Empire: Book 2, The Chronicles of the Invaders (The Chronicles of the Invaders Trilogy) (5 page)

CHAPTER 8

A
ni’s nose was bleeding again. It always gushed when she pushed her abilities to the limit, and her training with the Gifted Novices required her to do it so often that she no longer had a single garment unstained by her own dark blood. She was the only one who displayed her weakness so dramatically, although others had their own ways of revealing the strain that they were under: a facial tic here, an uncontrollable trembling there.

But Ani bled.

She felt the blood running over her lips—left nostril first, then right—but she did not try to wipe it away, or stifle the flow. Instead she concentrated on the face of the tutor seated across the table from her. It was a simple test, but one that Ani had so far consistently failed. The tutor, whose name was Thona, was resting the palm of her right hand upon a small plate. Ani’s task was to convince Thona that the plate was growing hotter and hotter, until eventually the perception of heat would force Thona to snatch her hand away to avoid being burned. So far, after many attempts, the plate had remained determinedly cool, apart from the natural warmth of Thona’s own hand.

Ani tried to relax. Relaxing, focusing, that was the secret. You couldn’t force it. You had to clear your mind and control your breathing. You had to forget the plate. The plate didn’t matter; it was never going to be hot. What was required was a gentle manipulation of Thona’s perceptions. But Thona was strong. She was three times Ani’s age, and although she was supportive and tolerant of the Gifted Novices under her tutelage, it didn’t take a mind reader to see that she was growing increasingly impatient with Ani’s lack of progress.

Ani tasted the blood on her lips. She breathed in, and caught the saltiness of it on her tongue. Her concentration slipped, and in her frustration she pushed herself too far. The flow became a spray. It spattered the front of Ani’s robes, the table . . .

And Thona.

Ani leaped from her chair, mortified. She put her hand to her nose but the blood wouldn’t stop. She tried to sniff it in, and it caught in the back of her throat. She coughed, and more blood sprayed. She started panicking, feeling light-headed, and the room began to spin around her.

“I’m—” she said, but got no further. All went black, but not before she caught a last glimpse of Thona’s face, dark with anger and spilled blood.

•  •  •

When Ani regained consciousness, she was lying on a couch in the corner. A Half-Sister from the medical wing was wiping the blood from her face with a damp cloth, and offering her water to drink. Thona stood to one side in a gaggle of the Gifted, all staring down at Ani. The tutor had cleaned most of the blood from her own face, but some still speckled her red robes with darker patches, and a single smear of it lay beneath her right eye like a forgotten tear.

“I’m so sorry,” said Ani.

“There’s no need to be,” said Thona, but her face gave the lie to her words. Ani had failed. Again.

Sarea gave a spiteful little giggle, but Tanit jabbed her with a sharp elbow.

“It’s not what I do,” Ani tried to explain, blushing with shame. “It’s not my strength. I can cloud. I can convince you that you’re seeing something that isn’t there, but I can’t make you
feel
what isn’t real.”

But even that wasn’t entirely true. She had used the word
you
, but in truth she had never been able to cloud Thona’s mind. Oh, she could trick her fellow Novices, or at least those with no psychic abilities at all, but when it came to those with their own well-honed skills, those like Thona and Tanit, she might as well have been trying to change
darkness into light. She had tried repeatedly under Thona’s instruction as various members of the Gifted sat before her, cold-eyed and unyielding, immune to her probing. No wonder Sarea and Nemein dismissed her so casually.

Meanwhile they could manipulate her as easily as a doll, although they did so only under the supervision of their tutors, for even seemingly weak psychics like Ani were deemed precious, and they looked out for one another. The Gifted were the elite, and it was understood that all were still nurturing their talents, even if some made progress so much faster than the rest. Ani found this deeply frustrating, for she was acutely aware of the honor conferred by her flowing blue robes. Now she pulled at them anxiously.

“Clouding is simply the manifestation of your gifts with which you have become most comfortable,” said Thona, not for the first time. “You’ve just grown into the habit of using it, while failing to develop your potential in other areas. But Dessa can cloud too, and look at her! Dessa?”

