Guardians of Paradise (Hidden Empire)

by Jaine Fenn

  ‘You c-came . . .’ he whispered. ‘Thank you.’

  Jarek was about to say that was what friends were for when Taro tensed again. ‘N-nual,’ he stuttered.

  ‘Was she in there, Taro? Have you seen her?’ If they’d somehow missed her then they were screwed - there was no way the mercs would go back in now.

  ‘N-no—N-not here. But . . . I dreamed her.’

  If he’d been talking about anyone else Jarek would have assumed the boy was delirious or deluded. ‘Do you know where she is?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Taro whispered miserably. ‘Somewhere very bad.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Nual opened her eyes. Her throat was dry, implying she had been unconscious for a while. She was naked. She appeared to be in the cabin of a shiftship, though she couldn’t sense the near-subliminal hum she generally associated with space-travel. She got up shakily and walked over to the cabin door. There was no obvious lock, but she was unsurprised when it remained closed. The only other openings were air vents above the door and bed, both far too small to be of any use.

  She extended her other senses, reaching out to locate any presences beyond the door—

  —and ran up against a mental wall. Everything outside the physical confines of her cabin - her cell - was off-limits to her mind.

  Whoever had sneaked up on her in the alley had been able to hide their presence. Discovering she was now under a mental blockade confirmed her suspicions: she had been captured by the Sidhe.

  She tested the unseen wall, looking for a weakness, but there was none; the construct was built and maintained in unity: several Sidhe were devoting themselves to making her imprisonment mental as well as physical.

  She’d been in this situation before. This time, however, she had no intention of accepting her fate. She extended her mind again, pushing harder.

  The wall pushed back.

  She realised her mistake just in time and withdrew.

  In the brief moment before she disengaged from the other minds she sensed an unexpected emotion:

  Disappointment.

  She had been blessed amongst her people, yet she had turned against them. They were sad for her, she who should have been a source of hope but had become a source of shame. If she would only repent, then perhaps in time she might be forgiven.

  Part of her yearned to do as they suggested. Compared to the communion of unity, human speech was little more than noise, vague and inaccurate. She was being given the chance to return to a state of grace no ordinary human could comprehend, and she had missed that so much.

  But the unity was not welcoming her, it was chastising her. Before she could be accepted back into its all-consuming embrace, she must make amends.

  It was too late for that. She had made her choice seven years ago.

  ‘You realise he’s undergone surgery?’

  Jarek jerked fully awake. After the adrenalin rush of the mission had faded, his abused body had given in. It needed rest. He looked over at the medic who was examining Taro where he lay on the floor of the aircar. The boy had lapsed back into unconsciousness after a brief and not entirely coherent conversation: he claimed he’d somehow been in mental contact with Nual when Jarek rescued him, and that she’d been abducted by the Sidhe. Jarek was half-hoping Taro was drugged or hallucinating, for that news was about as bad as it got.

  ‘Surgery?’ he asked the medic. ‘What sort?’

  ‘That unit we found him in is designed to perform complex medical procedures without the need for a human expert. Someone programmed it to operate on him several times over the last few days, at various points in his abdomen and lower thoracic area.’

  ‘Will he be all right?’ Jarek hadn’t thought to check Taro over before he’d carried him out.

  ‘It’s all keyhole surgery, so the wounds aren’t major. I’ll redress them. The only problem would be if there’s much internal work been done. From the location and shape of the wounds I don’t think they were attempting anything serious, but you’ll need to get him checked out.’

  ‘So what the hell were they doing?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said the medic, ‘but this appears to be exploratory work. If I had to guess, I’d say they were looking for something that doesn’t show up on normal scanning equipment.’

  Something like Angel implants.

  She wondered if they had attempted to probe her before she regained consciousness. Probably not: Sidhe shields were at their strongest when the mind was turned in on itself in sleep or unconsciousness. Even if a Sidhe had the strength to enter a shielded and unconscious mind, she made herself vulnerable to the psyche she was invading, and might find the tables turned on her.

  Perhaps her best bet would be to stay asleep, locking herself away from her captors just as they had locked her away from the world. It was not a long-term solution, but it was worth a try. And there was a chance she might be able to contact Taro.

  However, though reason said sleep was a wise course, it felt like cowardice to return to it at once. Though she wasn’t afraid, it aggravated her to be kept in such ignorance and isolation. So she waited for a while, hoping for some change in her circumstances or environment. Finally, thirst and boredom combined to convince her to give up on consciousness. She put herself into a deep sleep and was unaware of anything until her sleep cycle took her closer to the surface, into the dream-world of her own subconscious.

  For a while she observed her mind undergoing its daily internal routine of cleansing and filing via her dreams. She retained a peripheral awareness of her connection to the waking world - if her captors were persistent enough to try and break down her defences while she slept, it would be now, when she was nearest consciousness - but nothing impinged on her shields, so when the time felt right, she focused her thoughts and reached out.

