I thought about it, and realized the Atomic Brains—or the Synthetic Minds—weren’t my enemies. They were the enemy of the Togs, certainly, and I wished the Togs the best as Gorthak had helped me. But the Steel Mother really wasn’t my enemy or my problem, as much as I would have liked to see it solved for the sake of the mutants who’d helped me.

  My problem was that I needed weapons, and I needed to reach the obelisk. Some way, somehow, I had to get weapons back to Mu, so I could take care of the dart rifle marksmen.

  I cocked my head, considering this from a new angle. Who had brought the Saddoth marksmen onto Mu? There was a portal on Garm, and there was a portal here on Tellus. Philip had said as much. And hadn’t someone said there was a portal in the Dark Citadel on Mu?

  I shook my head. I couldn’t believe this. I’d been a fool. I hadn’t put it all together until now.

  Surely, Philip, or the Institute, had been instrumental in bringing those riflemen to Mu. That meant the Institute was one of my great enemies. I didn’t remember those of Saddoth having the capacity to jump from planet to planet.

  “I’ve been an idiot,” I said.

  With the green light, I went back and found some leather gloves. I put them on, looked around a little more, found a few pieces of equipment and took them, then headed back to the elevator.

  Clutching the green light between my teeth, I reached out and grabbed the cables with my gloved hands. Then I swung out, wrapped my legs and feet around the cable, and slowly but surely began climbing upward as if it were a gym rope, wanting to get to the surface and off this crazy, irradiated planet.

  -32-

  Hand over hand, I climbed up the cable. My biceps burned, but I kept going, finding a rhythm to it. Pull up, lock feet, breathe, pull up again. The green light between my teeth cast weird shadows that danced on the shaft walls.

  My mind wandered as I climbed, maybe to distract me from the pain in my arms. I thought about Suvorov protecting Sky Island. The Russian was tough and smart, but how long could he hold out? Did the Ophidians have sky-rafts hidden in the Dark Citadel? If they did, Sky Island was in serious trouble.

  Pull up. Lock feet. Breathe.

  Was the Institute involved all this time with the Ispazars? The dragon-queens had seemed to be running their own game on Mu, but maybe there’d been Institute influence even then. There were different factions, different schemes, all of them treating Mu like their personal chessboard. And now, finally, the Institute was taking a direct hand in what was happening on Mu.

  My right hand slipped on the cable, rust flaking off. I caught myself with my left, heart hammering, then got a better grip and kept climbing.

  Had I been teleported here by the obelisk through Omilcar’s dead hand, or had somehow those little Homo habilis dudes been able to mess with the obelisk-ziggurat system? How would they even know about Omilcar? Well, maybe Omilcar had contacts with the Institute when he’d been alive. Who knew all the alliances crisscrossing through the former Harmony of Planets?

  Pull up. Lock feet. My shoulders were throbbing now.

  I didn’t really need to know all that stuff. I just knew that there were a lot of these ancient astronaut races, if you will. The First Folk and the Krekelens were definitely my enemies; maybe the agents of Vega were my friends.

  I had married Livi, and my dad had been a Vegan, or so I’d heard.

  I felt sad thinking about my sweet wife, murdered by Omilcar. I’d gotten my revenge on him, but it hadn’t brought her back. Nothing would bring her back.

  I shook my head as I continued to climb up the cable. I was getting seriously tired, but I wasn’t going to quit. I could do this, as I had the freshness of being healed by the Deep Waters. That had to count for something.

  From somewhere off to my left, through a shaft, I heard gunfire. They were pulse rifles from the sound of it. It must be the battle between the Togs and walkers, the war continuing its endless cycle.

  My legs were starting to cramp. How many stories had I climbed? The sickly yellow light was definitely getting stronger above me.

  The best solution, if the day ever came and I could save the three cities and rebuild the Pterodactyl Riders, would be to go back to the Dark Citadel. I would clean it out thoroughly. And if there was a portal down there like I suspected, I had to guard it or break it.

