Vengeance

by Brian Falkner

  “Because you are not Bzadian,” Kozi said. “Azoh cannot see into your mind. No Bzadian could ever get close enough to Azoh to carry out this task. But you can. You look like a Bzadian, but are not one. Your thoughts are your own.”

  “You are sure of this?” he asked.

  “I believe this to be true,” she said. “And there is something else. As we speak, defence forces are cordoning off the Congress.”

  “Why?” Chisnall asked, suddenly cautious.

  “I don’t know,” Kozi said. “It would seem they are expecting some kind of attack.”

  The Angels. Somehow the Bzadians had learned of their mission. What were the Angels walking into?

  “I need to warn you,” Kozi said. “If your people were to attack the seat of our government, it would almost certainly precipitate the use of the positronium weapons.”

  “Is that a threat?” Chisnall asked.

  She shook her head sadly. “I have no need to threaten you. It is simply a truth. In the event of an attack on Congress those who oppose the use of the weapons would no longer have a voice.”

  “If I do this,” Chisnall said, “if I poison your Azoh, your people will hunt me down, torture me and kill me.”

  “They will not find you,” Kozi said. “The poison is untraceable. If any suspicion does fall on you, we will protect you.”

  After she hung up, Chisnall sat thinking for a long time.

  The Angel mission to infiltrate Azoh’s chamber was in serious jeopardy. But was the mission even necessary? He felt it was. Perhaps even more so now than before. A new Azoh, a new government, could change the course of the war. Understanding their thinking could be vital to ACOG. But every move he made had so many permutations that it seemed like walking through a minefield, blindfolded.

  He checked the time. Whatever he decided to do, he had just an hour before the Angels arrived.

  Monster stood by the truck, his hand over the fuel tank, the pistol of the Bzadian soldier pressed tightly to his forehead. He seemed calm. The Bzadian female was tense and nervous. Price worried that she would shoot Monster accidentally with a twitch of her finger.

  “Do not shoot him,” the leader said. “You will kill us all.”

  The female held her position for a moment longer then snatched her gun away.

  “Now lower your weapons,” Price said, “please.”

  The leader looked from Price to Monster and back again.

  “If we do, you will kill us,” he said.

  “You will come to no harm,” Price said. “I give my word.”

  “We will not surrender,” the female spat.

  “Look around,” Price said. “Look at the faces of your team. If you do not lower your weapons, all them, and you, will be burned alive, screaming in agony as the skin peels back from your bodies. Is that what you want?”

  “So will all of you,” the leader said.

  “But we are desperate,” Price said. “If we are captured, then we will spend what is left of our lives in the torture chambers of the PGZ. For us, death is preferable to capture. It is up to you, but there is little time for you to decide.”

  The leader still seemed unsure.

  “They will kill us,” the female said.

  “You will not come to harm at our hands,” Price said.

  A blast of heat hit them, a rogue fist of smoke and flame, belching out of the fire. They all staggered. That seemed to make up the leader’s mind. He placed his gun on the ground. Slowly, the rest of his team followed.

  “You promised not to harm us,” the leader said.

  “And I will not break that promise,” Price said. “Angels, sound off, injury report.”

  “Angel four, Oscar Kilo.” Barnard sounded dazed. Price glanced around. Barnard held the pieces of her helmet in her hands. It had shattered, but saved her life.

  “Angel five, Oscar Kilo,” Wall said. His armour too was badly damaged but he was unharmed.

  “Wall, go and check on Brogan,” Price said, when there was no word from the last member of the team. “She’s up in the tree line.”

  Barnard retrieved the Bzadians’ weapons as Wall climbed the bank.

  “Monster, be careful with that grenade,” Price said.

  He had already withdrawn it from the fuel tank and was replacing the pin.

  “Let’s getting out of here,” he said. “That was close.”

  “We’re going to need your armour,” Price said to the leader of the Bzadian team. “Looks like you messed up ours real good.”

  “You promised not to harm us,” he said.

  “And we won’t,” Price said.

