by Gary Gibson
‘If we don’t pull this off, and the radiation does come, the Citadel should be able to shelter us for some weeks at least.’
‘It won’t come to that,’ said Matthew confidently, but Sam could see how pale and drawn he was. The youth seemed to have shrunk within the parka he wore.
‘Matthew. Something on your mind?’
‘He’s my father,’ Matthew said quietly, ‘and I just wish there was some way we could settle this differently. Make him see this isn’t right. Look, I know that seems—’
‘Your father’s been locked into what he believes for far too long for him now to accept anything else,’ said Sam. ‘I used to believe in the same things too. But I changed.’
Was it possible to avoid an armed contest? Sam hoped so, hoped there would be some way. It might be simple: they might just walk in, activate the shield, and that would be it. Or it might take a lot longer – and Ernst would do everything he could to stop them.
And then, so suddenly that it seemed wrong, it started. Sam felt almost betrayed, as if all this business were some kind of game with rules that had been broken. A shot rang out. People screamed, some yelled, most just ran for cover. Another shot.
Screw this, thought Sam, and walked out into the open, shielding his eyes against the harsh polar sun to try and locate where the shots were coming from. Somewhere higher up, he surmised. Somebody yelled at him to take cover, but he ignored them. He heard the distinct whine of a bullet ricocheting off stone.
Trencher came forward and pulled him to one side, joining several others crouching beneath a stone outcrop. Sam peered up, saw a distant figure retreating from a high vantage point where the ground rose to meet the nearest entrance into the Citadel. The shots ceased.
‘Well, that settles it,’ said Trencher. ‘Ernst isn’t in a mood for debate.’
‘A couple of us have gone off to try and flush them out,’ said a girl called Michelle. ‘But we’re going to have to keep our eyes open.’ She looked pale and shaken, as they all did. These kids had rarely come into contact with real violence before. Perhaps they felt betrayed, thought Sam, that one of their own people would shoot at them.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘We need to get moving. We have to get the Kaspian in there before Ernst gets his act together.’ Perhaps, he thought hopefully, Ernst was still on his way, having sent just a small advance contingent to guard the Citadel.
‘We might have to take some chances, you realize.’ Trencher was echoing Sam’s own thoughts. ‘If you don’t mind risking the golden calf, that is,’ he added. Sam knew he meant the Facilitator, and the Kaspian who had brought it.
‘We’ll take no more chances than we have to.’ I’ve learned so many secrets here, thought Sam. And now the Kaspian gets to find out too.
Perhaps, he thought, it was best that the alien creature has no idea what he had in mind for it.
Kim
Kim watched as Elias brought the shuttle in for a final landing beside the Citadel. The whine of its engines dropped rapidly as the craft settled on a smooth patch of rock, near two other landed shuttles with people standing by them. People where people shouldn’t be, she reflected. Somehow she felt sure none of them had anything to do with the research station here.
‘Elias, do you know any of these people?’
He snapped out of his reverie. ‘No, I don’t. But I know Trencher’s here. I can feel it.’ He saw the anxious expression on her face. ‘They don’t mean us any harm, if that’s what you’re thinking, or they’d have started shooting by now.’ He moved towards the airlock door. ‘We need to get those guns ready now.’
Kim looked at him uncertainly. ‘You really think we’re going to need them?’
He shrugged. ‘Better safe than sorry.’
Elias
He saw Trencher standing there as soon as he disembarked. The man was looking a lot older than he remembered.
Trencher looked past Elias towards Kim and the alien emerging from the shuttle behind him. ‘There’s some things here I didn’t see in my mind,’ he commented to another old man with horrific scars criss-crossing his face, where visible under Arctic-style survival gear.
‘Trencher,’ said Elias, his expression volatile. ‘I . . .’ He choked, not sure what to say. Powerful emotions warred deep within him. ‘I came,’ he said at last.
‘You did good, Elias,’ Trencher smiled gently. ‘We’ve both come a long way from the streets of London. Now, do you understand what’s happening here?’
