• • •
By the time Paul reached the Nomad vessel, Galton was seated beside Rizzo, both of them lost in their own thoughts. Rizzo had been fond of De Souza, and maybe more than that. Paul didn’t know if they’d ever had a relationship, but he believed that Rizzo might have been a little in love with their dead lieutenant. As for Galton, now that the fighting was over and they were about to leave the Envion, he had time to think about Cady. His expression was unreadable as he stared down from the window at Torma, the world on which his lover now lay buried. Paul gently laid a hand on his shoulder, an attempt at comfort that Galton barely acknowledged. His cheeks were wet. Paul left him to his grief.
Meanwhile Peris and Tiray were locked in loud discussions with Steven about the Nomad ship’s technology.
“Gentlemen,” said Paul, interrupting them, “perhaps we could continue the debate after we’ve freed ourselves from the Envion.”
Steven glanced up at his brother as Peris and Tiray moved away without complaint. Paul’s tone, although polite, had brooked no opposition. He was changing, inhabiting his new role as lieutenant. Back on Earth, fighting the Illyri, Paul had been groomed for leadership by the Resistance’s commanders, and had accepted every responsibility that was given to him. But this was different. They were far from home, conscripts in an alien army and barely out of basic training, yet when they had been at their weakest—their comrades dead or dying, their ship crippled, a superior force preparing to attack—Paul had rallied them, forging them into a new fighting unit, and all those who would have killed them were dead. Steven was sorry that De Souza was gone, but he was also grateful that his injuries had led to Paul’s promotion, for Steven did not believe that De Souza could have handled the situation as well as his brother.
His eyes moved past Paul to Alis, Tiray’s aide. There was something familiar about her, something he could not quite place. She looked very young, but she was beautiful in a hard way, like a statue molded from gold. He had tried to apologize for touching her, but the apology had been almost as awkward and embarrassing as the original offense. As Steven stumbled over his words, Alis had simply watched him with her unblinking Illyri gaze, her head turned slightly to one side like a bird listening to a worm trying to talk its way out of being eaten.
The Nomad vessel shook as something ignited in the heart of the Envion. Fire bloomed briefly on one of the lower decks before the hull ruptured and the flames were smothered. The blast distracted Steven from Alis.
“Get us out of here,” ordered Paul.
“Yes, sir,” Steven answered instinctively, then realized that he was talking to his brother. “I mean—”
Steven paused, and thought.
“Yes, sir,” he repeated, and in the reflection on the cockpit glass, he thought that he caught Paul smiling.
But just as he prepared to unlock the Nomad ship, it rang with an alarm sound. Paul turned to see that Galton, unnoticed by anyone else, had risen from his seat, and had opened the connector door.
“Galton!” cried Paul. “What are you doing?”
“I’m sorry,” said Galton. “I can’t leave here.”
He stepped through the door and into the connector. Before Paul could react, the door had closed again, and seconds later he both felt and heard the shuttle detaching itself from the Envion.
“It’s Galton,” said Steven. “He’s decoupled us from inside. Do you want me to try to dock us again?”
And in that moment, Paul made his most difficult decision yet.
“No,” he said. “Let him go.”
Sometimes, he thought, grief was just too much for a person to bear.
He stepped to the one of the hull windows and saw Galton looking back at him from an observation bay. Paul raised his hand in farewell and thought that he saw Galton respond before he turned away. The Nomad distanced itself from the Envion, the larger ship growing smaller and smaller through the windows, the great yellow mass of Torma lying behind it. Paul felt a terrible pang of sadness as he watched the final moments of the Envion, his last sight of Galton still fresh in his mind, remembering the faces of those who had served on the destroyer, losing their lives in doing so, and how the ship had held itself together for long enough to allow them to escape safely, as though it had wanted them to live. But he hoped too that the memory of the raiders’ slaughter might die with the vessel.
