by O. J. Lowe
“Not yet,” he called back. “Helga, go get to him. I’ll cover you. We make it out together or…”
“No!” she roared, her voice almost incandescent. “You need to get him out. I vowed to protect him…”
“One of you get the fuck over here and hurry!” Frewster shouted. “Quit bloody talking about it!”
“Ladies first,” Nick said, tossing her a wink. “Come on, Carlow, bloody get to that speeder before I have to drag you there!”
He pointed his blaster at the closest invader, a dark-skinned Vazaran and pulled the trigger, the shot took him in the chest, the force of the blast took him down. “I’m running out of shots! It’s now or never.”
“Helga, hurry!” Frewster shouted. He was probably in the best place, they were doing their best not to hit the speeder. It brought weight to his theory that they’d come here to get Frewster and not either him or Helga. “I order you not to bloody die here now quit being a fucking martyr. You don’t get out of it that easily.”
She didn’t look happy as she glanced first to him, then to the readout on her weapon, all blaster rifles had them to count the number of remaining shots. Her mood looked like it had darkened, it wasn’t good news, that was for sure.
“Three,” she said. “We go on three.”
“You go on two,” Nick said. “I’ll cover you, I’ll go on four, you lay down fire for me!” He nodded at her. “Leave nothing behind. This is all or nothing!”
Begrudgingly, she returned the nod, already had her weapon up as he counted out one, and then two. She was on her feet and charging for the speeder, limping as she clutched at her side while firing one handed into the army. Nick’s blaster reported again and again, scattering those who’d avoided taking cover under Helga’s initial assault, he counted out two more beats in his head and then ran himself for the speeder. Frewster had a key in the ignition, the engines roaring to life as he hurled himself into the backseats and then it kicked forward like a mule. A couple of dull thuds and a scream, he saw a couple of bodies laid out by the bumper, someone who hadn’t gotten out the way fast enough. The speeder was moving, slowly kicking into life but it was going. He saw Helga leaning out the shotgun window, emptying her last power pack into anything that came close, her face screwed up in concentration. Her weapon clicked empty and she tossed it away, let it drop where she’d held it. Shots peppered the rear of the speeder, took out the window. Nick buried his face into the seat, shards of glass slashed at his neck and ears, he rolled onto his back and felt them bounce away.
More and more shots were missing now. They were almost clear of the garage, almost outside.
Almost.
He looked up and he could see the command aeroship above them, moving into an attack position. He tried not to think about what would happen if it opened fire on them, they wouldn’t stand a chance. Maybe a skilled pilot in a faster speeder could evade it indefinitely. An aged man in this heap of expensive crap wouldn’t stand a chance. In the front seat, Helga was writhing in pain as Frewster slalomed the speeder about the fields, trying to make the line of fire unclear as possible. He doubted it’d be anywhere near enough, but the efforts were appreciated. He didn’t want to die like this after all.
Nick reached into his coat, tossed the rags to her. “Try and staunch it as best you can,” he said. He gave her an apologetic look, one that told her he knew it wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. She smiled, jerked her head towards the ship. It was a look that said, if you’re going to do something.
He sat up, punched open the roof window and pointed his X9S at the aeroship. He heard Helga give out a pained chuckle. Frewster coughed. “Dear boy, you can’t possibly bring down one of those with that little blaster.”
Nick ignored him, pulled the trigger, emptied the weapon in the direction of the aeroship. The prediction was a good one, if the pilot showed any awareness of being hit, it didn’t bother them. If anything, it drove them into an attack position, the afterburners kicked up a gear and, in a heartbeat, they were almost on top of them. Nothing like the threat of an attack to bring the predators into a sense of ruthless overconfidence.
“Nice plan,” Helga said. “I thought you had something better. What next? You going to throw rocks at it?”
