by Richard Fox
Taking his own advice, Clay raced back to the bridge, almost slipping on the wet floor before he got to the co-pilot’s seat. He swung the control panel over his lap and pressed a tiny button underneath. The console lit up with blinking screens and Clay slapped a palm over a camera bead.
“Rescue 2-9, anyone there?” came from a speaker.
“Yeah, this is Lee, onboard security,” Clay said. “Both pilots are down. What’s my evac status?”
Clay could almost feel the weapon systems of the other ship locking on. He heard Tyr scrambling out of the ship along with the thump of a heavy object against bulkheads. Maybe he could buy them enough time to get clear. Maybe he and the rest of them were already dead.
“Lee, is it? Looks like you’ve got an indig problem.”
“Negative negative…ship security is tight. Turret took out a bunch that got too curious. Less work for later, am I right?”
“Boss must like you because we’re authorized to do a recovery. Activate your suit beacon and get clear. Leave your scummy behind and set him to agro burn. I don’t want a bull in the precious china shop I’m flying.”
“No issue…what’s your ETA?”
“I’ll have a line-of-site telemetry laser on you in…what did you say your name was?”
Clay bolted out of the bridge, bounced off the passageway bulkhead, and ducked through the blasted-out exit. He ran up the hillside as a low rumble filled the air. His lungs burned and legs ached as he pounded up the slope that seemed to get steeper as the sound of the Compliance ship grew closer.
He felt the heat of incoming fire before it struck the downed craft. The blast wave slapped him from behind and propelled him over the top of the plateau, sending him sprawling through grass and puddles.
Clay felt an odd texture against his face and hands. Radar scattering nets. He gripped the nets and rolled, wrapping the material around him. Sinking into mud, he prayed that it would mask his thermal signature from the enemy ship’s sensors.
The bottom of a triangle-shaped interceptor hovered overhead, the gravitic engines sending a tremor through the mud that loosened it into a slurry. Clay sank further, his face barely above water.
The interceptor bolted away.
“There we go.” Clay tried to open his arms, but the netting and mud held him tight. He scissored his legs and the water splashed over his mouth and nose.
“Help. Help!” Clay struggled but couldn’t get out of the straitjacket he was in. He sank deeper as he strained to get his mouth into the air for one last plea for aid.
The red skies and constellations of the gods were just visible through the muddy water as he sank deeper, his lungs on fire as he burned through the last of his oxygen. That he was about to die beneath the gods’ gaze struck him as a rather cruel irony.
There was a splash in the water and someone hauled Clay out and onto somewhat more congealed ground. He spat out water and choked for air.
Fastal leaned over him, a confused expression on his face.
“Move.” Sazon poked Clay in the cheek with the eraser on her pencil and then put the tip to her clipboard. “What was the purpose of that behavior? Some manner of ritual atonement for internecine conflict?”
“Cut me out! Just cut me out already!” Tangled up in the netting, Clay had never felt more like a fish in his life.
“Stop moving.” Fastal drew a knife from the sheath on his thigh. “You’re like a grish caught in pen wire.”
“Maybe he received a suicidal impulse from speaking to the others?” Sazon rapped the tip of her pencil against the clipboard. “Do you have any feelings of hopelessness or lack of enjoyment in—”
“The netting,” Clay growled. “The netting scrambles their area scans. Like I told you. They use a focused beam and there’s nowhere to hide, but it’s like looking through a straw for the pilot. Difficult and time-consuming. But I would’ve been easy to spot on thermals—ow, careful!”
“My grish would bitch just like that when they got nicked as I was freeing them from a long and painful death while they were caught in pen wire,” Fastal said as he yanked his knife up and cut through strands of netting.
“The mud masked most of my thermal signature. With my face in the pond, I must’ve looked like an animal or a fresh bronto pattie to the pilot. Doesn’t matter. I’m alive, aren’t I?”
