Warden's Fate

by Tony James Slater

  30

  When Kyra arrived back from the village, Tris asked her to meet them on the Folly’s bridge for a debrief.

  A word to Askarra got them underway. The Empress and her followers accompanied them, as they headed for a patch of empty space near the planet Demios had adopted.

  Kreon had returned from his investigations in short order; apparently less was known about the Planet Forge than the Black Ships. After conferring with Lord Balentine he took on the role of silent spectator, as Tris struggled to convince Kyra of the merits of his plan.

  Her reaction was predictably sarcastic. “Sure, that’ll work,” she said. “I can’t see a single thing that could go wrong. In fact, seeing as how you’ve got it all under control, I might as well go and do my nails.”

  And with several hours to kill before they reached their destination, she did just that.

  Lord Balentine had volunteered to stay with the Folly. He was ultimately responsible for the crew of the Vanguard, and Tris instructed Askarra to grant him control if none of them returned from their showdown with Demios. Her electronic voice betrayed no emotion as she agreed to these conditions, but as soon as he left the bridge her hologram appeared to plead with him for caution.

  Tris appreciated her concerns. Hell, he felt the same way himself, and on an epic scale. This was not like any mission he’d been on before. This wasn’t a research trip, or a rescue attempt. It was an out-and-out assassination — or it would be, if they could pull it off.

  Murder, by any other name…

  But if anyone deserved it, Demios did.

  With his mother’s warnings ringing in his ears, Tris rode the elevator down to deck seven, and took the nearest radial corridor towards the peripheral. With yet another lethal assignment on the cards, there was only one place he wanted to spend the rest of the journey.

  Ella hadn’t been present at the debrief. As usual she’d managed to gather all the information first hand; Tris suspected that she stayed away from meetings to conceal how much she knew. It made him wonder just how far ahead of them she’d been the whole time. Ever since their first meeting, when she’d come knocking on his door inside the Wardens’ ancient fortress, he’d had the feeling that she was playing a wider game. Not a conspiracy; more like, no matter what he found out, it seemed that she already knew about it. And had three plans and a contingency prepared to deal with it. It was thrilling to be going on a real mission with her — one that she’d planned, rather than her simply tagging along as he got swept from one disaster to the next.

  Inevitably, the door to her room slid open just as he was about to knock. His best guess was that she’d set up cameras out in the corridor, not that he’d ever seen her monitoring something like that.

  Live-streamed to eye-implants?

  One more thing he was never going to ask her about.

  “So,” he said, as he stepped into the room.

  And stopped, because there wasn’t any floor space. The usually bare room was filled with sleek black cases, several of which Ella had laid open on the deck. He didn’t need to peek inside to know they were weapons; the cases would have been at home in every assassin movie he’d ever watched.

  “Holy crap! Did all this come from the Priestesses?”

  She beamed up at him from where she sat cross-legged on the floor, a long black tube that screamed ‘rifle barrel’ in her hands. “Normally we travel light. I suppose they were expecting trouble.”

  Tris picked his way between the cases, and flopped down on the narrow bunk. “We’re not taking all this with us, are we?”

  “No. I’m storing most of it here, in case we get to come back for it. But if we don’t, you should probably tell your mum not to let anyone else try opening any of it.”

  She put the tube down and plucked a matt black cylinder the size of a Mars bar from a different case.

  “Is that what I think it is?”

  “Smoke grenade,” she confirmed. “And this one is nerve toxin.” The second cylinder she produced looked identical to the first.

  “How can you tell?” Tris asked.

  “The pattern of the grip. Makes it easier in the dark.”

  Tris looked around the room, noticing another new addition. On a simple folding stool, a single candle burned in front of a small square mirror. A plain wooden cross was propped up next to the mirror. It would have looked creepy, except he grasped the significance straight away.

