Conquest

  The soldier’s name was Varon. He had been posted to Aberdeen for the previous six months. In that time, half of his platoon had been killed or seriously injured. Although he had been on Earth for only eighteen months, he now counted as a veteran in the Highlands.

  Varon hated Earth, but most of all he hated Scotland. He came from the desert planet of B’Ethanger, at the heart of the Illyr system. He was built for heat and sand, not rain and mud. He had not stopped sneezing since he arrived. Today, at least, it was not raining. It had seemed like a good omen when the extraction team had set out.

  Bullets kicked up dirt to his left, but Varon did not look back. If he could get out of range and find cover, he might be able to hold off the Resistance until a rescue party could be sent out. He had his blast pistol and heavy rifle. The rifle was charged for two hundred rounds, and the blast pistol was good for another twenty. If he needed more than that to stay alive, then he really was in trouble.

  There was a low stone wall ahead of him. He dived over it headfirst, and almost knocked his brains out on a gravestone. He was in an old cemetery, littered with lopsided and broken monuments that reminded him of rotten teeth. There was plenty of cover here, but it would be as useful to his pursuers as it was to him. Still, better this than no cover at all, he thought, even if being in a human cemetery made him uneasy. The Illyri had always cremated their dead. They did not leave them to rot in the ground. It was another reason to regard the humans as a barbaric race.

  The grounds of the cemetery sloped upward, and he followed the gradient. If he could make it to high ground, he would have the advantage. He skirted a huge tomb that dwarfed the other resting places, and stopped short.

  There was a young woman kneeling by a grave about thirty feet from where he stood. She was putting wildflowers into a plastic vase. She looked up at him as he appeared. Varon raised his blast pistol and stepped forward. As he did so, his right foot knocked against a metal object. He glanced down and saw the hand grenade.

  “Ah,” he said, and then he was gone.

  •••

  By the end of the first day of the search, the Illyri had lost two interceptors and a skimmer, and had suffered more than thirty casualties, twenty of them fatalities. When the advance base on the Cairngorms Plateau came under extensive mortar fire, it was rendered temporarily unfit for use. The losses were the most significant suffered by the Illyri in a single day since the early years of the invasion.

  The message had passed quickly through the Resistance in the Highlands: we have a valuable prize. The Illyri want to get it back.

  Stop them.

  •••

  “So,” said Sedulus, “what you’re telling us is that you are powerless to act beyond the Moat?”

  “Not powerless, no, but we can operate only with great difficulty,” said Lord Andrus. “And while the situation is most dangerous beyond the Moat, it’s not much better once you travel more than a few miles north of the Glasgow–Edinburgh line. The truth is that the Grand Consul’s shuttle could not have gone down in a worse location.”

  Sedulus was silent for a moment. He looked at Syrene. She nodded.

  “I am sure that you have not forgotten your recent conversation with Grand Consul Gradus,” said Sedulus to Lord Andrus. “The Diplomatic Corps now has jurisdiction on Earth. The Military is at the command of the Corps.”

  “My understanding was that all such authority lay with Grand Consul Gradus,” said Lord Andrus. “In his absence, I am once again responsible for decisions here.”

  “I’m afraid not,” said Sedulus. “The Grand Consul left instructions that command should default to the ranking Corps official while he was offworld. The Archmage Syrene will confirm this.”

  “It is true,” said Syrene. “I witnessed my husband giving the order myself.”

  “In his absence, therefore, I am in command, not you,” said Sedulus.

  “I object most strongly—” began Lord Andrus.

  “Your objection is noted,” said Sedulus. “I have decided that I will take total charge of the search for Grand Consul Gradus—and, indeed, your daughter.” He glanced at Danis. “Neither have I forgotten your own little traitor, General Danis. She will be found.”

  Danis did not reply. The only sign of his inner tension was the slow, rhythmic tapping of his right foot on the carpet.