  I thought about the baan on my belt. This thing could probably do that, slice right through whatever mechanism made the portal work.

  Finally, with my muscles trembling with exhaustion, I reached an opening. It wasn’t the top, but a maintenance access maybe fifteen feet below where the yellow light was strongest. I swung over, my feet finding the ledge, and I swung again before I let go of the cable. My hands were cramped into claws even through the gloves. I flexed them, working feeling back into my fingers.

  The opening led to a duct, horizontal and wide enough to crawl through. This was much easier than climbing. I pulled myself forward on my elbows, the green light still clenched in my teeth, illuminating the way.

  As I crawled, I continued to wonder what the best solution to all this was. The Institute had to be stopped. They were playing games with entire worlds, watching us all as if we were lab rats. Philip’s observer sphere proved that. They’d probably been recording everything, gathering data on how humans fought, how they died, and how they adapted.

  The duct went on and on. My elbows were getting raw even through the jacket. But eventually, I came to a halt. There was a huge grate ahead, and debris and junk piled beneath it. But I could see the sickly yellow sky through the bars.

  I ignored the debris, using my leather jacket and gloves to protect myself from the sharp edges as I positioned myself. Then I stood upright in the wider section under the grate, reached up, and found that it was made of solid metal bars. Heavy stuff, probably designed to keep things from falling in rather than from climbing out.

  That was no problem.

  I pulled out my baan and activated it. The blue blade hummed to life. I started cutting through the grate’s bars.

  Soon, I deactivated the baan, hooked it back on my belt, and climbed up through the hole I’d made. My boots scraped on broken concrete as I pulled myself up and out.

  I stood, looking at the desolate wasteland city of Ploor spread out before me. Skeletal buildings, rubble-filled streets, and that sick yellow sky pressing down on everything, proved this was a true radiation planet.

  I was back on the surface of this hell world.

  Now I had to decide on my next move.

  -33-

  As I stood there looking at the desolate city, my conscience tugged at me. I realized that the Togs had given me their precious healing, and I owed them. I’d probably be spitting blood otherwise and would soon have died.

  I couldn’t abandon them, not just like that. When you owe somebody your life, well, you have to pay back your debts. That’s what a man did.

  I looked around and saw a subway entrance about a block away. I jogged there and found I had the baan in my hand, though it wasn’t turned on. As I reached the entrance, I could hear the sounds of battle echoing up from below—pulse rifles, screams, and the whine of buzz saws.

  Gingerly, I started down the steps.

  I was only halfway down when I came upon several dead Togs. Their bodies were still warm, pulse-rifle wounds smoking in their chests. I turned off the baan and clicked it onto my belt and took one of the pulse rifles—one of those heavy things that weighed as much as a light machine gun. I put the strap around my neck, took the extra power packs from the corpses, and descended deeper.

  The first walker was stationed at a turn in the stairs, its red sensor eye sweeping back and forth. I brought up the pulse rifle and fired. The beam punched through its sensor array, and it stumbled backward, firing blind. I put three more shots into its chest before it toppled.

  I kept moving down. Two spider scouts skittered up the walls toward me. I swept the rifle in an arc; the pulse beams cut them in half. They fell in pieces, sparking and twitching.

  Another walker appeared at the next landing. This one saw me coming and raised its arm-mounted weapon. I dove to the side as its pulse beam scorched the wall where I’d been. From my prone position, I fired up at an angle, catching it in the joint between head and torso. It went down hard, hydraulic fluid spraying.

  The stairs seemed to go on forever, twitching back and forth like a switchback trail. Then I spied another walker, this one with its buzz saw already spinning. I backed up, firing controlled bursts. The first shots sparked off its armor, but I adjusted and found a weak spot near its hip joint. It collapsed, the saw blade scraping sparks from the concrete as it fell.

  More spider scouts came at me from a side passage. Four of them, moving fast. I burned through the rest of my first power pack taking them down; their metal bodies clattered down the stairs.