“You’re welcome,” Fastal said and ripped netting away so that Clay could sit up. “So all we have to do to sneak up on the enemy is cover ourselves in mud and move under a canopy of this stuff.” He tossed a handful away.
“They’re lazy and we’re not enough of a threat to them right now.” Clay got to his feet and, with a slight limp, went to the edge of the hilltop. What remained of the Enforcement vessel was scattered in and around a smoking hole.
“I have my duties,” Fastal said. “You go back to the airfield with Sazon. Pack up everything. We’ll convoy out of here as soon as we can.”
“Your duties…I understand,” Clay said, looking around. Fires from the blast cast light on the dead soldiers from the first attack on the ship.
Clay limped away, not sure if he’d dislocated something in a knee or ankle or if it was the normal after-battle aches and pains.
Even though Fastal succeeded in shedding Enforcement blood, this fight didn’t feel like a victory.
Chapter 45
Michael paced back and forth through a small bedroom while Sarah sat on a chair and stared out the lone window overlooking King’s Rest from several stories high.
“Where did they take Dad?” Michael asked. “Why are we back home, of all places? Why aren’t we…teaching them something? Or helping them evacuate the city?”
“You know how to move millions of people out of a city in a quick and orderly fashion?” Sarah rubbed a temple. “Or if it’s even a target?”
“But it should be evacced just in case!” Michael went to the window and tried to open it, but it was nailed shut.
The door opened and a Blooded—a pistol in hand—shook his head at them.
“We can’t fly,” Michael said, sitting on the bed and sulking, “or survive a fall like that. Chill out.”
A Royal came in, a solid briefcase in one hand. “Even if you did survive the fall, every Tyr in a two-block radius has orders to shoot you two on sight—unless you’re with me,” he said. “Suumsar, King’s Shadow. Pleasure.”
“Why are you telling us your security arrangements?” Sarah asked.
“So you don’t even think about trying to escape.” Suumsar leaned slightly to one side and examined Sarah’s face. “Brilliant. Not even the Hidden are so well disguised.”
“The Hidden are real?” Michael asked.
“Something from the Far Darkness is ignorant about the Tyr…curious.” Suumsar glanced at Sarah, who said nothing to answer Michael’s question. “I will conduct your debriefing. Be completely truthful with me and it will go easier for you.”
“We’re not Worthy People spies you’re trying to recruit,” Michael said. “OK, we are spies, but not like that. Wait. What I mean is—”
“Ask your questions,” Sarah said, putting a hand on her son’s shoulder.
“Your house…” Suumsar laid out pictures of the dark hole punctured with utility pipes where their home used to be. “How did you do this and is this some sort of…power you have?”
“The house was rigged to disintegrate if it was ever compromised. Technology that we couldn’t risk being discovered,” Sarah said. “Same thing happened when one of your agents handled one of our weapons. They’re gene-locked to our…kind.”
“But what about this thing?” Suumsar took a wax-paper envelope out of his case and handed it to Sarah.
Sarah tested the weight of the slate, then gave Michael a dirty look.
“Oh. I…uh, was looking for that,” the boy said.
“You were supposed to ash it.” Sarah glowered.
“Well, I was doing some reading on these sorts of situations and then we were
in such a rush to leave that…and it’s not like the old rules even apply anymore. I’m surprised they even got it out of the house,” Michael said.
“Constable Pyth grabbed it before your residence could erase itself,” Suumsar said.
“Pyth? How is—” An elbow from Sarah quieted her son.
“This might prove useful to you.” Sarah removed the e-pad and squeezed the corner. The screen lit up with a depth holo through the screen and she turned it to show the Tyr. “It doesn’t have an immediate military use, so our kind didn’t rig it to disintegrate on command, though it will burn like paper if it’s touched by fire.”
“Maybe a history lesson?” Sarah swiped to one side and a holo appeared above the pad. Suumsar jerked back. “Coherent light. It senses my touch but has no feel to it.” She fanned the pad down and ran the holo through her knee.
“Tell me what your kind is doing here…and how we can stop the attacks,” the Shadow said, composing himself.
