by Chris Walley
In between making his calls Merral looked at the images of the Triumph of Sarata to see if there was activity. Soon four vessels—three large cylinders and a smaller cone-shaped ship, separated and began an ominous descent toward Farholme.
One new complication soon emerged. The entrances to the Langerstrand center had been closed with the thirty people working on the liaison project still inside. Those inside were cut off from communication and it was not long before a new and troubling word was heard in the war room: hostages.
With ten minutes to go before the deadline, Corradon walked into the tiny annex to the war room that served as Merral’s office. He sat on the edge of a chair, his face overflowing with anguish.
“What am I supposed to do?” he asked in plaintive tone. “Is it possible that it is a bluff?”
“Perhaps. But I wouldn’t assume so.”
The representative reached into an inside pocket and pulled out the small transparent box. “This is all they want,” he said, in sad wonderment, lifting the lid so that the gray wafer could be fully seen. “This pathetic little sliver of synthetic material. Is this worth the lives of men, women, and children?”
Merral suddenly felt such an overwhelming sympathy for this man and his dilemma that he felt unable to answer.
Corradon rubbed his face in his hands. “If I say no, I condemn people to die.”
Merral felt he had to speak. “True. But if you say yes, you betray the Assembly. And if, as we believe, the Dominion needs the data in the Library in order to attack the Assembly, then both choices involve potential deaths.”
Corradon shook his head in dismay and thrust the box back into his pocket.
Clemant soon entered and noiselessly took up a position in a corner of the room.
In silence, they watched as the figures on the clock slipped by. When 12:00 arrived, Corradon buried his head in his hands, his broad shoulders shaking.
The silence continued.
Over the next few hours, the three large cylinders landed at Langerstrand while the smaller one stayed in low orbit. Images from the peninsula showed machinery being unloaded and excavations beginning around the liaison center. Within an hour, a structure was formed from massive sheets—a tower of dark metal that grew like a vast, severed tree trunk.
Merral received a call from Vero. “I’m staying out of sight,” Vero said, “there’s plenty to do.”
“Can we save this village?”
“No. We don’t know where it is. We can hope the irregulars may make a defense. But that’s all so far.”
“So far?”
“There may be other means of defense later. But we can’t use them yet.”
“Vero, from here this doesn’t look good.”
“My friend, it’s not much better down here. But we have plans. Have faith.”
Shortly afterward Prebendant Delastro turned up, his long, bronze-tipped staff in hand. Merral detected a grim satisfaction in his expression.
“So, Commander—as I suspected—the Dominion is revealed in its true colors: a vile body of bloodthirsty and aggressive liars. Their deception is unmasked. They are the brood of demons.”
“I’m afraid that seems entirely possible,” Merral answered carelessly, wishing that he would go away.
Delastro gave him a sudden penetrating look. “Why did you say ‘I’m afraid’?”
“Because I prefer to believe the best of people. I do not delight in the discovery of evil.”
The prebendant flinched. “Nor, of course, do I. But the exposure of evil is the first work of the man of God.” He paused. “We must trust that this envoy of yours will deliver us.”
“I see him as the Lord’s envoy, not mine.”
“Of course, but a weapon given for us to wield.”
“Prebendant, I am very busy. How can I help you?”
“I just came to offer you my support.”
“Very good of you.”
“You can rely on me, Commander. You know where I stand.”
“Meaning?”
“There are others whose real allegiance is less plain. . . .” A rather twisted smile crossed his triangular face. “Whose manner is, shall we say, darker?”
Merral stared at him. Silence is best.
“The questions about Sentinel Enand have never been answered. He has set up a base in the very foundations of Isterrane. He has men who obey only his orders. He spies on us all.”
“I think that’s a bit strong,” Merral said as firmly as he felt he could without risking a confrontation.
The prebendant glared at Merral. “I found out he was observing my Library habits.”
“I see.” Merral remembered that Vero had mentioned discovering the prebendant’s interest in angels. He wondered why, at the moment when he needed all the support he could get, he had to deal with this man.
“Commander, he is not really one of us. Who knows what he’s conjuring down there? What powers? Dark by complexion, dark by action.”
Now barely able to suppress his anger, Merral rose from his seat and ushered Delastro to the door. “Prebendant, I don’t think this is a helpful discussion. I have better things to do.”
“I’m just warning you. It’s my duty as chaplai—”
“Good-bye!” Merral pushed him out and slammed the door shut.
That night Vero, struggling to sleep on his camp bed, was suddenly aware of a knocking at his door.
“Who is it?”
“Perena.” He heard a strange note in her voice.
“What? Hang on.” Vero looked at the wall clock; it was just after two. He pulled a dressing gown over his sleepsuit and opened the door, noting that she was in uniform. “P.! Come in. Take a seat. Any news? I was expecting to hear some.”
“Not yet. It’s impossible to guess their target.”
“What can I do for you?” This is no social call. How pale she looks.
Perena sat stiffly on the very edge of a nearby chair.
“Vero, the fact that there is a single military vessel has confirmed that a . . . a plan I have may work. To destroy this monster.”
