"Beta decay," said Roche, echoing the voice of the Box in her skull.
Neva nodded again. "The rifles were radioactive — so contaminated that only a few doses resulted in debilitating sickness. The gunrunner had deliberately sold them, knowing the harm they would do. This left the people of Ul-œmato in a bind: continuing the defense of the town with the weapons meant slow death by radiation sickness, while surrender meant that they would be invaded." She lowered her eyes to the floor. "So the town fell to DAOC without a fight, killed by the rifles that had almost liberated it."
Roche waited for her to continue, but Emmerik picked up the tale.
"Shortly after taking the town," he said, "the DAOC troops learned what had happened. Naturally, they were appalled. Along with orbital bombardment, the use of radiation weapons was forbidden. Breaking the Warfare Protocol carried a heavy penalty. If conciliatory measures were not taken immediately to demonstrate their innocence, word would spread that the DAOC troops had planted the weapons themselves."
"So," Cane guessed, "as a gesture of goodwill, DAOC allowed the few remaining survivors to keep the town?"
Neva glanced back to him in the shadows. "Yes," she said. "Although they took the mountains around it, the security forces vowed to leave the town and its inhabitants alone." Again she faced Roche. "In the weeks remaining to them, the dying townsfolk buried the dead in a ring around the town, using the poisoned rifles as gravestones."
Roche remembered the endless field of rifles pointing at the sky, and shivered. "And the gunrunner?" she asked.
Emmerik snorted. "You've seen what happened to him," he said.
Roche nodded slowly. "The Eckandi."
"Lazaro Houghton," said Neva, her voice cold, "was eventually captured by the Dominion with the help of the COE — in a further gesture of goodwill. After his trial, he was sent to Sciacca's World as a convict. He only lasted a year before the inhabitants hunted him down and meted out their own justice."
"Thus 'Houghton's Cross'," muttered Cane.
"That's right." Emmerik stared at him in the half-light, the glow from the heater catching his intense expression. "Only a handful of children survived the radiation sickness, but DAOC's promise still holds. They won't attack us here. The Cross, the old city, has become a symbol of everything we strive for: justice for past wrongs, freedom to live as we wish — "
"And it's safe," said Cane, cutting through the Mbatan's rhetoric with hard-edged pragmatism.
"That too." Emmerik glanced at Neva, and Roche noted the look that passed between them. "We do not seek a bloodbath, and we are not interested in leaving the planet. Our cause does not belong with the convicts, or the wardens. We were born here, all of us. This is where we want to live, in peace, for the rest of our lives. In order to do so, we will attempt diplomacy, but not open rebellion."
"Except as a last resort," added Neva. "Our reluctance to trust off-worlders is ingrained, you see. Sciacca's World has been betrayed at various times by the Ataman Theocracy, the Dato Bloc, the Commonwealth of Empires, and even by the Dominion, who abandoned it to its fate eight hundred years ago. Any treaty would be regarded as suspect until proved by time."
"Patience is what we should be embracing, Neva," said the Mbatan wearily, as though they had had this disagreement many times. "There has been enough death here."
"But not enough, it seems, to convince the wardens to agree to our terms." Neva returned her attention to Roche. "Haid seeks a hearing with the High Equity Court of the COE to discuss our claim of sovereignty. To do this we need a hyperspace communicator. But our requests to use the MiCom facilities at the landing field have been denied, and Warden Delcasalle refuses to negotiate."
"So you fight," said Roche, finally feeling that she understood the nature of the rebels. The why of their actions, if not the how.
"No, we resist." Emmerik leaned forward to accentuate the word. "We will never give up hope of finding a peaceful solution."
"Even if it means using a stranded Armada officer as a bargaining point?"
"Perhaps," said Neva. "It might come to that."
"But it won't." Emmerik gave the woman a warning look. "We have other plans, plans that don't involve betrayal."
"But do they involve Veden?" said Roche.
Neva glanced at Emmerik, and the Mbatan looked away. "It's important that you understand us," said the woman, "to enable you to decide where you stand. But until you make that decision, we will tell you nothing more."
Roche took the hint, although she was more curious than ever about how Veden intended to help. She looked into the adjacent room to see what Veden was doing, but the Eckandi and Maii, along with the other rebels, had gone.
Until you make that decision ... Neva's sentiment bothered her. Although she could sympathise with the rebels' plight, she wasn't sure she should take a stand at all. It wasn't her job to get involved — unless that was the only way she could get off-world.
Roche lay back on the bed that Neva had prepared for her and closed her eyes.
Roche tried to find a comfortable position.
Roche absorbed this disquieting thought in silence. Her fate rested in the Eckandi's hands: if he chose not to help the rebels because of her involvement, then she could hardly blame them for turning her in. What did she have to offer them in return for their help? All she had done so far was bring the Dato with her into the system, and increased Enforcement's presence in the mountain range — neither of which was likely to sit well with the rebels.
