After a bloody campaign that lasted half a century, The Heron, on the cusp of defeat, deployed two ancient airships of refugee Heron to the distant planet of Honora. The Kreft rose to power shortly thereafter. With nothing to stop them, they turned Icarus and its moons on their heads looking for the rumored weapon. The Heron, they finally decided, must have destroyed it in lieu of letting it fall into enemy hands. Their first act of victory was to enslave The Heron settlements and erect their largest outpost on Icarus as a symbol of their power.
Their plan for ruling the Epimetheus was simple enough. Shortly after reclaiming The Ice Ring, they set out to break down and then rebuild the cultures they deemed worthy of advancement. They would work from the shadows to neatly unite the galaxy under their rule. The alternative was more war, something they might not be able to afford. With the ancestors' laboratories in disrepair, they had no immediate means of creating more of themselves, but using the Epimetheus, they could build an army of expendable foot soldiers not only capable of wiping out the straggling Heron rebels, but all other opposition they might encounter as their conquest branched into other worlds and galaxies.
And that had been the state of things in the Epimetheus for almost five hundred years.
With a growl of pain, Reece jerked and found himself hands and knees on the laboratory floor. The Spinner pinched off his temple and fell with a quiet tick to the marble. He stared at it blearily, panting as his brain tried to catch itself up to speed. It felt like a muscle, sore after a long day of tearing itself apart.
After a moment, Nivy knelt beside him and met his eye. “Are you alright?”
Reece considered as he slowly leaned up on his haunches. It was like someone had slipped him a pair of bifocals, and suddenly, he could see the fingerprints of the ancestors plainly stamped all over the Epimetheus, transferred from The Kreft and The Heron through Aurelia to Honora and so on. Bleeding bogrosh. Honora seemed awfully young all of the sudden. “Not even remotely.”
Nivy nodded, eyes on the Spinner. “I thought about just telling you, but I don't know if I could have.” Almost as an afterthought, she stood, nudged the Spinner out into the open with her boot, and stomped on it. It crackled and sparked as it died. “That history has been passed down by memory since the first wars…it's too dangerous to be kept anywhere accessible. There probably aren't more than ten Heron who know it at a time. If The Kreft got their hands on it—”
“They would know the truth about the weapon,” Reece finished, still a little breathless as he scrubbed the back of his forearm across his forehead. “They'd realize it was never hidden on Icarus to begin with, and that it needs a key.” He'd always thought The Heron Underground was a little crazy for going to such lengths to make sure their spies, if caught, wouldn't be able to talk under duress. But if collaring their people kept The Kreft from finding out they could still get their grubby hands on the ancestors' weapon…a weapon that could wipe out an entire race…then he could see the need.
Nivy nodded again, watching him as he stood. He was just remembering some of Eldritch's more confusing words from the night of the masquerade. We cannot leave until Epimetheus is ours, Reece. It is…how would you say…a part of our peculiar genetic code.
“I need a minute,” Reece muttered as he began to pace. Nivy sat on a desk and pulled up her knees to watch him work out the wrinkles in his thoughts in silence.
Reece was only a strategist when it came to flying. In a war council, he'd probably be about as useful as a cricket stick. But he couldn't stop thinking that The Kreft's biggest blunder hadn't been their assumption that the ancestor's weapon had been destroyed. It had been the overlooking of the two airships that had found their home on Honora at the height of a war when all hope for their opponent had otherwise seemed lost.
Turning on his heel, Reece pointed at Nivy and said, “So what I just saw…that came directly from the memories of The Heron who first fought The Kreft?”
Nivy waggled her head. “Indirectly, but yes.”
“And they didn't have any more of an idea than you do about the weapon? The key?”
She stared at him expressionlessly with those eyes that he would swear sometimes could read his mind. “You're wondering why they chose to save two ordinary ships like Aurelia and Aurelius when they could have sent any other amount of ancestral technology to safety.” She shrugged. “Aurelia and her brother were some of the only ships leftover from the time of the ancestors that The Kreft hadn't made off with or left in pieces.”
