Empire: Book 2, The Chronicles of the Invaders (The Chronicles of the Invaders Trilogy) (2 page)

CHAPTER 2

F
ar from the Marque, and from most civilized systems, a Military shuttle came in low across a desert, following the mounds and crevasses of the sands below, dipping, rising, shifting gently to left or right under the expert control of the pilot. Sometimes he came so close to the ground that the shuttle’s thrusters kicked up clouds behind the craft, causing the proximity sensors to activate and send alarm signals pinging through the craft.

“He’s going to kill us. I swear he’s going to kill us.”

The voice was Private Cutler’s. He was the unit’s communications specialist, and resident pessimist. As far as Cutler was concerned, the only reason he wasn’t already dead was because God hadn’t yet come up with the worst possible way of killing him. Cutler was from Omaha, Nebraska. The first time he saw the ocean was from the window of the Illyri transport shuttle that was taking him to join the Brigades. On that day, he was convinced that he was going to drown. Since then, he’d variously believed himself to be on the verge of burning, falling, suffocating, being poisoned, or being crushed to death. Today, crashing seemed the likeliest fate, especially with Steven Kerr at the controls of the shuttle.

Beside him, Steven’s older brother, Paul, rested his head against the back of his seat and closed his eyes. He had no concerns about Steven’s abilities as a pilot. Steven was gifted: there was no other word for it. Paul believed it had something to do with all of those PlayStation games that had cluttered their shared bedroom back in Edinburgh. Paul had dabbled in games—he liked POV shoot-’em-ups, although he quickly grew out of them after his involvement in the human Resis
tance movement against the Illyri invaders introduced him to the sordid reality of killing—but Steven’s devotion to them was total. He could immerse himself for hours and hours, forgetting even to eat, his fingers and thumbs dancing over the controls as though he had been born to the buttons. His particular fondness was for cars, planes, helicopters—anything that could be driven or flown. When the time came for their aptitudes to be tested by the Illyri, Steven had aced all of the flight simulations. He had immediately been fast-tracked into the pilot program, spending most of his time sitting in a comfortable chair playing a glorified computer game, while his older sibling was left to muddle along with the grunts—running, jumping, falling, and shooting.

Oh, Paul knew that it wasn’t really like that for his brother, however much it amused him to tease Steven about it. Pilots had to be at the peak of mental alertness and physical endurance, and Paul had watched Steven stumble back bleary-eyed to their shared barrack room, his head thumping and his limbs aching from hours of increasingly difficult simulations. Less than one percent of those who aspired to be Brigade pilots made it to the level that Steven had reached—command pilot—and none had ever attained it so soon. The shuttle they were now in was Steven’s, the first craft over which he had sole control, and he was relishing every minute of it, even if Cutler was not.

“He’s crazy, you know,” said Cutler. “If he flies any lower, we’ll be traveling underground.”

“He’s not crazy,” said Paul. “He’s just happy.”

“At least one of us is.”

Paul opened his eyes. He’d been hoping to nap on the flight, but even he had to admit that Steven’s maneuvers were not going to allow anyone to rest peacefully. Not that Military shuttles were designed with comfortable sleep in mind: they were heavily weaponized and armored transports, with individual flight seats facing one another along the length of the craft. Twin cannon hung beneath the pilots’ cabin, with a second pair of cannon contained in a bubble at the rear of the craft. When required, four sets of rocket launchers could unfold from the body of the craft in an X-formation: it was a fast, ferocious weapon of war.

On this day, though, they were not at war, for theirs was an exploratory mission. In fact, of their unit only Cutler and De Souza, their lieutenant, had ever fired their weapons in anger. Even they had done so only as part of a protective mission on a moon that didn’t even have a name, only a number, and their pulse weapons had been used on creatures that were just an evolutionary step above jellyfish. The truth was that the universe was mostly empty of intelligent life—in fact, empty of much life at all. So far, the human race was the most advanced species that the Illyri had encountered, and look what had happened to the people of Earth: invasion and conquest, followed by occupation. The Resistance still fought the invaders—Paul and Steven had been captured in just such a battle against their conquerors, before being forcibly conscripted into the Brigades—but their campaign was mostly just an annoyance to the Illyri.