Elias felt uncertain. ‘Only what you told me before you . . . before you disappeared. I know that Ernst Vaughn brought you here,’ he said. ‘But I still don’t know why. And I don’t know who all these other people are.’
Trencher sighed. ‘Freeing me wasn’t the reason I wanted you to come after me. This is exactly where I’m supposed to be – where I should be.’
Elias shook his head, still confused. Trencher laid one hand gently on his arm. ‘Remember what I said, Elias, one of the last times we spoke? I wanted you to do just what you had to – what you would do anyway. Come with me. We’re both going to have a long, long talk.’
Sam Roy
Kim stood alongside the alien, Roke. Sam Roy saw her glance in his direction, her eyes suddenly growing wide in recognition.
‘You’re Sam,’ she said, approaching. ‘I – you don’t look the same.’
‘I’ve been feeling a bit better lately,’ he admitted with a smile. ‘I tend to heal very fast.’
‘So, it’s true? There’s something there inside the Citadel that can protect us?’
Sam nodded. ‘But we do have opponents. People who want to stop us. You should know that in advance.’
‘Yeah. I sort of got that impression already.’
He motioned to her to follow him, and to bring Roke with her. Its ear-jewels sparkled in the bright crisp air, most of its frame barely visible under a voluminous parka designed for the human frame. He’d healed so much, Sam realized, that Roke hadn’t recognized him.
Sam could see Trencher and Elias conversing off to one side. Ursu sat nearby, with the Facilitator, seemingly fascinated by this other Kaspian. Matthew was going amongst his people, huddled in tight little groups, explaining what was ahead of them, cajoling, encouraging.
It seemed to Sam that Matthew’s people might, for all their initial spirit, be wavering. Sam could see it in their eyes. They wanted their own future, but he suspected not all of them were prepared to pay the price that might be asked of them.
Elias
Trencher gathered them all together: Sam, Elias, Roke, Ursu and Kim.
‘Okay. So where do we head for when we actually get in there?’ asked Elias.
‘Inside the Citadel? Sam’s the one who knows it best, him and your friend Kim,’ said Trencher, looking over to where they stood beside each other. ‘I’m under the impression either one of them could find their way around in there blindfolded.’
He turned back to Elias. ‘But it’s dangerous, Elias. There are precise routes to follow. Space and time . . . they don’t operate the way they should, once you get in there.’
‘I only know parts of the Citadel,’ warned Kim.
‘But I know almost all of it well,’ said Sam. ‘It’s not going to be a problem.’
‘And then?’
‘We all foresee things, Elias – you, me, Sam, Ernst. It’s not completely accurate, it’s sometimes misleading, but most of the time it’s more than any of us can bear. You must know that by now.’ Elias nodded grimly. ‘We don’t know exactly what’s going to happen in there, but we do know what we have to do.’
Elias looked sharply at Sam. ‘Someone else arrived here with me and Kim, but he didn’t make it. He warned me about some kind of explosion that’s coming.’
‘The technical term is gamma-ray burster, but that information’s correct.’ Sam explained his findings about the war between the Angels and the other, unknown species. ‘There’s every reason to believe these creatures who fought against the Angels and lost are
responsible for it in some way.’
Elias shook his head. ‘What would they gain by killing everything in sight? This is a lot to take in.’
Sam nodded towards the Citadel. ‘It starts to make sense when you know that whoever created the Citadel incorporated a means to protect it – and this entire planet – from the burster event. There are machines called Facilitators that act as watchdogs over the whole thing, intelligent enough to debate the actions that should be taken, depending on particular circumstances. The Facilitators were removed from the Citadel a long time ago, probably by the distant ancestors of the Kaspians themselves. Now we need to get at least one of them – just one – back inside there, or else the shield won’t activate, and everything above the local equivalent of a snail is going to be incinerated within a few weeks.’
