Thieves of Light

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Bhodi Li had expected to see very little with his first glimpse of the maze room, because he thought the great volume of the arena would be fully taken up by the structure of the maze. When the moment for that first glimpse arrived, he indeed saw very little, but for a very different reason. The chamber was virtually empty, like a new house where the furniture hadn't been moved in yet. There was almost nothing to see.

With Li-hon standing at his elbow, Bhodi scanned the surprising scene. The "floor" was hard-packed soil the color of sienna, and the walls were cleverly painted in a way that made the illusion of a planetary surface extend to the horizon. The landscape was featureless save for three gently sloping mounds, like great waist-high anthills, located in a triangle near the center of the chamber.

"That's the Arrians' favorite design," Li-hon said, following his gaze. "They use it everywhere the terrain allows. Very low profile. We had to develop special sensors to detect them. As soon as we did, they started scattering phony ones all over the map, with all three entrances booby-trapped."

So that's what the dark patches are, Bhodi thought.

Each mound had a black wound-more like a hole angling down into the earth than a doorway-on the side facing the center of the triangle. The sight reminded Bhodi vaguely of the storm cellar in The Wizard of Oz, minus the doors. The rest of the warren was underground, unseen and unknowable.

Defensively, the whole arrangement was both elegant and intimidating. A warrior standing in the entrance and facing outward had the protection of a foxhole and the sightlines and battlefield command of a machine-gun nest. Even if the defenders were driven down into the tunnels, any entrance could be covered by a crossfire from the other two.

"Nasty," Bhodi said.

"Yes. At the real warrens, only two of the three entrances are booby-trapped."

Bhodi swallowed hard and tried to keep his discomfort off his face. "So when do the nasties show up?"

"They're already inside."

He knew better than to ask how many. "I get the approach for free?"

"The Arrians prefer not to fight on the surface when they can avoid it," Li-hon said. "Why should they? May I see your weapon, please."

"Yeah," Bhodi said, handing him the Allison. "Why should they? So how can you tell which of the entrances is safe?"

Li-hon checked the power reserve and the output rating, then handed the weapon back. "You can't. Good luck, Bhodi Li." Then he walked away and disappeared through a doorway that made it seem as though he were stepping off the edge of the world.

For a long minute Bhodi stood stiffly in place. This is a psyche-out, he thought tersely. He wants me to get jelly-knees and go back into my shell. I can't believe they can't give any better briefing on cracking a warren than 'You can't.'

Bhodi looked up in the direction of the hidden observer's booth and its invisible wide-field cameras. I'll bet he packed the booth, too. He wouldn't tell me, because he wouldn't want to give me any extra motivation. Haj and Pike and the First Guardian — maybe the whole damn platoon, come to see Bhodi's last hurrah. Son of a -

Turning his attention toward the triple mound, Bhodi tried to steel himself for the challenge ahead. Two out of three chance I don't even make it past the entrance. Great odds.

He realized that his mouth was dry and his heart racing. Scared? he taunted himself. Yeah. Scared of putting my head down one of those holes and getting it fried off.

Everything they ask me to do, they already know I can do, he reminded himself.

But this time, Pike's assurance could offer no comfort. They didn't ask me to do this — I asked. I'm the one who said I was ready, not Li-hon. And now I've got to do it, or I can't face them again. But how? How do you beat these kind of odds? For a long moment, he wavered on the verge of following Li-hon out the exit, laying down his Allison, and going home to safe, tame little Montclair.

It was something else that Pike had said that rescued him, a comment he had made after Bhodi had won his fourth straight live-opponent duel. "You know what I like about you?" Pike had said, clapping his hands on both of Bhodi's shoulders. "You fight dirty."

At first, Bhodi had wondered if he should take offense. But Pike hastened to explain that he meant Bhodi wasn't afraid to expose himself to a hit to gain an edge or achieve an objective.

"I like the guys that come back with phaser tracks all over their armor," Pike had said. "The armor's there to protect you. If you never take advantage of that, you're not getting out on the edge where you ought to be. These types that come out of a firefight without so much as a scorch mark on their fighting suit, you can have 'em. Give me the guys who fight dirty."