“Why?”
“Because compared to the ancestors' other ships—the ones The Kreft claimed for their flagships—they were pushbikes. They weren't even functional before The Heron deployed them. They were museum pieces, some of the crudest of the ancestors' designs. Either The Kreft had no use for them, or they were simply overlooked.”
Slowly, Reece started pacing again with his hands shoved deep in his trouser pockets. “But you came to Honora because you suspected Aurelia had something to do with the weapon. What?”
After a moment, Nivy reached inside her coat and from under her arm pulled out The Heron key-gun, which he had last seen in its port on Aurelia's flightpanel. She must have grabbed it while his back was turned. Just like a real spy. He tried to choke back his annoyance as she offered him the gun by its barrel.
“Thirty years ago, a band of Heron spies who were running recon on Icarus stumbled upon an outpost in the mountains. It hadn't been disturbed in hundreds of years. They had reason to believe it might have been one of the remote laboratories used in the development of the ancestors' weapon. They took every bit of research they could load into their ship and destroyed the lab behind them.”
Reece looked up from staring blankly at the key-shaped gun as Nivy fell quiet. She canted her head towards it pointedly. “This?” he exclaimed, holding up the gun. “This came from the lab? But it's a…” He almost dropped it as an alarm started ringing in his head. It was a key. “Is this…the key?”
“It's the key to Aurelia.”
The smooth gun suddenly felt as heavy and cold as his gut. “You're saying Aurelia is the weapon.”
“I'm saying,” Nivy sighed as she stood, joined him, and yanked the gun from his limp hand, “that both this and the book Hayden has been trying to translate were in that lab, and for a reason. The Heron who excavated it were seen leaving Icarus. They were gunned down, but an escape capsule made it back here, to Ismara. It had some notes, a few useless datascopes, the book, and the key. All the other research was destroyed. We'll never know what it said, but there's a chance that those Heron did. What does that tell you?”
“That you Heron have an unfortunate inclination for jettisoning important stuff?”
“I swear, you have the attention span of a bumblebee. Focus, Reece. If the spies had a chance to look through the research, and they chose to give us the book and the key…”
Reece grunted, catching on. “Then they both must have something to do with the weapon.”
Nivy's blue eyes grew Pantedan bright as her story picked up speed. “That's what we thought. For years, people worked on translating the book, but it didn't match any of the ancestor's previous writings. It just didn't make sense. And the gun looked like a gun, but it couldn't work as one. The Heron began to grow frustrated. The key and book were put away for a long time, until an ordinary engineer in the Underground, who had been working on plans to rebuild Aurelia from the blueprints left by the ancestors, noticed that the ship was outfitted to run with a very particular key. He was the one who made all the connections. He was the one who told me about it, who convinced me we had sent away the one solid lead we had on the weapon. But The Six wouldn't hear him out. They were done expending good people and resources chasing legends. So he took matters into his own hands.” She wet her lips, looking suddenly strained. “He went looking for Aurelia.”
Reece knew most of the story from here out. “Let me guess. The spy who crash-landed on Atlas nine years ago.”
> “Tolen. He left Ismara with a black mark on his name. Most of The Six thought he had gone renegade, but I knew better. Canter and I were the only ones who believed in what he was trying to do for The Heron by solving the mystery of The Aurelia. Of course, I was only ten at the time. My support was almost more of a hindrance than a help.”
Proceeding with caution—Nivy had that wild, crouching look about her again—Reece backed up to a desk and took a seat before asking, “But he only took the book, right? You brought the key with you when you came.”
“He stole the book first and was discovered. He had to run before he could try for the key.”
“So how did he plan on flying Aurelia?”
“How do you think The Heron refugees flew her, all those years ago?”
“A spare?”
Nivy shrugged. “Presumably. Tolen was willing to spend the rest of his life on Honora, searching for answers and if necessary, another key. He didn't anticipate The Kreft influence there.”