  “For now,” continued Sedulus, “all Military craft are to withdraw from the Highlands and return to their bases. This will be a Securitat operation.”

  “What do you propose to do, Marshal Sedulus?” asked Andrus. “Scour the Highlands yourself, mile by mile?”

  “It is tempting,” said Sedulus. “But I have enlisted the help of more experienced hunters than I.”

  He stood to leave, and Syrene did the same, taking his arm.

  “The Highlands,” Sedulus concluded, “are about to be subdued.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  S

  ometime later, Syl heard a vehicle pull up outside, but the window in the outbuilding faced away from the noise and she could not see what was happening. Just Joe and Paul came for her shortly after the engines died, and she was brought to the comfortable kitchen of the cottage. There she found Tam, Heather, and two men she did not recognize, but who were now introduced to her as Mike and Seán. Heather pointed to a seat at the table, and Syl took it. Seán leaned over and offered his hand. She shook it.

  “Fine strong grip on you,” he said.

  His accent was different from the others.

  “Thank you,” said Syl. “I think.”

  “Sit down, Syl, and don’t mind him,” said Heather. “He’s Irish,” as if this explained everything one could possibly want to know about the man.

  There was a big battered teapot in front of Seán, and he poured Syl a cup while he spoke.

  “Just visiting,” he said. He pushed milk and sugar toward her, but she added only the milk.

  “Seán transports weapons for us from across the Irish Sea,” said Just Joe. He watched Syl to gauge her reaction.

  “Why are you telling me this?” she asked.

  “A gesture of trust,” replied Just Joe.

  “And they don’t mind if the Irish guy gets it in the head if you do talk,” added Seán.

  “That too,” said Just Joe. “Syl, tell me why you helped Paul and Steven escape.”

  “Because they helped my friend and me during the bombings on the Royal Mile. And because they were going to be executed, and I wasn’t going to let that happen.”

  “Why? Because they’re young?”

  “Yes. And they hadn’t done what they were accused of doing.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Paul told me, and I saw in his face that it was true. And even if they had done it, hanging them would still have been wrong.”

  “What of the rest of the Resistance?”

  “I don’t know the rest of the Resistance.”

  “You know us. Would you see us hanged for what we’ve done? We’ve killed Illyri, and we’ll kill more. This is our land, our world, and we want it back.”

  Syl had thought about this a lot of late, but she did not have an answer. The question was too complex. She was of the Illyri, and she did not want to see her people hurt, but she also understood that the conquest of Earth was indefensible. The Illyri might have been more advanced than the humans, and stronger militarily, but that didn’t give them the right to invade, to suppress, to take young humans as hostages, train them as soldiers, and send them off to fight the Illyri’s wars on distant worlds.

  And many of those wars still raged, with no end in sight. This much she’d learned while hiding in the spyhole behind the Great Hall at Edinburgh Castle. The most brutal fighting of all was taking place on Ebos, a jungle planet on which every life-form, whether animal or vegetative, was actively carnivorous. But i
t had been found to have enough precious metal deposits beneath its surface to meet the needs of the Illyri for centuries. The dominant species on Ebos was a reptilian race vaguely similar to the Komodo dragons of Earth, had the dragons learned to walk upright, but much larger, infinitely more vicious, and with a chameleon-like capacity for camouflage so finely tuned that it rendered them practically invisible to the naked eye. Their ability to thermoregulate also meant that heat-detection lenses were ineffective in alerting the Illyri to their presence. While their weaponry was hardly sophisticated, it was surprisingly effective, their blades and arrowheads capable of slicing through even the thickest of body armor. Ebos was regarded as the worst posting in the Illyri Military. For the most part, Punishment Battalions and troublesome conscripts were the main source of workers and soldiers, and their casualty rates were astronomical. If the roles had been reversed, Syl knew, she would have been standing alongside the Resistance, just as Paul and Steven were.

  And yet, and yet . . .

