by Conner, Jack
No one outside Ghenisa had known what was going on inside the country, but on the way back Avery’s party had heard rumors running wild of Admiral Haggarty on the warpath and fighting in the streets. Now Avery saw multitudes sitting in grave silence in the airport terminals, waiting for planes that might not come. Many stared with blank, dull faces at television screens, where a news anchor was giving an address. Without having to discuss the matter, the four paused to listen:
“... still no sign of the Prime Minister. She’s been missing for three days now, and though many reports have come in that she’s dead and that her body has been recovered, each corpse is revealed to be that of someone else. She may still be alive and in hiding. Some say she and General Hastur are together, planning to strike back when they can ...” The anchor’s eyes moved to someone off-screen, and his posture changed, becoming more rigid, and when he spoke next fear tinged his words, and also bitterness. Was someone in the studio with him censoring his report, possibly at the point of a gun? “Grand Admiral Haggarty claims he has no knowledge of …”
“Doctor Avery?”
A man grabbed Avery’s elbow. When the doctor turned to him, he saw a breathless, gaunt-faced young man, urgency in his every tic.
“Who are you?”
In a whisper, the man said, “I’m a supporter of Denaris. Please. Come with me. My associates are distracting Haggarty’s agents even now.” Darkly, he said, “They were awaiting your arrival.”
“How do we know you’re not with Haggarty?” Hildra said.
The man gave her a grim look. “The Admiral wouldn’t need subterfuge, lady. He’d simply arrest you on the spot. Or kill you. He’s taken command of the country, and he’s not subtle.”
They glanced at each other warily. “I can protect us if need be,” Layanna said, and she didn’t need to add, If this man is a liar.
They allowed the self-proclaimed supporter of the Prime Minister to usher them through back halls of the airport, being let through by, apparently, more underground supporters.
“Is it true?” Layanna said. “Has there been a coup?”
“No time for the full history,” the man said as they reached a door leading outside and took it. They were at the airport’s pick-up lane, Avery saw; few people were arriving in Hissig these days, and there were only a smattering of vehicles waiting to pick up incoming family members. Looking wildly around, wind making his hair dance like that of a madman, their guide found the car he was looking for and strode toward it at a brisk pace. The others followed, more reserved. If this was a trap, now was the time to spring it. It wasn’t until Avery saw the driver that his reservations melted away.
For, driving the automobile, was none other than Michael Denaris, the Prime Minister’s husband. Avery had only met him a few times, but they had both lived in the Parliament Building in close proximity for a couple of weeks and had had dinner and lunch together several times. Avery recognized him without question.
“Get in,” said Michael. “Quickly. I don’t know how much longer our people can distract Haggarty’s.”
They piled in, leaving the breathless young man that had fetched them to his own devices, as seemed to be expected and planned for, and were away, off into the chaos of Hissig.
“Where are we bound?” Layanna said.
“I wish I could say the Parliament Building, but Haggarty bombed it two weeks ago.”
“Gods,” said Hildra.
“It drove Gwen into hiding before ...” Looking haunted, he didn’t seem able to go on.
“We heard she was missing,” Avery supplied.
Nodding, Michael gathered himself. “We were staying in safe houses, but the last one was betrayed and we had to flee. We went to Muscud, one of the sewer settlements. Gwen got a line on Jeffers, the fellow who’d found the mutilated bodies—I believe she showed you one—and hoped he might be able to help us find the Collossum hiding down there. Yes, she told me all about it, and besides, it’s common knowledge these days. At any rate, she hoped that if she found the Collossum then General Hastur could strike it. But Hastur vanished. Gwen went looking for her with some men, and she went missing, too. That was three days ago. We haven’t seen her since.”
“That’s terrible,” Hildra said. “Shit, we’re sorry.”
Michael let out a ragged breath and nodded.
“And you’re, what, leading a resistance?” Janx asked.
“Something like that. There are many of us, and there’s fighting all over the city. I wouldn’t call myself the leader, but I am, perhaps, a leader. I’m more of a symbol than anything else, to tell you the truth.”
Avery saw barricades blocking certain streets, manned by tense-looking men and women. Trash littered road and sidewalk, and rocks or bullets had shattered countless windows so that their jagged remains gleamed like teeth. Graffiti covered walls and lampposts. Here and there bodies lay strewn near gutters and under awnings, sheets generally thrown over them, but not always.
“It’s a warzone,” Michael said. “When Haggarty made his move, assaulting the Parliament Building, people took up arms against him, or many of them. Most of them are for Gwen. The Army was on her side until the general disappeared. Now we’ve lost most of them, too, though there are a few brigades still loyal to us.”
“Civil war,” Janx muttered. “Shit.”
Avery suddenly found it hard to catch his breath.
“Where are the Starfish?” Layanna said, and he admired her for keeping on task. His own thoughts had become disordered. “We had expected them to attack by now.”
“Everyone had. They’re all just off the coast, waiting,” Michael said. “Poised to strike every major capital on two continents.”
“Why don’t they?”
