She was not sure if he was making a joke or if he had lost his senses, but the question was rendered moot as the howling down the hall rose to a crescendo that shook the walls. They were upon her before she could brace herself.
The first Ntja to come skittering around the corner was holding his falchion in two hands like a spear, thrusting it at them before he had even cleared the edge. His slobbering lips were pulled back from sharp, glistening teeth, and the small dark eyes gleamed with malice. He only sported a couple of the metallic enhancement domes, smaller than others they had seen. He was a low-status line soldier, incapable of higher-level tactical reasoning.
She allowed the long blade to slide past her, hyper-aware that Justin was on the other side, and then simply dipped one knife into his eye socket with a graceful gesture that saw the thug stumbling forward, dead on his feet. She spun beneath the next slash, hearing it whistling in before she could turn, and rammed the other knife up into the folds of flesh that covered that soldier’s neck. Dark blood sprayed out in a fan and he slumped to the side.
She stayed low, her knees bent in a crouch, and the blades flashed out, slicing upward and gutting the next two to pound around the corner. She stood, but three of the soldiers rushed her at the same time and she was overwhelmed. There was no way they could bring their long swords to bear against her in the tight confines of the hall, but their sheer weight bore her down to the hard deck plating. Shadows flashed above her as others jumped over their tangled pile, and her eyes flared as she realized they were going for Justin.
“Get the Human!” The voice was guttural, muffled by the bodies piled above her, but the words were unmistakable. “Kill him!”
They knew who the real threat was.
Angara screamed in frustrated rage, pushing her knives over and over again into the unyielding flesh that surrounded her. They writhed and pummeled at her, but could do nothing to stop the little blades. Unfortunately, even as she killed them, they slumped down over her, pressing her even more forcefully into the floor.
Somewhere above her she could hear shouts and growls and the dull clang of heavy Ntja falchions against each other. With each sound, her desperation grew, and she pushed herself through the tangle of leather-clad arms and legs, rising at last from the pile of bodies as if she were emerging from some foul ocean.
Justin grinned at her. His shoulders were heaving with his labored breathing, his face and arms were running with black Ntja blood, and he was using his stolen sword as a prop to hold himself up, surrounded by the hacked and mangled bodies of the remaining Council troops.
“You didn’t think I could do it.” It wasn’t a question, but he smiled wider, and she was nearly overcome with the desire to wrap him in her arms.
She forced herself to shrug. “I figured you’d hold your own.”
That got a reaction, and he stood a little straighter, gesturing to the bodies at his feet. “That’s it? I don’t get any credit for all this?”
His eyes had a wild cast to them, and she reminded herself that he was not a warrior. The Human before her had never killed another living being before this day. Given that, it was nearly miraculous that he was holding up as well as he was.
“You were incredible.” She kept the smile off her face, looking into his dark eyes with all the sincerity she could muster. But there was no repressing her instincts completely. “Of course, these were all small ones.”
He was sputtering, his returning smile faltering, when her ear began to itch with a warning of an incoming message. She held up her hand to silence Justin, nodding to the Variyar now moving up past them in the corridor, and listened to the report.
“Sanctum?” She tried to make sense of that. “Why would they go to Sanctum?” It was an old, decrepit ship; the oldest in the city. There was nothing to lend it any sort of strategic value at all.
Unless …
An image of the Alcove and its ancient black wall flashed into her mind; a towering doorway that had never opened to anyone in the history of the city.
No one knew what was behind the wall. Maybe Marcus knew something she did not? At least she knew he had survived the crash.
She turned back to the task at hand. The control center was close, and the resistance was folding. She looked over at Justin, collapsed against the wall behind her. He straightened again as she turned, pretending he had been standing tall all along, and looked around him with a nonchalance that would fool no one.
“Marcus is okay.” She owed him that news before they continued. “I think he’s got an idea.”
Justin’s face lit with relief, but then hardened. “Is he coming back this way? I’d rather not have to try to use the damned necklace if there’s any other option.”
She shook her head. “He’s got another idea, but there’s no telling if it will work, even if he can get through. We need to keep working to get you to the Skorahn, in case he fails, or…”
He looked at her for a moment, but then nodded before she was forced to finish the thought.
“Okay, well, let’s get to it, then.” He jerked his chin down the hall. “Care to take the lead? I don’t feel like I have anything else to prove at the moment.”
She looked at him, and half a dozen possible retorts fought for space on her tongue. But then she looked down at the dead enemies he had stacked on the floor, and she nodded with a slight smile.
“I can do that.”
Around them, the Variyar prepared for the final assault on the control center.
*****
The hatch over his head seemed innocuous considering what could lay on the other side. Marcus looked back at the line of beings following him. The two mystics stood nearest, Khet Nhan eager to continue, Sihn Ve’Yan resigned to whatever lunacy he forced upon them next. The young Thien’ha had turned sullen as they moved. Her dour anger seemed to grow, however, whenever they clashed with Council soldiers.
