Conquest

  She watched as Howie separated from the group and walked a short distance to relieve himself against a rock. Then Duncan got up and headed into the bushes. She could hear Howie urinating, and soon others started to do the same thing, men and women. It was gross, but it reminded her that she needed to go herself, and that Paul was reluctant to let her out of his sight after the events at the farmhouse and their aftermath.

  “They should be more careful,” she said to him.

  “What?”

  He sounded tired, and irritable. He was aware of the continued whisperings of Aggie and Duncan, saying he was getting too close to the alien girl, that he favored her above his own kind. If Duncan and those who felt like him about the Illyri captives ever succeeded in drawing enough of the others to their cause to take over the leadership from Just Joe, Paul knew there was a good chance that they might kill him and his brother alongside the Illyri.

  “When they pee,” said Syl. “They’re not careful. They just go anywhere and don’t think about it. They need to dig a hole, and then cover it over when they’re done. You know that my people will be using Agrons to track us on the ground, and Agrons can see in the ultraviolet spectrum. Urine will show up as bright yellow. All those people who slipped away to pee while we were walking? They’ll have left a trail to be followed. Even I can see faint traces of it.”

  “Why didn’t you say something before?”

  “Because I didn’t think of it before. Because I’ve never been hunted before! Now I need to go too, but I will dig a hole.”

  Paul reddened. “I’ll go with you,” he said.

  “What are you going to do, hold my hand? Read to me?”

  “I’m not supposed to let you out of my sight.”

  “Where am I going to go? I’m in the middle of nowhere, and you keep forgetting that as far as the Illyri are concerned, I’m a criminal and a traitor. They hate me and, although your people hate me too, for now I think my chances are better with you than with the Illyri. If that changes, you’ll be the first to know. Now, if you’ll excuse me . . .”

  She rose and stomped off. She passed Ani along the way. Steven was seated next to her, and they were sharing a bar of chocolate.

  “Well, aren’t you just the pretty couple?” Syl said.

  Ani stared at her, a block of chocolate halfway to her mouth.

  “What did we do?” she asked. “And where are you off to in such a temper?”

  “I am going to pee, if that’s all right.”

  “Do you want some company?”

  “No, I do not! The last thing I want is company. I want a couple of minutes alone, and if anybody else offers to come with me, I’ll have to start selling tickets!”

  “Right,” said Ani. “I won’t come, then.”

  “Isn’t Paul supposed to stay with you?” said Steven.

  Syl raised a finger of warning at him.

  “Don’t,” she said. “Just don’t.”

  She turned her back on them and stalked off, ignoring the looks that the humans gave her, heedless of whether they were hostile or merely curious. She passed Gradus slumped against a stone. He was still little more than a walking zombie—not that she had tried to speak to him, but she knew from Paul that he was still unresponsive. Duncan had even stubbed out a cigarette on his arm, with no result. He had received a punch in the stomach from Just Joe for his troubles.

  “You leave him be,” Just Joe had warned. “We’ll deal with him when we get to the Green Man.”

  “If he lives that long,” Duncan replied.

  “If something happens to him, you’ll be keeping him company in the next world. For now, you stay away from him, you hear?”

  But Duncan just smiled as he slunk away. He had caught Syl watching him, and the change in his features made her shiver. There was hatred in them, but also hunger, and that frightened her more than anything else.

  She found a quiet spot in a small hollow, and when she was sure that she was alone, did what she had to do. She took her own advice and carefully dug a small hole with her hands first, then covered it over when she was finished. She used some of the water in her backpack to clean her hands, and poured a little on her face in an effort to wake herself up. She was so tired, but she knew that Joe might well decide to continue to march. They were on the outskirts of some woodland, which would at least provide shelter, but Joe was anxious to keep putting miles between them and their pursuers for as long as possible. Paul had told her that they were about a day away from the Green Man, but when she tried to press him about the identity of this person he simply shrugged and looked away. Syl suspected that he knew no more about the Green Man than she did.

