Conquest

  “You promised you’d tell us what’s happening,” she said.

  “I did,” said Fremd, “or as much of it as I know.”

  He patted Lorac on the shoulder.

  “Bring our esteemed guest, the Grand Consul. We’re ready for him now.”

  And while Lorac went to get Gradus, Fremd told them his tale.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  T

  he first surprise was that Fremd was not just a member of the Diplomatic Corps; he had been a junior Securitat, and Sedulus had once been his adjutant.

  “I believed,” said Fremd. “I believed in the great expansion of the Illyri Empire. The wormholes had opened up the universe to us, and I was young and wanted to explore its vastness. It was about the discovery of worlds and not the conquest of them, although I admit that was part of the mission. Yet we were to be gentle rulers. We would not ravage societies. We would not rape planets for their resources. What was good for the Empire would be good for the new races we found, and the opposite would also be true.

  “But humanity was different, for this was a species very like our own. The Empire had monitored the human race’s development for decades. There were debates about whether or not conquest was the appropriate response to humanity’s growing resourcefulness, but the Corps overruled the Military’s hesitancy. And to be fair, there were strong reasons for subduing humanity. They were hostile to one another, so the violence of their reaction to an alien civilization could only be imagined. Their history was one of brutality and warfare, and they allowed whole nations to starve while others stored food in barns until it rotted. It was felt that they could not be reasoned with.

  “So Earth became a planet of conquest, but it was decided that care was to be taken with its inhabitants, for we had yet to discover any race as similarly advanced. But then, as you know, humanity proved more difficult to control than had been hoped, and the occupation became less gentle. There were those of us who started to believe that we should not be on Earth at all, and a new approach to humanity, one of cooperation and peaceful coexistence, needed to be implemented.

  “But I was not directly involved in such debates. My posting was four and a half light-years away in the system the humans named Alpha Centauri, monitoring the mining of the diamond world 55 Cancri e, and the harvesting of methane from larger planets in the system.”

  The harvesting of methane meant that Illyri ships traveling without using wormholes did not have to carry as much fuel for their flights. Instead, they could be refueled from methane bases scattered throughout galaxies. Within Earth’s solar system, the Illyri had planted harvesters on Jupiter, Mars, and Uranus, but the largest harvesting operation was on Titan, one of Saturn’s moons, where it literally rained methane and the surface was dotted with rivers and lakes of it.

  “The mining was being carried out by Illyri prisoners and, I’m sorry to say, by Punishment Battalions from Earth,” said Fremd. “It was near the end of my deployment there. I didn’t care for it—I was little more than a prison guard, and I spent too much time wearing a Lethal Environment Suit for my liking—and so I requested a transfer to Earth. In addition, there had been disciplinary problems, and prisoners had attempted to hijack a shuttle and escape. The Corps sent a senior consul—an uncle of our friend Gradus—to Alpha Centauri to investigate the problem. I was to finish my deployment when he arrived and travel on to Earth, but the pilot made a docking error as he approached the station at Cancri, and the ship was damaged. There was an oxygen leak, and most of the crew died, but we were able to rescue the consul. He was badly injured, but we brought him to the surgery and the medics went to work on him.

  “And that was when I was called, because the scans revealed something living inside the consul’s head.”

  Fremd could still clearly recall the moment; the “first sighting,” as he thought of it, the first glimpse of the Other. Wrapped around the consul’s brain stem, embracing his cerebellum with wispy tentacles, was a parasitic organism of some kind.

  “When we made an attempt to remove it, the organism tightened its grip on the cerebellum, and those whiplike tentacles made further inroads into the consul’s brain. His body began to convulse, and the medics decided that no further investigation of the organism should take place for fear of killing its host. We sent a coded message to Gradus, informing him of the discovery, and the consul was placed in an isolation chamber. The message that came back was simple: nobody was to leave the station for fear of contamination, and there was to be no further communication about the consul or the organism until a team from the Scientific Development Division arrived.

  “But further unrest erupted on Cancri,” said Fremd, “and I had no choice but to leave the station and travel down to the planet to deal with it. I had to wear a full LES kit on Cancri, anyway, so there was no danger of my passing on any infection.”

  He paused then, as though the memory of what came next was still painful for him.

  “The scientists arrived while I was on Cancri, but with them came Securitat death squads, and the slaughter began. I stayed on the planet while everyone on the station was being killed. I had left a communications channel open with my second in command, Seval, in case I had to explain my absence, and I heard him die. I heard them all die. They were murdered by our own people. Seval’s last act was to excise all record of my trip to Cancri. As far as the Securitats were concerned, I was missing, presumed deserted.

  “Then they blew up the station and left everyone on Cancri to die. The prisoners saw the station exploding, and there was a rush for my ship. I had to kill to save myself, and I abandoned the remaining miners on Cancri. That’s my burden. I carry it with me every day.”

  “How did you get to Earth?” asked Syl.

  “I hitched a ride through the wormhole on the coattails of a Corps ship,” he said. “Eventually I made my way here, to Scotland.”

