by Thomas Locke
Dillon said, “I wonder how the Cyrian authorities are explaining this buildup.”
Sean nodded to the snow-flecked glass. He thought his reflection looked scared. But there was nothing he could do about it, so he focused farther out, where the former park between the café and the main station was now jammed with equipment and mobile units and people.
Dillon went on, “Police carnival, maybe. Public display of angry egos. Has to be something.”
Carver entered the room and asked simply, “Ready?”
“Absolutely.” Dillon settled into the padded station and smiled at Carey. “Matter of fact, Sean is ready to take his own watch now. He’s good to go.”
Sean looked over. His and Dillon’s pallets were separated by a low table holding a comm link and an alarm button, and the chairs for Carver and Carey and Elenya. He said, “I need to be sure we’re in total sync for phase two.”
Dillon offered a mimic of Carver’s swift smile. “So why don’t you take lead?”
“I like how things are.”
Dillon snorted. “As if any of this was about what you like.”
“Good point.”
“So you take the hunt, I’ll follow along.” Dillon reached for Carey’s hand, shared a look with his lady, then shut his eyes. “Carver?”
“Ready when you are.”
Sean discovered a subtle pleasure in taking the lead position. He followed Dillon’s pattern, though everything he did was somewhat clumsier. He tried to hold to his brother’s speed and agility but knew he fumbled the job. Even so, Dillon stayed with him, searching where he missed, letting Sean grow comfortable with being the guy up front.
As soon as they returned and reported no change, Sean drew Elenya into the former office, settled her into position, and repeated his idea for how he might help her learn to hunt. He knew she didn’t need to hear the instructions a second time. But he could also see that she liked him forming this verbal link.
Sean suspected she might be held back by the same terror he no longer felt. The panic attack that every new Watcher most likely faced could be the deciding factor of who actually graduated into their ranks. Sean imagined those who were least comfortable with their own world and physical life were also those who made it easiest through the fear barrier. Who let go and accepted the small death. Who could roam free. And hunt.
His idea was simple enough. Focus the energy at the core of his being and distill it through his feelings. Try his best to push aside all the nervous chatter, the pressure, the worries, the uncertainties, his own fears, everything but the chance to give this amazing woman what she deserved. All he had that was good and his to give. As she settled down and breathed and tried to still her fears, he fashioned his shield into a link and poured everything that might help create both calm and confidence . . .
And she was gone.
He could actually feel it happen. Like she had moved beyond him. That she was with him no longer.
And with a terrible start, he realized for the very first time what it would mean to lose her.
He knew there was no logic to this. But they had long since entered a realm where logic held no sway. Sean watched her lay there, silent and scarcely breathing, and suffered through a glimpse of the inevitable. That even if they succeeded in fashioning a life together, even if they lived all their days as one, someday she would depart. And she would not return.
Elenya sighed softly, opened her eyes, and asked, “Why are you crying?”
53
By the third day they had settled into a routine, and words like cramped and boring filtered back into their conversations. Elenya started making forays beyond the café perimeter. She visited with her father, mending fences, checking on the pulse of the mini-city growing up around them. Their little structure had become the center of a human whirlwind, even though most of the real tornado was off-world. The bureaucrats grew increasingly frustrated and resentful of being kept out of the loop. Which of course was ridiculous. Every Watcher reported in as soon as they returned. What the authorities meant was, they hated not being in control. And since Sean couldn’t do anything about that, he wouldn’t even talk to them. Even when Tatyana asked nicely. There was too much risk of giving in, and he couldn’t afford that. None of them could. Everything depended on maintaining the status quo. And hoping they would hold on to the element of surprise.
Much as Sean chafed at their confinement, he couldn’t just leave. As Dillon put it, they were the ones who brought everybody to the dance. The station and its perimeter were now on a battle footing. There was no such thing as a day off. They were on full alert, even when sitting around watching the clock count down the Cyrian equivalent of seconds like a miser handing over gold.
But they could make temporary escapes.
That evening, Earth time, Dillon and Carey slipped away for a meal with her father. When they came back, Sean and Elenya followed suit. Elenya seemed thrilled with John’s backyard grill, the roast chicken, the potatoes. It was amazing to watch her get excited over coleslaw. And raspberry iced tea—she actually moaned with pleasure over that one. It felt great to laugh, to share with John all that was happening, to feel a momentary freedom from the grim cadence of waiting.
The fourth day passed. And the fifth. On the sixth, the Cyrian leaders tried to insist on bringing Insgar back. The old woman was the last remaining Watcher who had survived an alien attack, and had been one of those responsible for tracking the aliens when they tried to spread via the transiters’ occupied bodies to other worlds. She had led the Watcher’s Academy for almost thirty years.
Insgar informed the Cyrian delegation they would ignore Sean’s instructions at their peril, and sent them packing.
The sixth day gave way to the seventh, and the eighth. The disjointed meals with John and the few fleeting moments they could enjoy in the loft became a highlight of each passing day and kept the rising tension at bay, at least partly.
On the ninth day, everything changed.
