Empress of Eternity (34 page)

10 Tenmonth 1351, Unity of Caelaarn

After a long and bittersweet evening with Maarlyna, during which he had not so much loved her as clung to her, Maertyn spent most of the remainder of the night fully awake…amid infrequent brief periods of dozing. He would have preferred to have left then, but there was little point in that, since he only knew where to reach Tauzn during the day.

They spoke little as they prepared for the day and dressed, but Maertyn kept looking at Maarlyna, wondering how it had all come to the point where all his efforts to save her had led inexorably to his having to leave her, possibly forever…if he failed.

Do you really have to do this? That he had asked himself more than once over the long night. But how could he not? He, and he alone, from what he knew, had the ability to stop a tyrant before matters worsened. How did a man live with himself if he refused that opportunity? He didn’t want to follow the example of the Laarnian martyrs…but he had to do…something.

Arm in arm, they walked down to the lower level, where they shared tea and not-quite-stale bread slathered with sweet orange preserves. He wanted to say something more to her about how much she meant…and how he didn’t want to leave her…

All of that would merely have repeated what he had murmured the night before…and made him seem somehow…pathetic.

So he smiled and looked at her, trying to create a lasting image in his mind.

Then, as the time drew near, they walked back up to the main level, where he checked the pair of stunners that had been in the crate Rhesten had sent so many days before. He also fingered the ice hammer, before putting it in the inside pocket of the formal ministry jacket he’d chosen to wear—a maroon and silver-gray lord’s jacket for all of that.

“Is it time yet?” he asked “I want to be in his office just before he returns from his morning staff meeting.”

“Almost. What if he doesn’t have a meeting?”

“Then he’s there…or he’s not, and I’ll work around it.” He slipped the stunners into the side pockets of the jacket, then walked toward the south door of the station, where he stopped. “Let it be done…dearest. I will return…as I can.”

“You know that if you leave the Bridge this way, you can’t return…except by traveling back to the canal?”

“I know. I heard you tell the others that.”

“And you know I can’t leave? Ever?” The tears ran down the sides of her face, and she stepped forward and embraced him. “You deserve better…” she murmured.

“We don’t always get what we deserve,” he murmured back. “But perhaps we have…or what we wished for. I wanted you to be here forever, and I wanted the chance at great deeds.” He tightened his arms around her for a moment, then brushed her lips with his, before easing out of her arms.

“Be as careful as you can, dearest,” she said softly.

“That I will.” He smiled and looked at her, taking a long look, one he hoped would not be the last, then turned toward the door.

“It takes longer here,” she said quietly. “Or seems to. I’m not quite certain which.”

“I know.” He did not look at her, but kept his eyes fixed on the station wall.

When the stone did slide open, the brilliance of all the colors of the rainbow flared around him as he stepped through the opening and down from the railing onto the outside balcony of the office of the Minister of Protective Services, a balcony that overlooked all of Caelaarn to the south.

Maertyn did not look back but hurried to the glassine door between the covered balcony and Tauzn’s private office. Inside, the office was empty, as he had hoped. The door was locked, but it only took three sharp blows with the ice hammer to break the lock. That wasn’t surprising, since few would have expected a burglar or assassin to enter from an eleventh-floor balcony in the middle of a guarded complex.

He wiped the grip of the hammer with the fabric at the bottom of his jacket and dropped the hammer on the yielding flooring of the balcony, then took one of the stunners from his pocket before he stepped into the office.

So far as he could tell, his entry activated no alarms. At least no one burst through the door to the outer office, but that might have been because the brilliance of rainbow light still flared behind him, possibly distracting security personnel.

From his recollections, the offices of all ministers had private facilities for changing and other necessities. He tried the door on the left. It was a closet. The one on the left held the facilities and a robing chamber with a mirror. That would do. He left that door ajar and turned back to the wide and empty desk.

There he checked the comm system. He didn’t even try to access anything in it. All he wanted was an open line with a delay to one other system. That took him only a minute or so, and he couldn’t help but smile wryly as he thought about the idea that time didn’t exist, only event-points on a continuum, or something like that.

Then he retreated to the small room, leaving the door barely ajar, and waited…and waited…

He wasn’t certain how long he had waited when he heard voices.

“…took forever this morning…”

“That’s understandable, sir. There’s been no success in entering the canal station, and with the inquiries about the Gaerda dirigibles…and that rainbow…”

“Ashauer’s at the bottom of this…”

Although Maertyn had only heard Tauzn speak a handful of times, the minister’s deep, resonant, and reassuring voice was distinctive enough that he recognized it immediately.

