by Simon Kewin
With a roar, the blank-masks surged forwards, a number of the Templers falling and being trampled underfoot. It looked like the rebels would be able to take the stairs, but then a phalanx of City Guards charged in from one side, wielding their powered-up batons. The screams from the blank-masks rang out clearly as the guards beat them to the ground. Selene witnessed more than one blank-mask twitching in the dirt, control of their muscles lost, blooms of urine soaking through their clothes.
It was going to be a close fight. More guards were rushing in, but the numbers of blank-masks were swelling, too. She was sorely tempted to jump in, take the side of the revellers. Here was Concordance, acting through others to suppress revolt. With her enhanced strength and speed, she might make all the difference.
She forced herself to hold back. Concordance would be watching events very closely, and if they picked her out, they'd come for her. She still wore her demon-mask, but her enhanced physical attributes were clearly going to mark her out from the crowd. Could they trace her movements across the country? From satellite images? Perhaps. She couldn't afford to take the risk. She hung back on the edges of the mob, in the shadows of a doorway that would, hopefully, conceal her from the observation platforms circling overhead.
The fighting grew more intense, clubs and edged weapons wielded by both sides. She saw arms half-severed from shoulders, skulls staved in by bludgeoning blows. A group of the Guards forced their way through the melee to the stairs. The lines of Templer priests parted to let them through. The Guards formed a circle upon the wide space at the top of the steps, immediately in front of the arched doorway. Their actions troubled Selene; she could see no reason for them. They were up to something.
The blank-masks, their numbers swelled by more and more arriving from the surrounding city, had finally predominated. Now there were those among them wearing other masks: people not a part of the organized rebellion who had joined in when they saw what was happening. The few remaining Guards on the ground had retreated, and it was clear to Selene that the lines of priests would soon be breached as the crowd surged over them to reach the temple itself.
A great light blasted out from the top of the stairs, bright enough to blind everyone on the ground. Selene's natural eye couldn't react quickly enough, but her artificial eye filtered 99% of the energy out, protecting its delicate biomechanics. For a moment, she thought some explosion had been detonated, that a blast-wave would sweep through the crowd, throwing them back against the walls.
That wasn't it. On top of the stairs, within the ring of guards, three figures had appeared. Whether they'd come from inside the church or had arrived by some other means from above, she couldn't tell. The blast of light had been detonated to cover their arrival, suppress the mob.
There were three Void Walkers there, their grey robes unmistakable. Two of them she'd never seen before, but the third she had. In the centre, unmistakably, was Kane. The guards moved in formation back down the stairs to reform the defensive line, while Selene stepped forwards, heart hammering. She would kill Kane there and then, jab a blade into his neck as he had done to her father. Or failing that, take him out with a shot from the blaster. Not so personal, but it would do.
A hush had passed through the crowd at the sight – shock, perhaps, at the sight of the Void Walkers on the ground. The people of Migdala knew only too well what that meant. As Selene pressed forwards, she was aware there was something else going on. Masked heads were turning to each other, mutters of confusion passing among the mob. They seemed bemused at the sight of the three Concordance soldiers. Of course, they knew Kane. Kane was from their world.
The Void Walker held up his arms as if in greeting, or as if asking for calm. Selene muscled her way through the crowd, not caring if she was spotted and identified. She'd thought this Void Walker was dead, destroyed by Ondo's nukes at Maes Far, and now she would make sure of it. Images from another planet played through the back of her mind: Ossian, and the slaughter of the children at Kane's command. The parallels in the two situations were obvious. Intent on her revenge, she ignored the thoughts.
Kane turned from side to side, taking in the crowd like a performer on a stage. He looked as if he was going to speak. Instead, he lowered his arms rapidly, a gesture that clearly meant now. Immediately, beam-weapon fire lanced out from the arched windows of the temple, wide arcs of high-energy radiation licking backwards and forwards across the crowd. Where the beams struck, people died, their screams cut off as limbs or torsos were vaporized.
Kane's voice boomed out, amplified through the hovering platforms. “Do not flinch, my friends. Step into the light and face the judgement of Omn. Do not fear, the pure of heart among you will be saved. Step into the light, and an eternity of joy awaits you.”
The sickening stench of burning flesh suddenly filled the air. Selene hesitated, finally stopped by what was taking place around her. Without thinking about it, she deactivated her olfactory responses. A collective scream rose from the crowd as they swelled backwards, desperate to get away from the stairs, away from the terrible beam-weapon fire. Even she wasn't strong enough to push against them. People were trampling over each other to flee, all thought of revolt gone. Kane did not relent. The beam-weapons continued their work, washing across the throng. He was a painter brushing his canvas in a wash of red. Concordance had allowed the attack on the temple to take place, had let the rebels come, so that they could be more easily identified and slaughtered.
She slid her blaster from its holster on her ankle. One shot, that was all she needed. The surging crowd buffeted her, throwing her around, making targeting difficult. She switched to her left hand and let her biomechanics maintain a rock-solid aim on Kane's chest, slightly to one side where his heart should be.
