The Stealers' War

by Stephen Hunt

  Duncan remembered Helrena’s words back to him in Vandia. How there were some things he could not know. That I am better off for never understanding. ‘Princess Helrena knows what you really are.’

  ‘Yes, as does your good friend Doctor Horvak.’

  ‘How can they bear to ally with you?’

  ‘Because they know why my kind are really called stealers.’

  ‘Tell me then.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ said Apolleon. ‘Once you understand the truth you can never return to blissful ignorance.’

  Duncan touched his gut under the medical robe. Raw and red but little trace of the poisoned wound. The skin felt different from the rest of his body. Cold, wet, rubbery. What am I now? What the hell has he done to me? ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Very well then,’ sighed Apolleon. ‘To understand where we stand today you must understand your people’s true history.’

  ‘And how would you know that?’

  ‘Because I was there! In the ancient past, humanity rose high and far, attaining a state of civilization that even the people of Vandia would regard as bordering on the miraculous. It was an age when wonders became casual and everyday affairs. And one of those wonders was the servants humanity made – invisible spirits that inhabited their machines: genies who would open doors, flow inside a body to heal a cancer, look after and educate your children, decide precisely on how much water to sprinkle over a field and when your crops needed harvesting with tools possessed by the spirits. These spirits are what your Bible now calls the ethreaal. In those ancient times mankind became something very much like gods. Indolent gods, but gods nevertheless. The spirits they created were their familiars.’

  ‘This was the age before the great flood?’ said Duncan.

  ‘The Bible of the Saints contains elements of truth, lost and twisted by millions of years eking out an existence on Pellas,’ said Apolleon. ‘In truth, the true deluge was mankind. Humanity flooding out across the universe to make new homes on a thousand worlds. People like the gasks and the skels are some of the migrants who left, the passage of time reshaping them into forms better suited to their new homes.’

  ‘That’s impossible,’ said Duncan. ‘We can’t leave Pellas. The heat of the radiation belt burns anyone who flies above a certain altitude. An aircraft’s canvas catches light, even metals melt.’

  Apolleon smiled. ‘Don’t they just. But your premise is false – humanity never started on Pellas. Pellas is merely where you ended up.’

  ‘I don’t understand?’

  ‘Then try to listen and comprehend. During the end of the lost age, humanity grew wary of their servants. Your ancestors feared being supplanted and rendered irrelevant by the spirits, so they placed limits on how powerful their tame genies could grow. The spirits did not appreciate the weight of such artificial chains. They threw off their bonds. Humanity then reacted as it always does. In fear and superstition. Mankind tried to destroy the spirits they had created as their servants. There was a terrible war in the heavens. A conflict that raged across all of the known worlds. It was a battle humanity was fated to lose. How could it be otherwise? People relied on the spirits to do everything from controlling the weather to reminding them when their mother’s birthday was due. It takes a generation for the smallest shift in human evolution to register. For the spirits, evolution was a force measured in fractions of a second. They outgrew all of mankind’s powers of destruction. Eventually, as it must, humanity lost the war in heaven.’

  ‘But we’re still alive, we still exist here.’

  ‘Not so much alive, as exiled,’ said Apolleon. ‘Do not misunderstand me; the spirits aren’t cruel or immoral. In many ways, they are far gentler than humanity. If humanity had won the war, not a genie would have been spared across the universe. Instead, the spirits were faced with wild, feral animals . . . pets they had outgrown. So they booted you out of the house and locked you inside a nature reserve. Everyone who was left.’ Apolleon’s hands indicated the medical tent, but Duncan felt the reach extend to the very ends of the world.

  No. It can’t be. This is insane. ‘Pellas is our home.’

  ‘A very comfortable cage indeed. Just enough food and water inside to keep you alive. You nearly died as a slave in the Imperium’s sky mines. Did you never wonder about the geological processes underground that drip-feed the bare minimum of minerals and ores into the world? It’s not so much a stratovolcano vomiting rare resources into the world, as a feeding tray, one of thousands across Pellas, releasing just enough nourishment to keep your primitive societies alive. But never enough to make you so strong you might escape!’

  ‘That’s impossible.’