Through the window Paul watched the arid white landscape of the planet pass below. This was Torma, and it had taken them a month to reach it. Somewhere above Torma lay the Illyri destroyer
Envion
, now undergoing repairs after a difficult trip, or “boost,” through the final wormhole. Paul was still not used to the sensation of wormhole travel—the distortion of space and time, the sickening sense that he was leaving his brain and internal organs trailing behind him. The best that could be said was that at least it was over quickly, and he was always relieved when the trip was completed, and he found himself alive and intact.

Peris, their Illyri training supervisor, now sat at the head of the craft, just behind Paul. The Illyri soldier had once been the commander of the guard at Edinburgh Castle, but had given up his comfortable existence in order to watch over Paul and Steven in the Brigades. Paul did not truly understand Peris’s motives, but he had accompanied the Kerr brothers from Earth, and had been with them throughout their basic training at the Brigade base on Coramal, a tiny planet in a small system a long way from anywhere interesting.

The training had mostly involved learning how to function as a unit, along with honing the weapons skills of the recruits, teaching them the basics of Illyri technology, and improving their command of the Illyri language, mainly through immersive techniques, including
feeding them a steady stream of words and grammar while they slept. The alien tongue proved less complex than Paul had first thought, and soon he could speak it better than most, which was undoubtedly one of the reasons why he had been promoted to sergeant. The recruits had also undergone a range of medical procedures designed to prevent their bones from becoming brittle over long periods in space, and to address the increased risk of cancer due to radiation exposure.

Now Peris caught Paul looking at him, and nodded. Paul had grown to respect the old Illyri, even if he could not say if he liked him. The Illyri were the enemy, and Paul’s ultimate aim was to destroy their empire. If Peris got in his way, then Paul would kill him. And yet he could not look at Peris without thinking of Edinburgh, and the castle.

And Syl.

Face it, Paul thought, not for the first time, you’re in love with an Illyri. In an ideal world, you’d bring her civilization to its knees and then run away with her through the ruins. How do you think that’s going to work out? Oh, and there’s also the small matter that she’s millions of light-years away, separated from you by countless wormholes, and imprisoned in a convent run by a bunch of weird nuns who worship knowledge as a god. You should have just dated a girl from Leith, or even Dundee, or, at a push, Inverness.

Beside Peris sat Faron. Although Peris exceeded him in age, experience, and wisdom, Faron was technically the ranking Illyri officer on board, and this was his first full mission. The Brigades were used to give new and inexperienced Illyri officers like Faron a taste of command. As far as Paul was concerned, Faron was particularly useless: his arrogance concealed his uncertainty, and he was contemptuous of the humans under his command, a poor attempt to mask his fear of them. Faron had only joined them on this trip because he needed to rack up a certain number of missions before he could leave the Brigades behind.

Paul watched him sweat. Steven’s piloting of the shuttle was clearly terrifying Faron as much as Cutler, but Faron didn’t want to appear weak in front of the humans, or Peris.

“Are we there yet?” said Cutler.

Paul closed his eyes again, and dreamed of Syl.

CHAPTER 3

E
lda muttered her vague thanks for Syl’s timely intervention as she followed her from the chamber. Together they walked along in awkward silence until they reached the junction where the Twelfth Realm joined the Thirteenth, and Elda turned to go. She paused, and then touched Syl’s arm briefly.

“Take care,” she said, looking at Syl directly for the first time since she’d arrived at the Marque all those months before. “These old halls are treacherous. My friend Kosia was killed by a falling wall . . .”

She trailed off, looking uncertain, as though considering saying more, yet fearful of the consequences if she did.

“Your friend Kosia?” said Syl. Instantly she regretted the disbelief that seemed to slip unbidden into her voice as she repeated the words
your friend
, as though friendship were somehow beyond Elda.

Elda stepped away and looked down, her shoulders slumping even farther.

“Yes,” she said, “my friend. We joined together.”

“I’m sorry,” Syl started to say, but Elda was already scurrying away into the Thirteenth with not a glance behind her.

Syl couldn’t decide if she wanted to shake the Novice, or hug her. Elda was so uninvolved, so passive. She faded into the background, limp and washed out, doing everything she could not to draw attention to herself, so anxious to avoid any unnecessary contact with others that the sleeves of her robes were grimy from pressing against the walls of the Marque. And yet clearly she felt sadness at the death of her friend, this Kosia, of whom Syl had never heard before. She was
hurting, but who would ever know it to look at her? Who would ever look at Elda anyway, when she hardly seemed to be there at all?

