by Andy Boot
"You are right, of course... It... I..." he stammered, "yes... I must launch our air fleet and order a blanket ground search. But what it means..."
"It means nothing until it has taken its course. The only meaning will become clear after the event. The tide has flowed from us, and we must follow in its wake," Vixel murmured. Then, louder, "and one more thing, Minister."
"What?" the Minister replied with a distracted tone.
"If you ever spit in my face again, I shall destroy you. Remember who I am."
The Minister paused, but said nothing, only now was he beginning to realise the ramifications of dealing with such a man as Vixel.
Belthan
Daliel sat, impassive, and listened with care to all that the junior minister had to say. How he felt that their plans had come to naught. How he felt that the best thing to do would be to cut their losses and run. How the coming of war would cover their tracks. With their adept now gone, and Bey in enemy hands, there was nowhere left for them to go.
"Gods alone know that I do not want war. The purpose was to achieve our aim by bypassing such an event. But now that it is an inevitability, then we should use this to our advantage, shouldn't we?"
He gave Daliel a questioning, almost pleading look. The squat, scarred warrior sat impassive, saying nothing. After a pause he stood up and walked slowly to the wine decanter, pouring himself a glass of the two-tone liquid, drinking it down in one draught. All with little sign of urgency. Finally, he turned to the junior minister. When he spoke, it was in slow, measured tones, underscored with an edge of menace. His words were carefully chosen and enunciated, as though he were reining in his anger.
"Do you take me for a cretin? Are you deceived by the way that I look? War is now inevitable, but rather than mask our duplicity it will expose it. When Varn strike back, they will do so with more than conventional weapons. They will use the media to reveal how their plot ran parallel with one from within Bethel. An investigation will follow. Perhaps, if I can control this, then I can effect a solution that will be of some use to us. But even if I can do this, while Simeon and Bey remain alive, along with that harlot who is helping them, then there is danger to us.
"Do you think that they will keep silent if they are saved by our forces, or somehow manage to escape the Varn military? Of course they won't. Perhaps, if we are lucky, Varn will want to terminate them. Perhaps, though, we cannot afford to take that chance."
The junior minister gaped, slack-jawed. In his attempts to find a solution that would salvage their lives, if not their careers, he had taken care to make sure that no blame would come to be focused on them.
What Daliel was suggesting would render all this as dust in the wind. For the junior minister knew what such action would entail.
"You can't ask that of me. I would be found out, questions asked! It would lead directly to us."
The truth of his position hit him hard. If he did not act as Daliel wished, then there was a strong chance that his duplicity would be uncovered. If he did act as the Intel chief commanded, then his actions could not be more obviously signalled if he invited the newscast media into his office while he signed the order.
Daliel, seeing the way in which he had crushed the junior minister, smiled inwardly. He put his arm around the blonde man's shoulders, and guided him to his desk.
"Did you really think that we could let them live? Did you really think I would be fool enough to leave my back exposed, and not have contingencies? Yes, the order will come from you. But you will have been acting in good faith from information received. Our Intel tells us that Varn seeks to eliminate the Mage - whether it does or not is unimportant - and so the Chief Minister orders you to direct our forces to effect a termination on sight, hoping to blame it on Varn. You need not worry, you see, a memo will be planted in the system, copies 'accidentally' mailed to select other ministry personnel. There will be evidence enough to prove that you were only acting under the orders of a higher counsel. It is that counsel who will be held responsible. Of course he will deny it, but this whole affair has been badly handled from the public's point of view. Someone will have to pay, and why not a figurehead?"
Throughout this discourse, the junior minister's visage had been brightening as the import of Daliel's scheming was revealed to him. The Intel commander had found a way to apportion blame that was little short of genius. With one move, he had prevented their duplicity being revealed; eliminated a threat and cleared the way for them to continue their forging ahead towards power.
"Daliel, how could I have doubted you?" The junior minister whispered, his voice reduced to a husk by the emotions running within him.
"All too easily it would seem," purred the Intel commander. "If I am truly to protect myself, then I have to protect you as well. But mark this well. As easily as I have done this, so could I also reverse the process and destroy you. It would be nothing personal, believe me. We can be very useful to each other, and you have a nature that I understand. But you are still young, and have much to learn. I think the nature of our relationship must change. You have believed yourself to be the better man because of your standing. Standing is not everything. I am the better man. Never forget this." These last words he whispered close to the minister's ear. With a satisfied smirk, he stood back and clapped the younger man on the shoulder.
"Now," he said in a more cheerful tone, "to business. I have a command memo to plant. By evening it will be safe for you to send the order to the air fleet. Who, by my timepiece, should be well under way by now. And by morning? Ah, my friend, by morning all our problems shall lay in the past."
Daliel left the room. The junior minister sat alone and silent, pondering his fate. Like an echo from the other side of Inan he too was beginning to see the ramifications of facing away from the Gods and dancing with the devils that lay beneath.
