Alliance of Exiles

by Caitlin Demaris McKenna

  “What are you doing?” Stone’s flat voice said behind him.

  Mose’s smile formed a familiar bitter line on his face. “The Project would have briefed you on mission protocol. I am reestablishing contact with their autonomous travel capsule. They have to make sure it can find me should the . . . need arise.”

  “But how—”

  “Just watch.”

  Whitish sediment clouded the water in the ditch one moment; in the next, a spreading darkness like spilled ink choked the narrow course. It took on a viscous, seething texture, as if an army of huge insects were writhing about under a taut sheet of black latex. Questing fronds darted upward from the surface of the trough, hovering toward Mose’s limbs, his face, seeking like blind worms.

  “What—” The Veert’s palanquin started forward.

  “Just watch,” Mose repeated. About time the Veert see what the Terrans are willing to put their helpers through.

  He rose, shucking off his loose robe and tossing it into the palanquin’s cockpit. The nanocarbon snakes continued to rise from the water, weaving into a complex brocade of strands, encysted structures glistening within. Its braided length loomed over him, the end drooping to touch the very end of his snout like a love nip.

  Mose closed his eyes and let the snakes cover him.

  This time the sensation of sleek tentacles slithering over his flesh was mercifully brief, free of any nauseating subcutaneous incursions. He still kept his eyes closed until the individual plates and joins had been fully woven and the fabricator tendrils had retreated. When he opened his eyes, he was encased in a reassuringly inert set of body armor, molded to his contours but with a generous flexibility between the minuscule carbon plates that composed the material of the suit. The main mass of the capsule ship was already retreating into the ditch, fraying into myriad strands as it went. Mose flexed the major joints of his new armor to ensure they were mobile, and checked that the sheath openings along the arms were clear. Then he climbed back into the palanquin and pulled the door shut.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  The Veert’s machine didn’t move. “What was that? I have never seen anything like that.”

  Curious all of a sudden, aren’t they? Mose supposed he couldn’t blame Stone for that; his own first reaction to capsule ship technology had been to repress an urge to curl up in a ball brushing frantically at himself and whimpering.

  “One of the many forms of nanotech the Expansion has chosen not to share with the rest of us. I arrived here in that thing. A convenient—though not particularly pleasant—form of travel. It can fabricate a selection of specialized materials as well, such as this armor.”

  “Fascinating,” Stone replied. “We are cut off from so much of importance, here in the Shining Cage. I wonder how different things are on Veerthome now.”

  Stone wheeled backward out of the alley and Mose followed, resuming their course through the city.

  About ten minutes later, they arrived at a curious sculpture that was totally absent from Mose’s memories of Anmerresh.

  With Stone in the lead again, they were following a wide thoroughfare quite near Mose’s old district. His heart clenched briefly going past the narrow stone arch of the district entrance, and then Stone turned onto a twisting side path. Mose had to accelerate to keep their palanquin in sight.

  The side street—little more than a footpath, really—culminated in a cul-de-sac dominated by a single monument. The spot had clearly been meant for private contemplation: the little grotto was enclosed by curving stone walls filigreed with rust-red ivy that sprouted tiny white flowers in places. The plaza could not have been more than five meters across, a good portion of that taken up by the sculpture.

  Mose had thought he knew all the war memorials in Anmerresh: Memorial to the Glorious Dead of Ankharrh-6; Whalg-General Cripples the Terran Freighter; Suicide Pilots Posthumously Receive Their Accolades; The Children of Traat Gaze Upward with Hope and Regret. This last was the sculpture of the Traat sea stack whose replica fountain Mose had admired last night.

  Yet the great pile of stone and metal before him remained a five-meter-tall blank in Mose’s memory, even though he must have passed this monument dozens of times. If it was there, that is. Perhaps it was erected after my departure for Olios 3.

  Rising from the pavement on a broad dais of basalt, the monument included a plaque inscribed with the title in several languages, including the Teluk variant of O’o Nezz.

