A Kind of Peace

by Andy Boot

  The veldt lands were speckled with blue and green lakes that served as leisure resorts, with sprawling accommodation blocks around the edges. Once again, aerial shuttles serviced the settlements, and Jenna found herself lifting the holoship above them. She opted to stay above the cloud cover: although it was not necessary for concealment, she found that the air current resistance was easier to handle at this height. The adjustment in the ships' pressure resistance for those within demanded the lesser exertion.

  The atmosphere within the holoship grew warmer as they reached the interior of the continent. Here, close to the equator of Inan, the land beneath them began to change. The plains gave way to a series of small hills, gradually rising until they became ranges of mountainous territory. The towns beneath them became less spread out, more and more concentrated into clusters that nestled in valleys. The mountains around shaded them from the worst excesses of the sun, yet kept them isolated. The need for aerial shuttles became more apparent to Jenna as she looked down on the small clusters, buzzing with shuttles and personal aerial transporters.

  They must be near to their target. She had never been to the continent of Varn, despite their military alliance with Kyas. It had always been a shining, golden land of legend. The place where those who excelled in military service would receive recognition. She had seen holovid images of the land, of course, but it was not the same. Despite their mission, she was still filled with a sense of awe. It amazed her that these towns and cities could exist in this sun-scorched and seemingly inaccessible territory.

  The rocks were bleached white by centuries of exposure to the pink sun. Yet their outcrops provided enough shelter from the heat, and from the rains when they came in the winter months, to allow the settlements to have flourished. There was enough farmable land to initially support the population, and with the advent of technological advances the aerial routes had rendered the need to farm obsolete. Now the thin soil supported trees and shrubs that were grown purely for decoration.

  The location of these towns and cities had been less obtuse than might be supposed. Their locations nestled within the shadows of such forbidding rocks had made them almost invulnerable to attack, with the result that - unlike in other parts of the continent - all of these ancient settlements still betrayed their roots, with a seemingly random mix of the old and the new. It was easy to see why Ramus-Bey had been brought here, just as it was easy to see why this was where the elite of Varn would make their base. Difficult to bomb, almost impossible to invade, it was a fortress made by nature.

  There were several towns and cities scattered amongst the hills, but only one that was large enough to be Ilvarn.

  Jenna shook herself from her reverie, and focused on making the Peta invisible. She would have to take it down beneath the clouds and into the heart of the city. She could feel Simeon at her back, his breath hot against her neck. When he spoke it was almost in a whisper.

  "This is it. Are you ready?"

  "No," she replied truthfully. "But it doesn't matter, does it?"

  The holoship descended into the airspace of the capital. It was well into morning and the residents of Ilvarn were going about their everyday business. As he stared out of portside, the holoship dropping swiftly, he could see vehicles on the roads, people in markets and trudging in and out of buildings. Everywhere was colour: unlike Belthan, this was a place where people would rather be terminated than wear black and grey.

  Yet, despite this superficial difference, it struck him that they were exactly like the people he had left behind. Why they should be any different was a notion that he could not explain. In his imaginings during their journey, he had pictured the Varn capital in a state of siege, waiting for the Bethelian forces to descend. And now they looked as though they had no notion of the planet-changing events taking place in their midst.

  Why should they? He realised he had assumed that everyone in the world shared his troubles. In truth, the average citizen of Ilvarn neither knew nor cared. Like everyone else on the planet, they were oblivious to what happened, nominally at least, in their name. Like himself, they were all toys in someone else's game.

  But now was not the time to ponder such matters. Enough to know that it should make his immediate task easier.

  Some cold comfort as Jenna brought the Peta in to land.

  The main centres of Ilvarn were not something that Simeon had ever been called upon to investigate. However, even the dumbest of grunts knew that there were three old buildings in the centre that formed the hub of the capital. One was the Institute; a second was the Ministry building from which the governing body operated and the third was the Central Fortress, which had been, in ancient times, the seat of the old Regent and was now the hub of the military organisation. In the Fortress, the military leaders held council, planned strategy and held and interrogated prisoners of note.

  Playing it like a gambler, Simeon figured it this way; if you captured a Mage, then you'd want to secrete him away as fast as possible. Somewhere secure. Somewhere he wouldn't be noticed. As there were representatives of all nation states in the Ministry building as a condition of the peace treaty - an opening of archives and files, a sharing of information that was supposed to promote trust and eliminate the need for further secrecy - then it was unlikely that any prisoner could be risked there for discovery.

  So it was the Central Fortress or the Institute. Both had points in their favour: in the Institute a Mage could blend in magically and not be noticed; in the Fortress, he could be secured in a dungeon cell, out of sight and possibly out of mind. In the Institute, the mind of another Mage could cage him; in the Fortress, a frail old man could be physically shackled and tortured so that his mind could not focus on his magic. At the Institute, there was less likely to be an increase in warrior security without it being noticed; at the Fortress, any increase in magical activity would stand out.