  She wiped the water from her eyes and drank what was left in the bottle. She could hear a stream flowing nearby. It sounded as if it was just over the other side of the hollow. She could refill her bottle from it, and it would save her having to ask for some of Paul’s, or forcing him to ask Norris for more. Norris was the quartermaster, so he was in charge of their supplies, and functioned as a kind of human packhorse, carrying extra water, food, and ammunition without complaint. The only time he did complain was when someone asked him for any of it. He lived in constant fear of running out of something, and the easiest way to ensure that he always had supplies was by not giving any of them away.

  Syl found the stream, filled her bottle, and drank deeply from it. The water tasted fresh and pure. It made her feel a little better but she was reminded that, unlike the water, she was distinctly unfresh, and very dirty. She sank down on the grass, pulled her knees to her chest and rested her forehead against them, lost in thought, trying to make sense of the series of events that had led her to this situation, beginning with her decision to skip classes for her birthday and head out into the city. That was her mistake, she decided. Had she not done that, everything would have been different. She and Ani would never have met Paul and Steven, and her safe, sheltered life in the castle would not have been disturbed.

  Would Paul and Steven have died, though, had she not ventured beyond the walls? Would it have mattered to her if they had? She liked to think that it would have, and that she might have tried her best to persuade her father to spare them, but she would not have involved herself in any harebrained rescue plan. Perhaps Meia would have found another way to save them. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

  But not to have met Paul . . .

  She was too weary to examine her feelings for him in any great depth. She knew only that she felt something, and he in turn felt something for her. She didn’t want to call it love. It was too early for that. The only thing of which she was certain was that she was glad that their paths had crossed, whatever the consequences might prove to be.

  She heard footsteps behind her, and because she had been thinking of Paul, she looked up expecting to see him there. Instead a stranger peered down at her from the rise. He wore filthy camouflage clothing, and he held an old bolt-action rifle fitted with a bayonet. It gleamed darkly in the slow-dawning light. Syl guessed that the man was in his thirties or forties. The dawn shadows, and the woolen hat pulled down almost to the level of his eyes, made it difficult to tell. The muzzle of his rifle was pointing directly at Syl.

  “Open your mouth, you little alien whore, and it’ll be the last thing you ever do,” he said.

  Slowly Syl got to her feet, her heart thudding in her chest. She considered trying to run, but then another man, dressed similarly to the first, appeared to her right, and two more popped up on her left, younger than the others. The fast-moving stream cut off her escape to the north. She was surrounded.

  “She’s pretty,” said one of the younger men. He was probably in his early twenties, and his face was hard and cruel. He made the word pretty sound unclean.

  “She’s Illyri,” said his companion, and he made the word Illyri sound like an insult. He was smaller than the other man, and his face was
softer, but in an unpleasant, effeminate way. Syl suspected that he might even have a crueler nature than his friend.

  “Doesn’t bother me,” said the first.

  “She’s not to be touched,” said the man with the rifle. “Not yet, anyway.”

  The man to Syl’s right was closing in on her. He was bald, and his right eye was white and dead. Syl backed away from him until she felt the water of the stream on her feet. The man with the rifle raised it to his shoulder and got her in his sights.

  “No further,” he said. “I’ll drop you where you stand, I promise you.”

  Suddenly a small figure sprang at him, forcing the barrel of the gun upward while landing a fierce kick to the man’s right knee. Syl was so relieved to see Steven coming to her aid that she took her eye off the bald man to her right, and instantly he was upon her. The force of impact sent her tumbling into the shallow stream, the bald man going down with her, but he recovered more quickly than Syl. He bent down to grab her by the hair, but her right hand came up fast, a rock held firmly in its grasp. It caught her attacker on the side of the head. His eyes rolled up, and he tumbled unconscious into the water. Now both of the younger men were advancing on Syl. They came at her simultaneously. With a furious growl, she struck one a blow to the left arm with the rock, but it did little damage, and then he and his friend pinned her arms behind her. Syl tried to scream for help, but a hand clamped down over her mouth, muffling the sound.

