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                                Chapter Nineteen

   Sean snaked around the feet of the towering summits at a cautious four
   hundred KPH. His sluggish speed had made the journey long and dragging,
   but it was the best he could manage, for the cutter's terrain-following
   systems were down. That forced him to fly hands-on, which was a pain. But
   few things were harder to spot than a stealthed cutter with no active
   emissions and flying low, slow, and nape-of-the-earth through mountains,
   and until they knew the quarantine system wouldn't swat atmospheric
   targets, anything that might draw its attention was right out.

   Inconsequential thoughts flickered as he concentrated on his flying. All
   the unoccupied seats in the twenty-man cutter made Israel's human crewmen
   uncomfortably aware of just how alone-and how far from home-they were, yet
   it was even worse for Brashan. They had to leave someone aboard the
   battleship at all times, and his nonhuman appearance made him the obvious
   choice. He'd taken it better than Sean could have, especially since they'd
   agreed to forego any com signals that might be detected. Not only was
   Brashan barred from sharing their exploration trip, he couldn't even know
   what they'd found until they got back to tell him!

   The cramped valley narrowed further, and he dumped another fifty KPH. It
   was nerve-wracking to fly solely by Mark One Eyeball (well, Mark Two or
   Three, given his enhancement) through the inevitable distortion of its
   stealth field, and he swore softly as they came up on an acute bend.

   "The Force, Sean," Sandy whispered in his ear. "Use the Force!"

   "Jerk!" he snorted, but there was an edge of laughter in his retort and
   tense muscles loosened back up a bit. He spared her a brief smile, then
   returned his attention to his console as their valley joined another. He
   checked his nav systems and headed up the new gorge with a small surge of
   excitement. It was even narrower and twistier, but they were getting close
   enough that this one might take them all the way in.

   He made another forty kilometers, then cursed again-less softly-as the
   valley ended in a steep cliff. He halted the cutter and lifted it
   vertically, hugging the rock wall. The dim light of Pardal's small moon
   washed scrubby trees and bare rock as tumbled mountains fell away on every
   side, and Harriet sucked in a sharp breath beside him as they topped out.

   "I'm getting something on passive!" Sean went into an instant hover, and
   his sister closed her eyes, communing with her sensors, then scowled. "I
   can't resolve it, Sean, but it's coming from just beyond that next
   mountain."

   Sean banked the cutter, angling down and around the side of the next peak,
   and she opened her eyes.

   "Now I've lost it entirely!" she groused.

   "Good," he said. "If it's line-of-sight, it can't see us, either. And for
   your information, sister mine, our objective is 'just beyond that next
   mountain,' if you and Sandy have it plotted right, so it sounds like we're
   going to find something when we get there!"

   Tamman grinned at him, but Sandy plugged her own feed into Harriet's
   console to study her recorded scanner readings.

   "Not much, is it, Harry?"

   "No." Harriet turned her own attention back to the data. "I make it at
   least six distinct point sources, though."

   "Yeah. But did you notice the one at about oh-two-one?"

   "Hm?" Harriet frowned, then nodded. "Lots stronger than the others, isn't
   it? And there's something about it . . . Damn. I wish I had a link to
   Israel's computers! It reminds me of something, but I can't think what."

   "Me neither. Tam?"

   Tamman glanced at the emissions through his own feed and shrugged. "Beats
   me. Most of those look like power leakages, not detection systems, but the
   biggie is something else." He tapped his teeth. "Hmm. . . . You know, that
   just might be an orbital power feed. Look there-see the smaller source
   tucked in to the east? That looks like a leak from a big-assed bank of
   capacitors, and the big one's definitely some sort of transmission. How
   about a ground beacon for an orbital broadcast power system?"

   "Could be," Sandy mused. "Hard to believe it could still be up after all
   this time, but you're right about it's being a transmission, and it'd sure
   explain why it's so much more powerful than the others-not to mention how
   there could still be power for any active installations. But if it really
   is a receptor, that means the Valley of the Damned has an active link to
   at least one power satellite. Even if it's only a passive solar job, you'd
   think the quarantine system would spot the transmission."

   "So?" Tamman countered. "If you and Harry are right, the Temple's running
   the system by rote, so what could they do about it? For that matter, why
   should they even understand what their 'Voice' was talking about?"

   "Yeah." Harriet twisted hair around a finger and glanced at her twin. "I
   think Tam's right, Sean. Either way, the transmission's just a steady
   tone, not a detection system. I don't see anything that looks like one,
   either, but I'd rather not take the cutter much closer or give away any
   more scan image than we have to until we're certain of that."