“…Maertyn’s just an expendable piece…”

“…rather resourceful for being so expendable. How did he seal the station? No one’s ever done that.”

Maertyn had waited to see if anyone else would enter, but it seemed as though no one else would. Raising the stunner, he eased the private facilities door open a trace wider, then fired at the back of Tauzn’s head, switching to the man on the left, Deputy Minister Aembit. The third man was someone Maertyn didn’t know, but he immediately yelled, “Assassins!”

That was all he got out before the third stunner bolt hit him.

Maertyn pushed the door open wide, took three quick steps and thumbed the stunner up to full narrow beam strength, and placed the tip at the back of Tauzn’s head, giving a double jolt. If the minister lived, and Maertyn didn’t care one way or the other, he wouldn’t have much mental processing power.

Maertyn immediately did the same thing to Aembit, then hurried across the room, flinging the door to the balcony wide open, and then moving to a position where he’d be shielded by the door to the outer office opening. As he took his position, he adjusted the stunner to a wider beam.

For several minutes nothing happened, and Maertyn wished he’d known that. He could have used the time to alert Ashauer. Then the door burst open, and three black-shirts sprinted into the office. All were wearing body armor and helmets.

That didn’t stop stunner beams aimed at the back of their necks, and all three toppled.

Maertyn eased over to the door and kicked it shut, then twisted the privacy lock. He knew that would only slow them, but he needed a moment or two…or three.

Dashing back to the desk, he triggered the comm code for Ashauer, although the open line had been feeding to the deputy assistant minister. Ashauer’s image came up, and Maertyn hit the override. “Ashauer…Maertyn here. I’m in Tauzn’s office. He’s been assassinated, and now everyone’s attacking the office. Thought you might like to know. Do what you can.”

There was no immediate answer.

Maertyn left the channel open, and retreated into the facilities room, leaving the door ajar.

Outside he could see another brilliant rainbow arching toward the balcony, but this time it did not touch the balcony. He smiled.

The rainbow continued to coruscate for several more minutes, and no one tried the door to the office.

He waited…and the rainbow vanished. He kept waiting, then checked the time. Almost half an hour had passed.

What was going on? Were they mobilizing a full assault team?

From somewhere, he heard sirens.

Then the door burst open, and more black-shirts poured in, fully armored, looking around.

Outside the balcony a flitter hovered.

Maertyn narrowed the stunner beam to a needle focus, and fired…without effect. The black-shirts looked around. Maertyn fired again.

One of the black-shirts turned toward Maertyn, leveling a high-impact projectile automatic at him and triggering it.

Maertyn felt himself falling, and he clutched at the doorway, seeing for a moment a fog that rolled away from the flitter and in through the open balcony door. One of the armored black-shirts staggered, but Maertyn lost sight of him as he toppled backward to land on the hard floor.

“…least I got Tauzn…Maarlyna…”

Above, the ceiling began to spin around him—before darkness crashed across him.

24 Siebmonat 3123, Vaniran Hegemony

How long the heat and cold, the rush of time, and the sense of time passing not at all, while he could neither move nor sleep, lasted Duhyle had no idea. He only knew that it ended, and darkness enfolded him. When he did wake, he was encased in a medical unit in a small chamber, with only his head and upper neck free. There was even some sort of cap on his head. Every appendage of his body, not to mention his torso, was a mass of pain, except that the medical nerve blocks kept him from feeling that agony, only letting a trickle through so that he was aware of how severely he had been injured.

Helkyria looked up from the small screen in her lap. She sat in a reclining medichair and her entire right leg, from mid-thigh to toes, was encased in a regeneration cocoon. “Welcome back into time and the universe.”

“Am I going to stay here?” His voice was ragged and hoarse.

“The medical types weren’t certain at first, but you’re far more resilient than they could have imagined, and there’s no doubt now.”

“Symra said that your leg got torn up a little. A little? Was there anything left before they got you to regen?”

“Enough for the regen to take.” Her voice was pleasant.

Duhyle could see the darkness around her eyes. “Barely, I suspect.”

“You were in far worse shape, dear.”

Duhyle wasn’t about to argue. “Where are we?”

“In the medcenter in Vestalte. There’s not much left of Vaena. That was the last Hammer strike.”

“Did we stop her soon enough? What happened after I threw the last grenade?”

“You did. What did you have in it?”

“Not in it. On it. That was what the keeper gave me. Mistletoe. Mistletoe from the distant past, from the keeper’s time. The insulation allowed it to penetrate Baeldura’s time or event-point shields, and the grenade then shattered the insulation, I’d guess, and channeled the explosion toward Baeldura.” He managed to stifle a cough. “I presume it was enough.”

