Finally Syl found she could relax against him. She dozed in his arms as if it were the most natural thing in all the world, until a high-pitched whine roused her, and she saw Ani and Fremd responding to it just as she had. Seconds later, the humans heard it too.
“Skimmer,” said Fremd.
They looked to the brightening sky, lit by the first tentative rays of dawn. It was Ani who picked out the fast-moving craft first.
“There,” she said.
A pair of black specks fell from it, as though the craft were slowly disintegrating.
“What are they?” asked AK.
Fremd looked unhappy. “I don’t know, but if they’re good news, I’ll be surprised.”
He rose to his feet.
“AK, keep watch. If I’m not back in an hour, kill the fire and go to Maeve. Just Joe will join you there soon enough, all being well.” He pointed at Gradus. “But make sure you don’t lose him!”
Fremd grabbed his gun and was lost to the pines. Syl wriggled away from Paul, the spell broken. They were all silent now. There were no more laughs, no more teases, no more games. They could only wait for Fremd to come back and tell them what new turn the hunt had taken.
•••
An hour passed, and Fremd did not return.
“AK,” said Paul. “We should go.”
But AK just shook his head.
“We wait.”
“But Fremd told us—”
“We wait!” repeated AK, and Syl could see how scared he was. For all his bluster, all his bravado, he was still only a boy. He didn’t want to make decisions. He didn’t want to lead. Fremd should have left Paul in charge, thought Syl, but then Fremd didn’t know Paul. Now, seeing the fear in AK’s eyes, Syl suspected that Fremd didn’t seem to know AK very well either.
They remained as they were, AK’s eyes fixed hopefully on the forest, willing Fremd to appear.
“Syl,” whispered Ani.
“Yes?”
“Do you hear it?”
She did. It was a soft whirring, but it was there.
“It’s coming closer,” she said.
“What?” said AK. “What’s coming closer?”
Then they saw it: a small hovering black object, little bigger than a football, a single red light blinking at its heart. It moved about four feet above the ground, altering its course to avoid the trees. Closer and closer it drew to them. AK began to get to his feet, his weapon pointed at the approaching threat, ready to fire, when they heard Fremd’s voice from nearby.
“Don’t move!” he said. “Just don’t!”
They all froze, AK poised uncomfortably between kneeling and rising. The object approached him, and Syl could see that its surface was a mass of sensors and antennae. It was only a few feet from him when it stopped moving forward. It paused for a moment, as though thinking, then dropped until its blinking red light was level with AK’s head. The boy trembled, partly in fear and partly because he was trapped in an agonizing position. Syl could see it in his face. His brow was contorted with pain as he tried to remain still. She willed him to hold on. Just a few seconds more, AK. Do it for us. Please.
As if her plea had been heard, the object rotated in the air, its red light turning to the forest, and began to move away. AK sagged to the ground in relief.
And the orb spun back in his direction.
AK panicked. As he started to run, Fremd cried a single word: “No!”
The young soldier only managed to take a few steps before a dart whistled from the body of the object and hit him in the back. He stumbled and fell to the ground, just as Fremd’s blast rifle blew the sphere to smithereens.
Syl was the first to reach AK. She stretched out a hand to him, but instantly Fremd was beside her, pulling her back.
“Don’t touch him,” he said.
AK was writhing on the ground, as though being tortured with electric shocks. At least two inches of the dart still protruded from his back. A series of green lights along its length slowly began to blink out.
“What’s happening to him?” said Syl.
“The dart has determined that he’s human, not Illyri,” said Fremd.
“And?”
“Nanobots,” said Fremd. “It’s flooding his system with nanobots.”
Inside AK, millions of tiny self-replicating robotic forms were reproducing. Technically, such weapons had been outlawed as part of the restrictions placed on the Illyri artificial life-form program, for nanobots had proved more difficult to control than expected. The most advanced bots, used to target defective and diseased cells in Illyri, had turned upon their patients, having identified all flesh as inferior and flawed when compared with machines, killing those whom they were supposed to cure, although the problem had since been solved.
