by Thomas Locke
And galvanized the Praetorians into full assault mode.
57
The great bonging alarms now alternated with a recorded voice telling everyone to evacuate the station. Trains froze where they were, and all the doors flew open. Even so, some people still milled about in confused panic. After all, the Cyrians had known both peace and stability for decades. Only when they saw the alien swarm did they try to flee. But by then it was too late.
The swirling enemy overwhelmed the station’s upper left quadrant, consuming all it came into contact with. The Praetorian Guard assaulted in a shock wave of fury. Carver led one contingent, Josef another. The Guards poured in now through numerous transit points. Instantly they were shouted into formation and sent on the attack.
The Guards fashioned a net of force that stretched over the entire alien mob, a wall between the humans and the enemy. The enemy attacked the net in a swirling mass of fury, like a poisonous stream seeking a conduit, an opening.
There was a subtle shift in the station’s atmosphere, a grim hesitation in the onslaught of death and destruction. The Guards’ barrier was being eaten away in a multitude of places. Each new hole was rimmed by the same green fire as the portal through which they continued to surge. Each grew into another flower of death. And through them flowed a new wave of attackers. Humans who were humans no more.
At their lead was a female in torn shreds of clothing, a slobbering beast that loped down the slanted wall on all fours. With each of her howls she released a gob of green fire, all of her projectiles aimed at the Guards. She duplicated as she ran, first two, then four, then an entire squad of howling mimics. Their fireballs struck the Guards’ shields and clung and ate and burned and finally worked through. When they did, the Guards within had time for one terrorized scream of their own. Then they faced the same choice as Tirian. Many of those assaulted were too close to their fellow Guards to blast away. Those who did not went rigid, they howled, and they went on the attack.
Hordes of the tormented and their duplicates spilled out, leaping, flaming, racing. The noise rose and rose. The station was a battle zone now. And still the enemy’s numbers grew.
But so did the Guards. They split and re-formed into tighter units, each squad small enough now to take personal responsibility for all the others in their group.
The battle flashed and flamed, while a new battalion formed by the far wall and began building a new power net, a barrier to hem in the swarming aliens and their replicates. The Guards flowed in through a dozen transit points now, hundreds of new troops arriving with each passing minute.
The fight was a close-run thing. When the turning came, Sean momentarily feared he was merely hoping for a shift. But within a few breaths he could see that the aliens were in retreat. Snarling, vicious, still inflicting casualties. But their surge had been stemmed. The battle was swaying now in favor of the human race.
Sean turned to the others. He saw that they knew, and they feared for him. He shouted it anyway. “It’s time.”
To their immense credit, they all nodded and transited with him.
58
The semi-wrecked duty room was cramped and uncomfortable with all the tension. Chenel and Baran had followed them back, and no one had the heart to tell them to leave. Sean saw the realization dawn on both their faces of what he was going to try. They made no attempt to disguise their horror. But at least they did not object.
Nor, astonishingly, did Elenya. She gripped his face with hands so tight she dug into the flesh of his neck and temples. But Sean did not mind. Nor did he mind the tears. Nor the fierceness of her voice, nor the fear in her words. “You will come back to me. Do you understand?”
“I do.”
“You will not make me live alone.” She shook his head, hard enough to hurt, and yet he felt nothing but comfort. “Tell me!”
“I love you, Elenya.”
She kissed him, fierce as her grip. Then she released his head and fashioned his invisible belt. She took hold of his arm, folding down over him. So close her tears fell on his hand. But she did not speak. She did not protest. Nor did she make a sound as she wept.
Sean looked over to where Dillon was stretched out on the opposite couch. “Ready?”
“For hours,” he replied, reaching for Carey’s hand.
Carey gripped him tightly. “Don’t you need Carver?”
“Just hold my hand,” Dillon told Carey. “Everything’s good.”
Chenel declared, “I must come.”
Sean did not object. He did not point out that she actually didn’t know for certain what he intended. Instead he merely asked, “Are you sure?”
She swallowed hard. “I am.”
“You will serve as Dillon’s wingman. You stay one fraction behind him. Linked to him like he is to me. Ready to make the move back. Drawing us with you.”
She swallowed again. “Understood.”
Sean turned back to his brother. “Dillon.”
“Oh man, don’t get all gushy on me, okay?”
“Thanks.”
“You can thank me when this is over.” Dillon shut his eyes. “I am three seconds from out of here.”
Elenya released Sean long enough to fashion a second belt around Dillon. She gripped both one-handed and retook her fierce hold on Sean.
Sean asked, “Baran?”
“Chenel is belted.”
Elenya kissed him again, tenderly this time. “Tell me what you are going to do.”
“Make this happen. Come home. To you.”
“I’m waiting here,” Dillon said.
Sean shut his eyes. “Let’s go.”
59
The alien swarm had divided into eight different segments, with two Guards battalions fighting each. One group of troops maintained the shield barrier while the other attacked. The station was filled with great billowing surges of Praetorian force and green lightning blasts and the shrieks of the remaining possessed. But their numbers were lessening, and another four battalions cornered them and squeezed them and then destroyed the remaining aliens.