  “I’m so, so sorry about Evie,” he said, feeling awful. Once again, everything had happened so fast; he was already psyching himself up for the next battle, whilst Ella had been ferrying people around and taking care of all kinds of stuff without complaint. He hadn’t had time to think about how the death of her sister might have affected her. No, scratch that — he hadn’t made time.

  Pretty shitty boyfriend material. Not that that’s much of a surprise.

  “So, you were Catholic?” he pointed at the cross.

  “We had to be. Nuns ran the orphanage where we grew up. We used to pray together, in the early days, before…” she stopped speaking, and squeezed her eyes shut tight.

  “I’m sorry,” Tris repeated lamely. He wasn’t sure what else to say.

  Eyes still closed, she nodded wordlessly.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” He patted the bed next to him in as non-sexual a way as he could manage.

  “Not really.”

  “Are you… okay?”

  She was quiet for a moment. “Not really,” she said. And a tiny hiccup escaped her.

  Tris knew then what he had to do.

  Placing his feet carefully, he reached her in two strides. Bending down, he put his hands under her arms, lifting her easily. Genetically engineered or not, she weighed next to nothing. He carried her back to the bunk and eased her onto it, sliding on behind her to wrap her trembling body in his.

  And for the next two hours, he lay on the bed and held her while she sobbed.

  ***

  The mood was sombre as they assembled in the docking bay.

  Tris knew how serious the situation was; it was etched on Kreon’s face. Ella’s plan called for Kyra to pilot Nightshade, coming in behind them using the Empress and her followers as a shield just like last time. The hope was that Demios would assume they were all aboard; the reality was that he would realise they were up to something, and would almost certainly try to destroy the shuttle before it landed. Ella knew how crafty her ex-employer was, and had built several distractions into her scheme. If Kyra was allowed to land, she would stay inside the shuttle and keep both weapons and engines hot. If not, she would have to improvise, but staying alive would become her top priority.

  The Empress would proceed as though she intended to challenge Demios. She believed that he would be forced to accept, if for no other reason than to maintain respect amongst the thousands of adolescent Siszar that surrounded him. They must all have lost their alpha males to his psychic lance, and mass-subservience was the result. But it was a tenuous and unnatural state for them. Should Demios flagrantly disregard a challenge from one as powerful as her, it could incite them all to tackle him at once. It was a dangerous path he walked; Tris couldn’t help admiring his audacity, even whilst detesting the man himself.

  Meanwhile, Tris, Kreon and Ella would land as close to the crate-compound as they could without arousing suspicion. Tris and Kreon would make a break for it, busting their way in through the back wall to confront Demios, whilst Ella remained in the ship with the high-powered sniper rifle she’d recently acquired. Kreon handed her his Kharash knife, which would let her cut a firing slit in the hull; whatever the outcome, they wouldn’t be flying the captured nestship out of there. Hopefully the ship’s bulk would give her enough height to shoot over the wall of crates, killing Demios before anyone else had to get their hands dirty.

  As plans went, it was elaborate, and it was multi-pronged.

  And as Tris knew from vast experience, it was bound to go wrong.

  But th
ey had prepared as best they could. Demios had been a thorn in their side from the very beginning; if they couldn’t finish him off now, they never would.

  Kyra reported that Lukas was recovering well, and that he’d promised to join them.

  “You didn’t let him?” Tris asked her, horrified.

  “Hell no! I knocked him out again. But with drugs, this time.”

  For her role as decoy, Kyra had scrubbed the worst of the black ichor off her pink-sprayed armour. Tris had to admit, it was an interesting effect; sort of like Space Marine Barbie after a hard day on the battlefield.

  Ella was the last to arrive. Tris had left her to get cleaned up, and returned to his own quarters to do the same — the lack of a bathroom in her place really made things difficult.

  She strolled in quite casually, betraying no sign of the quivering wreck she’d been a short time before. Her flame-red ringlets had been tamed into a braid, and the sleek black bodysuit she wore was festooned with pouches and gadgets. Short swords rode both hips, and she carried the sniper rifle resting back on her shoulder like a gangster with a shotgun.