   "You and me both. What d'you think about that for a landing site?" He
   pointed to a wide ledge. It was at least thirty meters across, covered in
   the local equivalent of grass and brush, but a visible depression had been
   worn through the vegetation. "That looks like some sort of game trail, and
   it's headed just about the right way."

   "How far out are we?" Tamman asked.

   " 'Bout thirty klicks, straight-line. Don't know how far by foot."

   "Suits me," Tamman agreed, and Harriet and Sandy nodded.

   Sean slid closer, studying the ledge. A swell of rock broke the grass
   close beside the game trail, promising no hidden surprises for his landing
   legs, and he set the cutter down. He held the drive until the gear
   stabilized, then cut power but left the stealth field up.

   "End of the line." He tried unsuccessfully to keep the excitement out of
   his voice. "Let's get our gear."

   He rose from his couch and opened the weapons locker while Sandy and
   Harriet slipped into the shoulder harnesses of a pair of scanpacks. He
   strapped on a gun belt and grav gun and handed matching weapons to the
   others. The Malagoran mountains were home to at least two nasty
   predators-a sort of bear-sized cross between a wolf and a wolverine called
   a "seldahk," and a vaguely feline carnivore called a "kinokha"-both of
   whom had bellicose and territorial personalities. None of them felt like
   walking around unarmed, and Sean wished privately that Israel's equipment
   list had offered something a bit tougher than their uniforms. The
   synthetic fabric the Fleet used for its uniforms was incredibly rugged by
   pre-Imperial Terran standards. He had no doubt it would resist even a
   kinokha's claws, but it wasn't going to stop a seldahk's jaws, nor would
   it stop bullets. Of course, it was unlikely, to put it lightly, that
   they'd meet any armed natives this close to the Valley of the Damned in
   the middle of the night, yet kevlar underwear would have been very
   reassuring. Unfortunately, neither Battle Fleet nor the Imperial Marines
   issued such items, which he supposed made sense, given that nothing short
   of battle armor could hope to resist Imperial weaponry.

   He grinned at his own thoughts as he and Tamman clipped extra magazines to
   their belts and shrugged into knapsacks heavy with spikes, pitons, ropes,
   and assorted mountaineering gear Sean hoped they weren't going to need.
   Then he eased his pack straps more comfortably, opened the hatch, and led
   the way out into the night. 

   The game trail helped, but it was far from straight, and many of its
   slopes were almost vertical. Tamman took the lead while Sean brought up
   the rear. The formation freed Harriet and Sandy to focus on their
   scanpacks (which had far more reach than implant sensors), without
   worrying about anything they might meet, and the four of them moved at a
   pace which would have reduced any unenhanced human to gasping exhaustion
   in minutes.

   The moon was still high when Harriet threw up a hand and beckoned them all
   to a halt. Sean closed up from behind as the other three clustered to wait
   for him, and his eyes brightened as he looked down at last into the valley
   they'd come so far to find.

   It was bigger than he'd expected-at least twenty kilometers across at its
   widest point and winding deep into the mountains. A sharp bend fifteen
   kilometers to the north blocked their vision, and the shallow, rushing
   river down its length gleamed dull pewter under the moon. He adjusted his
   eyes to telescopic vision and felt a shiver of excitement. The shapes
   clumped on either bank of the river at mid-valley were half-buried in
   drifted ages of soil, but they were too regular and vertical to be
   natural.

   "I'm getting those same readings." Harriet swung the hand-held array of
   her passive backpack unit slowly from side to side and frowned. "There's a
   batch of new ones, too. They're lots weaker and more spread out; that's
   probably why we didn't spot them before."

   Sandy turned, directing her own attention down-valley, and nodded.

   "You're right, Harry. Most of what we saw before seems to be clustered in
   those ruins, but I'm getting a line of weak point sources about ten klicks
   to the south. Looks like they run clear across the valley."

   "Yeah." Harriet shaded her eyes with her free hand as if it could help her
   see farther. "And there's another line just like it up there where the
   valley curls back to the west. I'm not too sure I like that. I can't lock
   in well enough to prove it, but they could be passive sensors, and
   those're logical places to put some sort of defensive system."

   "Good point," Sandy agreed.

   "Um." Sean moved a few meters south, peering in the direction of Sandy's
   find, but not even enhanced eyes could pick out any details. The valley
   floor was too heavily covered in scrub trees and tall alpine grasses, and
   moonlight and shadow did funny things to depth perception even in
   low-light mode. He pinched his nose in thought, then turned back to the
   others.