They had made it to the breached tower by eliminating the small squad of Ntja that had first come to investigate their crash scene. He had never actually seen the enemy, beyond the flashes of energy slashing out from an entranceway to a nearby tower. The Variyar had saturated the shadows beneath the overhang with their own rifle fire, and soon the blasts had slackened off.
Once inside the damaged tower, Marcus had followed his instincts, feeling almost as if he were moving through familiar territory again, although he had never visited this part of the city. They had gone down through the service tunnels, into the vast, echoing space of the empty Concourse. Apparently, Taurani had locked the city down, and once the fighting started, even those few who had been allowed to roam freely had retreated behind whatever safety they could find.
The rail line was as he remembered … or thought it should be. His memories and his expectations were blurring in a confusing way that he did not even try to articulate to the others. They took two of the service cars, which responded quickly to verbal commands, and met only token resistance from two more parties of Ntja.
Sooner than he wanted, the service rail had brought them to the very edge of the Concourse, and they were now standing at the Ring Wall. On the far side was the bronze expanse of the empty plains surrounding Sanctum. In his overflight with Iphini Bha, he had been distracted during their approach and departure, but he was almost certain that they had quite a long walk ahead of them, with no cover at all to hide them from the wary eyes of the Council forces.
He shrugged. There wasn’t much else they could do at this point. They had seen the Ntja shadowing them, and he knew by now the corridors between him and the Red Tower were probably filled with the enemy.
“If we turn back now, we die.” Ve’Yan’s spat the words in a bitter tone. “We don’t have a choice.”
Marcus turned back to the wall before them, stretching over thirty feet up to the roof of the Concourse far overhead. The hatch was similar to the blast doors that protected the control center or the primary docking bay, but there was no heavy security system that h
e could see. He put his hands up against the cool metal, fingers splayed, and bowed his head.
He intended to search for the deep, prayerful center of thought that had allowed him to operate the doors to the docking bay when they were making their escape. But as soon as he closed his eyes he felt a click behind his forehead and the surface beneath his hands gave one quick jerk and then fell away from his hands, rising up and away, into the wall.
The unmistakable shimmer of an energy field buzzed into being over the doorway, and the harshly-lit expanse of burnished bronze stretched out before them.
“We will need to watch for air cover.” The tallest of the Variyar muttered. He kept looking back at the vague figures lurking in the shadows behind them. “They will be in contact with their other forces. They will know where we are, and where we are going.”
Marcus nodded, his eyes fixed on the tiny lump of bronze glittering in the distance. The outer Wall of the Concourse swept away to either side, the tall shapes of the city’s towers rising up behind it in both directions. To the right the Wall diminished into the distance until it ended abruptly, over a mile away, at the precipitous Gulf. To the left, though, the wall stretched away, and then curved forward, encircling the vast empty space, until it reached the Gulf on the far side of Sanctum, tiny in the distance.
There was nowhere to hide out on that plain.
“There’s nowhere to hide in here, Marcus.” Khet Nhan’s voice was soft; it was as if the little creature had read his thoughts. He put a soft paw on Marcus’s shoulder. “If we stay here, this is where our cycle will end.”
Ve’Yan snorted, shaking her head with a violence that surprised him. “As if you have any further care at all for the cycles.” She shoved Marcus’s shoulder and pointed with one long finger out into the glaring light. “If we are going to go, let us go. Let us not dress it up in mystical terms, or pretend we are struggling valiantly in the service of something greater than ourselves.” She glared at Marcus, her face more pale than usual. “If we turn back now, we die.”
He didn’t fully understand her anger, but he nodded. What she said was true.
Glancing back over his little band, he was heartened to see the brawny Variyar ready to follow him out into the stark light. Their horns gleamed, their eyes aglow with the prospect of more violence.
With a nod, he pushed one shoulder through the energy field, felt the plane of the surface pass over his body, and the small field snap into place over his head. Flexing his fingers, he was glad to feel the now-familiar tightness there as well.
Outside on the bronze plain they moved at a brisk trot, the Variyar spreading out before and around him, seeking for targets. No avalanche of blaster shots fell upon them from the top of the Ring Wall behind them, but glancing back he could make out the shapes of Ntja standing there, watching, their weapons held ready across their chests.
“Why aren’t they shooting?” The flesh between his shoulder blades crawled.
“I believe that is a question best left to the dark silence.” The leader of the Variyar muttered. “So long as they are not shooting, the answer can do nothing but discomfit us.”
“Perhaps they know our quest is useless.” Ve’Yan spat.
“Perhaps they do not know enough to fear our quest,” offered Nhan.
Marcus found himself wishing he had a stronger impression one way or the other.
If there was some threat to the Council in his visiting Sanctum, with the amulet locked away in the control center with Taurani, he didn’t know what it was.
*****
The sounds of battle rang down the hall, as if the fighting might round one of the corners before them at any moment. Khuboda Taurani, Ambassador Plenipotentiary of the Galactic Council to the Free City of Penumbra, ran his tongue over the stiff brush of his brill in satisfaction. They had not yet reached the control center.
And now they never would.
He gestured with one arm, enjoying the dramatic sweep of the sleeve as he moved, and a score of Ntja soldiers in the black uniforms of Ochiag’s fleet moved past, holstering their guns and drawing their heavy, clumsy blades. Judging from the clangor down the corridor, the suppression field was in full effect here.
