Year of the Church 1084
(10,691.134)
Jerra Olaff paused before the mirror. She held her hair brush, clasped in both hands, to her breast and looked over her shoulder again. She had the strangest feeling of being watched, though clearly, she was alone in her room. They were all waiting for her outside. Her brother was visiting, probably for the last time in a long time to hear him tell it. He had business again on Shaala, he said, that would keep him very busy. More than that he wouldn’t say, but Jerra felt the truth of his words, saw it in his eyes. She had toyed with the idea of pursuing Entitlement, had a natural talent for it, but decided in the end that a life in the Church was not for her. It was enough that her brother had become an Initiate of the Sixth Secret.
“Who’s there?” she said suddenly, whirling.
It was more than just a feeling now. Someone was in the room with her. She was sure of it.
• • •
From within the closet, Salton Stoakes looked at the girl through the Yellow Diamond Spectacles. Light poured from her head, from a wellspring. Given time, he thought that he might be able to discern its source. Unfortunately, he was supposed to cut it out of her instead. It was as mesmerizing now as it had been with Anis Lausden. He’d wasted too much time admiring it, though, and would have to force himself to take action. He prided himself on his ability to conduct his missions undetected—or at least unseen—but this Jerra Olaff was remarkably perceptive, alert to his presence. It had been difficult to get her away from her family as well. The house was small and cozy, and she rarely left or was left alone. And now another had joined them, her brother, called Faaylin Olaff, whose perceptions were of a far higher caliber. It wouldn’t do to rush this. He would wait a little longer. He would recede further into the shadows, into the cracks and crevices of the house, and wait for her to sleep.
She relaxed when he was gone. He removed himself to a place within the walls where he could watch them all, once she had joined them, through a seam. Whenever he moved even the slightest bit, though, he got the impression that Faaylin Olaff sensed it, so he sought to be very, very still until he was taken for a part of the house itself instead of the intruder he was. He could wait. He was nothing if not patient.
The sun went down and the wind outside howled. The cold didn’t bother him, but Stoakes wondered how and why people settled in places like this, on planets like this, when there were alternatives. From what he heard, a place nearby called Shaala was a paradise. Still, the house was warm enough, built half into the ground for superior insulation. They apparently grew tubers and mushrooms in a sub-cellar which alone might have sustained them, but they also had some animals, which they slaughtered for food as necessary, penned up in another detached structure not too far from the house.
He was impressed by the simple efficiency of their lives and was struck with a peculiar kind of shame: he was growing ever fonder of the smell of Jerra’s mother’s cooking, which filled the house in waves throughout each day. Beyond that was the useless guilt that seemed to plague him of late. Like Anis Lausden, this girl, Jerra Olaff, was beautiful. He could easily see her arm in arm with Holson, even though Holson was now coupled with the last of the Pardine girls, and even though he knew it must never be. He could see the rightness of it, too, but only let that cement his resolve. Stoakes was the Emperor’s man and there would be reward. It may be a long time coming, but his youth returned to him was worth it. After all, people died every day, and she wouldn’t, strictly speaking, be dead when he was finished, not right away, anyway. In the end, she would just be another statistic.
• • •
When everyone in the Olaff household was in his or her bed and all was still, Stoakes passed through the catacomb cavities within the walls and eased through a crack at the back of Jerra’s closet. He passed through the hanging clothes and into the room like a rippling black cloak given life. She lay upon her bed and was covered with quilts piled high. These rose and fell with her breathing, and Stoakes had no doubt that she was lost to sleep. Soon she would be just plain lost.
Stoakes pulled the Suicide Knife from its sheath at the small of his back and moved to occupy the impossible space behind the head of the bed, which butted up against the wall. He hovered above her, staring at the whorl of light gushing out of her with the aid of the Yellow Diamond Spectacles—he was getting used to them—judging the best angle to enter and the appropriate depth. The chisel-point tip touched her temple, slid in without resistance until half the blade was buried inside her head. The light winked out, and though respiration did not occur for Shades while Dark, Stoakes felt his breath catch in his throat. His hands were suddenly shaky. He firmed his grip on the Knife and drew it from from the soft embrace of Jerra Olaff’s brain, leaving a few beads of blood in a line upon her temple. He thought that if he returned to normal he would find his eyes wet with tears. He remained Dark.
