signature. There was no question that the Widowmaker knew far more than he told about this place. Likely he or the Empress, or both, had a spy among these rebels.
"I'll need an invasion force at the Hadenmen's entry point," he said. "My lieutenant will take command. Captain, you and I will pass through the transfer portal. Choose ten of your best men, and I'll do the same."
The transfer portal left them in an artificial forest, deep below the planet's surface. The dark green depths weren't too far off Rashemen's wilderness. Dynaheir shook off her memories of home, looking for signs of attack.
She had chosen a mixture of specialists, since Sarevok himself seemed uncertain about what lay ahead. A communications officer, Olamide Oni, who spoke several alien languages and mastered new tongues quickly. Second Lieutenant Alamoudi, an old spacer with greying hair and an intuition that made him survive when others did not. Her Investigator, of course, and Xan for his esper abilities. Tiffany Chan, a young medical officer, fussy and alert. Five marines, all of them under her command at least two years, from young and beardless to old enough to remember Hadenmen.
Dynaheir saw that one of Sarevok's band wore an aristocrat's insignia on his flowing cloak; a yellow and white pomegranate flower, although whether Delryn or De'Arnise or Despana she couldn't tell. Other than that, all the men and women wore the Widowmaker's standard sleek dark costume, which looked a touch too form fitting to be comfortable. He had his pick of Academy graduates and chose the best fighters of the generalation.
"I know those two," Doctor Chan muttered to Alamoudi, pointing out a man and a woman standing next to each other. "They're famous—Slythe and Kristin. They're Arena stars who took on all comers together, a married couple. It's a pity they left before the Masked Gladiator came. I should ask for autographs. I had a poster of Slythe in my bedroom ..."
The woman raised her hackles at that, and bared her filed, pointed teeth. Dynaheir coughed meaningfully.
"Watch for what's of import to our mission," she ordered. They walked in silence after that. Sarevok led them with a purpose in mind, charting a course directly north. They paused at stuffed corpses of wolflike creatures, which showed the inhabitants of this forest did something. Except for insects, the place seemed deserted.
Dynaheir realised she hadn't seen signs of any living creatures larger than insects. Had the wolf creatures eaten everything there was, and then died of hunger?
"You're leading us to our deaths." Xan had grown increasingy jumpy and wild-eyed as they went, and now he'd laid aside all traces of military discipline. "I see it. I've been sensing it all the time we've walked. It's alien to us, it has more than five dimensions, and they're all insane. It knows we're coming, it knows we wouldn't accept the changes. It wants to kill us all. And it will—"
Sarevok stepped swiftly forward to strike him into silence, but Dynaheir stood in front of him. He lowered his hand. "Forgive me," he said, unapologetically. "I should have warned you not to bring an esper. Their sensitivities can't handle a place like this."
"You'll doom us all!" Xan broke in.
"He always insists that our missions will end in disaster," Dynaheir said. "He's not normally this bad. Calm down," she ordered, and Xan knew enough to subside.
He gathered himself and tried again. "In the spirit of professional advice, Captain—and Lord Sarevok—it's my duty to warn you against unnatural alien artefacts out for your life. It's my precognition that you will die if you go further."
He'd managed to unnerve everyone in one fell swoop, except perhaps Sarevok. "Return to the transfer portal, esper," Dynaheir said. She kept her voice steady, and the group's attention rested on her instead. "If you say you're unfit for this, leave."
He bowed his head. Espers were trained not to disobey orders, ever. He turned his back and went.
What are the sensor readings? Dynaheir subvocalised, back to the ship's AI, Cyclops.
Unknown structure in the heart of the planet, Captain, the AI replied. Our measurements of it conflict. You should have a visual impression soon. But the closer you get, the less likely it is you'll receive a communication feed.
What's the estimated time for breaking through on the other side? she asked.
Four more hours.
And if we waited that time, would we be able to fire on this structure? Destroying things as a first resort was normally the Empire's policy, after all.
Cyclops' tone was uncertain, which was rare but possible in an AI, mimicking humanity. I suppose. But none of my data fits the parameters. There are things where disrupter beams are not recommended and things where they are. I'm confused, and I'm an AI. So's the whole communications department. Nobody likes this place. How about ...