* * * *
In defiance of sheer physical exhaustion, her mind wouldn't let her rest. She lay for two hours on the camp mattress — staring at the orange, unflickering glow the heater cast across the ceiling, and thinking about everything Neva had said — before finally giving in to restlessness.
The atmosphere of the room was thick and heavy with sleep. The floor was carpeted with a dense, aging fabric that might once have been a vibrant red, although the years had faded it to a musty brown. Roche tried to imagine the room filled with people — dignitaries, diplomats, soldiers, partisans — but failed. The town's oppressive stillness had penetrated every building, every room, robbing it of even ghosts of memory.
No one stirred as she climbed out of the bunk and donned her survival suit. Cane's eyes were open, but he neithe
r moved nor made a sound to disturb the others. Grasping the valise by its handle, she eased out of the room and into the hallway, where she waited a moment, listening. Still no sounds of alarm. When she felt certain she would not be followed, she swiftly and silently retraced the steps that had led to the room from the street below.
The wind had picked up in the hours she had been sheltered. It blustered around the base of the tower, snatching at her cropped scalp and stealing her warmth. Not yet certain where she was headed, she put down the valise for a moment to tug the hood of her suit over her head. As she did so, she happened to glance upward and glimpsed the Eckandi gunrunner, Lazaro Houghton, his twisted body silhouetted against the Soul.
She shivered, picked up the valise, and walked away, heading into the darkness of the city.
How long it took her to reach the town's outer wall she had no way of knowing, but when she arrived, the eastern span of the Soul had grown perceptibly brighter. Dawn was approaching. Randomly choosing a walkway, she climbed the network of ladders and platforms up the inside of the wall until she stood on its lip, thereby gaining an unobstructed view of both the town behind her and the crater around it. The wind moaned incessantly, seeking to tug her from her ancient perch. She gripped a brass rail with her one good hand and watched patiently, her mind empty of all thought, as the orange sun rose over the horizon.
Below her, still in shadow but growing more distinct with every second, was the field of graves encircling the town — rifle after rifle in an endless procession. So many graves, she thought. So much —
"You are restless," said a voice from behind her.
She turned, startled. It was Emmerik. She let herself relax. "Yes."
"Everyone has a still point, a focus, a place where one can find peace." Emmerik tipped his head to the sunrise, at the stain of blood spreading over the crater lip. "Mine is here. Houghton's Cross at dawn."
"You didn't follow me here, then?"
"Oh, I followed you. I was watching the tower from across the street. When you left, I chose not to stop you, thinking you might be headed here. Hoping." The burly Mbatan sighed deeply, the deep crinkles in the thick skin of his face smoothing slightly. "A moment of stillness is all I desire of every day. It's a shame you can't partake fully of it."
Roche turned back to the sunrise. "I have such a place also, but it's far away from here."
"Further than I can imagine, most likely. I have never travelled through space, even to a place so near as the Soul. Leaving my planet seems impossible, sometimes, although I hope to one day."
"How?"
"That will be up to Haid to tell you. It is not my place to discuss such matters."
"But Veden is essential to your plan?" Roche asked, and noted the contempt in her tone.
Emmerik heard it also, and smiled. "Don't let him worry you so."
"Worry me ... ?" She stopped and sighed. "I guess he does a little. I can't help thinking that he will betray us to Enforcement the first opportunity he gets."
"He is simply afraid," said Emmerik.
"Afraid of what?"
"Of what you represent."
Roche studied the Mbatan's bearded face closely. "What about you? Are you afraid? Do I frighten you?"
Emmerik laughed, the thick sound rolling out across a sudden gust of wind. "No," he said. "You don't frighten me." He paused. "Your companion, however — Cane — he chills me to the bone."
"Why?"
Emmerik shook his head and folded his beefy arms against the wind. "When we halted in the mountain pass last night, while you and Maii and Veden waited in the rocks, Cane and I found a recon team up on the far side of the rift. They were waiting for us to come up. We'd doubled back another way and come on them from behind. They were scanning the path with infrared, waiting for us to appear."
"An ambush."
He nodded. "They were armed. We couldn't wait for them to lose interest and move elsewhere. We needed to get past them, and they had to be dealt with swiftly, but there were six of them and only two of us. I could see no easy way to approach them, or to overpower them without raising an alarm. I turned to Cane to suggest we return to your hiding place, but he wasn't there." Emmerik winced as the memory returned to him. "They didn't see him coming, or hear him. It was ... unbelievable. I've never seen anyone move so fast. He killed them with his bare hands, soundlessly and efficiently. One of them, the last, had time to gasp for mercy, but Cane simply reached out and snapped his neck." Emmerik gestured with his right hand, imitating Cane's killing blow.
His eyes stayed on Roche. "What is he, Commander?"
