Crusade (Exile Book 3)

by Glynn Stewart

  “I know,” Amelie agreed. “I’ll be good. I can’t guarantee they’ll let me bring bodyguards everywhere, though. Ambassador or not.”

  “I trust your…persuasiveness, Minister,” Köhl replied with a chuckle. “But I do have another option.”

  Amelie looked over to see that the Marine had produced a small package from inside her armor. It was…it was very gun-shaped.

  She opened it. It was definitely gun-shaped, with a trigger, trigger guard, safety…but it lacked such key features as a magazine.

  “What is this?”

  “This is what happens when Dr. Brigette Reinhardt decided she’s sick of her husband being a defenseless twit in the middle of a war and ‘borrows’ her father’s database,” Köhl replied.

  Dr. Lyle Reinhardt’s daughter was primarily the CEO of one of Exilium’s engineering management companies. She was also a mother and the wife of Captain Cameron Alstairs, who was Vigil’s commanding officer and Amelie’s husband’s right hand.

  “It’s a laser pistol, Minister,” Köhl continued. “Based on the same principles as the weapons used by Assini hunter-killer drones. It’s the first pistol-sized energy weapon we ever built, but the Marines bought the design from her and manufactured a small run.

  “Variable power. Minimum should kill a man. Maximum should punch through power armor but probably won’t kill the wearer,” the Marine noted. “Five shots at max, sixteen at min. There’s one replacement power cell there, but recharging the cells requires at least our shuttles.”

  Amelie regarded the weapon carefully. Neither the Confederacy or Exilium had ever managed to compress pulse-weapon technology down small enough to create plasma sidearms. The Marines didn’t go in much for lasers outside of specialist tools, either, but she could see the value. The power density implied by the shot settings left her more nervous about the power cell than the weapon itself.

  She took the laser pistol anyway, tucking it into the spot designed for a weapon on the bulky vest under her clothes.

  “They’re more likely to disarm me than they are to take my guards away,” she pointed out. “But it might come in handy. We’ve got an hour left. What’s your plan, Major?”

  “I’m going to be walking the perimeter of the house with the platoon commander and Sergeant Ryu,” Köhl told her. “I will have time to take a shower while you’re talking to the Intendant.”

  Amelie snorted.

  “Does this place have anything I’d call a shower?” she asked. It was, after all, alien plumbing.

  “It’s…” The Marine paused thoughtfully. “It’s at least in the same general concept?”

  “Then I guess I’ll check it out. Never hurts to be at your best when you’re meeting with a tyrant.”

  It seemed a fair description. She wasn’t aware of any non-tyrant rulers who’d execute a government official because they didn’t like the way information had been handled.

  If anything, she was being generous. The phrase mad tyrant was probably more appropriate.

  25

  Istila returned exactly when ban had said ban would. Freshly showered and re-dressed in another of her ambassador suits and armor vests—with the laser pistol transferred to the new vest’s holster—Amelie met ban at the front door.

  “Is the Intendant ready?” she asked brightly.

  “There are ceremonies a stranger must go through to meet the voice of the Fates in this mortal time,” Istila told them. “These are your escorts?” Ban gestured to Choi and the two other Marines with her.

  “They are. They will come with me everywhere,” Amelie said firmly. That had been part of the agreement, but it never hurt to reiterate.

  “As was agreed,” the Keeper confirmed. “Follow me, Minister Lestroud. Your people’s safety is His Greatness’s word.”

  Amelie kept her scoffing at that carefully internal. How many of the Intendant’s guests over the centuries had seen the guesthouse stormed? She doubted this was a safe place to be an ambassador, let alone a supplicant.

  For now, she kept her peace and followed Istila back into the mountain. This time, they took a smaller elevator that went sideways. There didn’t appear to be a distinction between movement between levels and on a level in the transit system inside the mountain.

  When the door opened again, though, they were hit with a wave of sulfur.