She fired, hit – but some energy shielding flared around the Walker, dissipating the power of the shot. Kane found her in the crowd, shouted something, pointing her out to the guards and the hovering observation platforms. More than one person next to her screamed and dropped as they were struck, the sudden heat from their burning flesh flaring upon her own skin. The rational part of her brain said she had to run, too. With a cry of fury, she let the panicking crowd sweep her away.
She forced her way into one of the side-roads leading from the square. She thought she'd escaped, but it immediately became apparent this was part of Concordance's plan, too. Let the trouble-makers flee and then funnel them into traps. The fleeing rebels turned a corner to be met with a line of City Guard officers, hand blasters trained on them.
Rather than firing and giving her location away, Selene charged. She was close enough to reach them: in a run she was limited by the speed of her natural musculature, but her enhanced left half allowed her to fling herself forwards to barrel into the Guards before they could fire. She was suddenly on the ground, punching and kicking as the Guards engulfed her, striking her with the butts of their rifles, kicking at her with their metal boots. One placed his boot on her neck to choke off her breathing.
With a roar she forced herself to her feet, throwing her assailant against a wall. Seeing what she'd done, another Guard levelled his blaster to fire. Her left arm moving more quickly that the Guard could react to, Selene swept the weapon from his hands and punched him hard in the face-mask, sending him reeling backwards to the ground. For a minute or more, Selene was a whirl of kicks and punches as she battled the Guards. She was aware only of the choreography of it; the dance of lunges and ripostes.
Others among the blank-masks joined in, striking blows and kicks of their own. More and more rioters surged down the passageway. Suddenly, only one Guard survived. He stood over a prone female blank-mask holding a length of steel pipe he'd picked up from somewhere, about to slam it down into her chest, skewer her to the ground. Selene moved before the Guard could strike, throwing herself at him, hurling him against a wall. With her left fist she pummelled him into unconsciousness.
For the moment, the fight was over, the Guards lying in broken heaps on th
e ground. From the lack of heartbeats, she knew several of them were dead.
“We have to get away,” she called. “More will come.” The blank-mask she'd saved lay at her feet, blood running freely from a gash on her forehead. Selene considered, assessing her options. She had no access to overhead telemetry that might tell her the best escape route to take. Others were already fleeing, limping away before more Guards arrived. The prone blank-mask twisted herself round onto her knees to force herself vertical.
The winged-heart tattoo upon her inner wrist was immediately familiar. Selene helped the woman to her feet, lifted the mask from her face. She was young, her eyes wide from the shock of what she'd seen, the closeness of her death. Bruises marred the smoothness of the skin on her cheek. The cut in her scalp didn't appear to be too deep. It took her a moment to recognize Selene.
Selene said, “So now it's my turn to rescue you. We need to get off the streets before they slaughter everyone. Do you have a place here? Is there somewhere safe we can go?”
The woman's voice was faint. “I have a place. Across the New Bridge.”
Selene tore a scrap of clothing off one of the fallen and gave it to the woman. Hold this on your head to stop the bleeding. Lean on me.”
Selene supported her as they worked their way through the crowds, stepping over bodies trampled in the terrible crush. There was nothing she could do for any of them. She consulted the maps in her brain. New Bridge was north. It was also three hundred years old; presumably the name had once made sense. The crush of people fleeing Senefore swept them along so long as they could keep their feet. Fires burned and distant explosions crumped in the air; it was impossible to say whether they were fireworks, a part of the celebrations oblivious to what had taken place, or acts of destruction being unleashed upon the crowds. Each flash briefly lit up the faces of those around Selene, their grotesque masks making the procession like something from a primitive culture's vision of an underworld hell.
Selene picked out narrow side-passages that took them in roughly the direction they needed to go, hoping they would be free of City Guard ambush. Security platforms hummed overhead, heading for some new trouble spot, and more than once Selene and the woman had to huddle in a doorway until one of them passed over. Creeping along, wary, Selene listening for trouble ahead to the fullest extent of her perceptions, they edged away from the city centre.
It took them the best part of an hour to cross the bridge and reach the quieter hillside suburb where the woman lived. In the distance, fires burned in the centre of the city, their glow reflected broken in the rippling waters of the lake. The night air was wonderfully cool after the press and heat of the crowd. The woman lived in a low, oblong house, one of many scattered around on the slopes among clumps of towering trees. The heady scent of night blooms filled the air, as did woodsmoke from fires and cooking pits.
The woman's door unlocked automatically as they approached, and Selene let her down into a chair within the shadowy interior. City light filtered in through the shuttered windows. Colourful, twisting glass sculptures were set here and there upon the room's carved wooden furniture. Some flowery, herby scent filtered through the air.
Selene said, “I don't know your name.”
The glow from the city lit up the woman's face. The blood on her forehead had dried up. Unexpectedly, she looked amused. “And I don't know yours, not your real name, anyway. You basically just carried me for three kilometres. How did you do that?”
Selene took her mask off and let it drop to the ground. “It's possible you do know my real name.”
