* * * * *
Miles away at that very moment, Eiron contemplated the explanation he might offer. No, better to wait until they ask, he shrugged, refusing to let anxiety paralyze him or cloud his thinking. He waited only a few minutes before the transport landed. The pilot released the gangway for him but never spoke a word.
When the rescue plane touched down back at the Command Center, Eiron peered out cautiously from inside the cockpit’s shotgun seat. The pilot was already halfway across the docking bay heading towards the barracks corridor when Eiron finally backed his way down the co-pilot landing ladder.
Jumping to the ground, he lingered beside the plane a few minutes longer, gazing around at the familiar surroundings. Right away, he saw that the docking bay was empty. Training maneuvers were usually going on at this time, weren’t they? he asked himself. But all of the other planes were out, and there weren’t any flight officers around to guide them back in.
That would mean that his unit had been transferred to Ernestia for a month of recon duty, protecting the ore shipments, he reasoned. So why had they brought him back to Headquarters instead of sending him to join his unit? He wondered, foolishly, knowing all along the reason why, but being optimistically hopeful. The Senka in Ernestia could easily have debriefed him, but they had brought him back to Headquarters.
Obviously they had a special welcome in mind. Eiron turned his head around anxiously, keeping his back to the plane. He thought he sensed several pairs of eyes watching him from above; he hoped they would hurry up and make their move.
As soon as he took a step away from the plane, several hatch doors hissed open, dispelling armed Tiasennian guards wearing navy blue uniforms with bronze shoulder guards, belts, and knee-high boots. The Primary Guard. Twenty men and women chosen from the best of Tiasenne’s military. The Primary Guard were Ezáitur’s own first and foremost, and in performing their duties had become the pilots of the new, improved comet fighters, his parents’ project—Eiron had hoped to join them one day for that reason.
The Primary Guard existed in order to protect and serve the Fer-innyera. When Fer-innyera Ezáitur traveled anywhere on Tiasenne, the Primary Guard flew escort to protect him. Whenever Ezáitur remained at Headquarters, the Primary Guard kept on the watch for signs of espionage and assassination attempts on Ezáitur’s life, and of course, they performed the most challenging, special tasks which Ezáitur could not entrust to his other guards and officers.
“Ekasi Vaikyur-Erlenkov, it is my duty to inform you that you are scheduled for a de-briefing in the interrogation room. We are here to ensure that you reach that appointment on time.” The rich baritone of Senka Aktaeon Forren, the leader of the Primary Guard, echoed in the hold. He was a tall, middle-aged man in impeccable shape, with a rugged, uncompromising face and bright cobalt eyes. That was not what you noticed, though. His hair was uncustomarily long, immaculately trimmed at shoulder length, and it was jet black. His unusual appearance didn’t seem to have been a problem; however, Forren’s intimidating, swarthy mystique fit the role of Ezáitur’s front man and interrogations officer perfectly.
Forren took a step forward and waved his arm. In response, two guards moved forward to bind Eiron’s hands; Eiron surrendered them willingly, for now.
Eiron was surprised when they passed the main interrogation room of the Command Center and continued down the corridor. The procession cleared six security checkpoints before stopping before an unmarked door about fifteen minutes later, somewhere in the corridor that connected Command Central to the Headquarters building. Eiron was escorted inside, and then the Primary Guard took up a position outside the door.
A man in civilian garb sat in a deep, cushioned chair with his back to Eiron on the other side of a large, polished, purple desk. A smaller stiff-backed chair had been placed a couple of feet before it.
“Do be seated,” the unidentified man instructed. Eiron stared at the man. Even from the back, his salt and pepper brown hair seemed familiar.
The man who swiveled around to face him was Fer-innyera Ezáitur.
Ezáitur wasn’t a tall man, but not short either, with a defensive yet manipulative personality.
“Don’t look so surprised, Ekasi Eiron Vaikyur-Erlenkov.” Ezáitur purred. “Do you know, I remember you from your graduation—what was it, six years ago? I never forget the faces of my top graduating officers.”
“It was seven years ago, sir.” Eiron corrected him.
“Ah yes, thank you,” Ezáitur’s tone was anything but grateful. “The years run together, you know. But your exploits since are not entirely unknown to me.” He continued gracefully. “Everyone remembers the surprise attack last year on Wysteirchan and the young patrolling Ekasi that single-handedly defeated twelve enemy space fighters.”
“That was only blind luck on my part, sir.” Eiron protested.
“No, no, my dear boy.” Ezáitur frowned elaborately. “You mustn’t be so modest. Your training records confirm our subsequent assessments—excellence in reaction time and maneuvering ability. Perhaps you get that from your mother. I knew Melain Vaikyur at the Academy, you know. What a beautiful woman she was—it’s a real pity she became attached to that Orian. A real pity.”