“But if the key was all that important, why the bogrosh would the ancestors have risked making two of it?”
Nivy countered, “If it was all that important, why would they have risked only having one of it?”
“Fair point,” Reece admitted, scratching his jaw. “But how about this one. Presuming Aurelia and her key really do have something to do with this weapon, why do you think the ancestors left them both behind when they took off at the end of the war?”
Nivy noisily huffed a strand of black hair out of her face as she crossed her arms and shifted her weight. “That's what The Six are always getting hung up on. They refuse to leave the ancestors any margin for error.”
“I can't really blame them. That's a bleeding big margin.” As Nivy eyed at him darkly, Reece felt the need to point out, “What kind of geniuses build an all-powerful weapon and then forget to pack the key?”
Before Nivy had the chance to answer, the laboratory door banged open magnificently.
The woman from his interrogation, the one with her black hair shaved over her ear on one side, stood in the open doorway with an armed escort of white-cloaked guards filling the hallway behind her. Canter. She looked even more intimidating without Nekoda’s fist impeding his vision, lean and fit, with feline grey eyes on deceivingly dainty features. She struck him as the kind of person who would use that deception to her advantage.
Canter surveyed them with her hands on her hips, then prowled over, smirking. Up close, she didn’t look more than thirty or so. “Heya, Reece,” she greeted. Her accent was like Nivy’s and Mose’s, inquisitive, unrolling into lazy vowels and rounded R’s. “How’s the head?”
“Bruised.”
“No doubt. Nekoda’s a mean swing. He’s downright handy in a fight.”
“Handlers usually are.”
Canter looked him up and down, reassessing him, and then pulled out another sharp smirk. “That’s right. I forgot you have one of your own. Where’s he gone off to? See, this is why they were locked in a cell, Nivy.” Turning on the heels of her tall black boots, she stooped to look Nivy in the eye, sneering. Nivy stood as if someone had soldered a rod to her spine. “So we wouldn’t lose track of them. Are you not even going to say hello? It’s bad enough we had to find out you were alive from this one. I figured you had made off with him and the Pan when I went to check on them and found Waylon sleeping in a supply closet with his hands bound.”
Nivy said mildly, “He wouldn’t give me the key code to their cell.”
“Probably because I told him not to. Good to know the idiot can do something right. Anyways, I need you and our escapee to come with me. Some of The Six have asked to see you. Three guesses who.”
Clearing her throat—her face suddenly looked a little blotchy—Nivy remarked, “Word gets around the Underground fast these days.”
“A lot has changed since you left.”
“I can tell. Since when do we trust Nekoda to do our interrogating?”
Wickedly smiling like this was the moment she’d been waiting for, Canter lifted her left hand and peeled off her black gauntlet to show off the nondescript band around her ring finger. “Since I decided to marry him. You just missed the ceremony. It’s a family business, now.”
Alarmed, Reece watched Nivy as she shut her eyes and mouthed a word that looked suspiciously like dirt. Some of the men clogging the doorway chuckled under their breath, though they stopped the instant Canter loudly snapped her fingers without so much as a glance in their direction. Not a bad power to have, but Reece was too busy feeling disturbed to be really impressed. Canter had said family. Did that mean she and Nivy were—
“I take it from your blank expression Nivy didn’t bother with introductions,” Canter said as she tugged her gauntlet on again. “We’re sisters.”
“By marriage,” Nivy clarified, her eyes springing open. Before Reece could become really disturbed, she explained, “Canter was married to my brother before he died.”
Reece heard an unbecoming wheezing sound—like a deflating balloon—and realized it was coming from his throat. “The brother who died nine years ago,” he remembered slowly. Nivy refused to look at him as she nodded once. “You said Canter had something to gain by helping you get to Honora to find out what had happened to Tolen. Tolen was your brother, wasn’t he?”
