The Dark Ascent

by Walter H Hunt

  Byar fluttered down from somewhere to land next to Owen; he gently grasped one of Owen's forearms. The teacher nodded to the Master and departed for another perch. Jackie bowed to the Master of Sanctuary, who grasped forearms with her. He did not speak, but kept a gentle hold on her right arm and led her to a cushion beside Owen, gesturing briefly toward the gyaryu. She sat and placed the scabbarded sword across her lap, hilt to the right, her hands resting lightly upon it.

  Byar stood between Jackie and Owen and placed a hand on each of their shoulders.

  "We are assembled in this place of quiet," he began, "to examine a Sensitive skill which has appeared among the People."

  It was a ritual phrase, but she saw Owen's shoulder tense under Byar's grasp. She caught his eye; he was angry, but trying not to show it. "It is rare," Byar continued, "that a new Sensitive phenomenon occurs; and it is long established by law and by custom that the appearance of such a skill requires the examination of the hyu and the hsi of the bearer. This serves both as a guide to the Flight of the People and as an assurance that the bearer's Inner Peace is maintained.

  "What is unusual about this circumstance is that this talent seems not to be new to the People, but instead is one that has lain hidden for many turns. It is anGa'riSsa: the Shield of Hatred. As this talent may not be well known to many among the People, I beg eight thousand pardons for a few moments to speak of it." His wings moved to the Posture of Polite Approach.

  "In the time of the Warring States, before the end of the War of Unification, the Lord of Despite strove against the servants of esLi. Chief among the generals of esGa'u was Shrnu'u HeGa'u—He of the Dancing Blade—who led the Army of Sunset. This army swept from the shore of the Western Ocean to the foothills of the Spine of Shar'tu, and laid all to waste before them. At the Plain of Ca'ra'man, through a cruel deception, Shrnu'u HeGa'u and his minions destroyed the Legion of esLi; and those who still held the Inner Peace were forced to flee where the Eight Winds drove them.

  "At last, the Army of Sunset arrived at Sharia'a, the City of Warriors."

  Jackie watched Owen's shoulders tense again.

  "The sorceries of the Army of Sunset were potent, and the defenders of the city slowly gave way to despair and depression," Byar went on. "As it happened, however, esLi still smiled upon the city: A young warrior named Dri'i, who had been at the shattering of the Legion, was within the walls of Sharia'a. The hsi of Dri'i was strong; as the warriors of the city gradually succumbed to the e'gyu'u of the servants of esGa 'u, he was moved to anger.

  "He went from place to place in the city, from warrior to warrior, communicating this anger to the defenders of Sharia'a. Gradually they were moved to resist that with which the esGa'uYal attacked them. And while the Army of Sunset laid waste outside the walls, the warriors stood firm until the agents of esGa'u withdrew their siege and sought easier targets. Thus was the power of the servants of esLi preserved until it was time for them to emerge in the service of the Golden Circle once more.

  "We believe that this talent has emerged in this young warrior." Byar looked down at Owen, who nodded, tight- lipped, trying to maintain composure. "This is the subject of this Ordeal."

  Byar placed his wings in posture of deference to esLi, all over the chamber, beside and above them, wings moved in response.

  "esLi commands that the journey begin. esLi commands that the Ordeal commence."

  Through the chamber, Jackie could hear the word esLiHeYar being spoken, a sound as gentle as a breeze. She closed her eyes, feeling the tendrils of Byar's consciousness extend toward her.

  A gong sounded in the distance.

  "I raise my head toward the orb of the Sun and survey the land of my clan-fathers. I scan the horizon and watch for the legions of esGa'u. Though the searing heat burn away my skin—"

  Gong.

  "Though it singe my wings until, blackened, they drop away—"

  Gong.

  "Though the madness-of-daylight comes upon me, I shall not swerve from my duty."

  Gong.

  The room was absolutely quiet, as if there were not a living soul in it. Jackie opened her eyes, not knowing what to think; she expected to see the meditation chamber, or perhaps some representation of Sharia'a . . .

  Instead she found herself looking at a holo display, focusing on six aerospace fighters. In the near distance she could see a vuhl hive-ship.