She turned to Dessa, and so did the others, but it was several long seconds before the girl spoke.

“If you can convince someone to see what isn’t there, it requires only a minor adjustment for you to make that same individual feel something that isn’t real,” Dessa said evenly. “You simply haven’t found the mechanism for that adjustment yet.”

Thona nodded in satisfaction, but not at Ani.

“Quite,” she added, “but we will.”

Ani remained unconvinced: perhaps clouding was all that she had, like an athlete who could only kick with a right foot, or throw with a left hand. Sometimes a degree of ability simply made one’s other failings all the more obvious.

And, hovering at Tanit’s other elbow, it seemed Nemein was unconvinced too, for now she pointed a taunting finger at the small, sad figure of Ani on the couch.

“Are you sure, Sister Thona, that she has any real talent at all?” said Nemein, and cast a sidelong glance at Tanit, seeking approval. “Perhaps we’re wasting time trying to improve something that’s destined
to remain basic, when that energy could be better spent working on something more important?”

The implication was clear: Nemein would rather that they focused on her own more interesting talents, for her specialty was disease, and she was anxious to move on from curable illnesses to her own variations on cancer and plague. But Tanit replied before Thona could.

“Nemein,” she said in her clear, carrying voice. “Do you not recall when you first began, and all you could muster was that ridiculous pimple on Sarea’s face? These things take time, and the poor girl’s only been here a few months.”

She smiled, warm as the sun, and Ani found herself grinning gratefully back at her. Like Syl, Ani was wary of Tanit, but still she couldn’t help but be drawn by the young Novice’s charisma. She might have been dangerous, but that made her approval somehow more significant.

“How do you feel now?” Tanit asked, almost gently.

“Okay,” said Ani. “A little dizzy, but it will pass.”

Tanit nodded at her encouragingly, holding her gaze.

Now the medic looked to Thona. “I would suggest that the Novice’s training be suspended for today.”

“Really?” said Thona. “Three years of medical training, and you tell me what I already know? Go and make yourself useful elsewhere.”

The medic took the insult without flinching, and left the room. The Sisterhood operated a strict hierarchy, and seniors tolerated no dissent from mere Half-Sisters.

“Go to one of the meditation rooms,” Thona told Ani. “Read. Think. Clear your mind. Tomorrow we shall try something new.”

Ani nodded. Something new would be good. If she were forced to look at that plate again, her brain would surely explode. She stood. The room tilted slightly, and congealed blood slid down the back of her throat like slime, but she swallowed it and made her wobbly way to the door. Tanit gave her a kindly pat on the shoulder as she passed, and the fleeting touch of another made Ani pause briefly, yearning desperately for her mother, for her home.

She stumbled down the hallway and into the first unoccupied med
itation chamber. It was less austere than the training room—fragrant, faintly lit, and piled with seductive tapestry cushions. Artificial intelligence systems meant she could call up art, books, and music from Illyr, Earth, and the handful of other worlds that had so far yielded significant signs of culture, but Ani accessed none of them. Instead she collapsed in a corner, and cried and cried.

•  •  •

Thona stood before Grandmage Oriel. The old Sister’s quarters—the largest in the Fourteenth Realm—were illuminated by rainbows thrown by fluorescent crystals, and the crevices and carved nooks on the rock walls contained artifacts from hundreds of worlds: art, fossils, specimens in jars. Such displays were not uncommon among the most senior of the Sisterhood. Each was a physical manifestation of a piece of knowledge gathered and treasured.

“You have blood on your face,” said Oriel. Even in the dim light, her eyesight was uncannily sharp.

“Ani,” said Thona. “She bled again, badly. She even lost consciousness for a time.”

“But you will persevere.”

It was an order, not a question.

“Yes. She has a gift, but I fear the extent of it may be more limited than Syrene hoped.”

“No matter. Some ability is better than none at all, and we have known Novices in the past that have required time to develop their capabilities. Does she still consider herself to be a hostage?”

