by Simon Kewin
“Who is it?” she asked. “What are they doing?”
Ondo still hadn't replied. She craned her neck around sideways to look at him. In the freezing air, her ragged breath billowed out in front of her, clouding the scene. Her artificial systems had compensated for the icy grasp of the polar air, ramping up exothermic chemical reactions to spread warmth through her tissues. Ondo had no such protection. He hung by his straps from the other seat. His eyes were closed and he wasn't moving. His muscles were shivering involuntarily. She queried the flecks in his brain to check his biological status, something he'd granted her privilege to do. His nervous system was sluggish, but active. He was alive, physically undamaged, but succumbing to frostbite and hypothermia as his biology withdrew precious heat from his extremities to keep his core alive.
She queried the lander's systems to see if the voidhull could be sealed, the air within warmed, but got no response. The lander was dead.
She reached across and touched Ondo's hand, uselessly willing heat to cross from her flesh to his. Unable to manipulate its immediate environment, his biology was reacting as it should, but it was a flawed strategy. He would never emerge from his oblivion. She had to override his natural reactions, rouse him, take control of his body's responses. She sent instructions into his flecks, instructing them to rouse him to consciousness, at the same time grappling with the restraints that held her pinned to her seat.
She fell to the floor that had once been the ceiling, landing in an undignified heap. In the same moment, Ondo's flecks reported that he was responding, slowly surfacing to awareness. She reached up above her head to free him from his restraints, catching him as he fell to cradle him to the ground. She wrapped her body around his to give him her warmth.
She saw the moment his eyes flickered open. From his far-away stare she guessed he was also studying the telemetry, pulling in all the data he could just as she had, assessing his situation. His augmentations were nothing like hers, but they were capable of passively monitoring his surroundings while his natural brain slept. Now, finally, he answered the questions she'd asked him while he was out of it. They were close enough for his words to be communicated brain-to-brain, with no prospect of anyone else listening in.
“It's a Void Walker.”
“Here?”
“So it seems.”
“How can that be? You've been monitoring the planet intimately since my escape, watching for possible traps.”
He thought about that for a moment, his larynx bobbing in his neck as he worked his throat into life. “They must have embedded him in the ice-cap during the chaos of the initial attack. My guess is he's been here ever since you escaped, waiting for the moment I, or someone, came for the fragments.”
“We might never have come; the Walker could have been here for years, for his whole life.”
“The Void Walkers are fanatics, unquestioning, used by Concordance as it sees fit. One would happily sacrifice themselves on the spot if a First Augur instructed them to.”
“Concordance knew about the ship in the ice all along.”
“Yes.” A troubled look flashed across his features as his words streamed into her mind. “I've mentioned before how they often seem to know things they should have no way of knowing. How did they discover the fragments were here? How did they calculate we'd find out and come looking?”
“It's no great mystery. They're eavesdropping on you, listening in.”
“I'm sure they're not, you've seen how careful I am. Insanely paranoid, I believe you said. If they knew where the Refuge was, they'd have come for us a long time ago.”
“Then the answer's obvious. Omn knows and sees everything.”
From the flicker of his smile, it appeared her words had amused him. “Of course. That would explain it.”
“Why are we even alive? Why did the other three harpoons miss us?”
“I assume because Concordance don't want us dead yet. They brought us down so they could capture us.”
“Or they want the memory fragments.”
Ondo shook his head, closed his eyes. “They could have retrieved the artefacts any time they wanted. This is about us.”
Another idea occurred to her. “If they knew about the fragments, maybe they were manipulating my father all along, letting him make his discoveries so they would reach you, make you come here.”
“It is possible. Me or someone else, some other enemy of Concordance.”
He was shivering in her arms; she needed to raise his body temperature. The lander was equipped with environmental suits for use if it lost atmospheric integrity or, in extremis, if they needed to carry out EVA manoeuvres. The suit would be clumsy to wear but would give Ondo a degree of protection. A couple of hours outside, and she'd need one too, but for now her augmentations protected her. She propped Ondo up against a bulkhead and retrieved a suit from its locker, vacuum-sealed to minimize its volume. She helped him into it, feeding his arms into the sleeves and closing up the seals, like he was a child and she his mother helping him get dressed.
“What do we do now?” she spoke out loud as she worked, as if it was something of little importance. “They've destroyed the Dragon. We're alone.”
“Most likely the Dragon detected what was happening to us and went into a stealth/evasion pattern. It's possible it's simply hiding itself.”
“Where?”
“Hard to say. I gave its Mind considerable autonomy to act in these situations. Preprograming an adequate response is basically impossible, and its capacity for analysis and strategy is considerable. Besides, it would be a risk if we knew exactly what it was up to; if we did, then potentially others could find out from us. If it's out there, we still have a chance.”
“So, we sit and wait?”
“The Walker is waiting for us at the pole. I think we should go and see what he wants.”
She studied the distant scene, seeing it from overhead through the eyes of an atmospheric nanosensor. The Walker stood unmoving in front of his buried ship. Clearly waiting for them. “I don't like it. We're safer here.”