Eiron said nothing, of course, refusing to let Ezáitur stir him up.
“Melain had a gift. Vaikyur has it too, you know. I understand you have that same gift. No ordinary pilot gets promoted to company leader and head of maneuver training at the Academy.”
“Yes, sir.” Eiron clipped in agreement.
“That’s better.” A slow smile crept over the Fer-innyera’s face, exposing sharp, even teeth. “Now I would like to know what happened on the evening of the attack on northwest Inen and the enemy’s appearance in sector five’s Classified Zone. You disappeared that night, and were presumed dead.” Ezáitur laced his fingers and tucked his thumbs under his chin thoughtfully. “I would like to help you, honestly. Otherwise I would have left this questioning to my new Secretary Mahlinswur.” Ezáitur reclined in his chair, predatory eyes fixed on Eiron.
“Yes, sir, I understand.” Eiron said. “Senka Vaikyur ordered me to fly by the northwest corner of the capital to investigate the civilian complaints concerning noises in the sky.” He explained. “I was attacked by six new Orian planes, faster than any I’ve ever seen before, and they drove me into the Classified Zone. I was hit, and I crashed, sir.”
“Please don’t prevaricate, Ekasi Erlenkov.” Ezáitur interrupted, feigning amusement. “Enough. I am sure Senka Vaikyur will be interested in learning about the enemy’s newest space fighters, but I am more concerned with what happened afterward. How have you managed to survive all of this time?”
“I’m not sure, sir.” Eiron managed to appear perplexed.
“You aren’t sure?” Ezáitur’s tone was incredulous. “Could you be more specific please, Ekasi.”
“Well, to put it bluntly, I mean I don’t remember anything since the crash.” Eiron shrugged, suppressing a smile. “Some debris landed on my head, and I passed out. After that—blank. I can’t remember anything. I’m sure someone must have fed me and tended my wounds, but the only thing I remember is coming to way out in the middle of nowhere. I didn’t know what to do, so I activated my emergency frequency transmitter.”
“Yes, I see you still have your uniform.” Ezáitur spat the words out. “Looks like it was a bit torn, though. I wonder who mended it?”
Eiron remained silent.
“Well then, if you can’t remember now, perhaps you should stop by again when you do.” Ezáitur flashed Eiron a congenial smile. “Until then, I’m sure your grandfather will be pleased to see you.” Ezáitur reached out to press a buzzer on his desk.
“Senka Forren, I’d like you speak with you, please. That will be all, Erlenkov, you may go.” Ezáitur waved his hand dismissively. “But wait outside for a moment, and Senka Forren will escort you back to the Command Center.”
Once the Primary Guard Commander stood before hi
m and Eiron had left the room, the Tiasennian Fer-innyera’s pleasant countenance vanished. His forehead furrowed in dissatisfaction.
“Watch him closely, Forren.” Ezáitur said at last.
“Sir?” Forren asked, bewildered.
“You heard his explanation.”
“Yes, sir, I was monitoring it, as you instructed me.”
“And?”
“And, I don’t see why he would be lying to us, sir. I know Erlenkov’s record. And I’m familiar with his psychological evaluation. We don’t consider him a threat. He’s unswervingly honorable. We’d have asked him to join us already,” Forren explained, “except he won’t do cover-up operations. He was demoted once for disobeying orders, or he’d’ve been a Miran by now, too. It’s a pity to waste talent, though. He’s a remarkable pilot.”
“I thought as much.” Ezáitur said.
“Sir?”
“That I should trust his assessment about the new Orian space fighters. Quite an annoying development, yes… yes, indeed.”
“Yes, sir.” Forren agreed.
“However, I am not concerned about his status, Forren. I mean for you to watch for signs of his attitute, not his aptitude. I mean I don’t believe that he’s forgotten where he was. He knows all right, but he’s got his reasons for not telling us.”
“Have you got any ideas as to why, sir?”
“Oh yes, Forren, and more than one.” Ezáitur licked his lips and drew a deep breath. “He may have been taken by the Orians themselves.”
“You don’t really believe—”
“He is half-Orian, you know. Perhaps they found him and cared for him for their own reasons. It would explain the way he’s acting.”
“I don’t understand, sir.”
“How shall I explain?” Ezáitur said. “Let me tell you a story from back when I was at the Academy. In my third year, I was present at the interrogation of an Orian soldier. The man was crazed, terrified that Fer-innyera Alton was going to ‘steal his thoughts’ as he put it. My superiors concluded that the Orian leader must have a mind-searching device to extract information coercively.”
“A mind-searching device?”