  She was back aboard Duc d'Enghien at Cicero.

  Even before Owen opened his eyes, he felt something familiar under his hands—not the hilt and scabbard of a chya, but the controls of an aerospace fighter. He almost didn't want to look but he did, and saw what he'd half expected to see: the cockpit of Green Five, in the absolute comm-quiet that had come just before he was pulled into the ship directly ahead of him.

  "No," he said to himself. "This can't be happening again."

  Somewhere beyond where he sat, trying to make the controls respond, he was at Sanctuary; this was a test, some sort of zor mental construct. It was an exact reenactment of something that had already happened—

  No, he thought. Not exact. There's something I can do now that I couldn't when this happened.

  He felt his anger beginning to rise. Over the last few weeks he'd made an effort to throttle it, to harness the power the teachers at Sanctuary said he possessed: First Talon, Second Talon, focusing on the Inner Peace.

  The hell with that.

  He let go. He let go of all of it: all of the resentment, all of the disgust, everything that reminded him of his fellow Green pilots' deaths. He gripped the controls with such emotion that pain coursed through his wrists and forearms . . .

  And suddenly the controls responded under his hands. The hive-ship loomed so large that it filled the entire forward screen, but there was still plenty of room to turn. He heeled the little craft to starboard on a steep pitch and after a moment he was facing open space. Off in the distance his navcomp picked up Duc d'Enghien.

  "All right," he said, to no one at all. "All right!"

  Teach, he thought to himself.

  "If I've got attitude controls, maybe I've got comm," he said aloud. "Green Five to Green Leader. Gary, respond."

  The Green comm channel was still quiet, but he could just make out the backfeed from Duc's flight bridge. If he could reach Green Wing Commander—

  Save them first, he thought. Maybe he'd wind up failing and flying his bird back to the carrier alone, but he had to try. "Gary, this is Owen. I don't know if you can hear me or not. If you can't answer but you can still hear, listen to me. Listen to my voice.

  "They're going to kill you, Gary. They're making you see things that aren't there, and they're going to kill you just like they killed Admiral Tolliver and the crew on the ships that went out with him. You have to fight it—You have to . . . you have to hate them. You have to hate them with everything you've got."

  You have to feel what I'm feeling right now, he thought, pitching the fighter over. Green One—Gary Cox's plane— and Green Four—Anne Khalid's—were in visual range. They were on an intercept course with each other.

  "Green Five to all Greens, copy my comm: Fight this thing. Focus on your hatred." He listened to his voice; he sounded like some sort of damn Sensitive himself. "Listen to me—you can do this. This is the enemy."

  Silence. Owen was closing on Schoenfeld and Khalid now; navcomp had picked up Aaron Schoenfeld, aft and a bit to port, closing on his tail.

  "For God's sake, someone respond!"

  They can't do it, he thought. They're going to die, and they're going to take me with them. One shot from Gary's guns, and I'm—

  "Green Five," his comm said. "This is Green Six. I copy, Five." It was Aaron Schoenfeld's voice—it sounded strained, like he had something heavy on his chest. It was a voice from the grave, and it electrified Owen.

  "I've got your flank, Owen," Schoenfeld added. "What's— What's going on?"

  "No time to explain. Break off: I've got to get through to Gary and Anne and Devra."r />
  "Break off?"

  "No," came another voice. It was Gary Cox, the wing leader. "I read also, Green Five."

  "I copy." It was Anne Khalid's voice. She was beginning to change course. "Coming around again, Green Leader."

  Owen's navcomp showed another fighter coming alongside, to starboard. "Green Two copies also, Green Leader," said Devra Sidra.

  "Form up," Gary said. "We're going in."

  "Are you crazy, Gary?" Owen said. "We can get away—get back to base before they take us over again."

  "They're not going to."

  "This makes no sense, Green Leader."

  "Are you disobeying orders, Five?"

  Six ships against a hive-ship three kilometers long? Owen thought angrily. We're going to be plasma.

  But this wasn't real—in reality they'd all killed each other, and he'd been pulled inside the hive-ship and interrogated . . . and given anGa'riSsa.

  "No sir, Green Leader," Owen said.