“I hardly think she considers the question at all,” said Thona. “She’s very anxious to please.”

“And what of Syl Hellais?” said Oriel.

“What of her?” said Thona, who cared little for ungifted Novices.

Oriel’s face remained impassive, but inwardly she could barely contain her impatience. Thona was so blinkered, so unambitious in her thinking, that her definition of “Gifted” extended only to psychic abilities. But there were other strengths, other talents. Oriel saw much potential in Syl Hellais—potential, and more, for there was something
about Syl that troubled the old Sister, a blandness to Syl’s character that did not chime with her natural intelligence. It suggested the possibility of concealment, and Oriel was most curious to learn what it was that Syl might be hiding. But Syl had so far proved unreadable, even to one as talented as Oriel.

“Syrene is most anxious that Syl should find her place in the Marque,” said Oriel. “She has high hopes for the daughter of Lord Andrus and his dead Lady. She could be a great ambassador for the Sisterhood.”

Syrene had not stayed long at the Marque before returning to Earth, her journey back to the planet made more rapid than ever by the discovery of a series of new wormholes. Officially Syrene remained in mourning for her husband, Gradus, and she partly blamed Syl and Ani for his death, but Syrene was nothing if not practical, and the Sisterhood was her first love. If the Earth hostages could be put to use in the advancement of the Nairenes, then so be it.

And doubtless Syrene had other secret aims in mind, for such was her nature.

“We should never have admitted Syl Hellais to the Marque,” said Thona, still wittering on. “The mother turned her back on us, and now we give shelter to the daughter? She does not want to be here, and I, for one, do not want her here either.”

This time, Oriel sighed aloud. How many times did they have to go over this?

“She requested admission to the Sisterhood,” said Oriel. “We cannot turn down one who offers herself to us.”

“She requested admission to save herself from death, or the near certainty of it,” said Thona. “That is not a genuine calling.”

“And Ani? Did she not join us for the same reason?”

“But she has a gift!”

Arguing with Thona, Oriel realized, was a fruitless exercise.

“And,” Thona added, “we do not need her as a hostage to use against her father. That problem has been solved.”

Ah, thought Oriel, that much at least was true. Governor Andrus was now Syl’s father in name only. Syrene had seen to that.

Syrene, and what dwelt within her.

CHAPTER 9

T
he sands of Torma were alive, both inside and outside the platform. The survivors watched as they churned and roiled, buffeted by the unseen creatures that moved beneath them. Occasionally one of them would break through, its back curved and catching the sunlight, shining like cut glass. They were almost beautiful.

Almost.

The walls of the drilling platform were constructed from sheets of heavy alloy, each riveted to the next, and specially designed to be resistant to the heat of the Tormic sun. Otherwise, to touch them would have been to risk scorching one’s skin. Their foundations were sunk into the sand, but only to a distance of ten feet or so, and that was largely a result of their sheer weight. Whatever the creatures were doing underground, it was not only causing a degree of vibration capable of loosening the rivets but also distorting the shape of the walls themselves, buckling them slowly so that eventually they would put so much pressure on the joins between the plates that they must eventually collapse.

“We won’t last six hours up here,” said Steven. “And we won’t last six seconds once we hit that sand.”

“We need to get to the shuttle,” said Paul. “It’s the only way.”

“But how?”

“A line. We can run a cable from the walls to the edge of the platform, and rappel down.”

“But where do we get the cable?”

“There,” said Paul. He pointed to a coil of wire that lay on top of a jumble of barrels, crates, and unidentifiable pieces of mining equip
ment. It stood just beneath the walkway, some twenty feet from where they were. Twenty feet away, but also at least nine or ten feet below.

“Were you planning on walking over to get it?” asked Steven. They had all surmised by now that, whatever the nature of their enemy, the creatures must be acutely sensitive to the slightest of vibrations and the shifting of the sands. After all, the unit had seen no evidence of eyes on their heads, and there would be little need for them below ground. Setting foot on the desert floor would be like ringing a dinner bell.

