Defiance: (The Spiral Wars Book 4)

by Joel Shepherd

  The bug took off in a wide, circling arc about the room, scanning. “Thank you,” said Semaya, two of her better English words, and pulled a second gun from her robes, and handed it to Lisbeth. “We must move fast, no questions now.”

  Lisbeth nodded… and noticed that there was a maid huddled on the floor, attended by another. Lisbeth rushed to her, and found Niala, attended by Lilien, a bullet wound in her side, and quite a bit of blood. “Oh no… Semaya?”

  But Semaya was amongst the bodies of the fallen visitors, retrieving things. “There will be medical attention on the way,” came Timoshene’s translated voice in her ears. “You were the target. You will make her safer by leaving.”

  Renala came running from the staff quarters, shrugging on a cloak of her own, and tucking more things Lisbeth couldn’t see somewhere safe. She too had a pistol in hand, and Lisbeth stared — Semaya had always had a faintly dangerous grace, and Lisbeth had known that surely there must be other assassins or warriors on her staff, but Renala? Renala was so small and quiet.

  Semaya beckoned her, and Lisbeth ran, willing her legs not to give way as the initial rush of terrorised adrenaline began to dissipate. She clutched the gun in her hand without having any real idea what to do with it, and ran after Timoshene out the door, through the little atrium, then into the broad hall outside. From somewhere came the ringing of a bell, echoing from afar. From her apartment behind, the fading sound from the open balcony — the shrilling of shuttle engines, now far too close for overflight regulations to allow.

  Lisbeth ran with Timoshene, Semaya and Renala down the hall. She had no clue what was going on, but she was still alive, and these three parren seemed committed to keeping her that way, for a time at least. But Timoshene was Aristan’s man, and her tokara, charged with ending her life himself should Phoenix not deliver on its promises. But the ehrlic and his guards were certainly Aristan’s, which meant that…

  They rounded a bend and hit the elevator bay. A car was already present, and welcomed them with open doors, as all four piled in. So one of them had uplinks that were patched into the local elevator systems, and possibly other systems beyond. Parren capabilities with neural uplinks were often remarkable.

  “You,” said Lisbeth, looking at Timoshene as she crouched gasping against the glass elevator wall. Floor numbers unwound on a display, the alien numbers writhing. “You’re not Aristan’s man at all, are you? You’re Gesul’s.”

  Timoshene gave Semaya a meaningful look, and got one of mild contempt back. They’d been talking about her, Lisbeth thought. “Aristan has ordered you killed,” Timoshene said shortly.

  It should have horrified her, but given what had just happened, that moment was past. Another thought struck her. “Phoenix! Oh my god, has something happened to Phoenix?”

  “Phoenix is well,” said Semaya, coolly checking her pistol, clasped in thin, elegant hands. “Something has happened, but details are unclear. Aristan is displeased with Phoenix, and feels your usefulness has ended.”

  “But… but Phoenix doesn’t know?” Lisbeth wracked her brain, desperately. “No, Phoenix can’t know! But they’ll find out eventually, right? I mean, if I’m killed, Erik will kill him!”

  She wasn’t actually sure that was true, she realised as she said it. Erik’s primary concern was Phoenix, and he would take no action that would jeopardise his ship’s security, no matter what had happened to his sister. But Aristan couldn’t be sure of that, and had to know that Erik would at the very least be looking for the slightest opportunity…

  “Oh no, he’s going to betray Phoenix!” she gasped as it occurred to her. “Phoenix is too dangerous for him to leave alive after he’s gotten rid of me!”

  Timoshene and Semaya exchanged another, grimmer look. “Gesul’s judgement of you was correct,” said Timoshene. “He has determined to get you out.”

  “Why? To what purpose?”

  “Aristan moves not just against you, but against Gesul,” said Semaya. “You are new here. This is an old struggle, between Aristan and Gesul. You have only glimpsed the very tip of the mountain. But now, this old story is coming to an end.”

  “But what does Gesul want with…?”

  The elevator burst into open light before she could finish the question. They were racing down the inner wall of the central Domesh Temple, where a great cross was carved through the centre, like the cuts of two great knife strokes in a cake. The floor below was filled with running parren, swirling and colliding in a great commotion. Security forces, Lisbeth thought, rounding people up. In patches, there was fighting, but it was too chaotic from this height to see if the violence was lethal, or just fists and staves, at which some parren also excelled.

