by Barry Kirwan
"Gabriel sent me. He is dead."
Jennifer staggered, almost tripping over one of the heads. "What? He’s… What are you talking about? And what do you know about my brother?" Visions from the previous night’s nightmare re-surfaced.
"He’s gone, Jennifer. I spoke to him yesterday, but Alicians – like these – killed him."
She balled her fists, sensed the blood rushing to her head. "Why are you doing this? Who the fuck are you, anyway? My brother died in the War years ago. He was a hero, he was –"
"Grimelda."
She paled. "What… what did you say?" her voice was uneven, her legs weakened beneath her.
"He told me that he once called you by that name, to annoy you. It usually worked. You broke his nose on the lake with an oar. He said he never told anyone you did it. He sent me to look out for you."
Her body trembled. She felt herself lose control, the rage boiling inside her. "Liar!" she screamed at him. "Bastard liar!" She lunged at him with the stiletto. He caught her hand in a vice-like grip and pinned it in mid air, centimeters from his neck, his eyes stone calm. With her other hand, and then her feet and her knee she attacked him, landing hefty blows that would have brought anyone else to the floor in agony. But he stood, taking it until her wrath wore itself out. He shook her by her arm.
"He only found out you were alive yesterday. He loved you. You were the only one he ever loved."
She was silent except for her serrated breath, her head bowed. He still held her stiletto hand. She let the stiletto fall. He released her, and she sank to the floor, head clasped in her hands.
"People are coming from the tower," he said. "We will talk more later. Gabriel had a mission. The war is not finished against his enemies – our enemies. You will see me again." He let go of her hand and vanished through the holographic wall.
She was drenched in someone else’s blood. Dimitri’s voice boomed out, calling for her, frantically shouting her name. She listened to him call her name several more times before she got up and walked through the holo-wall.
"Over here!" She brushed away tears, not caring that she smeared blood in their place. "I’m over here!"
Later, alone in their cabin, she told Dimitri everything. He implored her to leave the ship, but she refused. It was two in the morning and she was still wide awake. Dimitri was dog-tired, but refused to sleep.
She felt as if she’d just noticed she’d lost a limb. The worst thing was, if that man was telling the truth, and if Gabriel had only found out she was alive before he – died – then he would have been as warped as she was now. All that lost time they could have had together.
She had often thought their relationship mirrored that between Caligula and his sister – without the incest – a blood-bond intensity that surpassed any other relationship. She closed her eyes and tried to feel his presence, but couldn’t. It was like a sound you didn’t notice until it was switched off. All these years she had drawn confidence from him, maybe because at some unconscious level she knew he was still alive, and now he was gone.
Dimitri, his eyelids bloodhound heavy, stirred and squeezed her again, his bear-like paws wrapped around her unresponsive body. It didn’t comfort her, but maybe, she thought, it was stopping her going over the edge. But it wasn’t – she grasped that it was actually holding her back from dealing with this. She pretended to sleep, and sure enough, a few minutes later Dimitri began to snore. She eased herself from his loosened grip and slipped outside their tent.
She went to the lower control room, inhaling deeply the moist air. Now at least she could be alone with her thoughts. And with her brother. She sat on the cold floor and fingered her necklace. She didn’t need to look at the picture inside of her brother – she knew every line and hollow of his face. "Gabriel," she said, "I never told you how –." Her neck prickled. She sprang to her feet.
"You!" It was the old man, right behind her. She hadn’t heard him enter, and had just suddenly become aware he was there – she had a suspicion it was only because he’d allowed her to. Although she didn’t trust him, she wanted to know more about him, and her brother. Anything he could tell her would be hard currency.
He squatted, tracing a circle on the floor with the hilt of his nano-sword – she’d thought they were an old War-myth – etching a pattern on the surface that was like a tarpaulin stretched taut.
