Only one of the Folly’s remaining hanger bays was large enough to accommodate Wayfinder. Loader had fortunately emptied it of hundreds of Kreon’s treasures, and the Warden slid in through the cavernous opening with mere inches to spare.
Tris held his breath until they contacted the metal deck with a clang that reverberated through the cockpit. “You’re gonna dent it,” he warned.
Kreon released the controls and swivelled to face him. “Then perhaps next time, you will do the honours.”
They headed out, Tris still cradling Loader’s consciousness. On the one hand, he felt he should treat the object with a degree of reverence; on the other hand, it spun nicely in his palm. It was not unlike a luminous snow-globe, and he had a hard time ascribing Kreon’s beliefs to it.
To him.
Tris reached out with the Gift, wondering if Loader’s consciousness would register.
He got nothing.
Perhaps because the talos was digital? Or perhaps because he was something so far beyond digital that Tristan’s mind was like a pocket watch to him.
As they reached the doors that led out of the docking bay, Tris turned for a quick look at Kreon’s prize spaceship. It was an odd thing; a roughly teardrop-shaped profile, with the cockpit at the narrowest point and the rest of the vessel fanning out behind it. The blocky hull was too irregular to be called sleek, but the shape in and of itself wasn’t clumsy.
What ruined the whole effect were the two gigantic railguns strapped to the top. Their barrels were longer than the entire ship, sticking out in front of it like skis on a Smart Car. The guns were so ridiculously over-sized they put Tris in mind of clown’s shoes. They also couldn’t move; Kreon could be as cocky as he wanted about their victory back on the planet, but it was blind luck that the mercenaries’ ship had parked right in front of their barrels.
Kyra was first through the doors to the bridge.
Karra’s hologram was waiting for them. “Welcome home,” she said, her voice an electronic deadpan. “I’m receiving a signal from the planet.”
The largest of the bridge’s viewscreens flickered white for a second, then filled with the head and shoulders of a strikingly beautiful woman.
A familiar woman.
“Sera,” Tris snarled. Their latest experience had cemented his hatred of her. That she was so cruel, so calculating, obliterated her beauty. Her expression was intense, her eyes hard. She ignored him completely.
“Kreon.” Her tone was icy. “You just can’t stay out of my business, can you?”
The Warden drew breath to reply, but Sera beat him to it.
“No matter. This world is mine now. I am giving you precisely one warning: surrender immediately, or I will vaporise that decrepit old junker and what’s left of your battle station. You have the time it takes for my ships to reach you to decide.”
And just as abruptly, the screen went dead.
Silence reigned for a handful of heartbeats. Tris stood spell-bound, his blood boiling. She’d made no mention of what she’d done to Loader… no mention of the life and death struggle they’d endured on the planet. It was like their survival was nothing more than an inconvenience to her.
Kreon was the first to snap out of it. “Askarra, how many ships are you monitoring?”
The hologram, which had remained frozen during the exchange with Sera, flickered back to life. “I detect no vessels in the immediate vicinity, Lord Anakreon, but there has been substantial damage to my long-range sensor package. I cannot exclude the possibility that my data is flawed.”
“So, what, we’re flying blind?” Tris asked her.
The hologram turned its head to look at him. “Optical targeting capability remains undiminished.”
Tris made a ‘what the…?’ face at Kyra.
“Use your eyes,” Kyra translated.
“I see nothing on the scopes in any direction,” Kreon reported. “Every available instrument tells me we’re alone out here.”
“Sera has resources though,” Kyra reminded him. “Some new piece of stealth-tech she got from Demios?”
Kreon frowned at her.
“Shouldn’t we just get out of here?” Tris interjected. “Before they come, I mean? If we can’t see them, maybe they can’t see us yet…”
“I have plotted coordinates for a grav-jump away from this system,” Askarra chimed in. “Tristan, would you like to initialise?”
“Um… I dunno.” Tris bit his lip. “Kreon?”