  Something hit the elevator’s glass wall, hard, and Timoshene thrust Lisbeth down. Another loud crack, then another — someone was shooting at them from across the central canyon, Lisbeth realised, and then Renala was slumped against the back wall, sliding down.

  The canyon floor rushed up and engulfed them, as the elevator plunged below ground level and continued, on evident override against any attempt to stop it. Lisbeth leaped to help Renala, but Semaya thrust her back and went herself. Looking up, Lisbeth saw holes in the glass just above her. A marine would check her weapon, she thought, and she did that — it was small and simple, with a safety and a trigger just like a human pistol. A cartridge-ejector, not a magfire, and she checked the magazine as various marines had shown her, then slapped it back in and put a round in the chamber. It didn’t look like it would have stopping power, but then, parren weren’t big.

  Gravity surged as the elevator came to a rapid halt, then the doors opened with a crackle of fractured glass. “Go!” said Timoshene as Lisbeth tried to look again to Renala, and pulled her after him, Semaya close behind. In the elevator car, Renala lay still, head lolling against the wall.

  They ran into an underground carpark of sorts, with rows of great columns to hold up the enormous weight above… but the lighting was temporary, great floodlights powered by humming generators, glaring upon the sides of large construction vehicles. Large parts of the concrete floor were gone, exposing piles of dirt and digging equipment. Timoshene led them past several vehicles, and ahead was a wall, with orange barriers about a large hole. Timoshene tripped a barrier alarm which flashed and wailed briefly, then stopped as though overridden.

  Lisbeth followed into the hole in the wall, which turned into a passage, lit at intervals by a string of temporary lights. At some point the random, rough walls turned into a proper hall, and Lisbeth made out some recently-cleaned patterns on old stone. She thought it looked very old, and that impression grew stronger when they arrived at downward stairs that had once been an escalator. The rubber handrails were frayed and rotten, and steel planks had been laid on the downward slope, with footholds cut into them, as the stairs beneath were in no evident condition to hold a person’s weight.

  Timoshene simply held his robe and slid, like a young boy on a stair railing, and Lisbeth copied, bruising her backside on several of the small steel footholds, Semaya sliding close behind. How old did an escalator have to be, and remain unused and ignored, before it began to look like this? Lisbeth guessed the answer without having to ask.

  Beyond the base of the ancient escalator, they emerged into an old, wide tunnel. It was full of excavation equipment, floodlights and automated carts to haul away debris. Lisbeth and her guards ran on raised walkways on the tunnel sides, past ladders and scaffolding that climbed the walls, and dropsheets below where workers had been cleaning the stone and steel. An old underground train station, Lisbeth thought, thankful for the exercise that had become her norm of late — if she hadn’t improved her fitness after coming with Phoenix, Timoshene would have been carrying her by now.

  At the end of the platforms, where trains would once have run, sat a large off-road vehicle, with big, open-suspension wheels taller than the chassis. Its engines growled, and on the platform ahead were more Domesh guards, now aiming weapons a
t the newcomers along the platform. Timoshene did not slow or take cover, and the weapons lowered, the guards parting as they arrived to show a tall parren in robe and hood, evidently waiting for them.

  “Move quickly, we are leaving,” Gesul told them, and clambered into the big vehicle behind the front wheel. Lisbeth was ushered after him, then Timoshene, Semaya and other guards, bouncing on a big, wide seat as engines roared, and doors closed. Then they were rumbling and bouncing down the tunnel ahead, on ground that was evidently not yet fully excavated, and thus the need of big off-road wheels and torque.

  “The Domesh Temple is new, but built on the site of a far older, Tahrae structure that was destroyed when the machines fell,” Gesul told her. Lisbeth knew that, but politeness held her tongue. “The temple above ground was destroyed, and below ground, many of the old tunnels and rooms were sealed. The job was hurried in some places, and thorough in others — here we have been clearing the train tunnels, they once connected all the temples of the Kunadeen. Now they only connect the current temples — the Harmony leadership never approved of the rebuilding on this temple site, thus they have not allowed new tunnels.”

