According to Bolswaithe's calculations, Thomas still had a little over thirty-six of his hours to spend alone before his speed approached normal rate and he rejoined “normal” time.
“What do you want to do today?” Thomas asked Ratatosk as he dressed. He used double the amount of deodorant; he really disliked not being able to have a hot shower, and he had already tried to have a bath using water bottles, but it was just too impractical. He checked in the mirror—he had patches of scruff all over his face mixed with clean skin where his beard hadn't begun to grow. He had just turned sixteen, but thanks to his seven months in limbo, he was closer to seventeen now in the real world. Gramps had always been a man that shaved regularly, as was his dad. But in two or three occasions he had seen them grow a full beard; he had secretly waited for his full beard to grow too.
Maybe when he turned seventeen for real he would grow one. Now he just looked unkempt.
“For starters, I want to eat something better than this.” Ratatosk showed Thomas a bag of chips he had already eaten. Thomas smiled; the squirrel was a ravenous little beast. He and Tony would hit it off instantly.
Tony!
That was what they were going to do today. Find Tony.
“I'll get you something better,” Thomas said, “then we'll check on Bolswaithe.”
***
Ratatosk was indeed ravenous. Thomas couldn't figure out where the squirrel had fit the entire watermelon he had given him. He had cut it in half, and before he could cut a triangle for himself, the squirrel had jumped into one side and chewed through it. The other side had followed, a little slower, but just as messily as the first.
Ratatosk was still licking himself clean as they undocked Bolswaithe from his connection.
“Good morning, Thomas,” the voice sounded high and fast. Thomas had decelerated a little bit and Bolswaithe was now faster than him.
“You need another adjustment…one, two, three, four.” They had done five adjustments already and Thomas knew the drill—he counted until Bolswaithe analyzed the speed of his speech.
“Better?” the voice came out perfectly.
“Done,” Thomas said. “What did you find out about the robot?”
“It was a very limited search.” Bolswaithe displayed information on the wristpadd screen. “Nothing conclusive so far, but there was something that, if confirmed, is very disturbing.” The screen split; on one side it showed the robot skull, which Thomas had taken with them to the Mansion and placed in front of Bolswaithe for him to analyze while they slept, and on the other an amateur video of a kid’s birthday party where a flying rod crossed through the air. “I believe these are connected,” Bolswaithe said.
Thomas sighed. Maybe the limits on Bolswaithe’s computing power were greater than he imagined or the butler's intelligence had already deteriorated. “I thought we had said that these rods are an optical effect. An insect flying faster than the camera can see,” Thomas said. “Your words.”
“I remember that conversation differently.”
“Your words without all the technical things,” Thomas said. “You said that it was an optical illusion.”
“That is the general expert opinion,” Bolswaithe said, “and now I believe that is the case in ninety-nine percent of the time, but I’ve been reviewing video records and this one is different. Check the highlights.” The video of the rod froze, and Bolswaithe electronically enhanced the picture, then highlighted in blue a long line attached to a circle on one side of the rod. “See that shape?”
“Yes,” Thomas and Ratatosk said in union.
“Now check the eyes of the robot skull, please.”
Bolswaithe displayed their fight in Ethipothala Falls. “I uploaded the robot's skull and cross-checked it with photographic and video archives. In one of my crosschecks I found a telltale mark. Tony was right. There was a rod in Ethipotala, and it's not much, but enough to do a connection with the rods and the skull.”
“I can't see anything similar,” Thomas said after checking the eyes of the skull. The orbs were a plastic white encasing a video camera.
“I'm highlighting it right now on the video.”
A thin, blue line appeared on the still image of the rod. It was just a straight line that made a slight left turn and then became a dot. Thomas checked the skull's eyes again and found something similar running on the outside of the orbs, just a thin line of golden material that ended up turning left and becoming a dot.
“It looks just like a circuit,” Thomas said, “embedded into the material.”
