Vengeance

by Brian Falkner

“Who’s Dimitri?” The Tsar asked.

  “Dimitri Nikolaevna,” Goezlin said. “A regular member of Angel Team Four, along with Ryan Chisnall, Trianne Price, Retha Barnard, Hayden Wall and Janos Panyoczki.”

  “Never heard of any of them,” The Tsar said.

  “You might be surprised how much information we have compiled on you all,” Goezlin said.

  “Your spies were uncovered a long time ago,” The Tsar said. “They’ve been feeding you false information for years.”

  He waited for a response to that, but didn’t get one. There was no sound at all except for the slow tapping of Goezlin’s shoes, a light tread on a concrete floor. Was he pacing the room? Was he tapping his feet? The Tsar couldn’t tell without twisting his head around and he wasn’t going to give Goezlin that satisfaction.

  The footsteps moved away, then returned. When Goezlin spoke again it was in a softer voice. If not more friendly, then at least conciliatory.

  “It may surprise you to learn that I have a son, about your age,” Goezlin said. He sighed. “What I would feel if he ever found himself in your position, I cannot imagine. But of course that would never happen. We do not send our children out to fight. And do not think that will prevent me from doing my duty. My having a son will not save you if you do not tell me what I need to know.”

  “What’s your son going to think when we kick your Bzadian asses off our planet?” The Tsar asked.

  “I need to find out what your friends are up to, and to stop it,” Goezlin said, as if he had not heard The Tsar’s question. “Let us examine my options. There are drugs I could use, but they would take too long.”

  “Say no to drugs,” The Tsar said.

  “I could subject you to pain that you could not withstand,” Goezlin said. “But your history and ours shows that people will say anything to stop the pain and I would not trust the results.”

  “Whip me, beat me, make me listen to rap music,” The Tsar said.

  “Fortunately I have a better option,” Goezlin said.

  “Oh God, not the rap music,” The Tsar said. “I was only joking. Anything but that! Peace out.”

  “I think we should discuss your family,” Goezlin said.

  Now The Tsar was silent.

  “And at last we get a reaction,” Goezlin said.

  “There’s not much point in talking about my family,” The Tsar said.

  “Is that what you believe?” Goezlin said.

  “You know it as well as I do,” The Tsar said.

  Goezlin said nothing, but the display screen in front of The Tsar came to life. A photograph came up on the screen. The Tsar stared at it for a long moment.

  “It’s a fake,” he said.

  “You know it’s not,” Goezlin said, as more photographs flashed past in a quick slideshow. “And neither are these.”

  “Identification and purpose?” The voice came out of a speaker in the centre of the ceiling. The language was the high language.

  Chisnall looked carefully at the doors as he considered his reply. The glass was thick, no doubt bullet and bombproof, and the two sliding panels completely overlapped, providing a double layer of protection. In front of the doors a heavy metal shutter protruded from a ceiling panel, ready to slam shut in the event of an attack. This was what Kozi had called “light protection”.

  “I bring an urgent report on the new human jets,” Chisnall said.

  “We are in security lockdown,” the second, more senior guard said. “Please give us the information and we will pass it on.”

  “The report is red-listed,” Chisnall said. “High security.”

  “Then it can wait,” the senior guard said.

  “No it cannot,” Chisnall said. “As it concerns an imminent attack on this building.”

  There was silence as the two guards conferred with each other.

  “There is no admission to this secure area until the situation above has been resolved,” the guard said. “If it is urgent, you will have to submit the report electronically.”

  As he spoke, a Bzadian female in Azaykin uniform stepped into the security area behind him, talking urgently on a radio. She wore insignia denoting her rank. A captain of the guard. She looked up and caught Chisnall’s eye.

  Chisnall kept his face impassive, giving no indication that he recognised or knew her. But he did. And his world had just turned upside down.

  It was Kozi.

  “Here they come,” Wall said.

  Price nodded. She had heard it too. The sound of the doors opening.