“Indeed. We could not detect the presence of a nano-chip in the captive’s brain, but as you know a nano-chip can be made to be undetectable. After the interrogation, the prisoner was taken to a cell, where he was kept under constant surveillance. Every so often—at random times it seemed, for it didn’t matter what he was doing—his face would contort suddenly and then he could be heard to scream. It was an agonized sound or so I am told. Only a few words could ever be made out. ‘I told them nothing, Leader Sargon, nothing’ was what he was saying—it took us a while to figure that out. You couldn’t tell much from that volume. The distortions—”
“I know, sir.” Forren nodded, well versed in the ways of interrogation.
“Well, I can tell you, his behavior intrigued us, and at last we learned the name of the Orian Leader, which as I’ve said before—”
“You had already heard, without knowing where or how.” Forren said.
“Anyway,” Ezáitur continued, “I remember thinking, surely this Sargon could not reach him to harm him here! So I concluded that the Orian soldier must have had some security device implanted in his brain that caused him to feel pain whenever he contemplated betraying his Great Leader. To prove it, we had Doctor Erness run a body scan.”
“And?” Now Forren’s interest was genuine.
“Well, we found nothing out of the ordinary, and as I said, no signs of any kind of behavioral control device implantation in his brain, so my colleagues dismissed the incident. However, I still believed my hypothesis, even after the prisoner died a week later.”
“What has this got to do with Vaikyur-Erlenkov?” Forren saw the direction Ezáitur was heading but needed confirmation.
“Well, Forren, perhaps if he was captured, he may have been programmed as a spy or an implant to sabotage our High Command, even without his knowing it. It is possible that they were able to take over one part of his mind, maybe with some kind of nano-implant, and that the rest of his mind has no knowledge of the secret saboteur within him.
“In that case, he wouldn’t remember anything. But on some level, he cannot betray his captors, or they will mutilate his mind, just as they did their own pilot.”
“But you believe he does remember, you said before, sir.” Forren reminded him.
“Yes, his eyes gave him away.” Ezáitur agreed. “I am sure he does remember his captivity and being forced to tell them what he knows. Maybe he doesn’t wish to spy for them, but it is probably something beyond his control. If he refuses to cooperate, he will feel his punishment. Perhaps he already has.”
“But if you feel he’s a spy, then why allow him to rejoin us? Put him in confinement.” Forren shook his head in confusion.
“We can watch him. But told you I had more than one explanation. Inen is rich in historical folklore, more than our other cities.”
“Yes, sir.” Forren agreed. This was fact. “The civilians of Inen have been exposed to political rumors for a long time.”
“You are correct, Forren. The civilians here remember more than we give them credit for. I am well aware that the truth lives on in legend, and I have often fallen to such sources of information when my officers are unable to extract it.”
“You mean Vaikyur, sir? Mahlinswur failed to find out—”
“Yes, of course he did.” Ezáitur interrupted impatiently. “It seems he was a bad choice, far worse than Marúsh. Remind me to demote him sometime. I’ll send him to Nestor, I suppose. There’s not much going on out there.
“Anyway, what was I saying, Forren?” Ezáitur coughed, trying to recall.
“You were talking about folklore, sir.” Forren responded quickly and waited.
“Ah yes.” The Fer-innyera’s eyes alighted with recollection. “Well, you see, I grew up in Inen, as a matter of fact, not far from here. As a child I loved to listen to my grandmother telling me stories she’d heard in her youth. One of them she told to frighten me concerned a region she’d heard about from her father, Senka Korrince. She told me that soldiers, enemies of the state, had disappeared without a trace near the Northwestern Sea and that if I wasn’t careful to mind and learn to obey then the ghost of the cliffs would come for me, too.
“Well, I told her that I didn’t believe in ghosts.” Ezáitur chuckled. “I was getting too old. She looked scared, as I’d never seen her before, and she warned me that I’d better not say things like that aloud. She claimed to have seen the ghost woman when she was alive, that her grandfather had taken her to meet her, and I should be afraid because even then the woman could steal a person’s soul with a look.
“Of course I didn’t believe her, and I said so. She told me then that the ghost woman came from the sky in a ship that she led to victory against the Orian Leader’s flagship. The woman died in the attack, and her ship was destroyed, but where she fell her soul still haunted the cliffs to punish those that scorned the cause for which she’d sacrificed her life.
“For years I believed that her story was pure fantasy, a tale told to frighten a misbehaving child.” Ezáitur sniffed.
“But while I was at the Academy, I learned that a woman named Alessia matching this description really did exist, even if the ghost and ghost stories weren’t taken seriously. And, my dear Forren, if you ever visit the northeastern plain of our great capital city just where the hills begin, you will find traces of an impression in the soil that stretches several nariars, before it disappears in the hills.”