  “I understand why you’re fighting, and no, I don’t believe in execution—for anyone,” she said at last. “We don’t execute our own people on Illyr, and I don’t see why we should execute those on other worlds. But I don’t want to see Illyri killed, and I won’t help you to do it.”

  Her mouth was dry. She took a sip of tea to moisten it before continuing.

  “My people think I’m a traitor, and if I’m captured, the best I can hope for is to be imprisoned far from this planet until the Diplomats decide to free me or make me disappear. I have no interest in betraying you. If I betray you, I betray myself.”

  Just Joe looked at the others. Seán’s grin had never left his face, but it had never reached his eyes either. Syl sensed the danger in him. The ones—whether human or Illyri—who laughed and joked the most were often the worst, she had found. If you listened hard enough, the hollowness inside them echoed their laughter. Heather whispered something to Tam, who did not reply. Paul stood beside the fireplace, waiting.

  “Well?” said Just Joe.

  “Yes,” said Heather, with some force.

  “Yes,” said Tam, although a little more reluctantly than his sister.

  “Go on, then,” said Seán, smiling away. “Yes—but if she lets us down, I’ll kill her myself before I die.”

  “Paul?” said Just Joe.

  “You know my answer,” said Paul. “Yes.”

  “Who knew you were all so trusting?” said Just Joe. “Yes it is, then.”

  “Yes to what?” asked Syl.

  “To you staying with us,” said Just Joe, “and not being handed over to one of the other groups as a bargaining chip for hostages. But understand this: Paul has stood up for you, and he’s guaranteed your honor with his own life. I hear what you’ve said, and I believe it to be true. But if push comes to shove, and you turn on us, the boy here will pay with his life, and you with yours. Am I clear?”

  Syl looked at Paul, but he was staring fixedly at the table.

  “Yes,” said Syl, for there was no other option.

  Just Joe relaxed. The decision had been made, and there was no point in fretting about it any longer.

  “Now,” said Just Joe. “Tell us about the Grand Consul.”

  •••

  For the next hour, Syl spoke of Gradus’s arrival, and of the Archmage Syrene. She told them what she knew of the Sisterhood, although much of it seemed to be familiar to them already. Mostly they were interested in the Grand Consul—how he acted, what he said, whether he had seemed strange or preoccupied at all, whether he had spoken of the attack on Birdoswald, and the suicide of his nephew.

  And bodies: had there been any talk of human bodies?

  But there was little that Syl could offer in reply to these enquiries, and she was glad of this. Okay, so she didn’t know very much about Gradus, and what she did know she did not like. But nor did she like spilling what she knew to the Resistance, for it really did mean that she was committing treason, that she was a traitor.

  “Why don’t you ask him all this yourselves?” she said finally.

  “We’ve tried asking him,” said Just Joe.

  “Nicely, and not so nicely,” said Seán. “We didn’t get very far.”

  “Show her,” said Tam. “Maybe she can explain it.”

  Just Joe and Paul led her from the cottage to a second outbuilding, this one bigger than the one in which she had been kept, and more closely guarded. The door was unlocked at Just Joe’s order, and Syl entered with the two humans.

  Gradus was seated in a corner, his hands tied behind his back. There was bruising to his face, and a cut on his scalp had bled badly. Despite herself, Syl felt sorry for him. She was about to admonish the humans, and demand that they clean him up, when she saw Gradus’s eyes.

  They were almost completely white behind the nictitating membrane, which now appeared fixed in place. His breathing was very shallow, and his mouth hung open slightly. She approached him warily, and touched his skin. It was cold.

  “What have you done to him?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” said Paul. “Well, he was being questioned—”

  “Beaten, you mean,” said Syl.

  Paul did not continue, but had the decency to look ashamed.

  “His body temperature dropped suddenly,” said Just Joe. “His eyes rolled up into his head, and that membrane thing became fixed. He stopped responding to any kind of stimuli. Pain, heat, touch: he didn’t seem to feel any of it. Is that natural? Is it something that your people can do under stress?”

