He watched Temperance pour liquid from one cup into another. Sparks flew from the bowl and she announced that it was strong enough. Justice, who had been holding his sword high in his right hand, prepared to lower it. At the signal, all Hell would be unleashed.
He saw, in a way, The Emperor, resplendent in his purple gowns, his head adorned with the horns of a goat, bow before The Priestess. Pleased, she gave a slight nod. The Emperor rose and said “It is decided. Aurelia will have this world.”
And Fortune, never seen and always present, smiled.
Redfire felt as though he was watching a ritual, a ceremony performed perhaps a hundred times, always on the eve of some colony falling to Aurelia. With Sapphire, though, it was different. This would be the end of his former world. Yet, he felt he was detached from it. He felt fine, and he did not know why.
The Hermit, in rags cast off by the other Arcana, who kept his own counsel and seldom spoke, broke his meditation and whispered in the Emperor’s ear. The Emperor stood. “Bring the Priest,” he bellowed. Six Swords were dispatched for the task. As in a dream, they immediately reappeared. They brought a Sumacian, in chains, wearing a tattered black robe, onto the floor. He was bruised and beaten, about to die, Redfire knew, but his expression was placid and meditative.
The Sumacian was laid out in the middle of them. The Arcana drew around him in a great circle. “Your world is about to end, look,” said the Emperor. And the sky above the Tower was filled with the vision of Sapphire, and the thousand ships about to set upon her.
The Priestess laughed and raised a cup. “Aurelia triumphs,” she said in a voice that rang like a beautiful bell.
The Sumacian looked unconcerned. “That is one possible outcome.”
“It is the only possible outcome,” Fortune thundered. Redfire could not see Fortune clearly, but only the image of a great circle projected into the sky, and a voice like rolling thunder, indomitable.
“We will burn your world,” said The Hierophant. “Your seas will be boiled away, your mighty cities pounded to dust, your surface scourged until it is sterile.”
“You and your kind will be forgotten,” laughed The Fool.
<
“As I have said,” the Sumacian repeated. “That is one possible outcome. I can think of one other.”In my version, your great world-ship burns, and takes all of you with it. Aurelia is broken.”
<
“Kill him, now,” ordered The Empress. And Temperance, in a movement swifter than lightning, reached out with his sword and pierced the Sumacian through his heart.
The Sumacian looked at his wound. “Now you’ve done it. You can call it destiny, or you can call it quantum-chain-destablization. It just takes a very small detonator to start, small enough that an army of them can be carried in the blood, awaiting for exposure to the air.”
“Kill him again,” ordered Strength, and Temperance struck out again.
The Sumacian reached toward the spot where the sword has first pierced him. His hand was soaked with blood, but the blood was rapidly transforming, from red material substance to bright white light.
<
The laughter of the Arcana fell silent. The Sumacian lifted up his arms, snapping the chains, which fell apart into dust and rust. He spread them far apart like an eagle in flight and as he did so his body began to burn with a white-hot flame.
And Death cried out, “Stop him!”
But there was no stopping him. In less time than “Stop him” takes to scream, the warrior had dissolved to white flame.
The flame spread, faster than wildfire, faster than lightning, faster than the burning ring of a supernova. It touched each of the Arcana in turn, and they burned like sodium dropped in water. White light of flame traveled down the Tower to the very heart of the World-Ship and set the Hanged Man, suspended in his tank, to boiling. Somehow, it crossed the ether, sent The Moon and The Star into nova.
Across the face of the world-ship, thousands upon thousands of starfires bloomed, consuming all.
In the last second before the world-ship burst apart its debris burning and flying into space as it burst, far too much of it about to rain down on the planet on Sapphire, whose oceans would not be enough to quench the all-consuming flame, Redfire felt an aesthetic admiration for the elegance of the weapon and wished he had thought of it.
Redfire awoke. Mercuria was slapping him in the face. “Time to wake up, Nappy. Time to move.” Redfire felt the soreness of his loins and groaned. “I honestly don’t believe I can do it again.”
“Not that way, Sweetie.” He felt a splash of ice-cold, salty water in his face. He opened his two heavy eyes. Mercuria was unfastening his chains.
“How long…”
“Until your ship is destroyed… four hours, a little less.”
“I’ve been out for twelve hours?” It did not seem like that long.
“Not quite, but circumstances have forced us to accelerate our schedule.” His wrists were shackled together, but she had freed his legs. “Also, we have to relocate. Now move.”
“Aren’t you going to ask me if I have decided?”
“You haven’t yet. There’s a process here. You’ve been seduced, drugged, and subjected to all the tools of Aurelian persuasion. Perhaps you think you know how you’ll decide, but the real moment will not come until you face the imminent destruction of your ship.”
“Suppose I told you I wanted to do it, I wanted to be in.”
“You’d be lying. Now, move.” She jammed something into the back of his ribs, a sharp, cold metal point delivered a jolt to his system. She pointed him down a long hallway of rusted metal. Her lamp illuminated the first few meters, but after that nothing could be seen.
She prodded him again. “Move it.”
Redfire shuffled. He had been shackled in place so long his legs were stiff. The progress of his first few steps was clumsy.