  She felt Taro’s presence almost at once, and experienced a giddy surge of relief. While he was alive and they could communicate, all was not lost. But he was barely coherent, his thoughts fuzzy with pain and drugs.

  Initially she concentrated on supporting him with her unseen presence. In his confusion, he assumed she was on her way to save him, and it hurt to have to kill his hope. She tried to pass on her own situation as far as she understood it, despite the pain his answering despair caused her; then, without warning, he was gone.

  She was alone in her head.

  Nual braced herself for an attack, and when none came she realised that the link must have been broken from his end. It looked like her contact with Taro did not compromise her mental defences, perhaps because it was a different kind of unity to the one she had been brought up in. It was possible that the Sidhe keeping her imprisoned could not even sense her connection to her lover; certainly they had made no attempt to use it.

  After a while she slipped back into true unconsciousness . . . until she became aware of a strange physical sensation: shaking, coming from deep inside, and a chill blowing across her entire body. Her mind began to build a dream around it - flying through freezing clouds while thunder rattled around her - even as she recognised that the cause was something external.

  She woke herself up. When she opened her eyes she was in darkness, shivering violently, her teeth clenched against the urge to chatter.

  What was happening?

  She reached out wildly. Her left hand hit a wall; she snatched it back. She must still be in the cell, but they had turned off the light and heat. She edged across the bed to put her back against the wall, then drew her legs in and curled up to conserve body-heat, channelling warmth into her core. This might be a precursor to an attack, so she tried to keep her mind sharp and focused, ready to defend herself.

  She wondered how long it would take for unconsciousness to become a necessity rather than an act of defiance. This time, though, she might not have the option of waking up. Her entire body was spasming now, and her jaw ached from trying to control her chattering teeth. She curled tighter, fighting the impending hypothermia . . .

 
She dismissed the first touch of warm air on her face as hallucination, then, slowly, the lights began to come up again. By the time they were back to their normal level the room was warm enough that her shivers had subsided into the occasional twitch. That just left the raging thirst and the cramps in her empty belly.

  Her captors had just been reminding her who was in control. They wanted her to know that she couldn’t hide in her head for ever.

  ‘Can you walk?’

  Taro wasn’t sure he could, but he nodded anyway. After what Jarek had just done for him, he wasn’t going to give him any trouble.

  He’d come to with a rush that just had to be chemical. As he helped him to his feet, Jarek told him to avoid driving or operating heavy machinery; from his tone he guessed Jarek was making a joke. When the door of the aircar opened, the walls of Stonetown jiggled and throbbed in his vision, confirming that his current sharp-and-ready state came courtesy of some serious drugs.

  The aircar dropped them off on the harbour wall and promptly swung away. ‘Who were those coves, anyway?’ asked Taro shakily.

  ‘Local muscle, hired to finish the job you got shafted over.’

  ‘Nice of them to get me out too.’

  ‘Nice doesn’t come into it. They did it because they were paid to.’

  ‘Like I said . . . I owe you.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. Let’s get ourselves a cab.’ He put an arm round Taro’s shoulders and Taro leaned into the support gratefully. It was still early, but already too hot for sensible people to be out and about.

  When they limped into the harbour-side market they got some predictably odd looks. Taro glanced down at himself and saw how he was dressed. ‘I tell you, lady, it was a top prime party!’ he called out to a woman who’d stopped examining the produce on a nearby stall to stare at him. She looked away hurriedly.

  They found a cab on the far side of the market. Its interior was wonderfully cool, and Taro leaned back into the soft seat with a sigh.

  ‘I’m sorry to ask, but I need to know: how much can you remember? ’

  He opened his eyes to see Jarek watching him. He thought for a moment, feeling a chill beyond that of the aircon as he recalled glimpses of the stone ceiling, the uncaring, unfamiliar faces, the muffled voices, the sense of constriction. ‘Not much, just flashes. Nightmare stuff. They kept me drugged up’ - spikes of distant agony, deep inside him - ‘oh fuck, I think they cut me!’ He’d been trying to place what else was wrong besides generally feeling like shit: underneath the drugs that were masking the pain he felt like he’d been kicked in the guts. He put a hand on his belly and touched what he realised must be dressings. Jarek caught his wrist.

  ‘Yes, they did. And we’re going to make sure there’s no serious damage. I think they might have been after your implants.’

  ‘My implants?’

  ‘Yes. Can you still fly?’

  ‘Not sure.’ He flexed his feet, which felt further away than usual. A moment later he lifted free of the seat. He stopped the motion. ‘No worries. The bastards didn’t get them.’

  ‘That’s good. Very good.’ He sounded relieved.

  Taro looked out the window. He realised they were heading out of Stonetown. ‘Where’re we going?’

  ‘To the starport.’

  ‘We’re leaving?’