Someone stirred in another room. The sound of approaching footsteps grew louder, and a man’s voice called, “No. . . No!”
The door to the room burst open. Standing there with an eerie light encircling his head was Faaylin Olaff. “Jerra!” he cried.
Stoakes was mildly surprised by Olaff’s speed and the subtlety of his perception. He moved out from behind the bed into the center of the room, regarding Olaff through the Yellow Diamond Spectacles. The light around the young man’s head was different from that which came from Jerra, but within it Stoakes thought he saw another kind of infinity. The Spectacles were more distraction than help, so he removed them. Olaff’s crown light was still clearly visible.
Stoakes drew back his Suicide Knife and thrust it forward, a short powerful jabbing motion that had no hope of reaching Olaff there at the door, and yet a chunk of flesh just under his ribs on his right side, turned to pulp and sprayed the wall behind him red.
Olaff bent double, the crown light wavering then growing stronger again. He straightened somewhat, and through bloody spittle he hissed, “What are you? Surely not the King of Spades come to claim my sister.”
“Something like that,” Stoakes croaked out in reply, his Artifact automatically adjusting his speech to make it understood. “I’ll claim you, too, before I’m done.”
The man smiled blackly. “It will cost you.” With an effort, he stood straight, and his crown light surged.
Stoakes felt power on a scale that momentarily shocked him. It seized him, rammed him into the wall behind, and pinned him there. Splintered wood and bits of plaster sifted down. A white-gold ring—the crown light—burned in the wall and held him suspended. His wrists and ankles felt like they might pop, but his left wrist, though it throbbed, had somehow managed to escape the crucifying trap. Stoakes examined his free hand and noted the smoking debris below his feet. The Tether Launch control. He slowly raised his gaze to fix it upon Olaff.
Stoakes still held the Suicide Knife in his right hand, but with a flick of his fingers, sent it to his free hand. He held it horizontally, below the plane of his eyes, and watched as Olaff dropped his own eyes slightly so that he was seeing his reflection in the blade of the Suicide Knife, in the Midnight Mirror.
Olaff blinked and looked unsure of what to do.
Stoakes laughed and plunged the Suicide Knife into his own belly, just under his ribs on the right side. With a jerk and a slight twist of the blade at the halfway point, he’d described a semicircle in less than a second, returning the blade to just under where he’d initially stabbed himself.
Olaff stared in disbelief then coughed blood as the backwards C rose up in bright red upon his belly through his pajama top. He dropped to his knees as his organs spilled out among a torrent of blood, then fell forward where he would have suffocated on his intestines strewn out upon the floor if he hadn’t been dead already.
The crown light crucifixion ring faded and Stoakes drifted downward. He rubbed his wrists and rotated his ankles. He was suddenly aware of the mother, Aami, and the father, Rossos, standing in the hall, staring into
the room, transfixed by the horror they beheld. He stared back for a moment, shook his head in unpleasant resignation, and kicked off from the floor. His shadowy form passed between them and proceeded out of the house into the still dark of early morning. Immediately after his passing, the two fell onto each other, their throats neatly and almost bloodlessly slit. But now the blood was flowing and the cold from outside was somehow stealing into the house.
10,691.145
It had been two weeks now. Stoakes could see the Vine, a dim coil of dark thread in the ice blue sky, still days away. He had no doubt of its coming, of its arrival, but wondered how he would get to the sixth planet, where the Vine would make planetfall. The means existed, they had an advanced system of mass drivers that provided transportation between all of what they referred to as the Three Worlds, but security seemed abnormally tight for a civilian-run operation. He later overheard from some of the locals that many of the launch ways had been shut down or repurposed. Stoakes was certain that they were making preparations to repel the Vine. Despite the seemingly primitive conditions on this planet, their technology was substantial. There was no way they would be caught off guard by the Vine’s approach.