The AI's voice in her ear fizzled, and abruptly went out. A few steps later, high shining silver walls appeared before them, cutting into the edge of the forest like a sword. The scope was more vast than Dynaheir had expected; she couldn't see the end of the walls. There were no seams in them, as if they'd been poured onto the planet. She had seen much worse than silver walls. She'd walked past the gleaming coffins on Grendel and faced one of the scarlet unstoppable killers. She fought an alien cocoon from a dying starship that enveloped Unseeli's entire Base and killed every last man, woman, and child. She'd stepped through the ever-burning inferno of the planet Loki, coughing up thick ash even through a hard suit. There was nothing—except for Xan's prediction—that marked this as any more difficult.
Dynaheir tried to reach her ship again, but there was no reply.
She walked alongside the Widowmaker. "I assume this is what the Empress desires," she said. "Is the mission to destroy it?" Something in her craved the idea of leaving this place with all haste and blowing it up from space; a primitive, atavistic fear.
Instead of answering, he faced all the group. "We are few, we are elite, and we have been trusted with this mission." His voice carried, strong as a bass horn calling for battle. "The Empress herself commissioned me, as I have personally selected you. We challenge the hand of death itself, and challenge it unafraid. I have faith in you, for you are the chosen few. I have trust in you, for the weak could not have come this far. You must show strength, the strength of the best of Humanity against aliens and enemies and freaks. You must not turn away from our quest. Today, we change the entire Empire, forever."
'Twas vain and empty rhetoric, though Dynaheir granted that the Empress' consort had some skill in the delivery. What he did not say was how the Empire should be changed, and what the consequences would be.
"Some of you have fought aliens before," she spoke, "and I have no doubt in your training and honour. We swore an oath, and we know full well what we must do. Follow the steps for hostile alien territory, don't take a step forward without clearing the path first, and watch for your comrades. Investigator, take point." The practical orders brought them back from Sarevok's melodramatic aspirations.
Minsc stood before the entrance. There was a gap between the seamless steel walls, like a missing tooth. This artefact was older than the Hadenmen, and probably very much older than Humanity.
"These readings can't be correct, Captain," Olamide Oni said, bent over the equipment. "I'm having trouble measuring at all. What I've got says it's bigger on the inside than the outside. Alien technology?"
"Or clever architecture," Dynaheir said aside. "Life signs?"
"None detected. The machine has limited range, under these conditions."
The silver walls reminded Dynaheir of the coffins on Grendel, but she told herself the planet's conditions were completely different. Minsc seemed lost, as he always did when there was nothing immediate to fight. He was a different man since his head was caved in on Grendel, defending Dynaheir in that bloody place. He suddenly smiled in her direction, warm and even cheerful on this alien world.
"Enough wasted time. Follow me," Sarevok commanded. "For the Empire."
Dynaheir nodded, and walked into the Maze behind him.
—
There was nothing there, nothing but pale silver walls with no reflections in them. If the outlaws had passed this way, there was no sign of them. Dynaheir couldn't afford to show any fear. Her people kept their cool, so far, and walked in formation. Sarevok's group also managed some semblance of discipline. She realised that cooperation was by far the best choice, and deliberately asked a young man with a scruffy beard on his chin to set up the next measurement stop. Private Benvolio Kahler, recruited directly from the Academy to join the Widowmaker, who'd won strategic simulations previously thought to be impossible.
They couldn't see the entrance of the maze any more. Corridors twisted and turned, compasses whirled, and cut off from the ship's AI it wasn't possible to tell which direction was which. Dynaheir felt as if she were walking through the folds of a human brain.
"The dimensional transcendence indications are increasing, Captain. It looks even bigger on the inside now. And still no life signs," Olamide announced, her greasy hand tracing the pucker in her brow.
Sarevok laughed. It echoed among the silver walls, although no other sounds seemed to. "The Madness Maze cares nothing for your instruments. It defies all human understanding. All that's needed are courage and will. Those who can fight, join me on the other side!"