She squatted too, studying his features: grey hair, clear complexion, white moustache and beard, and sandalwood eyes – she hadn’t noticed until now. They accented his composure. No matter what this man did on the outside, she knew he inhabited the eye of the storm on the inside. But she wanted information, facts to paint over the vacuum of ten years of lost connection with Gabriel.
"My name is Cheveyo."
"You trained my brother, didn’t you?"
"My best pupil."
"Assassin?"
"Cleanser."
She was both stunned and proud – it was rumoured only one in twenty survived the training. "Many enemies?" She didn’t take her eyes off him for even a moment.
"One snake, many heads."
She made an effort to play out this game – using statements, not questions – to be equals. He was not her teacher. And she had the feeling he would only accept fiercely independent-minded students in any case.
"But the snake is still alive."
He carried on drawing patterns.
She felt a new sense of purpose – Gabriel was back somewhere in her universe again, part of her life, defining her as he used to. All the past ten years: of failed Chorazin entrance, of being a student biding her time – squandering it – loving a man but having to hide part of herself – the real her – to keep Dimitri – all this suddenly dropped from her, like cinders.
"Who do I kill?" she said, cold-blooded, slipping effortlessly back into Dublin gang-mode.
He met her eyes head on. "You think you are smarter than you are. That is a danger."
She bristled. "I am smart! It’s not just my studies. I saw you earlier. You didn’t look right, something was out of place."
"You think you notice things others do not."
She wanted to get up; her thighs hurt, but she knew that would somehow be defeat. She was in some kind of interview, and if she failed, this man, the one link to her brother, would be gone. But she knew she was smarter than other people.
"I see things others don’t."
The reply was instant, which annoyed her, because she was stuck following his script, which wasn’t how it usually went.
"All others? The men I was with, for example?"
She was about to snort with contempt, and say well, of bloody course! Then it dawned on her that she had been tricked.
"Ah," he said, "progress. What really happened this afternoon, Jennifer?"
She concentrated, suppressing the burning sensation in her thighs. She had missed something – no – she had been misdirected. She’d focused on him alone, not the others. But they were normal – weren’t they? Just some guys lifting a crate. The crate - what was in the crate? It crystallized in her mind.
"You’ve loaded a nuke on board!"
He rose as easily as if gravity was suddenly working in reverse, but did not extend a hand to help her up as she followed suit. He put his hand under her chin, and held it there. "What was I doing just now?"
Instinctively her head tried to move downwards to see what he had drawn, but the hand under her chin was iron.
"Nothing I do is without purpose, Jennifer. Nothing anyone does is without meaning. You must observe, and you must perceive – foreground, background, the threads between. You do see more than others, but your ghosts get in the way." He let go of her chin. For once, she knew she’d met more than her match.
She had to redeem herself. "How long have we got?"
"Where would you like to go?"
"That little time, eh?" She pursed her lips for a moment. "To the snake’s lair."
She grinned – it was the sort of game she a
nd Gabriel would have played – should have played, together. He had been playing without her for a decade, but now she would finish his hand. He would watch from somewhere, maybe applaud. God, how she’d missed him!
Cheveyo flicked his eyes downwards. She looked at the pattern he had been drawing. It was a kind of insect, one she couldn’t identify, and next to it the ankh.
"The enemy." She understood; it all fitted together. "The owners – the true passengers of this ship."
"You are indeed smart. Gabriel told me that once – intuitive almost to the point of prescient. But knowledge divorced from action is academic. Are you ready?" He held up the metal ankh taken from the dead woman’s neck. He walked over to the console. "The people upstairs would not have been able to start the engines. They do not have the key. Besides, upstairs may control navigation, but here is the real control room. If I activate the engines from here, the destination is already pre-set." He held the ankh above a groove in the console. He waited for her reply.
"Shouldn’t we wake the others first?"
"What do you think they will do?"
The engineers would take control and delay launch. "Dimitri was right, after all?"
Cheveyo laid a hand lightly on her shoulder. "Professor Kostakis is usually right, even when he doesn’t know it. That’s why he loves you – your certitude. In fact he has it, after a fashion, but despite what that man said, Kostakis is a scientist, and is bound by a scientific approach. It sometimes slows him down from his true destiny."