54
A third couch had been brought into the duty room. Elenya was hunting with them now. Josef served as her anchor. She held back, staying firmly attached to Dillon’s side. She did not venture out, nor did she ever express any real affection for the experience. She did it because she wanted to share in every aspect of Sean’s world. And he loved her more for doing so.
Elenya’s real duties lay elsewhere. With every passing day, her role as go-between became more vital. Carver related the arguments and the egos and the maneuverings. Josef then described observing Elenya handle the Cyrian leader’s strident demands to be placed in charge. Both men smiled through their tales, taking evident pride in this woman coming into her own.
The one point over which the planet’s rulers refused to budge was the station. Sean wanted it closed. The Cyrians would not even discuss it. Elenya’s arguments got them nowhere, particularly because the Praetorian officers weren’t certain it was a good idea. If the plan was indeed to pretend at normality, the station needed to look normal. Which required passengers and trains and business as usual. Elenya’s urgent plea to create a fake power outage or rail problem fell on deaf ears. The bureaucrats spoke of public calm. The officers used terms like collateral damage. Sean tried hard not to loathe them all.
Sean had hardly seen Elenya the previous day, save for their hunting sessions and a hurried meal with John. All her remaining hours were spent on outside duty. Playing mediator. Keeping them isolated. Shielding them with the force of her will.
On the afternoon of day nine, she was so late getting back they almost left without her. When she finally appeared, Sean stifled Dillon’s comment with a look that would have done Tatyana proud.
Elenya looked both drawn and angry, but all she said upon lying down was, “I’m ready.”
They rose, linked, and passed through the station wall.
Sean froze eight inches inside the station. Less.
Under other circumstances, it probably would have been comic, how he managed to halt D
illon and Elenya by reaching out arms he didn’t have and gripping them with hands that were back inside the former café. They both stopped, though, which was all that mattered.
Their entry point was the back of a kiosk that sold the veggie wraps, which had become their favorite Cyrian meal. They drifted behind and above the workers, watching the traveling hordes pass before their eyes.
A single instant was enough to be certain. Even so, Sean remained there a time. Scouring the distance, searching for the precise point of change. Once he identified it, he drew the others up and focused them on the location. Making sure they saw and understood.
The instant they returned, the very moment they opened their eyes and swung their feet to the floor, the entire world was filled with the tension they carried.
Carver demanded, “What is it?”
“Go get Chenel and Baran,” Sean said. “Hurry.”
When the Watchers arrived, Sean was seated on the same bunk as Dillon and Elenya, the three of them clustered together for strength and warmth, for they all felt chilled by the tense dread of having gotten it right. “Dillon, you tell them.”
“You saw it first.”
“You’re better at all this. Go.”
Dillon took a breath. “Take up position inside the kiosk. Don’t move farther. Aim at the gate that is five degrees off directly overhead. There are three empty tracks. Right there inside the gate. That is your target.”
Chenel asked, “What are we looking for?”
“You tell us,” Sean replied.
“Go,” Elenya said. “Hurry.”
Chenel was back in three minutes flat. She rose, rubbed her face, then said, “I confirm their findings.”
Carver protested, “They didn’t say what they identified.”
“They don’t need to. Sound the alarm.”
55
It’s like a jagged-edged hole into nowhere,” Chenel said.
They gathered in the ready room because one of the other Watcher teams was out now. A team would be constantly observing from this point on, stationed by the kiosk that had become their blind. Sean sat with Elenya and Dillon and Carey, his back against the outer wall. Night had fallen and he could feel the cold through the window above his head. Blasts of wind drove tiny ice pellets against the glass. Sean decided he liked the season. Somehow it fit.
He let Chenel do the talking. She was one of them, but she was also a recognized senior Watcher. As far as all the authorities gathered in this room were concerned, Sean’s own position remained in question. The leader of Cyrius was with them, along with a bevy of senior staffers, Ambassador Anyon, Tatyana, Carver, Josef, and a clutch of Praetorian officers. They shot Sean tight looks now and then. Taking his measure. Waiting for him to open his mouth. But Sean had no interest in becoming anyone’s target. He sat and drifted. Whatever satisfaction he might have felt over getting it right was lost to the tension and the fatigue and the dread.
Chenel went on, “The first thing you notice is that the flavor of the station has shifted.”
The Cyrian leader was an aristocratic woman with a grave bearing that matched the Ambassador’s. “Define flavor.”
“That is the accepted description for a Watcher,” Carver said.
“There are records from the last several invasions,” Tatyana added. “Ever since Watchers came into being. They all speak of a shift in the atmosphere, one they call flavor. Or scent.”
The Cyrian leader accepted this with a terse nod and said to Chenel, “Continue.”
“They have come and gone. I counted four recent forays.”
“I saw six,” Dillon said. “Each leaves a trail. Green. Like slime.”
“I saw no colors,” Chenel said.
“I did,” Elenya replied.
“There will be time for comparisons later,” Ambassador Anyon said, but without heat. “Go on.”
Chenel motioned at Dillon with a jerk of her chin. “You tell.”