“Bear in mind, if you try to run, I will kill you, and destroy your ship.”
“May I ask a question?”
“So long as you keep moving.”
“Who are the Arcana?”
For the first time, she seemed genuinely taken off guard. “How do you know about the Arcana?”
“Give us some credit. The Arcana are… what, your leaders?”
“Nothing so trivial as that,” she snapped.
“Your gods?”
She struck him across the back of the head with her prod, scratching him and drawing blood. “We are not primitives!” she raged. “And that is silly, superstitious nonsense.”
“Who are the Arcana?” he asked again.
He could feel her glaring at him. The sound of her voice was hateful, but a little awed. “The Echelon are the next level above humans, and the Arcana are the level above the Echelon. That’s all you need to know.”
“But who are they… what are they?”
“I have told you enough. I’ll strike you again. You will learn more about them when you join with Aurelia. We will tell you all you need to know.”
Something moved his lips and spoke for him, because he hadn’t formed the thought himself. “They have been speaking to me.”
He thought he heard Mercuria gasp, then felt the sting of her prod on the back of his head. “Liar! The Arcana speak only to the Echelon, and only to the high Echelon.”
“The Emperor… right, big man, Purple robe… The High Priestess, clothed in sky-blue with great white horns… Strength, the infinite woman, power over animals … Temperance, not like forbearance, but like tempered steel, a tempered will… Fortune… you can’t see her, but she casts a shadow in the shape of a wheel…”
“Stop it… stop it!” She screamed at him. “Those are just the outward manifestations of the Arcana,” she said, still suspicious. “The true Arcana have a nature that can not be known, or even contemplated by base animals
like us. Each of the Arcana symbolically and literally embodies an aspect of Aurelia.”
“So they are both symbolic and literal?”
“Yes.”
His eyes became peaceful. “That pleases me, aesthetically. The idea that… not only can a thing be literal and symbolic at once, but such things can become the governing…entities of an entire race.” She took this in, trying to judge whether his comment was sarcastic or sincere. “The closest you might understand is that they are guiding spirits. Your own world has ideals, freedom, honor, for example. Our Arcana are literal manifestation of the things Aurelia values. The First Echelon created them, using some kind of technology from the Aenaugh to draw their highest essence from within, so that we would always have their guidance.”
“Where did they come from?”
“The Arcana have been with humanity since the Dawn of Evolution. The First Echelon drew them out from the from the mind and gave them form. That is all one needs to know.”
“Where do they live?”
“They are everywhere and no where. They appear as they are called upon. When we embrace a new world, they always come to the megasphere, to rejoice with us.”
“Have you ever seen them?”
She did not answer, but he sensed that she had not, and resented him for it. They had arrived at a great shaft. It extended upward for hundreds of meters, into darkness. Was it too tall to see, or was it night outside? Redfire did not know.
But she could not help herself, she had to ask, “What did they whisper to you?”
“That my world would never become Aurelian, we would be destroyed…that fire is not the same as light… Death mean or precedes change, we must die in order to change, something like that… and we are what we are.”
Mercuria struck him angrily. “Now, begin climbing, and do not mention the Arcana again. I will not kill you, but I’ll give you a misery you’ll not soon forget. Climb!” Winter – The Southern Sea
By dawn on his part of the planet, the storm had broken.
“As near as I can tell, we are not too far off-course,” said Gilligan, standing high in the foredeck of the battered Peckwad.
Ziang surveyed the ocean. A rare, almost brilliant day on planet Winter had dawned. The veil of clouds that hid the sun was thin and ragged, like old lace. Icy white and yellow light poked through the holes and dappled across the bruise-blue sea.
Keeler, his face nearly as white as an ice floe, clung to the rail in a death grip. “How long after the ship stops moving before I don’t need to throw up any more.”
“I could sure go for some breakfast,” Gilligan said. “I could really for a cream pie right now, or some oysters.”
Keeler shuddered. “Stop that! You’re creeping me out and making me sick at the same time.”
“I think there’s some food in the food locker,” Gilligan continued.
“That seems like a reasonable supposition,” said Ziang. “Find out what there is.” With Gilligan absent, Ziang scanned the horizon with a double-telescope. “No sign of land, yet,” he said. “I am afraid our shipmaster will not be able to navigate until we can find a recognizable piece of land.”
“At least the water has quieted down,” said Keeler. “It’s a beautiful day.”
“Calm seas are not necessarily a good thing,” said Ziang.
“In what way,” Keeler asked.
The Old General grunted.
From below, there came a noise, as if thousands and thousands of tiny creatures were bumping their heads against the bottom of the boat. Keeler crossed to the prow, from where he could see an enormous school of fish (or whatever sea-swimming organism passed for fish on this planet.) They were fleeing, rushing madly away from the Peckwad’s direction of travel.
“What’s going on?” Keeler asked.
“They are running,” Ziang said. “Running for their lives.”
“From what?”
Ziang gestured.
Far out from the boat, a tiny spot of the ocean had begun to boil. In the midst of the quite sea, a perfect circle of bubbling, roiling waves disrupted the surface. The circle grew wider and wider. Presently, something began to emerge.