“T-that would be . . . welcome news. Actually, that’s a bit of an understatement. How?”
“The Guardian satellites have the firepower to vaporize this ship.”
“I remember. We talked about them. But I thought you said they were too static.”
“They are. But if this Triumph can be persuaded to move on a trajectory toward Farholme the Guardian system would consider it an incoming comet or meteor and open fire.”
But it won’t work. “Elegant. But I have objections, which will hardly have escaped you. How do you get them to take that trajectory?”
“We trick them.” Her face was ashen. “It’s your sort of strategy. We make them chase something, something they need to catch.”
“Such as?”
“A ship heading to recover the Rahllman’s Star.”
“That’d get their interest. But surely, they’d wait until it was recovered?”
“By which time it might be too late. According to Azeras, you can send a signal into Below-Space when you get near a hidden ship and order it to match your speeds as it rises. So if you get the timing right, you can dock and vanish in minutes.” He could hear the excitement in her voice. “They would want to seize such a ship while they could, if they thought it held the location of the Rahllman’s Star.”
“Maybe. Another objection, though. Didn’t you say—it seems like years ago—that there was a password system so that the Guardians don’t fire at our ships?”
“True. All our ships emit a signal that identifies them as vessels, not lumps of rock or ice. But a non-Assembly ship might not send it.”
“They’d copy any signal we’d send.”
Perena paused before speaking. “Yes. But we could always give the wrong signal.”
Somewhere in Vero’s brain something clicked ominously. I don’t like this.
“This would be a piloted mission. Right?�
� At her nod, he asked, “By . . . you?”
She nodded again.
Suddenly, the enormity of it all was terribly plain. “B-but surely, P., you’d be destroyed as well.”
There was a lengthy and heavy silence. Finally, Perena spoke, her words coming out slowly. “Yes. There is a risk. A high one.”
“Tell me you aren’t serious!”
“I am. But with an ejection capsule, I might escape. I’d need picking up within a few days though.”
Vero walked a few paces away, his brain reeling, and then turned round. “I would prefer any other strategy. Any!”
“And so would I. But if we are going to use this, we need to work on it, very soon.”
He tried to think of the practicalities, which seemed to push the horror of the idea slightly into the background. “Yes. They must pursue you. And it will only work once.” But how? His mind ran in a dozen directions.
“Will you help me?” she asked.
“H-Help you on a strategy that may kill you?”
“Yes.”
For some moments, Vero could say nothing. He felt close to tears. “If I must,” he said and put his head in his hands. He sighed. “And I suppose I must.”
An aide woke Merral at five. “Sir, the fourth vessel is coming down at the edge of the Western Varrend at a village called Tantaravekat.”
“Tantaravekat,” Merral repeated, rolling over to face the ceiling. He knew of the place, on a remote road intersection in the middle of the barren Aknal Plain.
“How many people? Three hundred?”
“Five hundred.”
Five hundred. Too many people.
Merral got to his feet. “God have mercy on them. You’ve warned them?”
“The communications around the village have failed.”
“I see,” Merral replied, calling up a wallscreen map that confirmed what he suspected. Tantaravekat was too far away from either the Western or Central Regiments for help to reach them in time. All they would have would be a handful of irregulars.
Merral remembered the vision he had been given by the envoy and shuddered. I want to intervene. But there’s nothing I can do for them . . . except pray.
Merral had a hospital ship placed on standby and requested a reconnaissance satellite overflight at dawn. He then ordered one of the fast scout vessels with a five-person specialist disaster team that the Natural Hazard Management Department used for reconnaissance to be made ready and requested a dozen well-armed volunteers from the Central Regiment to be sent to the airport.
He then waited and prayed.
Exactly at seven, Lezaroth appeared on the screen. His message was terse and delivered without any apparent emotion. “Operations at Tantaravekat are complete. You may visit the village from ten until midday local time. The village is under the control of Krallen units who are under orders not to harm you unless you are foolish enough to try and attack them. The village will be obliterated at 1300 hours. We advise you to be at least thirty kilometers away by then. There is no need to take any reserve or medical vessel; you will find no one living.”
As Merral and Lloyd were rotorcrafted from the roof of the Planetary Administration building to the airport, Merral had a glimpse of the growing defenses. Everywhere he looked there was activity. High dust columns rose up around the city as colossal machines chiseled great trenches and pushed earth and rock into high embankments. Buildings were being shuttered and the roads were clogged with vehicles transporting people and supplies.
At the airport, he explained the situation to the grim-faced men and women. “We must be prepared for the worst we can imagine . . . and then some more.”
23
Merral and the team did not immediately land at Tantaravekat but instead circled over it at an altitude of three thousand meters. It was a cluster of a hundred white-painted brick houses, dusty palm trees, and walled fields in the middle of a vast monotonous and dusty plain of pale salt pans and brown sand fields. They took images and then launched a surveillance drone that flew over at treetop level.
The images the drone sent back shocked them all.