"I don't know," she said, and recognised the doubt in his expression. "It's the truth. I wish I did know something more about him, but — " She looked out across the expanse of impromptu headstones. "You can always ask Maii if you don't believe me."
"I have. She says only that he is good at what he does, as are all of you, in your own ways."
"And that's all we can ever hope to be," she replied. "To fight ourselves is pointless. We must use what we have to the best of our ability and do as we see fit."
"And that includes killing in cold blood?"
"No!" She faced him angrily. He was twisting her words. "That's not what I mean. You can't blame Cane for what he did. They were the enemy. Given the chance, they would have done the same to us."
Emmerik didn't speak for several seconds. "I don't blame him," he said at last. "But if he ever turned against us — "
"He won't," Roche cut in quickly, although even as she spoke she could feel her own reservations. They were slight, but they were there. "He promised to support us," she said with more resolve. "And he will. I'm sure of it. I don't know much about him but I do know he is honorable. You yourself said that much."
Emmerik gestured to the makeshift graves below. "Needless killing is never honorable, Commander."
"That at least I can agree with," Roche said. "Perhaps we only disagree on our definition of 'need' ... "
Together they fell into silence, watching the dawn tighten its grip on the world. The sky lightened to its familiar yellow-red, and the radiance of the Soul dimmed in comparison. The only blemish was a dark shadow looming over the crater's northern wall. Moving perceptibly, it seemed to creep over the lip, spilling into the bowl of stone to flood the town. Its speed surprised her. Although she had experienced once before the terrible power of a dust storm, she still had trouble comprehending the sheer ferocity of the front. The turbulent shock wave riding at the fore of an atmospheric war.
"Fodder for the Soul," said Emmerik, following her gaze. He caught the look of confusion on Roche's face and smiled. "It's something we say when a particularly bad storm is about to hit. Sort of a presage of doom. You see, some people believe that the Soul is made up — "
" — of the spirits of those that have died here," finished Roche.
Admiration flashed briefly in his eyes. "Exactly," he said. "Anyway, one myth has it that these storms are the hands of a god collecting spirits to illuminate the Soul." He glanced up at the sky. "Somebody invariably dies whenever one hits, so maybe there's some truth in it."
Roche stiffened. "If it is a god, then it's working with DAOC." She pointed in the direction of what else she had seen, hovering at the edge of the cloud. "Look!"
A tiny speck of light flickered as clouds of dust rolled around it. An instant later, it disappeared entirely, tossed by the unpredictable currents that had briefly brought it into view.
There was only one thing it could be: a flyer attempting to use the front as cover for an approach to the town.
"Quickly!" Emmerik gripped her good arm and dragged her away from the wall. "We have to warn the others!"
They climbed down from the top of the wall and started running through the empty streets of the city. The moaning of the storm was distant at first, but growing rapidly louder. Beneath it, Roche imagined she could hear the nasal buzzing of the flyer, swooping toward the city to catch them unaware.
"Do you think they saw us?"
"Undoubtedly," replied the Mbatan without breaking stride. His heavy legs pounded the pavement relentlessly, and it was all she could do to keep up. "But they knew we were here anyway, otherwise they wouldn't have come."
"It couldn't be a routine patrol?"
"No." Emmerik slowed his pace as they rounded the final corner. The looming shadow of the storm spread across the sky ahead of them, beyond the two towers and their grisly mascot. The day — not even half an hour old — began to darken. Again Roche felt the numbing despair that had crippled her the previous day, but this time she was ready for it and therefore able to resist it. Lightning flashed in the brown cloud with increasing frequency, as though the elements understood their predicament and actively encouraged a sense of emergency. "Flying a storm front is dangerous," Emmerik gasped. "Not to be undertaken lightly. Only a lunatic or a soldier would attempt to approach the town this way."
"I thought you said they wouldn't attack."
"They never have before. Perhaps that's why they're using this method of approach: to hide from eyes other than ours."
Even as he said this, a siren like the bellow of a dying animal sounded in the distance, seeming to come from all directions at once. Emmerik stumbled to a halt, listening, as the ululating cry resounded eerily across the town.
"They must have noticed it too," he said. "Good. Perhaps now we have a chance."
"Who — ?" Roche used the pause to catch her breath. It seemed that she had been gasping ever since setting foot on the planet, and she wondered if the thin atmosphere was entirely to blame. "Who's making that noise?"
"The keepers of the city," Emmerik replied.
Roche remembered the strangely robed figures who had confronted her the previous night, when she had reached out to touch one of the cemetery-rifles. "The keepers? You mean the descendants of the Dominion colonists?"
"They have guarded the city for over five hundred years," he said. Then, with a wry smile, added: "They are also responsible for the rumors of it being haunted. If it is attacked, they will defend it."
Evergence: The Prodigal Sun Page 15