“It is precisely that,” Bolswaithe said. “A microcontroller. But without actually analyzing it in detail I can't be sure of what it actually does.”
“I'm not getting any of this.” Ratatosk sat on top of the skull and began to munch on something he had saved in his cheeks from breakfast.
Thomas knew the feeling; Bolswaithe’s explanations almost always ended with him not understanding anything, but this time he actually understood some of what the butler was saying. “It isn't alien, is it?” he asked remembering Tony saying something about the rods being of alien origin.
“Oh no,” Bolswaithe said. “Humans are capable of creating such devices, actually many companies create them daily. From cellphones to microwave ovens, all electronic devices carry microcontrollers.”
“So it's basically a dead end,” Thomas said. We can't really know who built this thing.”
“We can't.” Bolswaithe’s screen went blank. “But because of the complexity of the design, we can narrow the search to a handful of companies. All of them within the Guardians’ network.”
“You mean these things were created by the Guardians?” This information was disturbing.
“Not directly by us, but by a company partly owned by Guardians. Inc.” Bolswaithe displayed nine names on his screen, and Thomas recognized four of them and his heart sank.
“The Council of Twilight?” Thomas said. “These were created by a Council of Twilight Company?”
“That's what my analysis points to. These seven months the Council has grown more and more restless and resistant to Doctor Franco's chairmanship. The Doctor holds the title of ‘Grand Master’ and the Cane of Aesculapious. They are lifelong titles, so as long as he lives he has control of Guardians Inc., but that doesn't stop the other councilmen companies from growing restless and it has been known in the past that some try to follow their own agendas.”
“Like killing the enemy's Cypher.”
“That is correct. The Doctor has vetoed any proposal to eliminate Morgan while you were gone, but the suggestions about it being an option had surfaced more than once in the Council.”
“And someone decided to act.” Thomas went to the Aesir to take that option out from the table. The Norns had returned him just at the right time to stop it from actually happening. “So we have a traitor in the Council?”
“More like a rogue action,” Bolswaithe said. “Treason against Guardians Inc. has always resulted in the complete destruction of the traitor and the absorption of their holdings. Once we rejoin the time frame we will resolve this issue with the Doctor.”
Thomas sighed. They really couldn't do anything more about the “rogue” until they rejoined the time frame, but they could still do something about someone else.
“Bolswaithe,” Thomas asked. “Where is Tony?”
“He's on assignment.”
“So you've told me already.”
“So you already know.”
Thomas pressed on. “I want to know exactly where he is and what he's doing, Bolswaithe. I will find out with or without you. I’ll leave you here and not come back for you even if I find out where he is.”
“Thomas...” Bolswaithe said.
“You know I'll do it.”
“He's in Africa, in the Congo at the base of Mount Nyiragongo,” Bolswaithe finally gave in.
“What is he doing there?”
“He's about to go into battle against a faun army of the Af
rican Clans,” Bolswaithe said. “He's one of the leaders of our army,” he continued. “We apparently are going to war.”
A battle, armies, war? It seemed Thomas’s absence had created more than just a ripple in the company. “What is going on, Bolswaithe? Tell me everything! What is this battle about?”
An image displayed on the wristpadd, and Thomas immediately recognized the elegant curved horns of the faun in the picture.
“It is about Mar-Safi,” Bolswaithe said.
Battleground
“Mneme has not returned to the Halls of Remembrance since your encounter with her.” Bolswaithe had been telling Thomas all the relevant details that led to Mount Nyiragongo since he had left. “It has been one of the pressing issues that led to the Clans’ secession from the League of Nations.”
“You've told me that already.” Thomas took a dirt road up toward the battlefield. The gate to the Guardians’ outpost was active and open. Watchmen and Fire Teams had set up a Command center at the base of the volcano and were setting up both a supply line and a trench as he walked among them. “And I understand how the Clans could be angry at me because of that, but what does Mar-Safi have to do with this war?”