   "Anything right in front of us?" he asked, pointing down the steep-sloped
   valley wall, and his sister shook her head.

   "Not on this side, but that big one's just about opposite us. And I'm
   getting something else from it now. Do you have it, Sandy?"

   "No, I-oh. That's funny." She made painstaking adjustments. "The darn
   thing isn't steady, almost like it's got some sort of intermittent short."
   It was her turn to frown. "See how the beacon power level fluctuates just
   a bit in time with it? Think it's some kind of control system?"

   "If it is, it looks kind of senile. Then again, from the state of the
   ruins this whole place must've been abandoned thousands of years ago."
   Harriet tinkered with her own scanpack, then shrugged. "Let's spread out a
   little and see if we can triangulate on it, Sandy. I'd feel better if I at
   least knew exactly where whatever-it-is is."

   "Suits me." The two of them separated and took very careful bearings, and
   Sandy nodded and pointed across the valley.

   "Okay, I see it . . . sort of," she said, and Sean stood behind her and
   followed the line of her finger until he saw the more solid patch of
   shadows. He couldn't make out much in light-gathering mode, but when he
   switched to infrared things popped into better resolution. Not a lot
   better, but better. The ruins were built out from a bare stone precipice
   and whatever they were made of had different thermal properties from the
   cliff. Small trees sprouted from a thick roof of collected dirt, but the
   vertical walls were clear.

   "Any better ideas about that intermittent source now that you know where
   it is?" he asked, but Sandy shook her head. He glanced at Harriet and
   sighed as he got a shrug of equal mystification. "That's what I was afraid
   of. Well, whatever else this is, it's clearly the leftovers of some
   Imperial site, and I'm not too surprised it's in such lousy shape. In
   fact, if I'm surprised at all it's that anything's live down there. But it
   looks like we have to go on down if we want any more to go on. Any
   objections?"

   There were none, though Harriet looked a bit dubious, and he nodded.

   "Okay, but we'll play this as smart as we can. Let's rope up, Tam, and
   since you're the closest we've got to a Marine, you take point. Sandy, you
   stay up here and play lookout till the rest of us get down. Keep an eye on
   the whole place, but especially on that thing on the far side. Harry, you
   follow Tam with your scanpack, and I'll bring up the rear."

   Tamman nodded and slid out of his pack to extract a two hundred-meter coil
   of synthetic rope. While he and Sean rigged safety harnesses, Harriet and
   Sandy went on trying to analyze their readings without much success. Sean
   wasn't too happy about that, yet there wasn't a lot he could do about it,
   and he waved Tamman over the side.

   Tamman picked his way as carefully as he could, but the hundred-meter
   slope, while less sheer than the bare rock face to the west, was both
   steep and treacherous. The soil was soft and shifting despite a covering
   of grass, and he slipped several times. Harriet had it easier. She was
   taller than he but as slender as her mother; even with her scanpack she
   was much lighter, and she had the advantage of watching where he'd put his
   feet ahead of her.

   Sean should have found the descent easiest of all, despite his height and
   weight, since he was behind both of them and placed to learn by their
   mistakes, but much as he knew he ought to, he couldn't seem to keep his
   mind on where he was going. He kept looking up at the ruins on the far
   side of the valley, and when he wasn't doing that his attention kept
   trying to stray to the ones out in the middle. He knew he should ignore
   them-after all, Sandy was keeping watch on them and he was anchor man for
   the safety rope-but he just couldn't. Which was another reason he'd put
   Tamman in front, where they needed someone who wouldn't let curiosity
   distract him from the task in hand.

   Yet perhaps it was as well he was distracted. It meant he was looking up,
   not at his feet, when Sandy suddenly screamed.

   "Something's coming up over th-!"

   A boulder two meters to Harriet's right exploded, and she cried out in
   pain as a five-kilo lump of stone slammed into her shoulder. It didn't
   break her bio-enhanced skin, but the impact threw her from her feet, and
   that, Sean realized later, was what saved her life. The heavy energy gun
   needed a handful of seconds to reduce the boulder to powder; by the time
   the first energy bolt hit where she'd been standing, she wasn't there
   anymore.

   He dug in his heels instinctively, hurling himself backward to anchor her,
   but the next bolt of gravitonic disruption sliced the rope like a thread.
   Her fall accelerated, and she tumbled downslope, slithering and bouncing.
   She tried frantically to avoid Tamman, clawing for traction as she
   gathered speed, but the loose soil betrayed her and he couldn't get out of
   the way in time. Her careening body cut his feet from under him, sending
   them both crashing downward in a confusion of arms and legs, and more
   bolts of energy came screaming out of the night. Gouts of flying dirt
   erupted all about them as ancient, erratic tracking systems tried to lock
   on them, and only their unpredictable movement and the senility of the
   defenses kept them alive.

