by Gary Gibson
Kim glanced at the others, and realized she didn’t need to say anything. They moved rapidly in a line down the steep path, towards the giant entrance.
Elias
‘I’m unarmed,’ said Elias. ‘I want to talk to whoever’s in charge here.’
‘Who sent you? Who are you?’ Various voices spoke at once.
Elias noticed with satisfaction that none of them seemed to be paying much attention to anything but him. The parked shuttles blocked most of the view towards the entrance, so if Kim and her party were coming down the incline, he couldn’t yet be sure.
Don’t fuck it up, he prayed, as two of Vaughn’s men came forward and began checking him for weapons.
‘Look, I just want to speak to the man in charge here. If he’s who I think, we go back a long way.’
‘Vaughn? You want to speak to Vaughn? You won’t find him here. He’s down inside the Citadel.’
‘Shut up, Stephan,’ growled one of the others. ‘We’re the ones asking the questions.’
Too right, thought Elias. At least one of you has some brains.
A shout came from somewhere and all heads turned. Elias saw a woman come running up to them, breathless. ‘There’s a whole bunch of people heading down by the side of the entrance. I think they must be with him.’ She was pointing at Elias.
Stephan’s eyes widened, and he swung his rifle like a club, aiming it straight at Elias’s head. Elias reached up and caught the end of it firmly, holding it still, while he punched his attacker hard under the chin. Stephan’s jaw clicked ominously and his eyes rolled back in his head. Then several men grabbed at Elias, and he went down under a hail of fists and gun butts.
Kicking and punching, Elias kept trying to get back on his feet. Shit, he thought. No good after all.
A single shot cracked through the still air, and then another.
Elias heard a bullet ricochet somewhere nearby.
The men and women attacking him froze, as if in a brief tableau. As he looked past them, he realized some of Vaughn’s people were already heading for the Citadel entrance.
Go, he thought. Go.
Kim
Damn! Somebody was shooting at them.
Sam hurried them on. ‘Get in, get in,’ he muttered, deliberately placing himself between them and the distant shuttles.
After the daylight outside, the gloom inside the colossal entrance was truly appalling. Sam urged them on, deeper and deeper into the vast tunnel that led downwards from the entrance. They hurried into deepening blackness while the Primalists who had sided with them supplied covering fire from the boulders nearest the entrance.
After a few minutes, only a vague greyness existed behind, to remind them there was a way out of there at all. Kim had forgotten that the entrance tunnel curved slightly here, in a long, gentle spiral into the Citadel’s core.
They stopped for breath, listened and waited. There was no longer anything to be heard from above, but she didn’t allow herself to be lulled into a false sense of security. She lowered a small backpack to the ground, and fumbled through it until she found one of the torches they’d brought from the shuttle Elias had hijacked.
Sam reached out to put a hand on her arm before she could switch it on. ‘Not now,’ he said. ‘The light could lead them right to us.’
‘Hell,’ she said, exasperated, ‘we won’t be able to find our way through this place in the dark.’
‘That’s not a problem,’ he said. ‘You’re going to have to trust me.’
‘This place is dangerous,’ she argued. ‘It doesn’t work the same as anywhere else.’
‘I know exactly where we need to go,’ he said. ‘Trust me when I say I know what I’m doing.’
She felt him take her arm, then communicate with the two aliens. Kim felt furry hands, with hard rough claws, reach out of the darkness and grip her surprisingly lightly by her upper arms. The sensation made her momentarily dizzy with panic. Sam guided them on through utter blackness, Kim convinced every step forward might result in them all plummeting into some hidden abyss.
Kim listened as the aliens conversed with each other in clicks and whistles, and immediately she knew what they were talking about. She envisaged a city surrounding an outcrop of volcanic rock. And then the same city – no, she somehow realized, a different city – this one beleaguered, under siege. She saw the smaller of the two aliens escaping from the city, carrying the Facilitator.
