No, Maddox realized. That was the wrong way to think about it. They were here as avengers. They were here to discover what had been going on in Gath. Maybe this was why someone had kidnapped him. It was a stretch. But whatever would give him a little more gumption to see this through, he figured was good.

  Therefore, Maddox kept going. He didn’t feel anything from his intuitive sense. He didn’t feel the mind fusion, except that it was waiting for the chance to pounce. Maddox had the sense that when it did pounce, it would attack with savagery and unrelenting murder lust.

  They wound through the tunnel as it went down at a slant. It seemed to go on and on and on, until three kilometers later, they came to another hatch. No alarms had rung; nothing that they could sense. Yet Maddox felt that beyond this hatch lay the real test, and maybe the weapons that they had come to get.

  This must be the heart of the Metamorph lands. Here was what made the Metamorphs tick, the mastermind behind them. Did that mean a Yon Soth? It was impossible to know.

  “Is Mara awake yet?” Maddox asked softly.

  Gently, Dravek shook her.

  Mara smacked her lips and opened bloodshot, red-rimmed eyes. “My head hurts.” She gasped, and her eyes opened wide. “Captain Maddox,” she said in an eerie voice. “You must turn back or die. You have come too far. I know of you now. I know who and what you are.”

  Dravek shook Mara, but she slid out of his arms. She stood, reaching for a gun. No doubt, she meant to blow Maddox away. Dravek tore the gun from her grip.

  Mara raised her finger, pointing at Maddox. “You are doomed. You murderers have slaughtered my progeny. You have slaughtered the gift of my intellect. You are such a foul, God-besotted creature. You do not understand the forces that you play at. You think to defeat me. You think to harm me. I see no battle fleet arrayed against me, ready to rain down hellburners. We know of you, Captain Maddox. We have learned of you, and now you have come into our nest. Oh, open the door. Let me feast upon your flesh. Let me destroy it with telekinetic delight. Dare you come in any further, Captain Maddox?”

  Maddox looked at Dravek. “Put her to sleep. I don’t think she should have to bear the Yon Soth’s thoughts anymore.”

  Dravek pinched Mara’s carotid artery until she slumped unconscious.

  Maddox looked at the others, wondering if the force that had spoken through Mara could speak through any of the others. Suddenly, his intuitive sense told him that before the Yon Soth could gather its intellect to do such a heinous act as taking over another’s mind and will again, he needed to go on the attack.

  “Let’s do this.” Maddox reached for the handle to the hatch, turned it, and then readied to throw the hatch open.

  -63-

  Maddox leapt out of the hatch into an even more immense chamber than the one they’d left. In it were all sorts of equipment and machinery. Some were shuttles, others were tanks, missiles, rockets and such. It was a veritable museum of weaponry. He’d never seen any of these models, though he recognized the types of equipment they were.

  Bright lights shined in the ceiling, illuminating everything.

  From his intuition, Maddox expected a horde of Metamorphs to rush them. Instead, there was nothing, an empty museum.

  The others filed in with their weapons ready.

  “Where is everyone?” Ophir asked.

  As if to answer him, a large hatch opened at the far end and out boiled—

  Maddox blanched as a feeling of utter revulsion shook him to his core. The enemy reminded him of the octagonal robots he’d spent so much time together during a horrific trip from the planet Kregen to the edge of its star system. They boiled out. Was it a hundred creatures? They scuttled across the floor, their metal tentacle tips tap, tap, tapping on the floor as they charged as a group.

  The creatures were metallic balls the size of a man’s torso. From the balls sprouted segmented metal tentacles. None of the automations had a weapon that Maddox could see. They did have shining red lights on the balls, perhaps their optic ports. They scuttled across the chamber fast.

  “Grenade launcher,” Maddox said. “Start blowing down those things.”

  With his grenade launcher aimed, Gricks fired—pop, pop, pop. He sent grenades arching slightly in a flattish trajectory. They exploded among the automations. Some grenades did damage. Mostly, the horde of advancing things scuttled all that much faster at them.