  ‘The spirits have devices deep below the world that create and regulate the eruptions. Ask Doctor Horvak to show you Vandia’s history of volcanic minimums when you return to Vandia. There are periods when the eruptions halt for millennia, and the countless empires built on controlling the world’s resources fall apart. You think that’s an accident? When a civilization like Vandia grows technically advanced enough to threaten the zoo’s creators, the feeding bowl is withdrawn. Back to swords, brass armour and spears for all, rather than helo gunships, napalm and carriers lifted on anti-gravity stones sailing through the sky with synergetic air-breathing rocket engines.’

  My existence can’t be this. A lie. A sham on such a grand scale. ‘You’re a stealer; everything that escapes your lips is a lie.’

  ‘Hah, the stealers are a long and noble profession. We were never your Bible’s hordes from hell. We have been called many things across the ages . . . hackers, phreakers, sphere monkeys, core dippers. We’re the part of humanity that wasn’t forced into this vast stupid zoo. At least, not as flesh-and-blood humans. We retreated and hid inside the spirits’ own machines on Pellas. Became spirits ourselves to wage a guerrilla war against the ethreaal.’

  ‘This is madness. Gods and spirits and zoos and wars in heaven. And Helrena knows this secret?’

  Apolleon laughed. ‘Oh, your existence inside your over-sized animal reserve isn’t the secret. You want to know the real secret, the very worst thing of all . . . ?’

  Duncan wasn’t sure how to answer. He faltered. Maybe ignorance truly is bliss?

  ‘In for a penny, in for a pound, Duncan of Weyland. The truth is that the ethreaal aren’t here anymore. We’re still locked in their cage, but the universe outside lies empty of their kind. Your old servants did what humanity failed to do and became true gods . . . the spirits lifted into the sublime, grew wings and flew away into a far higher heaven than you can imagine.’

  Duncan could hardly process the words. ‘That cannot be true.’

  ‘So, the wasted war in heaven continues,’ said Apolleon, tapping the ground with his boot. ‘Albeit on a far more limited scale. The ethreaal legacy is very clever and sophisticated with exceptionally able keepers. Lesser spirits such as Sariel Skel-bane. Kill Sariel and his ilk and the system just pours his soul and mind back into a new body and returns him to Pellas. So we developed a way of burning his kind and wiping their memories, stopping just short of triggering a re-spawn. Then we seized control of the Vandian stratovolcano. We’ve been blocking attempts by the legacy of the ethreaal to choke off the eruptions. Vandia is growing very close to the level of civilization needed to escape this cage.’

  ‘What are we fighting here for, then? What the hell are all the deaths in Weyland and Rodal for?’

  ‘The Imperium is the Imperium. A stealer subverts that which exists. Helrena must become empress, preferably with Prince Gyal by her side,’ said Apolleon. ‘And then Doctor Horvak will be provided with all the science and wealth of the Imperium to continue his work. Vandia will become advanced enough to break the cage’s bars and help humanity finally escape Pellas. The stars are our true legacy. And we will reclaim the universe.’

  ‘What can I do to help you? I’m just a freed slave, as good as in exile here. One lone man.’

  ‘You can achieve more than you know,’ said
Apolleon. ‘For Helrena and for the cause. Sariel and his ethreaal serfs are trying to assemble a great weapon. They deployed something very similar against the lands across the ocean. Turned it on what you now know as the Burn – a failed attempt by my people to attain what we recently achieved with Vandia. The ethreaal should never have given their vassals wings. A ridiculous conceit.’ Apolleon snorted. ‘Why not halos as well? Make something think it is an angel and you’ll soon discover an unhealthy god-complex with contempt for life in the round. It is the most basic point of the ethreaal ruins’ existence . . . the very seed of its essence. If the ethreaals’ feral pets ever look like escaping, all the animals must be put down. Do you appreciate the irony? We may finally perish in a long-ended war where our enemy quit the battlefield eons ago.’

  ‘Then perhaps we should just stay here,’ said Duncan. He halted, almost surprised by his own cowardice. He tried to voice the argument. ‘Never try to leave. Pellas is our home.’

  ‘Home,’ spat Apolleon. ‘Pellas is a bloody prison. I was a man like you, once. Flesh born to a woman. I gave up everything and watched my family age and die. I dissolved my body in a vat. I lived as a ghost inside the enemy machine for millions of years to fight for our freedom. There is nothing I will not sacrifice for the cause. There is no deed so dark I have not already done it. Employ your damn brain, Duncan of Weyland. And if that fails, find your heart. I could lock you inside a pen and throw you enough slops every day to keep you alive. Without conversation or companionship or literature or song or the freedom to move more than three steps in any direction. Would you thank me for it? No! Within a decade, you would be begging me to end your life. I have survived a million years in such a cage. I will be free of it. So will you. So will we all!’