A massive explosion ripped through the destroyer, instantly tearing it asunder. Its two halves separated, and as if in slow motion, the wreckage began to drop toward the surface of Torma, shedding debris as it went, the shards turning to bright stars in the planet’s atmosphere, and among them was Galton, descending to join his lost love.
They watched the death of the Envion in silence. Only when it was gone from sight did Alis approach Paul and ask if she could take the copilot’s seat. Paul gave his consent. It seemed like a good idea for Steven to have some help.
“Set a course?” asked Steven.
“Just take us away from that wormhole,” said Paul, “while I try to get someone to tell me how we ended up in this mess.”
• • •
The Nomad—for, in the absence of a better name, that was what they chose to christen their new vessel—was a technological wonder. As Paul made his way to the rear, passing from the flight deck through a series of crew compartments, and into engineering, he could hear Peris and Tiray marveling at it while simultaneously trying to figure out where it had been constructed, and by whom. Four or five virtual screens overlapped in front of the two Illyri as they examined weapons systems, flight controls, and engines. Paul watched them in silence for a time until finally he grew tired of hearing them compliment a vessel that had been partly responsible for reducing a destroyer to wreckage, and its crew to ash and floating bodies, and coughed loudly.
“Lieutenant,” said Peris, his eyes bright, “it’s astonishing. We are decades away from producing a craft like this.”
“By we,” said Paul, “I take it you mean the Military?”
Both Illyri grasped his implication immediately, for the same thought had already struck them.
“Absolutely,” said Peris. “This must be the work of the Diplomatic Corps, but where did this technology come from? I mean, we have our own research divisions working on advanced propulsion and construction systems, but even if the rumors are true, we still haven’t come close to developing a fusion engine of this sophistication. The Nomad is barely one-tenth the size of the Envion but its engine is at least three times as powerful. This thing is fast, resilient, and armed with weapons capable of taking down a Military destroyer. It shouldn’t exist, but it does.”
“And it came hunting for Councillor Tiray,” said Paul.
Thula came back to join him. There were now two humans and two Illyri. Paul stole a glance at Peris, still shoulder to shoulder with Tiray, both gazing around them in wonder. It remained to be seen where precisely Peris’s loyalties might lie if he had to choose between the Illyri and the unit.
“We need answers,” Paul continued. “Thula and I examined the bodies of the raiders on the Envion. All identifying marks had been surgically removed from their skin, and their Chips had been pulled from their skulls. That’s not an easy piece of surgery, is it, Thula?”
Thula nodded. “From what I’ve heard, true Nomads deactivate their Chips, but they don’t go cutting into skulls to pull them from the cerebral cortex.”
“Right,” said Paul. “Now, putting all these pieces together, what we have is some kind of secret Corps vessel disguised to look like a piece of Nomad junk, carrying trained raiders—we reckon Securitats, given the dirty nature of the work—who targeted an Illyri politician, and wanted him badly enough to be prepared to take on a Military destroyer and kill everyone on board.”
Tiray looked pained.
“Lieutenant,” he said, “you are not alone in losing friends and c
olleagues. Do you know what lies on the other side of that wormhole? I’ll tell you: the wreckage of a ship called the Desilus, with a crew of twenty, among them my own stepson. The Desilus was to have been my mission ship, but by the time I reached it, everyone on board was dead, and the Desilus itself resembled the Envion in its final moments. It was only a miracle that brought me and Alis safely through the wormhole.”
Paul looked at him coldly, for it was the arrival of Tiray that had been the Envion’s undoing.
“You’ll have to forgive us for not regarding your coming as a miracle,” said Paul. “The last I heard, miracles involved raising the dead, not sending the living to join them. Your miraculous escape drew the raiders down on us instead, which brings us back to the main question: What makes you so important? What did they want from you?”
Tiray looked to Peris. Clearly he was uncomfortable with being interrogated by a human—resentful, even. Paul wondered how many humans Tiray had even encountered until now; a few Brigade troopers seen at a distance, perhaps, but no more than that. Tiray clearly expected Peris to intervene on his behalf. Now we come down to it, thought Paul. Now we will see.