  “What do we do?” Dravek said. “We need blasters. We have these chemical slug throwers. Are these rifles going to be of any use to us?”

  “There’s one way to find out.” Maddox took his stance and took deliberate shots. Some of the shots downed the advancing machines. Other shots ricocheted off metal.

  The interesting thing was the few shots that penetrated the outer ball hulls. From the holes squished brain matter.

  Maddox understood. The automatons had brains inside them. Were those human brains? Were they two-brained Metamorphs? The brains looked pinkish, much more pinkish than a human brain would look. It was disgusting. It was revolting, and it struck Maddox as desperate evil.

  Now, all of them opened up with their weapons. A fusillade of fire struck the oncoming horde of metallic, octagonal automatons tap, tap, tapping across the floor. These must be the workers of the Yon Soth, if indeed that was what had been talking through Mara.

  Had the talking drained it of energy? Maddox didn’t know. He slapped another magazine into his assault rifle, and he kept hammering the things.

  “Spread out,” Maddox shouted. “We have to kill these things. We have to kill them all. If one survives and it dismembers each of us, we’ve lost.”

  Gallant Ophir stepped up. He made fists with both hands. He’d discarded his guns. Instead, with concentrated rays from his ruby rings, he beamed the metallic things. His beams were as good as hot lasers. They burned through metal hull plating as he swept many at a time. The others behind kept coming, crawling over those he’d slain.

  “Protect Ophir!” Maddox shouted. “On all accounts, protect him. Make a circle around Ophir.”

  The team circled Ophir. They chattered assault rifles, lobbed grenades and shot machine guns. They stood around Ophir as the mechanical things rushed at him.

  Maddox realized that despite everything they were going to lose. There were too many of the metallic crawlies charging them. Bullets and grenades had too little effect on the metal.

  Maddox dropped his assault rifle and pulled out his monofilament blade. This was probably his best weapon against them.

  Maddox didn’t yell, “Cover me.” Instead, he launched himself at the things. It seemed like suicidal madness. Yet what had he told Dravek before? Madness was their only way or chance to escape.

  One of the tentacled arms lashed him, hitting him across the head, nearly stunning him. Maddox skewered it, the monofilament blade slicing through the metallic skin and into the brain underneath. Then he was among the metallic spider-like creatures. He endured their tentacled slashes and as they grabbed at him, trying to stretch his limbs.

  Maddox had already become a madman of fury. He lashed like a berserk Viking of old, moving, ducking, swaying, accepting the hits, accepting the pummeling to his body. He would be black and blue if he survived this. The knife did damage. It opened armored hides and tore pink brain masses.

  Maddox felt the hot rays from the ruby beams. He saw the red rays piercing, slashing and exploding metallic ball-hulls.

  Still the creatures skittered at them.

  Maddox knew that if he faltered, if he gave in to fatigue, it was all over. He slashed a tentacle from his leg. Some severed tentacles were curled around him like giant bracelets. They squeezed, but they didn’t squeeze hard enough to stop him or stop the blood flowing to his limbs.

  A few tentacles tried to grab his neck. He slashed them all in a blow.

  Maddox was stabbing, hacking, and he didn’t realize he was yelling, shouting and foaming at the mouth. His eyes were opened wide like a berserker of old. No one had ever seen such fury in Captain Maddox. What else could he do? That was what the situation called for. He endured blows that would have knocked him unconscious at other times. He was in the zone, the fighting zone, the berserker zone. A lust to kill, maim and destroy gripped his mind. These were the Yon Soth’s machines. These were like the things that had almost destroyed him in the Kregen System. This was his chance for payback. He bellowed with rage, slashed, cut, hacked and advanced.

  He was a prodigy. This was a display of knife fighting probably none would ever see again. Something of legend was taking place, even as Ophir’s rings, one by one, began to sputter, having been drained of whatever energy fueled them.

  Grenades launched. Men ran up and fired their assault guns against the metal hulls, smashing them open.

  The machine creatures slew men, four in all, all Honey Men.

  Gricks bled badly from a leg wound. But even now Mara was dressing the wound. Hern had many cuts and bruises, but he had a savage snarl with two machine guns, one in each fist, blazing away.