  Memorial to the Glorious Dead of Rreluush-Tren, Mose read off silently. That would explain the color scheme. The monument had been rendered mainly in a combination of turquoise-colored stone and dull steel, appropriate colors for the blue jungles and concrete cities of that overgrown world.

  The Teluk Coalition had calculated for everything except peace. The thought that Terrans and Urd might actually join forces in the time it took the Coalition to reach Rreluush-Tren was inconceivable then. Terrans only conquered; they didn’t make alliances. Yet that small event was enough to destroy the Coalition on that world.

  Whichever artist had created this sculpture understood that much. Memorial to the Glorious Dead of Rreluush-Tren was nothing less than a pile of corpses—Arashal corpses, Osk corpses, Baskar corpses, even a few Rul and Challa’iti—heaped into a limp mound rendered in blue stone and chrome steel, but still eerily realistic in ways that sent chills down Mose’s back. Streaks of azurite and yellow tourmaline ran through the stone, marring the bodies with mineral ichor. The mass of dead reflected an unsettling formlessness, an undifferentiated mass of flesh that compelled his gaze to rove it until it found a detail to seize on: in one place an outflung hand; in another, open jaws frozen in a rictus; in still another, a pair of closed eyes that seemed almost serene until Mose realized the head they belonged to wasn’t attached to a body. Two carved soldiers, one Terran and one Urd, surmounted the pile of corpses, standing side by side in easy camaraderie as they stared off into the distance of their shared future.

  Mose quietly approved of the piece, but he had the feeling Stone hadn’t led him here to admire Anmerresh’s civic culture.

  “So, why are we—”

  “You will see,” Stone said. They maneuvered their palanquin nearer Mose’s and extended a spindly manipulator arm.

  With a deftness Mose wouldn’t have thought possible in the clumsy manipulator, Stone coaxed the mechanical arm under an outthrust prong of the sculpture and pulled it up. The segment rotated smoothly upward . . .

  . . .and the morass of carved corpses shifted in uneasy sleep.

  Mose jerked his controls in startlement, edging his vehicle away from the sculpture. As he watched the tons of stone and metal writhe as though coming alive, he grasped the mechanism: Some of the discrete elements—bodies—of Memorial to the Glorious Dead of Rreluush-Tren had been fitted with tracks that could be moved up or down by the lever Stone had pulled. The figures fit together so precisely that even Mose’s keen eyes hadn’t noticed the hidden mechanism. As he watched, a roughly circular hole opened in the grisly face of the monument like the maw of some vast spider.

  Mose wheeled up to the threshold. A gently curving ramp led to a shadowy landing perhaps fifteen meters down, all of it carved out of the bedrock under the city.

  “I am beginning to suspect how much of this city’s history I don’t know,” Mose said. “It seems Anmerresh is riddled by these catacombs. How did you find out about this place at all? The information must be classified up to the Civil Council of Anmerresh at least.”

  “That is not necessary for you to know,” Stone said. “It is a place where our activities will go unobserved. Is that sufficient, Mose Attarrish?” Even through the flat voice of the translator, he could tell the Veert was nettled.

  “Yes. That’s sufficient.”

  “Then we will proceed.” Stone steered their palanquin through the mouth of the sculpture onto the ramp, and Mose followed.

  Wary of irritating his Veerten guide further, Mose was silent on the
descent to the landing, but his mind was alive with questions, threads seeking connections. He could believe the rebel Veert capable of carving out one hidey-hole under the Civil Council’s snout, but it seemed hard to believe a network like this was the work of one clandestine group. Such a large engineering project had to have had municipal backing at the least . . .

  They emerged into a rock antechamber before Mose could finish that thought. The domed room was about five meters across, featureless except for a metal door at one end. At first Mose thought it was another waterlock, but it was set into the curving wall rather than the floor.

  Three more Veert waited for them in the room. He studied their markings and decided none of them were known to him. The one nearest to him and Stone held some kind of electronics pad in one tendril. A scanner?