That's how you beat the nasties, Bhodi thought. You fight dirty. That's the way you used to play when it was just a game. And win or lose, that's the only way to play it now -

That decision cleared the emotional cobwebs from Bhodi's reasoning, and immediately he found himself following a more productive train of thought. What kind of booby trap would they use? Hydraulic walls to crush you? A dead-end with a five-meg phaser cannon firing straight up at you? Razor-sharp spikes that shoot out of the ceiling?

No matter what the trap, Bhodi realized, an invading force could find out which entrance was the real one simply by being willing to sacrifice two warriors. Unless you designed a booby trap that was so well hidden nothing gave it away until it was too late for the would-be invader to relay his discovery back to his platoon mates. A warrior goes down into one of the holes and is simply never heard from again.

Yes-it would have to be something quiet. No explosions, no odd noises. It would have to be something tidy, to avoid having a clutter of dead bodies to warn the next one in. And it would almost certainly have to be something that was automated, tripped by sensors of some sort. They wouldn't want to isolate part of their fighting force in dead-end false tunnels, not when they could be needed elsewhere.

So what, then? A slippery ramp with a vat of acid at the bottom?

Bhodi wished he had some sort of flying camera to send in first. Even if they fried it, a glimpse of what was past the entrance would be worth the loss. If only I didn't have to go in first and find out the hard way -

Then he realized that, in fact, he didn't have to go in first. He had no partners, no equipment to spare and the landscape was barren, but there were other resources. Specifically, there were grapefruit-sized light globes arrayed all across the "sky"-the ceiling of the arena.

Backing off a few steps, Bhodi pulled on his helmet and raised his Allison above his head. With three pinpoint blasts, he burned away the supports that held three of the globes. They dropped loudly to the surface, dimmed rapidly and went out, but did not shatter. The last of the three rolled to a stop just inches from his booted foot.

"What's he doing tearing up the arena?" Haj demanded, coming up out of his chair in the observer's booth. "My arena. Li-hon, I insist you put a stop to this right now."

"I said he would have a chance," Li-hon said. "Sit and watch."

"I won't tolerate it. No one has ever done anything like that before."

"I agree," Li-hon said. "And I'm interested to see what use he makes of them. Sit down, Haj. This is only the beginning."

His plan vague but complete, Bhodi scooped up the faintly warm globes and started toward the warren. He circled around the back of the nearest of the mounds, cradling the lights in the crook of one arm and holding the Allison at the ready with his other hand.

Then he started up, as though on his way to play king of the hill. Three steps up, he was on his knees. By the time he was at the top, he was lying prone.

When he peeked over the top, he could see slightly inside the entrances of the two other mounds, but nothing of the entry to the one he was on. Holstering his Allison and leaving two of the lights perched precariously on the top of the mound, Bhodi squirmed forward on his belly until he was close enough to the entryway to stick his head out and look down into the tunnel.

There he paused for a moment and bled off some of the incredible tension he felt with a hearty exhalation. Then he touched his helmet controls, activating the image amplifier built into its faceplate, and stole a peek inside.

He had not expected to be shot at, and was not. Why should they scare him off at the door, when patience would bring better opportunities? But he did not see much. His head motion plus the sudden transition from the well-lit arena to the dark catacomb made the amplified image ghost like a badly tuned television.

Tensing himself, he took another, longer look. This time he saw an empty earth-walled corridor an armspan wide and barely fifteen feet long, terminating in a T with a cross corridor.

There are two hiding places, he thought as he withdrew. They get to hide around the corners, and I'm backlit against the sky. So easy they ought to be ashamed.

But that assumed that this was the true entrance, and not one of the sucker traps-an assumption he wasn't going to make without testing. He poked his head out past the edge for a third time, and when the image of the corridor stopped ghosting, hurled the light globe down into the darkened tunnel.

It bounced once against the floor, and a moment later four bluish beams of phaser fire flashed from below and intersected in the air above the globe. Bhodi resisted the impulse to duck back out of sight. He watched as the globe bounced twice more, strangely untouched by the continuing phaser blasts, arced back toward the floor a third time-and then vanished. There a momentary hum, a crackling noise, then silence.

