‘They’re trying to undermine you – to get you second-guessing yourself. Now is the time to show your strength. Crush anyone in the Guard or the garrison who shows disloyalty. No mercy.
‘And forget this Scarlet League, for the time being. It’s clear now that they are a front for the traitors in your own ranks. They create dissent and get you spending your resources chasing phantoms, while the real revolution is happening right here within the walls of the Citadel. Find the ringleaders and you’ll find this Blakeney.
‘Root out the traitors in your midst and the League will disappear. I’d bet my life on it.’
‘Except, it’s not your life that’s in the balance here, is it?’ Hartman sounds petulant. ‘I should stop you leaving, you know.’
‘If you say no, I’ll stay, Bainbridge, you know that. But the Citadel is no place for Sharonne at this time and until I know she’s safe, I won’t be of any use to you. You said it yourself. Who else can I trust to get her back to the Fortress de Vries safely? If they have their eye on your heritage, why stop there? Why not bring down every Family?
‘Look, if we hurry, we can make it back there in a little over two weeks. A few days to make peace with my father, then I can return here in a little over a month. Once I know Sharonne is safe with my father, I’ll return and we can fight this thing together.
‘Oh, and one last idea. The chances are that the traitors are in league with an Esper – or more than one. It’s the only reason they’d destroy the bands like they did. They’re probably using their powers to gain intelligence. I would suggest you recall all the Guard units you have outside Berra – at least until the crisis is over. They’re less likely to be in on the conspiracy, and you’ll have more bands available to protect your secrets within the Citadel. Once you’ve got rid of the threat, there’ll be plenty of time to resume the patrols. For now, you need to consolidate.
‘And I need to reconcile with my father. It’s been too long, Bainbridge. Besides, he’s a strong ally. You may be in need of help from the de Vries Family, before this is over. Once I’m back in his good graces, I can ask his advice.’
Adam places a hand on the fat man’s shoulder. Something he would never normally get away with.
‘I really think it’s the right move.’
He watches Hartman’s face, wishing he had even a tenth of Armin’s Gift. If the old man says no, the choice is awkward. Stay, and force his friends to find their own way back, or disobey the man who is still, for the time being, the most powerful man in the land.
Hartman’s face is unreadable.
Finally, he nods.
‘Six weeks. I need you back here to help me crush these traitors.’
‘I’ll try to make it five, sir.’
Adam bows and leaves the room, cheering silently.
It is only when a number of days have passed, that Hartman will realise his mistake. In the heat of the catastrophe besetting him, he has forgotten about Lessandro Dey and his murderous mission.
His trusted assassin is already halfway to the Fortress, riding the fastest of the Black Guard’s horses into the ground, to make it to de Vries’s table and fulfil his assignment.
By the time the boy and his sister arrive home, Anton de Vries will be days dead – which will make the boy master of the Fortress de Vries. Such a huge responsibility will make it impossible for him to return to the Citadel, except on ceremonial occasions and even the head of the Hartman Family will not be able to demand it.
And when that realisation dawns, Bainbridge Hartman will curse his insatiable taste for intrigue.
In creating a more controllable ally, he has robbed himself of one of his greatest assets in his struggle against the cancer in his own household.
Berra
Central Region
February 12, 3384ad
JORDAN’S STORY
Two days later, Adam drove a wagon out of the main gate of the Citadel, with Sharonne seated next to him and Armin riding alongside. Pulling the wagon were four of the best horses from the Hartman stable.
Just beyond the edge of town, a second wagon joined them, its rigid canopy hiding seven of us and the baby, while Mykal and Leana sat up front. The wagon was a gift from the Scarlet League, the horses the unwitting donation of four Guard soldiers, who lay unconscious, stripped of cloaks and bands, in the side-alley where they were ambushed.
If we were going to swap horses at the relay stations along the road, we had to begin the journey with Hartman horses.
Whenever we stopped to change horses, Eliita, Mykal and I would stay hidden inside the second wagon. We didn’t want to take the risk of anyone recognising us from the trip up, only a few weeks earlier.
There was one stop, however, that I was particularly interested in making.
We were about ten days into the journey and making excellent time, when we arrived at a small village that I remembered well.
When the others were taken inside to rest, I had Armin probe the place.
It took him about two seconds to find her and send her to the wagon.
I felt her move around the back and then the canvas flap began to lift.
– Hello, Kyra.
The shock on her face was almost comical.
– You! she said. But I thought—
– So did they.
She smiled, then.
– I’m glad you made it. What can I do for you?
I hadn’t discussed it with the others, but I knew what their reaction would be, so I asked her.
– How long would it take them to notice, if you just left?
– I don’t know. A couple of days, maybe. I’ve been known to wander off at times and no one cares too much where I am. Why?
– I was just thinking that you might prefer to ride with us. We can take you to people who will care. People like you. We’ll be here for another couple of hours. Make your way down the road a bit, and wait for us there.
