Hammer of Time (The Reforged Trilogy) (39 page)

Panna had to admit that Professor Xen's own opinions might have shaped her own. The Ixthians were not, as a species, great followers of the Union of Light. For the most part, it had been the humans who founded the religion. The Lyceum representatives from Ixth had approved the creation of a unified faith in the early days of the Central World Alliance, but that was more to put an end to the incessant bickering and religious wars than any desire of their own to adopt a human god. The genetically purist Ixthians were gods unto themselves, Xen was fond of saying. Their creations had no heart problems. Not, at least, that they could not fix in the next version.

So Xen had theorized a common ancestor for most of the life in the galaxy. Or at least a common
planet
of origin, a world on which the dominant life was bipedal, with a single head, two arms and two legs and an omnivorous diet. That planet had obviously had the insects and wolves from which Ixthians and Lyrans descended. Probably some sort of large primate, too, that eventually became the powerful Dailons. Xen had not been popular around campus with the other Ixthians for suggesting that their own species might not have been the dominant one on some ancient shared homeworld. He had been very brave, Panna always thought.

But her own people, the Arcadians, did not seem to entirely conform to the rules of Professor Xen's theory. They were close to human in appearance and had a great many gene sectors in common, but also shared partial redprints with several bird species. Panna had no access to dryad or nyad cells, but she suspected that they did not share that genetic profile. The four species could not interbreed. The rumors that Cavain's black hair came from pyrad blood were highly suspect, to say the least. Panna liked to hope that when Cavain wiped out the pyrads ten thousand years ago, he at least wasn't annihilating his own people.

How could four such similar but different species evolve on several different planets at once? They could not have, Panna concluded as an undergraduate student.

There was the Arcadian stellar system to consider, too. All five planets circled the sun, Aes, on a single perfect orbit. Each tilted at an exactly seven-degree angle. Panna had run simulations in the Poes Nor lab over two hundred times. The chances of such a system occurring naturally were in excess of one in eight hundred trillion. It was not impossible, but it was extremely unlikely. Unless someone created it that way. Created the Arcadian worlds and their inhabitants the way Ixthians created new organs in their sealed ceramic vats.

And the Waygates, ancient even beyond Arcadian reckoning… Gripper said that the language they boomed across Pylos was similar to his own, but that it was summoning its own technicians. Its own creators, the Devourers. But with the discovery of a Waygate on Prianus… What if the
Devourers
were that common ancestor to the coreworld races and creator to the Arcadians?

Panna realized that Ballad was talking and probably had been for some time. His wings were alternately flexing, one after the other in agitation. Panna waved him off.

"Hold on, I need to write something down," she told Ballad.

The leather-clad young knight stopped speaking and cocked his head to one side, frowning. "What?" he asked. "You weren't listening to a word I said!"

"No," Panna agreed as she reached over the edge of the bed. She found a datadex and rummaged through her backpack for a stylus. "Sorry."

Ballad slapped his hand down in the middle of the screen. "Panna, stop! Will you just listen to me for half a minute?"

She yanked the datadex out from under Ballad's fingers. "This is important!"

"So is what I'm trying to tell you! There's someone else–"

"It can wait!"

Ballad stood, throwing his hands into the air and stormed from the motel room.

________

Sweat dripped into Logan's eyes. He ignored the salty sting and carefully slid the thin tweezers beneath the coils of green and black wires.

"Can you even see what you're doing, Hunter?" Gripper asked.

"No," said Logan. "You're not supposed to be here. Get back with the knights."

"You might need the extra hands. I'm not leaving."

Logan didn't spend energy on an answer. He held his breath and slid the tweezers delicately along the bottom of the timer casing, beneath the snaking twist of tangled wiring, until he felt the point impact something against the metal. There. More sweat rolled down the back of his neck, soaking his hair. The dim, hot red sun burned down on the damp skin, reflected and refracted by Kaellisem's glass towers.

Slowly, he worked one of the tweezers' prongs under the obstacle. The little tool slid in his grip and nearly fell into the opened bomb, right onto the lumpy yellow-white bars of hand-packed nitrocycline. Logan squeezed and pried up the tiny piece of metal. He tugged it gently free from the casing. The little half-circle of copper was welded clumsily to a length of the green wire. Logan swiftly pressed the contact down onto the small battery gripped tightly in his illonium left hand.

"What did you do?" Gripper asked.

"Put the timer on its own circuit. We have about thirty seconds before the system shorts on the uncalibrated voltage."

"So we just need to get the nitrocycline out, right? That doesn't sound so bad."

"It's corrosive," Logan said. "Did you find the amylide?"