He was gone in moments, slipped into a side passageway. It was impossible to see where he'd gone. He wasn't the only one. Six men raced after him straight away, including Kahler, although they were going in completely different directions.
"Captain? Their life signs ... this device doesn't know where they are. It doesn't know where we are. I think it's broken ..." Olamide, normally calm and analytical, laughed to herself. Dynaheir stepped over to her.
"Put it down. Put everything but your weapons down," she said. "It's plain the instruments don't work here. Stay together, take the left path in the maze." Everyone knew that was how anyone could wend their way through a maze. "This isn't a test where only the strong survive. We're all trained toward different skills. Follow orders, and I shall protect you."
"It wasn't like that in Investigator training," Minsc said. Dynaheir noticed with horror that he was staring glassily at one wall. "Only the strong are allowed to survive that. There used to be lots of children, and now there's only a few."
"Minsc," Dynaheir said, and mercifully he looked at her. "Do your duty. Go forward."
The walls were still indistinguishable from each other, but they had a plan. Dynaheir didn't have to look back, leading from the front. She trusted Alamoudi to keep the rear, as the veteran had done so many times before. Minsc walked on, his body solid as granite, and behind him Ifrit Iftikhar, an unarmed combat specialist who'd once pinned down an N'Jarr for three minutes running. Jones and Chan were the least experienced there; but the key was to give newer crew experience, so that they then instructed others. If that experience consisted of walking through an unnerving alien artifact, let it be so.
Dynaheir had to turn back when the screaming started. Doctor Chan leant against a silver wall, and couldn't seem to pull herself away from it. Alamoudi grabbed Chan's hand, but her skin and flesh writhed away from them both. She was being cut to ribbons by invisible swords. She tried to say something, but it dissolved into more screaming. Her flesh and bone alike fell off in thin strips, and what was left of her fell on the ground. Beardless Chiumbo Jones, the youngest marine there, vomited.
Tiffany Chan had served all her active duty on Dynaheir's ship; had patched many crew members back together and survived away missions on Chrysomallus and Atala and Tiger Mountain. She was unquestionably dead. They left her behind.
Then Dynaheir lost another marine. He slipped down the wrong passage, and though they looked, they couldn't find him anywhere. Chiumbo Jones pressed his fists to his head. He was pale.
"I don't feel ..." he managed, and then his head exploded in a cloud of blood and brains. And it was followed by two other men, exactly the same, three heads gone and three bleeding bodies falling to the ground. Iftikhar's long fingers were still curled into a defensive fist.
"Turn back!" Dynaheir yelled. Olamide stared at her.
"Hell is empty ..." she said. Olamide knelt down and threw up her own tongue, which writhed out of her mouth with a stream of dark blood. She looked up in her terror, and other things came cascading out of her: windpipe, intestines, stomach, horribly wet and twisted together. Minsc stood above her, and brought down his sword. It ended the pain.
Hell is empty, and all the devils are here. They ran. They fled down passageways without thinking about it. Lieutenant Alamoudi paused and panted harshly.
"Leave," he said, eyes bulging as he stared at one of the walls, "it's got me."
Dynaheir had never seen a man turn inside out before. Alamoudi's skin moved to the inside of his body, swallowed by still-beating lungs and heart. Blood vessels trembled on the outside of his body, and Dynaheir saw the backs of his eyeballs, pulsing in the middle of his brain. Then the organs folded over themselves even more, and he collapsed into a squishy pile on the floor. She hoped he was dead.
They ran past two of Sarevok's soldiers, the former gladiators Kristin and Slythe. They'd terrified the Arena in their time, and they fought back to back once more against invisible enemies. But as they stepped close to each other, their bodies tangled. Their skin melted over each other, seemingly without their notice, and they became a strange two-headed creature. It still swung its swords around a liquid column of flesh. Then the sword arms melted into each other, and the puddle roiled across the ground.
The aristocrat from Sarevok's band, further on, was still recognisable from his yellow and white cloak. Blood poured out over it, oozing from his eyes and groin, and then the red trails of blood seemed to harden into snakes. He screamed as they bit him.