  “We begin the first stage of the purification ceremony,” Istila said calmly as ban led the way out. Ban had been expecting this and seemed much less bothered than the humans.

  Coughing, Amelie gestured her guards forward. She had a breather included in her vest that would automatically deploy if the air got bad enough. This was safe. Just unpleasant.

  They had come out into what looked like the entryway for a temple. A cavern, a hundred meters square and twelve high, had been excavated to allow for a doorway to be flanked by pillars and carved beasts that resembled Earth’s mythical sphinxes—though the heads of these “sphinxes” had the armor plate of a Siva.

  The door itself was six meters tall, attached to hinge mechanisms that were very clearly statues of armored Sivar warriors of another time.

  “This is the Gateway of Fire,” Istila told Amelie. “We will walk the Pathway of Fire to the Mountain Heart, and there we will greet the next gateway.”

  Ban’s faceplates shifted in what might have been an attempt at a smile.

  “Assuming you survive, of course.”

  “Lead the way, Keeper Istila,” Amelie replied. “I would hope that the ceremonies would not cost the Intendant the life of his Keeper of the Keys of Peace.”

  Ban gestured and the statue hinges activated, the mechanical warriors pulling the massive doors open in front of them. An even stronger scent of sulfur radiated out, and Amelie suddenly had a very strong suspicion of both what the Mountain Heart was—and how the First and Final Citadel was powered.

  Nonetheless, she followed Istila through the Gateway. The air grew warmer as they entered into a carefully carved descending spiral. Sulfur-laced mist drifted up from the lower tier of the spiral—and as one of the gusts of mist swept over the lead Marine, the man’s breather snapped automatically into place.

  Istila laughed, a strange clapping sound—but ban was already pulling a breather from within ban’s robes.

  “Tradition requires we walk the path,” ban told them. “Pragmatism suggests that we survive the path. I have breathers if…”

  Amelie and the other Marines manually activated theirs and the Keeper laughed again.

  “Come, Minister Lestroud. The beating heart of the First and Final Citadel awaits us—and tradition only allows us so much time.”

  The Mountain Heart was similar to the Gateway of Fire. A massive space had been excavated, with pillars and statues carved out of the living stone to decorate a space. Through the center of the space, like a stream of water in a surface temple, ran a tube of lava.

  Sulfur might be rising from the stone around the lava stream, but the stream itself had been capped a long time before. A canal bed of some kind of special ceramic funneled the magma along the route, and a transparent layer of something—any of her military people might have IDed it, but that wasn’t Amelie’s skillset—covered the lava.

  That allowed for the space to be habitable by humans and Sivar, but it was far from comfortable. If they had the lava this much under control for a ceremonial cavern, Amelie was now quite certain geothermal power provided much of the Citadel’s electricity needs.

  “This way,” Istila told them through ban’s face mask, gesturing toward a second gateway that matched the first one. This time, the sphinx-like beasts were replaced by a second set of Sivar warriors, looming six meters tall over everything in the space.

  “This is the Gateway of Iron,” ban explained as they reached the door. “Once, there would have been ritual combat on this spot to prove your right to continue…but such traditions fade with time.”

  The fact that the Mountain Heart itself would have killed far
more of the ritual combatants than the fight would have was probably a factor in that.

  The Gateway opened for Istila’s gesture, and a second set of spiraling tunnels led away. They were less filled with sulfur, and it took Amelie a moment to realize why: water was running down the floor of the tunnel, and a stiff artificial breeze pushed air along above it.

  Only a tiny rivulet of water survived the heat to reach the bottom as liquid, but it was absorbing some of the toxins from the air…and the stiff breeze made sure that the steam rose up the other tunnel, making the Pathway of Fire much more unpleasant than this tunnel.

  “This is the Pathway of Water and we approach the Gateway of Water,” Istila told them. “We have been purified in fire and now we will be purified in water before we come before the Intendant.”

  “Do you do this every time you approach him?” Amelie asked as the water grew into a broad but shallow stream across the floor.