Nick winked at her, dropped a hand to her shoulder as he slid back into the speeder. He found the disperser, fumbled into his pocket, rooted around for what he was looking for. “Oh, I saved the best surprise until last. When all else fails, throw credits at the problem.”
“If you’re going to do something, then hurry,” Frewster said. “We can’t dodge forever.”
“I think we should stop,” Nick said. “I need a clear shot at it, I need it to be as close as possible for it to work. The moment I say so, Brennan, I need you to hit that accelerator as fast as you can. We do not want to hang around here or we’ll die. End of story.”
He found what he needed, slid the credit into the palm of hand. Either this would work, or it wouldn’t. He prayed it would. Alvin Noorland had done good work, he’d assured everyone that there was no mechanical reason why it wouldn’t. He could still remember that lecture even now, could recall Noorland’s voice as he’d urged them not to do it unless they absolutely had to though. ‘Because,’ he’d said in that rough voice of his. ‘It is hands down, the dumbest thing you could do.’
If Alvin Noorland was watching him in the afterlife, he hoped he was smiling on them all. He needed all the help they could give him. Helga glanced back, a handful of rags pressed against her side. She cocked her head to the side, a bemused look.
“What is that?” she asked.
“Al Noorland’s last gift,” Nick said as the speeder came to a halt. Frewster kept his engines running, one hand hovering above the accelerator stick. “Saving lives even though he isn’t with us anymore.”
They were coming, the ship was swooping in, he could see them getting closer. If he concentrated, he might be able to count the enemy forces sat in the back. He stood up, brought the disperser to his shoulder and aimed down the sight. Centre mass. Control your breathing, he could almost hear his old shooting instructor saying.
Closer.
They were hovering above them, a good thirty feet up and twenty away. Still not close enough to be effective. They might sense a surrender, but they weren’t treating it as a certainty yet. They were wary.
Closer!
“Nicholas,” Frewster said. “Whatever happens, it’s been an honour. Nice to know that Unisco didn’t squander my legacy.”
Closer, damnit! He watched. Twenty feet up, ten away. He could make out the details on the pilot’s face. Behind them, a crimson haired figure, barely taller than the seats in front of her from this angle. She was gesturing, telling them to lower the weapon. She suspected something. Nick smiled.
“Boom,” he said. “Make me!” He stood up straighter, kept one hand on the weapon to keep it steady, gave them the middle finger with the other. “Fucking make me, you bitch!”
They moved closer, the magical range. Studies had shown that kinetic dispersers were truly effective over ten feet, less reliable over twenty and truly useless over thirty. He only needed an element of reliability. Closer still. He’d riled them, he could see the fury on their commander’s face. Even if she’d not heard the words, she’d gotten the gist of them. She wasn’t stupid enough to miss them, though he hoped she was dumb enough to fall into the trap.
He glanced at the credit coin, a white colour and worth five hundred credits, smiled and pushed down on the centre of it. He dropped it into the barrel of the disperser, saw them oncoming and pulled the trigger.
Nick felt the kick of the weapon blast back into his shoulder, some part of him was screaming for Frewster to go, go, go and the speeder kicked off into action, already on the move. The blast itself hadn’t done anything, the force dispersed before it even came close to damaging the aeroship. The credit though had carried on going, driven on by the momentum of the shot until it lodged d
eep in the windshield. Nick saw the look of surprise on the pilot’s face, only for a moment but it was enough.
The last moment anyone aboard would ever have. He had to shield his eyes, covered them with his arm as the giant fireball ripped through the aeroship, tossing it onto its side and driving it towards the ground. It was on its death throes, any idiot could see that, Nick watched as it became little more than a speck in the distance, further and further away. By the time it hit the ground and the explosion engulfed the wreckage completely, they were too far away to do little more than hear it.
“You’re welcome,” Nick said, dropping back down into his seat. “Now fly. Let’s get as far away from here as possible.”
Chapter Nine. The Aerius.