“Wait.” The Warden’s tone was final. “Hasty action will avail us nothing. Think. What do we know about Sera?”
“She’s fucking insane?” Tris answered. Then he remembered Kreon had once been married to her. “And kind of hot? Like, insanely hot?”
Kyra rolled her eyes at him, but didn’t comment.
Kreon took no notice of him. “Sera is an expert manipulator. If our first impulse is to flee, then that is precisely the action she desires us to take.”
“What?” Tris was confused. “You mean, she wants us to escape?”
“Quite possibly.” Kreon turned back to address the hologram. “This was a message, not a conversation. Askarra, would you please replay it for me? No audio,” he added as an afterthought.
The computer chimed again, and Sera’s image reappeared on the big screen. Her dark hair was up in a dishevelled braid and her shoulder armour bore new scars and carbon-streaking. The material behind her head was padded, and straps of webbing angled in from off-camera to disappear in front of her.
“Freeze it.”
Kreon stared at the image for long seconds. Tris glanced over at Kyra; she seemed to be handling the possibility of invisible enemies as well as she handled most things.
“Askarra, play Sera’s declaration of independence. The one she broadcast to Atalia,” Kreon said.
The next screen over lit up, flicking from a view of the space surrounding the Folly to a near-identical picture of Sera. The angle was the same, her armour was the same, albeit cleaner… only her expression differed; triumphant arrogance, rather than angry disdain.
Kreon pounded a fist on the nearest console. “I was right! She’s in her fighter.”
“That makes no sense,” Kyra told him. “Why would she broadcast from the cockpit? It’d be cramped as hell in there, and nowhere near as powerful as…” she trailed off as something dawned on her.
“What?” Tris demanded. “What is it?”
“She’s alone.” Kreon spoke quietly. “Sera isn’t sending these messages from her command post because she doesn’t have one. She isn’t here to muster her forces — she’s hiding.”
“But… she…?”
Kreon tapped a button and the tactical display sprang up to replace Sera’s image. No threats registered in any direction.
“So, no invisible ships?”
Kreon shook his head. “The majority of Sera’s forces on Homeguard remained loyal to Atalia. When she fled Earth, she had only a handful of soldiers with her. Not even enough to remove the Planet Forge.”
That made sense. Tris had helped Loader drag dozens of bodies into Sera’s underground base before they’d blown it up; the talos had mown his way through her entire retinue, before hauling both Kreon and the alien terraforming device back to the surface.
“Demios’ fleet was also scattered during the battle,” Kreon continued. “It is possible that Sera has yet to reestablish contact with them. Or perhaps their alliance was more tenuous than it appeared; Demios never was one to place a cause before self-interest.”
“Those mercs,” Kyra said. “Sera must have a group on retainer, like you and Sharki. She’s grabbed every warm body she could lay her mitts on and dug in down there… and we just wiped them out.” A slow smile stole across Kyra’s features. “We could trap her down there, Kreon. You and me together — we could finish her.”
Kreon rubbed a gloved hand over the scars on his scalp. “Indeed. To find her essentially undefended… it is a rare opportunity.”
�
��You want to go after her?” Tris was aghast. “Down there on the planet?”
Kreon leaned forward over the console in front of him, bracing himself with both hands. “It is tempting.” He suddenly sounded weary. “But even unsupported, Sera is a formidable adversary. Going after her will take significant time and resources, and there is no guarantee of success.”
Tris studied the Warden’s posture, and something clicked. “You don’t want to kill her, do you?”
The look Kreon gave him was so black he took a step back — but then the Warden let his head drop. “No, Tristan. You are correct. For all her… complexities… I loved her once.”
Kyra slid a comforting arm across the Warden’s shoulders. “Ah, shit,” she said, with a sigh. “I know what you mean.”
Kreon looked up at her. “Thank-you, Kyra.”
“No worries,” Kyra said, letting her arm fall. “It’s all good. I’ll kill her.”