Unsurprisingly, Concordance hadn't broadcast any video of events on the ice of Maes Far to the wider galaxy, but there had been stories about her and Ondo: the dangerous renegades, the terrorists, threatening to overthrow the galaxy's order. Threatening everything. She'd been depicted as a monster, half-person, half-machine, but she'd be recognizable.
In the half-light of the room, the woman nodded her head as she studied Selene. “Right, so that starts to make sense. It explains the poor accent for one thing. Why are you here? Because of Kane? We heard he was on Maes Far.”
“I thought he was dead, but I wanted answers, yes. He killed my father right in front of my eyes. He waited under the polar ice-cap for me to come so he could do it. Waited a year and a half, just the two of them. That's pretty extreme behaviour. So, yeah, I wanted to know how he ended up as he did. I guess, how everything ended up as it did.”
The woman didn't reply for a moment, then seemed to come to a decision. “Given that I know who you are, I'll tell you my name in return. I'm Myrced Iles. I'm a teacher here, nowhere near as exciting as a galactic renegade with superhuman biomechanical enhancements. I'm grateful to you for getting me out of there.”
“I told you that you didn't have a chance against them.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“What's going on upon this planet? If you know who I am, then you know what they did to my world. Why are they letting you openly oppose them?”
Myrced climbed painfully to her feet and limped to her small kitchen. She poured two long drinks, the juice of some purple fruit mixed with a dash of a clear alcoholic spirit. She added tinkling cubes of ice and handed one of the glasses to Selene.
She sipped her own drink, and looked thoughtful for a moment. “I don't know how to answer that properly, because it's hard to understand what's going on elsewhere. We saw the Maes Far shroud being deployed, and we know what it did to your world, but we only get to hear what they want us to hear. It's hard to know what's normal. Were there anything like the Temples on Maes Far?”
“Nothing. We had a few minor religions here and there, but they were irrelevant to most people.”
“Perhaps that explains it. Our understanding is that on worlds like ours, they control the planet by making use of an existing power structure. Elsewhere, it might be a world government, or a Guild structure, but here it's a religion. The Revelation Temples have been important on all continents for a long, long time, thousands of years. They're central to many people's lives, a source of wisdom and comfort and meaning. By infiltrating the Temples, adapting their moral codes, we've been invaded without the need for a fight.”
Selene sipped at her drink, feeling its coolness trickling down inside her. “I don't get why they bother. They can simply threaten to destroy a population that doesn't succumb to their rule.”
“Godel has made veiled threats along those lines in the past, promises to cleanse the planet of its evils. Of course, that just makes us more determined to fight back. In the end, I suppose it isn't going to go well.”
Selene said, “I'm going to kill Godel. And Kane. And all of them.”
Myrced drained her drink and set it down on a table. A curious smile played across her lips. “I believe you. You don't need to do that now, though, do you?”
She stepped closer, her gaze frank. The fires from beyond the lake lit up her eyes. They'd walked side-by-side for hours, Selene supporting her weight, breathing each other's breath, but the intimacy of their situation in that quiet room was suddenly stark.
It took Selene a few beats to adjust to the shift in the conversation. “You're thinking about this now?”
“All we have is now,” the woman replied. “We've learned to relish the moment, find our pleasures where we can. You think we have carnivals because it's some ancient tradition? No, we've learned to laugh and dance precisely because Omn disapproves. You, on the other hand, look like you have the fate of the galaxy on your shoulders. That's too big a burden. Don't be so hard on yourself.”
There was something about their recent escape from danger and horror that opened doors inside Selene. She had the curious sensation of lights being switched on throughout her body. She'd been so concerned with surviving, with recovering her life and physical functioning, that she'd forgotten this side of her, barely given it any thought. Its return was an unexpected joy. She wasn't simply a biological and biomechanical machine that needed fixin
g, that needed to consume food and expend energy to maintain tissues and bodily systems. She'd gone beyond that. Delight at the possibilities opening out, at the rush of lust flooding through her, sent a tingle across her skin as she returned Myrced's gaze.
She double-checked that her Ondo was dormant, unable to overhear anything she was experiencing or thinking. She said, “I can probably delay destroying Concordance for a few hours.” She set down her own drink and stepped into the woman's arms. Here, suddenly, unexpectedly, was a moment of refuge, a simple denial of Concordance and death and horror. Whatever the morning would bring, all that could be forgotten for a time.
Carefully, wary of her bruises, Selene took hold of Myrced's body. Her lips tasted of spice and the purple fruit as they kissed, cool in the night air. But her tongue when it found Selene's was warm.
Myrced led her by her hand to a narrow flight of steps in the corner of the room. The shutters in the bedroom upstairs were open, the cool night air breathing in, rich with the scents of night-time blooms and the strident chirrups of insectoids. The room was dominated by the double bed at its centre.
“Help me get my clothes off,” said Myrced. She couldn't raise her arms over her own head, so Selene did it for her. There came the moment when it was time to reciprocate. Selene paused, wary. It wasn't just the thought of showing her naked body to Myrced, it went deeper than that. There had obviously been no one since Maes Far, since her injuries, and the thought of another person seeing her as she now was seemed suddenly unbearable.