“Ambassador,” an Ntja soldier with extensive enhancement domes pushed through the reserve squads guarding him. The creature sketched a vague salute and stood stiffly, waiting to be recognized.
Taurani’s reputation for strict discipline and decorum had clearly spread to the fleet.
“Yes?” He turned to the newcomer, keeping his glittering eyes down the hall. As soon as he heard from his vanguard, he would be moving out toward the control center, where the Skorahn awaited him with the prospect of a well-deserved distraction in the person of the cowering Iwa’Bantu deputy.
“We have reports from some of the striker teams moving through the city. The Human administrator has broken through the cordon and is making for the center of the city.”
“Former administrator.” He spat the words at the cretin, and was gratified to see the beast cringe at his tone.
Sanctum. Why would Marcus Wells be heading to Sanctum? The barbarian had surprised him at every turn, so he tried not to set too much credence in his initial impulse to dismiss the move as a hopeless ploy. Certainly without the Skorahn there was nothing the Human could do at the old wreck.
And yet, for some reason, the idea twisted at something in the back of his mind.
“Well, at least we’ll know where to find him when we clear things up here.” He shrugged, forcing himself to relax. There was nothing the Human could do without the medallion, no matter where he was. “Tell the striker teams to follow, but not to engage unless he leaves them no choice. When the time comes, I very much intend to be in on the hunt.”
“Yes, Ambassador.” The big soldier nodded and backed away before turning and trotting down the hall.
“Ambassador, the way is clear.” One of the Ntja formed up around him tapped a gleaming bronze hemisphere erupting from the flesh near his ear. “The Variyar are being held several jogs down the corridor. We are cleared through to the control center.”
The rigid lines of Taurani’s face twitched, as if they intended to form a Human smile, and he would almost have been willing to let them, if they could. Everything came down to this moment. K’hzan Modath had revealed himself to be the recidivist traitor everyone in the Council had always known him to be; his clandestine fleet had been revealed at last, and when Penumbra was awakened against him, he would be crushed between the city’s defenses and Ochiag’s Peacemaker fleet.
His long strides took him past the point guards and to the control center. The scars from the escape of the Humans and their allies were still dark around the blast doors and along the walls of the corridor. He almost told one of the following soldiers to make a note to have the mess cleared up, but then his spirits lifted even higher as he realized that he would soon be gone, with no further need to suffer the ugliness. As soon as he took care of Marcus Wells and his people, Taurani intended to leave this benighted backwater behind and return to the Council for his reward.
As he moved to enter the control center he met an Ntja soldier coming out. It was dressed in the brown uniform of the diplomatic guard, a puzzled look on its animal face.
“What?” He barked, trying to ignore the cold grip on the back of his neck.
The soldier cocked its head at his tone or his word, looking blankly at him through its rheumy little eyes, but said nothing.
With a snarl, Taurani pushed past the big oaf and into the beating heart of Penumbra. The bodies had been removed, the mess cleaned up as best the soldiers were able. All was silent at the moment, as the battle was being controlled from advanced command nodes throughout the city, and, until it had followed the Variyar fleet, from Ochiag’s command ship overhead.
The light was dim, the viewing fields of the various stations humming and glowing with a neutral gray. A bar of only slightly brighter light was falling out of the ad
ministrator’s office, where the security door was open, and the privacy door ajar.
With a sinking feeling Taurani moved toward the door. Iphini Bha should have been at the door, cringing and groveling for his amusement, holding the Skorahn up in shaking hands.
The cold had risen up and over the crown of his head. He rushed the last few steps and threw the door open, a savage curse for Bha in his throat.
A curse that died, its ghost escaping as a whisper, as he surveyed the room.
The towering, purple-furred form of his body servant Iranse lay stretched out on the floor. His face bore a vague expression of surprise, somehow also conveying mild annoyance. But he stared up at the low ceiling with a single dull, unmoving eye. His other eye was a red ruin, the butt of an ancient stylus standing proud of the wet, wrinkled flesh as pale blood traced a gentle stream from the corner of the eye, matting the fur there, and flowed to the small puddle gathering beneath his head.
The paintings on the wall were jagged, filled with angry reds and yellows, but they were sinking as he watched, a dark blue, almost black shadow seeping up through them, drowning out the brighter colors. He paid the art no mind and scanned the room for the sake of form. He already knew what he would find.
Of Iphini Bha and the Skorahn there was no sign.
Chapter 26
The material was dead and cold against his forehead. Unyielding beneath his desperately probing fingers, there was nothing but the heavy, leaden blackness. No sensation of energy stirred within. No sense of purpose or awareness touched his mind through the contact. The massive black wall was cold, solid, and dead.
They had crossed the bronze plains without incident. The towering Ring Wall of the Concourse surrounded them like the bowl of a massive arena. Council forces had shadowed them, watching from the top of the Wall and following in their wake, but keeping their distance, not engaging them as they ran desperately for the derelict space ship in the center of the flat void.
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