  Reluctantly, under the guns of the Angels, the Bzadian soldiers stripped off their combat armour. Barnard stacked it in the fire truck.

  Wall emerged from the trees with Brogan in his arms.

  “How is she?” Price asked.

  “Unconscious but okay,” Wall said.

  Price turned to the leader. “Get down the bank and into the water.”

  “That is just a stream,” the leader said.

  “I promised you would come to no harm,” Price said. “But I can’t take you back to Canberra. Get in that stream.”

  The Bzadian leader looked around at the other members of his team, then back at Price. She lifted her coil-gun to emphasise the point. After a long, cold look at her, he led the way down the bank.

  “Follow the stream as far as you can,” Price said. “It gets wider and deeper the further you go. When the fire comes, get your heads under water as long and as often as you can.”

  Monster helped Wall lift Brogan up onto the fire truck. She was showing signs of coming around. Next they moved The Tsar. The Bzadians were already out of sight around a bend in the stream.

  Monster drove. He manoeuvred the truck around in a three-point turn, then took off at speed. Already trees on both sides of the road were smouldering and the scrub was on fire.

  KILLING AZOH

  [0850 HOURS LOCAL TIME]

  [OUTSKIRTS OF CANBERRA]

  The first firefighting rotorcraft that the Angels saw flew right overhead as they approached the outer suburbs of Canberra. A monsoon bucket swung underneath, trailing a thin line of water that glinted through the haze of smoke in the unnatural and sinister twilight. The rotorcraft was followed by three others.

  “We made it,” Wall said, almost disbelievingly.

  But well behind schedule, Price thought. They had just ten minutes to get to the rendezvous point at the Congress building.

  The Tsar lay on the floor in the rear of the cab. His eyes were open. Barnard sat with him, giving him measured sips of water.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “Cut yourself shaving,” Barnard said.

  “Nice to have you back with us,” Price said, looking around from the front seat.

  “Damn,” The Tsar said weakly. “I was having a really nice dream.” His voice was scratchy and hoarse.

  “What about?” Barnard asked, gently stroking his forehead. It was an uncharacteristic gesture for her.

  “I don’t remember,” he said. “But I think you were in it.”

  “Was she naked?” Wall asked, earning himself a weak fist bump from The Tsar but a flying wad of blood-soaked dressings from Barnard.

  Strange, ghostly light poured into the cab through the side windows, colouring The Tsar’s face to a dusky red. His eyes were fixed on the sun, a bloodshot orb patterned like the moon, watching them from low on the horizon.

  “Whenever I see the sun,” he said, “I’m reminded that I live on a humongous spinning ball of rock hurtling around a giant ball of fire.”

  “What’s your point?” Barnard asked.

  “How insignificant we are in the scheme of things,” The Tsar said.

  “That’s bull. It’s all relative,” Barnard said.

  “What’s relative?” Price asked.

  “The scheme of things,” Barnard said. “You may think you’re insignificant in terms of the
solar system, but to some ants’ nest you just stood on, you’re pretty freaking major. You’re a force of nature, an act of God. It’s all relative.”

  The Tsar tried to laugh, but managed only a single hiccupping sound. His eyes closed again and he was silent. His breathing was shallow and quick, like that of a small child.

  “Tsar?” Barnard asked. “Tsar?”

  There was no response.

  “When we get to the city we should go to the hospital like Wall suggested,” Barnard said. “Leave The Tsar there. He’s lost too much blood. At least in a hospital he’d have a fighting chance.”

  “Not going to happen,” Price said. “Brogan was right. The Puke disguise won’t fool a doctor, and once they realise there’s one fox loose in the farmyard, they’ll pull out all stops to find the rest of us.”

  “If they haven’t already,” Wall said.

  “So The Tsar is expendable, is that what you’re saying?” Barnard asked, rounding suddenly on Price.

  “We all are,” Price said.

  Barnard glared at her for a moment, then lowered her eyes and nodded. “We’re going to be late,” she said. “We’ll miss the rendezvous.”