Bhodi blinked, then backed quickly away from the edge. It took him a moment to realize that the globe had dropped right through the floor as though nothing were there. That in fact nothing was there. Part of the floor was missing, its absence hidden by some clever trick of lighting and coloration. The automatic phasers had missed their bouncing target because they were meant to miss. They were there only to drive an intruder along at an appropriately reckless pace.

Climbing down from the first mound, Bhodi circled clockwise to the next. As expected, the second entry way appeared identical to the first. He repeated his test, sacrificing a second globe. This time nothing happened. The globe rolled to the bottom of the ramp, bumped the back wall of the cross corridor, and came to a stop unmolested.

A second-man-through booby trap? Bhodi wondered. Smart systems that won't get fooled the same way twice? Or the real entrance, with hidden snipers that are cool enough to wait for the real thing?

Instinct more than reason persuaded Bhodi that he had in fact found the real entrance. But he felt little joy at the accomplishment. They know I'm up here now. And they'll hear me coming, slipping and sliding on that dirt chute, and fry my butt on the way down.

He retreated to the back of the mound to consider his situation. Just a moment, he thought. Just a moment of surprise is all I need — one trick they're not expecting. Just enough to get me to the bottom in one piece.

Then, in a moment of insight, he realized that he had the trick in hand-had practiced it a hundred times in his own house (and been reprimanded countless times by his Mom for doing so). The steep-sloped entry way was like a stairwell, and he had already perfected the fastest way of going down a flight of stairs Bouncing up, he scooted in a sweeping lefthand circle to the area between the mounds. He lobbed the third light globe down the mouth of the second false entryway, then started running toward the real entryway. When he reached the shadowed threshold he leaped toward the darkness, catching the top of the opening with his hands and used that as a leverage point to swing his feet forward.

He was flying feet first down through the chute, out of control. If he had guessed wrong, he was going to end up flat on his back at the bottom, the breath knocked out of him, staring up at the pseudo-Arrian who was going to have the pleasure of dispatching him.

But he had not guessed wrong. His entry into the chute had tripped some sensor, and as Bhodi dropped toward the bottom a figure stepped out from the right and started firing up the ramp. But Bhodi was not where the warrior expected Bhodi to be, and the shots missed low. A moment later Bhodi's boots caught the warrior in the thorax, driving his body backward and snapping its neck forward.

The collision drove the guard all the way to the wall, where it was sandwiched momentarily between rocklike earth and a human projectile. With something to push against, Bhodi turned his fall to the floor into a twisting roll and came up with the Allison in his hand. He burned his opponent's chest pack with his first shot, and only in the light of its exploding circuitry did he see that his opponent was Qeth, disarmed, and quite unconscious.

One Bhodi did not linger. He snatched up the fallen warrior's sidearm with his free hand, tested it with several shots down the dark passage to the left, then started himself down the passage to the right with both weapons at the ready, like a two-gun sharpshooter from a four-horse Western.

He went thirty steps into a corridor so dark that even the image amplifier couldn't capture enough light to provide a sharp view ahead, then slowed as a feeling of terrible apprehension began to haunt him. Something was wrong. It was as though the sound of his own footsteps had changed Suddenly his unarmored right elbow was seared by a phaser blast that came out of nowhere. He twisted toward what he had thought was a wall and dropped to a crouch, ready to return fire if only he could find a target.

As if in answer to his unvoiced plea, lights came on all around him. In an instant, he saw that he had blundered into a small chamber with several exits, and glimpsed motion in one of them. In the next instant, the brilliance of the amplified light turned his vision all to white. It was as though a superpowered camera flash had gone off inches in front of his face. He was blind.

On internal compass alone, he spun away and scooted back the way he had come, skidded into a baseball slide, and flattened himself belly-down on the floor facing back the other way. He fired at random down the corridor with his Allison, hoping to drive back anyone who had followed, all the while fumbling with the switch for the image amplifier and praying his vision came back soon.

Then Bhodi realized that it was the helmet itself that was still blinded, the display circuits destroyed by the sudden peak. He slapped the release on the chin strap, shook the helmet off, and found himself looking up at the gaunt figure of an Ikthalarian edging toward him along the wall, a Bracke in its left hand.