  The time The Tsar had bought them had just run out.

  They were concealed in the art gallery at the rear of the atrium. She eased her head around a pillar. The entrance doors were open but the doorway remained empty. A head appeared, just a quick stolen glance, checking the corridor was clear. A few seconds later a soldier stepped into view, crouching, weapon at the ready. Another emerged from the opposite side of the doorway. Their weapons traversed the grand entranceway.

  “Hold your fire,” Price murmured. “Let’s see how many we are dealing with before we engage.”

  The uniform of these soldiers was different, Price noted. There was something hard and clean about them. Something very efficient about the way they moved into position.

  “Nzgali,” Wall breathed.

  The two on point moved forwards and four more joined in behind them. Another complete squad followed.

  “A little closer,” Price murmured into the com. “Now.”

  They had dialled their coil-guns up to maximum. Maximum noise, maximum damage. The noise, echoing off the pillars, was deafening. The glass doors behind the Nzgali shattered and several of the soldiers fell, their body armour shattered.

  The rest hit the floor and began returning fire.

  The pillars began to explode around the Angels in shards of concrete and plaster.

  “Fall back, fall back!” Price said.

  The Nzgali advanced in combat formation, moving in pairs, leapfrogging each other. One providing constant covering fire.

  “You’re sure this is a good plan?” Barnard asked, ducking back behind a pillar as the edge of it exploded, right where her face had been a half second earlier.

  “We’re about to find out,” Price shouted over the gunfire. She emptied a clip around her pillar without looking or aiming, then slid silently sideways as the other Angels retreated deeper into the gallery. She moved to a sculpture she had scouted out earlier. A model of something familiar to all human children, but mostly unknown to Bzadians. The wooden horse of Troy. A flat panel on the side was hinged. It lifted quietly. She slipped inside and waited, listening to the gunfire as the other Angels continued to move away, making sure the Bzadians heard them.

  “Okay, we’re out,” Barnard said in Price’s ear. “Have locked the rear door. It’s just you and them now.”

  “Just the way I like it,” Price whispered.

  The Nzgali did not see her. They did not hear her. They did not detect her. In groups of two and three they moved past the wooden horse, smoothly, professionally, covering each other as they began their sweep of the gallery.

  “You ready?” Barnard asked.

  “Do it.”

  All the lights in the gallery went out.

  “On the floor, now!” The voice gave him no choice, and neither did the vicious kick to the back of his knees. Chisnall went down, hard, Brogan beside him.

  A quick glance up showed a squad of heavily armed Azaykin surrounding them. There was no chance to reach for a weapon, no chance to pull out his puke spray grenade. The guards had slipped into the room behind them through some secret, silent door.

  Only now did the double glass doors in front of them slide open. Kozi, flanked by more guards, stepped through.

  What was Kozi doing here? The last time he saw her she was a clerk. But here she was, part of Azoh’s inner circle. And it was more than that. If Azoh could read the minds of those close to her, then couldn’t she read Kozi’s mi
nd? Whose side was Kozi really on? What was going on?

  Kozi raised her radio. “We have them. Two of them. Trying to sneak into the bunker.”

  She listened then replaced the radio on her hip.

  “Search the female,” she said. “But be careful. She has Fezerker training.”

  One of the guards relieved Chisnall of his weapon, but when he began to search him, Kozi held up a hand. “I will do it,” she said. “This one is Chizna.”

  With Azaykin weapons just centimetres from his head and body, Chisnall felt Kozi’s hands forcefully and expertly patting him down. No area was left unchecked. He was forced to roll over and the process began again. Kozi’s hand passed over the slim shape of the grenade without comment although her eyes met his.

  Brogan’s belt pack was emptied, the items inside laid out on the floor, including the bugging device hidden in a nutrition bar. If the soldiers thought it was anything but a food item, they gave no sign of it.

  Eventually, Kozi straightened and pulled out her radio once again. “Tell Goezlin they have been secured. We will hold them until he gets here.”