“It looks like a flower that’s opening. Green fire around the edges.”
One of the Cyrian elders complained, “I have just walked through the station and noted nothing amiss.”
“It’s there,” Chenel said.
“You don’t need to see it,” Dillon said. “That’s why you have us. To see for you.”
The Cyrians squinted angrily at Dillon. Dillon glanced at Sean and gave him another of those patented Carver-type smiles. Gone so fast it might not even have existed.
Dillon went on, “The flower or whatever you want to call it is an opening to the dark side.”
Chenel said, “These new forays we detected were probably them checking up, making sure the station remains unprotected.”
The Cyrian leader asked, “Is this standard practice prior to an invasion?”
“We have no idea.” Tatyana had the decency to look at Sean as she spoke. “Never before have we known this level of advance notice.”
All eyes tracked to Sean and stayed there. Finally Ambassador Anyon asked, “What do you suggest as our next step?”
Sean felt uncomfortable with the attention, but he knew what had to be said. “Ready the troops. Be sure to set up a secondary perimeter around the outside of the station, in case they break through.”
The leader said, “Should we evacuate?”
Sean was about to urge them to do just that when a shriek arose from the duty room. The scream wrenched them all, a great cry of mortal distress. On and on it went, long enough for them to unfreeze and rush in and see the Watcher flail against the hold of her anchor.
Her limbs were not her own, that was how it seemed to Sean. Like she was a human form wrapped around something else. And that something was flooding into her, gripping every shred of her physical form with a convulsive force.
She flung her spotter across the room. The man weighed close to twice what she did, and he flew eighteen feet before crashing into the far corner. She did not rise from the bed. She catapulted to the side wall. And clung there. Snarling.
Sean looked into the face of death. The alien growled at him, taking in the scope of their planning and their intentions. And screamed again, this time in utter fury at the attack being exposed.
Tirian’s blow was the first to slam into her. Then Josef, and Carver, and finally Dillon. Gripping the alien with invisible fists, squeezing out the alien life-form, and then striking the enemy with blasts of ice and fury.
Within the space of a dozen heartbeats, it was over. The woman fell to the floor. Inert.
Tirian leapt over the demolished comm link and touched her neck. “We have a pulse.”
Carver fumbled through the wreckage, found the button, and slammed his fist onto the alarm.
56
All the station’s doors were flung wide open. The alarm sounded throughout the vast building. The noise was deafening.
But no one inside the station knew what it meant.
The alarm had not sounded in over a generation. And never on Cyrius.
Most of the people simply froze where they were. And waited. Holding their ears. Trying to shout questions at whatever official was closest.
At Carver’s directions, the generals and the Cyrian military formed wedges and powered through the doors.
Even with all their advance work, they were almost too late.
The aliens were fast.
Sean and Dillon and Carey and Elenya entered behind the official formation, linked by clenched hands. They held to the outside wall and moved to a position that gave them a clear sight of the unfolding attack. Two minutes later, Chenel and Baran came racing up. Agape at the horror on display.
Sean thought it was like watching a high-speed virus invade a body. The aliens poured into the station through the portal that was now clearly visible. The aperture to another realm opened like a flower of death. The invading aliens spread with incredible swiftness, a greenish, translucent tide. They were not entirely visible. It was like viewing a confusing scene through heat waves. The aperture itself continu
ed to expand, a fracture in the human realm.
The first Praetorian Guards who arrived froze in shock. It was easy to understand why. The aliens massed in a swirling mob that grew with exponential speed. Everything and everyone in their scope was consumed. The sight was both savage and gigantic. In the petrified space of a few seconds, there were so many aliens they formed a putrid cloud. The churning mass was lit from within by great roaring flashes, lightning bolts of furious pleasure.
Perhaps the one event that saved them, the first finger in the dike, was Tirian.
All the civilians screamed with one voice and rushed for the exits. Tirian’s shield deflected one panic-stricken human after another. It was doubtful Tirian saw any of this. He moved with the single-minded purpose of a man who had finally, against all odds, been granted a chance for vengeance.
Against the surging human tide moved this lone individual, sucking up the fury and the fear, fashioning a huge ball of force that he flung into the alien mob.
Tirian might not have been the first to blast the aliens. But he was most certainly the first to take the battle to them. He raced forward, flinging one great bolt after another. His lone force was enough to slow the surging chaotic mass. At least, he did so for an instant.
Then the aliens counterattacked.
Streaks of green lightning blasted Tirian, over and over, halting him in his tracks. He fought back with single-minded fury. But the aliens gathered and formed an oval menace that swarmed over him. And ate away his shield.
Sean and his friends watched in horror as Tirian’s shield melted under the onslaught. They saw Tirian react in shock as the first gap appeared in his shield, rimmed by the deadly green fire. A drop of electric acid oozed through the opening. Tirian screamed and jerked. But there was no escape. His shield was now his cage.
Then he gathered himself. Drawing in everything, all the force that was around him, a great heaving breath that even included the acid of death.
And he exploded. A blast of force so great it actually halted the aliens.