  "Form up in config Gamma," Gary said. "Fire at will."

  The six fighters approached the hive-ship, weapons blazing.

  Jackie looked around. The bridge—or something made to resemble it—was deserted except for her and Byar HeShri. He stood by the pilot's chair, where Barbara MacEwan had sat watching as they raced away from the doomed fighter wing. Jackie stood beside the huge pilot's board where she and Ray Santos had also stood, fists clenched, watching the little fighters kill each other—all except one. No Ray Santos; no Barbara MacEwan. "I thought we were going to see Sharia'a," Jackie said to Byar, without turning. "I don't want to see this again."

  "It may not turn out the same way, se Jackie."

  "Oh?" She was furious, and spared a moment to look over her shoulder at him. "Who'd you invite to the party this time?"

  "I invited no one," he answered. His wings moved to the Stance of Restrained Affront. "The esGa'uYal are free to walk the Plane of Sleep on their own."

  "Meaning?"

  "There is at least one present here, se Jackie. Can you not feel it?"

  "Is it . . ." Shrnu'u HeGa 'u, she was going to say; but she had become accustomed to the feel of Qu'u's ancient enemy. This was different: vaguely, disturbingly familiar, in a way that was annoyingly elusive.

  "Something is happening," Byar said, gesturing toward the pilot's board. It was: As she watched, Green Five—Owen's fighter—began to turn aside from the vuhl hive-ship. For several moments the other fighters continued to move toward each other as they'd done in real life; then they, too, began to move away.

  "They're going to escape," Jackie said.

  "I do not think that is their intent," Byar answered. "Look."

  Owen fired his weapons at the hive-ship, which seemed unshielded and unable to defend itself. Meter by meter, millisecond by millisecond, he expected a gun turret to train on him and destroy his fighter; but it wasn't happening. What was happening, was that the Green Squadron's concentrated fire was literally slicing off parts of the enormous vuhl vessel.

  Owen hadn't faced bug ships in battle . . . Well, he thought, except that one time at Cicero—but that hardly counts as a "battle."

  Could their hive-ships actually come apart that way? He'd read what he could about the battles at Adrianople and Thon's Well; no one had gotten close enough to attack them in detail.

  Gary Cox's fighter continued to lead the Green Squadron a few dozen meters above the surface of the hive-ship, firing at the surface. Owen would have expected to break off at any time—they should be running out of energy to power their weapons by now—but the telltales in front of him showed one hundred percent across the board. It was as if the ship was a passive target, waiting for them to destroy it.

  There was a wrongness about the entire scene—as if Owen's five dead colleagues flying again wasn't wrong enough . . . But this wasn't a fight, it was a slaughter. As pieces of the hive-ship were sliced away, he could see insect bodies tumbling into space as the compartments depressurized. It was a hideous way to die.

  What they deserve, he thought to himself. It doesn't matter: This is what was supposed to happen.

  He wanted to call Duc d'Enghien, to call Commodore Laperriere and tell her the bugs could be defeated—that there was a way to fight them. They could be killed.

  Every one of them can be killed. Every one.

  "What the hell is happening, se Byar?" Jackie said. The six fighters had done considerable damage to the hive-ship they were attacking: it had been laid open like an animal carcass, with a huge gouge amidships. "Why are they doing this? Why doesn't the vuhl ship fight back?

  "I don't understand this Dsen'yen'ch'a at all." She put her hand on the gyaryu. "Is this something to make Owen Garrett feel better? It's a dream. It never happened. Gary Cox and his wingmates killed each other because they couldn't resist Domination. Owen couldn't, either, but he was pulled into the ship instead of being killed."

  She looked away from the board to Byar, who stood a few meters away. The rest of the Duc's bridge had become ethereal, almost invisible, as if it were a 3-V mockup. Behind Byar there was nothing but a sort of misty glow.

  "I have no explanation," Byar said. "If the aliens do not fight back, it is because they cannot. This is a sSurch'a: It is intended to tell us something about se Commander Garrett's talent."

  "This is symbolic . . . of what?"

  "We will have to ask Commander Garrett when the Ordeal is complete. Something changed. Presumably," Byar added, walking toward Jackie, "he used his ability to fight the Domination of the aliens—and the outcome is different."