  “The old library you’ve been visiting, to read about the Tahrae,” Lisbeth gasped as she realised, and the vehicle bounced over rough ground. “Is it down here too?”

  “Yes. Aristan’s people control access, but they have not yet catalogued all the new discoveries there. I have my people in those places too.” With a glance at Timoshene and Semaya.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To find Phoenix, and warn her.”

  Lisbeth stared at him, still getting her breath back. “Why?”

  “Because your brother, Lisbeth Debogande, may have found the truth. About the Domesh, about Drakhil, about the drysines even. Some of us welcome truth. Others do not. I will rescue this truth, and with it, the soul of the Domesh, and the true soul of House Harmony.”

  Something had happened when Phoenix was in Kantovan System, Lisbeth thought. Erik had found something, and Aristan had found out what. Perhaps Gesul knew what that was. Perhaps word had returned, and that was another part of the reason he’d been visiting old libraries unearthed in the excavations beneath the Domesh Temple. Aristan had not liked this discovery. Well, that was hardly surprising, given what happened when people dug around in the cherished history of events they desperately wanted to be true. Sometimes history let you down. Lisbeth recalled Aristan in the Tahrae Temple on Stoya III, so eager to learn about Drakhil, dropping Phoenix clues to help their search. And then kidnapping the Captain’s sister to ensure he got his slice of whatever they found next. So now he’d gotten his slice, and hadn’t liked the taste.

  Aristan would know that Gesul’s support was not reliable. Gesul had shown himself fascinated by the things Lisbeth had told him, and apparently unthreatened. Aristan needed the support of the second-in-command of the Domesh, if whatever he planned next was going to work. Evidently, he’d judged he could not win that support… and so, he did this instead.

  “We saw fighting in the main hall,” Lisbeth said, grabbing a support bar as the big vehicle tipped and thumped over the debris that still filled half the tunnel. The parren all those thousands of years ago must have filled it in completely. “What are they going to do with all your people?”

  “It is the Kunadeen,” Gesul said grimly. “The Incefahd hold me in no favour, but they like Aristan far less. Bloodshed will be limited to initial fighting. Tobenrah will not allow more.”

  Timoshene glanced warily at his master for the first time — a considerable liberty for the duty-conscious parren. ‘More’, Lisbeth wondered? More bloodshed than in the initial fighting? Was that what Timoshene feared could happen? A mass slaughter of those identified as Gesul supporters? And who even constituted a Gesul supporter? Lisbeth had thought she’d been getting to know the ins and outs of Domesh Temple life, and the major players in the broader politics of House Harmony beyond. Now she feared she’d barely grasped a thing, if all this had been unfolding right under her nose without notice. God knew how anyone could make sense of broader parren politics across all five houses. Parren loved their divisions and intrigues too well.

  Ahead, the car’s great bank of lights showed the end of the tunnel, where the piles of dirt had not yet been removed, and made a ramp up to the ceiling. The car stopped, settling on suspension so that it was not too far a jump to the ground, then Gesul, Lisbeth, Semaya, Timoshene and four of Gesul’s guards, moved quickly up the ramp to where an ancient ventilation shaft was exposed. Within were ladder rungs, and Lisbeth climbed in her turn, until they stepped off at a newly-hewn passage that continued for fifty metres amidst the makeshift supports of a mining tunnel, then another ladder and a climb.

  The leading guard pushed something aside, and climbed up to open air. When it was Lisbeth’s turn, she was astonished to find herself on grass, beneath the walls and ceiling of a tent. About the tent were ceremonial ornaments, large vases and many banners across wide tables… and Lisbeth recognised the craft tents, where Kunadeen craftsmen and women would gather to make new banners for the Isha — the great ceremony of welcome to the newly phased — or for other ceremonies that required originals. It happened out here in the garden spaces of the vast, paved courtyards, as parren liked to do all their artistic things while surrounded by nature.

  And so Lisbeth was not surprised to venture outside the tent, and find a grassy clearing amidst a thicket of trees along a stream, with a lovely bridge nearby… and she wished she’d had a chance to see more of parren life beyond the Domesh Temple, as she’d only heard of this place and others discussed by her maids. About were other tents, all guarded, and she realised that this had long been the entrance to the tunnel excavation going on below -- probably it was illegal, the Domesh had ignored calls to stop construction on the old Tahrae site, but they were evidently more wary of venturing beyond that old foundation. And so they dug this tunnel, and connected it to these tents in the garden, which were always here, and always guarded least someone steal or sabotage their contents.