Dynaheir dropped down, and tried to cover one of the cuts with her hands. Where she touched the man only bled liquid blood, but everywhere else it writhed like a living creature. It was joined by ropes, viscera, organs that vomited up through all his orifices. Intestinal ropes covered his mouth, and cut off his screams. She drove her sword into his heart to end it.
She stepped over a mask of skin on the ground. Dynaheir vaguely recognised the face as young Kahler, and wondered what happened to the rest of him. Two more men lay on the ground beyond him, black marks covering both necks as if they'd strangled each other while blind.
Everyone was dead. Minsc tottered on his feet. He fell to the ground and didn't open his eyes. Only a small bag at his neck moved, pulsing with something living inside it.
Get Minsc out of the Maze, Dynaheir thought, and all she was crystallised on that goal. He was the last left alive. She seized his collar with one hand, and aimed her disrupter wildly at the Maze.
The silver wall collapsed. There was more beyond it. She aimed more carefully and fired again, dragging her Investigator as she went. She didn't look back to check whether he was still alive or not, but pulled and aimed again and again. She destroyed more and more of the Maze, and didn't give a damn. The shining silver walls collapsed around her, and blindly she thrust forward and forward. With her disrupter empty, she fell to her hands and knees on the ground.
—
Owan drew herself up, blinking at the glare of the ice above. If this was the Madness Maze, it seemed hardly worth the trouble. It was like she'd stepped through a simple door. She couldn't really remember what had happened, so she decided to ignore it.
Something crackled in her implant, and then she winced as Turandot shaped her subvocalising into a shrapnel grenade. "Owan! Where the hell have you been?"
"You're such a nanny goat," Owan subvocalised back. "What was it, five minutes ago? Ten?" She didn't usually lose track of time. But she banished the unease to the back of her mind.
"Six hours," Turandot snapped. "Don't ask me what happened, I don't know either. I'm hiding on the dark side of the planet, commanding the Last Standing. They brought disrupter cannon and a whole engineering squad. They made short work of the ice canopy and found the Hadenmen's entry."
Owan looked around, still dazed. They were all there, as far as she could tell, Imoen on her right and Aerie on her left, Keldorn and Melissan behind. And the giant Wolfling had come back behind them.
"I did not think it possible. Melissan was right," Cernd said. "Of everyone to walk the Maze, tens of thousands who tried—twenty-two survived. Including you."
"Told you the odds were crap. I should've shanked you," Montaron muttered. His fingers itched over his weapons, and he looked down at his own hands as if he were surprised at the sight. "Feels like someone went for the inside of my head with steel wool. But it's sort of fading away. Fucking alien esp."
"I thought I saw visions ... faces from my past, and things that never were. But they're leaving me. I wish they weren't," Keldorn said.
"You sound like the madman over there. Pity he got through." Montaron gave Xzar a familiar, measured glare. "It's called the Madness Maze, so it figures."
"It's mad, I'm mad, it's lucky that our madnesses were convergent," Xzar babbled. "Mostly mad people are mad alone, like all the people in asylums who think they're the real Empress Lionstone. But I think it has more to do with the company you keep. Someone was singing."
"I heard that too," Aerie said, "it was l-like a dream. I think it was a nice one ... I don't remember."
"Feelin' good, kiddo? I'm feeling real good." Imoen beamed, closed her right hand, and then opened it again with a set of tiny throwing daggers nested between her fingers. A very nimble conjuring trick. Her sling was gone.
Adam said nothing. He was breathing heavily below his golden implants, and his eyes still stared at something deep inside himself.
"I waited for this a long time," Melissan said. She looked calmer than any of them, triumphant, already looking outward to the horizon. Then Owan saw exactly what she saw. The Empire came into focus, pinnaces and ground troops who'd already pierced the ice shield, a black mass at the edge of the horizon like a gathering of locusts about to strike.
Adam cursed. "My brethren's tomb. There is no longer any time. I must wake them, before it's too late. Keep your promise." He was off like a shot, running over the horizon, and then Ourawang raced to keep by his side. She wasn't alone.
—
