Chapter 3
Conan slept lightly. Years of practice enabled him to snap awake at the slightest disturbance. A stirring from behind the desk opened his eyes. He rose out of bed and grabbed his sword in one motion. He looked at Amala's bed across from him; she wasn't there. He flung his sheets off and got on his feet, heart racing. He scanned the room. His tension abated as he saw her work on something from behind the desktop.
"You startled me, girl," Conan grumbled. "Should've woken me first before fooling 'round this place."
"Come see what I'm working on."
Conan grunted and made his way to the desk. Amala had her astrolabe and a piece of parchment paper beside her. Several dots were drawn on it by a quill. A row of small square boxes lined across the desktop. They projected images of strange constellations Conan didn't recognize. Staring at the images, he wondered what magic could conjure them from nowhere. He dared to run his fingers down one of the glass screens; it was cool to the touch. "Well, they don't burn like stars," he thought.
"I flipped the switches on the bottom of these boxes," Amala explained. "And they made stars appear. I matched them to the star charts I made with my astrolabe. Look."
A line separated the parchment in two halves. One half had the constellations known to Conan from his nights sleeping under the stars. The other showed clusters of stars in unusal arrangements. Conan turned to Amala expectantly.
"Don't you see? These were their constellations!" Amala said, pointing to the unknown stars. The owners of this fortress came from the heavens. This has to be a...star...ship?"
"A ship with no sails or oars?"
Amala waved an arm around the room. "Look at all they've achieved. If anyone could build such a ship it would be them."
"Wherever this place is from doesn't matter. We've got to keep moving. I want us in Belverus by dusk."
Amala pulled a leather pouch from her satchel. "I filled this with the extra water bottles in the stores. Put in the wrapped food bars too."
"The smartest things you've done yet," Conan said, with the hint of a smirk.
Amala smiled narrowly at him and winced. "You'll need my smarts if we're going to get out of this," she retorted.
"And you'll need my strength as well."
The pair walked past the double doors and into the hall, where the fencing robot remained a wreck on the floor. Eventually they came to a left turn. Conan peered around the corner, ensuring it was safe. He saw another short passage that opened up to a cavernous chamber, partially obscured by a half opened door. It contained the same advanced machinery and dark screens as they saw in the last room.
Long strands of spiderwebs draped themselves over some of the equipment. Green rope-like vines crept through dilapidated sections of the chamber and dangled across the various objects of the room. Glass cylinders cast soft yellow light on the area.
"We'll go through there," Conan said. "But be careful for traps or creatures."
Amala nodded, holding her staff close to her chest.
Conan slid the door into a slot in the wall and entered the dim enclosure, poised to strike at anything that emerged from the shadows.
FLOOSH!
Conan kicked into high gear, head darting from side to side at the noise. Bright round floodlights turned on, illuminating the area. A group of bloated bats, disturbed by the sudden burst of light, flew from the ceiling and screeched. Conan speared one of the bats as it dove toward him. The upper half of its carcass trailed slickly down the blade, coating the metal in slime, while its lower half plopped to the floor. The dead bat emitted a noxious cloud, causing Conan and Amala to cover their faces.
The remaining bats headed toward Conan, baring their sharp fangs. He screamed at them and wheeled his sword in their direction, hacking off wings and carving into skulls. The open wounds from the injured bats released enough gas from their bloated bodies to form a large noxious cloud. If not dealt with, it threatened to overwhelm the humans. Conan waved as much of the cloud away as he could with a free hand, holding his breath at the same time.
The gas bats that could still fly backed off for the moment. Conan quickly finished off the ones that were downed. He turned to check on Amala, who kept one at bay with her staff, covering her nose and mouth with her wide sleeve. Conan was running out of air, and felt the pungent odor seeping into his mouth and nostrils. He looked around for something to help with the situation.
In the far left corner of the area were two glass cases. Two suits of armor stood behind each. Conan hacked the glass covers to pieces. He reached through one and unclasped a helmet from the rest of the armor. He put it on just before running out of breath. His fingers went up to a canister near the mouth of the helmet and instinctively pressed a button in its center . Fresh oxygen rushed into the helmet, protecting Conan from the gas. He grabbed the other helmet and tossed it to Amala. The noblewoman followed suit, using hers on as he had.
The swarm attacked again. One of the bats bit deep into Conan's shoulder, his scream of pain muffled by the helmet. He squeezed the bat in a crushing grip, threw it to the floor and crushed it underfoot. The pressure pushed all of its gas out in a stream, causing an obscene noise to echo through the chamber.
Conan and Amala stood back to back, slicing or bludgeoning the last bats. The oxygen in each of their helmets ran out, but not before the gas dissipated. They took the helmets off, letting them drop to their feet.
"What happened?" Conan asked.
"We must have triggered the lights to go on when we entered somehow," Amala replied.
Conan saw Amala's eyes go wide at seeing his shoulder wound. The bite marks shot jolts of pain through him, but he fought not to show it. "I've had worse," he said.