  They moved quickly in the gloom, but the night was bright with the glare from many temples about the Kunadeen, spreading the shadows of each tree in a dozen directions. More alarmingly, the air was filled with the keening roar of a hovering shuttle, a sound which echoed off as many distant walls as there were directions of temple light. Nose-to-tail on a path between trees, three groundcars were parked, sleek and fast. Lisbeth was ushered into the final one with Timoshene and Semaya, while Gesul went in the middle car. Lisbeth wondered how they’d gotten that big off-roader into the train tunnel below, given there was no entry point large enough to drive it in… and decided they’d probably disassembled it, and carried it in piece by piece, then rebuilt it by hand in the tunnel. Parren were meticulous, and infinitely patient when faced with obstacles that would exasperate humans or tavalai, to say nothing of chah’nas or barabo. In the temple, Lisbeth had heard told a tale of an apprentice who wished to take a job with a great master. He had taken a seat in the master’s waiting room, and there had waited an entire month before he was seen, sleeping on the floor, eating only water and bread as it was delivered. It turned out the master liked him, for a previous apprentice had been made to wait a season.

  ‘Tomorrow is a myth’, the common saying went. Most parren simply did not care about long-term consequences, hopes and plans… or not in House Harmony, anyway. There was today, and now, and what it might lead to in the future was something only rare men like Gesul and Aristan concerned themselves with. Then Lisbeth recalled that it had been Renala who’d told that tale of the apprentice, in her quiet little voice between elegant mouthfuls of dinner. And suddenly her eyes were filled with tears.

  The cars accelerated with a quiet hum that built to a wail, wheels thumping over joins in the paving as they left the trees. To the right, Lisbeth could see what was making all the noise — a big assault shuttle, hovering just short of the Domesh Temple, lights ablaze and do
ubtless with very large weapons looking to pulverise the first sign of trouble. About the vast, square base of the temple ran what looked like several thousand troops, between blocky armoured vehicles — the first display of raw military power Lisbeth had seen in all her time among parren. It was shocking to observe that the famed parren power-plays involved such brutal, blunt instruments, and that it was not all just swords, pistols, poison and ceremony. Lisbeth supposed that this was the reason for all that ceremony. Parren internal conflicts were so frequent, they had to be made as peaceful as possible, often to be resolved with a murder here, a fleeing into exile there. Otherwise, if every conflict ended with the heavy artillery deployed, there’d very quickly be nothing left.

  “A Domesh shuttle,” Timoshene said grimly, staring out the rear window to keep it in view as the cars wove toward a gap in the gardens, and a bridge over the stream. “Off one of Aristan’s warships, down from orbit. He is in violation of Kunadeen overflight protocols.”

  “And he’s not alone,” said the driver, pointing out the windshield. Ahead loomed another three temples, and beyond them, hovering low upon the perimeter’s edge, was another shuttle. “That one belongs to the Incefahd, he won’t like Aristan’s nonsense.”

  “And he won’t be the only one,” Semaya added. “The Domesh do not rule House Harmony yet, the denominations will be joined against this, least it go too far.”

  Meaning that the true rulers of House Harmony weren’t about to let Aristan’s purge of the Domesh denomination turn into a purge of all the Kunadeen, Lisbeth thought. Aristan’s ascension to lead all House Harmony could only happen with the Jusica’s blessing, and that was still a few years away, at best. It was not unknown for denominational leaders to try and hurry the process.

  The cars zoomed between gardens, hit the gentle rise of the bridge, then settled back down with a thump and rock. The guard beside the driver called warning, pointing to a line of armoured vehicles running past the trees on the right. For all the high-tech design, there were excess parren troops in heavy armour piled into the roof, like farmers on a cart heading to market in some old painting. Domesh troops, Lisbeth thought, if they were headed for the Domesh Temple — other denominations would not be welcome. And several of the rooftop troops pointed at the cars, appearing to shout to each other within their helmets.