The sun had barely had time to rise beyond the horizon before they were awoken by the sounds of battle in the skies. Jenna and Ramus-Bey had huddled together in their sleep, in search of warmth. Simeon lay just a little apart, having slumped at the mouth of the cave while trying to maintain a watch. The noises from above jolted him awake. He was instantly aware of the cramps and stiffness caused by the cold and his awkward position. He could hear Jenna and Ramus at the rear of him, coming round. He should check that they were okay, but his attention was immediately commanded by the activity above them.
Like some ritual dance, the battle began to unfold. With stately grace the large battlecruisers broke formation, moved through the pink skies of morning and assumed new and dreadful shapes. Around them, dancing pirouettes in the air, smaller attack craft spun webs of pulse fire, breaking through defences and peppering the hulls of the larger ships with the bright and incandescent colours of destruction.
Formations shifted patterns in the air as some craft were slowed by attack, while others surged forward, the larger pulse cannons of the battlecruisers coming into play as each sought to eliminate their enemy. Streamers of smoke from damaged and falling craft festooned the battle arena like garlands of death as the dance continued.
Simeon looked around to see that Jenna and the Mage were also watching. But it was nothing that they had said or done that attracted his attention. He looked beyond them to the rising and falling ground leading back towards the highway.
Trackers. Not far behind them, warriors, armed with blasters and a cannon.
Their aim was obviously not to capture.
Jenna cursed. "They're not going to ask us politely to go back to Ilvarn with them are they?"
"We've got to move," Simeon stated bluntly. He looked at the Mage. "Are you up to this?"
Ramus shrugged, and smiled weakly. "I'll have to be."
They began to move, keeping low to the ground. Simeon tried to pick a way through the sparse foliage and rock cover that the uneven terrain provided. His aim was to keep them out of sight. If he could see the trackers and warriors moving towards them, then chances were that they would be ju
st as visible.
Their progress was quicker than on the previous day. The night's rest had been good for the old man, he was able to move at a swifter pace and with greater ease. But as Simeon kept up an uneasy glance over his shoulder to see the trackers and warriors slowly gaining ground, he realised that this was not enough. They had a large force on their tail, heavily armed and they themselves had nothing.
"They're gaining. It's only a matter of time," he gasped between breaths as they scaled a small incline. He looked to the Mage. "If there was ever a time to take a chance..."
Ramus-Bey held his eye. The old man's face was haggard with effort, drained of blood. He seemed to be on the edge of exhaustion already. But still he could not bring himself to cross that mental line. He declined with a barely perceptible shake of the head.
"The risks are too great," he whispered, voice shaking with exertion.
"Then we may as well stop and face them, face the inevitable," Simeon said. It was a last desperate throw of the dice, designed to force the hand of the Mage.
At that moment, the very ground around them roared and bucked, throwing soil and rock into the air. The solid rock beneath them became a treacherous, living and moving thing, seemingly intent on throwing them into the gaping maw that had suddenly opened before them. The air sang with heat, ears were painfully hammered by sudden pressure change rendering all as silence for the briefest of moments.
To Simeon it seemed as though he was struggling through air as thick as a Varnian swamp, making his movements slow, clogging his lungs, slowing his brain.
As his hearing returned, the roar became overpowering, then faded briefly before swelling up once more. He struggled to his feet and looked up. Above him attack craft of the Bethel air fleet swooped down on the warriors and trackers who had been in pursuit, blasting into them with pulse cannon fire. The screams of the wounded and dying were lost in the overwhelming sound of the attack, making them seem like puppets on a distant stage.
One of the Bethel ships detached from formation and turned back, heading straight towards them. Simeon watched, unable to move, unable to believe that this miracle had happened, that they were about to be rescued.
Then it struck him that the craft was moving too fast to be preparing for a landing. Rather, it seemed like it was homing in for an attack.
Simeon yelled, a wordless cry of warning, as he turned and tried to locate Jenna and Ramus. The old man had been hurt in the first explosion and Jenna was leaning over him. It looked like his leg had been cut, but how badly it was impossible to tell. With an awful, time-slowed clarity, Simeon saw the both of them look up.
The warrior threw himself across the gap between them, catching Jenna around the waist and bundling her down onto the Mage. His momentum carried them, tangled into a ball, away from where they had been a fraction of a moment before. They rolled over on the jagged rock, catching on gorse-like bushes, tearing at clothing and skin. Each turn was another painful, jarring blow. The Bethel attack craft carved a path through the rock with pulse cannon fire, throwing earth over them. If they had stayed where they had been before Simeon's leap, the pulse fire would have ripped them to shreds.
As the craft completed its flight path and span out to be met by an approaching Varn craft, Simeon pulled the Mage to his feet. Ramus-Bey was moaning softly to himself, his ageing bones sorely treated by events. At any other time, Simeon would have sought to protect and cosset him. Now, things had gone beyond any such point.
"Look," the warrior yelled, "look at this!"
He turned the Mage so that he could see the devastation that lay behind them. His voice could hardly be heard above the roar of battle, but Ramus-Bey responded nonetheless.