He could sense from the people the palpable tension of imminent conflict, and the launch way security did seem extreme—though he thought it consisted mostly of manpower—he couldn’t help marveling slightly at the lack of actual military action. Perhaps it was a question of range. He didn’t know how far out the mass drivers would still be effective, but was that their only line of defense? Stoakes didn’t think so. He hadn’t seen any military vehicles or any other hardware that might aid in the making or suppressing of war, but it was as if they were waiting for something. Perhaps it was simply for the Vine to come within range, perhaps there were more like Olaff, and that was the source of confidence he felt in the people. In the end, it didn’t matter. Stoakes had decided what he would do. Regardless of whether or not he could get to the sixth planet, Shaala, he believed it was called, eventually the Palace would come or a blind runner would be sent here. If it were the latter, he would simply walk back to the Palace. He had no doubt that he could accomplish that before they would move on to the next system.
So, since the mass drivers weren’t critical to his return, and they appeared to be this planet’s main offensive capability, he would do his part to ruin them.
• • •
Stoakes stood outside the launch way identified by a sign as IP32. The giant copper coils thrummed audibly and made the ground vibrate even as far out as he was. A heat shimmer could be seen coming off of them. Despite regular snowfall, the launch way and the surrounding grounds for several kilometers around, paved with some stone aggregate, were clear of snow and not even wet.. The coils were obvious, but Stoakes thought that the ground was warm and dry due to the heat rising up from the power plant he imagined was buried directly below.
Traffic came and went through the launch way constantly. Uniformed personnel were everywhere, but were singularly occupied by their tasks. The more Stoakes moved among them, the more he realized that their purpose was not security at all, but simply to ensure that nothing went wrong or was left undone. Despite the volume of personnel, Stoakes had no trouble finding and breaching the entrance to the power plant, housed within a low bunker alongside the control tower that was situated roughly midway along the launch way.
Stoakes employed several tricks which supplemented the stealth already provided by his Artifact. There were ample shadows, even at midday, and Stoakes was adept at getting behind people without their knowledge. His speed and dexterity made it easy to move from person to person, to hide behind them and stay out of sight. Stoakes reached the bunker and slid along the front of the building, blending in with the dark gray paint that covered it. There were two men standing at the entrance, checking people into the facility. Stoakes waited a few minutes, letting them admit a pair of technicians, then, when foot traffic around the bunker’s entrance was lightest, Stoakes slunk along the wall behind them, easily passing through the gap between the doors.
Immediately inside the bunker was what appeared to be the power plant’s nerve center, manned by four men at seated stations. He learned that this was an inferior fusion reactor, though what was inferior about it he didn’t know. He did know that if the magnetic field containing the reaction could be shut down or shifted, he would accomplish his goal. He also learned that the most recent admissions would likely be the only visitors for some time. The pair that they had just replaced left the bunker minutes after he’d entered, and the next shift change wouldn’t come for another four hours so he had ample time to work.
Stoakes passed through the elevator doors to find the car absent. He descended the dark shaft that led to the reactor itself under his own power. The shaft opened onto a corridor—a tube—lined with metal squares, like tiles, from floor to ceiling. The light was limited down here, which suited Stoakes just fine, and was provided mostly by various gauges, schematics, and access panels, breaking the monotony of the metal tiles at intervals. Stoakes soon gathered that this corridor circumvented the reaction chamber.
He made the two kilometer circuit around the reaction chamber and found that there were sixteen stations at intervals designed to regulate the magnetic field containing the reaction within the chamber. Ultimately, he was not concerned about being discovered. What could they do to him anyway? The technicians, he was convinced, could do nothing, but it wouldn’t do to be trapped underground when the reaction was allowed to spread beyond the chamber that housed it. In making the circuit, he followed a pair of technicians on rounds to check gauges and perform safety checks until they stopped to remain for a time before going back. Stoakes continued on and found that there was a team of two men for every four stations, a minimal crew that would never know the destruction that Stoakes had in mind.