   Sean almost fell after them as soil crumbled under his heels, but he
   managed to hold his position, and his grav gun leapt into his hands in
   pure reflex. The scarcely visible energy gun fire was a terrible network
   of fury to his enhanced vision, and a fist squeezed his heart as it
   reached out for his sister and his friend. But he'd been looking in
   exactly the right direction when it started. Whatever was firing on them
   wasn't shooting at him-apparently he was still outside its programmed kill
   zone-but his implants told him where its targeting systems were, and his
   weapon snapped up into firing position without conscious thought.

   It hissed, spitting explosive darts across the valley at fifty-two hundred
   meters per second, and savage flashes lit the dark as they ripped into the
   ruins. Each armor-piercing dart had the power of a half-kilo of TNT, and
   the crackle of their explosions was a single, ripping bellow as ancient
   walls blew outward in a tornado of splinters.

   He held the trigger back, firing desperately and cursing himself for not
   having brought any heavy weapons. Even his implants couldn't "see" well
   enough to target the energy guns; he could only pour in fire and pray he
   hit something vital before their control systems killed Harriet and
   Tamman.

   A fist of pulverized soil slammed the side of his head, and a corner of
   his mind noted that the defenses had finally noticed him, but it was a
   distant thought as his three-hundred round magazine emptied. He ripped a
   fresh one from his belt, then grunted in anguish as the energy bloom of a
   bolt of disruption clawed at him. He rolled desperately to his left and
   managed-somehow-not to plunge downward after the others. Sandy had gotten
   her grav gun into action as well, and the thunder of her fire filled the
   valley as he finished reloading and opened up again. He cursed viciously
   as Harriet and Tamman slithered to a halt, but Tamman had figured out what
   was happening. He wrapped a powerful arm around Harriet and hurled both of
   them back into motion a split second before the automated guns could lock
   on.

   Flames licked at the brush atop the ruined structures as Sean and Sandy
   pounded them, and Sean cried out as an energy bolt blew his backpack
   apart. His nervous system whiplashed in agony, the stunning shock threw
   the grav gun from his hands, and he heard Sandy screaming his name through
   the roar of her fire. He clawed after his weapon with numb, desperate
   fingers, and then an explosion far more violent than any grav gun dart lit
   the valley like a sun at midnight. The ruins vomited skyward as the
   capacitors feeding the energy guns tore themselves apart, and the
   concussion blew Sean MacIntyre into unconsciousness at last.

                                     * * *

   "Sean?" The soft, anxious voice penetrated his darkness, and his eyes slid
   open. He was still on the slope, but his head was in Sandy's lap. He
   blinked groggily, and she smiled and brushed dirt from his face.

   "Are you all right? Are you hurt?"

   "I-" He coughed and broke off, wincing as a fresh wave of pain spun
   through him. His implant sensors had been wide open as he tried to find a
   target, and the corona of the energy bolt had bled through them. His
   nerves were on fire, and he moaned around a surge of nausea, but he was
   alive, and he wouldn't have been without his enhancement. Not after taking
   a shot that close to his heart and lungs.

   "I'm okay," he rasped as his implants recovered and began damping the
   pain. He swallowed bile, then stiffened. "Harry! Harry and Tam! Are
   they-?"

   "They're all right," Sandy soothed, pressing him back as he tried to sit
   up. "The guns never managed to line up on them, and-" a ghost of humor lit
   her face "-at least they got to the bottom faster than they'd expected.
   See?"

   He turned his head, and Harriet waved up at him from the valley floor.
   Tamman wasn't looking in their direction; he was down on one knee, grav
   gun ready as he scanned the valley for any fresh threat. Not, Sean thought
   muzzily, that there was likely to be another. All the ruckus they'd raised
   dealing with the first one should have drawn the attention of anything
   else that was still active, and he relaxed.

   "Thanks. If you hadn't gotten to it in time-"

   "Hush." Sandy's hand covered his mouth, and his eyes smiled up at her as
   she kissed his forehead. "We got to it, and we're all lucky you left me
   behind. Now kindly shut your mouth and let your implants finish
   unscrambling themselves before we hike down after Tam and Harry.
   Hopefully-" her free hand caressed his hair and her lips quirked primly
   "-a bit more sedately than they did." 

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                                                                       Framed