  Meanwhile, on the rise above, the gunman had recovered from the shock of Steven’s assault, and with a swing of his rifle he slashed the boy across the chest with the tip of the bayonet, drawing blood. Syl heard Steven cry out to Paul for help, but his voice seemed impossibly small against the sound of the stream, and the pumping of the blood in Syl’s head. Harder and harder it pumped, louder and louder, until her entire vision filled with red. There was a growing pressure in her skull, as though her brain might explode.

  And then Steven was sent sprawling on the ground, and the rifle rose above him, the bayonet poised to descend and finish him off. Syl bit hard into the hand against her lips and tasted blood in her mouth. There was a yelp of pain, and the hand was pulled away.

  Later Syl would try to recall what happened next, but it was unclear in her own mind. Only the dead and the dying proved that it had occurred at all. A great rage coursed through her, starting from somewhere deep in the core of her being. It was like a flame igniting, turning from red to white, scorching everything that it touched, but its focus was the man with the rifle. Syl held him in her sights as though it were she, not he, who was pointing a weapon, except now Syl herself was the weapon. There were no longer hands holding her, and she was vaguely aware of bodies falling into the rushing stream. She uttered one word—“No”—and in the aftermath she would recall how quiet it sounded, how calm and controlled. It was not a shout or a scream, but the solitary syllable denied the possibility of any outcome other than the one she pictured in her mind—the rifleman’s death.

  He jerked upright, and in a single fluid movement spun the rifle so that it was no longer pointing at Steven but was aimed at himself. Then, without hesitation, he balanced the butt of the rifle against the ground, the bayonet toward his own chest. He paused for a second, and on his features there seemed to appear the realization of what he was about to do. He looked at Syl, and there was a question on his lips that was destined to remain unasked, for the force of her will compelled him to finish what had been started. He slumped forward, and the bayonet pierced his heart. His body shook once, and then was still.

  From the camp came shouts, and a short exchange of gunfire, but Syl barely heard it. She fell to her knees, all strength leaving her in an instant. She stared at the dead man on the rise, his body and the rifle in perfect balance so that they formed a triangle against the dawn. She looked to her right and to her left. The two younger men lay stunned in the water, but they were still alive. The bald man was facedown in the stream, blood flowing from the wound in his head. Somehow Syl managed to turn him over, but his face was pale, and she felt sure that he was dying.

  The mist cleared from her vision, the sound of the blood in her head growing fainter. Steven came splashing to her, calling her name, his shirt red with blood. He put one arm around her waist, wrapped her arm around his neck, and pulled her to her feet.

  “Don’t tell them what I did,” she whispered. She was crying. “Please don’t tell them. I didn’t mean to do it, but he was going to hurt you, to kill you. I didn’t mean it. Please, please . . .”

  “I won’t,” said Steven, and he was crying too. “I won’t tell them anything, Syl, I promise.”

  Now there were more people approaching, Paul and Ani among them. Syl tried to say something, but no words would come. Her vision blurred, and the world went away.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  S

  yrene had left instructions that she was not to be disturbed, not while she was meditating, but now her principal handmaiden Cocile stood before her. Cocile functioned as an extension of the Archmage; she spoke with Syrene’s voice, and was the only one permitted to intrude upon the Archmage at any time, yet still Syrene felt irritated by the interruption.

  “You bring news?” she asked.

  “Yes, Your Eminence. Marshal Sedulus sends word that he has crossed the trail of the Grand Consul. The Agrons have his scent once again.”

  Syrene breathed a sigh of relief. Her beloved husband was not safe yet, but this was progress.

  The handmaid lingered. She looked unhappy.

  “Is there more?”

  “A breach of security at Eden.”

  Syrene could not disguise her anxiety at this information.

  “What kind of breach?”