“Relations were tense already, and Mar-Safi was hijacked yesterday from the Leyeeta Clan lands by humans.”
“Leyeeta?”
“Hyenas,” Bolswaithe said. “They are one of the strongest African clans and have many settlements. Mar-Safi was living in one close to the Sahara when a group of armed humans attacked and killed many of the Leyeeta as they kidnapped Mar-Safi.”
“And the Clans think it was us who hijacked her?”
“Hoormel Kian is sure it was us,” Bolswaithe said. “He's actually named himself as an envoy to find a 'diplomatic solution' between the Clans and Guardians Inc. He was beginning a speech when we received intel that Mar-Safi was inside Mount Nyiragongo, and satellites confirmed that she's inside the volcano’s caldera by the lava lake. We sent a team in; the fauns were coming too. There were hostilities between the two and soon Mar- Safi was forgotten by both teams trying to rescue her.”
“That's stupid!” Thomas said, leaving the camp behind. He knew that Tony was surely in the front lines.
“It is a sign of how desperate things have become since you left,” Bolswaithe said. “Both the Guardians and the African Clans had already been preparing for combat since the Clans seceded, and their immediate build up around Mount Nyragongo only proved that they had been ready to wage war.
Thomas’s intrusion in the Halls of Remembrance had been the first in a chain of events that led to this. He vowed that he'd do whatever necessary to end this useless fight.
“Stop, Thomas,” Bolswaithe voice became shrill until only beeping sounds came from the wristpadd.
“I can't hear what you're saying,” Thomas said.
“You've decelerated almost twenty-three percent in the last minute,” Bolswaithe told him. “Hold on, I'm compensating.”
Thomas stopped for a second. He hadn't felt the change in speed as things were still frozen around him.
Ratatosk peered into the wristpadd.
“I can see you,” Bolswaithe said. “You're still moving incredibly fast, but you're at the uppermost limits of my camera. If you hold still I can make out your features.”
“How long until we return to normal time?” The last time Thomas asked Bolswaithe had given him almost thirty-six hours.
“At the present rate,” Bolswaithe calculated, “about twelve of your hours.”
“Can you tell us where we are?” Thomas turned the wristpadd toward the mountain, and a plume of smoke rose from the top of the volcano.
“We are almost to the frontlines.” A red laser beam came out from the wristpadd and pointed toward a line in the trees. “You'll find Tony in that direction.”
Thomas quickened his pace as he went into the bushes. He passed Guardian Fire Teams and Watchmen. The soldiers were pointing rifles toward the trees above them.
“The attack has begun,” Bolswaithe said. “The Fauns prepared an ambush. Follow that trail.”
The Guardians were getting ready to repel attackers. Thomas could see fear in some of their faces as he passed.
Then he found Tony at the front.
It was like pausing an action movie in the most intense scene. Tony was yelling, his two swords in hand and ready to receive an enemy that was ready to kill him. Thomas knew the faun that had jumped over Tony, frozen in mid-air. He had met him in the Halls of Remembrance.
It was Chief Gratsat.
The gorilla had jumped over Tony from a boulder, and his arms were raised and locked over a huge, wooden mace, ready and aimed at Tony, his mouth open in a fierce yell, his large canines bared in a snarl.
Tony had braced himself and placed his swords in front of him, aimed at the gorilla’s chest.
“Looks like both of them will be killed,” Ratatosk said as he jumped over Tony and checked the angle of the swords. Gratsat was going to be impaled by the swords, but his weight would surely kill Tony too. “The two generals killed by each other in the first seconds of the battle... Very poetic.”
“Very stupid you mean.” Thomas dropped his backpack and walked over to Tony. “If anyone can stop this madness it’s these two.”
“I don't think that will be an option after time resumes,” Bolswaithe said. “Gratsat will surely die, and Tony's chances of survival are slim at best.”