  Byar's face was suddenly brightly lit, and both of them looked back at the pilot's board. The vuhl ship had suffered a major explosion where the gouge had been, showing empty space beyond . . . and something else.

  "What's that?'

  Byar's wings moved to the Cloak of Guard. "The stars are wrong, se Jackie."

  "Magnify two hundred," she said to the air. The pilot's-board view changed, closing in on the vuhl ship; as they watched, the two parts of the ship—the aft and fore sections—fell apart in an additional explosion, tumbling out of view. A ragged, irregular patch of stars that didn't belong there, stretched across a patch of space hundreds of kilometers wide.

  "It looks like a hole. A tear in space. I've . . . never seen anything like it."

  "I've never seen anything like it," Owen said into comm.

  "It's like a gateway to another place."

  "Damn straight," Gary Cox answered. "Form up, Green Squadron. Let's see what we have."

  "Maybe we should comm Duc before we go in, Green Leader," Owen said. "If we—"

  "Form up!" Gary interrupted. "This is the gate, Green Five. This is the destination."

  "What?"

  "The destination," Gary repeated. "This is where we've been going all along."

  Six aerospace fighters dove for the distortion, where different stars shone.

  "This isn't right, se Byar. Sound the gong. Stop the Ordeal."

  "I beg to differ, se Jackie. We must follow this through to its conclusion." He gently grasped the forearm of her off-arm; she had the gyaryu in her hand, not remembering having drawn it.

  "This is out of control."

  "Yes." Byar's wings moved to a posture of reverence to esLi. "Eight thousand pardons, se Jackie. But it always was."

  Suddenly, as the fighter craft reached the rough boundary between Cicero space and the other side of the rip, reality seemed to shatter. An intolerable brightness blinded Owen in his aerospace fighter, and Jackie and Byar on the bridge of Duc d'Enghien.

  When they could see again, they were standing all together, dusty ground beneath their feet. An orange sun shone from a blistering-hot sky.

  Jackie looked up and saw towers above, glowing a pale yellowish white at their tops.

  "What—?" Jackie began, but Byar held up a taloned hand.

  "Ah," he said. "This is where I expected we would be, at the start."

  "Sharia'a?"

  Byar moved
his wings to Standing Within the Circle. "Correct, se Jackie. Now we will see—"

  "See what?" Owen said, looking around him. "See me play Dri'i?" Owen stepped to his left, directly into the path of a zor warrior . . . who stepped through him. "Not likely, Master Byar. Looks like your little setup isn't going to work out as you planned it. They don't even know I'm here."

  It was true for all three of them. They were in the scene, but not a part of it: The armed zor warriors who moved from place to place neither saw nor heard them.

  "How do we know this is Sharia'a?" Owen asked. "It could be anywhere, any time."

  "The towers," Byar replied, gesturing. "The warriors of Sharia'a decorated the towers of their city with the bones of their enemies."

  A horn sounded somewhere. The gates of the city swung wide open and eleven zor entered, flying a meter or so above the ground. One carried a green banner bearing the glyph of Outer Peace.

  Jackie looked at the lead figure. He was a warrior of the People, but there was something subtly wrong with him she couldn't quite figure out. The gyaryu confirmed what she already suspected: This was a servant of esGa'u, and a high-ranking one, at that. It wasn't Shrnu'u HeGa'u, though; of that she was sure.

  "Why is an esGa'uYe within the walls of Sharia'a?" she asked Byar. "This isn't part of the legend."

  "Nor is this," Byar said, looking across the wide courtyard before the gate.

  A group of four warriors bore a small wooden palanquin which held a sword-rest. The sword-rest in turn held a blade that was unmistakably the gyaryu. They stopped a few meters away and bowed to the servants of esGa'u.

  "No," Jackie said. "This has to stop. The Ordeal must end before—"

  The scene began to fade as the three of them watched. Dust swirled to obscure their view of the esGa'uYal, and of the warriors of Sharia'a who were preparing to present the Talon of State to them.

  A gong sounded somewhere: once, twice . . . three times, four times.