Trencher gripped Elias’s arm with surprising strength. ‘Vaughn stole years of my life, Elias, and now I really want to make him suffer. I’m sick of his taunting and his games. We won’t let him win, do you understand me?’
‘I understand you. How many stand against us?’
‘A lot, and Vaughn is in charge of them. He’s here, Elias, in flesh and blood.’
Elias looked uncertain. ‘If he’s anything like you, then he can’t be killed.’
‘That remains to be seen,’ said Trencher. ‘Remember what I said, Kim and Sam know the way in. At least one of these aliens needs to go with them. Make sure it does, Elias, and make sure it then activates that shield. Do the right thing, my boy. You always did.’
Elias glanced around at the men and women who gathered nearby. ‘Are they all from the Station?’
‘That’s a whole other story,’ muttered Trencher.
Elias studied the kids with guns and felt his heart sink. Civilians. Well-armed civilians, but how would they really feel when they came face to face, bullet to bullet, with their former friends and neighbours?
The best solution was to prevent things from getting that bad.
Elias climbed up on a landing strut of one shuttle craft and waited until they noticed him. Gradually they all fell quiet, after Sam yelled for their attention.
‘Hi, folks,’ he said. ‘I guess you all know why you’re here. Listen, within the next few hours, a lot of people – including the Kaspians – are likely to die when the radiation strikes. Sam here has been investigating a way to stop it. That means we’re all going into the Citadel, we’re going to switch on a defence shield, and then we’re going to come out again. All of us.’
Sam then came forward and addressed the small crowd. ‘Ernst Vaughn has misled you for too long. He has put himself in the place of God, and aims to become a destroyer of worlds. God would not require such sacrifice as proof of love or devotion. Yet Ernst Vaughn does. That makes him the true Adversary. Those who oppose us are our friends and neighbours. But if we have to, we must defend ourselves, not only for our own sake, but for the sake of this world on which all of you were born.’
It seemed strange that the alien who had captured Elias and Kim should apparently choose to come to this far-off, desolate place. Most of the time the creature stood quietly with the other, slightly smaller Kaspian, both watching with those huge unreadable eyes.
The smaller one was the key, both Sam and Trencher had told Elias. He had to get it in there alive. But the older one with the jewels in its ears would also suffice. Somehow the process wouldn’t work without the presence of an alien.
Ursu
Ursu had entered a world he knew he might never understand. From talking to Roke it did not take long for him to realize that the other was, in fact, someone of considerable importance; an imperial emissary, no less. And although they were not overtly being kept prisoner, the prospect of enduring forty nights of ice by escaping in any direction was as effective as the bars of any cell. Though Roke was someone important in Xan’s empire, here in this strange place, on the very edge of this empty black city out of time and legend, they found their roles strangely reversed. It was Ursu who had struggled to bring the Facilitator to this place, Ursu who had successfully evaded the armies of an empire – with, admittedly, some help from the Shai.
They were moving now. The female Shai came to him, speaking words both incomprehensible and alien. Out of habit, Ursu laid a hand on the surface of the Facilitator, and understood exactly what she meant. They were now going to enter Baul, and there would do that which needed to be done. Roke watched them both with old, tired eyes.
Ursu again found his way back to Roke’s side as they started off. They moved quickly up a steep path that ran along the perimeter of the legendary city. The mountains that separated Baul from the rest of the world were visible on the horizon, their astonishingly high peaks cutting deep into the sky. The increasingly steep path led over the ridge of a long hill that extended root-like far out from the main part of the Citadel. Sheer black cliffs fell away below them, a precipitious drop.
If they were to be attacked now, they were in an extremely vulnerable position, but they passed on unharmed, unseen – for the moment.
Elias
Elias moved ahead of the rest of them, feeling as if he were leading a band of armed children. Coming over the top of the incline, he gazed down at an entrance to the Citadel. One of several entrances, Kim had explained but, according to Sam, this was the quickest access to where they needed to be. And with the burster wave only hours away, time was now everything.