She was getting drawn into something, she realized, where it would take too much time to understand the complex details. Sam began talking to her then, and even as he spoke, she could see his words being translated into images and concepts that she assumed made some sense to the two Kaspians.
‘There’s a chamber a couple of levels below,’ he said, invisibly in the darkness. ‘It’s been a while, but I think I can get us there without any problems.’ And she could see this chamber for herself, as clearly as if accessing her own memories.
The Facilitator and the bioware Book technology must both tap into the same thing in the brain, she thought.
‘Give me your backpack,’ said Sam several minutes later, and she passed it over. He opened it and pulled out a pair of torches. The sudden light was so bright that the aliens flinched away from it.
‘So at last we’re allowed to see,’ she muttered. They had come to a fork in the tunnel. She saw a sudden image, in her mind, of a great fire sweeping through the galaxy . . . of her disembodied self flying at tremendous speed through clouds of stars, towards the heart of the Milky Way.
‘That’s the Facilitator talking now, not them,’ explained Sam. He trained his torch down the left-hand tunnel and started forward.
‘You mean that thing’s sentient?’ said Kim, as she and the Kaspians followed him.
‘Sure. Although whether it qualifies as being alive in a sense we might understand is another matter. But it’s certainly capable of thought and decision-making, within the parameter of its intended purpose.’
‘So what I just saw, what we all saw, that was programmed into it?’
‘Something like that. Or perhaps they’re Angel memories stored inside it like reference material. Did you feel the minds operating beyond the clouds of stars in the heart of the galaxy?’
‘Yes, I did. I felt something.’ The darkness beyond the reach of the torch’s light seemed less oppressive now. But Kim still felt as if the blackness were some kind of liquid she could drown in. It brought back bad memories.
‘Hang on,’ said Sam. ‘I know where we are now.’
Kim gazed around her and shivered. ‘I really hope you do know where we’re going, because if you don’t, I can’t imagine how we’re going to find our way back.’
Sam looked behind them. They’d only proceeded a little way beyond the tunnel’s fork, but it looked . . . different. ‘Typical topological warping for the Citadel,’ he said. ‘Nothing to worry about, as long as you know what to expect.’
Kim stared down the tunnel and shivered, remembering all too clearly what had happened the last time she had been in the Citadel.
Ursu
He felt the older alien place a hand on his fore-limb, slowing them both down until the two Shai had moved a little ahead of them, still intent on their conversation. ‘We have to remove these outlandish creatures from our world,’ Roke whispered, with a degree of passion surprising his companion.
‘I believe they wish to help us,’ protested Ursu.
‘But to what end, to what end?’ muttered Roke. Ursu saw the Shai called Sam glance over his shoulder, briefly showing them its teeth.
‘It can hear our thoughts as well as we can hear theirs,’ said Ursu, caution in his tone. ‘We should talk about these things later.’
Roke merely blinked his eyes in acknowledgement.
Kim
‘It’s trying to deviate us from our course,’ said Sam as they moved on down an increasingly narrow passage.
‘If we’re not careful, the Citadel’s spatial topology
could redirect us into some kind of dead end,’ she replied. Like a Venus flytrap catching insects that wandered into its throat, she thought. ‘Just make sure you do know what you’re doing.’
There were more twists and turns still to come; the further in, the narrower the corridors became. But Sam navigated them all with apparent ease, leading his party of three who followed dutifully behind.
‘We’re almost there,’ he announced, after a little while. The ceiling above their heads was much lower now. They suddenly heard a sound somewhere ahead: like the creak of a chair, or the scuffing of feet along the ground? Either way, they all four froze and listened.
Sam motioned to them to stay where they were, and stepped quietly forward. Light was evident from somewhere ahead, enough to now light their way, though Kim couldn’t quite figure out the source of it. Several metres ahead Sam halted, turning his head first one way, then the other, listening like a bird.
‘Ernst,’ he said, disappearing suddenly around a corner Kim could have sworn hadn’t been there a moment before.
No sound, nothing. For the first time in her life, she understood what people meant by a deafening silence. She edged forward, beckoning the two Kaspians to follow.