“There are two issues,” Sarah said, entering text commands on the pad, “neither of which you’re going to understand right away…or accept. The first is the Reptilians. Almost…one hundred and twenty Tyr years ago, humanity found a primitive species that a Corporation—think a Toiler guild but run by Royals—conducted experiments on. Experiments in consciousness and genetics.” She turned the pad to Suumsar and his jaw dropped as he took in the true-vision recording of a humanoid alien with scales and large eyes lying on an operating table.
“The tests had a number of unintended consequences. The Reptilians became fully sentient and something a bit more…they evolved into something we don’t fully understand and became some sort of unified intelligence within a…parallel dimension.”
She swiped to a laboratory where a trio of Reptilians floated up and into a cacophony of color and fractal patterns.
“The Reptilians vanished for a few years, then returned with star fleets and technology on par with ours and began destroying human colony worlds. We thought they were defeated after the last of their ships was blown up, but then they returned again with an equal level of technology…and no mercy.”
“Demons,” Suumsar said.
“Yes, the comparison holds.” Sarah switched the pad off. “The Reptilians appeared in our home system of Terra a hundred years ago and smashed a comet into the ocean. Killed billions and wrecked the environment. We won’t be able to live there again for decades, even with our technology.”
“Are these reptiles coming here?” Suumsar asked.
“I doubt it. They seem tethered to their home star and won’t act beyond a two-thousand-light-year radius…which is where the bulk of human colony worlds were set up before they attacked,” Sarah said.
“So our corporations are moving colonies beyond the threat. To stars like this one,” Michael said.
“And our Royal caste issued an edict, the Human Imperative, that prohibits the genetic study or manipulation of intelligent—or nearly intelligent—life. Then there is a silent command to that edict: any alien intelligences are to be destroyed before they can become the next Reptilians.” Sarah’s face fell.
“That’s…that isn’t very reassuring, assuming you’re telling the truth,” Suumsar said.
“Zike and his soldiers have no reason to tell you the truth or to negotiate in good faith.” Sarah tapped the pad against her knee. “They must deliver a colony to their clients. That is all. They care nothing about saving the Tyr if that’s what it takes to fulfill their contract. It is a matter of survival to the supreme human authorities, and a matter of profit to Zike and his Corporation.”
“And what is this second matter?” Suumsar asked.
“That may be a bit harder to accept. Even though we’re forbidden to—”
An air raid siren howled in the distance, joined by more and more into an undulation of echoes as the wails reached the safe house.
“Bunker,” Suumsar said, drawing a small pistol from beneath his tunic. “Both of you, now.” He wagged the muzzle at the door and snatched the slate away from Sarah.
Explosions rattled the windows.
Chapter 46
“What was that?” Lussea looked up from her bowl of boiled grain.
“Sounded like an explosion.” Constable Pyth went to a phone on the kitchen wall and wedged the handset between his shoulder and ear. He flipped switches and pulled the dial lever, cursed, then did it again.
“Phone’s down.” He slammed the handset into the receiver then took his gun belt from a peg on the wall.
Lussea rushed over to buckle it, a task she’d done for her father hundreds of times before he left the house.
“Where are you going? Mother’s still at worship and—”
“If it’s the demons from the Far Darkness, then the King will need me to defend him and the realm.” He touched the holster on his hip. “Doubt I can use a rifle, but I’ll be of more use with the Blooded than at home.”
“They’re not demons. Don’t call Michael that.” Lussea put her hands on her hips and glowered at her father, but her countenance changed to one of fear as another explosion rattled the windows and shouts rose in the street.
“I have quite a list of unkind names for those that attack my city and—”
A blast wave tore through the front living room and sent Pyth stumbling into the kitchen table. It fell hard onto its side and sent supper flying across the room.
Lussea cried out, her hands to her abused ears. Flaming debris tore past the windows, breaking them and sending hunks of smoldering masonry into the drying rack and the icebox.
