Empire of Dust

by Jacey Bedford

  Instant panic gripped the crowd. Archie relayed the scene as he quietly slipped away. No one individual could be heard above the clamor. Those inside were jostling each other in the doorways to get out.

  Several people came running from the market square and were trying to get in to see what was happening. Cara, Ben, and Ronan ran with the rest. A small side door swung open, unlatched by a bot, and they slipped into the shadows to find Archie waiting.

  *Hold on—I have to put the lights out.*

  Archie ran back to where he had a view of the body of the hall. Cara could feel him retrieving the tiny sapper bots one by one and sending them to each light source. The candle flames flickered and died, and there were yells and bumps. No doubt someone would find an oil lamp and relight it, but until then, the confusion provided a good cover. When he came back, the four of them ran down the steps that led to the undercroft, their soft-tread boot soles making little noise on the stone floor.

  There was no light at all, but they were all wearing infrared beamers and night-lenses so with Serafin’s schematic in their implants and the Ben-talent for direction pushed to the fore there was no error. They arrived at a strong internal door.

  Barely pausing, the part of them that was Archie silently sent a bot to flip a few levers inside the mechanical lock. They waited to see if anyone in the room had noticed. The Cara-Ronan part sensed six deadheads in the room. Max and five guards? Unlikely. Probably Max, Colchek, and Taris with three guards.

  *The prisoners must be shackled; otherwise there would be more than three guards.* It was Ben’s thought, but they all understood it simultaneously.

  The guards were well-insulated from the noise of the evacuation upstairs. Cara shut herself off from the fear that was bouncing around in the undercroft from the condemned men, and tried to concentrate on the guards. They had a kind of swagger-feel about them that said they were armed.

  *Maybe less sharp than unarmed men might be,* she said.

  *Ready? On my mark. Go!* Ben kicked them into action.

  As they burst through the door, Cara dropped to the right and Ben to the left, drawing eyes away from Archie and Ronan. Ben carried a fist-sized stone in one hand that he’d picked up outside. He lobbed it at the groin of the first figure and the man folded in two. Cara took the second one, rolling in under his aim as he brought his weapon into play. She pushed him backward and went for his arm, slamming his elbow hard into the stone wall. While his gun fell from numb fingers, she put him out with a single anesthetic dart from her smart-dart gun.

  She looked round. Ben was just straightening up from the third man. It had only taken seconds so far.

  Ronan ran straight to Max. He’d been roughed up, so he didn’t look pretty, but he was still on his feet.

  Colchek and Taris were backed against a wall, shackled as Max was, with no regard for the cast on Colchek’s arm.

  *Here, Archie.* Ronan signaled him over, and Archie crouched over Max’s wrists and ankles. The tiny sapper bot disappeared inside the lock mechanism and the shackles fell away.

  *Out now,* Ben said and motioned toward the door.

  “What about us?” Colchek called out.

  “What about you?” Ben’s voice was hard.

  “They’re going to burn us.”

  “Yes.”

  “Take us with you.”

  “Take us, or we’ll tell them it was you took the freak-lover,” Taris said.

  “Take you so you can burn some more of us?” Cara pulled off her hat, and they recognized her immediately. Their faces sagged.

  “But you’re right. We can’t leave you to burn,” Ben said. He pulled a tranq gun from the back of his belt and leveled it at them. “One shot will put you to sleep for hours. You’ll just wake up in time for the bonfire party. Two shots are enough to drop a bull, so you could die, depending on your constitution. Three will kill you for sure.”

  Cara saw Ben’s face was pale and strained. She couldn’t imagine that he’d just pull the trigger, but letting them burn alive was also unthinkable, no matter what they’d done. She realized she was holding her breath, not knowing what he’d do; not knowing what she herself would do if she held the gun.

  “You’ve got a choice,” Ben said. “You can tell me who set up the burning at the tank farm, or you can die right here and now.”

  “Go to hell,” Taris spat at him.

  Ben pulled the trigger.

  The tranquilizer dart hit Taris in the thigh. He stared at it, wide-eyed.

  “Five seconds. Make your mind up,” Ben said to him.

