The Stolen Future Box Set

by Brian K. Lowe

  “Unstable,” I mused. “Yes, that about sums it up.”

  “They needed you, all of them. Why do you think the Utopians’ technology surpasses the Nuum? The Nuum have hardly had an original thought since they landed here.”

  “All right, I can see what you are saying. The Utopians’ technology comes from what the Thorans had when the Nuum landed. Before that, the Thorans were highly advanced. I can see where I might have helped them.”

  “Can you? As you said, the Thorans were well-equipped technologically when the Nuum arrived. You have seen their weapons, and they outnumbered the invaders by orders of magnitude.”

  “So why did they lose?” I steepled my fingers as I thought. “Were the Nuum right all along? Did the Thorans just roll over?”

  “I was there when it happened, of course. History did unfold the way Lady Maire was taught, although the story has been edited. Three hundred years ago, the Thorans had the wherewithal to fight off the Nuum, but they had gotten lazy. They had lost any interest in exploration or travel, and most of their interest in each other. They were selfish and fragmented. Does this sound familiar to you?”

  It did, and now history was about to repeat itself, as the Nuum returned again.

  “Charles,” the Librarian said, his tone shifting abruptly, “please do not be alarmed. We are being telepathically scanned.”

  Ahead of us I saw a sleek silvery aircraft about our own size flash by the window, then another. After a moment they sped off.

  “What the hell was that?” I demanded.

  “Sensors indicate that they detached from the main body of ships heading due south some one hundred-ten miles to the west of us.”

  “What body of ships? Show me!”

  A holo-display sprang to life in the cabin showing what could only be called a fleet of airships, of a design I had never seen. Three were capital ships. Unlike the spherical Procyon, they were wide, with raised gull-wings on either side. Obviously warships, their very lines proclaimed them predators. A cloud of zipping bees surrounded them, like fighters escorting a bombing run.

  “Do you recognize them?”

  “I do not.” If the Librarian had had glasses, he would have removed them for cleaning. “They do not share the characteristics of the Returners’ ships, if that is what you are thinking. Fortunately, since they were conducted telepathic scans only, they did not detect anyone on board. They must have dismissed us as a drone.”

  A lucky break for us, then. But who were they? Where were they going? And what was their mission?

  Chapter 57

  Mile-high Death

  Maire

  Lobok straightened at the last possible second, and I struck him just below the waist. The impact nearly threw us both off the side of the ship. I held on to whatever limbs or clothing I could, but while his boots held, but his legs did not. I clearly heard something snap. He screamed in my ear as I hugged him for dear life.

  We were both hanging almost upside-down, our lives dependent on his magnetic boots. I had hit him in the side, and he was trying to bat me away, but he couldn’t get an angle. He tried to move his feet, but he screamed again from the pain of his injured leg. He cursed me furiously and caught me with an elbow hard in the ribs. I gasped but wouldn’t let go.

  Now that I had stopped him from gaining the hatch, what was I to do? If I let him go, I’d fall eight thousand feet, but with him struggling like a wounded breen, not letting go was all I could do. I wrapped a leg around one of his, hoping it was the uninjured one, because I needed the anchor and a broken leg wasn’t going to be much help.

  With my grip more secure, I forced myself to let go with one arm and tried to circle it around his neck. He’d gone all turtle on me again, and I couldn’t get under his chin. Feeling my vulnerability, he redoubled his efforts to throw me off. Had he possessed two good legs, he could have released one of his boots and used it to kick me, but he didn’t. He tried anyway, and for a second, he lost his concentration from the pain. I slipped my arm around his throat and applied all the pressure I could, praying it would be enough. Even without an arm around my own throat, I was seeing stars from the lack of oxygen.

  Sooner than I expected, he went limp. Fearing a trap, I kept up the pressure, until suddenly I realized his thoughts had ceased. It wasn’t a matter of him shielding them from me; they were gone. He was dead.

  I took a few moments to collect myself, breathing as deeply as I could, waiting for my thundering heart to calm just a little. As frightening as it was, I now saw that stopping Lobok had been the easy part. I was hanging a mile and a half in the air, attached to my ship by nothing but a pair of magnetic boots—which were connected to the opposite end of a dead body.

  With my leg wrapped around his thigh, I couldn’t bend backward to gain a handhold. A wash of cold fear covered me. The only way to get back inside was to climb over Lobok’s body, which meant I had to turn around—and the only way to do that was to unhook my leg and support all of my weight with my hands. If my grip shifted, if he fell out of his boots…

  There was no help for it. As carefully as if I were crawling through a nest of cave spiders, I unwrapped my leg—and the sudden shift pulled me down. I was holding on by nothing but his tunic. I dug in with my fingernails—and the fabric held.

  Suddenly Lobok’s greater size was a blessing. I found his armpit with my foot, and it supplied just enough of a hold to steady me as I forced one hand after the other to let go and grab higher. I grimaced as I reached his inverted crotch, but it was the best handhold I had. I pulled myself upward until I could use that as a foothold and I was hugging his right leg with both arms.