“Ha!” the bark of Kreon’s laugh was as harsh as it was unexpected. “Very well then!” He looked over at Tris. “Tristan, I invite your opinion on the matter. Do you feel capable of taking on Sera and whatever remaining barbarians she has scraped together?”
Tris, put on the spot, went with his gut.
“No.”
Sera was so recently a friend, yet now she terrified him completely. Her actions had caused countless deaths, and the memory of her standing in front of him, poised to slice ribbons off him with his own knife, still haunted his dreams. Was it cowardice that made him not want to face her? She scared the living crap out of him, that was for sure. Or was there more to it? Sera knew things about the past. The way she’d referred to his father suggested they had once been close. Prying information out of Kreon was like drawing blood from a stone, but Tris realised he’d been hoping to sit down with Sera one day and ask her everything he wanted to know about his dad…
Ha! Fat chance. She’d skin me alive as soon as talk to me.
Because Sera was insane.
And now, there were other ways to find out what he wanted.
An old ally of mine, his dad’s hologram had said. He can answer any questions you have.
When you first enter Lemurian space…
“Screw it,” Tris said. “Screw Sera. She’s nuts, and she’ll get herself killed sooner or later. Half the galaxy is after her right now; no need for us to get involved. Plus, and no offence intended by this, but I don’t think we can take her. Not on our own. She’s too clever and too dangerous — it could just as easily be a trap. I vote we stay focussed on the mission. Make for the Lemurian Empire and see what we can find out.”
Kreon stared at him for a long time, as though analysing his motives — and nodded. “Then that is what we shall do.”
8
The journey towards Lemurian Space had a markedly different feel to it.
Oddly enough, Kreon’s mood was almost jubilant — at least to the carefully trained eye. The Warden took Loader’s glowing glass jar and disappeared into a lab on board Wayfinder, emerging only for visits to the docking bay that contained the talos’ original remains. The few times Tris saw him he was carrying crates of spare parts and muttering to himself, but there was a gleam in his eye and his habitual scowl was noticeably less scowly. As far as Tris could tell, the old Warden was sleeping on Wayfinder too — Tris got the impression he’d never expected to see the ship again. Which made sense; if the last two months were anything to go by, Kreon must have had one hell of a rough century.
Kyra had given up teaching Tris to fly. With no opportunity to get out there and practice, there really wasn’t much point. She still devoted a couple of hours each day to his combat training, but those sessions had taken on more of a strategic tone. Tris felt they were genuinely sparring now, rather than Kyra kicking his ass just for the fun of it; she seemed keen to hone her own skills as much as possible, and it made him a little concerned about what awaited them in the Lemurian Empire.
The rest of their time together was spent on endlessly frustrating lessons in controlling the Gift.
Frustrating because, whilst Kyra’s psychic ability was impressive, her ability to explain it was not.
“You’ve got to focus,” she told him, for about the billionth time.
They were sitting on a pair of crates in the cargo bay, because Kyra accused him of falling asleep when she gave her lessons in the crew lounge.
“Focus on what?” he retorted. As far as Tris was concerned, ‘focus’ was one of those bullshit words people used when they couldn’t come up with something more accurate.
“You’re trying too hard to hear me,” she explained. “When you open yourself up like that, you’ll hear everyone, and loud enough to make your head ring. You can hear me without straining to listen. You know that. So you need to relax… and focus.”
Tris squeezed his eyes shut in response to the headache she was giving him. “You know that relaxing and focussing are literally opposites, right?”
She sighed. “I can’t demonstrate it here. All your practice has been like this—” she waved a hand around the cargo bay, empty apart from a few bits of gym equipment. “If you want to learn how to cope with several minds at once, and how to filter out individuals from the background noise, we need a few more minds around. A bunch of them, ideally.”
The door slid open. “Then perhaps my arrival is timely?” Kreon stepped into the cargo bay, a smug look on his face.
Kyra glanced up at him. “Meh. You barely qualify.”
Kreon let that one pass without comment. “The training progresses?” he enquired.
Tris studied the deck while Kyra gave her report.