Another tight-lipped nod. He felt like there was a ship sinking in his gut that had its anchor wedged in his heart. Despite everything they’d been through, Nivy had somehow never found the time to confide in him that the spy his brother had seen nobbled on Atlas had been her brother. She didn’t even look guilty as he stared at her, waiting for some kind of an explanation, if not an apology. She didn’t look at him at all.
Canter snapped her fingers again. “Enough chit chat. Bind their hands.” She pretended to look aghast as the guards moved forward and Nivy opened her mouth in protest. “Oh, did I forget to mention? You’re under arrest.”
XXVII
Radioactive
Reece twisted his hands uncomfortably, trying to wring even an inch out of the strange manacles cutting off their circulation. It was no use. Now that he knew what to look for, he understood how the technology The Heron had inherited from the ancestors was a feat of machine working in tandem with man. The faded puncture wound on Mose’s neck matched the mark Nivy’s collar had left behind. The Spinner had to connect to human memories to work. And the manacles hit just the right pressure points to make trying to move in them painful on top of useless.
He looked sideways at Nivy, trying to gauge how bad off she thought they were. Her unblinking, single-minded stare didn’t seem to bode well, and unlike him, she wasn’t even cuffed.
None of the guards had looked worried in the least about the wisdom of leaving her and Reece with only one escort. Either they trusted Canter to handle herself, or if they didn’t, they knew better than to voice their doubt where she could hear. From this angle, Reece could see how the leather harness crossing Canter’s back dangled an alarming collection of sheathed knives.
“So, what did you learn about Tolen?” Canter asked as she herded them down a set of steep rocky stairs. They had yet to reemerge into the main hub; since leaving the laboratory, Canter had steered them clear of all other signs of life, which again, didn’t bode well. Her little side tunnels tended always left and down, passing fewer and fewer intersections but growing curiously dimmer and dimmer, until she unpocketed one of those glowing, hand-sized domes that washed the party in a bubble of light.
“Little more than we’d already suspected.”
“His book?” When Nivy said nothing, Canter gave Reece a hard shove that made his body remember its colorful bruises. “This one mentioned it when we were purpling his face.”
Reece grunted. “You say we, but I don’t remember you helping.”
“Well. In spirit.”
Seeming distracted as she glanced around—though Reece doubted she could make out anything more than a yard away—Nivy asked, “Where are we
going?”
“I told you, Asa and Illie want to see you. They’ve been preoccupied with reports of the peculiar Kreft activity and haven’t had the chance to talk over everything your brown-eyed captain gave Nekoda last night, but I think it goes without saying they’re feeling a mite stern.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Nivy said dryly. “What is this place? I’ve never been here before. It can’t be new.”
“It’s as new as everything else ever is around here. Which is to say bleeding old.”
Probably owing to the fact he had just been over this part The Heron’s wild history, Reece beat Nivy to what that meant. “You found more of the infrastructure left behind by the ancestors,” he guessed. Nivy shot him an amused sideways glance. He decided to let it mean she was impressed.
“Oh, look,” Canter remarked, “a good looking one that’s actually smart.”
“How much did you find?” Nivy interrupted. “And how? When?”
Canter actually seemed gratified by Nivy’s interest, though she played it off with a casual wave of her hand. “Not long after you left. There had been a bad raid on Elpis and we were packed to capacity, so The Six pushed the need for expansion into the mountains. A bit of tunneling and accidental avalanching later…” She broke off as they suddenly stopped at a stout steel door, exchanging low words with its hooded guard. He stepped aside and waved them through the checkpoint, into a room too big and black for Canter’s light to more than dent.
Something about the cool shift in the air gave Reece the sense of wide open space and vast emptiness. They could easily be on the edge of a cliff or the bottom of a pit at the heart of the moon…he couldn’t tell. But the uneasy prickling feeling of being watched at least told him they weren’t alone. Something was looming in the shadows, silent, asleep, biding its time. The sound of their boots shuffling over dusty cement floors echoed like whispers.
The Airship Aurelia (The Aurelian Archives) Page 41