The world was placid for a long moment. Joey rather enjoyed that. Then he finally noticed all the red medical displays crawling through his exovision, so many and so bright he could barely see anything else.
‘Giu’s bollocks,’ Faustina wailed. ‘Joey? Joey, are you alive?’ She took a couple of steps forwards and hesitated, looking between him and Roxwolf.
‘Unlock the gateway,’ Joey said. ‘Quick. I don’t think I’ve got long.’ He banished all the bad-news medical icons from his exovision – not that their absence made the world a whole lot clearer. ‘Hey! Hey, Roxwolf, how you doing, pal?’
The mutant Faller coughed and flopped over, clutching at his hip where the bullet had torn through. ‘Last time I jailbreak with you, my friend.’
‘Keep pressure on the wound. Help is coming.’
‘Help?’
‘Yes. I think.’
‘Done it,’ Faustina cried incredulously.
Joey’s u-shadow told him access to the gateway’s smartnet was now open. He linked to it and pulled the operational routines into his exovision. The BC5800d2’s systems were all recognizable, though there were plenty of specialist functions he didn’t even consider. He started to load instructions in.
‘It’s turning violet,’ Faustina exclaimed.
Uncomfortably warm liquid was bubbling away in Joey’s throat, making it even harder to breathe. He scanned the displays that showed him the BC5800d2’s initialization process running. Then he had to work through the more complex terminus coordinate selection procedure. Hyperspacial resonance revealed planetary masses orbiting their solitary star. Only one had moons, though they were exceptionally small. He shifted the coordinates again, opening the terminus close to Trüb’s surface.
It must have been about right, for a lovely purple glow spilled through the open wormhole to shine across the crypt and its grisly contents. Trüb’s mauve surface was alive with subtly shifting patterns of colour, like solid rainbows rippling gently round the smooth globe.
His body was trembling now, and growing cold. ‘Faustina, send a signal through. You have to contact them. Tell Paula she has to take charge of the gateway’s smartnet. Quickly. I’m losing it.’
‘Joey?’ The anguish in her voice was plaintive.
‘Don’t worry. This is just a copy of me. I’ve bodylossed before. The worst bit is waking up in a clinic’s emaciated clone; they always fast-grow them. I think it’s coz it’s cheaper that way.’
‘Don’t talk,’ she told him.
He hadn’t known he was.
His u-shadow reported several new links opening. One connected directly with the BC5800d2’s smartnet. Faustina started crying.
*
Kysandra stepped through first, her nose wrinkling up at the carnage on the floor of the crypt. She was just about to embrace a sobbing Faustina when she froze in shock.
‘What the crud is that?’ she demanded.
‘I’m Roxwolf. Good to finally meet you.’
She grunted in bemusement. ‘I guess it really is the end of the world.’ The wound in his side looked bad, but his paw was pressed against the ripped flesh, slowing the ugly pulses of blue blood.
‘Can you do it?’ Faustina asked. ‘Can you stop the Fallers?’
‘Paula thinks she can.’ She saw Chaing lying on the ground, a nasty bullet wound in his thigh. ‘Hello again, captain; you really need to learn how to duck faster.’
He nodded weakly. She didn’t like how pale he was; the blood loss was getting serious. Ry and Florian came through the wormhole behind her. ‘Ry, first-aid the captain, now.’
‘I’m on it!’ he exclaimed.
She stared at the mutant Faller.
‘I warned you about the bombardment,’ Roxwolf said. ‘I’ve been helping you. I had a deal with humans; you said you’d let me live.’
‘That’s true,’ Faustina said.
Kysandra found passing judgement was unusually difficult. So many years had been spent exterminating Fallers, her instinct was just to fry him with a disrupter pulse. ‘Florian, you take Roxwolf. Paula can decide what to do with him later.’
‘Welcome to the reunion, my friend,’ Roxwolf grunted at an uncertain Florian.
‘But . . . he’s alien,’ Florian said. ‘The medical kit won’t treat him.’
‘Just apply basic first aid, stop the bleeding. Fallers are tough beasts.’