The expression that lit her face was amazing. Beautiful, even. Then she started to cry.
– I’ve been so lonely, she said.
– Past tense, I replied. You’re going home.
ERIN’S STORY
After nine days, we were back in the Wood.
We left the second wagon at one of the Sect safe houses and sent the horses on with Adam, who was heading back to the Fortress. That choice surprised me a little, until it dawned on me that, as far as he was concerned, his job wasn’t finished.
He needed to make peace with his father, so that he could move on with his strategy of dismantling, brick by brick, the stranglehold that the Hartman Family had over the land.
What awaited him at the Fortress, however, changed everything.
He arrived to the news that his father had died a few days earlier – choking to death during a private dinner with the Hartman envoy, who had since left Old Bourne to report the tragedy personally to his master.
On asking the name of the envoy, Adam finally understood.
Lessandro Dey.
Did he mourn for his father? Perhaps.
I know that when Sharonne was told, by the courier her brother despatched to the Wood, her eyes remained dry. There was no pity in her for the man who could have done so much, but failed one of the basic tests of humanity – to inspire the love of his own family.
The courier had brought two spare horses and when he left, half an hour later, he was accompanied by Sharonne and Bran.
A few hours later, the Lady Sharonne de Vries returned to the Fortress where she was born – and for the first time, Bran of the WildWood entered her home through the front gate.
Bainbridge Hartman had played his ace, but the puppet he had installed would never dance to his tune. The Fortress de Vries had a new master – and that master had a brand new vision.
Not that it made much diffe
rence to Hartman.
Within six months, he was dead – murdered by the Guard who had sworn to serve and protect him – and with no male heir to carry on the Hartman line, the power of the Citadel fell into the hands of his murderers.
Lessandro Dey ruled for one bloody year before suffering a similar fate, and his successors followed in a swift, declining procession.
Over time, the power of the Citadel waned and the government of Berra fell to the ‘Scarlet Parliament’ – which immediately signed treaties with the remaining Families – a move sponsored in the Council by the Family de Vries.
The alliance between Old Bourne and the government of Berra became the strongest, and most prosperous on the Eastern seaboard, and the savage tribes and the Fe’ls of the dead cities retreated slowly into history.
In the years that followed, Adam, Sharonne and Bran would become known as the unstinting patrons of the New Renaissance, and the Fortress de Vries would shine as a beacon of learning in a land starved of enlightenment.
In fact, Adam’s first act as master of the de Vries domain was to free all the members of the Sect and to turn the basement areas into a new secure Archive. Added to the papers and books and artefacts, which had been transported there from the old Archive, was full access to the amazing library of the Fortress de Vries.
And the first librarians of the new library?
Two strangers from a very long way away.
If I’d thought there was any point, I might have suggested that Erin order them to take their seats on the trip home and discuss with the Council the pros and cons of spending an extended time on a primitive and sometimes dangerous planet.
But there was no point.
Hanni and Eliita were historians first and crew members a distant second, and in this instance their passion, of course, won out.
No longer would the Old Knowledge be a feared and desperately guarded secret. Anyone with the interest, anyone with a desire to learn, would be welcomed at the Fortress – and protected with every atom of its not inconsiderable resources.
Perhaps the best surprise of all was waiting for us when we found our way back to the Wood.
Half the Village came out to meet us, as we approached. I doubt that they’d expected ever to see us again and the fact that we had returned – our numbers swelled by a boy prodigy, a girl in search of a home and a three-month-old baby girl – just added to the excitement.
But one person hadn’t come to meet us.
He sat, with his leg propped up on a stool, basking in the sunlight and smiling broadly, as we approached.
– Alvy? The thought was more like a scream. You’re alive.
Erin Mathieu the Mistress of Understatement.
– Well? What happened?
What had happened, as he revealed in his unique, convoluted way, was bordering on the miraculous. On the night that the Archive fell, he had fractured his ankle and cracked a tibia, jumping into a small ravine, to escape the Fe’ls.
He had lain there in incredible pain, trying not to whimper, while they searched for him all around, coming within inches at times, but finally giving up and heading back to their camp.
Splinting the broken bones with branches and some rope that he had plaited from vines and grass, he had dragged himself for days, until he reached the Wood, where he was found and returned to the Village.
The healers had set his leg and the bones were well on their way to mending – though they still throbbed unmercifully at night.
The ether-comm was also damaged in the fall, but through hours of patient work, over a week and a half, he had raised a signal and contacted Terese.
– How much longer were you going to wait, before giving up on us and calling down the second lander? Jordan asked.
Alvy just shrugged.
– No one seemed in too much of a hurry. The plan was for me to wait till the leg was better, then come and find you.
– On your own? I laughed. You’d do it too, wouldn’t you?
For once, he was serious.
– And you wouldn’t?