  “Okay, hello!” Kyra said, when she saw her approaching. “Damn, girl! You finally look like you mean business.”

  Ella blushed, setting the stock of the sniper rifle on the deck. “I always mean business,” she said, casting a sly glance at Tris. “But part of being an assassin is not advertising that fact.”

  Kyra eyed the rifle, then took it when Ella offered. She grunted as she picked it up, looked it over, then flung it to Tris without warning. He caught it in mid-air, his reflexes giving him a brief moment of pride.

  But Kyra wasn’t watching. She was focussed on Ella. “Now look,” she said. “Before I go on a mission with you, there’s something I’ve got to do.” She reached out, taking Ella’s slender hands in her own. “Damn, I knew it. There is just no way that shit is gonna fly.”

  Digging into a pouch on her thigh, Kyra produced a small glass bottle. “Purple is all I got on me, so you’re gonna have to work with it.” Unscrewing the top of the bottle, she pulled out the attached brush and went to work on Ella’s nails. It only took a few seconds, before she blew on the wet varnish and pronounced herself satisfied. “There — we match.” She held up her own glittery fingernails as proof. “Now don’t get killed out there. Sparkles look crap on dead bodies.”

  Ella nodded, and Tris thought he saw her lip tremble.

  “Here,” he said, handing Ella back the rifle to forestall any emotional outburst. “Shit this thing’s heavy! How the hell do you lug it around so easily?”

  “Simple,” she said, the mischievous glint back in her eyes. “I’m much stronger than you.”

  “Preach it!” Kyra cawed, and gave Ella a spontaneous high-five.

  As Kreon moved in to issue last-minute warnings to the girls, Tris found himself stood with Lord Balentine. The old Warden had come down from the bridge to see them off. To fill the awkward silence before it developed, Tris decided to pick his brains on a subject that had been bothering him.

  “You know a fair bit about the Kharash then?” he started. “As a librarian?”

  Balentine smiled fondly at him. “I am the Seneschal of the Fortress, guardian of the Archives on Atalia — an honorary role, much as Kreon is our Commander of Cavalry. But yes, the ancient Kharash are amongst my areas of study. Not that our archives are much use. We have very limited information — legends and the like, passed down through the generations by word of mouth. But your master has been kind enough to allow me access to the Lemurian religious archives that you, ah… came across.”

  “It’s all good,” Tris pointed out. “Kreon’s daughter basically runs the Lemurian Empire now, so she’ll have no issues with us robbing data from the Church.”

  “Yes, well,” Balentine continued, managing to inject a note of disapproval into those two words, “regardless. Their records were far more contemporary. Although they still viewed the Kharash as gods, they were at least diligent enough to take notes.”

  “So what kind of stuff could they do? With the Gift, I mean.”

  Balentine frowned. “The Gift has been our name for psychic talents since antiquity, but to the Kharash they would have been as natural as breathing. There is no treatise on their biology, unfortunately, but from the legends one can surmise that their abilities were extraordinary. Telekinesis, the ability to move objects with a thought, is commonly referenced. And their powers of healing were mentioned a lot, too, though some of this could be due to their advanced technology.”

  “What about combat applications? Could they use the Gift in a fight?”

  Balentine frowned. “As I mentioned, they were a peace-loving and benevolent race. I’ve never heard or read anything about them fighting amongst themselves.”

  “But if they did?” Tris pressed him. “What would that be like?”

  “You’ve fought using the Gift yourself,” Balentine pointed out. “Presumably it lets you know where your enemies are, what they’re thinking and so on?”

  “Yeah. That’s the gist of it.”

  Balentine must have heard the defeat in his voice, because he dug deep for something else to share. “Fighting a telekinetic would be a whole different story, though. Imagine if they were strongly talented? They could deflect your weapons, crush your armour, without ever having to put themselves in danger. They could crush you, even — squash your head with just a thought.” He chuckled, perhaps at the absurdity of the idea. “Providing, of course, they don’t mind making a mess!”