  “Fuck you.” The anesthetic reached his brain and Taris slumped back against the wall, falling awkwardly against his shackles.

  “What about you?” Ben asked Colchek.

  “Please . . .”

  “You have the same choice that he had,” Ben said. “Don’t make such a stupid one. You’ve got a slightly better chance of not ending up as barbecue if you agree to go public with your story.”

  “I . . .”

  “In another three minutes this building will be dropping around your ears. Who told you to burn the tanks?”

  “Kill him and let’s go,” Tatum said.

  “Tell him, Colchek,” Cara said.

  “The director. May we be forgiven. The director told Taris that fire cleanses—but I didn’t mean for Danny to get hurt, honest.”

  “You just won a temporary reprieve,” Ben said. “Unshackle him, Archie.”

  Archie sent the little bot to flip the mechanism in Colchek’s shackles.

  “What about him?” Archie nodded at Taris. “You can’t leave him. If he doesn’t die when I drop this building, he’ll finger us and they’ll burn the poor sod alive in any case.”

  “We can’t take him, either. One extra body will tax the groundcar space as it is. We can’t take two.” Ben took a deep breath, and his mouth clamped into a tight line. Quickly, he pumped two more darts into Taris’ prone body. A cold shock ran through Cara, and, in part, some of it was Ben’s own reaction that she was feeling. He hadn’t taken any pleasure in the act.

  “Max, can you walk?” Ben asked.

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Good. I’ll feel much safer with Colchek out cold, but we can’t carry two of you.” Ben leveled the tranq gun at Colchek and shot one dart into his thigh.

  “You promised . . .” Colchek’s hands flew to the dart as if he could pluck it out.

  “It’s only one dart. You’re not dead yet,” Ben said.

  As Colchek’s knees buckled, Ronan and Cara caught him between them.

  “Let’s get out.” Ben went to Taris’ body and pulled the three darts out of it. The pinpricks wouldn’t show by the time they’d finished.

  “Drag them into the hallway.” Archie indicated the guards. “That part won’t fall.”

  He and Ben grabbed the three unconscious men and pulled them, one at a time, to safety.

  Ben straightened up. “Time for Archie’s wrath-of-God stuff,” he said.

  There were more sounds of chaos from upstairs. By now, most of the crowd was safely outside the building. Archie slipped away again, heading back to his bots in the body of the hall. The voices of the crowd turned to shouts and screams as loose masonry began to fall inside the bell tower. The bell crashed to the ground, but no one was injured. Then, slowly, the fabric of the building began to crumble, starting with the bell tower. The final few, still in the building, stampeded for the doors. Some people elbowed each other out of the way; others helped those less able. A small group of people carrying an unconscious man went unnoticed. Miraculously, or so it seemed, the building held together long enough for everyone to get out, then, stone by pseudo-gothic stone, the tower twisted and fell, taking out the end wall which in turn brought down a major part of the roof and the upper galleries.

  The morning would find a dangerous shell with nothing left whole except part of the undercroft and the south wall with its huge stained glass window depicting the dove of peace.
If the psi-techs left the settlers to clear most of the site by hand, it might be several weeks before the last bit of rubble was sifted and it was known for certain that Max and Colchek were missing.

  *Quickly.* Gen had the groundcar ready. She swung the door open and flung herself out of the driver’s seat to sit in the back with Max. The vehicle wobbled on its antigravs as they bundled the unconscious Colchek into the storage space and Ronan climbed in with him. Ben took over the controls with Cara by his side.

  *Make room.* Archie reached the groundcar last and pushed himself into a space not meant for passengers.

  Within minutes psi-tech emergency squads from Landing responded to frantic pleas from the settlers. They landed their flitters in the street. Teams of paramedics and rescue workers poured out of flitters and onto the pads. As the first pilot lifted off again to make room for more incoming craft, Ben coaxed their seriously laden craft out of the alley and joined the traffic.

  “What are we going to do with Colchek?” Cara asked. She deliberately didn’t mention Taris.

  “Seriously embarrass if not ruin Lorient if he tries to stir up any more trouble.”

