He rushed through and sealed it behind him. Even his urgency couldn't offset years of ritual and careful training. The airlocks had to be set. Lives might depend on it one day, and his standing in the good graces of High Priest Myril was tied to careful compliance and absolute attention to detail.
Ozymandes hurried down the main passageway of The Temple. His footsteps echoed, and he tried to keep them silent. The others would soon start poking their heads out of their cells, or the many small chapels that lined the hall. He didn't have time to be chastised, or to engage any of them in discussion, so when the echoes continued, he broke into an all out run.
When he stumbled through the doorway into the High Priest's antechamber, he was out of breath and coated in sweat. Eldrid, Myril's scribe, glanced up from the parchment he was carefully copying with a start, spattering ink over the document in a fine spray. He gaped at Ozymandes for a second, as if trying to comprehend the sight before him. Then he noticed the ink.
Sputtering angrily, Eldrid rose. He reached for his spectacles, yanking them from his face, and started around the desk.
"What is the meaning…"
That is as far as he got. Ozymandes stepped around him quickly, gave the scribe an apologetic shrug, and darted through the doorway to Myril's inner chamber without a word.
Two things met his gaze the moment he stepped through the doorway. Myril sat, slumped back in his great leather chair, and quite alone. That was the first. The second was that the High Priest was fast asleep with his feet propped directly in the center of his great desk.
Ozymandes stood very still, not certain how to proceed. He didn't want to wake the old man suddenly – but his news couldn't wait, and if he didn't act quickly, Eldrid would be on him. He didn't have time for a scuffle, or the shouting match that might ensue.
"Your Eminence?" he said.
He spoke softly, and all his words managed to elicit from Myril was a loud snort, followed by steady snoring.
"Your Eminence!" he called out louder.
This time Myril started. He choked back another snort, sat up straight very quickly, and nearly topped from his chair as his feet slid off the desk. When he recovered and sat up straight, he caught sight of Ozymandes, and glared in open hostility.
"What is the meaning of this?" he cried out. "Eldrid! Eldrid get in here at once and…"
"Your Eminence, wait," Ozymandes cried.
He stepped forward and actually laid a hand on the polished surface of the High Priest's desk. Under normal circumstances, he would never have dared, but he knew he had only moments to get the old man's attention.
"I have been on duty in The Chamber of Stars, Eminence," he said in a rush. "There is an anomaly – a sign. Something is coming, and very rapidly. I did not know what to do, so…"
"Anomaly?" Myril said. "Anomaly? What kind of anomaly? What are you talking about? What…"
"You must come," Ozymandes said. "Please, your Eminence. I would never disturb you without good reason. I have seen a great light approaching the city. I observed it for only a few moments, and it moved an entire mark on the lens grid. There is not much time…"
Myril's eyes cleared as he came fully awake. Eldrid burst into the room, but the High Priest stayed him with a quickly raised hand.
"You had better be correct, young man," he said, still glaring at Ozymandes, but with less anger now and more purpose. He turned to Eldrid.
"Rouse the others. Send them to The Chamber of Stars immediately."
Eldrid backed out of the room, nodding in confusion.
"Wait!" Myril called after him. "Before you do anything else, send a runner to High Councilor Cumby. He will need to be notified that something is amiss."
"What shall we tell him?" Eldrid asked.
"Tell him that there's an Urv-Blasted anomaly,” Myril bellowed. "Tell him that the stars are aligned for great evil. Tell him that the sky has begun to crumble and fall. I don't care what you tell him – get him to The Chamber of Stars."
Eldrid ducked out of the room without another word. Myril rose and stepped around the desk. He had always been an imposing figure to Ozymandes – a symbol of power. In that moment he looked more like a sleepy, confused old man. His hair waved in gray wisps about his head, and his beard was twisted to one side from where he'd leaned into the chair to nap.
"Well, don't just stand there, young man," the High Priest muttered. "Let's go. I want to see your anomaly before any of the others arrive. We will have to study it, and then, we will have to act."
"What can we do?" Ozymandes asked. He regretted the question almost the second he spoke as Myril's eyes filled with ire.
"How should I know? Do you know how many anomalies have been dealt with by The Temple in my lifetime? I'll tell you, just in case you have fallen behind on your studies and don't know. There have been none. Zero. There is never an anomaly, and duty in The Chamber of Stars has been nothing but a peaceful, quiet hour or two of meditation…until now. What can we do? I would suggest we pray as we walk, and hope that something occurs to us before your anomaly crashes through the veils and depressurizes the entire city."
Ozymandes lowered his head and followed meekly as Myril stalked out through his chambers and into the great hall. There were still stragglers waiting to complain about the noise, but seeing Myril, they kept their silence. When the High Priest passed through their ranks, Ozymandes at his heels, they fell in behind.
As they opened the airlock and began to file inside, it occurred to Ozymandes to wonder just how much weight The Chamber of Stars was intended to hold. He hoped fervently that they weren't about to find out, because he had the feeling that they already faced a problem beyond the scope of their knowledge and abilities, and even for the High Priest, one such catastrophe at a time was more than sufficient. Briefly, he wished that he'd gone to his chambers and read a book, rather than swapping for the ill-fated Chamber of Stars duty. Then the airlock opened, and they were climbing the narrow stairs in a long, solemn line, and all other thoughts slowly drained from his mind.