  I slapped in a fresh pack and kept moving. One more walker waited at the entrance to the main tunnel system. It had positioned itself well, using a concrete pillar for cover. We exchanged fire, pulse beams lighting up the darkness. I finally got it by ricocheting a shot off a metal door, catching it from an angle it surely hadn’t expected.

  It had taken two full power packs to clear the way, but I’d done it.

  Finally, I reached the lower area where the real battle was happening. The scene was chaos. Mutant Togs were using their serrated blades against walkers with their buzz saws. The air was thick with smoke and the smell of burned flesh and hot metal. There weren’t as many walkers left, but there were dead mutants everywhere: bodies piled in defensive positions, some still clutching their weapons.

  I found a good firing position behind some rubble and started picking off walkers one at a time. A walker was about to decapitate a young Tog—I put a beam through its sensor. Another was closing on a group of wounded: three shots to its back dropped it. The Togs saw me and roared their approval, fighting with renewed energy.

  The last walker was surrounded, three Togs rushing it with blades raised. It spun its buzz saw in a desperate arc, but they overwhelmed it, hacking it apart.

  In the sudden quiet afterward, I slung the huge pulse rifle over my back.

  I found Gorthak, bloody from a dozen wounds but still standing. We gripped hands, warrior to warrior.

  “Thank you, my friend,” he said, breathing hard. “Thank you. We needed that help. They were going to obliterate us, as we’d run out of power-packs for our pulse rifles.”

  “I could see that,” I said.

  “Where is the small one?” Gorthak asked.

  “Rescuers of his kind took him. They tried to capture me, but I forestalled them.”

  “Ah, I knew it,” Gorthak said, spitting a bloody gobbet to the side. “He is bad. They’re all bad.”

  “Yes,” I said. “They are bad. They are your enemy.” I paused, then added, “I did find an entrance to the Steel Mother.”

  I described to Gorthak the stairwell that led down, how I’d gotten there through the flooded maintenance area, and how, if they wanted to, they could find it.

  “Ah, that is a grand idea,” Gorthak said, but then his expression darkened. “But we do not have the Speaker to the Machines. Where is she?”

  “She died. Rhea died trying to save us.”

  Gorthak spat another bloody gobbet and glared in the other direction. He soon nodded. “You have found a way to get to the Steel Mother. But our numbers are too few now, and they know about us. This was an outpost. We will have to pull back and regroup. We cannot lose too many.”

  I looked around at the carnage, and that’s when I saw the small bodies among the dead. “Why did you bring children here?”

  “It was deception move,” Gorthak said, his voice heavy with what sounded like regret. “But the children paid for it.”

  There were dead mutant children everywhere, some no bigger than ten years old, if I was any judge, still clutching tiny weapons.

  “We have others fighting in outer areas,” Gorthak said, shaking his head. Then he looked at me. “Will you come with us?”

  “No, I must go back into the city and find the obelisk.”

  “Do you mean Dead Tower?”

  “That’s what I’ve heard it called.”

  “No one can make it work.”

  “Well, I’ve got to try.”

  Gorthak studied me and finally nodded. “I wish you well, friend.”

  “And I you,” I said.

  “Is there any more I can do for you?” Gorthak asked.

  “You healed me. What more can I ask?”

  “You will need supplies. We can regroup and gather them now.”

  “Yeah, I could use supplies, and maybe a map of the city, if you have it.”

  “I do. One that shows what really is.”

  “That would be awesome,” I said.

  Once more, we shook hands. I wished them luck as they began organizing their wounded and dead. This was worse than the planet of the Neanderthals. These poor Togs fighting this endless war, generation after generation, with no end in sight.

  Maybe the stairwell was a way to victory. I didn’t know. I just knew that the Institute, the First Folk, were here, watching, waiting, and clearly seeking something. And now Philip was back with them, surely plotting something more against me and my people on Mu.