“The pride of the skies, the greatest wonder of the kingdoms you’ll see in this life or the next. She’ll fly you from one edge of the civilised world to the other and she’ll do it in so much style you’ll want to do it again and again. Come ride the Aerius, you’ll never feel more like a Divine. One day, you’ll tell your grandchildren you were amongst the first to ride it.”
Promotional advert from the days when the Aerius was about to take her maiden voyage.
Nobody quite knew why the Aerius had crashed when it did. Nobody had ever been able to find the wreckage, hence the confusion. Without any sort of quantifiable evidence to support a theory, it was doomed to fail before it had gotten off the ground. The only sort of supposition was conspiratorial at best, with none of it concrete. She’d heard them all, the Aerius had always been a pet interest of hers. Not knowing was something that she’d hated. If you didn’t know, you were at a disadvantage.
One theory was that it had been hijacked, not very expertly and they’d brought it crashing down. One that it had been carrying cargo that had vaporised the entire ship. That explained why nobody had been able to find it until now. Hard to find something when it had apparently been broken down into little more than trace atoms. That theory had been proved false. When she’d been in the Chamber of Fate, she’d seen it all. Everything that ever was, everything that ever could be. She’d seen it all and she’d wept, so much suffering and so much death. Little interspersions of joy didn’t make up for that. Triumph didn’t cover tragedy, not when there was so little against so much. It had filled her with despair, she’d seen the world the way it truly was and not the way people believed it to be.
Not many of the memories remained. For a few moments, they’d burned brightly into her brain, searing her grey matter. She couldn’t see anything but them. With time, they’d faded. The old man who wasn’t a man had told her that. He’d worn the face of her grandfather, but he’d been anything but. There’d been something worse than malice in his demeanour.
Indifference. He hadn’t cared what she did with the knowledge, just that she wouldn’t be able to take most of it with her.
That, she suspected, was the test. What you did with what you took. He’d explained it to her, thus. Three questions. The answers would remain with her. Knowledge she would not be able to forget.
“So many,” he’d said with a smile. “Come here and ask the wrong questions. They ask what they think they need to know rather than what they truly need to. Panic. Pressure. It gets to them. That is why they fail. The coolest head inevitably prevails. What sort of person are you?”
She’d asked her first question. “Why can’t I take everything I know now from here with me?” An impertinent question, but not an unimportant one. To understand things, you needed context, she’d always found. The answer to her first question would tell her a lot about the way to move forward.
“Because all knowledge costs something. To remove the knowledge of everything, the price would be tremendous. To take away the knowledge of everything that has been and could be, it is not meant for the minds of man or woman. It would destroy you to walk in the mortal world with that knowledge. Why do you think seers go mad eventually?”
“I assumed that they were sick to start with,” she said. “A long time ago, I thought that. I’ve recently started to believe that may not be the case.”
“One does not simply start to believe. One always believes. It’s merely a matter of acknowledging it or not. A denier always wants an excuse to deny. A believer will always find a reason to believe.”
She couldn’t argue with that. Even as far back as she could remember, now she thought about it, there’d always been that fascination. That key on the mountain had been the prime example, when she’d pushed that old man to his death. Here in the Chamber, his face was as clear as the day, a memory she couldn’t ignore.
“Yes,” her host said. “Every memory, good or bad.” His face faded, replaced with the old man from the mountains. “Ye ‘member me, do ya, little missy?”
“Do you do other impressions?” She wasn’t impressed. “Or just dead old men?”
“Is that ye secon’ question, missy?”
“It is not,” she said. “My second question is, how does one acquire this knowledge and take it back without it consuming you? I do not wish to be destroyed by it.”
The old man chuckled, a sound not unlike bricks smashing through a window. His lungs sounded ruined. A thin stream of crimson trickled from his eyeball. “Ain’ never that easy, little missy. Death is all part of’ been human an’ ye can’ change that, no ye can’.”