~ * ~
Far away, in the dining hall of The Outpost, Aria happened to glance up through the skylight. She gave a gasp of surprise and rose from here seat, backing so quickly her drink tumbled and spilled across Lyones' lap.
"What?" the big man said, pushing back from the table.
The others had already followed Aria's gaze. In the sky far above, a brilliant flash of light was crossing the skyline.
"That thing is close," Euphrankes said, standing and moving closer to the window where he could see clearly. "Gods…it's headed directly for Urv."
"What do you think it is?" Lyones asked. "I've never seen anything quite so bright, or close."
"I don't know," Euphrankes said, "but I think we'd better get to work. How many of those patches have you got?"
"A dozen, fifteen maybe," Slyphie cut in. "There will be more by morning. I managed to use some of the old equipment to automate it."
"Before you even knew if it would work?" Aria asked.
Slyphie grinned.
"I always knew it was going to work. It was the rest of you who were skeptical."
Euphrankes laughed, then turned back to gaze at the brilliant chunk of fire dropping from the sky.
"We'd better get going. I think we need to clear the road to Urv, and do it fast. If we can get there with a few of those patches, we might be in time to help."
"Hold on a second," Bonymede cut in. He was a big man, round in the center with slightly bowed legs and arms as thick as most men's thighs. His voice boomed like a loudspeaker. "Didn't they just banish you? Again?"
"That was then," Euphrankes said. "This is entirely different. It's one thing to hold a grudge against the men and women of The High Council – but if that thing causes serious damage to the First Veil in Urv, everyone in the city will be in danger. If we can help, we have to try."
"We could fly in," Aria said. "We'd get there more quickly."
Euphrankes shook his
head.
"We couldn't get the equipment in and out of the locks in Urv. We might get them onto the Vector, but we'd never be able to unload. The only way in is down the road."
Lyones crossed the room and flipped on a bright light above a large, square table. He opened a drawer and pulled out a map. It showed the road between The Outpost and Urv. Near the center, on the Urv side, the main breach had been clearly marked. There were several smaller tears marked on either side.
"I think we can drive through,” Lyones said, running his finger down the length of the road. "We'll need serious patches here," he poked the map, "and here. These other breaches are small; they won't need a full patch, just an Imperium shield and pressure."
They gathered around and began to plan as the strange, flaming object plummeted closer to the planet, and the High Priests and High Council of Urv met in a mild state of panic, high above the city streets in The Chamber of the Stars. Time was growing short.
Chapter Four
There were a number of vehicles at The Outpost capable of making the land journey to Urv. Most of them were intended for personnel transport, but in this case, Euphrankes chose the largest in their fleet. It stretched nearly fifty feet in length, and was designed to fit narrowly within the confines of the road, providing maximum cargo space. Before the road had fallen to disrepair, the tracker, as they'd dubbed it, had made regular runs, carrying airlock mechanisms and other products of The Outpost's factories to the city. The return trips had restocked food supplies, and carried in natural resources concentrated in remote areas.
Euphrankes father had discovered the lighter-than-air qualities of Freethion gas, for instance, but had not discovered a plentiful source of it near The Outpost. As it turned out, a large pocket existed on the outskirts of Urv herself, so trade had been brisk. The trade continued, but it was much more difficult to move supplies through the cities’ airlocks. The Vector could carry quite a bit of freight, but could only deliver smaller items and machined parts to Urv. There was more leeway in some of the other cities, where larger airlocks had been installed and the airship technology had been more fully embraced, but that trade was precarious as The High Council was the acknowledged governing body over all the cities.
Without the roads, though they would never admit it, The High Council and The Temple ruled over a shrinking and dying world. Half the roads out of the city were damaged, and the half that were still in operation were showing signs of wear. The High Council had been forced to change their stance from complete opposition to traveling between the veils to a grudging acceptance. They had taken a stance against progress, and regardless of the stunning short-sightedness of it, the people had followed their lead. Now the entire structure of their society was on the verge of collapsing from entropy.
When the outlying cities had begun work on the Freethion-powered airships, emissaries and priests traveled the roads, usually by foot, to condemn them. When the Merchants Guild approached The Council with plans for the first airship tower, they were turned down, and taxed. It wasn't until the third of the great roads had to be sealed that they acquiesced, and they put strict limits on the size and number of seals that could be attached to the First Veil.
"The veils protect us," Myril had said. "They have always protected us, and to presume to breach that protection is blasphemous and foolish. Each time we allow ourselves to slice another piece of that holy veil, we weaken it – and we show the weakness of our faith. A higher power encased us in the veils and that power can be counted on to protect us in the future – but only if we show faith. Only if we do not presume to know things we were never meant to understand."