  Syl couldn’t help but be impressed. Hitching was an incredibly risky maneuver, relying on the gravitational force of the larger ship in the wormhole to pull the smaller craft through. If the hitchhiker miscalculated even slightly, or if the main ship was bounced around either entering or leaving the wormhole, then the other vessel would be destroyed.

  “It took a long time for the Resistance to trust me, and for me to trust them,” said Fremd. “They kept me in a cell for two years. I barely saw daylight. Eventually I met Maeve, and things started to change. But I said nothing about what I’d seen on the station, not until a few months ago, when I started hearing rumors of human bodies going missing, and of secret facilities set up on Earth by the Scientific Development Division. We also learned from our spies of a flood of Corps officials arriving on Earth, all of them related, or loyal, to Gradus, and all with links to the Scientific Development Division. What happened at Cancri station suggested that there were those at the highest levels of the Corps and its Securitats who wanted to keep the existence of the organism, the Other, secret. But what if it wasn’t the only one? What if there were more of these things infecting the Illyri? And perhaps the relationship between the organism and its host wasn’t merely parasitic, but symbiotic.”

  “Symbi-what?” asked Ani.

  “Two organisms of different species operating in unison, to the benefit of each,” said Fremd. “Like, for example, the pilot fish that feed from the mouths of sharks and clean away decaying matter, or even dogs and humans, except in the case of the Other and its host the relationship is obviously more, um, intimate. So we decided to target newly arrived Corps officials, especially those with a familial relationship to Gradus, in the hope of capturing one, but we had no success—until Gradus himself fell into our laps, thanks to you two.”

  At that moment Gradus appeared, struggling between two men, Just Joe close behind. He was no longer the pathetic figure who had trudged through the Highlands at the end of a rope. Now he screamed and swore, and his eyes were filled with pani
c. He saw the medical equipment, and he seemed to intuit its purpose: there was a small X-ray machine, and a lightweight Illyri magnetic resonance imaging scanner, capable of producing immensely detailed images of the interior of a body. Alongside them stood a tray containing scalpels, calipers, and dressings.

  “No!” said Gradus. “You can’t do this.”

  “Place him facedown,” said Fremd.

  The men laid Gradus on a gurney, firmly securing his hands, feet, and head with straps.

  “Sedate him,” said Fremd, and Lorac slipped a needle into Gradus’s arm. The Grand Consul grew calmer, but he remained conscious.

  “No,” he repeated. “No, no, no . . .”

  “Come,” said Kathleen to Syl and Ani, guiding them toward the door. “Maybe you should leave.”

  “No,” said Fremd. “Let them stay. If I’m right, they should see this.”

  On Fremd’s order, they placed protective masks over their noses and mouths. Lorac powered up the MRI scanner. Fremd looked upward, his lips moving in prayer to his old gods, and said:

  “Begin.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  T

  he rain had ceased, but in its place came a mist that was just as drenching. It seemed that each tiny particle of moisture was visible in the light streaming from the castle, but then the artificial illumination dimmed as power was diverted to the machines in the basement of the keep. A handful of emergency bulbs continued to glow brightly, but battery-powered lights were pressed into service, and even, here and there, oil lamps.

  The guards at the walls watched the mist, and the inhabitants behind the walls watched the guards. The castle’s occupants were those who had fled their isolated homes because of bandits, like the late McKinnon and his associates; or those with family members whose involvement with the Resistance had been discovered, and whose houses had been destroyed in reprisal—for the Illyri’s tactics north of the wall were often more brutal than in the cities. These people had found a haven at Dundearg, and Maeve Buchanan had almost bankrupted herself taking care of them. But she was of an older order, one that recognized a duty toward those who lived on the land owned by the castle, and extended even to land that had once been owned by the castle long before. They were her people, because they had always been her family’s people.

  But everyone within those walls knew what had taken place in recent days: the pursuit of a precious prize that the Resistance had defended to the death. Now that prize was inside the castle, and they feared that the pursuers would soon be at their door.

  And those fears were about to find form.

  •••

  Four guards stood on the battlements above and flanking the main gates. Two were still in their teens, and two were older and more experienced. That was the way with the Resistance in the Highlands: there was an abundance of fresh water up there, and so, unlike the city dwellers, they had remained relatively unaffected by the contamination of the water supply with chemicals that subdued the instinct to fight, to resist. Yet at the same time, the struggle against the Illyri was more overt in the North, and harder fought. The casualty rate was higher as a consequence, so it was important that the younger ones learned quickly from the older fighters, because those more experienced fighters might not be around for long.

  The gates were fortified by a truck packed with bags of cement and sand. Once the gates closed, the truck was driven into place and only moved when friendly parties were trying to enter or leave. Machine-gun posts occupied each of the rounded turrets, and mortars were in place behind the walls.