  “A scientist was killed. An intruder gained entry using her . . . remains. Two more scientists died during the incursion. It seems that the intruder may have witnessed a procedure. A human procedure.”

  Pain lanced through Syrene’s brain. Panic. Alarm.

  “Do we have any idea of the identity of the intruder?”

  “They were disguised throughout, but an injury may have been inflicted. Material was recovered at the scene.”

  “Material?”

  “ProGen skin, and internal lubricant. Your grace, the intruder was an artificial life-form.”

  Syrene could barely fathom it. An artificial, a Mech, here on Earth? They had all been destroyed. The order had been given.

  To Danis.

  To Andrus.

  Were they capable of deceit on such a scale?

  “Summon Vena from the hunt,” she ordered. “Send her to Eden. Tell her to access every surveillance system, every secret camera. I want to know the identity of the Mech.”

  •••

  Meia’s intention had been to return to Edinburgh and tell Governor Andrus of what she had seen at the Eden Project, but a call from the castle had forced her to alter her plan. Anyway, she was uncertain of what precisely she had seen at Eden: an infestation of some kind, an infection? An organism had clearly been introduced into the human, and it had spread through his system, but what was the point of introducing it to begin with? Furthermore, it seemed to Meia that the host body was fighting the intruder and was, in fact, in the process of rejecting it. That seemed to tie in with the preserved remains of mangled animals that she had discovered. The only conclusion she could draw was that the parasite had been rejected by an array of Earth’s species, leading to the death of the host body, and the human was simply the latest of those unfortunate creatures.

  Perhaps it should not have concerned her as much as it did. The Diplomats and the Military were forever examining, and experimenting on, the new life-forms they found, but it was a core belief among the Illyri that such experiments should not be carried out on advanced races, even if Securitat scientists were known to quietly ignore such niceties. Humanity was more advanced
than any other race yet discovered. What was being done to humans at Eden was not just unethical, it was illegal.

  But then the call had come, and Eden was put aside for a time. Meia was a spy, and spies in turn relied on spies: she had a network of informants both inside and outside Edinburgh Castle, some of them under the governor’s nose. The news that Peris had been dispatched to the Highlands with a strike team created problems. The Resistance had Syl and Ani—and, indeed, Gradus, which must have been quite a bonus for them—and Meia had heard nothing to indicate that the three of them were anything but alive, and safe. She knew their final destination; it was reasonably secure, as long as they could make it there without being intercepted by Sedulus and the Securitats.

  Gradus’s decision to take the same flight as Syl had been disastrous for Meia. Had the Illyri female been alone on the shuttle, all would have been well, and Sedulus and his Securitats would have had no reason to involve themselves in the subsequent search. Andrus and Meia could have ensured that the hunt went nowhere near them, and they could have kept Syl and Ani hidden until some form of negotiation ensured that they would not be grievously punished for what they had done. If necessary, Meia could have hidden them for years—even offworld, if the Diplomats proved unwilling to bend on the issue of punishment. Instead, Gradus had become the focus of the search, and Sedulus’s future was dependent on his safe return. Sedulus was dangerous and ambitious, but he was not a fool, and the Highlands were not limitless. If he persevered, as Meia knew he would, he would close in on his quarry, and he would corner it. It was also widely known that Sedulus hated both Andrus and Danis, and Meia believed that were their daughters to die in the Highlands, Sedulus would sleep as soundly as he had ever done.

  Now Peris and the strike squad had complicated the situation still further. Meia knew what Peris would do. He was an experienced soldier, clever and resourceful. From what she had heard, Sedulus’s efforts to carry out a quick, successful rescue of Gradus had resulted only in carnage. To find him, all one would need to do was follow the trail of bodies. Peris would shadow Sedulus in the hope that he could snatch Syl and Ani from under his nose, but if Peris started killing members of the Resistance as part of some ridiculous rescue plan, there were those among the Resistance who would happily put bullets in the Illyri girls’ heads in reprisal.