“Why aren't Henri and his brothers here?” Thomas hadn't seen any of the Grotesques in the frontlines or the camp, and their muscles would have been useful in a battle with these fauns.
“It was still a rescue operation until three minutes ago,” Bolswaithe told him. “You know what most fauns think about Henri and his brothers. We didn't want to provoke them further by bringing them.”
Thomas scanned the area in horror. Fauns were ready to spring a trap on the Guardians surrounding Tony. Once time restarted it would end up in a massacre.
“We need to rescue Mar-Safi,” Thomas said. “She's the main reason for this. If the fauns see her safe and sound this will stop.”
“That would have been the best option before you slowed down,” Bolswaithe chimed in. “But it is a five- to six-hour climb and then another two to reach Mar-Safi inside the caldera. Even if you could somehow carry her back, it would be too late.”
“And if I don’t save her, doing anything here will just postpone the war.”
Ratatosk jumped from Tony and perched himself above the gorilla’s head. “I’d say that the Norns really chose well where to place you,” he said, touching the gorilla’s fangs with a finger.
The Norns! Thomas hadn’t made this connection with the Norns, but he had rescued his grandfather already, and he had slowed down as soon as he reached the battleground. If he had kept in the previous rate of deceleration he would have had more than a day to move everyone out from harm’s way and save Mar-Safi, but now he only had the exact amount of time to either save the armies or save Mar-Safi.
“There must be another way. The Norns wouldn't put me in a losing position,” Thomas said.
“Of course they would!” Ratatosk jumped back on top of Tony’s shoulder. “What would be the point of placing you here if you were predestined to succeed? They are creatures of destiny, but they don’t assign that destiny. They see possibilities and then watch it as it unfolds.”
“So they placed me in a point of time where I can change things?”
“Or let them unfold,” Ratatosk told him. “Destiny is the result of the choices we make.”
“Thomas,” Bolswaithe said, “you have a chance to change this outcome. You can move Tony away and set him up in a way to defeat Chief Gratsat.”
Thomas had already thought about it, and it would be easy to move Tony to the safety of the camp, but what then? Once Gratsat recovered he would attack again and the Guardians would still engage the fauns in combat.
He couldn't move all the soldiers and save Mar-Safi i
n nine hours, but he could give the Guardians the advantage. He could trip the fauns, push them on the ground or tie their feet, which would give the Guardians enough time to react.
And kill them all.
Thomas couldn't do that. “I can't set the fauns to be killed,” he said. “And I can't just leave them like this.”
“But you can change the course of the battle,” Ratatosk said.
“Yes, I can.” Thomas sat down to think by Tony's side. “But then the fauns will be massacred.”
It was a no win situation—do nothing and both sides would tear each other to pieces; help the Guardians, and all that Hoormel Kian had said about the Guardians would be vindicated. There would be war, not only with the African Clans, but with all Fauns.
“You can also tip your king,” Bolswaithe said after a minute or so.
“What?”
“As in chess,” Bolswaithe explained. “Tip your king, resign from the battle. Concede defeat.”
When Thomas didn't answer Bolswaithe added, “The best victory is when the opponent surrenders of its own accord before there are any actual hostilities... It is best to win without fighting. That's from the Art of War.”
“Surrender. Okay, I like that. How am I supposed to do that?”
“Take Tony's and all other Guardians’ weapons away.”
“Are you nuts?” Thomas yelled as he looked around. The Guardians’ weapons were the only thing that could balance the fight against the fauns.
“If you take the Chief's mace,” Bolswaithe said, “he's still very able to kill Tony with his bare hands, and the same applies to all other fauns. Humans, on the other hand, don't stand a chance against them unarmed. They'll have to surrender.”
“And what happens if the fauns don't accept their surrender?” Thomas asked. “What if I leave them defenseless and they are all killed?”
Guardians Inc.:Thundersword (Guardians Incorporated #2) Page 32