“Not really. I’ve got to admit, teaching isn’t my forte. His Gift is stronger than hell. He could probably hear you from the other side of a planet, but he just won’t…” she threw her hands up and made air quotes, “…focus.”
Kreon studied Tris for a few seconds. “Very well then,” he said at last. “Perhaps we should try this.” He fished inside a pocket of his trench coat and produced a flat piece of metal the size of a ruler. He held it up in front of Tris. “I want you to bend this with your mind.”
Tris squinted at it. “Are you having a laugh?”
“Not all all,” the Warden said, his tone serious. “Visualise it. Concentrate on it. Can you sense the iron? Look deeper, into the bar’s molecular structure. Feel the space between its atoms. Now… bend it.”
Tris filled his mind with the piece of metal, trying to imagine zooming in so far he could see inside it. It didn’t help; all he could think of was a cartoon picture of little balls bouncing against each other. Still, he tried, letting the Warden’s words guide his efforts — to no avail.
By the time he gave up his face was red from the effort, and sweat was beading on his brow. “I… I can’t bend it,” he panted.
Kreon stared at him again — then chuckled. “Of course you can’t bend it! It’s an iron bar.”
Beside him, Kyra burst out laughing.
Tris glared at her, then back at Kreon. “You… absolute bastard! Did you come down here just to take the piss?”
“Not at all,” he replied, “though I confess I enjoyed that immensely.”
“The look on your face…” Kyra gasped, “…priceless!”
Kreon cleared his throat. “My apologies, Tristan. I came to ask you both to join me in the Wayfinder’s crew lounge. I have something to show you.”
The crew lounge on Kreon’s ship was a fairly spartan affair. As Kyra had noted, comfort seemed less of a consideration than cleanliness. Tris couldn’t imagine the room got used a lot even when the ship was in regular use; the image of Kreon kicking it back with a cocktail and a magazine just didn’t gel.
“I have brought you here to witness a re-birth,” Kreon said, a tad dramatically. “The talos we knew as Loader may have been destroyed, but his essence lives on. I have re-housed the Sentience Containment Unit temporarily, so that Loader may rejoin the crew.”
Tris,
on the edge of his seat, gazed expectantly at the door. From the way Kreon was beaming, anything could come clanking in. A bipedal robot perhaps? With knives for arms… or guns? Or something spider-like and scurrying, with a big-assed cannon mounted on top of it. He looked at Kyra. She was staring at the door too, but nothing had come through it yet. Had Loader’s new body suffered some catastrophic malfunction whilst waiting in the corridor?
Kreon would be gutted.
Tris plastered a big grin on his face just in case, before asking. “Uh, Kreon? Is he okay out there?”
The Warden’s brow furrowed. “Out where? Loader is right in front of you.”
It was Tris’ turn to be confused. “Oh?” half expecting another joke, he dropped his eyes to the coffee table in front of him.
On it lay a plain steel case about the size of a school lunchbox. Kreon made a grand gesture, indicating the box. Tris looked back at Kyra; she raised an eyebrow at him.
“Oh.” Tris felt his grin drooping, and hastily reinforced it. “Oh! Wow! So this is… this is Loader?”
Kreon positively radiated pride. “Indeed.”
Tris eyed the box suspiciously. “No way… so… can he, like… do anything?”
Kreon’s brow furrowed. “Tristan, he is a fully sentient yet synthetic intelligence! A miracle given form. What more would you have him do?”
Tris shuffled his feet awkwardly. “I dunno. I just thought it’d be cool if he could… fly, or had guns, or… you know, flame throwers…” He glanced at Kyra; she was wearing her poker face. “You’re not pranking me again, are you?”
Kreon sounded hurt. “I neither slept nor ate for the last three days in pursuit of this endeavour. That case contains the most advanced piece of hardware in the galaxy.”
“Yeah, no, of course,” Tris blustered. He cleared his throat and addressed the box, feeling more than a little foolish. “Uh, Loader? Are you in there?”
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