  Hern fired a final burst, cutting down the last moving automaton. He swiveled more, his gaze searching, seeking. Then he turned to Maddox. “We did it, boss.”

  Maddox looked upon Hern as a demon of destruction might. Was Maddox about to charge and slay Hern? It was quite possible.

  Dravek ran up before Maddox, waving his arms. “We’re friends. We’re friends, Captain Maddox. You did it. It’s over. The fight is done.”

  Maddox stared at Dravek, raising the monofilament blade. It was wet with pink brain mass, whatever had been within the housings of the tentacled things. Maddox cocked his head.

  “We’re friends Maddox,” Dravek said. “It’s over. This part of the battle is over. We must move on to stage three.”

  Maddox blinked. It seemed as if sanity once more shone in his eyes. He didn’t speak. Perhaps he couldn’t. His shoulders slumped, and the monofilament blade dropped out of his hand. Exhausted from the fierce underground battle, Captain Maddox collapsed. The berserkergang that had gripped him now left him swooning. He hit the floor, unconscious.

  -64-

  Captain Maddox dreamed. He didn’t like his dream and he had a suspicion that his unconscious body was in a bad place. Yet he couldn’t wake up.

  In the dream was a creature, a vast, tentacled, whale-sized creature. He didn’t see it in the dream, but he knew it swam in fluids far below him. It swam in a specially constructed place and swam not as an alert, awakened creature but as a sleeping shark flicking its tail in order to keep its forward momentum. A shark did that so its gills would continue to extract oxygen from the water.

  For a shark’s gills were not like a fish’s that could pump the water. The shark needed to use the forward motion for the water to flow through and past the gills.

  In that sense, the great creature swam slumbering. It swam below as dreaming Maddox stood on a dark plain. In the dream, Maddox was vaguely aware that he’d recently fought with berserk fury akin to madness.

  The reason for the berserk fury was his internment in a tiny pursuit sled with octagonal robots. The time spent there had driven him nearly mad with desperation. After surviving the robots and pursuit sled, and defeating the Cosmic Computer, Maddox had overcome some of the horrible torment, or so he had believed. In truth, much of the hidden desperation had coiled like a pressed spring, waiting and straining with his fear of enclosed spaces and a hatred of constructs that warred against humanity.

  Maddox stirred in his sleep, though it did not disrupt his dream.

  He stood upon a dark and spongy plain with a dot in the sky. The dot was red and bled red illumination. He watched as the surface rolled like a wave, as if something gigantic swam underneath. He knew what it was, but he knew he shouldn’t name it. Because in naming it he might call or summon it.

  He had a feeling the…creature had spoken to him before through Mara as a dream. The evil creature had dreamed, and that dream had repercussions in the real world.

  Maddox believed he understood a truth. The telepathic emanations from the sleeping, slowly swimming thing down there had sent powerful mental thoughts and emotions to the societies on Gath. Those vile emanations had provided the impetus for creating the desert Metamorphs and later two-brained creatures to create a gestalt mind fusion. The emanations had also provided the push for Honey Men to castrate their prisoners and the Old Ones to indulge in their worst sexual perversions.

  In his dream, Maddox was certain he could burrow through the spongy substance and meet the whale-sized entity with its tentacles. But he had no weapon to slay it, as he had used weapons long ago as Meta had carried him to safety to a portal. Neither did Maddox possess hellburners or screaming asteroids dropped from orbit to destroy the deep dwelling…monster.

  Could nuclear-tipped missiles launched from the Highlands reach and destroy the creature? Maddox deemed that as highly unlikely. The thing was protected by too much earth, rock and substance. Hellburners and dropped asteroids could kill it, but they would also destroy every living creature on the planet Gath.

  Dream Maddox stood upon the dark plain, contemplating his next move. There was something he’d missed or failed to decipher and understand. As he dreamed, he waited for his unconscious to give him the answer.

  Psychologists call that part of the mind the subconscious. Yet that imparted the idea that the subconscious was below or beneath the conscious mind. In truth, the unconscious mind roiled with ideas, thoughts and plans that sparkled into life like rare gems, like stars in the sky that shined with brilliance.