The station was holed in several places, great gaping fissures through which the snow fell and the flanking maneuvers could be seen. The sky was lit with battle and the air filled with the shrieks of the dying enemy.
Only one position remained unguarded. One place where the aliens could go. Back into the portal. Back where they had first swarmed through. And it was toward this point that Sean headed.
Sean would never have defined himself as brave. At that moment, he was too scared to even spell courage. But he moved forward. Even when he could no longer remember why.
He had space for one coherent thought as he started forward, followed by Dillon and the Watcher.
Paradigm shift.
It was something from math class, his least favorite subject. The teacher had repeated those two words over and over. Paradigm shift. Moving outside the safety zone of logic and established rules. Ignoring the safe step-by-step procedure of whatever came next. Going off the rails. Changing the world in the process.
Sean hovered and searched for his target. Then Dillon shocked him into next week. His brother moved up and gripped Sean. Since Dillon had no arms, he used what was available—a warrior’s fierce emotions. Loyalty and determination and aggressive, hardened pride. And love.
Then Dillon released him and shifted back.
And Sean was ready.
When viewed in this bodiless state, the mass of aliens looked entirely different. Which was why Sean was here. He had known this the instant the cloud spoke to him. That was how he recalled it. The impossible gift of communication from a timeless state, shifted into images he could fathom in the here and now.
The enemy’s individual forms were much clearer now, like translucent jellyfish filled with venomous intent and the power to move at blinding speeds. The aliens were laced by violent shades of green and ochre, tight lines of force that shimmered and shifted with amazing swiftness. The alien portal was la
rger now, a great gaping hole laced in green fire, like it was intent upon eating its way into the core of the human world.
Then one of the battalion’s nets dissolved, and the aliens spilled out, a heaving body of surging fury. Aimed straight for the portal. Fleeing. And the Guards let them go. Sean assumed the net’s opening was intentional, to see if they would retreat. As soon as the Guards witnessed the blast of recoiling aliens, all the other nets revealed small holes on the side closest to the aliens’ portal.
Sean drifted forward, a disembodied witness to the salvation of a planet. Intent not upon this battle or this world. But rather helping his civilization prepare for the next time.
His civilization.
The thought was enough to commit.
A lone alien swam past, much closer than the others. Flying so fast Sean almost missed his chance. Almost, but not quite.
He dove forward.
Into the alien.
The suspicions that had come with the cloud’s images proved correct. The alien’s shield did not halt him. Sean’s bodiless state granted him the same ability to invade as the aliens.
Sean was overwhelmed by a myriad of impossible impressions. The energy he had witnessed coursing within the swarm was in fact their method of communication. And yet there was no leader. He knew this, just as he knew that the alien had sent out a panic alarm. Just as he knew the aliens had stopped their progress toward the portal. All of them. And turned toward him.
Sean saw the communication link did not begin with any of their number. Instead, it was emitted by the portal itself. A fierce awareness burned through now, hunting, hunting. Taking aim with a ferocity that left him utterly frozen. Incapable of thought, motion, response.
The electric communication between aliens burned away his host. The alien within which he had imbedded himself was gone. And still the lines coursed and lashed him, strong as razor whips. Tearing away his shield, his mind, his being.
He was lost.
Then the belt jerked him away.
As Sean was swept back, his vision cleared sufficiently to watch Dillon fashion a weapon of his own. He was glad for the chance to observe his brother come into his own. Dillon breached forty centuries of staid resistance to change and growth. He drew into himself all the lashing lines of communication and vengeance and force, turning them into one great, huge, massive . . .
Hammer.
Dillon turned their own force against them. He swung the great mallet of power and wrath in a huge arc, mowing through the aliens, stopping them in their tracks.
The last thing Sean saw was Josef and Carver leading a force of Guards, two flanking arms that rose up and surged forward, flaming the air with power of their own.
Then the darkness swept him up, and he was gone.
60
The face that greeted Sean when he opened his eyes was hardly the one he wanted. Sandrine bent over him, grave and professionally concerned. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes.” His mouth tasted foul. “Water.”
She fitted in a straw, let him drink, then held up her free hand and asked, “How many fingers do you see?”
“Oh, let the lad be. Move aside! You poke and prod me enough for ten patients!” The face that replaced Sandrine’s was ancient and seamed and smiling. “Hello, lad. Remember me?”
The name swam up through the depths. “Insgar.”
“Those dolts wanted to take you to the Praetorian Academy. Lock you away in some tower. Nothing to see but a continent of ruin and black rock. Idiots, the lot of them. I am two hundred and twenty-seven years old by Serenese reckoning. Do you know how I have survived this long?”
“Where is Elenya?”
“Eating a well-deserved meal. Pay attention. I survived, lad, by taking time for pleasure! And joy! Though both have been redefined by the limitations of age, I’ll warrant you that. And the only way you can make room for either is by ignoring all the dolts out there and all their frantic little conversations that add up to absolutely nothing.”
“How long . . .”