  “We’ll make it if we hurry,” Price said. “And if there are no more hold-ups.”

  “Good luck with that,” Brogan said weakly.

  “Oh, great,” Wall said. “She’s awake.”

  Kozi had said Azoh was young, but she hadn’t said how young. And Kozi had also neglected to tell him one other fact. Azoh was a girl.

  Her entrance to the council chamber was a grand affair. Surrounded by her personal guard, the Azaykin, she entered in a procession, led by her most senior advisors. She wore bright blue robes, flowing like the sea amid the contrasting desert sand colour of the Azaykin. Her advisors wore a deeper brown.

  They made their way slowly through the room, arriving at the ceremonial chair. The leader of the High Council, Field Marshall Leozii, formally offered her his hand, which she accepted. He then helped her to the chair.

  Azoh’s eyes were soft. Her face was covered with ornate jewellery attached by piercings through her eyebrows, ears and nose. Elaborate tattoos covered her cheeks and forehead.

  If Chisnall had to guess, he would have put her at no more than seventeen or eighteen years old, although he suspected she was older than she looked.

  The salt shaker rattled a little on the tray with the other condiments he was carrying. Chisnall had been selected to present Azoh with a tray of appetisers, another formal part of the ceremony.

  There was no doubt in Chisnall’s mind that the Peacemakers had played a hand in that. It could be no coincidence that he had been chosen for this tremendous honour.

  But Azoh was a girl.

  Had Kozi deliberately withheld that information from him, worried that it might affect his decision? Or had she simply not deemed it relevant, or important enough to tell him?

  After all, why should it matter? Killing Azoh would stop the war. It didn’t matter what gender, age or hair colour Azoh had, this was not about her. She was a pawn. A piece to be played in an interplanetary game of chess. No, more than a pawn, a queen who had to be taken.

  And yet for some reason it did matter.

  Azoh sat and, as she did, her gaze swept around the room. It took in everyone, one by one, only for a second, but when her eyes met his, Chisnall felt that she was indeed seeing inside his brain, into his soul, as if she knew his every secret. Her eyes seemed to probe his, only for a millisecond, then were gone.

  No wonder Bzadians thought Azoh could read their minds, Chisnall thought. He was human, and supposedly safe from her prying mind, but even so, he felt like he had just been through an MRI scanner.

  He approached, exactly as he had been instructed, pausing and bowing his head as he neared.

  Then she spoke. Her voice was soft and young, a pure sound, like cool spring water bubbling up through rocks, like the first quiet murmurs of a spring shower.

  “Do what you must do,” Azoh said. Unbelievably, she was talking to him.

  He almost went through with it. Almost. But her words seemed stuck in his brain, circling around and around like a line from a song you cannot get out of your head.

  Do what you must do.

  He placed the tray of condiments on the table by her side and, keeping his gaze averted – anything to avoid those probing eyes – he backed away, the salt shaker now palmed and secreted in a pocket of his uniform.

  “Chef, stop,” a voice commanded next to him.

  Chisnall froze, although every instinct told him to run. He looked around to see Field Marshall Leozii standing next to him.

  “Where is the salt?” Leozii asked, gesturing at the tray.

  The silence seemed overwhelming and to go on for hours, although in reality it was only a few seconds.

  “It … has been overlooked,” Chisnall said. “I will return to the kitchen and get some.”

  “No need, there is some here,” Leozii said. He took a shaker from his own table. He placed it on Azoh’s food table with a disparaging look at Chisnall. If nothing else, Chisnall thought, his career as a chef was over.

  But that could be the least of his problems. He was dismissed with a subtle hand signal from one of Azoh’s advisors. He turned to find Goezlin staring at him, and began the long walk down through the council benches, away from Azoh’s chair. He forced himself to walk slowly but his mind and heart were racing. Had Goezlin identified him?

  He increased his pace. He had reached the hall of heroes when he saw Goezlin, flanked by two PGZ agents, emerge from the meeting room behind him.