They started firing at the same instant, but Bhodi had two weapons and a better angle. He held the Ikthalarian's sensor pack in his sights until it exploded in a shower of sparks. When that happened, the Ikthalarian lowered his weapon, shook his head in self-disgust, and sat down along the wall.

"All yours," it said, gesturing toward the chamber where Bhodi had been blinded.

"So's that," Bhodi said, rising and pointing to the warrior's weapon. "I'm starting a collection."

The Ikthalarian surrendered the Bracke reluctantly, and Bhodi returned his own sidearm to the holster cuisse so that he had a free hand for it. Then he started cautiously down the corridor. The fierce white lights were still on, illuminating not only the chamber itself but also a fair distance down each of the five connecting corridors that branched off it. All five appeared to be empty.

But there was a sixth exit from the room-a triangular hole in the floor that looked like the hole left in dough by a cookie-cutter. Bhodi crept up to the edge, fired at random down into the hole, then leaned out and peered over the edge for a quick glimpse.

The hole led to another chamber below. The floor dividing them was more than two feet thick, and the floor of the second chamber was another ten feet below that. At first there seemed to be no ladder, but then Bhodi spotted a pattern of toe-cuts in the wall of the lower chamber. He could see little more of what awaited below-just a small section of the floor lit from above and his own shadow inscribed in the splash of light.

Bhodi looked up, scanning the branch corridors again, then systematically began to shoot out the rectangular lights illuminating the upper chamber. When the last one winked out, both the upper chamber and the lower were in darkness.

I knew there had to be a reason they were leaving the lights on, Bhodi thought. I go down that funky ladder with my back to them, spotlighted, and they sit in the dark and fry me.

But Bhodi did not plan to cooperate. He waited an interminable minute for his eyes to adjust, then slipped off the edge and dropped lightly into the lower chamber.

A beam of blue fury buzzed past Bhodi's head, close enough to vaporize a few flying strands of blond hair. He shoulder-rolled to the left and fired back in the direction the bolt had come from. Each blast of phaser fire dimly lit the room-far vaster than the upper chamber-in an eerie light.

Fire and move. Fire when moving. They dueled in darkness, circling, trying to anticipate each other's moves. Each tried to use the other's fire as a targeting aid, which led to short fierce exchanges and long periods of silence and darkness. Bhodi took hits on both legs, right thigh, left shoulder, and midback, none serious. He did not know what he gave in return.

It seemed like the only way the stalemate would end would be if they bumped together by accident and strangled each other. Then Bhodi got a flash of inspiration. Stripping one of the straps from his holster cuisse, he looped it around the grip of the Bracke. Laying the weapon on the floor, he snugged up the strap against the actuator, and the weapon began to fire.

Immediately, the unseen enemy began to fire back. Bhodi rolled twice to his left, into the darkness, then sprang to his feet. For a count of one thousand, two thousand, three thousand Bhodi ran away from the Bracke and toward his opponent as fast as his legs would carry him. Then he skidded to a stop, dropped to one knee, and aimed his own Allison and the one taken from the Qeth at the exact spot from which his unseen enemy's phaser bolts were appearing.

There was an animal squeal, and the other phaser winked out. A fraction of a second later, Bhodi heard the thud of something striking the floor. Bhodi kept firing until the lights came up and an end-of-match chime began to sound.

His opponent was a Riknoid and in obvious pain, kneeling and holding its right hand. Its weapon was lying in the center of a splatter of blood. Uncertain of his obligations, Bhodi took one tentative step toward it. But before he could decide whether his help would be welcome, three medical-section types dropped through the hole and hurried to the injured fighter's side.

Bhodi backed away then and retraced his steps through the now fully lighted warren to the entrance. When he reached the surface, he found Li-hon walking across the arena toward him.

"I won," Bhodi said quietly as they came together. "I'm ready."

"You won," Li-hon agreed. "But you're not ready."

"I want my third refusal."

"No."

"But you said-"

"I said I would give you a chance to show what you could do. I did, and you did. Now we continue to work on what you can't do," he said. "Go back to the platoon room. I'll be there when I can be. You've left me with a couple of injured Guardians to look after first."

And then he brushed past and left Bhodi standing there alone in the empty arena, his mind empty and mouth open, unable to quite believe what had just happened to him.