  The youngest of the guards, Jack Dennison, had just turned seventeen on his last birthday. He could easily be identified by the green-and-white Celtic scarf that he wore around his neck whatever the weather. The Illyri had long ago tried to clamp down on the most vicious of sporting rivalries by disbanding certain teams: the Red Sox and the Yankees in baseball; Real Madrid and Barcelona in Spanish football; and a whole list of teams in England, including virtually the entire English Premier League. But a particular target had been the Rangers and Celtic teams in Scotland. The two had long been at each other’s throats, a consequence of religious conflict that had hardened into pure hatred, but the tipping point for the Illyri had been a Scottish FA Cup Final during which violence had broken out between not just the supporters, but the teams themselves. When the Illyri tried to intervene, they succeeded in doing what centuries of efforts by priests, pastors, and politicians had failed to do: they united the rival supporters, if only against a common enemy. The ensuing riots against Illyri rule lasted for weeks, and added fuel to the ferocious Scottish Resistance that continued to that day. Even wearing the green-and-white of Celtic, or the dark blue of Rangers, was an arrestable offense.

  Now Dennison stared out into the darkness, his eyes and especially his ears alert. They would hear the Illyri before they saw them. They always did, just before they screamed, or roared, out of the air. But all was quiet. Dennison shivered. Beside him, Phil Pelham huddled into his waxed jacket. Pelham was from Manchester, and where Dennison wore green-and-white, Pelham favored blue-and-white, the colors of the former Manchester City. He and the younger man had found a point of contact in teams that no longer existed.

  “All right, lad?” said Pelham.

  “Yeah, all right.”

  “Experiments in the basement.” Pelham jerked a thumb at the keep behind him. “Maybe they’re making Frankenstein’s monster.”

  “They’ll need lightning for that,” said Dennison. “And dead bodies.”

  He realized what he had just said, and shuffled with embarrassment.

  “Well,” said Pelham, “best we make sure they don’t have any of them then, right?”

  “Right you are, Phil.”

  The mist rose before them. Dennison hated mist. It made him see figures where there were none, merely phantasms of his imagination. He wished the main castle lights would come back on. At the very least, the wall lights made it easier to distinguish between what was real and what was unreal. They had lit torches on the walls, as much to keep them warm as to provide more light, but they only helped a little.

  A form appeared in the haze, then vanished. Dennison narrowed his eyes against the damp and the dark.

  “What’s wrong?” said Pelham.

  “I’m not sure. I thought . . .”

  There it was again, except it was closer now, and to the left. But how could it have moved so quickly?

  “There’s something out there.”

  Pelham eased the AK-47 from his shoulder.

  “I don’t see anything. Where? Are you sure?”

  The first of the Galateans appeared, and he had his answer. A massive blast struck the gates even as Pelham sounded the alarm. The heavily laden truck shuddered on its axles, but remained in place.

  For now.

  The assault on Dundearg had begun.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  P

  eris and his strike squad were carefully monitoring the progress of Sedulus’s remaining cruiser, staying far above it in the hope that the attention of the Securitats would be focused on what was happening on the ground below them, and not on the skies above. When the cruiser eventually landed, apparently miles from the nearest village, Peris called up a map of the surrounding area, and found Dundearg Castle at the center.

  “That has to be their destination,” he told Aron, his second in command, as their shuttle circled high above cloud level. “There’s nothing else nearby.”

  “Then why have they landed so far from it?” asked Aron. The cruiser had come down more than a mile from the castle, and the last of Sedulus’s skimmers had joined it.

  “He wants to have troops at their walls before they know it, and the mist will hide his approach,” said Peris. “Plus he only has one cruiser left: if that castle is defended with missiles or heavy-caliber guns, they could blow hi
m out of the sky.”

  “I don’t understand why he hasn’t called for reinforcements.”

  “Because it would be a final admission of failure on top of the loss of most of his force,” said Peris. “Above all else, he wants to bring the Grand Consul back to his witch wife and reap the benefits. Pride will be Sedulus’s downfall.”

  He pointed at the on-screen map.

  “That looks like clear ground. Glide us in.”

  Aron sighed. “It could be a bog, for all we know.”

  “Well,” said Peris, “at least we’ll have a soft landing.”

  •••

  But Peris’s progress was also being tracked, although not by Sedulus. Meia had Peris’s strike squad and both the recently landed cruiser and skimmer on her monitor. She could see what Peris was trying to do: quietly land closer to the castle than Sedulus’s Securitats, and try to get inside to rescue Syl and Ani before Sedulus made it to the walls. He had to be stopped, because right now Meia knew that she, and she alone, was Syl and Ani’s best hope of getting out of Dundearg alive.

  Peris’s shuttle glided down on what was, thankfully for his squad, firm ground, the engines only kicking in at the final moment to soften the landing, just as Meia had anticipated. Her skimmer differed from Peris’s craft, and indeed, those of the rest of the Illyri fleet, in two crucial ways: its software was faster and its engines quieter. She had used all her skill and knowledge to make the improvements, and had shared none of them with others. In war, every advantage was crucial, but especially so for Meia and those who fought in the shadows.