  ‘Not immediately, but my ship’s med-bay is a lot less conspicuous than a trip to hospital. And after that . . . well, I’ve stirred things up a bit around here. We might have to take off at short notice.’

  ‘We can’t leave! Not without Nual.’

  ‘So you meant what you said, about dreaming her.’

  ‘Yes! We have to rescue her!’

  ‘From the Sidhe?’ Jarek’s voice didn’t give anything away.

  ‘Yeah, from the Sidhe. And before you say it, I know that I’ll probably end up dead, but I have to try.’

  ‘I’m guessing you two made up,’ said Jarek drily.

  Despite everything, Taro grinned. ‘You could say that. Listen,’ he said more soberly. ‘I know you got your mission, and I’m sorry we didn’t do nothing to help you—’

  ‘—actually Nual did. She found out which ngai produces the transit-kernels. I’ll tell you all about it later.’

  ‘She did? I knew she could. The thing is . . . you gotta carry on your fight against the Sidhe, but what I gotta do is find Nual.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you have any idea where she is?’

  ‘No, but when we were dreaming together I got this sense she’s in a ship’s cabin.’

  ‘Well, that would narrow things down. I’m guessing she must be somewhere in this system for you two to share dreams. Any idea where this ship is?’

  ‘No, sorry.’ Taro decided not to mention the other sensation from the dream; the feeling that there were a lot of Sidhe near her.

  ‘Hang on a moment, I need to make a com-call.’ He had a brief chat with someone official, someone he obviously knew. At the end he thanked the person and hung up. He turned to Taro with a sigh. ‘I was just checking for recent arrivals - going back to the ship if a Sidhe ship’s in port would be unwise. But there’s just me parked up, and the only other traffic in the last day was a tourist shuttle.’

  ‘So, are you gonna help me find her?’

  ‘I’m going to make a few enquiries later today. If there’s comeback from your rescue or a whiff of any other trouble, we’re out of here. We should probably prep to go anyway, given this ship Nual’s on is presumably either in orbit or hanging around somewhere nearby.’

  ‘So that’s a yes, then?’

  ‘That’s a yes.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Although living in the caldera had many advantages, it did mean that neither sunset nor sunrise was visible from Marua’s house, so once a week she took the steep walk up to the rim to watch the dawn. The path wound around the inner slope through barely tamed bush alive with birds and insects. It was a popular route, yet she never met anyone on it. She suspected her security and housekeeping staff ensured she was not disturbed, a move she found mildly annoying for she didn’t like inconveniencing her people unnecessarily. On the other hand she was flattered they cared enough to ensure she got this time alone.

  When she’d last come up here, the day after the Angel’s visit, she’d been at her nadir: her first attempt to recruit a replacement for Grigan had failed; she’d just uncovered the treachery of a trusted aide; she had unexpectedly met someone who might be Sidhe; and the next day she had let Tikao attempt the extension test on the last transit-kernel, with disastrous results - both he and the kernel had returned from the shift brain-dead.

  A couple of days after that, the Sidhe had turned up.

  Their representative, a surprisingly ordinary-looking woman calling herself Lyrian, had listened to Marua’s explanation of why there was one less transit-kernel than promised. Then she said simply, ‘And do you have the means in place to start processing the new intake as soon as they arrive?’

  Marua, feeling like a naughty child, had admitted that she was still working on it.

  Lyrian had nodded curtly, as though Marua were fulfilling her low expectations.

  So, as if to win herself back into the Sidhe’s good graces, she’d told Lyrian about the Angel - not that ‘Ela sanMalia’ (or whoever she really was) was necessarily Sidhe; how could a Sidhe end up as a registered assassin anyway? But Marua had no intention of holding back anything the hine-maku might want to know. She felt no enmity towards the Angel - quite the contrary, given that Olias Kahani’s subsequent death had almost certainly been her work - but she felt compelled to please her dangerous allies.

  Now she allowed herself a smile as the sun pulled itself free of the shining water and full daylight burst over the world. Thanks be to Tongaroa, things had finally started to improve.

  The buyers had what they came for, and though they hadn’t yet left the system, she wouldn’t have to deal with another visit from the hine-maku until the suppliers arrived,
whenever that might be. More importantly, she’d finally secured the replacement for Grigan. Dr Pershalek was due to arrive some time in the next hour; she would give him time to recover from the trauma of his midnight relocation, then go and meet him in person.

  Which just left the new problem.

  If this man Sais had contacted her before the visit from Lyrian and her associates, Marua would have felt obliged to tell them about him too. She was glad he hadn’t: his actions reflected badly on Marua’s ngai, implying she was not operating with the discretion the Sidhe required. And Sais was obviously an honourable man: so far he’d kept his promise and not released the information he held on her ngai, even though he now had what he wanted. His threat to expose her had brought Marua near to panic; hence her desperate lie that Tawhira-ngai might have both the Angels, and her eagerness to let him join the mission while hoping he might die during it. She was not proud of that response.