But the Securitats were not concerned with restrictions, and had seen the weapon potential in the rogue nanobots. These particular bots were designed to target essential organs in humans—the liver, the lungs, the heart and the kidneys—and tear them apart. Blood bubbled from AK’s lips. His eyes widened, his body jerked one final time, and then he lay still. Inside him, the nanobots, their work now done, shut down their systems and died along with their host.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
V
ena stood in the control center at the Eden Project. She had been there many times before. While her base of operations was Edinburgh, Sedulus had entrusted her with the task of discreetly overseeing security procedures at Eden, even though there were already senior Securitat operatives in place to take care of such matters. It was all wheels within wheels: spies watched people, other spies watched the spies. It was enough to make one doubt one’s faith in everyone, human or Illyri, assuming one had any faith to begin with, which Vena did not.
She had examined the bodies of the dead scientists. Sidis, the one in the car park, had been killed with a single stab wound before losing a finger and an eye. Her body had been tested for trace evidence. Fingerprints were found, but they did not match any on the Illyri databases. Vena was not surprised; if, as suspected, the attack had been carried out by a Mech, then the fingerprints could be changed at will by the simple application of some newly patterned ProGen skin. The other bodies had revealed little, although the clothing taken from Harvis, the scientist who had wounded the Mech, had been sprayed with both internal lubricant and blood. The blood contained no identifiers, confirming that the intruder’s flesh was laboratory-grown, an artifice.
That was interesting. The Mech was, in a sense, biomechanical: it had added a thin layer of real tissue over its mechanics and hydraulics. Why? Vena supposed that, in the event of a minor injury, it would be seen to bleed like an Illyri. A deeper wound, such as the one Harvis had inflicted, would cause more problems, but only if there were others around to witness it.
Perhaps the Mech simply wanted the tissue in order to maintain the illusion that it was an Illyri so it could hide itself more easily, but why stop there? Vena wondered if the Mech could feel pleasure or pain. After all, Illyri who had suffered major injuries requiring amputation, and for whom replacement limbs could not be created for genetic reasons, usually had regrown tissue applied to the artificial limb and then linked to their nervous systems so that no sensation was lost. One of the problems with the Mechs was that they began to believe that they could feel. But to truly experience the world required more than a cyborg’s brain and a series of complex artificial systems. How could one love if one could not enjoy the touch of a lover’s skin? How could one feel pain without the vulnerabilities of flesh?
No, thought Vena, this was not just a Mech with delusions. This was something more special, more dangerous. This was a Mech in the process of transforming itself: not completely artificial, and not yet Illyri, but an entity in between.
This was an abomination.
Pieces of video appeared on the scree
ns around Vena as the system collated all sightings of the intruder. The Mech had been careful—a hood raised here, a head down there, always conscious of surveillance, seen or unseen—but gradually the system began to assemble a face from the brief glimpses of features that the cameras had picked up: an eye from this one, a cheekbone from another, a corner of a mouth from a third.
After an hour, Vena had an image. She almost laughed when she saw it, for the identity of the Mech came as both a shock and an unexpected gift.
Meia.
It would give Vena nothing but pleasure to terminate her existence.
CHAPTER SIXTY
S
edulus stood in the command cabin of his cruiser, a relief map of the Highlands on the screen before him. To his right was the Galatean sergeant; like all of his kind, he had no name—or none that the Illyri could pronounce. The Galateans called each other “Brother” or “Sister” according to gender, although in reality there were no family or clan loyalties among them, and as far as the Illyri could tell, they had little time for complicated emotions such as grief, or guilt, or even love. They mated, they bred, they lived, they died, and, in the service of the Illyri, they killed. It seemed to be enough for them. Sedulus was content to address the Galatean as “Sergeant.” When this one died—as he assuredly would soon, for the Galateans had a life span of only twenty years—he would be replaced by another who looked, sounded, and smelled just the same.