“I didn’t ask you why it can’t be done. I asked you how it would be done.”
“That ye did. That ye did.” His lips peeled apart, a crack of a grin appearing. “The reason we can all hold that knowledge, do ye know, is because we’re differen’. Ye get? We’re not like ye. We have that spark of div’nity in us.”
He gestured to her wrist, her eyes had fallen, and she’d reacted with a start at the gem there. For a moment, she thought he’d slipped a bracelet on her. “Ye know what that is? That be a gem from old Gil himself. Contains just a weesiest of his power. Enough t’get ye started I think. Bet ye expect more from his heart, yeah?”
No bracelet. She realised that now she looked closer. It was a lovely piece, all the colours she could ever imagine and at the same time, none of them. Effervescent water. That’s what it reminded her off. Oil on an ocean surface, bathed in sunlight. One made the other. The presence and the void. She could see the gentle pressure point where it rested against the skin of her wrist, could feel the tip digging gently into the vein.
“Div’nity can’ never be bought. Only taken through blood ‘n’ death. That be the only way you can do it. Mebbe ye unite the seven but ye don’ want to do that.”
“Divine blood,” she said thoughtfully. The pressure on her wrist increased. The crimson broke down her skin like a stream of tiny red ants. “I have one question left.” Not a question. She’d made sure of that. A statement. At this point, the mystery man could have taken anything she said any way he liked. He’d made that point earlier enough, he’d let her off when she’d asked him about his impressions.
The face shifted again, swirled about like a whorl of spilled puddling, the body going with it. Her breath caught in her throat, flushed her face as she saw the familiar white bridal gown. She’d paid for it for Meredith after all. Meredith whose face looked the way it had on her aborted big day. Petulant but happy. She was lucky she’d gotten a wedding at all.
“You do have one more,” she said, with Meredith’s voice. “I’d say you should pick it wisely, you know.”
“You don’t sound like her,” she said. “You’re not a good impression of my daughter.”
“I haven’t had to put up with you like she has,” the figure said, more than a little spitefully. There was no need for that, surely. “That old man, your grandfather, they’ve both been with me for a long time now. Your daughter still lives.”
Her face pulled up into a scowl. “Yes. As to whether that is a good thing or not, I’m afraid that we may yet disagree.”
“You dislike her?”
“I don’t care much for her attitude. I tried to do my be
st by her.” She meant it as well. If you were going to deny something, there was little benefit in doing it to a being like this. “She did not grow up the way I would have liked. I would like to have done a little better. I would have wished she’d done a lot more with what she had rather than picking the easy life.”
“You have a third question,” Meredith-who-wasn’t-Meredith said. “Ask now and take your knowledge as reward for reaching this place. Few before you have. Already you are exceptional in that regard. None have ever gone all the way.”
She said nothing, stood back and thought through everything she knew that would stay with her. Her thoughts, not the knowledge that now slid through her unrestrained. It felt hard to tell where one began, and others started, yet she persevered. To give up was not in her nature. With that knowledge split from her own experiences, she started to go through every bit of information related to what had just been said to her. Knowing that all this would be lost to her the moment she left was infuriating, she felt her skin crawling with anger at the very thought of it, but it was what it was, and better this than being left a vegetable by unrestricted access to it all.
“There are two types of people in these kingdoms,” she said. “Those who complain about what their circumstances are, and those that get on with it.”
“A point of pertinence.” That was a bigger word than she’d ever heard Meredith use. It truly wasn’t a good impression of her. “Do you know what you wish to ask?”
“Quiet! I’m thinking.”
Everything. What could she do with everything? She could break the world, she could put it back together. She considered her options, left her foot tapping against the ground. Seeing every possible future, every truth and lie, knowing what could happen, it was truly humbling. The strangest thing of it all was that even seeing the most likely future didn’t leave her wishing to abort. If anything, it only strengthened her resolve, realising that things weren’t as they seemed.
