“We prefer to go in alone,” says Nemes.
The twenty Guardsmen crouch with lances at port arms. They make a solid wall of iron, zygoat fur, silk, and elaborate helmets. The Guard captain bows lower. “I apologize for my unworthiness, Most Honored Guests, but it is not possible to enter the Winter Palace without an invitation and an honor guard. Both will be here in a minute. If you will be so kind as to wait in the shade under the pagoda roof here, Honored Guests, a personage of the proper rank to greet you will arrive in only a moment.”
Nemes nods. “Kill them,” she says to Scylla and Briareus and walks forward into the palace as her siblings phase-shift.
They shift down during the long walk through the many-leveled palace, shifting into fast time only to kill guards and servants. When they exit by the main steps and approach the Pargo Kaling, the great Western Gate on this side of the Kyi Chu Bridge, they find Regent Reting Tokra blocking the way with five hundred of his finest Palace Guard troops. A few of these elite fighters carry swords and pikes, but most hold crossbows, slug rifles, crude energy weapons, and railguns.
“Commander Nemes,” says Tokra, lowering his head slightly but not bowing so much as to lose eye contact with the woman in front of him. “We have heard what you did at Shivling. You can go no farther.” Tokra nods at someone high up in the gleaming eyes on the Pargo Kaling tower and the black chrome bridge of Kyi Chu slides silently back into the mountain. Only the great suspension cables remain far above, ringed about with razor wire and frictionless gel.
Nemes smiles. “What are you doing, Tokra?”
“His Holiness has gone to Hsuan-k’ung Ssu,” says the thin-faced Regent. “I know why you travel that way. You cannot be allowed to harm His Holiness the Dalai Lama.”
Rhadamanth Nemes shows more of her small teeth. “What are you talking about, Tokra? You sold out your dear little boy-god to the Pax secret service for thirty pieces of silver. Are we bartering here for more of your stupid six-sided coins?”
The Regent shakes his head. “The agreement with the Pax was that His Holiness would never be hurt. But you …”
“We want the girl’s head,” says Nemes. “Not your boy lama’s. Get your men out of our way or lose them.”
Regent Tokra turns and barks an order at his row upon row of soldiers. The men’s faces are grim as they raise their weapons to their shoulders. The mass of them blocks the way to the bridge, even though the roadway of the bridge is no longer there. Dark clouds boil in the chasm.
“Kill them all,” says Nemes, phase-shifting.
LHOMO HAD TRAINED US ALL IN THE HANG-GLIDER controls, but I had never had the opportunity to fly one before. Now, as the cliff rose out of the fog in front of me, I had to do the correct thing immediately or die.
The kite was controlled by manipulating the control bar that hung in front of me as I dangled in my harness, and I leaned as far left and put as much weight on it as the rigging allowed. The parawing banked, but not steeply enough, I realized at once. The kite was going to intercept the rock wall a meter or two away from the outer apex of its arc. There was another set of controls—handle grips that spilled air from the dorsal surface at the leading edge of each side of the dorsal wing—but these were dangerous and tricky and for emergency use only.
I could see the lichen on the approaching rock wall. This was an emergency.
I pulled hard on the left panic handle, the nylon on the left side of the parawing opened like a slit purse, the right wing—still catching the strong ridge lift here—banked up steeply, the parawing turned almost upside down with its useless left wing spilling air like so much empty aluminum frame, my legs were flung out sideways as the kite threatened to stall and plummet into the rocks, my boots actually brushed stone and lichen, and then the wing was falling almost straight down, I released the left handle, the active-memory fabric on the left leading surface healed itself in an instant, and I was flying again—although in a near vertical dive.
The strong thermals rising along the cliff face struck the kite like a rising elevator and I was slammed upward, the control bar swinging back against my upper chest hard enough to knock the wind out of me, and the parawing swooped, climbed, and tried to do a lazy loop with a radius of sixty or seventy meters. I found myself hanging almost upside down again, but this time with the kite and controls beneath me and the rock wall dead ahead again.