What the Mage could see caused him a deep distress, and a pain in his soul that surpassed anything that could come from his battered old body. The ground before them had been heavily scored by pulse fire, and was littered with the dead and dying. The Varnian ground force that had been pursuing them had now scattered. Some, those with the cannon capability, were attempting to return fire at the attack ships that cruised over them, casually dispensing such destruction. These craft were too swift and manoeuvrable for the ground warriors to effectively draw a bead, and so they became - literally - sitting targets.
Varn attack craft had joined the fray, seeking to defend their fellows on the ground. This bought the air battle closer to home and made it easier to assimilate.
"You better pray the Varn ships are good, because those were our own people trying to terminate us," Simeon yelled. "They all want us terminated, and you think this is not the time to take chances?"
The Mage's eyes blazed. "You fool, you still think it is an easy choice?"
Simeon shook his head. The Mage paused, and looked at the carnage around them. Warriors were dying, craft were being destroyed, all because of him. At least, that would be the explanation understood by the masses drawn into war. For this was just the beginning.
Ramus-Bey was heart-sick. This was not why he had studied for so many years. This was not why he had acquired such knowledge, and with it great power. This was not his responsibility, but it had been made his by the actions of others.
Now was the time to accept it. He turned to Simeon.
"Very well. The time has come."
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Year Zero - Period Three
Simeon looked at the devastation that was being wrought around them: Ramus-Bey may consider that this was the right moment, but it was far from the right place. The Mage stood apart from the area of most carnage but in all truth, he may as well have been wearing a sign proclaiming his identity and role as the primary target.
"We need to get him into cover," Simeon yelled at Jenna, straining to make himself heard above the roar of battle. She assented after the most cursory of glances.
They took the Mage and pulled him low, eyes scanning the immediate area for anything that would offer them some kind of refuge. Ramus-Bey struggled against them.
"I will not hide any more," he proclaimed, suddenly puffed up by his own sense of importance. No man who could alter destiny should cower away.
"Can you put a protective charm around yourself while you work?" Simeon said.
"Well, no, not exactly, not if I have to concentrate," the Mage prevaricated, losing the edge of his arrogance. "It has been a while, and..."
"Then it will be a pity to be blasted to shreds before you get a chance to flex those magic muscles, won't it?" Simeon snapped, giving Bey no chance to argue as he pushed him into a trench carved by a previous blast of pulse fire.
The soil that lined the trench was still warm. Sweat spangled their foreheads as they crouched down, the depth of the blast area almost covering their height. The walls of the trench formed a sound barrier of sorts, cutting down the noise of the air attack craft and their fire. Despite the fact that they were now almost enclosed by dark walls of soil, the morning sky was made brighter by the implosion of pulse engines as battlecruisers were ripped asunder, the force of the blast making the daylight seem as night by comparison.
"Are you sure about this?" Jenna asked the Mage.
Simeon furrowed his brow. "What kind of a question is that? He's just said..."
Ramus-Bey stayed him with a gesture. "She's right to ask. I told you, I have no idea of what may happen, if anything. But it's something that I can't avoid. I have to try. If anything I've ever believed in actually meant something, then I have to..."
"Then we need to watch your back." Jenna spoke emphatically. "Sim, if he's going to try, then we need to keep him well protected."
"And we're here why, exactly?" The exasperated warrior questioned.
"Down here we can't see if the ground forces are making progress towards us," she continued, ignoring his peevish tone. "We need to keep scout out the ground above, so Ramus can get to work in peace."
The Mage allowed himself a smile. "An interesting definition of peace. Go, do what you must, leave me to prepare." Simeon an
d Jenna moved in opposite directions, leaving the old man hunkered down, breathing deeply with his eyes now closed, trying to shut out all stimuli as he prepared to cast.
Attack craft flew over the trench, holding fire. Were they waiting for them to emerge, or was it that they had no idea that they had taken refuge here? Simeon favoured the latter, as he knew the normal tactic when the enemy was located was just to blast the hell out of the area. The air wing of the military had never been known for their subtlety. As far as he was aware though, there was no bio-identification software that would enable the attack craft to single out Ramus, or himself and Jenna.
If anything, while the air forces battled each other and tried to penetrate the visual and bio-feedback murk that littered the battlefield, any real threat posed would come from the ground forces. The fact that they had not been as yet attacked was good. Even if their position had been identified, the land forces were still some way off.
Time to check. He risked getting his head blasted from his shoulders, but it was the only way to locate the opposing forces. He took a deep breath, feeling the bile bite the back of his throat. Cautiously - as though that would make any difference - he raised himself so that he could see over the lip of the trench.
The noise was overwhelming, almost physically battering him back into the trench. He turned through a full three-sixty degrees, appalled at the sight that greeted him.
The Varn land force knew where they were. They had almost entirely circled the trench. Fortunately, it had great length, so even in doing this they were still at long-distance blasting range, wherever there were groupings of them.
In numbers, they were much reduced from the force he had first seen earlier that morning. The air strike had devastated them, and he was able to count the groupings and those within them at a glance. Twenty small teams, dug in to as much cover as they could find. Each team was composed of four or five warriors. They were equipped with small and large cannon. Although they showed obvious intent towards closing in on the trench, they were pinned down by the constant passes of the Bethel attack craft.