“It's not like you to be cautious,” said Ondo. “I thought that was what I brought to the relationship.”
“There's taking the attack to them and then there's suicide. This ship gives us some shelter.”
“Not enough. It's broken beyond repair and our food supplies will run out very quickly. Sooner or later we have to confront him, especially if the Dragon has been destroyed. His ship is the only way off this planet. Perhaps there is something going on here we don't understand. Perhaps this Walker has gone rogue, isn't what we think. In my encounters with them, I've sometimes had the impression that there are suppressed, conflicting personality traits within them. Some repressed side-effect of their indoctrination. Or, then again, if he is what we think, and he's summoned other Concordance forces, we should move before they get here.”
With her help, he climbed to his feet. His core temperature still wasn't as high as she'd like it to be, but it was stabilizing. Moving would be good for him. The air outside the ship was frozen cold, but it was mercifully still, with no wind-chill. At least they'd be safe from the ice-wolves that had once prowled the snows. They'd even have the weak light and heat of the sun on them for the five kilometre trek to the pole. The thought of that, her homeworld sun, the sun of her childhood, shining on her skin once more, was an appealing prospect.
They scavenged what few supplies of food and water they could from the wreckage. They obviously had access to an unlimited supply of ice, but she was wary of lowering Ondo's core temperature again if he consumed it. What else could they take that might be useful? Not much. The craft had been equipped with a rack of handguns and rifles, but these had been thrown clear in the harpoon strike.
She climbed out of the jagged hole in the lander's voidhull and jumped down to the ice. The craft's remaining blaster array was still attached. Bracing her foot against it, she wrenched one of the barrels and its firing mechanism free from its tur
ret. It would do as a makeshift weapon. It would have been too heavy for any normal person to use, unless they were from some seriously high-g world, but she was able to cradle it in her left arm with relative ease. There was no mechanical trigger, but there were electronic control systems she could interface with to make the weapon fire. It retained enough charge for a few shots. Holding it made her feel a little bit better about facing the Walker.
She helped Ondo out of the ship and they set off. The sliver of sun was low in the north, canted onto its side like the thinnest sliver of a new moon. A shooting star arced across the velvet sky and winked out. Perhaps it was some Concordance orbital artefact burning up, or one of Ondo's, or just some random speck of space dust. The hazy light gave the scene a sense of impossible distances, as if the distant peaks and folds in the ice were unreachable, mystical lands. Their path looked clear enough though: head south for the pole and the waiting Void Walker. They walked together in silence, each of them sifting through the telemetry from above, wary, watching for the arrival of other ships.
Half-way there, a single harpoon shot blasted off from one of the batteries at the pole. All shining white metal, it rose into the clear, cold air upon a column of cloud to reach a height of four hundred metres. It was already angling back down to the ice as it flashed over them, soundless in its supersonic rush. It was clearly targeting the ruined lander. It struck a few seconds later. This time, there was an explosive payload; the detonation burst apart the air, the shock wave through the ice sending both of them stumbling to the ground.
She caught Ondo's eye, and a look of understanding passed between them. Concordance did want them alive, and it was making sure they had no way off the planet. They could do nothing but continue to the pole.
The Void Walker stood motionless as they approached, a calculating scowl on his features. He wore the plain grey robes of all those in his sect. He was a young man, barely older than she was. There was something predatory in his features, as if he were deciding the best moment to leap to the attack. Judging by the hunger in his eyes, the prospect of it delighted him enormously. His head was shaved bald, a caterpillar scar creeping across his skull behind his left ear, as was the case with all Void Walkers. Some part of the medical procedures carried out on them, according to Ondo.
His voice was fuzzed slightly by the energy wall, but his words were clear when he spoke. “We knew you would come. We knew you wouldn't be able to resist the temptation of the forbidden knowledge buried in the ice.”
“Why are you here?” asked Ondo. “Such a cold and lonely place to see out your years.”
The Walker's grin widened at Ondo's words. “You should know all about being cold and lonely, heretic, traitor, out there alone in your hollowed-out rock. Except, now you're not alone; now you have your companion to listen to your lies. This girl from Maes Far, or what little remains of her. What abomination have you turned her into? Your whore, programmed to submit to your every depravity?”
Selene took a step closer, bringing up the barrel of the lander blaster to point directly at the Walker's head. The energy wall might or might not be powerful enough to protect him from a close-range shot. “What do you want, Walker? What you are doing here?”
“Isn't it obvious? I'm here to complete what was started. You must die. It is clear there isn't much of you left, but even that must be burned away until nothing remains. It is because of populations like yours that evil enters the galactic mind. Your sins are to blame for all that is malevolent and cruel. There must be no survivors of Maes Far; its evils are to be cauterized.”
“What evils?”
“The fact that you don't know simply proves your debasement.”