This was no good. I would conclude the loop on the cliff wall. I yanked the right panic handle, spilled lift, tumbled sideways in a sickening drop, sealed the wing, and tugged handles and control bar while shifting my weight wildly to establish balance and control. The clouds had parted enough for me to see the cliff twenty or thirty meters to my right as I fought the thermals and the kite itself for a clean line.
Then I was leveled and flying the contraption, spiraling around to my left again, but carefully this time—ever so carefully—thankful for the break in the clouds that allowed me to judge my distance from the cliff and leaning hard left on the control bar. Suddenly a whisper in my ear said, “Wow! That was fun to watch. Do it again!”
I jumped at the voice in my ear and then looked up and behind me. The bright yellow triangle of Aenea’s parawing circled above me, the clouds close above it like a gray ceiling.
“No thanks,” I said, allowing the comthreads on the throat of my skinsuit to pick up the subvocals. “I guess I’m through showing off.” I glanced up at her again. “Why are you here? Where’s A. Bettik?”
“We rendezvoused above the clouds, didn’t see you, and I came down to find you,” Aenea said simply, her comthreaded voice soft in my ear.
I felt a surge of nausea—more from the thought of her risking everything to do that than from the violent aerobatics of a moment earlier. “I’m all right,” I said gruffly. “Just had to get the feel of the ridge lift.”
“Yeah,” said Aenea. “It’s tricky. Why don’t you follow me up?”
I did so, not allowing my pride to get in the way of survival. It was difficult to keep her yellow wing in sight with the shifting fog, but easier than flying blind near this cliff. She seemed to sense exactly where the rock wall was, cutting our circle within five meters of it—catching the strong center of the thermals there—but never coming too close or swinging too wide.
Within minutes we came out of the clouds. I admit that the experience took my breath away—first a slow brightening, then a rush of sunlight, then rising above the cloud level like a swimmer emerging from a white sea, then squinting into the bright light within the blinding freedom of blue sky and a seemingly infinite view on all sides.
Only the highest peaks and ridgelines were visible above the ocean of clouds: T’ai Shan gleaming cold and icy white so far to our east, Heng Shan about equidistant to the north, our ridgeline from Jo-kung rising like a razor’s edge just above the tides of cloud running back to the west, K’un Lun Ridge a distant wall running northwest to southeast, and far, far away near the edge of the world, the brilliant summits of Chorno Lori, Mt. Parnassus, Kangchengjunga, Mt. Koya, Mt. Kalais, and others I could not identify from this angle. There was a glimmer of sunlight on something tall beyond distant Phari Ridge, and I thought this might be the Potala or the lesser Shivling. I quit gawking and turned my attention back to our attempt to gain altitude.
A. Bettik circled close by and gave me a thumbs-up. I returned the signal and looked up to see Lhomo gesturing fifty meters above us: Close up. Keep your circles tight. Follow me.
We did that, Aenea easily climbing to her wingman position behind Lhomo, A. Bettik’s blue kite circling across the climb circle from her, and me bringing up the rear fifteen meters below and fifty meters across the circle from the android.
Lhomo seemed to know exactly where the thermals were—sometimes we circled farther back west, caught the lift, and opened our circles to move east again. Sometimes we seemed to circle without gaining altitude, but then I would look north to Heng Shan and sense that we had covered another several hundred meters upwa
rd. Slowly we climbed and slowly we circled east, although T’ai Shan must still have been eighty or ninety klicks away.
It grew colder and harder to breathe. I sealed the last bit of osmosis mask and inhaled pure O2 as we climbed. The skinsuit tightened around me, acting as a pressure suit and thermsuit all in one. I could see Lhomo shivering in his zygoat chuba and heavy mittens. There was ice on A. Bettik’s bare forearm. And still we circled and rose. The sky darkened and the view grew more unbelievable—distant Nanda Devi in the southwest, Helgafell in the even more distant southeast, and Harney Peak far beyond the Shivling all coming into sight above the curve of the planet.