Florian dropped to his knees beside the mutant Faller and opened the kit. He took out a big dressing patch.
‘Thank you,’ Roxwolf sighed.
Kysandra turned to the third victim. ‘Prime minister?’ she said in surprise.
‘No, I stole his body. Don’t worry about this; everything is backed up. I’ll re-life later. Just get us back . . . Oh bollocks, here we go again.’ His chest juddered as blood gushed out of his mouth; then his body went limp.
‘It was Joey,’ Faustina explained.
‘Okay. Brief me, please, and quickly.’ Kysandra took a minute to study all the files Faustina sent over, along with listening to a fast summary. ‘Oh crud,’ she muttered at the end. ‘Paula, did you get all that?’
‘Yes. It doesn’t matter. If I can crack Valatare, it’s all over.’
‘How long?’
‘Not sure. Soon, I hope.’
Paula not giving a specific has to be a first, Kysandra thought. At any other time she might have enjoyed it. ‘So,’ she said to Faustina. ‘We’ve got a crowd of Eliter children outside thinking you’re going to protect them, and the Fallers are moving into the city?’
‘Yes,’ Faustina admitted miserably.
‘Okay. Demitri, the gateway is all yours. Take it back to Trüb.’
‘Inverting now,’ the ANAdroid replied.
‘Right, then. Ry, Florian: let’s go and make sure those kids are going to be safe.’
*
Stonal heard the crowd as soon as he emerged from the palace. It was a low growl of voices, all merged into a continuous animal rumble, charged with fright and anger. Shrill individual cries pierced the clamour, anguished children venting their distress. He tightened his jaw against any instinctive urge to rush and help as he stalked across the wide, empty parade ground. Palace Guards on the walkway at the top of the wall saw him coming and nudged their Comrades.
A small group of guards was clustered at the back of the big reinforced gates. He saw a man in a splendid blue and gold captain’s uniform arguing with a furious woman in a smart charcoal-grey suit. She was holding the hand of a five-year-old boy who was on the verge of tears.
‘Captain Fitzsand?’ Stonal said as he joined the group.
The captain saluted. ‘Sir.’
‘Are you in charge here?’ the woman challenged.
‘And you are?’ Stonal asked.
‘Maribeth. You have to let us in.’
‘Why are you here? What message did you get?’
‘We were told there’s sanctuary here. The Commonwealth is going to protect our children.’ She gripped her son’s hand tighter, pulling him even closer.
‘Who said that? What sort of sanctuary?’
‘It was a signal in the general network, verified by people I know. It said there was a Commonwealth machine here with a force field.’
‘Joey,’ Stonal muttered disapprovingly under his breath.
‘Then there was another message, a signal from space. All of us received that, and now we have the code to unlock the gateway.’
‘From space?’ Stonal asked disbelievingly. ‘Who sent a message from space?’
‘That would be me,’ a voice said behind him.
He turned to see the Warrior Angel walking across the parade ground, her coat tails flapping wide, brown suede hat at an angle, long glossy Titian hair flowing like a cloak down her back. She was smiling knowingly, which made her young face beguilingly lovely.
Two men were walking beside her. Stonal recognized them easily enough: Ry Evine and Florian. Both carried thick black cylinders on shoulder straps, and wore
ribbed matt overalls that had to be Commonwealth-built. He was surprised to see Faustina walking with them. He regarded her with extreme suspicion; she seemed more nervous of him than of Kysandra. It appalled him to think she might have been sneaking information to the Eliters all along.
Up above him, the Palace Guards on the walkway were cheering the Warrior Angel.
She walked right up to him and gave him an impish grin of appraisal. ‘Director Stonal. Finally.’
‘Kysandra. Did you tell these people to come here?’ His hand waved towards the gate and the strident crowd outside.
‘Partly, yes. But right now you need to get them through the gate and into the rose courtyard. Joey will throw a force field round them while we hold the Fallers off.’
‘The space machine is in the rose courtyard?’
‘Yes,’ Faustina said. ‘I moved it there. I told the Eliters their children would be safe here.’
Stonal kept very still. ‘You’re part of this?’