Jennifer wondered how and why this man knew so much about Dimitri as well as Gabriel – the only two men she’d ever loved.
"It is time," he said.
She tried to swallow, but her mouth had gone dry. Still he held the key, waiting.
"We’re going to Eden, aren’t we?" She struggled to believe it.
He smiled. "You are ready. Take a deep breath." He offered her his hand. As she took it, he dropped the key into the slot.
Chapter 37
Detonation
"We must go faster!" Rashid shouted through the helmet intercom system. Kat was already edgy enough. They had only just out-run the last shock wave, which had sent a mushroom of scorched sand high into the Eden sky, but they knew another worse one would soon come, as the neutralino detonator unleashed a series of discharges, each more powerful than its predecessor. Sweat trickled into her eyes as she swerved the skimmer around boulders at top speed. Her forearms and shoulders ached, but she continued to follow the Hohash mirror, twenty meters ahead, as it threaded an optimal escape route through the terrain – it meant she could drive as fast as her reactions permitted. A click interrupted her as Rashid activated the comms-link.
"Fifteen seconds until the next pulse. This one will send out high energy radiation. We must find shelter – the large boulder up ahead and to the right – stop on the leeward side."
Kat braced her arms and back, and let go of the throttle, triggering a descending high-pitched engine whine, shoving Rashid’s body forward onto her as they slowed down markedly. She veered the skimmer in a steep turn to the right. The mirror also turned, marking a wider arc. As she swerved the skimmer in a final tight twist toward the opposite side of the boulder, she caught sight of the pre-flash of white and purple, back where the Phoenix had been. She ploughed the skimmer over the sand like a surf board, as it juddered to a stop, but she misjudged it, and they bounced off a small dune hidden behind the boulder, knocking them both to the ground as the skimmer skittered away, sputtering to a halt.
"Right against the rock. Cover your eyes!" Rashid shouted.
Kat had no trouble complying, scrambling toward the boulder’s sheltering stone face. She curled up on her knees, face down, forearms across her visor, trying to bury her head in the sandy floor, to save her retinas from melting.
A hissing roar rose to an ear-splitting crescendo, even through her helmet. Kat knew it was the sound of the sand vitrifying and splintering, sending deadly shards up into the air. It was followed, not like last time by a sonic boom, but by a screeching that made Kat imagine banshees hurtling over them at great speed. Part of her wanted to take a look – she’d seen remote images of a neutralino detonation, but they’d always been optically filtered. Apparently, so a few now-blind people had said, it was one of the most spectacular sights ever, since it ionized the air and everything in its reach, casting out a luminous rainbow of metallic hues whipping like laser-wire through any unfortunate atmosphere in its wake – a scouring aurora borealis at ground level.
She recalled that the first ‘small’ test detonation six years ago in Alaska had not been sufficiently far away from population centers, and hundreds of Eskimos had gone blind. The scientists had also failed to predict the amplification effect underground, as the detonation had collapsed subterranean habitats hundreds of miles away. As the static-charged wind battered against her suit, she squeezed her eyes shut further. She recalled how they’d got into this.
They’d been heading out to the Phoenix, and were only ten minutes away from it when she’d copped a blinding migraine. Within seconds she brought the skimmer to a halt, and staggered off, unable to see. She fell to her knees and could barely hear Rashid’s increasingly alarmed questions. Then she saw what the Hohash was transmitting to her through her node.
"Rashid! There’s another ship next to yours."
"From Earth?"
She saw a small black ship, insect-like in shape with a large glass canopy in front, on six spindly legs. A single Q’Roth guardian emerged, carrying a long pole with a small box at one end – presumably a weapon.
"No – Q’Roth." It was hard to talk; the transmission hammered inside her skull.
"Kat, you must tell me everything you see. Everything!"