  ***

  Tris was glad they’d parked the Folly nice and close. The captured Siszar female spewed rage like a geyser, giving him a headache so bad he wanted to pound his face into the console. Ella found the controls for a forcefield which kept them from becoming one-dimensional when she activated the nestship’s grav-drive, but its side-effect was like an elephant sitting on his chest. Once they were safely underway she turned the field off, allowing him to breathe again, but that was as far as the luxury went. There were only three seats, and they had none of the fancy padding that had cushioned his backside in other ships. The Priesthood had used the barest minimum of human materials in their refit, making zero concession for comfort.

  Tris wore armour for this trip, a heavy and inflexible suit Kreon had chosen for him from the Vanguard’s armoury. He’d seen the same outfit on several of the dead marines during that battle, which didn’t give him a vast amount of confidence in it. It was cumbersome and restrictive, and hotter than hell — but in terms of protection, it beat the snot out of a t-shirt and jeans.

  No-one spoke as they rode the bubble of distorted gravity towards their enemy.

  The atmosphere inside the alien ship was tense…

  And disturbingly moist.

  When they reached the planet and slipped back into real-space, Ella’s console lit up with contacts. “Multiple ships in the area,” she reported, “all Siszar.”

  “Hold our course,” Kreon instructed.

  Tris couldn’t see either of their instrument panels from where he sat; he was in the third seat, wedged into a niche beside the passageway to the rest of the ship.

  “They’re scattering,” Ella said, relief in her voice. Working her controls constantly to keep them stable, she guided the ship down towards the atmosphere. The first haze of gases enveloped them, and the nestship juddered with turbulence. Ella’s full attention was on piloting now, while Kreon hunched over the tactical display.

  “All enemy vessels are vectoring away,” he confirmed.

  The view through the canopy changed from grey to green, as they came out into a layer of clear air. The world beneath them was another gem, pristine and unspoiled. Tris could make out a coastline and oceans at the furthest extent of vision, but already the angry red smear of Demios’ cruiser stood out like a bleeding wound on the landscape.

  “Are they targeting us yet?” he asked, still not convinced about their disguise.

  “Not this time,” Kre
on replied. “In any event, the cruiser itself is unlikely to risk firing on us. Our primary threats are the Siszar vessels, but none seem keen to molest us.”

  “This ruse is working a bit too well,” Ella pointed out. “If every ship we come across flees in terror, we might end up drawing more attention from the humans.”

  “Execute a landing at the earliest opportunity,” Kreon suggested.

  Ella hit the brakes, and they made a slow pass above the crate-walled compound. It hadn’t changed; two gaps had been left for entrances, and a smattering of humans and Siszar roamed both inside and out.

  By now the crimson hull of the cruiser dominated the skyline, rearing up above them as they dove for the ground. Tris clung to the edges of his seat, hoping Ella knew what she was doing. It had been a long road to get this far; he didn’t want to end up smeared across the plain below. But Ella was getting more familiar with the nestship, and swooped in to land in a way that Tris thought was very reminiscent of the Siszar.

  “Nice job,” he said, once they’d settled safely to Earth.

  “Thanks sweetie.” She slid gracefully out from behind her console and stretched. “I hope the rest of this trip goes this smoothly.”

  The passageway leading to the rest of the ship looked like a giant’s gullet. Tris hustled down it, his armoured feet sinking into the spongy deck with every stride. He had no more gear to collect; all of them were wearing their weapons. There really was nothing else for it.

  He stopped, allowing Kreon to move past him, and put a hand out to Ella. He still wasn’t great at using this kind of armour, and her delicate silhouette was festooned with lumps of gear, so he didn’t try touching her. Instead, she leaned into him, and planted a kiss on his cheek. “Watch him,” she said. “He’s tricky.”