Well, we’d made it back without his help, in the end. And when Hanni and Eliita got the news from the Fortress, and decided to stay, we realised that we had four extra berths on the homeward leg. Their two and the two spares that they’d included as a fail-safe, in case of malfunctions.
Armin and Kyra jumped at the chance – as I’d rather expected they would, but for Leana and Mykal the decision was more difficult.
– We can’t go without Den, Mykal explained, and even though Kyra offered her place, it made no difference.
A baby that young would never survive the cryo-sleep. The guidelines said two years old minimum – and I wasn’t about to buck that particular rule.
The three of them came to Deuc on one of the first Ether-Jump R-ships a few years later, and Jord and I were there to welcome them at the Al-Baada space-port.
Once again, Deucalion had become the haven for refugees from Earth. As Hanni told me once, during one of his more evangelistic moments, ‘History has a way of repeating itself, in spite of all we try to do to interfere.’
Alek and Reggie were my next choice, but they too were headed for the Fortress, claiming that Bran wouldn’t last a month without them there to keep him under control. They had a point – though I was sure that Sharonne pretty much had his number by now.
In the end, a young couple from the Village took the plunge. Pretty brave, when you consider how bizarre the whole concept of space travel must have seemed to them.
And so it was decided.
We made a trip to the Fortress to say our goodbyes, then a few days later, at the appointed time, we arranged for the lander to set down near the crash site and take us back to the Cortez.
On the night before we left, I arranged with Terese to send down in the lander a final present for Hanni and Eliita to deliver to the Archive.
‘Do you think they’ll be able to handle it?’ Terese asked, her voice distorted over the damaged comm. ‘I mean, they barely know anything about their own history.’
‘They’ll handle it,’ I replied. ‘After all, they have Hanni and Eliita to help them. They’re going to be the ones to lead their world back into the light, Terese. I think we need to trust their judgement.’
And so, when Saami piloted the shuttle to a perfect landing just metres from the remains of the other ship, he delivered a fusion-powered casserite cube, programmed with all the science of Deucalion and the Casias – science that owed its very existence to the work of centuries of thinkers on Old Earth.
The gift had come full circle.
As one of my tutors at the Academy once said:
Knowledge shared is knowledge grown.
Oh, and one more thing –
Stored on the cube was the entire history of Deucalion – every important recorded event from the First Thoughtsong of the Elokoi, through the human settlement, the Revolution, the Crystal Death, the expansion into the Casia System and nine hundred years of growth and learning – right up until the launch of the Cortez.
On the night of the Jump, I stood with Jordan on the bridge of the Cortez, looking down on the ancient planet spinning slowly beneath us.
– Regrets? he asked.
I looked up at him.
– Not one.
Which, on balance, isn’t at all a bad way to feel.
Then I leant across and kissed him. Hard.
Not very professional conduct, but considering I was just one sleep away from retirement, I don’t suppose it mattered all that much.
DEUCALION: A Short History – (Up to the Separation)
In 2022AD Earth calendar, in Sydney – a sprawling, untidy city in what would later be referred to as the Southeast Sector of Mainland Australasia – a previously unknown twenty-one-year-old polymath named Francisco DeBortelli revoluti
onised quantum theory and overturned all previous notions of celestial dynamics, with his Grand Theory of Sub-Dimensional Physics. As with Albert Einstein over a century earlier, his breakthrough was met first with disbelief, then with a grudging admiration by Establishment scientists – and with naked enthusiasm by a new generation of Researchers, eager to break the shackles of the ‘old science’.
Overnight, Sub-Dimensional Theory ushered in a new vision of what was possible, in a universe emancipated from the restrictive tyranny of three dimensions. Though the complex equations of Time/Sub-Space Relativity placed impossible limitations on the use of the ‘DeBortelli Warp’ for sub-dimensional travel, it was almost inevitable that a few years of experimentation in the vast Research labs of the major Corporations would usher in a new era of unmanned interstellar exploration.
This was the ongoing legacy of Francisco DeBortelli.
By the time of his premature death at the age of only twenty-seven, the first ‘warp-jump’ experiments had already been designed, and a decade later, the first exploratory ‘warp-shuttle’ was launched. One man’s inspired vision had opened up a universe of possibilities – possibilities that offered new hope to a world depleted of resources and choking on its own waste.
But hope – even the hope of an entire race – does not guarantee success.
From the beginning, the practical limit for sub-light-speed exploration and settlement was around eighty light-years. It was a boundary decreed by the limitations of science and the fragility of the human body.
Cryogenics or cryo-sleep is the science of freezing a body in stasis (known, more commonly, as suspended animation), then reanimating it at the end of its decades-long journey. In the final quarter of the twenty-first century, it was still a relatively new technology. Although it made deep-space exploration possible, it could preserve a human body for no more than a century, before fatal deterioration set in.
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