“Nope. You and Thula are going to take a leg each and lower me down.”

Thula wandered over to where they stood.

“Did I hear my name being taken in vain?”

“I have a plan,” said Paul.

“Is it dangerous?”

“Almost certainly.”

Thula permitted himself a grin. “Those are always the best kind.”

•  •  •

Paul swayed. The blood was going to his head, and he felt as though his brain was about to explode in his skull.

“Easy,” he said. “Easy!”

The fingers of his outstretched right hand brushed against the coil of cable. He couldn’t quite reach it. Just a little farther. He twisted his body slightly so that he was looking up between his own legs at Thula and Steven.

“Let me down another few inches,” he called.

“We can’t,” said Steven. “We’re at full stretch as it is.”

Paul tried again, but it was no good. The cable was just too far away. He was also growing increasingly nauseous. The creatures were now hammering ceaselessly away at the walls, and the vibrations were passing through Thula and Steven and into Paul. He was swaying slightly, like a man who had somehow found himself upside down while on a ship rocking at sea.

He felt a shift in the grip on his legs. He looked up again and saw that Thula was now holding both of his legs, and Steven and Peris were
holding on to Thula, easing him gently over the edge of the walkway until eventually the entire upper part of his body was suspended in the air. Paul felt himself dropping lower. His hand closed on the cable.

“I have it!” he cried.

He began dragging it toward him. It made a soft metallic grinding sound against the crates.

Sound.

Vibration.

“Oh, hell,” said Paul.

The ground was sky, the sky sand. Clouds disturbed it—clouds, and a shimmering like glass.

“Pull me up!” he shouted. “Now!”

But Thula’s belt had caught on the edge of the walkway. He tried to free himself by wriggling against it, which caused Paul to shift precariously in his grip.

“I’m serious!” said Paul. “Get me out of here.”

“We’re trying,” said Steven.

“Try harder!”

From his left came a clanging sound. He twisted his head to see Rizzo standing on one of the lowest rungs of the nearest ladder, banging the edge of a grenade launcher against the metal. Her more insistent vibrations caused the creature to change course, diverting its attention from Paul toward her. Paul could see that she had one leg hooked around a rung of the ladder, and another around the frame. She raised the launcher to her shoulder.

“Come to Mama,” she said.

The creature emerged from the sand, its jaws agape. The grenade, set to explode seconds after impact, shot into its gullet, just as Rizzo dropped the launcher and turned her back to protect her face.

The beast exploded, showering Rizzo with fragments. Paul instinctively closed his eyes. When he opened them again, Rizzo looked like a glass porcupine, her armor and the skin on the back of her neck embedded with shiny spines. Slowly she began to climb back up the ladder. For a moment she stumbled and seemed set to lose her grip, but somehow she kept climbing. Paul rose with her as Thula’s belt was
freed and they were both pulled back up to the walkway. Once Thula was safely in place, Steven helped him to drag Paul up while Peris went to see to Rizzo.

“How is she?” asked Paul, once he had secured the lightweight cable, draping it over his right shoulder. He and the others stood over Peris, who was kneeling beside Rizzo. She lay on her stomach. Her face was contorted in a grimace of pain.

“Get her armor off,” ordered Peris.

Steven hit the release straps at Rizzo’s shoulders and waist, and lifted off the rear panel of her armor. It had absorbed most of the impact of the shards, but some had still penetrated her body. There were smaller splinters in her neck, her arms, and her skull. The wounds in her back were bleeding through her shirt.

“Can you move your legs, Rizzo?” said Thula.

Rizzo’s feet tapped against the metal of the walkway.

“No spinal damage,” said Thula. “That’s good.”

He knelt alongside Peris, and gently tested the splinters in her skin. There were no spurts of blood, which meant no arteries were damaged, and none of the splinters looked like they’d gone in more than half an inch.

Peris turned to Paul.

“Why don’t you see about hooking that cable to the platform? Thula will look after Rizzo.”