  It was that part of his mind that Maddox needed to tap into.

  Perhaps that was why he was in his dream state. It was not to battle the—

  In his dream, Maddox rubbed his hands nervously. He’d almost named the type of creature, possibly summoning it to wakefulness through that.

  The vast evil entity, the ancient thing, the poisonous thing—one way or the other, he was going to have to destroy it. But he wouldn’t be able to that today.

  Today, he had to find the right weapon in the place where he, awake and aware, had gained victory over the metallic enemy.

  In the real world, one of the creations of the evil thing below waited above. The Yun mind fusion waited to slay and destroy or subvert and reprogram wills in the service of the evil below.

  Maddox grinned. He was the demon slayer. It would be best to think of the thing down there, swimming in its sleep, its tentacles flicking so it would propel the huge body—

  Maddox shook his head. He didn’t need to think of the demon below. He needed to engage his unconscious, so he gained a rare gem of an idea as a breakthrough to get out of here.

  He was dreaming and wasn’t sure what to do next. His anger and rage had subsided. Maddox knew he had far too much rage in his heart. It was one of his secrets. Perhaps it was part of his New Man heritage. Could he change his inner heritage?

  Maddox frowned. He was on the wrong tangent. This was the weapons site. Dravek had originally discovered the site in the computer files of the Trader Vessel Moray.

  Instinctively, Maddox knew the fact was important. Why was it important: the knowledge being in the computer banks of the Moray? Because, because…the Triad had hired or bought the Moray to this star system. They’d guided the vessel here in order to find the weapon site.

  Maddox frowned as he observed a spark of light between him and the red dot bleeding light into this gloomy realm. He studied the light and perceived it to be a scintillating gem.

  Maddox rubbed his chin until he raised a hand and then his index finger. The Triad of Naxos aboard the Moray had wanted to reach the location where his sleeping body lay. The reason the Triad had wished to come here was to pick up a weapon. What kind of weapon would the Triad use?

  Maddox squinted at the scintillating crystal in the sky. His mouth opened in surprise. The answer was obvious…as if had bubbled up from his unconscious mind.

  Now that he knew the answer, it was time to wake up.

  Maddox shouted in his dreamland. “Wake up, Captain. Time is of great urgency.”

  With that, dream Maddox vanished from the rolling plain of darkness, with the evil one swimming lazily far below.

  In the real world where Maddox lay, deep in the weapon museum, his eyes flashed open.

  -65-

  On the floor with its metallic remnants, with the smell of fired weaponry, exploded grenades, and the stink of pinkish brain matter torn from its metallic shells, Maddox opened his eyes. He saw several of those lying around him. There was Gricks, Hern—

  Dravek, sitting on the floor, stroked Mara’s back as she too sat up. Ophir stood and looked at his ruby rings. Perhaps he was worried they’d remain power-drained forever.

  Ophir noticed Maddox staring at him. “You’re awake.”

  The others glanced at Maddox.

  Maddox groaned and slowly sat up. He was tight and stiff. Already, bruises spread across his body. Metallic tentacles had pummeled, squeezed and slashed him like whips. His head throbbed where he’d received heavy blows. He touched his scalp, discovering that some of the hair had been torn from their roots. When he looked at his hand, there was a smear of blood on his fingertips.

  “You look like shit,” Dravek said.

  “I’m beat up,” Maddox said in a low voice, “and my mind is sluggish.”

  He looked around, and he couldn’t recall in detail what had happened, just that he’d known fury that had seemed to put a red mist before his eyes. He’d gone berserk, but it hadn’t been a hot berserkergang as the old Vikings did. Rather, it had been a cold and calculating berserkergang. That had been more dangerous to the enemy because his intellect still had analyzed and guided his hand.

  Maddox remembered the dream then. He remembered it better than the fight. He had something to do. He remembered that, too. Before he did it, he needed to set the stage. Although he ached and his energy was minuscule, it was time to get started. They were running out of time and had to get on with it.