Finally Lhomo had had enough. A moment earlier I had unsealed the clear osmosis mask on my hood to see how thick the air was, tried to inhale what felt like hard vacuum, and quickly resealed the membrane. I could not imagine how Lhomo managed to breathe, think, and function at this altitude. Now he signaled us to keep circling higher on the thermal he had been working, gave us the ancient “good luck” sign of the circled thumb and forefinger, and then spilled the thin air out of his delta kite to drop away like a hurtling Thomas hawk. Within seconds, the red delta was several thousand meters below us and swooping toward the ridgeline to the west.
We continued circling and climbing, occasionally losing the lift for a moment, but then finding it again. We were being blown eastward by the lower edges of the jet stream, but we followed Lhomo’s final advice and resisted the temptation to turn toward our destination; we did not have enough altitude or tailwind yet to make the eighty-kilometer voyage.
Encountering the jet stream was like suddenly entering a Whitewater rapids in a kayak. Aenea’s kite found the edge of it first, and I watched the yellow fabric vibrate as if in a powerful gale, then the aluminum superstructure flex wildly. Then A. Bettik and I were into it and it was everything we could do to hold ourselves horizontal in the swinging harness behind the control bar and continue circling for altitude.
“It’s hard,” came Aenea’s voice in my ear. “It wants to tear loose and head east.”
“We can’t,” I gasped, pulling the parawing into the headwind again and being thrown higher in one great vertical lift ride.
“I know,” came Aenea’s strained voice. I was a hundred meters away and below her now, but I could see her small form wrestling with the control bar, her legs straight, her small feet pointed backward like a cliff diver’s.
I peered around. The brilliant sun was haloed by ice crystals. The ridgelines were almost invisible so far below, the summits of the highest peaks now klicks beneath us. “How is A. Bettik doing?” asked Aenea.
I twisted and strained to see. The android was circling above me. His eyes appeared to be closed, but I could see him making adjustments to the control bar. His blue flesh gleamed with frost. “All right, I think,” I said. “Aenea?”
“Yes?”
“Is there any chance of the Pax at Shivling or in orbit picking up our comthread broadcasts?” The com unit/diskey journal was in my pocket, but we had decided never to use it until it was time to call the ship. It would be ironic if we were captured or killed because of using these skinsuit communicators.
“No chance,” gasped Aenea. Even with the osmosis masks and the rebreather matrix woven into the skinsuits, the air was thin and cold. “The comthreads are very short range. Half a klick at most.”
“Then stay close,” I said and concentrated on gaining a few hundred more meters before the almost silent hurricane that was buffeting me sent the kite screaming off to the east.
Another few minutes and we could no longer resist the powerful current in this river of air. The thermal did not lessen, it just seemed to die away completely, and then we were at the mercy of the jet stream.
“Let’s go!” shouted Aenea, forgetting that her slightest whisper was audible in my hearpatch.
I could see A. Bettik open his eyes and give me a thumbs-up. At the same instant, my own parawing peeled off the thermal and was swept away to the east. Even with the diminished sound, we seemed to be roaring through the air at a speed so incredible that it was audible. Aenea’s yellow delta streaked east like a crossbow dart. A. Bettik’s blue followed. I wrestled with the controls, realized that I did not have the strength to change course one degree, and simply held on while we rifled east and down in the pounding, flowing river of air. T’ai Shan gleamed ahead of us, but we were losing altitude quickly now and the mountain was still very far away. Kilometers beneath us, beneath the monsoon sea of white cloudtops, the greenish phosgene clouds of the acid world ocean churned away unseen but waiting.
• • •
THE PAX AUTHORITIES IN T’IEN SHAN SYSTEM WERE confused.
When Captain Wolmak in the Jibril received the strange pulsed alarm signal from the Pax Enclave at Shivling, he tried hailing Cardinal Mustafa and the others but received no answer. Within minutes he had dispatched a combat dropship with two dozen Pax Marines, including three medics.
