At the center of the formation, striding onto the flight deck as if he owned it, K’hzan Modath towered over his own, gargantuan sentinels. With a crimson cloak billowing out behind him, the exiled Variyar ruler paid the crowd no heed, moving at his own pace as the warriors around him kept their stations.
The stately group moved through the crowd toward the massive blast doors, and Angara looked to either side to watch the Humans’ reaction. Given how much militaristic pomp and ceremony existed on Earth, they could hardly be surprised by the parade-like atmosphere of the event. However, with the Variyar’s red skin, gnarled, impassive faces, and twisting tangle of ebon horns sprouting from their skulls, they could not fail to impress.
She knew less about Human mythology than she knew about Variyar history, but she knew about the fabled creatures the Humans called demons; she could even guess at the origin of the image, lost even to galactic scholars in the mists of a bygone age. And she saw, by the widening of their eyes and their open-mouthed incredulity, that the appearance of the Variyar had, indeed, struck a chord.
“What the—” Justin Shaw started, but his voice faded into silence, his arms flopping foolishly by his side.
“Holy shit …” Marcus, despite his pale flesh, looked very much like his friend in that moment. “What the hell are they?”
Angara made no attempt to repress her smile at their reaction. “They are the Variyar; militaristic atavists from the refuse pile of galactic history.” She leaned forward to whisper in both their ears. “They really don’t like Humans.”
She had kept her eyes on the king and his entourage as she spoke, and so was looking directly at K’hzan as she said the word ‘Humans’. There was no pause in his gait as he swept toward the distant ship, but his head swiveled the moment she finished the word, and his dark, cold eyes pierced the distance that separated them. He was staring straight at her, their eyes locked as if the vast space between them did not exist.
She went cold as she saw his eyes flick to the two figures beside her. There was no expression for her to read on that gnarled, implacable face. But a flickering of something she interpreted as recognition occurred as he looked at the two hooded figures, and her chill grew stronger.
“We need to leave now.” She pulled on their shoulders again, pulling them back toward the far corner and the service corridor beyond. She could feel K’hzan’s eyes boring into her back, could imagine him growling an order to his guards, and had no trouble envisioning what would happen next. The tension across her shoulders was unbearable as she pushed the Humans to move faster.
When the cry rose up behind her, she stumbled. There was no way the Humans could outrun the Variyar, but she had to try. She refused to give up, this close to her destination. She gathered her strength, shoved with all her might, and surged forward, eyes focused on the small, distant door.
But once again she was struggling against a surging crowd, and quickly she realized that she had misread the situation. She stopped pushing, ignoring the relieved expressions on the Humans’ faces, and turned to see what was happening behind her. Her eyes narrowed at the unfolding scene, and she started to push Marcus and Justin backward, once more heading toward the door, away from the procession.
A small group of black-skinned Humanoids had thrown off concealing cloaks and hoods and were brandishing heavy rifles at the tall red honor guard.
She snarled. Mnymians. Most Mnymians made a living as mercenaries, guarding against common criminals and those who most openly flouted Council law. They were also, coincidentally, the mercenaries of choice for the Council itself, when they chose to act outside their own supposed dictates.
The Mnymians, their red hair gleaming under the bright bay lights, were shouting something she could not make out.
She closed her eyes and accessed the communications network, plunging through the levels of security to slam into Iphini Bha’s implants.
“Bha! Trouble in the main bay! Mnymians are making a run for Modath!” She tried to push a sense of urgency into her thoughts.
“I see it.” Bha’s thoughts were icy calm. “I will try to get some Leemuks headed in that direction, but I do not think it will matter.”
That was probably true, now that she thought about it. Angara looked back up at the scene unfolding before her. This was not the first time someone had tried to assassinate K’hzan Modath. In fact, it was considered a premium contract few mercenaries would pick up given the results of past attempts.
But how had they gotten this close? They were dressed to appear as common dock workers, which would mean that …
A tall, four-armed overseer glanced over his bulging shoulder at the confrontation, scanned the crowd, and then pushed on through a distant access door. Angara’s eyes narrowed, but a sharp report dragged her attention back to the unfolding scene.
One of the Mnymians, growing tired of the shouted threats, shouldered his weapon and fired. There was a jade-green flare of plasma light, and the bolt slashed out at the Variyar. Once such power was unleashed, there was very little hope. No portable field would stand against a plasma blast. One of the guards leapt up, intercepting the shot with his own body. There was a dull cracking sound as the armor absorbed some of the energy, and then the guard was flying silently through the air, over a crouching K’hzan, to tumble bonelessly into a dark heap, streamers of steam rising gracefully up into the recyclers.
The fool. The Mnymians were immediately marked as strangers to Penumbra. Anyone even moderately conversant with the city’s inherent defensive systems knew what would happen next. And why the Variyar honor guard carried those long-handled copper blades instead of missile weapons.
She felt her ears pop before the tell-tale tingle across her skin let her know the suppression field had collapsed down over the entire room. The winking indicator lights along the barrels of the assassins’ weapons dulled, and the Variyar moved toward them, hefting their polearms with eager looks on their demonic faces.