  With that, Chisnall and Brogan were hauled to their feet and marched in through the double glass doors to inside Azoh’s inner sanctum.

  “Put them in the secure room,” Kozi said. “I want them under constant guard, at least three guards to each prisoner. Do not take your eyes off them for a second. Is that clear?”

  That was clear. That was also when Chisnall’s little finger found the pin of the grenade.

  The room filled with a dense white fog, which smelled vaguely of peppermint.

  The Tsar stared at the photographs for a long time without speaking. They had aged, especially his brother, the chubby cheeks firming into a strong jawline. His sisters’ smiling eyes now seemed hollow and haunted. The photographs could have been faked, but The Tsar was sure that they weren’t.

  “Katya, Oksana and Mikhail,” Goezlin said. “As you can see they are very much alive and in our custody in your native Russia.”

  “You hurt them and I will roast your dangly bits over a slow fire,” The Tsar said.

  “Yes, of course, this is what you would say,” Goezlin said. “But it is you who is strapped in a chair and I who have command over your life, and those of your family. I spoke before about pain. Perhaps that pain would be better inflicted on those you love.”

  “Don’t you touch them,” The Tsar said.

  The sound of a door behind him was followed by footsteps and a low voice. The Tsar heard Goezlin reply, and although he could not make out the words, it was clear that it was a matter of some urgency.

  Then Goezlin was back, right behind him.

  “I will let you dwell on that image,” Goezlin said. “You will have a few minutes to consider my request. It is a very generous offer. Your life and those of your siblings, for a very small piece of information that I would find out anyway in a short time.”

  Footsteps receded and the door opened and shut once more.

  Chisnall couldn’t take his eyes off the chair in the very centre of Azoh’s quarters. It was not really a chair, more of a throne. A seat suited to a great leader. A chair for Azoh. Yet she was dwarfed by it, like a child in furniture made for adults.

  The chair itself was made of some kind of burnished Bzadian metal, a colour that seemed to change depending on the angle you were looking at it. The armrests were adorned with the faces of Bzadian gargoyles, fierce jagged-jaw creatures with elongated skulls and deep-set eyes.

  Azoh sat patiently, as if waiting for them.

  On a smaller, less ornate, throne next to her a child waited also. A boy, perhaps eight or nine years old. His robes were black. His face was unadorned, unencumbered by the jewellery and tattoos that covered the face of Azoh. Both Azoh and the boy wore clear plastic masks over their mouths and noses, protecting them from the puke spray.

  The other Bzadians in the room lay where they fell, watching in mute fury as Chisnall and Brogan stepped past them. Already the ventilation system was removing the haze of spray, but the spray had done its work, circulating through the underground bunker, room after room.

  “Something’s wrong,” Brogan said.

  Something was strange about this, but not wrong, Chisnall thought. There was no coldness in this place. If anything, it radiated a warmth that had nothing to do with the heating and ventilation systems.

  “I don’t think it’s a trap,” he said.

  “Really?” Brogan asked. “Did you notice that these two just happen to be wearing oxygen masks?”

  Thin tubes led from the plastic covering on Azoh’s face and the mask itself lifted and flattened slightly as she breathed.

  “Maybe they have asthma,” Chisnall said.

  “Yeah, really,” Brogan said. “Asthma. I think Azoh knew what we were going to do before we did.”

  Chisnall stood in front of Azoh. She was extraordinarily beautiful, but in a soft, childlike way, a glimpse of innocence. The tattoos that covered her face were both elegant and intricate, weaving complex patterns, perhaps telling a story.

  Over the tattoos was the jewellery, attached to her ears, eyebrows, nose and lips; thin chains of an unusual silvery metal hung in loops, connected by bright, almost iridescent gemstones.

  Her hair was long, brown and tightly braided beneath the cowl of her robes.

  Next to her, the boy’s hair was in the same style, although his braids were shorter. He wore glasses with thick rims. He grinned, which was unsettling. Does he not understand what just happened? The smile made his glasses slip down and revealed that two of his front teeth were missing, both on the bottom.