"That needs attention," Amala replied sternly.
"If the last room was a kind of aid station, it didn't look equipped for anything like this."
"There's got to be something around. We'll find it."
The duo looked around the spacious environment. A large tube in the center stretched through the ceiling. Several doors ran around the circumference of the walls. Some of them had the same card machine that the lair's entrance did.
"Reckon there must be something valuable beyond the locked doors," Conan said. "Else they wouldn't need those cards to open them..."
"Let's see if we can scavenge some."
Conan wandered around the room, keeping one hand pressed against his shoulder to suppress the bleeding. He made his way around the other side of the tube. A bench bolted itself to a wall, on which sat another human skeleton in tattered clothes. A blue card rested in its bony fingers. Conan shook the card from its grip and tucked it behind his belt. Amala's voice rang out from afar.
"Found a red one in some metal scraps!"
"Good," he called back. "Now look for the doors that we can open with these."
Conan and Amala circled around the chamber and came to a door with a thick red stripe painted down one side. Amala slid her card in the door's slot. It opened with a whir. They carefully made their way inside. The room appeared to be a library. Rows of small cartridges in shelves occupied one side. Several desks, each with a built-in monitor and a tape sized slot, occupied the other.
"Almost looks like the scriptorium back home," Amala said.
"Only those definitely aren't books," Conan noted.
"No, they must be some other object on which to record information."
Amala approached a shelf of tapes, pushing away thick cobwebs and layers of dust to see them clearly. She started pulling them out one by one, studying their covers. Conan made his way over to one of the desks, gritting his teeth from the searing pain of his wound. He sat on the desk's seat and waited. Amala stopped at a tape and looked at it for a second, noting a red cross on its label. She showed it to Conan.
"Look, this has that same insignia on it from the other room. Maybe it has something to help us."
Conan nodded weakly, saving his strength.
Amala hurried over to Conan's desk and stuck the tape into the slot by the monitor. To their surprise, the monitor summoned moving images of what appeared to be a medical instructor. Whether the audio equipment no longer worked, or had to be accessed through some other device, the footage was silent.
A female human in a white lab coat displayed several instruments on a long flat table. She picked up a handheld device, with grooves set into it for gripping. A small button was where the thumb would be. A nozzle was on the opposite side. The camera panned to a man wrapped in several bandages.
The woman said something while placing the device up to the patient's shoulder, which was wounded similarly to Conan's. She pushed the button, causing a thick watery mist to splash onto the injury. It seemed to vanish in seconds. Amala touched the screen with a finger. "That's it! That must be a healing device. If we could find one, we could mend your wound."
Perhaps due to some technical error, the tape began skipping, showing the same sequence over and over. Amala popped the cartridge out and the monitor went dark again.
"I hope you're right. Though something tells me it won't be easy finding one in this damnable place."
"Well, we've got one more card to open a door with."
Conan and Amala went to the door with a blue stripe. They repeated the same thing as before, opening it with the matching card.
The pair came upon a grisly scene. Five human skeletons scattered themselves around the metal floor. Conan could tell at a glance that there had been a struggle. Though if it was between themselves or against some other foe, he wasn't sure.
One skeleton wore a tan jacket; it faced downward and its arms were splayed out. Conan tucked a boot under its ribcage and kicked it over. Strange medals pinned themselves to the skeleton's jacket. The barbarian guessed the long deceased person held some rank or role of authority. In its right hand, the skeleton clutched a strange tube with a hole at one end. The left gripped the same healing device seen from the tape cartridge. He knelt down and pried it from the bones.
Conan closed his eyes, braced himself and used the healing device on his wound. To his pleasant surprise, it shot a soothing stream of mist through him. The pain went away slowly until fading to nothing. What's more, the bleeding stopped and the holes left by the bat's bite sealed themselves up before his eyes. Amala looked as amazed by the gadget's healing powers as Conan.
"Incredible..." she whispered.
Conan moved to the other object of interest; a hollow metal tube. The device widened at the bottom, as if designed to be pressed against something. He picked it up and felt around it, noticing a trigger on the underside. He naturally moved the butt up to his shoulder, streadying the tube. Some intuition guided Conan's finger to the trigger. Amala stood away from Conan and off to the side.
"Be careful with that," she said. "We don't know what it—"
ZAAAP!
Conan jumped in his skin as the tube shot forth a short beam of light. It bore into the corner of the ceiling, causing an explosion of sparks. The barbarian stood awestruck, the weapon still clutched in his hands.
"It sent forth a beam of light at the flip of a switch...how?" Conan said.
Conan tried to grasp the implications of this powerful technology. Its ability to turn the tide of a battle or change the balance of world power staggered the mind.
In their haste to see what was behind the blue door, they had ignored the rest of the room and its purpose. Looking around, they noticed that the walls were lined with unlocked cabinets. Curious, they began opening them. To their surprise, each cabinet was stocked with the "light throwers" as Conan called them, and other exotic weapons. It appeared they had discovered the lair's armory...