“So what has all of this got to do with Vaikyur-Erlenkov, sir?” Forren asked.
“If you had been monitoring Secretary Marúsh’s last meeting with Senka Vaikyur, you would understand, Forren.” Ezáitur shook his head in disapproval. “They were discussing the Ekasi’s disappearance at point aico-seven when Vaikyur asked Marúsh of all things if the man was afraid of ghosts. Can you imagine such nonsense
? And out of the blue. But there is a method to his madness. You see, my grandmother was the only other person I had ever heard mentioning Alessia of ‘The Ghost’s Cliff’. So, the odds are there must be a connection.”
“I think I’m beginning to understand you, sir.” Forren nodded slightly.
“Vaikyur was the only man we know of who returned from the area until today. And, I believe it was Vaikyur who persuaded Alton to forbid access to the area.”
“Then perhaps Alessia survived the attack, sir.” Forren suggested.
“That is my belief.” Ezáitur nodded. “And those missing scientists and pilots who were with her must have helped her escape to hide in the cliffs.”
“So you believe their descendants may have saved Vaikyur-Erlenkov, sir?” Forren pursued.
“It is a possibility.” Ezáitur concluded dryly.
“Ah-hah. Vaikyur’s such a sentimentalist. It would be just like him to protect her disciples from undue attention.” Ezáitur was so involved, he didn’t register the informality of Forren’s remark.
“Yes.” Ezáitur agreed.
“So why do you bother with him, sir? Do you think he knows anything else?”
“Of course he does.” Ezáitur shook his head in exasperation. “Vaikyur knows too much and thinks too much. Men like him are dangerous. But it is even more dangerous to ignore them. I keep him around because I must, but I shall never turn my back on Vaikyur.”
“Hmmm.” Forren nodded, wondering. “But is all of this information important, sir?” Forren’s brows furrowed.
“I’m not sure.” Ezáitur responded dilatorily. “I believe so, but I think we may also find it worthwhile to watch our prodigal ekasi from now on. If he was taken by Orian, he may be of use in prying the old man’s secrets, or else perhaps the traitor will expose the Orians’ plans by trying to lead us in the opposite direction.”
“You think he’ll try something, sir?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“I don’t understand, sir.” Forren had brought his fingertips to his face briefly to knead his forehead, then exhaled shortly before turning to regard Ezáitur. “If he was taken by the Orians, I can see your point. But if Alessia’s disciples helped him?”
“That seems less likely, but in that event, we may have stumbled upon something far more important.” Ezáitur suggested in subtle triumph. It was a win-win situation. Either way, he would soon have Vaikyur-Erlenkov—and the elusive Vaikyur—precisely where he wanted them.
“What do you mean, sir?” Forren asked, though his tone implied the kind of feigned ignorance one used in setting up an argument. “If Alessia is dead and her ship was destroyed, why should we care if and where her people hide? Does Eiron really think he’s protecting them from us? They should all be dead or in old age by now.”
“Maybe he isn’t protecting them from us at all.” Ezáitur’s reptilian gaze had grown increasingly animated with each of Forren’s questions.
“Who from, then, sir? Not the Orians, surely. Why should they care about the descendants of a band of crazy scientists that fled to the hills? If they really are trying to find something there, what could it be?”
“That is exactly what we must know.” Ezáitur said.
“We’ll be watching Vaikyur-Erlenkov for any unusual behavior, sir.”
“Good.” Ezáitur clipped approvingly.
“And if he seems normal, sir?” Forren wondered.
“He will betray himself.” Ezáitur had no doubt.
“You don’t really believe Alessia’s people exist, do you sir?” Forren asked hesitantly.
“Not really.” Ezáitur replied, his voice studiously, artfully level as though baiting Forren. “Orian is a dying planet, and the hostile barbarians deserve to die. Nothing they could search for on Tiasenne would save them from their fate. Revenge alone is their only recourse, and our cities are too well guarded for urban flyby bombings to succeed. We aren’t in danger, so long as we keep up our guard.” Ezáitur gave Forren a sly sidelong look, testing to see how far he believed him, how far he accepted the perfectly constructed response.
“Then why did you bother telling me about the stories concerning Alessia?” Forren asked.
“You are a brute, Forren, even if you are the best at what you do.” Ezáitur chuckled. “Didn’t you ever listen to your grandmother?”
“No, sir. Mine was insane.” Forren explained. “She kept insisting that the war was a farce, and my father had her locked away.”
“You may go.” Ezáitur said.
Forren nodded absently, then left.
The Last Immortal : Book One of Seeds of a Fallen Empire Page 46