The tightline report uplink was confusing. The conference room at their enclave gompa was a gory mess. Human blood and viscera were splashed everywhere, but the only body remaining was that of the Grand Inquisitor, who had been crippled and blinded. They DNA-typed the largest arterial spray and found it to be that of Father Farrell. Other pools of blood reportedly belonged to Archbishop Breque and his aide, LeBlanc. But no bodies. No cruciforms. The medics reported that Cardinal Mustafa was comatose, in deep shock, and near death; they stabilized him as best they could using only their fìeldkits and asked for orders. Should they let the Grand Inquisitor die and be resurrected, or get him to the dropship doc-in-the-box and try to save him, knowing that it would be several days before he could regain consciousness and describe the attack? Or the medic could get him to life support, use drugs to bring the Cardinal out of the coma, and interrogate him within minutes—all the while with the patient under exquisite pain and on the verge of death.
Wolmak ordered them to wait and tightbeamed Admiral Lempriere, the task force commander. Out in the T’ien Shan System, many AUs distant, the forty-some ships that had come through the battle with Raphael were rescuing survivors from the terminally damaged archangels and awaiting the arrival of the papal drone and the TechnoCore robot ship that would be putting the planet’s population in suspended animation. Neither had arrived. Lempriere was closer, four light-minutes away, and the tightbeam would take that long to reach him and bring him up to speed, but Wolmak felt he had no other choice. He waited while his message burned out-system.
Aboard the flagship Raguel, Lempriere found himself in a ticklish situation, with only minutes to decide about Mustafa. If he allowed the Grand Inquisitor to die, it was likely that a two-day resurrection would be successful. The Cardinal would suffer little pain. But the cause of the attack—Shrike, indigenies, the Aenea monster’s disciples, Ousters—might remain a mystery until then. Lempriere took ten seconds to decide, but it was a four-minute tightbeam delay out and back.
“Have the medics stabilize him,” he tightbeamed Wolmak on the Jibril in orbit around the mountain planet. “Get him to dropship life support. Bring him out of it. Interrogate him. When we know enough, have the autosurgeon give a prognosis. If it’s faster to resurrect him, let him die.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” said Wolmak four minutes later, and passed word along to the Marines.
Meanwhile, the Marines were widening their search, using EMV reaction paks to search the vertical cliffsides around the Phallus of Shiva. They deep-radared Rhan Tso, the so-called Otter Lake, finding neither otters nor the bodies of the missing priests. There had been an honor guard of twelve Marines in the enclave with the Grand Inquisitor’s party—plus the pilot of the dropship—but these men and women were also missing. Blood and viscera were found and DNA-typed—most of the missing thus accounted for—but their bodies were not found.
“Shall we spread the search to the Winter Palace?” questioned the Marine lieutenant in charge of the party. All of the Marines had specific orders
not to disturb the locals—especially the Dalai Lama and his people—before the TechnoCore ship arrived to put the population asleep.
“Just a minute,” said Wolmak. He saw that Admiral Lempriere’s monitor telltale was on. The com diskey on his command web was also blinking. Jibril’s intelligence officer down in the sensor bubble. “Yes?”
“Captain, we’ve been visually monitoring the palace area. Something terrible has happened there.”
“What?” snapped Wolmak. It was not like any member of his crew to be so vague.
“We missed it, sir,” said the Intel officer. She was a young woman, but smart, Lempriere knew. “We were using the optics to check the area around the Enclave. But look at this …”
Wolmak turned his head slightly to watch the holopit fill with an image, knowing that it was being tightbeamed out to the Admiral The east side of the Winter Palace, Potala, as if seen from a few hundred meters above the Kyi Chu Bridge.
The roadway of the bridge was gone, retracted. But on the steps and terraces between the palace and the bridge, and on some of the narrow ledges in the chasm between the palace and the Drepung Monastery on the east side, were scores of bodies—hundreds of bodies—bloodied and dismembered.
“Dear Lord,” said Captain Wolmak and crossed himself.
“We’ve identified the head of Regent Tokra Reting there among the body parts,” came the Intel officer’s calm voice.
“The head?” repeated Wolmak, realizing that his useless remark was being sent to the Admiral along with all the rest of this transmission. In four minutes, Admiral Lempriere would know that Wolmak made stupid comments. No matter. “Anyone else important there?” he queried Intel.
“Negative, sir,” came the young officer’s voice. “But they’re broadcasting on various radio frequencies now.”
Wolmak raised an eyebrow. So far, the Winter Palace had maintained radio and tightbeam silence. “What are they saying?”