  I took time to breathe as I anticipated my next move. And I had thought the hard part was over…

  Gingerly, I reached up and detached the bindings on the mag boot on Lobok’s left leg, the broken one. His foot slithered out, and our combined weight pulled on the remaining boot, but it stayed put. Slowly, I brought my own left leg around until I could insert it in the boot, which latched automatically. I was attached to the ship again!

  I used that boot as leverage to reach the railing alongside the hatch, and my fingers wrapped around it in a death grip. With my free hand, I loosened Lobok’s remaining boot, and his body fell, down and away, spinning off into the void. I didn’t watch; I got my other foot into that damned boot as fast as I could.

  Lobok was dead. I was alive. The men and women on the Celestial had been avenged. My fight was over.

  And then I saw the strange fleet bearing down on the Procyon.

  Chapter 58

  The Final Showdown

  “Farren has managed to increase his speed,” the Librarian reported. “At this rate, he may elude us until he enters Xattaña.”

  “How did he do that?” I demanded.

  “Your feelings may be coloring your judgment, Charles. Lord Farren is an excellent pilot, as well as an accomplished engineer.”

  “You never told me that!”

  The Librarian was undisturbed. “I am a library. You should have asked me.”

  As rewarding as it would have been to fume at him, I had to postpone the pleasure. If Farren reached Xattaña, it would require the Procyon to retrieve him—and that at an unknowable cost of lives.

  “Can we increase our own speed?”

  “I can pilot this ship, Charles. I am not programmed to build one.” A small red light began to blink on the main control board. “If you direct me, however, I can employ its weapons systems.”

  “Target Farren’s ship and fire,” I ordered immediately. “Destroy it if you have to, but I would prefer to disable him.”

  Twin streaks of light shot from our underside, streaking toward Farren’s ship.

  “I think I can guarantee you, Keryl, that at this distance, disabling Lord Farren’s craft is the best we can hope for.”

  As far as I could read our sensors, the shuttle was flying on without pause.

  “Keep firing. Continuous fire until we damage him o
r he reaches the city.”

  Farren was using evasive maneuvers now, and even I could see that his piloting was inspired—but every swerve, every roll, slowed him down, and we were closing the gap rapidly. Suddenly the sensor screen showed blipped red where his ship was, and out the viewport we were close enough that I could see it rocking.

  “We hit him!”

  “He is losing altitude. He is attempting a controlled crash landing on the plains west of the city.”

  “Bring us in behind him.” My order was unnecessary; the Librarian had anticipated my need.

  “This being a warship, Charles, I would extrapolate that it may carry personal weapons,” he said, and I knew that he had been right earlier; I was letting my excitement at finally coming to grips with Farren interfere with clear tactical thinking. I spun in my chair, trying various cabinets built into the wall, and was quickly rewarded with a brace of pistols of the Nuum variety.

  To call Farren’s a “crash landing” would be to deny the man the credit I reluctantly admitted he deserved. He came down almost to the ground on the other side of the river, then skipped across the water like a stone, dropping velocity as he went. I am no pilot myself, but I could only believe that, given the shocks and jolts of such a ride, his managing to maintain control of his craft was no less than magnificent. Had he flown in my war, he would have given von Richthofen himself pause.

  He came to a long skidding landing, digging a huge furrow in the alluvial dirt and throwing up a cloud of dust several stories high. Had anyone in Xattaña not already known of his arrival, they could not fail to have noticed it now. Someone would soon be coming to investigate, if not rescue him.

  “Set us down a hundred yards ahead of him,” I instructed, while I made sure my pistols were advantageously placed.

  “Charles, I am constrained from making any violent moves toward a human being without a direct command, but it is perfectly within my parameters to remind you that, now that Lord Farren has landed, you would be much safer in subduing him from inside this vessel. He could be rendered quite amenable to apprehension without any risk to you.”

  I thought of how Farren’s piloting skills had reminded me of the air aces of the Great War, and how they had been known to salute each other’s skill prior to engaging in battle. I thought of how when the next war came, that would be considered an anomaly of the chivalric past.

  “Just follow my instructions.” I stood by the hatchway while the Librarian landed us without a bump. I pressed the release and stepped out onto the plain.

  A breeze was springing up from the direction of the river, a product of the waning afternoon. My airship and I cast long shadows; a hundred yards away, I could see the shadow of Farren’s ship, and as he stepped away from it, his own. Apart from the creaking of cooling metal and the wind brushing past my ears, there was little sound. So alone were we that even at that distance, I had no trouble hearing his telepathic hail.

  “I almost made it!” He was walking toward me, slowly. As far as I could see, his hands were empty. I moved to close the gap.

  “It would have done you no good. We would have dragged you out eventually.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe the Crystallen would have stopped you.”

  I stopped a moment. “The Crystallen?” We were now perhaps fifty yards apart, close enough that I could see his wry smile.

  “That was their fleet that you passed. Had I known they were there, I would have joined them, but by the time I saw them, you were moving to intercept me, and I couldn’t take the chance you might try something brave but stupid. I know you, Clee, and you have a habit of succeeding where better men would fail.” If he was waiting for me to rise to his bait, he was disappointed. “But then I thought they’d stop you themselves. Why didn’t they?”