  He stopped his palanquin a courteous three meters from the Veert. Stone parked their palanquin to the side of his, and for a moment the quiet tableau held as Mose waited for Stone’s instructions on how to proceed. They’d probably want to scan him before letting him through the door into the real safehouse beyond this antechamber.

  Instead, the hatch of Stone’s palanquin lifted away and the Veert slithered out of the pilot’s cradle. Mose noted instantly that they were armed: the stubby butt end of what might be a dart pistol protruded from a holster strapped around the Veert’s smooth gray and brown stalk.

  “Thank you for your cooperation, Mose Attarrish,” Stone said.

  “It’s no . . .” No problem, he’d started to say as he hit his palanquin’s hatch release. The hatch didn’t budge. “Stone? I can’t get out.”

  “We’ve locked your palanquin with an electronic key,” Stone said. “Your vehicle is now under our control.” They waved a tendril at the Veert holding the pad, who manipulated something. Mose’s palanquin began to roll forward. Behind the four Veert, the metal door slid open to reveal a large elevator car.

  “What is this? Where are you taking me?” Mose tried the hatch control again, half hoping, but it was as unresponsive as before.

  “It will go easier for you if you don’t resist,” Stone said. They loosened their weapon in its holster. “You don’t understand the situation you’re in right now.”

  That was where Stone was wrong. Even as he focused on escape, another part of Mose’s mind was slotting the pieces together: an underground network the Veert had access to, but couldn’t possibly have built, coupled with their knowledge about Shomoro’s highly classified status and projects, could only mean one thing—the Veert weren’t operating under the High Council’s snouts, but with the Council’s approval. They’d pulled one over on the Project and the Project had delivered Mose directly into the Council’s hands.

  Mose wasn’t about to lie down at the Council’s feet without a fight. “I understand you only pretended to be the Project’s allies,” he said in a tight voice. “This was all a trap for me.” As he talked, Mose felt along the seam between the hatch and the palanquin’s hull with a blade. He tried to wedge his blade into the crack and break the seal manually, but it was too tight. The palanquin was less than a meter from the group of Veert; in seconds it would pass them and enter the elevator. Mose didn’t want to see where that elevator led.

  He rapped his knuckles hard against the palanquin’s hatch plate, listened to its hollow echo. The enameled front couldn’t be more than half a centimeter thick.

  The Veert with the control pad. If he could destroy the pad, it could buy him time to wrest the palanquin from their control. Mose extended his right blade all the way, gripping his forearm with his left hand to brace it. He bunched his legs under him, pointed his blade toward the control pad, and lunged.

  A teeth-gritting jolt, not quite pain, shot down his arm as his blade punched through the palanquin’s metal shell. He felt it scrape against the hull before the point bit into something soft. The Veert holding the control pad recoiled. One tendril hung by a thread, spurting milky blood. Their other tendrils lost their grip on the pad and it smashed to the floor.

  Now was his chance. Mose pried the face from the palanquin’s control console with his blade, exposing the wiring within. He reached for it—

  White fire engulfed his nerve endings and held him rigid.

  Mose tried to move, tried to breathe, but it was as if every muscle was contracting against every other. Black spots bloomed in his vision. He was distantly aware of his body, collapsed and twitching against the wall, his mouth open in a silent scream.

  It seemed to go on and on. And under it all—under the surprise and the pain that threatened to swallow him—a small, satisfied voice whispered that this was the end. He’d failed his mission, been captured again. But this time it was the Project’s loss, not gain. Whatever awaited Mose, there would be no more missions, no more sephs’ deaths on his head. He wondered if the Project would even learn what had happened to him. It would almost be worth dying to see the look on Jan’s face when he found out how he’d been had.

  Then, between one second and the next, the pain vanished. He could breathe. But he was still helpless to move. He watched, numb in the aftermath of such great pain, as the door was flung open by a Veerten tendril. A Veert—not Stone—filled the doorway, and then Mose’s lower body and torso were enveloped in a substance with the texture and heaviness of wet cement. As the Veert in the doorway retreated, he saw the buccal cavity open in their foot-body and knew the source of the stuff gluing his legs and arms to his body. It wasn’t cement but spitstone: the same organic glue the Veert used to build their sea-stack dwellings.