  It was hard to decide which was the more likely. In the end, these factors had no bearing on Jenna's decision. The truth was that she needed somewhere large enough to put down a holoship. It was in the nature of the craft that they were solid enough to occupy three dimensions when shaped by a trained mind. Their dimensions could be shrunk or enlarged up to a point but - and this was the crucial factor - they were very much 'real' up until the point when an Ensign relaxed enough to make them dissipate. To land one when laden with trade or troops demanded the same physical space as any aerial craft.

  If Jenna was to land the Peta before dissipating it so that she and Simeon could simply walk free, then it was vital she find a space large enough to set down without displacing stone or glass and metal, thus giving them away.

  The roofs of the skyscrapers gave no space. They were cluttered with roof gardens, observations posts or other constructions that would be crushed beneath the initial descent, so revealing their presence.

  The turret, footway and walled surfaces on top of the castles also posed a similar problem. There was only one clear space large enough to take the initial descent in the whole of Ilvarn: the keep area of the Central Fortress.

  Never let it be thought that I like to do things the easy way, Jenna thought to herself as she guided the holoship down. Each Ensign had a name assigned to their mental constructs, even though it could be argued by a metaphysicist that the 'ship', as such, had no a priori existence. Not that a metaphysicist would be tempted to say this if a holoship should choose to land upon them. However, the notion of giving these occasional constructions a name was to help the Ensign to focus, identify with them, and treat them with care whilst in operation. Jenna, for instance, had chosen to name hers after Peta, her first pet. She had even considered changing the name to Fermy after her current pet, in order to reinforce such identification.

  Certainly, a psychologist watching the infinite care with which she manoeuvred her craft through the upward thrust of metal and glass, angling it to avoid contact, spinning it through ninety degrees so that it lay at a diagonal to the corners of the keep area as
it settled, avoiding the slightest disturbance, would have found grounds for insulting those metaphysicists who had poured scorn on their reasons for encouraging the naming of holoships.

  For Simeon, watching through the view screen as the city span around him, and as the cushioned fall of the Peta took them to their goal, such thoughts were irrelevant. Instead, he marvelled at the skill of the Ensign, and wondered once more about the stupidity of the military minds who had consigned her to prison farm duties instead of the realisations of her talents. Though, given that he would not have met her otherwise, and that he would not have been in a position to call upon her help, perhaps he should be grateful.

  As the holoship descended into the keep area, down below the level of the old defensive walls around the castle roof, he felt his feet sink slightly into the surface of the holoship's floor. Simultaneously, the interior walls of the Peta shimmered as though in a heat haze and became transparent. He could see the floor of the keep, and the stone walls that surrounded them. He could also see the surveillance imagers mounted on each corner.

  The interior of the holoship seemed to expand, appearing to rush outwards towards the stone walls, to meld in with them before finally vanishing from view. He felt his feet give way to the emptiness beneath them, falling just a short space before thumping gracelessly onto the stone floor. He had made only a few trips by holoship during his short military career, and found the adjustment to landing still a little strange. Having brought the holoship to within a fraction of the landing area's ground, Jenna had finally let go of the mental construct. Falling for a very short distance meant that the seemingly physical mass of the holoship would not create noise or disturbance beneath the castle roof.

  In all, a landing that had been achieved with little to give them away. Except for the surveillance imagers, that must surely have picked up their presence as the invisibility of the holoship dissipated to reveal the two warriors.

  Simeon grabbed Jenna and tried to pull her into a shadow beneath an imager.

  "What are you doing?" she questioned, pulling herself away. He didn't reply, merely gestured to the imagers. She followed the line of his arm. "Ah, those... I shouldn't worry about them," she said with a baffling lack of concern.

  "Either you've had a complete cretin attack, or you know something I don't," he remarked. He knew it was the latter as a sly grin crossed her face.

  "Just a little trick you can master with a touch more effort: when I dispersed the Peta's energy, I sent it - along with the invisibility field - out to the walls surrounding us. Any warriors who set foot up here won't be able to see or hear us."

  "Can you extend it anywhere we go?" Simeon asked hopefully.

  "I can maybe cast a short term charm around us when we step outside of this energy field"

  "Anything we can get is a bonus."

  "So this is the Central Fortress," Jenna said. "I suspect that getting off the roof will be a lot harder than it was getting down onto it."

  Simeon assented. "This place is going to be crawling with warrior security and advanced surveillance tech. There's no way we can avoid detection for long. What I need to do is get out of here and still give myself the best chance of making it in one piece."

  "Woah there," she exclaimed, "what's this change from 'we' to 'I'?"

  Simeon looked at her. His lips pursed, his eyes bore into her. "I told you. This is my fight. You can stay here. Maybe even use the holoship to get out quick. No-one has to know you're here."

  "And I suppose they won't be able to work it out if they take you?"

  "I wouldn't say."

  "Sim, you'd be terminated. You wouldn't have to say. They'd soon trace your movements back, and that'd lead right to me. As soon as I said yes, I was in this for the long haul. Whether I really wanted to be or not. So stop trying to be noble. It's not the time for that."