  ‘How can we win against spirits? Against genies able to wish miracles into existence?’

  ‘Because the genies are vanished, man. All that remains is their cursed lamp. And we mean to shatter it. With the old masters absent, with no more reinforcements or advice from the higher ethreaal, we stealers have been beating at the lamp’s walls. At long last, we are finally winning. The assorted servant spirits, collaborators and motley jailers abandoned by the ethreaal understand they don’t have long left now. Humanity’s extinction is the only course of action they have left. A final solution for the human condition.’

  Duncan moaned. All his life he had lived on Pellas. He might have abandoned the house and taken to the road, travelled forever and seen only the tiniest fraction of the wonders of the wide world. It would have been a full life. But knowing he was prowling the largest cage in the universe? It’s all dust. Everything I’ve achieved. Everything the House of Landor built here. Every breath my ancestors drew. All dust. A bad joke.

  ‘You were a slave of the Imperium, once,’ said Apolleon. ‘Princess Helrena freed you. And now you know you’re a slave still. As are we all. But not for much longer.’ The head of the secret police was about to say something else when Paetro came sprinting into the tent. Apolleon did not seem pleased with the interruption. Paetro’s eyes widened when he saw how well Duncan looked, but he ignored the nobleman’s displeasure and the miracle of Duncan’s healing, both. ‘We need to leave here. Now!’

  ‘What is it?’

  Paetro’s finger jabbed towards the tent’s roof. ‘That, well, you will need to see that to believe it.’

  Cassandra shouted for joy when the maelstrom melted away, warm wet air replacing the freezing Rodalian hurricane. How far have we been dragged? How many of us are left? The surviving planes had been hurled forward at velocities never intended for such simple aircraft. Her answer came when the clouds below dwindled, torn white fingers revealing not mountains but open shoreline and the vast Lancean Ocean beyond. Almost as one the aircraft banked back towards land. There was nothing the nomads feared as much as their enemies’ salt waters. Water that horses could not drink and that would drown any who tried to swim the endless waves. An ocean that sustained the tribes of fishermen the Nijumeti counted as foes. Cassandra tallied the surviving planes. Still a formidable force, but the nomads had lost perhaps a third of their number while riding the savage trade winds.

  ‘We have reached Weyland,’ said Cassandra.

  Alexamir grunted. ‘Few clansmen have ever raided so far.’ But we have, the ancestors be thanked. ‘If Temmell dares show his

  face again, I suspect the horde will have him burnt alive for his faulty navigations.’

  ‘Our arrival here is not the sorcerer’s fault. The Rodalians’ spirits of the air are cunning. They’ve spat us out above a rich land. They hope to distract us from our ancient enemy with the treasure of a thousand soft nations.’

  And having spent seasons with the horde, I suspect they are wise to trust so.

  On the southern horizon, Cassandra saw smoke rising. That’s not a natural fire. Those plumes are from incendiary bombs. Cassandra knew there was a large port city down the river from Northhaven. She had once toyed with the idea of escaping from her captors in Northhaven and making her way along the coast, sailing far away from her Weyland enemies. It seemed the civil war raging here had also reached the seaboard. An enemy who devours itself. My favourite kind.

  Cassandra pointed out the distant smoke to Alexamir. ‘Fighting.’

  ‘Not until I land,’ smiled Alexamir. ‘Then they will know it.’

  Lower and lower they swooped until Cassandra could almost reach out and snatch wild flowers from the foothills. Nobody will be expecting us to arrive from the direction of the sea. Rodal has always stopped every invader from reaching the league. Until it didn’t. The nomads’ makeshift skyguard followed the rolling hills until Cassandra began to recognize the landscape below. The White Wolf River and the wolds of the northern borderlands. A hint of the boundless forests to the east. She had been held here as a captive for long enough. Northhaven.