“We don’t know. Speculation is that the Collossum are holding them back. If Haggarty gives Ghenisa over to them, this Starfish will spare the country, and that will inspire a chain of similar conversions all down the coast, maybe trickle into the interior. It will be as if Octung had won the war after all.”
“We can’t allow that,” said Layanna, then frowned. “When you say Haggarty giving Ghenisa over to them, I assume you mean personally—as in offering it to the Collossum that apparently lives in the sewers?”
“That’s the common thinking among those that know about it, yes.”
“What about the team tasked with completing the extradimensional drill?” Avery said. “It was supposed to open a hole in the Starfish’s exoskeleton for Layanna to enter.”
“All imprisoned,” Michael said, “and the drill—in its early stages of completion, no less—destroyed.”
“Your side, does it still have any bombers?” Janx said. “Maybe the Army could bomb holes in it in place of the drill.”
“I’m afraid not. The Navy has complete charge of our air defenses now.”
“It was just a thought. Bombs didn’t do the Azadi much good.”
A sudden fear seized Avery. “What of the Voryses? The Drakes?”
Michael shot him a black look before turning back to the road. “Interesting you should ask that, Doctor. There have been rumors of them consolidating power, organizing for some sort of move while the country’s in turmoil. But without military power, and with the bureaucracy either scattered or under Haggarty’s control, they have no hope. We’re there.”
The jeep pulled up to a barricade blocking a certain street, and a rough-looking man with a rifle over his shoulder stepped forward and conferred with Michael for a moment. “All’s clear,” the man said, then, with a glance to Avery and the others: “This them?”
“It is,” Michael said. “Take care of them for me. Gwen thought they could be very important.”
“Wait,” Avery said. “You’re leaving?”
“I have other tasks needing my attention, I’m sorry.”
“What are we supposed to do?”
Michael gave him a strange look. “I was hoping you would know.”
Shaken, Avery disembarke
d with the others. The rough-looking man, who introduced himself as Myrtle Van, led them around the barricade, which was manned by an equally grim-looking lot, while Michael pulled away. For some reason Avery felt abandoned, even though Michael had likely just saved them from Haggarty’s agents.
Suddenly Layanna hissed in a breath. An expression of considerable pain had come over.
“What is it?”
Through gritted teeth, she said, “... the … ray ...”
Glancing up, he scanned for it, then saw the massive wedge shape sweeping through the skies overhead.
“Damned thing,” said Myrtle Van. “Haggarty’s been using it against us. The psychic aboard it can paralyze us with fear, and I mean drop us right to the ground. It disables us before Haggarty’s shock troops attack. Is your lady alright?”
To Layanna, Avery asked gently, “Are you?”
She shook her head as if to clear it. “I can fight him. The psychic. Hold him off, just like before. But only for a time. Last time I didn’t need to worry about keeping my location from him, only sealing off my mind. Soon, with the ray to amplify his abilities, he’ll sense me. He’ll know where we are. When he does ...”
Myrtle Van led them amongst the armed encampment, which occupied the buildings, streets and alleys of a former block of apartments and retail structures, cafes and restaurants, and Avery marveled at the everyday life of these rebels. A few Army officers led various projects, cleaning up debris, fortifying the barricade and so on, but mainly the civilians were on their own, with no visible order or governing body. Overhead flapped a long silken banner (riddled with bullet holes) with Prime Minister Denaris’s face staring out from it, bold chin aimed like the prow of a warship, eyes like searchlights. Below it the people ate dogs, hunter snails, anything they could catch, even poorly processed seafood. So many had become infected that an entire triage devoted to treating mutation had been set up; Avery promised himself to help later.
Van showed them to a bombed-out café front and through it to stairs that led up into several intact floors filled with shoddy apartments. He set them up in one already overcrowded with rebels and refugees, leaving them alone in a bedroom whose former occupants must have been hastily evicted—making the ugly looks a couple of the rebels had shot them more understandable. Had Michael ordered them to be given first-class service? If so, Avery felt ashamed for making others do without. They were given food—Avery didn’t ask what the meat was after making sure it didn’t come from the sea—and left alone, after one last message from Van:
“Mr. Denaris told me to make you comfortable and to give you whatever aid I could, including arms and men, to do whatever you needed to do, as long as it didn’t compromise our security. Just let me know what you need and I’ll get it done.”
“Well, this blows,” said Hildra after he had left, staring out the window and picking at her meal. It had begun to rain and a drypuss, a fur-covered octopus, was crawling up the opposite wall, hunching and bunching over the wet red brick, brown fur dripping. Avery wondered how long it would be before someone caught it for dinner. With a start, he wondered if he might have just eaten one. They were land creatures, after all.
“It’s a pretty sorry state,” Janx agreed.
“The good news is we have the nectar, or Layanna does,” Avery said. “But I confess I don’t see the way forward from here.”
By their swears and frowns he knew they didn’t either. From the floor below, someone began to sing, a woman. Another joined her, and another, and soon a swell of voices filled the air, both beautiful and terrible. It wasn’t a song of victory, or joy, but a song of mourning. Whoever the group was, they had just lost somebody. The woman that had started the song was likely a mother or lover.