Kim looked around. Had she blanked out there for a moment? She’d been walking towards where Sam had last been . . . now she was suddenly around a corner. The Citadel strikes again, she thought wearily, hearing the two aliens come up behind her. The smaller one was holding the Facilitator.
She looked the alien in the eyes, and spoke slowly as if that might give it a better chance of understanding her – even though she knew the Facilitator would make her fully comprehensible.
‘Are you ready to use that thing when you have to?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’ Ursu spoke in his own language, glancing over the room beyond. It was illuminated, but she still couldn’t figure out the source of the light. ‘But I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do.’
Me neither, thought Kim, turning away. The room was vast, circular, low-ceilinged. At its centre was a circular dais with a score of what seemed to be shallow indents around its perimeter.
There were tiny notches in each of the indents, and suddenly Kim understood that they must place the Facilitator into one of those notches. How do I know that? she wondered for a moment, before realizing it must come from the Facilitator itself. She turned and looked at the smaller Kaspian, gripping the object to its chest. She hoped it had delivered the same knowledge to the alien.
Sam was nowhere in sight. She cautiously stepped forward, regretted it immediately.
The room seemed to twist around her. Suddenly the Kaspians were at the far end of the great circular space. She stopped moving, every muscle in her body bunching. She now saw Sam a short distance away, kneeling on the floor. She hadn’t been able to see him earlier because, from the opposite end of the room, he had been hidden behind the dais.
‘I can’t see him,’ he said, his voice thin and weak. She realized he was lying in a pool of blood, and started towards him.
‘No, don’t,’ he said. ‘Stay where you are. Is the dais glowing?’
She looked to the dais. One of its indents had taken on a pale blue glow. ‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Tell the Kaspian to walk forward,’ Sam instructed. He had pulled himself most of the way upright, clutching at his side. He seemed to have stopped bleeding. Perhaps, she thought, it was only a surface wound. Kim turned and gestured to the smaller alien, and yelled for it to follow her footsteps. She noticed it hesitating for a moment.
Somehow just a few short steps seemed to carry the Kaspian all the way across the circular hall. Kim’s mind couldn’t make sense of that. Don’t think about it, she thought. The alien stood quivering beside her, its fur reminding her of a dog. The second Kaspian stayed where it was. She could almost feel the Facilitator tugging itself out of the alien’s hands. It stepped forward.
‘Don’t,’ said Sam. ‘Go left, not towards the dais. Now turn.’ The alien turned carefully, its ears pressed flat against its skull. ‘That’s it. Forward now – carefully.’
Kim could see it was now next to the one glowing indentation; yet the dais was in the opposite direction from that which the alien had appeared to move towards.
Just then, someone Kim had never seen before seemed to drop out of a tear in reality. It seemed to her that he was just suddenly there, emerging from around some impossible corner. How did he do that? she wondered, even as he leapt towards her. She had been holding her rifle in one hand, now realized it was gone – taken from her before she had even reacted. She watched it slide across the stone floor, into some impenetrable dark corner.
Her assailant had his own weapon, she noticed: a sonic slammer. He shoved it against the Kaspian’s back. She saw his finger begin to depress the trigger.
Suddenly Sam was there beside her. She had seen him move, out of the corner of her eye, in a motion so superhumanly fast she couldn’t quite take it in. He shot past her again, all in the passing of a moment.
She saw Sam swipe at the sonic slammer, knocking it away from the alien’s back. A ripple cut through the air towards the far end of the room, flipping the second alien onto its back. The smaller alien was left unharmed; Sam had just saved its life. Kim couldn’t feel so sure about the other Kaspian.
She felt powerless and helpless without the rifle. Lifting the torch, she shone it towards the man whom Sam was now grappling with. The new arrival had grey hair, a deeply tanned complexion, and eyes that seemed to burn with the fires of hell. The torch light managed to dazzle him for a moment, then he scrabbled away, reappeared close to the smaller alien.