“Several days, thanks to the good doctor. Whom I have taken as my new personal physician. No doubt I’ll run her off as soon as her government duty-time is done.”
Sandrine said, “Never, Mistress.”
“Humph. Give us a moment, would you please.” When the door clicked shut behind the doctor, Insgar pushed a button on the side of Sean’s bed, cranking him up to a seated position. She then touched a handle on her wheelless chair, lifting her up to where she sat at eye level. “How much do you remember?”
“Everything.” Sean swallowed hard. “I remember it all.”
“That’s good, lad. Very good indeed. Because there’s much you will be able to teach us once you’re recovered. Vital information that we should have gone after long ago.” She shook her head. “Still, the risk you took. Was this idea of yours truly gifted by the cloud?”
“Yes.”
“I was envious of you when I heard, but only for an instant. All my life I’ve yearned for such a contact, since before I knew I could transit. But now, seeing what it cost you . . .” She shook her head again. “We will talk more in the coming days. But one thing I give you now. The reason I demanded you be brought here to rest. The one thing I can offer you in your hour of healing.” Her voice was scarcely above a whisper yet carried the force of two long centuries. “An adept is not someone gifted with enormous abilities. Those dolts are a dime a dozen. We have a hundred worlds and more to draw from, you don’t think we can find recruits with enormous abilities? Idiots, the lot of them. I should know. I ran the Watcher school for the first thirty years of its existence. Almost all of my students left as they arrived, content to carry out orders better than the next dolt. No. An adept is someone with the courage to see what needs doing, and then finding it within themselves to act.”
For reasons Sean could not explain, the words caused the back of his eyes to burn fiercely. “I lost my courage.”
“I know you did, lad. I know. Your valor has been eaten away, the audacity to act crushed, the daring to defy logic consumed, the flame of life almost extinguished.” She touched her chair handle a second time, drawing closer still. “But all this will return, do you hear me? I know it for a fact because I have been where you are now. You will heal, and you will grow from your experience, and the next time such courage is required, you will be ready. Only take time for—”
Her words were cut short by the door slamming back. Elenya flew in, across the stone floor and into his arms. He held her and tried to reply to the woman at the same time, for Insgar remained where she was, smiling at them both.
The room had tall windows along both far walls, and the sunlight was gentled by the veil of white-blonde hair that spilled across his vision. Sean breathed in the warmth and the joy and the love, and tried to fight the rising wave of fatigue, for the moment was too precious to lose to slumber. But his body had a mind of its own. And he was soon swept away.
61
Insgar lived on Serena, her twin world. Many who retired from the service chose to dwell on the planet of their first transit. Sean doubted very much that he would ever select Cyrius as his home. Which was another thing the invasion had cost him, along with a decent night’s sleep.
Sandrine gradually weaned him off the drugs that had kept him under for almost seven days. He didn’t miss the grogginess. But his rest was now punctuated by nightmares of demons that chewed at his bodiless being and lashed him with green, electric fire. He spent his nights locked in battles he would never win, until he was drawn out by the chant of a woman who almost sang his name. Sean. He heard Elenya even when she was not around. And when she held him, she carried in her strength the drumbeat of life and the clashing cymbals of shared breaths, and above it all was the soaring joy of hearing her speak his name. Sean.
Insgar’s home was a rambling country estate, all on one floor, built in an open square with a vast courtyard at its center. Sandrine lived in a separate apartment in th
e back and was enormously happy with the arrangement. Insgar was a natural teacher and found in Sandrine a willing sponge. The doctor would have her choice of institutes for further study, if or when the time came.
The central courtyard held a formal garden, fountains, sculptures, and two small groves of blooming trees. Insgar spent many hours harassing the gardeners assigned to her flowerbeds. It was a happy home, filled with light and wind and space for reflection.
Dillon came every free day, often bringing Carey with him. He was preparing to enter the Academy, but for the moment he was spending time in the loft and visiting with their parents. Their parents showed mild curiosity over Sean’s absence but accepted Dillon’s excuse of a new temporary assignment. Sean tried to show interest in descriptions of their parents’ new homes. But it all seemed to be filtered through the knowledge that he had moved on. He was setting up a life of his own now.
Carver visited as well, and Josef, and both men carried with them the quiet pressure of the unseen hordes who urgently awaited the chance to speak with Sean. But he never saw them alone, as Elenya remained determined to hold the world at bay until Sean was ready.
But his idyll could not last forever, much as he might like to pretend the choice was his. Insgar was bossy by nature and tolerated no argument once her mind was made up. Which was how Sean found himself facing the prospect of dining with Elenya’s parents. He had already recognized that arguing with his host was a futile effort. So he agreed, but his sour countenance was enough to invoke her ire.
“You show that face to my guests, and I will make you sorry you still draw breath!” When angered, Insgar liked to raise her chair up high enough to glare down from imperial heights. “You think the aliens gave you a hard time? You wait, young sir! I will show you what real trouble feels like!”
“I said I’d do it.”
“Aye, and I am ordering you to do so cheerfully! Now show me your smile of greeting. Phah. Elenya, talk sense to this dolt.”