For a time Avery’s party listened in silence to the dirge as rain beat against the windows, and it seemed to him as if he were in a black hole with no light able to reach him and no way out. He tried not to think of Ani but failed. She’s fine, he told himself. Idris and the other Voryses would be weathering this current conflict better than most, surely. Hell, if what Michael said was true, they were more than just all right; they were about to be on top, or make a play for the top position, anyway. Avery hoped, prayed they didn’t. If they failed and the fight turned against them, Ani would be in danger. Be safe, he thought, as he did many times every day, sending the thought out into the ether like a prayer. Be safe. Be well. I will see you soon.
With the rain to lull them, the group settled in to sleep. It had been a stressful day, and they needed rest. Despite himself, though, Avery couldn’t drift off. By the way Layanna tossed and turned on her side of the room, he doubted she could either, though both Janx and Hildra seemed to have let slumber take them. They were used to sleeping on the run, though. Avery supposed he should be too by now, but he knew he would never reach their level of casual adventurism. Nervously, afraid of his reception, Avery approached Layanna and plunked down beside her.
Her eyes had been closed, but she cracked them. “Yes?”
“I just—I wanted to talk—” He let out an exasperated breath. “I wanted to say this days ago, but there hasn’t been a chance.” You’ve been avoiding me, he didn’t add. “I wanted to say I was sorry. I really am.”
She kept silent, as if waiting for more, then said, “Well, you’ve said it. Good night.” She rolled over.
“Layanna, surely you know—I mean, with Sheridan—”
She rolled back over and fixed him with a hard look. “Yes? Just what about Sheridan?”
He opened his mouth to answer, then closed it. The truth was he didn’t know. The two women represented different things to him, though both were inscrutable and unknowable in their own ways.
“I love you,” he said suddenly.
She started. “You ...” Now it was she who couldn’t find words.
He spoke quickly, before the strength to do so left him. “I realized it in Mago. When I saw you through your amoebic sac, when I was, well, inside you. Before then I had been afraid of what you are—I still am, really—but it was then when I realized what you are is beautiful, in whichever form, inside and out.”
She stared at him. If he hadn’t known her better he would have thought he saw her eyes become moister. She looked away. Then, surprising him, she reached out and squeezed his hand. He squeezed back, his heart hammering. Part of him thought she might say it back. Part of him thought she would tell him to go to hell. He never found out, as just then she gasped sharply and clutched at her temples, an agonized expression on her face.
“What is it?” he said.
“The ray. The psychic piloting it—he’s found me. Thought I could hold him off longer—but with the ray—too strong.” Her face rigid, she added, “It won’t be long till the attack.”
Even before she finished, blinding pain drowned him.
It felt like hot lead poured over every fissure of Avery’s brain, all at once. He screamed and fell to the floor, rolling about, insensate, as waves of agony came over him, and oceans of stark raving fear. He was plunged into a madness of terror and pain, his whole world one of horror. It filled his head, pulsing, growing, so that it seemed it must burst from his skull and take on a life of its own like a clutch of cockroach eggs hatching in his brain …
As if the ocean was a veil that had been torn aside, the pain and fear and cockroaches receded, and he found himself shaking and gasping, drenched in sweat, on the floor of the apartment, a trickle of urine, thankfully just a little, running down the inside of his leg. Janx and Hildra were in similar states, and shouts and cries echoed from the surrounding rooms, indicating that everyone in the area had been likewise affected.
Shakily, Layanna said, “I can hold him off—for a time. But they’ll be—”
Gunshots erupted from the street.
Breathless, the group rushed to the windows and gazed outside, seeing lines of Navy storm troopers breaching the barricade, mowing down all resistance. Bodies pitched to the ground before them.
“They know we’re here,” Layanna said. “They came for me.”
“We need to move,” Hildra said, opening the window onto the fire escape.
“Hate to leave these folk,” Janx said, and by the look in his eye Avery knew he must be thinking of the singing, of the family on the floor below that had just lost somebody, or many somebodies. In the violence to come, they would certainly lose still more, and that’s if any survived.
“If we stay we die,” Hildra said, “and then these people will’ve died for nothing.”
Reluctantly, the four took the fire escape to the roof. Troops were there before them, but the roof abutted another, and they moved across, then passed over several rickety jury-rigged bridges that led to still more roofs; Hissig was home to a ragtag rooftop culture, and that came in handy now. Shouts followed them, and shots, but they pulled the bridges to their side, or heaved them over into the alleys, anything to discourage pursuit, and soon the noises faded.
“Shit,” Hildra panted, when they slowed to catch their breaths. “Where can we go? I mean, damn.”
“I don’t know where we can go that the ray can’t find me,” Layanna said. “I emit a strong extradimensional signature.”
“Perhaps ... surrounded by others with extradimensional signatures?” Avery said. Shots sounded in the background, still distant, but he jumped. “I-infected people, I mean. Could enough of them mask you?”
“Perhaps. A mutant ghetto?”