  Chisnall hesitated, unsure what to say, feeling like a fraud. Feeling unworthy to be standing here.

  What would he do if Azoh refused to come with them? He stared at her and she stared back. The boy kept grinning. Azoh was the first to break the silence.

  She removed the oxygen mask and laid it on the armrest beside her. It was no longer necessary. The air was now clear. Her eyes met Chisnall’s.

  She spoke in the high language. The words were simple, but so unexpected that his brain struggled to take meaning from them.

  “We should go now,” she said.

  BOOK THREE – AZOH

  Even monkeys fall from trees

  – Japanese proverb

  THE TUNNEL

  [1010 HOURS LOCAL TIME]

  [BZADIAN CONGRESS, CANBERRA]

  Price activated her night-vision lenses as she emerged silently from the Trojan horse. She left the trapdoor open and moved around the wide columns of the gallery. There was light. Just not much. The light from the outer doorways, channelled by the gallery entrance, filtered in, bouncing off pillar after pillar, seeping throughout the wide expanse of the gallery.

  It was like a forest. At night. And that, more than anything, made Price feel at home: on her own, operating in shards of darkness where no one would think to look. Ever since she could remember this had been her best defence. If you didn’t get noticed, you didn’t get hurt. Here she was dependent on no one. Responsible for no one. That was how she liked it and why the Angels called her “The Phantom”.

  She had another advantage: night-vision gear. The Nzgali weren’t wearing it, probably not seeing the need for it in the brightly lit Congress building. That was an oversight that Price intended to ensure they regretted.

  Her weapon was dialled down to silent. Her bullets were puffers. She was noiseless. The Nzgali, for all their training, were not. She heard the sounds of movement, of low conversations as they adjusted to the sudden darkness in the gallery. Price moved in the darkest shadows, in slow, silent movements that would not catch the eye or alert the ear.

  A peek around a pillar showed her four soldiers, standing in a small group, crouching, weapons scanning in all directions. A defensive posture. They were nervous, and rightly so. They were trapped in a dark concrete forest. And they were not alone.

  Price eased her head back around
the pillar, the muzzle of her weapon leading the way. She took careful aim at a pillar on the far side of the group and squeezed her trigger.

  The sound of the puffer pellet hitting the pillar was a sharp tap and the soldiers all instinctively looked in that direction.

  Price put two puffer pellets onto the back of the furthest Nzgali, knocking him forwards, but creating a cloud of puffer dust that the soldiers behind him could not help but breathe in.

  As they dropped, the Nzgali she had hit spun around, his gun seeking a target, only to have another pellet explode on his chest. He fell on top of the others, an untidy heap of bodies on the floor.

  A gunshot came from Price’s right and a bullet fizzed past her ear, so close that she could feel the wind of its passage.

  She dived forwards and rolled, seeking shelter behind the four fallen Nzgali, as more shots cracked out behind her.

  There! She caught a glimpse of the shooter, concealed by the width of a column. She had no clear shot. She aimed for the very edge of the round pillar and fired. The pellet exploded into dust against the hard edge of the pillar, and the soldier reeled backwards, clutching his face.

  He fell and did not get up.

  Price kept a mental count. She had seen twelve soldiers go in. Five were now lying on the floor. Seven to go.

  She moved deeper into the artificial forest.

  Azoh and the boy stood quietly against one of the storeroom walls. She had refused to leave the bunker without him. Neither seemed concerned that they had just been kidnapped and were being taken somewhere they did not know, by people they did not know, for reasons they could not know.

  Again, Chisnall studied the map Price had given him. A tunnel had been bored at the time of construction of the new Australian Parliament House, back in the 1980s. It joined onto an existing tunnel that already connected the original historic parliament house with the US Embassy building.

  The tunnel entrance, according to the map, was in a storeroom in the depths of the building. They had found the storeroom without problem. But there was no sign of a tunnel.