‘Since before you were born. Slvasta might have been your step-father, but he was my husband.’
‘Husband?’
‘I’ve rejuvenated Faustina several times,’ Kysandra said. ‘She knows her way around the capital and government departments like no one else.’
‘No,’ he said quietly. I cannot have been so unaware, so wrong. ‘You can’t be.’ Somehow it seemed like a defeat every bit as grave as the Faller Apocalypse. And he hated himself for thinking like that. I’ve given my life to securing Bienvenido, and everything I’ve done has come to nothing.
‘I was Bethaneve,’ she said relentlessly. ‘The first of the elites, their original leader. I planned the revolution. I watched Slvasta corrupt it with his paranoia. And I was there when Nigel flew into space. He was genuinely trying to save us, you know. His companions saved me and Slvasta – did he ever tell you that? I saw Uracus open and expel us from the Void. I have lived life in the Void and here. Neither are of any worth. We need to go home, back to the Commonwealth, and Paula can finally take us there.’
‘You’ve opened the wormhole in the crypt, haven’t you?’ he said. ‘Are you going to take the Eliters to Aqueous?’
‘No. There are no factions on this world any more, Stonal, only humans and Fallers. And now Paula’s found some allies. We just have to buy her time to contact them.’
He stared at the sweet old woman who had fooled him for decades, and knew he’d lost, that he was no longer in charge of anything. ‘I can’t risk Fallers getting into the palace.’
‘Neither can I,’ Kysandra said. ‘I’ll check the crowd as they come through. Don’t worry: my field function scans will spot a Faller easily.’
He wanted to say yes, but the word wouldn’t form.
‘Paula is the one Nigel trusted to finish the job if he failed,’ Faustina said. ‘The apocalypse is starting, and she’s all that stands between us and extinction. Open the palace gates, Director Stonal.’
‘Captain Fitzsand,’ he said. ‘Please open the gates. The Warrior Angel will be vetting everyone who comes through.’
‘Yes, sir,’ the captain said, and saluted.
He followed Kysandra as she hurried up the stairs to the walkway and stood almost directly above the gates. She hopped up on top of the wall so everyone thronging outside could see her. A massive cheer went up – people screamed, kids were jumping up and down waving excitedly.
‘You’re coming in,’ she told them. ‘Take it slow and easy, no pushing. When you get inside, you’ll be under a Commonwealth force field so the Fallers can’t harm you.’
Stonal raised his gaze over the heads of the volatile crowd and along Bryan-Anthony Boulevard. Such a neat clean line on the map, but in reality a chaotic thoroughfare of people pressed together, fenced by tall government buildings streaked with a century of grime. Beyond the rear fringes of the Eliters was a long gap where nothing moved, the purple-grey cobbles cut by tramlines, perspective shrinking back a couple of kilometres to bulky vehicles that rumbled slowly forward.
‘What are those?’ Stonal asked as the gates opened below him. Naturally, the crowd surged forwards.
‘Stay calm,’ Kysandra told them. It didn’t make much difference. People were agitated and close to panic.
Ry was peering forward, studying the approaching vehicles. ‘They’re troop carriers,’ he said. ‘Yours?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Stonal said, wondering what had become of the troops the vehicles had taken to their staging post.
‘Faller,’ Kysandra announced levelly. She pointed and a green flash erupted round her hand. Two hundred metres away, a man collapsed. Screams rose around him as people pressed back from the corpse; blue blood was leaking from his nostrils. ‘Take it easy,’ she commanded. ‘They will not get past us.’ Her field scan swept over the crowd; targeting graphics closed around over a dozen figures, two of whom were children.
‘Those troop carriers are picking up speed,’ Stonal said. ‘They’re going to be here before everyone’s through.’ As he watched them, he heard the sound of machine guns. Tiny sparks zipped out from the vehicles. He saw flames shoot from a big ten-storey office block they were passing. More flames began to take hold on the other side of Bryan-Anthony Boulevard.
‘I know,’ Kysandra said. ‘Boys, we’re on.’