The High Council had taken a slightly more lenient, but infinitely greedier stance. They taxed the merchants heavily for anything moving in and out of the city via the airships. They gouged any out-city merchants coming in for trade, and before one could travel from city to city on one of the ships, at least one who was not part of the crew that flew in on it, it was necessary to obtain travel papers and make an insurance "donation" to The Temple.
Euphrankes had not tried very hard to prevent the collapse of the road joining his outpost to Urv. It was the least damaged of the thoroughfares to have been closed off, but he felt safer with the airlocks than he did with The High Council having direct access to his home. If lives had not hung in the balance, he'd never have attempted to reconnect with the city.
Now that they'd committed to re-opening the roadway, they'd split the crew into shifts. Slyphie and Bonymede went in first. Bonymede was adept with the remote-controlled robotic units they used when working beyond the veil, and the first thing they needed to do was to get the patches into place beyond the first seal. Then they could test it by slowly pressurizing that segment of road. If it held, then the next crew, Lyones and Myklos, would come in and disassemble the airlock, moving it out of the way and making room for the tracker to pass. They would then perform the same action on the far side of the rift, clearing any debris that might have sifted in from beyond the veil as they passed through.
There was one major leak to get past, and if they were successful, two smaller breaks closer to Urv. The trick would be getting the attention of someone inside the city and convincing them to open the locks. Such a repair was unheard of, believed impossible, and despite the fact that it reinforced the veils put in place by "a higher power," it would no doubt be condemned by The Temple. If there hadn't been a fiery ball of –something – falling from the sky on a collision course with The High Council, Euphrankes would never have risked it.
While the others worked through the night in shifts, Euphrankes and Aria loaded the tracker and tested its systems. It had been sitting idle for a very long time. They'd even begun using the cargo compartments for extra storage, a practice the pair came to regret before the night was through.
"I wish we had more of the patches ready," he said, driving a small cargo truck up the ramp toward the tracker's hold. Aria controlled the doors and the lifts that moved the cargo into position. The system was designed for the most productivity possible with a small crew.
"We didn't even know if they would work," she said. "And really – what would we have done with them? This is an emergency, and I'll grant you that they may not fine us, banish us again, or throw us in irons, but if we'd taken one of the patches into The High Council, they would have called it blasphemy. They'd say we were meddling with the affairs of higher powers, and the repercussions would ruin us all."
"You're right, of course," he said. "Still, if that thing creates too large of a rift for us to seal, this is all for nothing."
"We'll be running a rescue mission if that happens," Aria said. "I vote we leave The High Council and the priests and cart out women and children first."
"Deal," Euphrankes said with a grin. "That might not be a bad way to fix things, all considered."
He deposited the crate of parts he'd been moving on Aria's lift and backed away.
"It's only going to take about two more trips," he said. "We either have enough, or we don't. I don't want to overload the tracker first time out. I think it's okay – I checked the engines, and the seals are good, in case something goes wrong with the patches and we have to rely on her for life-support, but she's been idle for too long. Machines that are made to move should do so. Otherwise they fall to entropy far too quickly."
"She'll hold up," Aria said. "It seems like a very long time since the roads closed, but it has been less than a year. Things are changing much more rapidly now."
"Thanks to rebels like yourself," he laughed. "It's a good thing we're out here. If it weren't for rogue scientists and rebel engineers, the days of Urv, and all the cities, would be short."
They finished the loading, sealed the tracker, and drove out across the compound on one of the cargo vehicles to check on the road and the seals. The second shift was underway, and they could see, even from a distance, that the patch was holding. Pumps were in place pressurizing the road beyond the portal, and Ly
ones waved to them as they approached.
"I have most of the supports loose," he said. “Once the pressurization is complete, we'll be able to slide them out of the way and move on in. You want to bring the tracker up now?"
"No," Euphrankes said. "Let's give the patches overnight as a test. We can drive the tracker up when we're ready to leave. We're going to try and get some rest. When you finish your shift, do the same. Slyphie and Bonymede will be first up, and they can load food and personal supplies before we hit the road. You two can sleep in the tracker."
"It's been a long time since we did that," Myklos grinned, brushing dust off his hands as he joined them. "I used to love that trip."
"Let's hope we're successful enough that you'll get the chance to make it once or twice more," Aria said. "If we do a good enough job, maybe we can bring the tracker back loaded with Freethion. If we tell them we need it for the patches, we might be able to add enough to the order to finish the outer hull of the Tangent."
"Believe me," Euphrankes said, "if we can pull this off, that will be only the start of what I'll be asking for. They'll be able to recreate what we've done on the patches, but not without time to deconstruct one, which they'll have to pay for, and they'll still need someone equipped for the manufacturing. This time, I don’t think they have much choice but to deal."
"Progress," Lyones said, "is a road paved with emergencies."
They all laughed. Then, with a few suggestions on how to handle the removal of the debris on the road, Euphrankes and Aria drove back to The Compound and climbed to their quarters. They made their way through the locks and seals quickly, but carefully. With work being done on the road, it was more important than ever that they protect their life-support systems.
"It's going to make me nervous all night," Aria said. "Just the thought of that patch collapsing and all of the air…"
Second Veil Page 3