Already Thula was searching in his kit for antiseptic, and a blade with which to work on the splinters, if necessary. Paul and Steven left him to it, and set about figuring out a way to secure a line to the shuttle.

Paul found a loose strut on the walkway’s support rail, and tied one end of the wire securely around it. The shuttle platform was a single sheet of metal, with no holes or slats into which a weighted cable might jam, so their best bet seemed to be to aim the strut for the shuttle itself. It stood on raised landing pegs, not dissimilar to those of a helicopter, so Paul tried for the nearest of those. The first time he missed entirely, and the second and third times he managed only to hit the shuttle itself, even knocking something from its body with the final impact.

“Was that bit important?” he asked Steven.

“I’d prefer not to be up in the air when we find out,” said Steven. “Maybe you could try not to reduce the shuttle to scrap metal before we even manage to board it.”

After each attempt Paul had to draw the strut carefully back across the sand. The last thing he wanted was for one of those creatures to pull it underground, and perhaps him along with it.

Paul threw again. This time the strut caught beneath one of the pegs. Paul gave it an experimental tug. It held. He leaned back and hauled as hard as he could. Still the strut did not move.

“That may be as good as we’re going to get,” he said. He fixed the other end of the cable to the walkway.

“Somebody is going to have to be the first to try it,” said Steven.

“That would be me.”

“I’m lighter.”

“You’re the pilot. If you fall, we’re stuck here.”

“Peris can fly a shuttle.”

“Not like you can. Look, I did the throwing, and I’ll take the chance. Once I’ve made certain that the line is secure, you can follow me down. We’ll take the shuttle to the wall and pick everyone else up from the air.”

De Souza would have to be helped on board, but Rizzo looked like she could make it herself. Thula had removed most of the silicon shards from her flesh, although smaller fragments probably remained, and she was now sitting up and taking water. The back of her shirt was dark with blood.

Paul was wearing his combat gloves. They’d give him a pretty secure grip on the cable. In an ideal world he’d have a clip to attach to the line, but the world in which they found themselves was far from ideal. Instead he fashioned a support harness from his bandolier. It wouldn’t be much help to him if the line didn’t hold, but if he lost his grip it might prevent him from falling to the sand. In the end, it was a psychological comfort, if nothing more.

Peris and Thula came over as Paul, seated on the walkway rail, was hooking his makeshift harness over the line.

“Are you sure about this?” said Peris.

“No,” said Paul. “Not that it makes much difference.”

At that moment the wall shook and a section nearby came loose and tumbled to the ground, leaving a massive gap in the wall. Had the wall weakened on the other side, it might well have landed on the shuttle, dooming them.

“On your way, then,” said Peris. “We don’t have all day. And if you need further encouragement, take a look over there.”

He pointed north, to where the fierce blue skies of Torma had vanished.

“What is that?” said Steven.

“A sandstorm,” said Peris. “It’ll sweep us from the walls, if they don’t collapse first.”

Paul said a silent prayer, curled his legs over the wire at the ankles, gave the line one final tug, and began his descent. He moved quickly, wanting to spend as little time as possible suspended over the rippling sands. He tried not to think about falling, to concentrate only on dragging himself along the line. His arms were aching already, and he was not even halfway there. His own body, his exhaustion, the heat, all conspired against him. The line sagged above him, dragged down by his weight. He had a vision of the strut shifting, its perilous hold on the shuttle’s peg weakened by the drag of the human being on the wire. Faster now, faster. He could see the shuttle platform ahead. It seemed as if he could already touch it with his toes, although he estimated that he had another ten feet to go.

And then the strut shifted. He felt it move, and the wire dropped him toward the sand. He waited for the impact, but it didn’t come. He was still hanging in the air, but he was at least a foot closer to the ground. Paul was afraid to move. If he moved, the strut might finally be pulled from its position. But what was the other option—to remain hanging from a line until tiredness took him, or the strut inevitably came loose, regardless of whether he was moving or not?

He inched forward.

The strut, held against the shuttle’s peg by only the barest of margins, came away, and Paul tumbled to the sand.