“It was.”

“You…we…were incredibly lucky,” he said.

She nodded. “We were, but we were lucky because the Aesyr rushed things. We couldn’t have taken that ship against a fully trained crew. They would have sealed every compartment at the first sign of boarders. I was counting on that.”

“How…did you know?”

“I didn’t, not for certain, but things pointed that way. Baeldura, or her captain, didn’t bring the ship all that close to the canal station, and the turns and maneuvers were sloppy. All their attacks on the station were rushed, and they were variations on strategies tried elsewhere. Baeldura and the Aesyr keep pressing for quick decisions. They were running out of time. They knew that if we could hold them off, their support would crumble. They had to win quickly, or not at all.”

“They were willing to destroy the entire universe…”

“One entire universe,” Helkyria corrected. “It does happen to be ours. That does make a difference. To us, anyway.”

Duhyle wanted to nod. He couldn’t. Not the way his head was restrained. He could only turn it slightly, just enough to see Helkyria. “Is it all over?”

“Mostly. When your…mistletoe…grenade exploded, there was some backlash to the other remote Hammer facilities. There’s nothing much left of Asgard and more than a few other locations in Midgard. They’ll have to be rebuilt. Thora was in Asgard, we think.”

“What about Valakyr…Symra?” Duhyle knew he wouldn’t like the answer.

“Valakyr’s troopers took the Bridge. She didn’t make it. Symra stepped in front of you.”

“She didn’t have to…”

“Yes, she did. She should have been in front of you the whole way.”

Duhyle disagreed, but he wasn’t about to say so. Finally, he asked, “Do you know
what
the canal—the Bridge—is?”

“The keeper called it a bifocused bridge—not a bifrost bridge,” she said with a smile. “It was built to block an ancient version of the Hammer—except the hammer was being wielded from Earth’s moon. The backlash of stresses pulled the moon closer to Earth and fragmented it—and a few billion human beings along with it—”

“How could they have built it without disrupting the entire planet?”

“It was actually built outside the local event-points, as the keeper would have termed it, outside of time, or what we’d call non-time, and anchored across from the time—or the event-point—of its building to the far future. It wasn’t actually meant ever to appear on Earth when it did—that was another unanticipated backlash of the conflict, but the builders had to bring it into ‘reality’—even if shielded—in order to stop the lunar bombardment of the world and to heal the rents in the dark energy web.”

“…and the cost of saving the universe was the destruction of their own civilization?”

“Essentially.”

“So our little effort was nothing compared to that?” Duhyle didn’t conceal the sarcasm in his voice.

Helkyria shook her head. “No. The way Thora and Baeldura had repeater Hammer stations across Earth, it would have been far worse. They might have even created such seismic upheavals as to wipe out all life entirely…except on the microscopic level.”

“I know I’ve asked this before…and you’ve explained…but how could they?”

“Because they believed that their truth was the only truth, and that beside it, nothing else mattered. Hasn’t that always been so with true believers?”

“So we stopped yet another group of true believers who believed that their ‘truth’ was so precious that the failure of us unenlightened types to perceive that merited the destruction of all Earth and the universe?”

“According to the keeper, we did more than that. The strain of the first conflict and ours reverberated or resonated through the event-points, or as we term it, through time. Those reverberations created images that receptive minds, dreaming minds, pick up on all event-points, even in those we’d call the distant past. Those minds only catch the images and sometimes the terms…and they become part of myths, of poetry at times, even cultural images.” Helkyria laughed softly, ironically. “That’s why so many myths are so illogical, and yet grip people, because there’s a ring of verity behind them, but the people who catch the images don’t know the context and fill it in with their own interpretations. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know…” She shook her head.

“And the canal, the Bridge is…what? The artifice of eternity?” he asked. “Or is that a phrase like the myths, one that resonates from the deep past to the future?”

Helkyria smiled. “Let’s just say it resonates, and the resonance worked for us.”

Duhyle almost snorted before asking, “And what of the keeper, the ruler of eternity? What resonates there?”

“Who can say? She doesn’t rule so much as keep eternity…for us…at least for her reign, perhaps longer.”

“Ruler…keeper…did you get anything of value from her?”

“Besides saving the universe?” Helkyria smiled, and her hair glowed warm gold. “Let’s say that I have a few equations and a few ideas for us to work on.”

“Oh?”

“They should allow us better ways to rebuild Asgard and Vaena…well enough that we can appreciate what lies, if you will, beyond the rainbow.”

Duhyle did smile at that, even as he wondered why.