  “Where are we going to keep him in the short term?”

  “Cryo. We’ll keep him in a med freezer.”

  “And what about Max?” She nodded toward the back where Gen was in Max’s arms. “Wherever he goes, sooner or later someone will recognize him. Are you going to freeze him, too?”

  Ben looked uncomfortable. Cara suddenly realized why.

  “You’re going to have to take him off planet instead of me. There’s no choice, is there?”

  “Not much. Dammit!”

  “It won’t be for long.” Cara tried to keep her tone light, but tears of disappointment were choking her.

  “I hope it won’t be for long.” He reached out and took her hand in the semidarkness. “I’ll come back and get you.”

  “Maybe Crowder doesn’t intend to abandon us. He might still send a personnel carrier for us all. I might be in cryo, so just stick to your specialty.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Being there when I wake up.”

  “You can count on that.”

  She didn’t mention the possibility of not waking up.

  • • •

  *Lorient is telling everyone that the psi-techs want to destroy the colony.* That message came from Saedi Sugrue in Timbertown. Cara was in the Mapping office, feeling like a spare part as Ben prepared to leave. *He’s just announced that he’ll take a meeting. I think you should come.*

  Cara cut Ben straight into her communication.

  *We’re on our way.* Ben stood up and his chair clattered over behind him. “I think we’ve pussyfooted around for long enough. Let’s go in force. This could get nasty.”

  *Gupta.* Ben used Cara’s link. *We’ll need twenty of your best men, all armed with smart-darts. Bring sound grenades in case we need to do crowd control.* He took a deep breath, gathering his thoughts. *Ronan, have a medical team standing by, too, and, Wenna—*

  “Here, Boss.” Wenna was right next to him and spoke aloud.

  “Make sure this place is well protected. It could be a diversion to draw us away to leave Landing open, especially if they’ve got snoopers out looking for Max and Colchek.”

  “Will do.”

  “Yan.” The pilot was standing by the door. “Get my Dixie ready to go, and put Max in there with a pilot—Gen, you can do that job—if there’s any sign that the settlers are going to tear Landing apart, get airborne, and we’ll arrange a rendezvous point.”

  Cara saw Max open his mouth.

  “Don’t argue, Max,” Ben said, “It’s as much to keep the Dixie in one piece as to save your neck.”

  Ben and Cara ran for the hangar. Gupta’s security team, twenty men armed with smart-darts and sound grenades, piled into flitters alongside them. Cara linked everyone in gestalt. In only minutes they all set down in tight formation on the perimeter of an angry crowd.

  • • •

  Ben leaped down from the flitter, Cara close behind him. Gupta’s men fanned out, ready.

  An impenetrable crowd of people had gathered outside the ruined hall where the Dove of Peace window stood like a monument above the ruins, cracked but not shattered. A wooden platform had been hastily rigged where the debris had been cleared.

  Up on the platform, Lorient was just stepping forward, his hair whipping around his face in the back-blast from the antigravs. Even at this distance he looked haggard. Behind him, Jack stood alone. No Rena. Was that significant?

  “My friends, we have all been betrayed.” Lorient’s voice rang out. “And, look, our betrayers are here.” He pointed at Ben and Cara and swung his arm to encompass the twenty men in black buddysuits with smart-darts held ready.

  He had the complete attention of the crowd. “Shall we suffer freaks and abominations to live among us?”

  There was a roar of “No” from several hundred throats.

  “That’s more than enough,” Ben said to Cara. “It’s time to get some attention ourselves.” He linked into the gestalt. *Set your sound baffles.*

  He clicked his cuff control pad and set his, feeling the background noise retreat to barely a murmur.

  Cara nodded. *All set.*

  Gupta confirmed. *Team all set.*

  Ben took a small sphere from his belt pack and rolled it into the middle of the crowd. It began to shriek with ear-splitting volume.

  His suit shifted the phase on the sound waves to cancel the noise out in the immediate vicinity of his ears, but Lorient’s congregation scrambled to get out of its way, falling over themselves and trampling each other in the rush. The screamer cut a swathe through the crowd.