Stoakes returned to the elevator shaft and jumped. His one-kilogram mass allowed him to rise up quickly and easily to the exit where he squeezed through the door like wet, black smoke. He paused for a moment before the elevator doors plotting the path his Knife would take. He didn’t want any undue mess to jeopardize what he was about to do to the reactor. In a blur, Stoakes was done. The four men at their stations slumped in their chairs, only one of them allowing a slow escape of blood to drop to the floor every six seconds. He approached the doors and jammed the Suicide Knife into the electronic lock, disabling it. He didn’t know if the guards outside would know he’d done this and didn’t care. He would be done soon.
He went back down the elevator shaft and moved swiftly, murdering all eight technicians with the Suicide Knife. He then disabled the power and back-up power to the four stations closest to the exit. Once the magnetic field gave out or was weak enough to allow the plasma to melt through chamber wall, the facility would be gutted by temperatures comparable to the hearts of stars. Stoakes didn’t want to remain for that.
There was no immediate indication that anything had happened, and Stoakes found himself dawdling, treading on the edge of annihilation for reasons he could not fathom. He cleared his mind and made for the exit, rising up to the bunker. As he went, something below gave birth to a low roar, which built and seemed to chase him. He still had the presence of mind to pass easily through the elevator doors, but something was coming which did threaten annihilation. He knocked the bunker door from its housing, scattering the two otherwise oblivious guards, and leapt up into the air, as high as he could. The nearby copper coils made a sudden and thunderous clang, the monotonous hum they produced changing character abruptly so that it was now like the lingering peal of a great bell that hung in the air for kilometers around.
Stoakes looked below. Smoke rose from the ground in sudden sheets. Then, as he watched, the ground for two kilometers around sank into a red hot crater of molten rock and steel. The mass driver coils, each standing five meters high and thirty centimeters thick, melted at the bottom and sank into the liquifying ground, toppling down with a c
ombination of more loud clangs, wet squishing sounds, and bass rumbles.
Then something exploded, something big. Stoakes didn’t know what it was, perhaps the fuel storage for the vehicles that used this facility to travel to the other planets of the Three worlds. He was unhurt, but the force of the blast sent him hurtling further, helplessly through the air. It took him a full minute to right and orient himself. He drifted on the air and realized that he had an excellent vantage point. If he focused his senses on the infrared spectrum, he would likely be able to spot another IP to destroy.
He was in the air for nearly twenty minutes before something caught his eye. As he’d hoped, he’d come across another mass driver. This one was much bigger than IP32. Stoakes had limited control over his progress through the air, but he wasn’t without some degree of skill in making the wind take him where he wanted to go. He adjusted his body so that gradually he started towards this new facility. He allowed himself to sink back down to the snowy ground, and kicked off once again, approaching many times faster now that he knew where he was going.
His final landing put him about half a kilometer from the fence that hemmed in the facility. Trees like sharp green spikes poked up from the snow all around outside, providing him with excellent cover. The sun would be rising soon, but Stoakes was unconcerned. He would wait or he wouldn’t. He wasn’t in a hurry. Either way, he would destroy the place.
Using the trees for cover, Stoakes observed the main gate. The security here seemed much more intense than it had been at IP32. There were more uniformed personnel here, but these were dressed differently and every man and woman carried a sidearm. The sign upon the gate identified this mass driver as “Iss EP06”: Extraplanetary Zero Six. . . Was Iss the name of this place, this planet? Stoakes didn’t know, but he did know that this was a military installation, not designed for shipping or transportation, not within the Three Worlds, anyway. There was a fairly steady stream of vehicles entering through the gate, each stopping for a security check. Stoakes saw the trucks inside being unloaded, some of them into buildings like hangers, of which there were several, some of them into neat ranks upon the open pavement. He was sure that this was ordnance. He was also pretty sure that, given the size of the launch way, that EP06 and any other EPs would be able to reach the Vine before the other non-military grade drivers. He might be able to find useful information here.
The Blood Solution (Approaching Infinity Book 3) Page 25