Twelve of Venera’s people knelt around her on the floor of a storage room that opened off the third-floor corridor. Mops and brooms loomed over her; a single flickering bulb illuminated the three men with machine guns who were standing over the prisoners. Two more soldiers had been tying their hands behind their backs, but the process had stalled out briefly as they ran out of rope. The commandant, who had at first seemed flustered and shocked, had soon recovered his poise and now appeared to be genuinely enjoying himself.
“You did a good job of sealing off the front doors, but my superiors were able to slip this through the crack.” He waggled the mimeograph at Venera. He was a beefy man with an oddly asymmetrical face; one of his eyes was markedly higher than the other, and his upper lip lifted on the left giving him a permanent look of incredulity. “They also slipped in some instructions on how we’re to proceed while they cut through your welding job. It seems we had a…” He flipped the sheet over to read the back. “…a certain Garth Diamandis in our custody, as guarantor of your good behavior. Our arrangement was very clear. Should you fail to obey our orders, we were to kill this Diamandis. I’d say that your little incursion tonight constitutes disobedience, wouldn’t you?”
Venera drew back her lips in a snarl. “Someday they’re going to name a disease after you.”
The commandant sighed. “I just wanted you to know that I’ve issued the order. He’s being terminated, oh, even as we speak. And—” he laughed heartily, “I had an inspiration! The manner of his passing is quite hideous, you’ll be impressed when you see—”
A soldier clattered to a stop at the door to the office. “The lower floors are secure, sir,” he said. “They had tied up the night watch and the guards in the prison. In addition, we found ten of these in the basement.” He handed the commandant one of the charges Venera’s people had set.
Venera exchanged a glance with Bryce, whose hands were still untied.
“Well, look at this.” The commandant knelt in front of Venera. “A little clockwork bomb. Why, it’s so intricately made, I can only think of one place it might have come from.” He arched an eyebrow at the knot of prisoners. “Are any of you from Scoman, by any chance?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but turned the mechanism over under Venera’s nose. “How does it work? Is it a timer?”
She said nothing; he shrugged and said, “I think I can figure it out. You turn this dial to give yourself… what? Ten minutes? If you don’t reset it before it winds down to zero it explodes.”
A muffled report sounded from somewhere in the building. A gunshot? The commandant glanced at his men; one turned and left the room. “I suppose one or two of your compatriots might still be loose,” he admitted. “But we’ll round them up soon enough.”
He was just opening his mouth to add something else when the lights went out. The building rocked to a distant blast.
Instant pandemonium—somebody stepped on Venera and crumpled her to the floor while some sort of struggle erupted just to her right; one of the machine guns went off, apparently into the ceiling, lighting the space with a momentary red flicker. All she saw was people rearing up, falling down, tumbling like scattered chessmen. She strained but couldn’t get free of the ropes that bound her hands behind her.
Another explosion, then another—how many of those bombs had they said they’d found? She was sure they’d planted at least twelve.
Now somebody fell on her in a horrifyingly limp tangle and she screamed, but nobody could hear her over the shouts, screams, and shots.
More machine-gun fire, terrifyingly close but apparently directed out the door. Venera wormed out from under the wet body and found a corner to huddle in, hands jammed into the spot where walls and floor met. She cursed the dark and chaos and expected to receive a bullet in the head any second.
Silence and heavy breathing. Distant shouts. Somebody lit a match.
Bryce and Thinblood stood back to back. Each held a machine gun. Another gun lay under the body of the commandant, whose lopsided face was frozen in an expression of genuine surprise. The room was awash with men who were holding one another by the throat, or feet, or wrists, all atop the tiled bodies of the soldiers who were still tied up. Dark blood was spattered up the wall and over everybody. Venera looked down at herself and saw that her own clothes were glistening with the stuff.
“Get them untied!” Somebody flipped a knife into his hand and began bending and slashing at the ropes. When he reached Venera, she saw that it was one of the archers. Venera leaned forward knocking her forehead against the floor as he roughly grabbed her arms and cut.
“The prisoners are loose!” Bryce hauled her to her feet just as the match went out. “Somebody find a bloody lantern! We’ve got to get out of here!” They burst into the corridor just as the lights resumed a dim glow. There were bodies all over the place, bullet holes in the walls, and she heard shots and shouts coming from the stairwell.
“Good idea to leave those men in the cells,” she said to Bryce. “A command decision.”
He grinned. They had given two men some spare weapons and grenades and, out of sight of the tied-up guards, put them in a cell with a broken lock. They were to free the prisoners and arm them if the rest of the team didn’t return in good time.
The soldiers recovered their guns and armor from a pile outside the storage room and one by one loped toward the T-intersection next to the stairwell. A firefight had broken out down there. Venera had her pistol in her hand but ended up in the rear, down on all fours as bullets sprayed overhead.
For a few minutes there was shouting and shooting. When it became clear that the men in the stairwell were of Sacrus, somebody threw a grenade at them, but more shots were coming from the side—the top right arm of the 'I from Venera’s perspective. That was the direction the commandant’s men had originally come from. The stairwell was at the very top of the T, the storage room behind her.
Now it was chaos and shooting again. Venera crawled to the left, to the spot where the metal cage had descended earlier. It was gone. She raised her head slightly and saw, through smoke and dim light, that the great metal door to the treasure room was open.
Bryce and the others had made it into the now cleared stairwell, but Venera had been too slow. Soldiers of Sacrus emerged from clouds of gunsmoke, faceless in the faint light. Venera scrambled to her feet, slipped on blood, and half fell through the doorway into the treasure room. Her feet found purchase on the carpet, and she pressed her whole body against the cold door. It slowly creaked shut, ringing from bullet impacts at the last instant.
She spun the wheel in the center of the portal and turned around to lean on it. A sound hangover echoed through her head for a few seconds, or was she still hearing the battle, but muffled by iron and stone?
Stepping forward she lifted her arms, saw blood all over them. Something caught her foot and she stumbled. Looking down she saw that it was another body—a soldier of Sacrus, maybe the very one with whom she’d locked eyes through the little glass window in the door. He lay on his back, arms flung about, and blood pooling behind his head.
His abdomen had been cut wide open and his entrails trailed along the floor.
A new wash of fear came over Venera. She backed against the door and brought up her pistol to check it. Wouldn’t do to have a misfire due to blood in the barrel. For a few moments she stood perfectly still, listening and, finally, looking about at the place she had come to.
The huge square room was lit better than the hallway had been, by small electric spotlights that hung over dozens of pedestals. She had glimpsed those earlier, the canisters and boxes atop them now glowing in surreal majesty. There was nobody else in sight, but she thought she could see another door opposite the one through which she’d entered.