  Chisnall turned a corner and increased the length of his stride, quickening his pace even more without appearing to hurry. A curve in the corridor hid the PGZ agents from sight and only then did he start to run. But there was little point. He had nowhere to go.

  “Well, this just keeps getting better,” Brogan said.

  They had found a vantage point on top of an unfinished high-rise building, a luxury hotel according to the dilapidated signs on the construction site.

  The Congress was completely sealed off. Tanks were rumbling into position on all the roads surrounding it. Crash barriers and barbed wire fences were being erected in a circle on the outer ring-road.

  Two rotorcraft, one a surveillance craft, the other a gunship, were circling, maintaining a constant vigil overhead.

  “Looks like they’re expecting us,” Wall said.

  “They’re expecting something,” Price said.

  “So much for no more hold-ups,” Barnard said.

  Price wriggled slightly closer to the edge.

  Rusted scaffolding and tattered tarpaulins encased the building like a decomposing, peeling skin. It had been under construction when the Bzadians had invaded. They hadn’t completed it, nor had they bothered to tear it down. It stood tall, silent and slowly decaying.

  The Angels had found a place to hide the fire truck amid the empty containers and deserted site offices at the rear of the building.

  From the second-to-top floor they looked out across the Congress. A rectangular complex in the middle of two concentric ring-roads, it had been largely dug out of a hill. Two curving shapes, like boomerangs, outlined a huge field of long grass above the buildings, which were topped by a massive metal flagpole.

  To the east, a blanket of grey smoke suffocated the horizon. The low sun lit the top layer of smoke.

  “They’ve locked the place down,” Wall said. “Looks like nobody is getting in or out.”

  “We might as well turn around and go home,” Brogan said, and smiled before anyone could say anything. “Just telling it like it is.”

  “What do we do now?” Wall asked.

  “I don’t know,” Price said with a pointed look at Barnard. “Perhaps if I had more information about the purpose of this mission.”

  “It wasn’t necessary,” Barnard said.

  “It was necessary for me to do my job,” Price said.

/>   “And if you’d been captured?” Barnard asked.

  “I wasn’t,” Price said.

  “You nearly were,” Barnard said. “We all very nearly were.”

  Price stared at Barnard, fuming, but knowing the other girl was right. The moment was broken by Brogan.

  “Where is the rendezvous point?” she asked.

  Price answered without taking her eyes off Barnard. “There is a service entrance near the kitchens. We were supposed to meet him there.”

  “Well, that’s easy then,” Brogan said. “Ryan won’t just give up. If we missed the rendezvous, he’ll keep trying. All we have to do is to find a way in.”

  “Oh, is that all?” Barnard said. “Past armed guards, concrete crash barriers and two giant battle tanks. Why didn’t you just say so before?”

  Chisnall looked around frantically. He had a few seconds at most. The kitchen was almost deserted. The chefs were all at the formal greeting of Azoh in the meeting room.

  His eyes fell on an industrial-size spray can of cooking oil. Footsteps sounded in the corridor behind him. He snatched up the can and placed it on top of one of the gas elements on the cooking hob, and spun the knob around. The electronic igniter clicked a few times and he could smell the gas, then it lit with a small whoosh. Flames lapped at the base of the spray can.

  He upended a large cooking pot and placed it over the can and the clawing flames, concealing them. He moved away from the stove and opened a cupboard, intending to hide the salt shaker, just as Goezlin entered behind him.

  Goezlin wasted no time.

  “Search him,” he said.

  “What are you doing?” Chisnall asked, as the two large PGZ agents grabbed him by the arms.

  Goezlin said nothing.

  “I am just a chef,” Chisnall protested. “All I did was to forget the salt!”

  “Really,” Goezlin said as one of the PGZ agents showed him the salt shaker he had just taken from Chisnall’s pocket.

  “A simple mistake,” Chisnall said. It sounded incredibly lame.

  “Have it tested,” Goezlin said to one of his agents. “And be careful with it. I doubt that it contains salt.”

  “What are you talking about?” Chisnall said.