Urisel started to reply and got to his feet. I ducked into cover and then moved away down the hall. Eyclone's code opened the door at the end and I crept through into a wide, circular vault. Two more hatches of regular pattern led off to either side. Ahead of me was a larger archway protected by a force screen instead of a door.
I backed into hiding alongside this opening as someone cancelled the force screen from inside. A figure stepped out, turning to raise the screen again. It was Kowitz.
I took him from behind, an arm locked around his throat to silence him, another hand pinning his right arm. He gurgled and struggled. I twisted him round and slammed his head against the doorframe.
Kowitz went limp. I dragged him in through the open force-portal. A control on the inner wall raised the screen again.
The chamber was long with a low ceiling. The climate-controlled air was dry. I realised it was a chapel of sorts, a stone-floored, rectangular nave leading to a shape that seemed to me an altar. The room was otherwise
bare of features, even seats or pews. Light glowed from recessed lamps in the roof. Leaving Kowitz on the floor, I strode down the length of the chapel and took a closer look at the altar.
It was two metres high, black, fashioned from a single piece of obsidian. The glassy stone seemed to glow with an internal light. On top of it was a jewelled prayer box about thirty centimetres square. I lifted the lid carefully with the blade of my knife-tool. In a bed of velvet lay an intricate sphere. It looked like a jagged lump of quartz, the size of a clenched fist, inlaid with gold circuits and complex woven wires, like an oversized uncut gemstone in a bizarre, ornate setting.
I spun around at a sound from behind me.
Kowitz, blood dripping from his dented forehead, stood pointing a laspistol at me. His face was pale, angry, confused.
'Step away from the Pontius, scum/ he said.
ELEVEN
Revelations. The noble sport. Pacification 505.
This was no place to be trapped. I dug into my reserves of concentration, and without any physical movement, struck him clean between the eyes.
A psychic goad like that, especially at close range and with a clear line of sight, should have felled him like a force hammer. Kowitz didn't even blink.
'Don't make me repeat myself,' he said, raising the weapon so it pointed at my head.
The room was psychically shielded, it had to be. Either that or something was leeching psychic energies out of the very air.
There's been a misunderstanding, Kowitz,' I said. 'I went for a walk and must have taken a wrong turn.'
It was pretty lame, but I wanted to keep his responses engaged and his mind busy.
'I don't think so/ he hissed. He was groping behind himself with his free hand, trying to find the control panel for the entrance. There was an alarm stud on it.
I waited. At any second, he was going to glance round involuntarily to help his fumbling.
When the gesture came, I threw myself forward and down, pulling my autopistol.
He looked back with a cry and fired, but his aim was too high and the shot flared off the end wall.
From a prone stance, I punched two shots through his left collar bone, and threw him back against the force door, which crackled at the impact.
Kowitz collapsed face down on the floor and blood began to pool around him.
I reached the door control. An amber rune was flashing. The bastard had managed to press something. I hit the force door deactivator.
Nothing.
I punched 'daesumnor' into the key pad.
Nothing.
I realised I was in deep trouble.
I guessed that Kowitz had hit an alarm that locked everything out. That was what prevented me from opening the door.
Urisel Glaw and several of his house militia appeared outside the shimmering force door. I could see them peering in and shouting.
I backed from the doorway and snatched up Kowitz's laspistol. When the door opened, I would use both guns to take down anything that tried to get in.
Then something psychic, dark and monstrously powerful rushed into my mind from somewhere behind me and I blacked out.