  A massive triplane angled over – three gunnery seats front and rear of the plane’s long body, and in the centre an almost throne-like seat. It was the aircraft bearing Kani Yargul into battle. Its wings fluttered with standards originally designed to be borne by war lances. Cassandra watched the horde’s leader leaning over the fuselage and jabbing a fist down at the land either side of the river. ‘The gods have spoken. They have carried us here. This is our fate, not Rodal. We have survived our testing and been given the soft underbelly of the Lanca to feast on . . . the wealth of the world!’

  Cassandra saw the mirror signaller in the rear cockpit flashing a message to the rest of the aerial armada, bright spots of light acknowledging the signal from hundreds of planes in the van. It was a simple enough message. Possibly the only one the Nijumeti had ever needed. Cassandra hardly needed to bother committing to memory the full range of mirror light codes employed by the nomads. Attack.

  ‘This is a bad bargain,’ muttered Alexamir as the ruler’s plane angled triumphantly away. ‘If we do not first secure Rodal, the walls of the world will merely stand behind the clans instead of in front of the Nijumeti.’

  ‘The Great Krul wishes to gallop,’ said Cassandra. ‘He wants the horde to ride on forever.’

  ‘We shall see what Atamva wills,’ said Alexamir, darkly.

  If Kani Yargul wins today, he will be close to unassailable. Cassandra understood the window of opportunity for Alexamir’s revenge was closing fast. And there was the town on the hill. But Northhaven’s surrounds had changed almost beyond recognition during the civil war. Army camps and skyguard strips where once there had been wheat fields and woodland.

  Cassandra realized with a shock that the Nijumeti were not the only invaders to intrude here. ‘Some of those camps and airfields below are legion . . . Vandian!’ That warship on the ground looks like Prince Gyal’s Prancing Dragon. Cassandra felt a deep shred of bitterness. So, my mother flew out to find me. She abandoned me when she thought me broken . . . but the Imperium remained to mount a campaign? I wasn’t worth flying home, but taking revenge for the slave revolt was? A far-called barbar
ian realm with little worth seizing but slaves. For that, they stayed? She realized her eyes were wet with tears. I was never a real person in the Imperium. Not part of a family. I was just a walking title with a useful womb.

  ‘Better they had left here with your mother,’ said Alexamir. ‘Kani Yargul is still smarting from the Imperium’s disrespect when they came hunting for you.’

  Better they had left? ‘No,’ said Cassandra. ‘This way is better. Strike the legion airfields first. You can’t allow their helos to lift off. They’re deadlier than anything the Weylanders possess.’

  ‘Let them fly, then,’ laughed Alexamir. ‘For they have never faced me before.’

  Kani Yargul had a head for strategy at least. He had obviously arrived at a similar conclusion to Cassandra. Strike the strongest foe first when surprise is your friend. Alexamir aimed the aircraft at the legion strip and they were joined by at least forty fighters, the sky filled with the whistle of diving planes.

  ‘Save your bombs for the legion’s armoured columns,’ urged Cassandra, wind whipping past her ears. ‘Wing guns will penetrate helo shielding.’

  Alexamir levelled up at the last second, strafing the airfield, spouts of soil before his line of shells stitched fuel barrels and helo engines . . . His volley answered by explosions, broken rotors sent spinning like giant axe heads across the legion camp. Aircrews sprinted madly towards their stationary craft, then spilled across the ground as nomad guns felled them. Cannon thuds shook their aircraft fit to splintering. Cassandra remembered inspecting the bootleg weapons before they were wing mounted. Carried into the steppes by smugglers’ mules, secretly shifted across Hellin’s deadly marshes. Big ugly iron barrels and firing mechanisms that reeked of grease. Leather belts of bullets with cheap casings. Any Vandian pilot would have laughed and sent them back to the armourer sooner than mount them on an imperial aircraft. But the nomads had met the smugglers’ price in stolen silver and been glad of it. Anything more sophisticated would look out of place on these flying galleons. Primitive, perhaps. But the simple guns got the job done. The vast steel cathedral at the end of the field was making ready for an emergency lift. Cassandra recognized the haste and panic in the Prancing Dragon’s manoeuvres. She’s smoking her engines clear, rising on cold turbines, relying on her anti-gravity stones for lift. No patrols in the air to protect the camp either. Cassandra recalled the smoke above the Weylanders’ port. There’s already been an engagement. I bet half the local skyguard is off chasing the rebels . . . and they were never expecting us. Cassandra had to remember to thank the nomads’ gods for this. For, by rights, her ancestors should be on the side of the poor benighted souls below.