  “I am known to the Mountain,” the Keeper said calmly. “You are not. The full purification will not be required for future audiences.”

  Stepping out of the Gateway of Water, Amelie was unsurprised to see that the only way forward was through a broad pool of water, filled by a gentle waterfall that formed a wall-to-wall barrier of descending liquid.

  It seemed her shower had been a waste of time.

  “We go forward,” she said firmly, stepping into the water. She was reasonably sure her electronics would survive this. Somehow, she doubted the likelihood of shorting out spy devices had hurt the survival of this particular tradition!

  “Always,” Choi agreed, her armored boots splashing in the water beside Amelie.

  “You begin to understand, I think,” Istila noted as ban walked beside them. Clearing the water, waiting robed attendants offered them large white towels, and the exit passed under what looked like industrial blow-dryers.

  “We must require you and your guards to surrender your weapons once we clear the Gateway,” ban continued. “The Intendant is the ruler of worlds, the righteous master of ten thousand suns. His safety cannot be risked.”

  “My guards come with me,” Amelie said calmly.

  “Of course,” the Keeper agreed. “But they must come unarmed.”

  “Very well.” Amelie glanced at Choi and the other two Marines. Their armor made them deadlier than they looked, but she was still agreeing to make herself vulnerable.

  But she had no choice. Through fire and sulfur and water into the belly of the beast she went.

  26

  After the temple-like structures she’d passed through in the purification rituals, Amelie was expecting to be ushered into a throne room that was as much temple as court. She was expecting the Intendant to be presented as some kind of god-king, probably wrapped in enough gold and jewels to buy a starship.

  Instead, she was brought into a room that had a clear relationship to the conference room on Watchtower. There was a raised dais at one end with a table on it, and three smaller tables in the rest of the room.

  No reporters. No gathered court. There were, at least, gold and jewels—the walls were decorated in gold filigree and murals of stones and gems that clearly drew attention to the figure at the head of the room.

  That figure wore a complex headdress of fine gold and platinum chains wrapped around his headplate. At some point, his headplate itself had been carved to inlay a triangle of tiny red gems above his eyes, but other than that and the chains, the Intendant was unadorned. He wore a plain white tunic, closer to his soldiers’ garments than his Keepers’, and had two other Sivar at the table with him.

  The lower tables were empty. Ten guards lined each wall, blocking the ability to see the detail of the murals, but otherwise it was just Amelie, her guards, and the central figures of the Sivar government.

  No wonder they’d required her Marines to surrender their weapons!

  Istila led the way, proceeding through the tables with a practiced grace to reach a section of carpet on the stone floor directly in front of the Intendant. Ban knelt on that carpet and bowed their head.

  “I bring the Exilium Ambassador before you, Your Greatness,” ban said breathlessly.

  Amelie was glad for the earbud translator. She assumed the Sivar had established their own translation programs to understand her people, but she wanted to control what she was getting of their emotion.

  “Approach, Ambassador,” the Intendant said. The untranslated tones of a Siva speaking were harsh on human ears, choppy consonants and short words. His voice seemed even more so.

  Gesturing for Choi and the Marines to stand by the door, Amelie walked up to stand next to the kneeling Keeper of the Keys of Peace. She gave the Intendant the same slight bow of her head she’d given Istila.

  “I am Amelie Lestroud,” she told him. “I am the Foreign Minister and Ambassador Plenipotentiary for the Republic of Exilium, and I am authorized to speak on behalf of our allies for these initial talks.”

  “So I understand,” the Intendant replied. He gestured diffidently around him. “This is Corstan, the Keeper of the Keys of War, and Rode, the Keeper of the Citadel. With Istila, they are my Governance.”

  Translation: these are the heads of my government. Presumably there had to be infrastructure and bureaucracy behind each of those Sivar. It was fascinating, though. Unless Amelie missed her guess, Corstan was male and Rode was female. The three Keepers seemed to explicitly represent the three Sivar genders.