  Syl shook her head. She had never seen any Illyri behave in such a way.

  “It’s possible that it’s something he learned from the Sisterhood, a way of protecting himself,” she suggested.

  “He’ll be hard to get to the Green Man in that state,” said Paul. “We can’t carry him.”

  “And we can’t stay in this place,” said Just Joe. “We’ve been here too long as it is. We’re moving at nightfall, even if we have to drag him on wheels.”

  Syl and the humans left the outbuilding, and the door was locked once again.

  “I’m sending you into Durroch with Tam and Heather,” Just Joe told Paul. Durroch, Syl had learned, was the name of the village they had bypassed earlier. “We have friends there, and we need supplies: medical mostly, in case we get into trouble, but we’ll need rice, dried soups, maybe some tea and coffee as well. There’s a shortwave radio at the chemist’s shop—you can use it to send a message to Trask letting him know that you’re okay. I promised him we’d put you in touch when we had the chance, but Heather’s radio has given up the ghost. Be as quick as you can. Any sign of Illyri, and you keep your head down and hope for the best, okay? Tam and Heather, not you, will make the call on whether anyone needs to start shooting.”

  Just Joe walked away, leaving Syl and Paul alone.

  “You staked your life on me?” said Syl.

  “Well, you risked yours for me,” said Paul.

  “I didn’t really know you then,” said Syl.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Syl looked down at her feet to hide her smile. “Just that now I’ve got to know you a bit, I might not be so quick to do it next time.”

  “Hey, I’m not so bad.”

  “Well, maybe I don’t feel that allowing your rescuer to be locked up like an animal is exactly nice.”

  Paul shook his head despairingly. “Women,” he said. “You’re from a different species, and yet you’re still the same.”

  “So you’re telling me you’ve given up on humans and decided to try Illyri females instead?”

  “That’s not what I said!”

  “But isn’t it what you meant?” said Syl, and suddenly she felt stupid, and a bit shy too.

  “No!”

  “Then why did you kiss me?”

  P
aul seemed lost for words. “I—I was overcome by the moment.”

  “So it won’t happen again?”

  “Not if you don’t want it to,” said Paul. He stuck his hands in his pockets. His face was furrowed with confusion. It made him look very young.

  “That isn’t what I meant,” Syl replied, mortified, and turned to walk back to the cottage.

  Paul watched her go. He looked even more confused, if such a thing were possible.

  “What?” he said forlornly. “I don’t understand. . . .”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  D

  urroch had only one main street housing two pubs, a supermarket-cum-post-office, a small café, a drugstore and, at its northern end, the local kirk, or church. It was small but very, very old, dating back to the seventeenth century.

  Syl sat in the back of the Land Rover beside Heather, with Tam and Paul in the front. Lex sat on Tam’s lap, his paws on the steering wheel. The little dog seemed to be quite familiar with that position.

  Just Joe had come to her as the party was about to leave for the village, and told her that she was to go with them. He gave no reason why, informing her only that she was to stay in the Range Rover unless ordered to do otherwise by Tam or Heather, and Syl had not objected. In part, she understood, she wanted to be with Paul, even though she was still embarrassed about what seemed to be their crossed wires earlier. She was attracted to him, that much she knew. She had been attracted to him since the first time they’d met, but something in her still rebelled against her own feelings because they were wrong, just wrong. It made her want to fight him, to push him away for fear of being hurt, but when he had seemed wounded by their exchange, she had felt a warm, warped pleasure, because surely that meant that he cared about her too.

  They passed the church just as Tam was trying to explain to her the nature of religious worship in Scotland.

  “You see,” he said, “originally there was the Roman Catholic Church, but then came the Reformation in 1560, and out of that came the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, but the Catholics and the Episcopalians were still around as well. Anyway, the Church of Scotland kept having arguments about how it should be run, and in 1847 two churches left to form the United Presbyterian Church, although an earlier fight had also produced the Free Church of Scotland in 1843. You follow me?”