To Sedulus’s left was Beldyn, recently returned from briefing Syrene in person. Sedulus trusted Beldyn as much as he trusted any of his staff, which wasn’t very far at all, Vena excepted. He could have spoken to Syrene himself via his lens, but he was concerned about this particular exchange being intercepted, and there were times when a whispered conversation was better.
Syrene had replied as he had hoped: it was unnecessary for the Illyri traitors, Syl and Ani, to be returned to Edinburgh alive. She remained curious about the one called Ani, for she had powers that could be of use to the Sisterhood, but, as with Syl, it seemed that attempting to entice her to join the Sisterhood would be more trouble than it might ultimately be worth, assuming that Gradus, once he was safely back in her arms, could be persuaded to spare their lives. Andrus and Danis were powerful men, even as the Corps and the Sisterhood worked to limit that power, and they would not give up their daughters without a fight.
Equally, unwilling apprentices were useless to the Sisterhood. Syrene’s predecessors had learned that hard lesson a long time before. Girls forced to join the Sisterhood by their families, or recruited in the hope that they might be molded to the sisters’ desires, invariably proved difficult and untrustworthy, and sowed discontent among the rest. In the past, to save their families distress, the Sisterhood had usually informed them that these novices were unsuited to life in the Marque and had instead been sent to new worlds, there to seek knowledge that might prove useful to the Sisterhood.
In reality, they had been quietly and painlessly killed.
But that was all in the past. The Sisterhood was now a haven only for the willing, for those who had elected, freely and without pressure, to give their lives to the pursuit of true knowledge.
Much of this was known to Sedulus, and what he did not know he suspected. It did not matter to him. The Sisterhood had given the Corps real power, and what was good for the Corps was good for him, but it was a delicate business. The continued difficulties in restoring Grand Consul Gradus to his wife seriously threatened Sedulus’s thus-far smooth ascension through the ranks of the Securitats, not to mention his life. If Gradus died, Sedulus would follow him into the void.
Now, though, they had a possible lead, courtesy of the turncoat Duncan. Sedulus had dispatched the second cruiser and his last skimmer in that direction. Galateans and Securitats would soon be on the ground. The net was closing on the humans and their Illyri prisoners. Sedulus was simply waiting for confirmation of a sighting, and then he and the remaining cruiser would join the hunt. Two red lights indicated the positions of the craft on the display before him. The Securitats on board were represented by the smaller white lights of their trackers. The Galateans were not fitted with trackers, an indication of their dispensability.
The cruiser touched down. The lights spread out as the Securitats began to disperse. Then, as Sedulus watched, one of the white lights vanished, followed by a second, then a third. Behind him, the aide monitoring communications turned in his chair.
“Sir,” he said, “we have contact!”
•••
Just Joe had known that they would come. It had been merely a matter of time, and he had made a calculated gamble by having Paul slip Gradus’s tracker to Duncan. He or McKinnon would inevitably have betrayed them to their Illyri pursuers, although Joe’s money was on Duncan. McKinnon was a thug, but he would have died before giving the Illyri more than his name and the time of day. No, Duncan had been the weak one.
Just Joe had baited the trap for the Illyri: a fire, a handful of sleeping bags stuffed with rocks, and fighters moving around and giving a semblance of life to the camp. Theirs were the riskiest roles, and he could only hope that the Illyri wouldn’t open fire on them from the air but would wait to tackle them on the ground. He reckoned that it was about 70:30 in the Resistance’s favor that the Illyri would land rather than shoot; they probably wouldn’t risk blasting them from their ships for fear that the Illyri prisoners might be among those sleeping in the camp. Actually, 70:30 didn’t seem like bad odds, but Just Joe still didn’t care much for them. The people below mattered, and Just Joe had already spent too much of his life informing men and women that their loved ones would not be returning to them.