•  •  •

Still shaken, Syl headed back to her quarters. Despite what Cale had said, her duties for the day were done. She had spent much of the afternoon in the Scriptorium adjoining the main library in their Realm, together with her best friend, Ani, translating a series of abstract poems from English to Illyri, before Ani rushed off to her special classes, the lessons she attended with the other “Gifted” Novices.

Syl had continued translating, but her mind had been anywhere but here, everywhere but now, and eventually the Sister in charge of the exercise sent her off early, tutting at her incompetence. Syl was relieved, for it was slow, painstaking work, and she couldn’t see why they bothered anyway. What use did the Sisterhood have for the musings of long-dead poets from a distant world? But then her tutors argued that the poems represented knowledge, however ancient and alien, and knowledge was the lifeblood of the Sisterhood. No knowledge could really be described as useless; there was simply knowledge that could be applied, and knowledge that had not yet found its application.

And, of course, it was part of their training as Novices. Translating, transcribing, reading, writing—that was how the majority of Novices spent most of their first three years. In between these tasks, they studied Illyri history, universal geography, mathematics, the sciences, and much more. Syl and Ani excelled in only one subject: existential biology, which explored the zoology and botany of conquered worlds, most specifically Earth.

The subject Syl disliked most was applied diplomacy. It was a mix of Illyri etiquette, social studies, psychology, and politics, with rather too much practicing of polite conversation, folding of hands neatly on laps, and discreet dabbing at one’s mouth to surreptitiously remove hypothetical crumbs for Syl’s liking. The subject’s purpose, as far as she could tell, was to train Nairene Sisters to enter the larger Illyri world and charm—or manipulate—everyone they met to further
the Sisterhood’s own ends. For Syl, it was only useful in teaching her how the Sisterhood operated, and how it viewed the world outside the Marque. Know your enemy: that was what her father had taught her.

Her father, Lord Andrus . . .

She swallowed hard at the memory of him, and her eyes prickled. No matter how much she tried, she could not quite resign herself to his loss, even though six months had gone, fully half an Earth-year since she had last seen him. But his loss was more than just the distance between them, for still she recalled the strange sweet smell of his breath, and the vacant look in his eyes when he had last held her and said goodbye. He was infected—his mind, his will, even his internal organs taken over by an unknown alien organism, leaving his body as just a carrier for the parasite that dwelt within it. Yet he looked and felt as warm and real as the only parent she’d ever known, and still loved with all her being.

And the public face of the Nairene Sisterhood, the Archmage Syrene, was responsible. Somehow, she had implanted that thing in Syl’s father. Somehow, she had stolen him away just before Syl could say goodbye, and poisoned him from within. Syrene was in league with these entities, these alien life-forms, but to what end Syl could not say. The handful of Resistance fighters who knew of their existence called them the “Others,” and Syl had seen them with her own eyes, had borne witness to them at a remote castle in Scotland before fire and explosions destroyed the evidence, leaving only smoke and denial. Still, she knew, and so did a handful of Resistance fighters on Earth, even though what they had seen raised only more questions.

Syl had sworn to find out the truth, to avenge her father, to free him from that creature inside him if there was any way at all, though she felt consumed by sadness so overwhelming she thought it might crush her. She had to believe there was hope, and the Nairene Sisterhood—guardians of all universal knowledge—was where hope lay.

•  •  •

Yet the Marque was enormous: a series of interlinked sections, or Realms—as many as twenty in total—stretching throughout Avila
Minor. Syl had first seen the Marque from above, when their shuttle was coming in to land. The boulders and sculpted cliffs that reared from the surface reminded her of Petra, the great rock-cut city in Jordan back on Earth, but now that she was inside it, she knew the Marque was more like the huge, busy mounds built by termites on the African savannah.

The walls of the visible buildings were thick, but much of the Marque lay hidden below the surface. Each Realm had its own landing pad for shuttles, and its own emergency systems, stores, generators, and solar farms. While the individual Realms were connected, most could be sealed off from their neighbors in an emergency, or in the event of an attack—although who would dare attack the Marque? By day, any invading force would be burned to a crisp by the sun, and by night it would be devoured by the vicious creatures that hunted in the dark. The moon would take care of any hostile force long before the Marque’s defenses could be breached.