The Mnymians were game enough, though. They threw their rifles aside after a few failed shots, and each drew long, flexible stringblades that began to whir through the air, filling the chamber with an unpleasant buzzing sound. The crowd surged back, not wanting to be quite that close to the sudden eruption of violence, and the red king’s guards started to move more cautiously forward.
“No!” The word erupted across the deck like a thunderclap, and even the advancing guards crouched in place, one looking back for confirmation.
K’hzan Modath leapt over the line of bodyguards, his own polearm glittering, his cloak flaring out behind him, and landed before the assassins in a calm, relaxed pose. His harsh features twisted into a contemptuous sneer, and he spat something she could not hear at the creatures who had dared to attack him.
At some signal she had missed, the Mnymians made their move, leaping at the towering red-skinned giant as one.
The long axe swept around with a hellish whistle, and two of the attackers staggered back, hands to faces as their blood sprayed across the deck plates.
There was no mistaking the cruel smile that crossed K’hzan’s crimson features.
“Alright, we need to go.” She turned around, her back stiff, and pushed the Humans away from the spectacle. “I have seen this before. The last few will be dead before we even reach the wall.”
Marcus and Justin resisted, but she applied some judicious pressure at the base of their necks and they surrendered, wincing at the discomfort. Behind them, a cry rose up from the mob. A more bloodthirsty sound than she was used to hearing outside of the fighting pits.
She looked over her shoulder to see what the Variyar were doing, but the king had disappeared through the blast doors, taking his guardians with him. The bodies of the Mnymian mercenaries were lying where he had left them, bleeding out onto the floor. It would make a nice mess for the Leemuks to clean up when they finally arrived, but then, that was just about the most one could hope to get out of them in a crisis like this, anyway. The blast
doors were sliding closed, hiding the shuttle from view.
Her relief at K’hzan’s exit was short lived, however, as she turned back to see the security lock on the access door had been engaged. A small light flashed on the panel in the doorframe. They were not going to be able to escape this way. She looked back at the teeming crowd; she did not relish the idea of forcing their way through that mob toward the main access doors into the Concourse.
While she was distracted, her two charges continued to head for the door, unaware of the significance of the winking lights. She sighed, rolling her eyes, and reached out for their shoulders.
And the door slid opened.
Angara blinked. The indicator light had shifted to the steady unlocked signal. Reaching the doorway, the Humans stopped and turned to her, hesitant to enter. The hall beyond was a maintenance corridor, with minimal lighting and no extraneous features. Currently, the lights were all dimmed to standby levels. She had never seen corridor lights do that with an open door.
She looked to either side, and then back out into the docking bay. The crowd was dispersing, many of them milling closer. Moving swiftly, she pushed both of the Humans into the corridor, willing to deal with the illumination issues once they were away from the port.
She had turned to close the door behind them when the lights along the corridor snapped into bright life. She spun around, staring at the Humans, but they were wandering aimlessly, gaping around them. Neither would have recognized the auxiliary controls even if they had been near them.
Only their section of corridor was illuminated, which was strange as well. Something was very peculiar here, and she looked at the Humans through narrowed eyes. She would rather not have to deal with eccentric systems while nursemaiding two creatures like this through the chaos.
“Well, we have got some light, and a few minutes’ respite, anyway.” She took a deep breath. The corridor’s strange behavior did not appear life-threatening, so she put it aside for the time being. “We can take these halls up through most of the tower before we have to risk the public access ways for the last leg.”
She looked them over to check their appearance and saw the ungainly lump the dark-skinned Human was trying to hide beneath his robes. Her lips tightened in further annoyance.
“Why?” The sour note of her voice was not lost on Justin Shaw.
He avoided her glare and produced the small duffle bag he had been carrying since rescuing it from his wrecked vehicle. It was innocuous enough, although the logos on its side would be unfamiliar to most galactics, and all too familiar to the kind of galactics they were trying to avoid.
“Why?” She said again, folding her arms, her hip cocked to one side in a pose she knew would translate.
The man shrugged, again with that insufferable grin. “Just some stuff from home I’d rather not do without, is all.”
She made no effort to hide her annoyance. The sooner she could get them both to the control center, the sooner Bha could take them off her hands for a while. She needed to get to work convincing some poor being to take Uduta Virri’s place.
“Come along. We need to get you to the control center before you convince me this is a hopeless cause.” She turned to move down the hall, almost not caring if they followed.
But they did. Marcus a bit behind his friend, looking at the open ductwork, wiring, conduits, and cables all strapped to the framework of the walls. He reached out toward an ancillary panel of lights and screens, dark and dead, and nearly jumped out of his robe when the panel came to life.
Angara whirled as a connection tone sounded in the muffled hallway, and her eyes widened in horror as she saw the panel bathing the Human’s surprised features in a blue glow.
“This is the control center, who is this? How did you make this connection?” She did not recognize the voice, but it had to be one of Bha’s workers.