  As the Togs brought me a pack with rations, water, and a map of Ploor showing the Dead Tower’s location, I thought about everything that had happened. The Institute had surely orchestrated the massacre on Mu. They were playing games with multiple worlds. And somehow, I was going to make them pay for it.

  -34-

  -Interlude Three-

  Minus his EVA suit, Superior Philip stood at attention in the orbital sphere’s ready room. Elder Philip, who ran the Institute operations on Tellus, sat behind a desk, which almost filled the entire space. Everything in the orbital sphere had been brought in pieces via the portal and reassembled here, and thus space was at a premium.

  Elder Philip was old by clone standards, with silver threading through his coarse hair and deep lines etched around his calculating eyes. His garments were pristine white with gold Institute markings denoting his rank, a stark contrast to Superior Philip’s travel-stained gear.

  When Elder Philip finally looked up from his datapad, his expression held a particular kind of contempt, possibly born of his intellectual superiority and bureaucratic authority.

  “So,” Elder Philip said, his voice carrying the refined accent of the highest Institute ranks, “let me understand the sequence of events that led to this disaster. You were tasked with the simple observation of the Traveler. That meant passive monitoring and data collection, perhaps with some minor manipulation to test his responses. Instead, you managed to lose our primary observation sphere over Ploor, exposed our presence to both the Togs and the Synthetic Minds, and allowed the subject to escape with full knowledge of Institute involvement in the Mu operation.”

  Superior Philip gave a nervous smile. “Excellency, surely you realize that the Traveler is far more resourceful than any of us could anticipate. Why—”

  “Enough!” Elder Philip said, interrupting. “You dare to lecture me about what I do and do not realize?”

  “No, no, you misunderstand.”

  “Do I now? Please elaborate then on my misunderstandings.”

  “I mean…” Superior Philip faltered, groping for the right words. “Excellency, our intelligence suggested—”

  “I’m going to stop you right there, as it is obvious you’re about to spin off into yet another of your tangents. First off, competent observers compiled the intelligence after months of careful study and research. The failing was not in the data, but in you.”

  “Excellency, please—”

  “I’m not finished,” Elder Philip snapped.

  Superior Philip hung his head to show his contrition.

  Elder Philip studied him, finally grunting. “In any case, what did you hope to accomplish by revealing yourself to the subject?”

  “You mean after the walkers obliterated the observation sphere?”

  “What else could I mean?”

  “Uh… I was exposed, Excellency, alone in an extremely deadly environment. I knew retrieval would take time, perhaps too much time. Weighing my options, I realized the Traveler would provide for my greater safety and at the same time allow for direct contact. I calculated that establishing a relationship of mutual benefit would provide superior data collection compared to the remote observation.”

  “You made all these careful calculations while floating bare-ass after barely escaping with your life, did you?”

  “I’m a trained operative, Excellency.”

  “No! You were scared and ran to the Traveler for safety. That much is true. But it had nothing to do with greater data collection.”

  “Well, I—”

  “I warn you. Don’t lie to me.”

  “Of course not, Excellency; I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  Elder Philip snorted. “You acted the part of a buffoon in running to him. Do you have any idea of the painstaking work it took to assemble the observation sphere? That you failed to protect our investment and then exposed our work to the very subject we’re manipulating… This is maddening. I am debating advising our Original to demote you two levels for your gross incompetence.”

  Superior Philip felt faint. He had to fix this, and fast, or risk exposure to the highest level.

  “I understand the resource implications, Excellency, but the potential intelligence value—”

  “Spare me your glib excuses,” Elder Philip said, interrupting once more. “Your time as a field operative among the barbarian Ophidians on Mu has dulled your intellect regarding real technical work. This is a serious project on Tellus, not a secondary operation. You no doubt wish to blame the missile explosion for your disaster, but missiles fly and explode all the time on Tellus. Your team wasn’t paying attention to outside factors. That was a fundamental error, a crass mistake a rookie might make, not a supposed superior like you.”