It wasn’t just that there were bodies lying in the streets. After all, death was no stranger to the Made Worlds and disaster teams trained for it. It was two facts: first, the bodies had been torn into fragments; second, perched calmly on the walls and roofs were the creatures responsible.
Merral looked at the ashen, stunned faces surrounding him. Lead from the front. “Everyone, I’m going in anyway—”
“With me,” Lloyd interrupted quietly.
“With Sergeant Enomoto then. It seems there’s no one living, but we need to be sure. I want only soldiers. Disaster team, if we need you, I’ll call.” He felt certain that the team wouldn’t be required. “I want to go, because I think we need witnesses. Someday there may be a chance for justice for Tantaravekat and I want to be able to say that we saw what happened.”
There were nods of agreement and one by one the soldiers said, “Count me in,” “And me,” and “Me too.”
At five past ten they landed at the edge of Tantaravekat Village. Merral, clutching a rifle, leaped out of the ship. Lloyd and the other soldiers followed. Just beyond the landing zone they took up positions with their weapons at the ready.
Merral soon saw the Krallen. A pair sat atop a palm tree, staring at the party from behind the fronds. They were bigger than he remembered, roughly the size of a small calf. “Battlefield Krallen,” Azeras had said. They showed no hostility, fear, or even curiosity, yet Merral senses a deep and strong malevolence.
A gust of hot, dusty air struck Merral and he smelled the heavy, sickly odor of death. He forced himself not to recoil and stood there, blinking in the hot bright light, looking and listening.
There were few sounds: the faint flap-flap of curtains from the nearest house, the banging of a window shutter, the buzzing of flies, and behind them all, the uncanny high whistling and hoots of the Krallen.
“Okay. Let’s do the job!” Merral snapped. “Safety catches on. Stick together. Follow me!”
They walked into the village past the incomplete defenses. Merral stared at the abandoned ditch and rampart system with unease. Even had it been finished, would it have done anything to defend this village?
As they approached the street that led into the heart of the village, Krallen could be seen perched along the roofs and on balconies like monstrous, deformed birds of prey, their whistles and quavering cries to each other showing pride and hatred.
A single Krallen strolled—there was no other word for its action—into the center of the street no more than a dozen paces ahead of them and turned to face them. Its eyes had a dull red fiery gleam that Merral had never seen on the Krallen at Fallambet.
Merral, suddenly aware that his palms were sweaty against his gun, half-turned to Lloyd who stood at his shoulder. “Say something to encourage me, Sergeant.”
“How about ‘even though I walk through the dark valley of death, I will fear nothing evil’?”
“‘For you are with me, your rod and your staff protect and comfort me.’ That will do. Here goes.”
Merral walked forward until he was barely three paces away from the creature and could see every detail, from the tiles of the body to the opposing claws.
For a long, appalling second, they stared at each other. Then, with a careless flick of the tail, the creature sauntered away.
The street behind was full of bodies.
Trying to avert his eyes for as long as possible, Merral watched the Krallen above. They tilted their gray heads, which somehow evoked memories of both dogs and reptiles, and stared back with red eyes. Some opened their stained jaws, some seem to flex muscles, and still others—in a dreadful parody of animal activity—seemed to groom themselves and examine their glinting claws. In their posture, Merral sensed a proud, almost mocking, indifference to the dreadful handiwork on the streets.
He steeled himself to what he faced and walked on, carefully we
aving his way past the human remains and avoiding the dried black rivulets in doorways and on the deep-set windows.
Amid the horror, Merral was surprised to find that although he seethed with grief, revulsion, and anger, a part of his mind remained analytical. He found that recognition a slight but precious comfort. After all, this was not just a horrid place; it was also a dangerous one.
He began to give orders and was amazed to hear the firmness in his voice. “Check that building. . . . Image that. . . . Get shots of those Krallen.” Giving orders allowed him to fractionally distance himself from the unspeakable scenes around him.
Within minutes, it was apparent that their presence was a formality; none of the inhabitants of Tantaravekat had survived. The appalling damage that the Krallen had done to the human beings was highlighted by the restraint they had shown to property. Apart from the universal bloodstains, the worst damage was that doors and shutters had been forced open.
Merral and Lloyd stayed in the central square as the soldiers fanned out in twos to check the few remaining streets. They stood in the shade of a teetering palm tree, beating the bloated flies away, aware that above them, black winged vultures drifted in slow circles.
“Sir,” Lloyd whispered, his voice quavering, “you reckon these things go to hell?”
“No, Sergeant. But their makers do.”
Lloyd wiped sweat from his face. “You know, sir, I’d like to really help them on their way.”
As they waited, it came to Merral that the whole thing was a ghastly hallucination: the heat, the smell, the sight of the Krallen, and the dead. He fought against it, trying to make his mind stay in analytical mode, and forced himself to look around for any evidence of a defense. He found little. It looked as if the handful of irregulars here had not been able to do anything to protect the village. The implications were troubling.
The soldiers soon returned and Merral sensed that beneath their disgust, anger welled up. Their terse reports were the same: there were no survivors.