The land was uneven, and scattered with rocks. There were only two places where the Illyri could land safely while still being within quick striking distance of the camp. In an ideal world he would have mined both sites, and as soon as a ship touched down it would have been blown to pieces. He had no mines, though, so guns and grenades would have to suffice. Neither did he have enough bodies to cover both sites, so he had made another gamble: that the Illyri would send a cruiser, not simply a loaded skimmer. In that case, only one potential landing site was big enough, and he had concentrated all his firepower on it. If he was wrong, there might still be time to move fighters into new positions, but they would be forced to break cover to do so, making them vulnerable to pulser fire, and the element of surprise would be lost.
Just Joe lay beneath a camouflage blanket. Around him, the rest of his band of fighters were similarly disguised. He had positioned his best shots on the high ground, armed with high-powered rifles capable of penetrating Illyri body armor even at long range. Closer to the landing site, two fighters lay hidden, each armed with a grenade launcher and a single grenade, the last in Joe’s arsenal.
Joe thought about Fremd, and the two Illyri with him. They had entrusted so much to Fremd, and now some of Joe’s people were probably going to die on little more than one of the Illyri’s hunches. Hell, they’d risked members of the Resistance already because of his suspicions, most recently at Birdoswald. But Gradus was too valuable a prize to surrender without a fight, and if Fremd was right, the knowledge he might yield was worth dying for.
He didn’t even hear the cruiser before it appeared. The pilot must have been ordered to glide down, a dangerous maneuver for such a big, heavy craft. Flanking it was a single skimmer, which had probably picked out the fire and the people from above and guided the cruiser in.
Just Joe took a deep breath. His hands shook. They always did before a fight. Only a fool wasn’t frightened of dying, he told himself, and there was no bravery without fear.
The cruiser touched down. His people at the camp grabbed their weapons and ran for cover. The skimmer flew over them, and a pair of black spheres dropped from its belly, homing in on the nearest fleeing humans. Joe heard the hiss of the darts deploying, and watched as Kathy and Howie were felled.
br /> The cruiser’s doors opened, and the enemy appeared.
Just Joe aimed his weapon, and he and his fighters rained vengeance upon them for the dead of Durroch.
•••
Sedulus watched as more and more of the white lights blinked out.
“We need to help them,” said Beldyn.
“No,” said Sedulus. “We wait.”
•••
The first of the grenades struck the side of the cruiser and exploded harmlessly against its heavy armor. A flurry of blasts from the Galateans’ guns blew the grenadier’s position apart. He died instantly, but the distraction was enough to give the second grenadier time to aim. From her position behind a massive moss-covered boulder, Heather steadied the launcher and tightened her finger on the trigger.
“For Tam,” she said.
The grenade shot away and vanished into the cruiser’s gaping maw. Seconds later it exploded in the enclosed space, crippling the cruiser and killing or injuring all of those left inside. Splinters of rock erupted around her as the Illyri opened fire, but a barrage of covering shots allowed her to break for safety. She was terrified, but she remembered to hold on to the launcher. There would be more grenades somewhere, and they couldn’t afford to lose weapons. She made it to where the first line of Resistance fighters lay, then threw herself to the ground, drew her high-powered pistol, and started shooting.
Meanwhile, Just Joe and Norris were trying to take down the black orbs. They had already watched three of their people die, and they were determined that there would be no more. Norris winged the first with his shotgun, destroying its guidance system. It responded by firing its array of darts aimlessly, although one still struck close enough to Norris’s head to produce sparks from the rock behind him. A second shotgun blast put an end to it, and its remains dropped to the ground and fizzled harmlessly.
Just Joe drew the second orb to him by waving his coat at it from behind a tree stump. It was, he considered, as the first dart smacked into the wood, just about the dumbest thing he’d ever done in a lifetime of doing things that were not very smart. As the orb approached, he stepped from behind the stump, his backpack strapped to his chest, and prayed. He felt the impact of the dart as it struck the pack, and he sprayed the orb with bullets even as he kept praying, until the magazine was empty and the orb was no more, until all that was left was his own voice calling on some god, any god, to protect him.