  And it hardened much more quickly. By the time his mind was clear enough to understand what had happened, Mose had been completely immobilized. Stone entered his field of vision from the left; they held the taser in one tendril, still reeling the contact wires back into the weapon.

  “I warned you,” they said. “This could have been accomplished peacefully.”

  “Eat carrion.” Mose spat on the ground. There was a weariness clawing at the edges of his mind, one he could not let show.

  The Veert Mose had injured was escorted by one of their fellows into the elevator. The doors closed and the two disappeared from sight. The remaining one conferred with Stone, who retrieved the smashed control pad and tried a few buttons before tossing it aside after the palanquin failed to respond. They directed the second Veert toward the cockpit with a wave.

  Mose held still until the Veert’s sea-flower-shaped head was leaning over him to reach the console’s controls. Then he twisted his head toward its nearest arm and opened his jaws for a bite.

  He bit down on air as the Veert scrambled out of the cockpit. In a flash, Stone replaced them. From a pouch on their belt they withdrew a syringe.

  “Do that again and I will sedate you,” they said. “You are coming with us. Conscious or unconscious is your choice.”

  Mose considered the rottenness of the choices before him. He could submit to this humiliating capture, or be pumped full of drugs and go to meet his fate in a state of blank oblivion. The second option was darkly attractive for a moment . . . until he thought of all the things that could happen while he was unconscious. He was not in an advantageous position right now, but that could change, and he needed to be awake if—no, when—it did.

  “I won’t do it again,” Mose said. Stone waved the other Veert forward, and this time Mose kept his head bowed as the Veert checked the palanquin’s controls. They withdrew and conferred with Stone again, then disappeared into the elevator and returned with the Veert that had been the injured one’s escort. Between them they pulled along a kind of wheeled cart, topped by a capsule-shaped lid of translucent plastic. One of them lifted the hinged lid to one side.

  The taser must have disabled the palanquin. Mose’s conjecture was confirmed when Stone’s two helpers reached gingerly under him and lifted Mose, spitstone encrustations and all, out of the palanquin. They struggled across to the cart and deposited him none too gently inside, on his back. Then the lid hinged clos
ed and his view of the outside world was reduced to gradients of light and shadow filtering through the plastic lid.

  The cart began to move. He heard the elevator doors whisk shut, and Mose and his captors began to descend.

  There was a crackle over Daikar’s headset as Stone transmitted their receipt of his orders. He signed off and slipped the headset free, hanging it on its peg on one wall of his sleek operator’s cubicle. His hand was shaking, and he made a fist to steady it. He’d made his decision; now he’d have to live with it. Neither choice would have let him avoid that.

  A throat discreetly cleared behind him made Daikar swivel his chair. Whalg-General leaned his tubelike body against one side of the cubicle. As he polished the claws of one hand with his blue councilor’s sash, the points of his teeth showed in a smirk.

  “Thank you for the tip about Grass Weaver,” the Baskar said. “I invited him to listen in on the whole sting. He was quite impressed with your team’s, ah, adaptability in dealing with Attarrish’s break for freedom.”

  Daikar bit the inside of his cheek, remembering the buzz of the taser. A nonlethal weapon, but that must have hurt. “So did you get your vote?” he asked, tension turning each syllable curt. Which of his orders had carried legal weight—the one Basalt had given him, or the one he knew to be right?

  “I did,” Whalg-General said. “The rest of the Council will be apprised you were acting under official orders.” His smirk turned snide. “Try not to make a habit of making them official after the fact, eh?”

  His tone was playful, but Daikar heard the granite-firm command underneath it. “No, Councilor.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Intervening bands of light and shadow passed over the front of the cart’s lid, centimeters in front of his snout. They were Mose’s only cue that he was still descending; the elevator’s motion was so smooth as to be imperceptible. Mose counted the bands, wondering what they were—level markers? If so, they had descended more than a hundred levels when the elevator coasted to a halt.