“Councillor Tiray, please answer the lieutenant,” said Peris.
In happier circumstances, Paul might have cheered: Peris was a soldier, and soldiers stuck together, especially when confronted by politicians.
“This is a very delicate situation,” said Tiray. “Many lives may be at stake, maybe even the future of the Empire.”
He had been talking to Peris, but now he turned and directed his attention to Paul.
“I mean no offense, Lieutenant, but you are human, and I am Illyri. You fight in the Illyri Brigades, but we are not on the same side.”
Before Paul could reply, Peris intervened.
“I would suggest that, given recent events, we are now very much on the same side,” he said. “As for the lieutenant, I suspect that he is aware of far more about the Illyri and our Conquest than he has chosen to reveal, even to me.”
He caught Paul’s eye, and not for the first time, Paul understood just how clever and sharp the old Illyri fighter was. What had Peris learned back on Earth? How much did Peris know? After all, he had fought alongside Lord Andrus’s head of security, the deadly, inscrutable Meia, and Meia appeared to know pretty much everything.
“And the other?” said Tiray now, gesturing at Thula.
“He’s my sergeant,” said Paul. “I trust him completely.”
“I’m your sergeant?” said Thula. “Since when?”
“Since now.”
“And you trust me completely?”
“Almost.”
“I’m touched.”
Tiray watched their exchange with puzzlement. Clearly this wasn’t how Illyri officers behaved with their noncoms. But Tiray now seemed resigned to answering Paul’s question. In the end, he had little choice, not if he wanted Paul’s help. Tiray could quote all of the Illyri regulations he liked, but he knew that, if they chose to do so, the humans could push him out of an airlock door—Peris too, if it came to that—and nobody would be any wiser. He didn’t know Paul well enough to be able to trust him not to commit such an act.
Tiray reached into the folds of his robes and produced a small USB drive. The Illyri rarely used such primitive methods of storage. In fact, Paul hadn’t seen one since he’d left Earth.
“This is what the hunters seek,” said Tiray. “And they will not stop until they secure it.”
CHAPTER 24
Syl was anxious to finish her book, for she was still reading the gripping little wedge of a volume about the early Illyri explorations, and was close to the conclusion: just one more world to discover. Yet then, abruptly, the book stopped. Syl turned the page and that was it: from the cliffhanger final line of one chapter to absolutely nothing—just the inside of the back cover intricately decorated in the old style, and perhaps remarkable in its own right, but without further words. No end was given to the tale, despite the promises in the earlier chapters of this last world, unexplored, spinning like a small, fat opal in space, distant and unknowable. Yet it had water, it had a stable atmosphere; it was alive with possibilities, and the potential for life.
She peered closer and saw that somebody had actually defaced the book. No, “defaced” was the wrong word: the final pages had been carefully sliced out, right up close to the book’s spine.
Annoyed, Syl threw the book across the room.
• • •
She must have dozed off, for her friend clattering through the door startled her awake.
“Syl! I did it! I did it!”
Ani was beaming, and she bent down and kissed Syl hard on the top of her sleepy head.
“I finally did it!”
“Did what?”
“Oh, Syl, it was amazing! I wish you could have seen it.” Ani glanced back at the open door as if expecting someone to appear behind her. “Anyway, I wanted to tell you. I wanted you to know.”
She gave a joyous little squeak, and spun in a circle of sheer excitement.
“Oh, Syl! I can’t believe it.”
“You still haven’t told me what happened, you idiot,” said Syl, smiling as she sat up.
Ani glanced at the door once more and took a deep breath. Her smile seemed likely to split her face as she spoke.
“I burned Thona! I made the plate hot!”
“Oh, Ani—that’s brilliant.”
Syl stood up and hugged her friend, which proved difficult because Ani was jigging about on the spot with the utter delight of her breakthrough.