Instinct took over, and Pyth snapped to his feet and grabbed his daughter by the scruff of her neck. He kicked open the back door and dragged her to his parked police car. Lussea scooped up a backpack by the straps on the way out.
“Constable! What’s happening?” A Blooded neighbor stumbled out of their kitchen, blood flowing from cuts across her face.
“I don’t know.” Pyth opened the front passenger door and pushed his daughter inside. There was an earsplitting roar overhead, and he caught a glimpse of contrails and a blur of something moving far faster than any fighter jet he’d ever seen. An orange glow rose in the north, deep and menacing. His mind went back to Slaver cities he’d fought through during the war and all the danger he’d sworn would never come to his family once that fight was over.
But here it was.
He got into the driver’s seat, ignoring Lussea’s crying and near hysterics. He didn’t blame her for being scared. He never wanted her to ever experience war.
Pyth turned the key to start his car…and there were electric clicks and nothing more.
“Damn it.” He looked up at the ceiling light and saw that it was off, as were the headlights. He turned the key harder, but the engine still wouldn’t turn over.
“Piece-of-shit car!” He banged his fist against the wheel and jumped out. He looked over the nearby connecting street that was always busy at this time of the day…and there were no moving cars. Every vehicle was stopped on the road with space between them, not like the usual traffic. Drivers had their hoods open and were shouting at each other between nervous glances to the sky.
“Dad, what about Mom?” Lussea asked from the other side of the hood.
“She…she may have been born a Speaker, but she’s been married to me long enough to have a bit of Blooded sense. There’s a shelter barely a block from her temple. She’ll go there and—”
Someone screamed.
Bright green bolts descended through the clouds, raining down a few blocks away in an orderly procession. Pyth saw the first flash and counted until he heard the impact—an old spotter’s trick to know the distance to where an observed artillery shell hit. He estimated almost six hundred strides to the northeast…the Spring Bridge. One of the main routes into and out of the city.
All other sound drained away around Pyth as the muffled explosions rolled on.
Lussea clutched at her father’s arm.
&nb
sp; “Shelter,” he said as he grabbed her hand and jogged down the road, ignoring his neighbors as they called on him for answers. “I’ll get you to a shelter where you’ll be safe. We’ll find your mother as soon as all this is over.”
“But if she took some oaxa, she’ll be goofy for hours. We need to go find her!” Lussea pulled him toward a street filling with Tyr as they wandered out of their houses, most with cracked or shattered windows from blast waves.
“Your mother—” he grabbed her by the upper arm and yanked her close, “would want you to get someplace safe before you risked your life looking for her in—the bunker. Next. To. Her. Temple.”
They crossed into the market where Daniel Clay liked to pick up food for his and Pyth’s lunches. A pair of Toilers came through the bent bars meant to protect a jewelry store and Pyth drew his revolver and pulled back the hammer. The Toilers froze, then dropped the stuffed pillowcases they carried.
Pyth wagged his muzzle from side to side and the two turned and ran empty-handed.
“Those two,” Pyth muttered and skirted the market with Lussea. “They’ll get the cuffs the next time I see them.”
They cut down an alley just as another thunder crack broke overhead. The pressure wave hit the building on one side and sent potted herbs, hanging laundry, and tanna pests falling around them.
Soil and shards of clay struck her shins from a near miss. Lussea gasped behind him, but he knew the difference between the sounds his daughter made when she was hurt and when she was startled; that sound was born of fear.
They emerged outside a park. The upper floors of buildings across the grass and ponds were aflame, but there was no sign of the fire brigades. A small crowd had gathered beside a dry goods store where a heavy metal door had opened up from the cobblestones.
“I’m telling you there’s no room for you!” a man howled.
“King’s Constable…move, move,” Pyth said and the crowd of mostly Toilers and a few retired Blooded got out of his way.
A scared-looking Blooded caste male, not yet old enough to take his oath of service, was at the bottom of the stairwell, a rifle in his hands.