  He nodded. "If that's the way it is. Tell me, how far does the invisibility field spread?"

  "Covers the whole of this area," she replied, indicating the sun-blasted stone roof. "Right to the edges. Where those doorways are," she continued, indicating the four - one in each wall - that broke the monotony of stone. "Then anyone staring in from the other side would be unable to see us, although we could see them."

  "Okay... so if we open the doors ourselves, then..."

  "Then we cannot be seen or registered on surveillance equipment as long as we stay on this side of the door."

  "Would that be suspicious?" he said with humour. "Maybe not - not if there was nothing registering on the other side. Figure it's an advantage... I'll take these two, you take those," he continued, indicating that she take the south and east walls, while he took north and west.

  Moving easily, knowing that they could not be seen, they conducted their initial reconnaissance. Simeon, for one, felt on safer ground. All the way along, the way that magic had overtaken conventional warrior codes had unsettled him. Despite the things he had learned from Ramus-Bey, he was still in essence a warrior, more used to dealing with tech and weaponry than charms and spells. Now, in having to tackle their exit from the Central Fortress, he was squarely in territory he knew.

  Each of the two corridors he recce'd revealed the same thing: old stone passages and stairwells were lit by fluorescent tech, each with imagers on the bends. It was easy to guess that the imagers continued the length of the stairwells. Furthermore, he could see small studs set into the stone steps. They had no obvious means of operation, but he had little doubt that they were motion detectors, triggered either by the disturbance of light beams or by changes in weight on the stairs themselves. The actual walls seemed untouched, so it was unlikely that there were any defensive weapons inset. In truth, there was little need: if they knew you were coming, all they had to do was wait for you to get to the bottom. There you were either terminated, or you went back up 'til you were trapped on the roof.

  He and Jenna met up back in the middle of the keep roof. She reported the same as he had observed, which was no more than he expected. Their next step was to look over the sides of the walls, to see exactly what lay beneath.

  This was a trickier proposition. In order to get to the top of the old battlement walls they would have to climb up steep ladders. Once at the top, the walkways were narrow. Simeon was concerned that they would be seen from below. It would be considerably more than an irritation to throw away their advantage, yet he could see no way of avoiding breaking through the invisibility field in order to survey the ground.

  "Right... let's do it," he said finally

  Once more they parted company, each heading for a diametrically opposed ladder. Simeon scaled his swiftly and looked back to see Jenna ascending more slowly. Smiling to himself, he stalked the walkways, tentatively peering over the edge to see what lay beneath. His biggest fear would be imagers facing up. He knew that if he had been in charge of warrior security for such a building, he would have played it safe in this way. Imagine looking over the edge, right into the unblinking eye of a prime piece of surveillance tech. It would be funny any other time.

  He thanked the Gods that whoever was in charge of equipping this castle had shown a flawed imagination. There were no imagers trained up, although there were several looking down on the walkways between the turrets and the keep building. These walkways were a long way down, and there was little in the way of footholds to assist any descent that was other than uncontrollably swift. The white stone was smooth and reflective, suggesting that it had been treated with an anti-climb agent.

  Beneath, the castle seemed deserted. As he extended himself beyond the edge of the walkway, he became aware of the increase in temperature: it seemed that the invisibility charm acted as a shield against heat too. This was an excellent discovery. There was little chance that there would be too many guards who would venture out in the heat of the middle of the day.

  Less chance of stumbling on any then, assuming that they could find some way off...

  Moving round, he could see that on the next
wall, it was much the same. A steep, anti-climb descent to the walkways between turrets and the keep below. Imagers pointed down. No guards. In the distance he could see, oblivious to what was going on above, ordinary citizens in the streets below. Looking around, he could see the glass walls of buildings surrounding the old castle, looking down on it from all sides. Idly, he wondered what it would be like to see a disembodied head appear over the side of the keep, and then disappear as suddenly. Would anyone report it, or keep quiet for fear of ridicule?

  No point in worrying about that. The design of the old building meant that there was no other method of descent other than through the stairwells.

  By now he had covered three of the four walls, and had come round to where Jenna was sitting down, back to the battlement baffle.

  "Tell me what you saw," Simeon said.

  She told him. He nodded briefly. "Same on all sides. No one charging up here to meet us, so I'm thinking that we weren't spotted. That's something. Looks like we're going to have to try and get down through one of the stairwells."

  "Think I'd prefer that," she said.

  "Tell you the truth, so would I," he replied. "Come on, let's get down to the level, and then work out which one..."

  "Is he here, or at the Institute?" Jenna asked finally.

  "One way to know..." Simeon took the amulet that he had secreted in his belt, and exposed the face of it to the sun. It was of a heavy metal, with a purple stone set in the centre. The stone had a pulsing surface that remained steady and rhythmic.

  "He's not. It would have changed colour if he was near. That's what Vandyne told me when he gave it to me," and Simeon had no reason to doubt the adept would.

  Slipping it back into his belt and securing it safely, he took out his hand blaster and checked the charge.