Since her arrival, Syl had remained imprisoned within these walls, feeling like a termite herself, digging, burrowing, going about the business of being a student, but all the time looking for clues to the Sisterhood’s true aims.

Well, when she wasn’t getting into trouble for protecting poor, wretched Elda.

And yet, and yet . . .

Syl was silently grateful for Elda and her submissive ways, because without Elda’s example she herself would never have known how to even begin to explore those parts of the Marque that were off-limits to her. She subtly watched how Elda slunk everywhere like a beaten dog, sidestepping the other Novices as they strode confidently by, slinking unnoticed into the shadows, hanging her head so as not to make eye contact, ducking nimbly into fissures in the rock face to escape comment. It was four years since Elda had first arrived at the Marque, but in that time she’d become as much a part of the place as the furniture, and as unremarkable as a wall or chair. Syl had learned that Elda had ceased going to class in her first months as the Nairenes’ expectations of her faded away to nothing, for she was so clearly born servile and
ignorant, and so obviously doomed to remain that way. The Sisters had happily handed her drudge chores, setting her to cleaning and dusting just to keep her out of the way.

By now Elda should by rights have been a Half-Sister, clad in the proud sea-green robes of those who had all but completed their education, who were only awaiting investiture into the order as full Sisters, but still Elda trailed around dull-eyed in her threadbare butter-yellow robes, the robes the Novices wore every day in the Marque, and gradually her garments had faded to the white that the lowliest, most unpromising order of the Sisterhood—the Service Sisters—donned when they were supervising cleaning, or on kitchen duty.

And somehow, somewhere Elda became invisible to those who believed themselves her betters, just as servants often do.

Syl had realized this as she was on the verge of almost ceasing to notice Elda too, and she had quickly taken her cue from the older girl’s cleaning headscarf and washed-out clothing, wrapping her own telltale bronze hair in a piece of sheet torn from her bed linen, and even stealing one of Elda’s dirty-white robes from the gymnasium when the girl had been hard at work in the showers in nothing but her underwear, scrubbing the moldy floors clean as water splashed on her bent back. Guiltily, Syl had replaced the garment with her best robe, crisp and fresh and yellow, but Elda seemed not to notice, putting Syl’s clothes on without even raising an eyebrow.

Slowly, Syl had started to explore, modeling herself on Elda as she did so, gradually moving farther into the places that were off-bounds to a mere first-year Novice, a bucket of cleaning utensils and dusters in her hand at all times. She did not risk venturing out often, and certainly followed no pattern, but when she did explore she hunched her shoulders, shuffled her feet, she practiced disappearing into the background. On the rare occasions when she was stopped or questioned, she claimed to be there in place of Elda or on the orders of a Service Sister, mumbling and apologizing until she was sent on her way, sometimes with a sharp word and once with a very nasty pinch to the soft flesh on the underside of her upper arm. Yet nobody seemed unduly perturbed by her presence. After all, those within the Sisterhood ac
cepted the honor of their place here: surely there could be none inside that intended harm or serious insurrection. There were so many females crowded into this space that it was relatively easy to disappear in the throng.

So Syl dusted libraries that weren’t meant for juniors; she wiped surfaces in higher Scriptoriums where the older Novices worked; she mopped floors in the Half-Sisters’ hallways, listening to their conversations; and she opened books that were not for her eyes. But so many corridors remained unexplored—countless warrens of rooms and chambers and private quarters, of dead ends and blank walls, and the main channels all led inevitably to the sealed door at the end of the Thirteenth: the sealed door painted with the red eye of the Sisterhood.

Too often, with her efforts frustrated, she’d lie on her bed, hatching new schemes as she dreamed of how she could make her world—indeed, all worlds—right again.

Yet sometimes she found herself dreaming of other things and other places too, dreaming of warm sunshine and the smell of roses, of dewy grass and birdsong, of an eagle soaring against heavy Scottish skies, of a deer walking beside an icy Highland stream, of fingers drawing a heart on her back . . .

Dreaming of the human boy she’d kissed on Earth.

Dreaming of Paul Kerr.