  It was my turn to smile. “They call me the Ghost, remember?” And I left it at that. “So you were working with Res Tofan and the Crystallen? I am surprised you did not try to recruit the klurath, as well.”

  His laughter was muffled by the breeze and the distance. “Had I known they existed, I would have! But you sealed off that possibility. The best I could do was try to keep them occupied.”

  As if by agreement, we started walking toward each other again.

  “I wanted to congratulate you on your flying. That was an excellent landing. I had no idea you were such a good pilot.”

  “Thank you. So Maire never told you that about me? I would have thought I was your favorite topic of conversation.”

  His mention of her name made me wince. I knew I had done the right thing in allowing her to pursue Lobok—the only thing—but until I knew she was safe the guilt would consume me.

  “Oh!” he said. “Was that a frown? Is there trouble between you? Or—has something happened?” He sounded quite giddy at the thought.

  “Nothing has happened. I left her with your friend Lobok. I expect he must be dead by now.”

  “Hm. Well, whichever way it goes, no loss.” We stood only ten yards distant now, still empty-handed. “So now what?”

  I produced one of my pistols. “Put down your weapon, and I will, too.”

  He blinked, tilted his head, then reached into a pocket and pulled out a pistol, the mate to mine. He knelt down and left it on the ground.

  I mimicked him, but when I rose I had my second pistol trained on him. “Now the other one.”

  Grinning openly, he laid his second pistol near the first, and I followed suit. I detached my stave, bringing it about to use in its sword configuration, and waited while he did likewise.

  “You know I’m better than you.”

  I shrugged. “I seem to recall it was a draw.”

  “You don’t have an army of breen to back you up this time.” He made a show of peering toward the still-open hatchway of my distant ship. “Do you?”

  By way of answer, I charged.

  It is one of my personal rules of war that defense is easier than offense, and that letting your opponent commit to a line of attack compels him to follow that line wherever it leads. But my experiences with Vanu’A had also taught me how to fight a telepath, and I was confident that they all learned to anticipate their foes’ strategies from their thoughts, if not as well as she. Since my attack could not be anticipated, it was an edge I was eager to exploit.

  I feinted and lunged, but he parried, and nearly skewered me on the return. I danced backward. Damn my over-confidence! There were more ways than telepathy to read an attack, and now I had tipped my hand and given him the advantage. I might read his mind in turn, but I had never trained to do so, and his shields were obdurate in any case. This was to be a match as in the days of the Ancients—and if Farren were as good a swordsman as he was a pilot, he might live to walk through the gates of Xattaña today.

  It was soon obvious, however, that my greater reach compensated for his skill. He would have to get inside to inflict a serious wound, and should we ever close, I could overwhelm him by sheer weight. If we were reduced to fighting mano-a-mano, Farren would not last a minute.

  His blade slithered around my guard and he pinked me high on the arm. We both jumped back—and then kept stumbling. The ground beneath our feet was trembling like an earthquake, but it went on and on, and suddenly I realized that there was a rhythmic pattern like a huge drum, boom-boom, boom-boom boom-boom…

  And that was when I saw that the sun had almost set.

  Farren saw it too. “They’ve let the monsters loose!”

  They had. Up from the river they were rushing, running, rolling, oozing, hopping… And yet, there was more…

  “There are more coming from the city!” I cried, and my heart sank as I made out their terrifying shapes: thunder lizards. What hideous duels they might have been planning I could not contemplate, but the leaders of Xattaña had thrown their entire colossal arsenal into one huge Olympiad of horrors.

  And we were caught in the middle.

  Chapter 59

  Battle of the Monsters

  “G
et to the ship!” I shouted, and started running without waiting to see what he might do. But my ship was fifty yards away, six or seven seconds at best, and our pursuers had no intention of allowing us that time. A titanic flightless bird, larger than a Zilbiri giva, seemed to sense my purpose and sprinted ahead of me, planting itself between me and the tauntingly-open hatchway. Its screech was an ear-splitting cry that was partly noise, partly telepathic, and completely obstructive to my attempts to direct the Librarian to engage weapons systems. It charged me, and I dodged, but I was quickly running out of places to go.

  There was a shout behind me. Farren was dancing about trying to avoid being crushed by some kind of wooly mammoth with straight tusks. How the Xattañans had designed such creatures that were as home on land as hidden in the depths of the river, I had no idea, but they did, and more were coming.

  Which gave me an idea.

  I ran up to the mammoth, waving my arms and screaming until it turned its attention to me, then I dashed behind it, hoping that Farren would follow my lead, for I would not willingly leave any human being to such a fate as this. The mammoth began to turn to follow, and then the thunder lizards screamed.

  It was as though the air itself had been slashed open. I had had no time to count, but there must have been a dozen of the beasts, running in a herd that would send fear down the spine of the greatest animals that ever lived. The attention of every creature that had left the river was riveted on them. We were totally forgotten. In a war of giants, pygmies could only scurry and hide.

  I was astonished to find Farren beside me, puffing from his flight.

  “If we can keep out of their way, we might be able to get out of here,” I said.

  “Good idea, siccing them on each other,” he replied. “I might live through this yet.” And then he stabbed me.