There were several shuttles scattered along the wide stony ramp that led up to the entrance. Elias’s heart sank; Vaughn was already here. He could see figures moving about down below, and wondered if one of them was Vaughn himself. His hand instinctively tightened around the barrel of his rifle. There were enough armed men and women visible to ensure that the people coming up the trail behind Elias would be outnumbered, outgunned.
He brought up his rifle and peered through the telescopic sight until he could pick out individual faces. Nobody that looked like Vaughn, however. Shit, he was probably already inside the Citadel. Elias scanned the whole area, particularly where the ground rose up on the far side of the ramp, in case Vaughn had positioned snipers.
He then studied the cavernous entrance through the rifle’s sight. This far north, the sun sat low on the horizon, and in twenty minutes it would no longer shine directly onto the entrance and the path leading inside.
He lowered the rifle, noticing how Vaughn’s shuttles were parked some distance away from the entrance. The path Elias stood on led down a perilously steep incline to a point no more than three metres from the entrance itself.
Elias retreated the way he had come until he rejoined the waiting column of his own people.
‘I’ve got an idea,’ he began.
The only problem was getting the precise timing right, since they’d be cutting things very fine. In a little over an hour, deadly radiation would begin creeping over the surface of Kasper, a silent, invisible killer.
Kim, Roke and Sam, with Ursu, still clutching the Facilitator, were to continue along the path, remaining out of sight. The rest of them, led by Elias and Trencher, headed back in the direction they had come, following a route that would take them in a wide circle, and into the rubble and boulders fringing the far side of the entrance ramp.
As they eventually moved in among the massive boulders there, Elias halted the young Primalist rebels, and explained to them what they must do.
Kim
Kim didn’t understand the significance of the Facilitator until Sam explained it to her. It was still hard to believe until she then spoke directly with each of the two aliens. The flood of visual information and knowledge she received was not unlike that experienced by eating Books. Except this time, the information surged through the Angel artefact, not through her own bioware. Her understanding of the two aliens, why they were here and the role each played in their world, seemed to grow tenfold in seconds. Absolute communication, she thought; not verbal, not entirely visual, but on some deeper level. She was learning to see
the universe through the eyes of aliens.
As they came to the topmost point of the path Elias had scouted out earlier, they fell quiet, and watched the activity around the shuttles parked by the entrance, but cautiously from a hidden vantage point. Kim studied the Citadel entrance, and the sheer rock face rising above it. Someone positioned up there would have a better view of what was happening below. Kim cast her eye over the myriad boulders scattering the slope that dropped away from the entrance, but could see no sign of Elias’s group. She guessed that was a good sign, for if she couldn’t see them, maybe nobody else could either.
Time was running very short. Whether or not they succeeded in reactivating the shield, they needed to be inside the Citadel when the burster wave hit.
‘Now we wait,’ said Sam firmly.
Elias
Even the smallest of the surrounding boulders was about half the size of a Goblin, so they had even better cover here than Elias had expected. He spoke quietly to Trencher, then they both looked around for good firing positions.
Unsurprisingly, few of the Primalists who had sided with them showed much enthusiasm for shooting at people they had grown up with. Elias watched as Matthew went amongst them persuasively, stiffening their resolve.
Kim
‘There he is,’ she said. Sam looked up quickly, as did the two aliens. She could just make out Elias’s lonely figure walking out from between a couple of boulders, towards the Primalists still crowded around their shuttles.
Elias
As he walked slowly towards them, the Citadel entrance gaped beyond them like the mouth of hell. ‘Hey there,’ he called out.
Someone barked out something Elias couldn’t make out. He continued steadfastly forward, conscious of the weapons levelled at his chest.
‘My name is Elias,’ he said, finally stopping. One of them stepped a little closer.
‘If you’re carrying any weapons,’ growled the Primalist, ‘drop them now.’
Kim
The curious Primalists had all shifted around to the far side of the parked shuttles, looking towards Elias with their backs to the Citadel entrance.