  *Come on.* Ben signaled, and moved forward.

  Cara, Gupta, and fourteen of Gupta’s armed men slipstreamed after him before the Ecolibrians recovered from the noise and closed in behind them. The rest of Gupta’s crew stayed to guard the rear.

  Ben jumped onto the platform, Cara close behind. The security men took up their position at the base, with their smart-darts armed and another screamer primed.

  Lorient rushed forward through the noise, but Jack leaped, his face a mask of pain, and grabbed Lorient’s arm. As Lorient shook him off, Cara got close enough to make contact. She seized Lorient by the hand and put a twist on his wrist that immobilized him before Ben could give in to his anger.

  Any excuse would do. Ben really wanted to smash his fist into Lorient’s face.

  *Not here,* Cara warned. *Not with all his followers watching. You’ll be playing into his hands.*

  *Don’t you trust me?* he shot back at her.

  *With my life, but maybe not with his right now.*

  Dammit, she was right.

  *Relax. Point taken.*

  The screamer stopped.

  “Jack . . . Jack!” It took two tries for Ben to get through to Jack. He was shaking his head and rubbing his ears with both hands. “Jack, as soon as this lot start to get over the screamer, they’re going to be fighting mad. Say something, anything, to quiet them down and give us some time with Lorient. Don’t worry, I’ll not hurt him, tempted as I am.”

  Cara let go, and Ben pushed Lorient toward the back of the platform. “This way, Director. We need to talk.”

  Lorient turned and pulled back his arm as if he was going to take a swing at whichever one of them he could reach first.

  “That would be a big mistake,” Ben said. “Listen, before you do or say anything else, because you and I hold your colonists’ future in our hands. I want them to survive. What do you want?”

  “I want you freaks away from here, back to where you came from.”

  “Before or after we try and find out who’s trying to screw us all?”

  Lorient paused for breath long enough to enable Ben to launch into what he had to say.

  “Here are the facts. One. The psi-tech force here is on your side. We think someone is going to make a bid for the platinum, and we
’re the only thing that’s standing between you and them. Two. The rest of your colonists in your second ark are missing. Three. If you want to save your people, you are going to have to work with us. The sooner we arrive at an understanding, the better for us all because, believe me, there may be more of you than there are of us, but if you back us into a corner, we can fight dirtier and harder than you ever dreamed possible.”

  “Are you threatening us?”

  “Haven’t you listened to anything Ben said?” Cara interrupted. “We’re trying to help you, but you’re too damn blind to see.”

  “There’s one more thing,” Ben said. “Your thug, Colchek, didn’t escape. We have him and he’s prepared to sing his heart out about you. What will your followers think then? What will your wife think?”

  Cara saw Lorient’s face crease with pain.

  “Now, do you want to talk?” Ben asked.

  • • •

  Cara stood back in amazement and listened, not to Ben, though she heard everything he said, but to the emotions coming from Victor Lorient. The answer to their problems hit her like a shower of bright sparks and she quickly joined with Ben to pass on everything she suspected.

  Ben heard her thoughts and his eyes widened.

  “He what?”

  Lorient’s mouth closed.

  “Hold still, Director.” Cara reached up and brushed Lorient’s hair from his forehead. Along a shallow wrinkle line, almost invisible unless you were looking for it was a fine surgical scar. “There’s no scar when an implant goes in because it’s seeded on the tip of the finest hollow needle, but to deal with it once it’s started to grow through the cortex needs a surgeon of consummate skill. He’s had an implant deactivated and partially removed.” She turned to Lorient. “Director, you used to be one of us.”

  “It can’t be done,” Ben said. “It would kill him, or drive him insane, and I don’t just mean paranoid, I mean a blob of gibbering jelly.”

  “They don’t remove it—it spreads too far too fast—but they can disengage the functions if surgery’s done quickly enough after the first phase of implantation. A girl in my unit at the academy had a psychotic reaction to the implant and opted for deactivation. It’s risky, though, a last option. What would drive a man to apply for an implant, take the time and effort to pass the exams, the psych, and the physical, and then want out almost immediately?”