“She shouted in fright. Everyone dropped what they were doing and turned around, and Thona looked at me in total silence for the longest time and I thought I was in trouble, but then she started laughing. And then everyone began applauding—Tanit, all of the Gifted, and some of the other full Sisters. For me!”
Syl laughed, clapping her hands too.
“And it wasn’t even a one-off, because Thona said I should try again, and I got it right. Again, Syl! I did it twice, and the second time it felt kind of natural.”
Syl opened her mouth to congratulate her friend, but before she could, they heard voices approaching in the hall outside.
“Oh, it’s them,” said Ani, looking fretful. “Syl, Tanit and the other girls are coming over to celebrate. I’m sorry. They insisted; they said they always celebrate big achievements.”
She stopped, for Tanit had appeared in the doorway, tall and beautiful, glowing with health and privilege, but with a face carved from ice. The others clustered behind her, peering over her lean shoulders as she blocked their entry.
“Ah,” said Tanit. Her eyes traveled from Ani to Syl and her pretty lips curled. “I thought I smelled something. Don’t worry. We’ll go.”
“No, please stay,” said Ani, and Syl watched the panic flit across her friend’s face, the despair of loyalties being torn as she glanced from Tanit to Syl then back to Tanit once more. Tanit managed to look a little disappointed, and turned as if to leave.
“Later, Ani.”
“Tanit . . . Don’t go. I—”
Ani spun back to Syl, imploring, and with a tug in her chest Syl took the hint.
“I’ll go to my room,” she said loudly.
“Thank you,” whispered Ani, looking stricken.
Tanit spun back again, smiling triumphantly.
“Wonderful,” she said, not even glancing at Syl now. “And, Ani, look what I’ve got! We brought cremos!”
With a girlish squeal she rushed over to Ani, brandishing a startlingly large crystal decanter of the precious wine, draping her other arm around the younger Novice, who smiled back at her as if she’d been handed the stars from the sky. The others followed, screeching and giggling, and Ani was swamped, lost to view in a flood of blue.
Syl stalked into her be
droom and banged the door shut, but nobody seemed to notice.
• • •
Syl lay listless on her bed, studiously ignoring, or trying to ignore, what was clearly turning into quite the party on the other side of the door. It had begun with the others entreating Ani to try out her newfound skill on them, and clearly she’d been successful because there’d been cries of “ouch” followed by cheers and applause. Syl grunted to herself, for surely Ani realized that they’d lowered their guards and were merely allowing her to play with their minds.
Finally it had all descended into teasing, joking, and gossip, and rather a lot of shouting over each other, and bawdy laughter, and sometimes the voices would disappear into whispers, punctuated by peals of merriment. Above the celebration, Syl regularly heard the voice of Tanit, ringing clear as a knife against glass, commanding and imperious, until finally Syl stuck her head under her pillow and screamed mutely into the mattress.
Eventually Syl took out Cale’s keys and studied them carefully, yet again. She had already decided that they certainly weren’t all cupboard keys, as she had briefly feared they might be. At least two of them were larger, similar to the ones Ani and Syl had been issued for their own quarters, but one had a thin red band around the tip. Syl had never seen a key like it before. She touched it lightly. One of the bigger keys might well be for Cale’s private quarters, but this other one must be important too. The red band said as much, the violent red hue of the Sisterhood.
Still playing over the possibilities in her mind, Syl hid the bunch away, then lit her candles, as it had grown dark and she loathed the stark overhead lighting of the Marque. Many of the girls used glowing crystals instead of candles, gifts from loving families on Illyr, and the stones cast soft rainbows of iridescence across the walls. Someone—one of the Gifted? Tanit?—had given such a rock to Ani, who placed it lovingly in their little lounge so that they could both enjoy its radiance. Syl rather wished she hadn’t. Yes, it was attractive, but then so was Tanit, and Syl didn’t want anything that called her to mind in their quarters if she could help it, although tonight was apparently out of her hands.