  “I am the Intendant,” the Siva continued. “The voice of the Fates and the ruler of the Governance. My titles claim I am the prince of ten thousand suns.”

  He bowed his own head in a mirror of her gesture, though his bow was a far more fractional gesture.

  “I rule thirty-three,” he said calmly. “Bound by star-lane and the Commandants’ fleets, they kneel to me. So, tell me, Minister Amelie Lestroud, what would you have of the fate of the Sivar?”

  “There is a danger in this corner of the galaxy,” Amelie said softly. “Machines forged by an old and foolish race to carve new worlds for their future homes. The machines destroyed their creators and have now turned their eyes outwards.”

  The exact details of the relationship between the Assini and the Matrices would be an explanation for later.

  “Some of those machines, these AI Matrices, retained an original code that required them to protect sentient life. Most had that code damaged by their form of interstellar travel,” she continued. “We have allied with those that attempt to protect others to stop their genocidal cousins.

  “Multiple species have joined us in our war against these Matrices. We have traded weapons and starships for their aid, but we stand as allies and friends, shoulder to shoulder against these robots.”

  She shook her head.

  “I was told you know their works,” Amelie said. “That you call them the Builders.”

  The two Keepers on either side of the Intendant, both clad in the same toga-like garment as Istila, looked directly to their master. Neither appeared to have a clue what Amelie was talking about.

  The Intendant, on the other hand, leaned forward and laid his hands on the table.

  “We have watched the Builders for some time,” he noted. “The Eyes of the Sivar look to the stars, Minister Amelie Lestroud, and we are not blind. When star systems change and worlds move, we see. We have wondered and we have studied and we know some of the Builders. You tell me you know more.”

  Fascinatingly, Corstan definitely hadn’t known any of this. He was in command of the Governance’s military but hadn’t been warned of the largest prospective threat they knew of. He’d only know what Amelie had told Ackahl, she would speculate.

  Amelie didn’t know Sivar body language, but if Corstan had been human, she would have guessed he was both furious and terrified.

  “We have fought against and alongside the Construction Matrices,” Amelie finally replied. “The central mind nearest you has been damaged beyond repair. It does not care if there is life on the
worlds it transforms, and it will use—it has used massive force to destroy anyone attempting to stop its work.”

  None of the worlds where the Republic had fought the Matrices were close enough for the light of those battles to have reached the Governance yet.

  “The Builders can move worlds,” the Intendant noted. “Yet you claim to have made war upon them. Successfully, I must presume.”

  “We have saved the worlds of our allies from them,” Amelie confirmed. “They were built to transform worlds, Intendant. The designs they use for war were intended for emergency defense, not to wage military campaigns.

  “They are powerful, yes, but they can be defeated. And we have done so.”

  “How can there be such a threat that the Keys of War were unaware of?” Corstan finally demanded. “It is the Commandants’ duty to guard your Governance, Your Greatness. Without this knowledge, we might have failed you!”

  “Be silent,” the Intendant replied. He didn’t snap or raise his voice, but Corstan recoiled as if struck—and Amelie was reminded that Istila’s predecessor had been executed in the last few days.

  The Keepers had to be feeling that reminder of the balance of power between them and the Intendant…or it was normal enough that they were always aware of that balance.

  “This was a matter of the Eyes and the Voices, not of the Governance,” the Intendant continued. “The Builders were approaching but they were far away. They are no threat to us yet and lie far beyond our star-lanes. The Keys had no need to know.”

  Amelie doubted that Corstan agreed, but he was also clearly utterly terrified of the soft-spoken man in the white tunic.

  “The Matrices are not bound by your star-lanes,” Amelie told them. “Neither are my people. If a Rogue decides that your territory is their next Construction zone, they will be here long before you can see them coming. They will not pass through your fortifications. They will not fear your ships. They will see your worlds as raw materials for their grand projects…and your people will die.”