Kim watched him try to tear the Facilitator out of the Kaspian’s grip. The creature squealed, but wouldn’t let go. Kim leapt forward, without really thinking about what she was doing.
She had a sensation of eternity opening up below and around her, and for the briefest of moments her soul quailed at the place in which it found itself. But just as rapidly that sensation was gone, and her shoulder was slamming into the grey-haired man’s side, sending him crashing into the dais. He came back at her, howling, tearing at her face with his fingernails.
She went down screaming as his fingers gouged at her eyes. Sam reappeared in a blink, pummelling at her attacker. The pair of them rolled away from her, struggling violently.
Kim did not waste any time.
‘Now!’ she screamed at the Kaspian quivering barely a few metres away from her.
She watched breathless as the creature lifted up the Facilitator and placed it carefully into the slot in the blue-glowing indent. The blue immediately faded.
Nothing happened.
Is that it? thought Kim. The world didn’t seem any different.
Ernst and Sam were poised several steps apart from each other now, but Kim had the impression that, due to the Citadel’s bizarre topography, they might as well be standing on opposite sides of a canyon. Both were panting, and Ernst looked distinctly the worse for wear.
‘It’s not over yet.’ Sam suddenly turned to her. ‘You have to put him in exactly the right place.’ What right place? thought Kim, but then the precise meaning of his words flooded into her mind, via the Facilitator. She now saw the artefact as the centre of a vast network of glowing lines stretching through the crust of the planet. Some of these lines were broken, disconnected. One more element was needed.
She realized something had happened to the very centre of the dais. A hole had opened up in it, deep and black.
In an instant, she understood the dais was designed to accommodate a flesh and blood mind as well as the Facilitators. Any one of them – human or Kaspian – could control the Citadel from the dais, which was the hub of a vast planetary network of which the radiation shield was only one aspect. Whoever interfaced with the dais in this way would clearly gain enormous power. She glanced at Sam, and his thoughts flooded into her: even if they won this struggle, the worsening situation on Earth would almost certainly mean
the eventual dissolution of the treaty that had up till now kept Kasper isolated. Eventually, this world would be conquered. Sam’s gaze fixed on her for a brief moment, his eyes bright. If one of the Kaspians interfaced with the dais, such an outcome might be prevented. A kind of benevolent dictatorship, a—
No!
Kim was not sure if the cry of protest had come from her or from someone else. It took her a few moments more to realize it had actually come from the Kaspian standing nearest to her.
‘I can’t do that,’ it communicated in clicks and whistles. And Kim could understand why. The Facilitator was showing them all a kind of living death: as powerful as a god, but alone, supremely alone. More than ever, the Citadel seemed a place of death, a vast and powerful tomb, much more awesome than somewhere conducive to life. Sam had planned a kind of supreme sacrifice. One maybe too great for the Kaspian to make.
Ernst and Sam faced each other in a wary crouch, an eternity between them. ‘Make it do it, Kim. One of them has to,’ Sam called out.
The sound of echoing voices came to Kim, and she glanced towards the entrance to the huge room. Torch beams flickered. As the voices came closer, one was more recognizable than the rest.
It was Elias.
‘Don’t,’ she whispered, but he was already stepping into the room. Suddenly he was beside her, only inches away. There he stood frozen, unfamiliar with the Citadel’s complex topography.
‘Just stay exactly where you are,’ she hissed.
Elias nodded slowly, remained rooted to the spot.
‘Just don’t move,’ warned Kim. ‘Not even an inch.’
Looking over at Sam and Ernst, grappling, Elias cursed under his breath. He raised his rifle, aiming for Ernst Vaughn. The bullet never seemed to reach him. ‘I don’t understan—’
‘Don’t try.’
Ernst and Sam leapt apart again; now Ernst appeared wounded. As Sam edged closer to where Kim sensed the invisible precipice lay, she started to voice a warning.
‘We can’t kill each other,’ said Sam loudly, looking directly towards her. ‘Only one other way to finish this now.’