Marcus’s head whipped to look at Justin, then to Angara, then back to the panel. His mouth worked as if he was going to try to respond, and she rushed forward to slap one dark hand over his face.
“Who is this?” The voice sounded annoyed. There was the sound of shuffling and muted speech, and then a new voice.
“If you do not identify yourself, we will dispatch a security team to your location.”
It was Iphini Bha. Angara could tell from her tone that the woman was on edge. She was up there somewhere, with no idea what she was waiting for, and was in no mood for unauthorized communications from supposedly dormant service panels.
“Very well,” her voice was sharper. Someone who did not know her might have been nervous. Angara just felt sorry for the Iwa’Bantu woman. “I will be dispatching a team to your location immediately.”
The panel went dark, and Marcus jumped back. He looked up at Angara, worry on his face. “Are we in trouble?”
She controlled her reaction, annoyed with herself for even being amused. “No more than we already were.” She gestured to the panel. “Bha will not be able to get a team down here for a while. She probably will not send one down at all. We do not have that many, and they have got more important things to do than track down an errant connection, especially with that mess behind us.” She paused, cocking her head, and then smiled. “But if a giant pale-green monster with wide-set eyes and a mouth like a toothed open sore shows up, run in the other direction.”
She gestured for them to continue. They both paused, looking at each other with concern, and then allowed themselves to be ushered forward again. Occasionally, a panel would come to life as they approached, but no more calls came through, and she made sure the Humans stayed clear. The panels dimmed as they passed, and they continued on their way.
The lights overhead continued to act strangely, and something started to niggle at the back of Angara’s mind. When they approached the end of a lighted section, the next section down would brighten. As they entered the new segment, the lights in the previous one would dim. This happened several times, Angara growing more and more suspicious, until finally she stopped. There were no systems that behaved this way in the city. The Relic Core produced more than enough energy, and every corridor, when active, was lit all the way down its length. This patch of light, following them like an eager pet, was unsettling.
“Marcus Wells, stay here.” She put a hand on his chest to stop Marcus from moving. “Please allow Justin Shaw and myself to continue a few paces?”
A look of panic that would have been comical if she had not already been so frustrated, crossed the pale Human’s face. “What? Why?”
She shook her head. “I would just like to test a theory. I assure you, nothing untoward will happen to you.”
He shrugged, and before he could voice further objections, she reached out and grabbed his companion, dragging Justin into the next, darkened segment.
That darkness did not recede as they approached, and soon they were walking into the gloom of meager utility lighting. When they were well into the powered-down section she stopped Justin and turned back. Marcus was standing in a pool of light that had not advanced without him.
Angara’s eyes narrowed again, deeper suspicions beginning to stir.
She called for Marcus and the man jogged up to them. As he reached their murky position, the lights flared to life, fading away in the segment he had just left. She shook her head and moved off, the light following them as they went.
At the end of the service corridor they came to a ladder rising into a round tube set into the ceiling. She turned to the Humans.
“There are many places in the city where the gravity fields of various towers and other components meet.” She pointed up at the ladder. “This is one such place. This particular interface is designed for bipeds and similarly-constructed sentients.” She began to climb, and then turned to look down at them. “Do not get disoriented as you reach the center of the tube. The gravity will shift slowly as you continue, until you emerge in the new field, oriented correctly.”
She could hear them speaking tog
ether as she climbed.
“That doesn’t make a lot of sense.” Marcus muttered. “Not a very fast way to travel.”
“There’s probably faster ways, for cargo, emergencies, things like that.” She could hear the shrug in Justin’s voice. “I get the feeling they’ve been doing this for a while. I’d say we leave them to it.”
Marcus grunted in response, and then started up the ladder.
The narrow tube enclosed her, and she climbed up, moving with the assurance of long practice. As the definitions of up and down shifted gently around her, up became sideways, and she adjusted without thought, following the narrow confines of the passage. Soon she rose up into a wide corridor illuminated in a red-tinged light. The hall was completely unadorned; typical Variyar ship architecture. The Humans emerged behind her and the three of them stood for a moment, catching their breath.
“Not the most inviting place I’ve ever been in.” Marcus looked around, his hands clasped together within the long sleeves of his robes. The hood was falling down from over his face and she reached out to snap it back into place with an exasperated tug. He looked at her, brows lowered, but left the hood where it was.
“Looks a bit like a bunker.” Justin reached out and brushed one metal wall with his hand. His hood, too, was slipping off his bald head. But she knew that would be less of an issue, so left it as it was.
“Not surprising. It was a Variyar warship a long, long time ago.” She jerked her chin down the hall, and they turned to see that it contained angular jogs as it stretched away from them, each corner heavy with reinforcement. Then she gestured with a thumb at the overhead lights. “You can tell from the corridors, and the lighting. It’s meant to replicate the illumination from Variya’s sun.”
She led them off, whispering for them to keep their heads down. Occasionally, they passed people moving along, heads down, attending to their own business. None of them paid undue attention to the two robed figures pacing at her side.
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