She decided there was no point in fancy tactics. Actually, no real point in any kind of tactics. Even she found the number of Fallers massing behind the troop carriers intimidating. They kept deliberately igniting the elaborate government buildings on either side of the wide road as they came, firing hundreds of dazzling magnesium incendiary rounds through the prominent windows and ornate doorways. Flames formed a solid wall, pumping out thick black smoke.
After the last of the anxious, noisy refugees scurried through the palace gates, she started walking down the centre of Bryan-Anthony Boulevard. Ry walked on one side of her, Florian on the other. Both of them had unslung their molecular severance cannons, holding them ready.
When the troop carriers reached the junction with Pointas Street, the giant human-Fallers walking alongside the vehicles opened fire with their pump-action bazookas. Cobbles exploded just in front of her, stone fragments erupting into the air. Tramlines were ripped up, blast waves twirling long chunks of steel rail about as if they were nothing more than twigs in a breeze. They slammed down, impaling walls and pavements.
Kysandra’s integral force field protected her from the furious chaos. She sent disrupter pulses cleaving into the lead troop carriers. They detonated into fatal shrapnel clouds that shredded the big Fallers. Their fuel tanks blew up, vivid energetic fireballs that engulfed the tall wirthwal trees lining the boulevard.
The second rank of troop carriers crunched over the flaming debris, and kept on coming. Behind them, the huge beast-Fallers started to spread out, disappearing into the alleys between the buildings.
‘Crud,’ Florian muttered. He dropped to one knee and fired his molecular severance cannon, chopping the hurrying Fallers apart. Very-heavy-calibre projectiles pummelled his force field, knocking him back five metres.
Kysandra chuckled at his outburst of profanities. ‘Were you expecting the apocalypse to be easy?’ A bazooka round slammed into her force field. It wasn’t fully rooted in the ground, allowing the blast to send her staggering backwards. She retaliated with another blast of disrupter pulses.
‘No,’ Florian replied. ‘They’re trying to outflank us.’
‘Yes. You and Ry will have to take out the big brutes on each side. I’ll keep going for the main group.’
‘The kids must be under Joey’s force field by now,’ Ry said. ‘All we have to do is sit tight.’
‘There are a lot of people in the palace that aren’t under the force field, as well as the rest of Varlan’s population. Right now, we’re what the Fallers are concentrating on. While they’re fighting us, they’re not killing anyone else.’
‘Oh great Giu! Okay.’
*
Paula waited
while Demitri enacted the gateway’s location inversion, and watched as the circular machine extruded itself out of the wormhole to stand on Trüb’s copper and emerald surface.
‘What state is it in?’ she asked.
‘There’s a degree of component degradation,’ he said, ‘but it will do what we need.’
‘Okay, let’s bring the other floater here.’
Demitri redirected the BC5800d2’s terminus coordinates to Ursell and pinged the floater. The response showed them it was drifting eighty kilometres above the surface, being pushed along at twenty-five kilometres an hour by one of the turbulent storms. He manipulated the terminus again, moving it closer and closer to the floater as it twirled about erratically in the conflicting winds.
Once again Paula was impressed by his control. It took less than ten minutes until the terminus had closed within twenty metres of the floater, and they established a link to the duplicate Laura personality in its smartnet. Demitri connected the wormhole to it, and brought it back to Trüb.
The three devices rested close together on the hard purple surface. Demitri stood in front of the BC5800d2 that had come from the palace. Fergus had the newly arrived floater, while Valeri linked to the gateway they’d brought from the Viscount.
‘Are you ready?’ Paula asked the Planter.
‘We are.’
Her heartbeat started to increase, which she couldn’t entirely blame on teenage hormones. ‘Demitri, let’s have some power, please.’
Exovision graphics showed her the BC5800d2 opening a terminus a hundred and twenty-eight million kilometres away, just above the star’s corona. The terminus at the other end of its wormhole opened fifty million kilometres directly above the star’s north pole. Demitri increased the internal length to twenty kilometres, and modified the exotic matter’s internal structure to pull power directly from the plasma flow. ‘The induction efficiency is poor,’ he murmured, ‘but we have an unlimited supply of plasma, so it really doesn’t matter.’