It was the grin on his face that made her fire, unleashing a solid beam of blaster fire at his head. He stood impassive, unmoved, as the energy flared across the surface of the dome and dissipated with a rising whine. He was unharmed, but she at least felt better for having tried. He probably didn't know what the supposed evils were, either. He was a tool of Concordance, dutifully parroting the words given to him. Even if he didn't believe the words he'd spoken, he would have said them anyway. His appearance, the arrival of she and Ondo at the pole: it was all a performance, the final act in the long destruction of Maes Far. The air was thick with enemy nanosensors, recording images, streaming it skywards. The galaxy would be watching; it would be allowed to see. The last survivor a survivor no more. The iron rule of Concordance enforced. Judgement enforced.
“And what of me?” asked Ondo. It appeared he'd come to the same conclusion that she had. His voice was tinny through his suit's speaker grille. “What are your plans for me? If you simply wanted us dead, you could have struck us in flight.”
The Walker inclined his head to one side to consider Ondo. “You will be returned to Omn, to the light you turned your back on. You made vows to him, and they will be kept, one way or another.”
“And what if we choose not to come?” she asked. “What if we choose not to play our parts in this little game of yours?”
“Then I will make you play.”
“We would walk into the darkness of this world, the world you destroyed, rather than join you,” said Selene. “You can't touch us hiding away in your little bubble.” It was an empty threat, but it was all she had. They had nowhere to walk to, and more Concordance ships would be arriving in-system soon, if they weren't already there.
“Oh, I think I can keep your attention a little while longer,” the Walker replied. “You see, I haven't been alone all this time. You are not the only survivor of Maes Far. There is one other. I've had my companion, too. Would you like to meet him? You know him, of course.”
A cold horror trickled through Selene at the Walker's words. “Who?”
By way of a reply, the Walker waved a hand and, without looking back, gesticulated for someone to come nearer. The entrance to the ship was little more than a hatch leading down into the ice. Bony hands clutched at the lip, and then an old man with straggling grey hair and a look of alarmed madness climbed into the light. He squinted, cowering as he took in the scene around him, as someone might who hadn't been allowed outside for a long time. He shivered visibly, only a stained white gown, torn in several places, keeping the polar cold from his skin. It was impossible to tell whether her face was covered in grime or bruises.
It took Selene a moment to grasp that this frail, shaking man was her father.
She raced forwards, throwing herself at the energy wall. Despite all her strength, she couldn't break through. “What have you done to him? Why is he here?” Her father recoiled a step at the sight of Selene charging forwards, but there was a moment when something like recognition flashed through his eyes. Hope and horror combined.
The Walker sounded amused. “In truth, he's been a poor toy. It took only a few months to break him, make him tell me everything he knows. He is weak, degenerate. The memory of the scourging agonies he has suffered at my hand keep him compliant, and he now obeys any instruction I give him without question. Pathetic, isn't he? I think he's probably happier like this, knowing his place, understanding where he belongs in the order of things. There must be comfort in that, don't you think? Before I took him, he was filled with such grand ideas and doubts. Now he is himself. Are you pleased at the sight of him?”
Selene battered on the energy wall three, four times with all the strength of her augmentations, but made no impact. She couldn't reach her father. In the thin light from the low crescent sun, there was a hint, the slightest hint, of black in his matted grey hair. Once it had been raven-dark, like hers. He'd been a strong man, muscles wiry and taut from his years of hiking and digging, but now he sagged like a broken puppet. His skin had once been weathered, darkened, by his long days spent outside in the elements, but now it was sallow and pale.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked through her tears.
But she knew the answer to that question, too. They'd tortured her father for information. More: the show was conti
nuing, and they were the masters of the message, spreading the truth they wished people to see. As much as anything, the destruction of Maes Far was a warning to the galaxy, and the last deaths, those of her and her father, would make that warning complete. Two dangerous heretics, enemies of Concordance, brought to justice, and their entire homeworld sacrificed along with them.
Concordance wanted to obliterate everything the inhabitants of Maes Far had learned. Whatever secrets the planet had harboured, Concordance wanted to be extremely sure that they never escaped. They didn't know who had learned what, who suspected what, and so they were killing everyone on the planet in order to be sure. The calculation of it was simple.
A Void Walker was forgiven all sins, could carry out any evil, any atrocity, so long as it was done in the service of Concordance. Their souls were already lost. The one standing before her slipped a knife from his sleeve, its edge glinting, honed to a fine edge. A cutting blade.
“Ondo, do something,” she said. But, incomprehensibly, Ondo wasn't looking at the unfolding scene. He was staring into the sky, studying something, as if bored or offended at what was taking place.
The Walker held the knife to her father's neck, but his gaze was on Selene. “Give your daughter your message,” he said.
Her father's throat worked a few times, his Adam's Apple bobbing. His voice was wavering, broken, but he got the words out eventually. “You have to die, Selene. You should have died; we all deserved to die for our evils. You should never have escaped judgement.” Now there was no look of recognition in her father's eyes.
Selene hurled herself once again at the energy wall, screaming abuse at the Walker. Even as she did so, she knew she was playing her part perfectly. The galaxy might or might not see the Walker threatening a defenceless, broken wreck of a man, but it would see her screaming in her animal fury. It would see what Ondo had turned her into.