“How lucky we are,” Ziang whispered.
Before Keeler could question Ziang’s definition of the word ‘lucky,’ the boat began to rise and buck as the disturbance spread outward from the point where a great horned creature was rising from the sea. Its head came first, a helmet-shaped thing with two-lobes around a vertical slit that might have been an eye or a mouth. At first, it appeared as a giant snake, all head and long, coiled body, but as it rose higher and higher, and larger and larger, other even more hideous body parts began to emerge.
When it had fully emerged, the beast towered over them, and looking toward it, they could see nothing but a sky of stony gray scales. Tentacles fanned out in every direction from a torso, large enough to wrap all of Pegasus in their twists and writhes. Huge plates ran up the back and tail of the beast. The head of the beast was so far away, at the top of its elongated neck, that it looked like a mere dot, although, by Keeler’s estimation, it had to be considerably larger than a milkbeast.
Keeler’s mind reeled, trying to put some sense of size and scale to the thing. Being of a professorial mind, he imagined the beast being described and depicted in some text. There would be two-full pages of text, or one massive two-page illustration (worth a thousand words at historically consistent exchange rates) and there, in the lower-right hand side of the page, the page number would be the relative size of his boat.
Gilligan appeared at the side of the boat, wielding a large harpoon gun. He aimed it at the monster, although the gesture would obviously be futile. Then, as suddenly as it appeared, it dived beneath the waves again and vanished, leaving scarcely a ripple in the icy-cold sea.
“What do you call that thing?” Keeler asked.
“Richard,” Gilligan answered.
“Oh,” Keeler said, opening the small emergency brandywine flask he kept with him.
“Do you want to know why?” Ziang asked.
Commander Keeler already knew. “Because he looks like a Richard,” he answered. He discovered he was shaking too badly to stand or move, and could do nothing but only wish he had brought a change of pants.
C h a p t e r T w e n t y
Pegasus – The UnderDecks
Constantine came to, feeling like a herd of large, heavy herbivores had butted him into the path of heavy earthmoving equipment which in turn knocked a hydroelectric dam down on top of him. Every bone felt crushed, every muscle felt like burned meat. His ears rang and his vision was limited to a small circular area surrounded by pulsating black and purple.
Also, his jaw was bleeding, and it felt like a tooth had been ripped out from a place where teeth do not naturally grow. The intruder had ripped out his Ident Sliver. He felt for his datapad and weapon. Both were gone.
“Good morning, sweetheart,” he heard Hunter say humorlessly.
“What are you still doing here?” Constantine said, with difficulty, it was as though his tongue had swollen and dried out in his mouth.
“I’m trying to stop an intruder from getting through to the missile hatcheries. And when I get through with that, I have to give a certain Centurion thorough and well-deserved ass-kicking.” Constantine pulled himself up to where he was almost standing. His vision was not clearing, and now his head was throbbing like an angry bell. Ghost stood next to Hunter, a hateful scowl on her gentle face.
“You want this?” Hunter said, holding up a medikit.
“This isn’t the right time to be playing games, Hunter, or should I call you…” Hunter threw the medikit hard and caught Constantine in the stomach. “We’ve got to go, quickly. The transport pod is gone.”
“So is my ID Sliver,” said Constantine, wiping blood from the back of his jaw. “Without my ID Sliver, I can’t over-ride the perimeter defenses around the Missile Hatcheries.”
“I thought the Missile Hatcher
ies were locked down,” Hunter said.
“I didn’t have time to alert the Watch. I was going to do that after… afterwards.” Hunter finished for him. “Regarding that…” he turned his hand over and dropped pieces of the paralyzer cuffs to the deck. “The next time you and Bellisarius play ‘Good Cop, Bad, Bad, Bad Cop,’ you’ll have to borrow his.”
Constantine avoided it. “There’s nothing between the intruder and the missiles but the auto-defenses, and he can shut them down with my datapad and my …” he took out the pain suppressor patches from the Medikit and attached one underneath his chin, to stop the pain there, and placed the other on the back of his neck, where it could intercept pain signals from anywhere in his body.
“Then, link Tactical and tell them there’s an intruder in the Missile Hatcheries.”
“I can’t activate communication links on this level without my Sliver,” Constantine looked like he wanted to crawl into a waste reclamation unit and die.
“Spare me, Connie. You’re a Centurion, you have communication nodes built into your skeleton.”
“That energy bolt fried all my internal systems, I can barely see you.” The pain that was only beginning to submerge beneath the cold cover of the anaesthetic was caused by tiny devices in his body recently burned and scorched. Parts of his musculature were now cooked like roast beef.
Hunter analyzed the situation for a few moments, crossed the deck, and slapped Constantine hard across the face. “Listen Connie, I know it will take every molecule of strength in your being, but try not being a knocker just once in your life. That intruder is in the Hatcheries. The only people who can stop him is us. Now, I suggest we get to maintenance lift 219G, we can take it up to Deck minus twelve. From there, we can take conveyance tube 122F up to deck zero. If we move forward toward Section 7, we can access the Missile Hatcheries through the launch instrument clusters.”
Winter Page 29