She narrated the scene as the Q’Roth walked – no crawled, or whatever – around the site, and then entered the single surviving module – Rashid’s home. The view shifted to the ND device and a digital display with three green lights shifting to reds. A figure of six-zero appeared, then it read five-nine, then five-eight…
Rashid pulled Kat to her feet and steered her over to the skimmer. Her headache vanished and her vision returned.
"Kat – listen to me – I have no idea how, but the Hohash has activated the detonation sequence. We have only fifty seconds before the initial discharge. Are you fit to drive? I have never driven a vehicle like this."
She drove for her life. The first, tightly-focused detonation had merely been felt as a pressure wave behind them. She managed to control the skimmer and surf it out.
But since then, despite the increasing distance they put between themselves and ground zero, they had already taken shelter twice behind a land mass to avoid being shredded by the sand-blast effect, or microwaves from a cocktail of lethal radiation.
Kat had not only received visual images from the Hohash, however. Just before it disconnected from her, there had been a fleeting emotional burst. It had wanted revenge, to kill a Q’Roth, a slayer of its masters. Having seen the guardian’s ship, undoubtedly armed, she was glad the mirror hadn’t wasted the one device they had which could destroy one of the aliens. Up to now, it seemed to her the Q’Roth had been ignoring Rashid and the Ulysses, probably out of contempt – they weren’t worth bothering with. That had changed now. They’d gotten the guardians’ attention.
Rashid tapped her on the shoulder. It had passed – until the next one. She got up and witnessed the desert dunes to the sides of the boulder, shimmering like glass blisters. Behind them, back toward what had been Rashid’s camp, a corona of sky around the boulder flickered a halo of violets and deep blues, as if somewhere in the distance hell was throwing a party. She had a bad feeling this particular party was just beginning. But she knew they were past the worst of it; they could outrun it now, and it wouldn’t reach the Lander. Lifting her visor, she gathered some saliva and spat onto the desert floor. It sizzled. "Let’s get out of here."
***
Blake stared upward at Pierre
being reeled in by the Q’Roth warrior.
"Pierre! CUT – THE - LINE!" He fired his second flare, as Pierre managed to slice through the taut wire. The flare stuck in the rocks just below the creature, so it wouldn’t be able to see them unless it jumped down. Blake prayed it couldn’t fly. He ran towards Pierre to try and break his fall but he didn’t make it. As Pierre hit the ground he crashed straight through it.
"Pierre!" Blake ran toward the hole, but the entire chamber shook, and he was knocked off his feet. The shaking was severe – it reminded him of the San Fran quake of ‘34, the mother of all US earthquakes, the one that finally had brought down New Bay Bridge. He rolled away from the cliff bottom just in time as rocks tumbled down. The noise rose to the point he couldn’t distinguish anything. In the last moments of the light, several eggs toppled over and rocks from the domed ceiling crashed to the floor. A second before the light failed, he saw an overhang that looked as solid as anything could be. He dove underneath it, tucking into the crash position with hands clasped over his head. The bone-shaking continued for another minute. He knew this wasn’t a Q’Roth protection system – it clearly endangered the eggs.
At last it ceased. Coughing from all the dust, he realized it was either a nuclear device or the neutralino detonator had gone off early; if Kat and Rashid had been in the vicinity… He had to focus on his and Pierre’s survival now, and the reason they had come here – to steal an egg – though he clearly had to re-think that strategy.
He crawled out from the overhang as the avalanche of rocks eased off. His vid imprint of the chamber was useless, so he fired the third of his four flares, set to low-burn, into the domed ceiling far above him. In the granite twilight it offered, he craned his neck and strained his eyes towards the ledge, but couldn’t find the creature. He stumbled over loose rocks to where the hole had been. It had narrowed in the quake.
He froze as he recognized something a few meters away, buried under a large rock – the creature, refreshingly immobile, and in a mangled posture, like a nightmarish cubist painting. Maintaining a safe distance, he shone his torch on it. A large pool of the blue-black fluid they assumed earlier was its blood gathered about its head.