"No," Gripper told him. "I'm sorry. I never need it on the Blue Phoenix."

Logan nodded. "Fine."

He carefully passed the battery to Gripper and flexed his illonium hand three times. The joints did not like the dry dust of Stray and the metal joints ground with grit. Logan held the cylindrical bomb steady in his right hand and reached inside with his left. There was a hiss and a pale, toxic-smelling thread of smoke rose as the nitrocycline seared the metal. Carefully… so carefully, Logan lifted one asymmetrical block of explosive free. The illonium covering his cybernetics was blackened and corroding.

Logan tasted blood. He was biting his tongue. Twenty percent of his melting hand was still agony. The nitrocycline seared his fingers like sticking his hand into molten steel. But the metal didn't sweat. It didn't bleed.

"Give me the bleach," Logan instructed.

Gripper pulled out a ceramic mixing bowl and Logan quickly dropped the nitrocycline into the slippery, oily-looking liquid inside. The dirty white explosive began to froth and dissolve into the bleach.

Logan repeated the process for the other two nitrocycline blocks, dropping the last into the now muddy brown bleach just as the timer wire sparked. The detonator – a small ignition coil from a vehicle engine – popped and glowed orange for a moment, then went dark.

Gripper jumped to his feet and punched the air with one huge brown fist. "You did it, Hunter!"

Logan sat back on the sandy ground, sweat pouring down his back and blood filling his mouth.

"Give me the rest of the bleach," he said in a rasping voice.

"Oh, shoot." The Arboran stopped his victorious canter and grabbed a bottle from beside his toolbox. "Yeah. Hold out that hand."

Logan gratefully let Gripper douse his burning fingers. The bleach that ran over his corroded illonium hand dripped dark gray onto the sandy ground. When Gripper was sure that the all of the corrosive nitrocycline had been neutralized, Logan sat back and forced his right hand to unclench. The skin was slicked with sweat and his fingernails had carved red crescents into his palms. Logan inspected the damage to his other hand. The gray illonium was streaked in foul-smelling black burns. The metal was blistered and brittle, already cracking in places like seared skin.

A winged shadow fell over Gripper and Logan, growing larger until its owner landed in the orange sand. Sir Anthem's golden hair and glass armor gleamed under the morning sun. The knight looked down at Logan as blackened bleach dripped from the human's hand and the ruined illonium creaked in weak protest of its abuse.

"Is your job done?" Anthem asked.

"Yes," Logan told him. He spat blood into the sand at his feet. "The bomb's been dismantled. I need a box or case to remove the parts. Something with no metal. One of the crates from the Blue Phoenix should do."

Anthem nodded and relayed the Prian's instructions to two of his knights in his own lyric language. Logan's Arcadian was improving, but it was still hard to follow the swift, liquid flow of Anthem's speech. Gripper upended a bottle of distilled water over Logan's burnt hand, rinsing away the bleach. Logan didn't let himself wince at the raw pain. The water was not cold, but it scraped over the exposed wiring like razors. Gripper bent close to examine the cybernetics.

"It doesn't look like much of the nitrocycline got inside. You ruined the plating," said the Arboran. "You're going to need to replace it. All the seals around the fingers and wrist are shot, too."

"Nothing like this happened when you found the other bomb," Anthem said.

"The others weren't nitrocycline," Logan answered. He stood and brushed the sand from his pants with one hand. "Our bomber is stepping up his game. That much nitrocycline would have taken out this tower and probably a few of its neighbors."

"And the sharp… sharpanel…" Anthem faltered. "The broken glass would have hurt many more."

"Your knights found it," Logan reminded the knight. "The new patrols seem to have done the trick."

Finding the second bomb – just two days after the theater explosion – had been sheer luck. Duaal had noticed the strange device while on a walk. The bomber seemed to know where Kaellisem's knights would be and when, making it all too easy to plant their explosives where they would not be found until it was far too late. But Sir Anthem's random reassignments and reordering of his knights had eliminated that advantage. Logan would have preferred to find out how the bomber knew in the first place, but…

"But we lack your experience in dealing with explosives. You have my thanks for responding so quickly," Anthem said.

Logan nodded. There were not enough cops on Prianus to make up dedicated bomb response units, so all police there were trained in the basics of dealing with explosives. Logan's hand grated as the brittle illonium crumbled and broken pieces caught inside. Suddenly, the red Stray dust didn't seem so bad. Nitrocycline presented a challenge even for experienced demolitions experts. The chemicals were expensive and the byproducts were deadly toxic. Whoever made this device had probably carved twenty years off their lifespan.

It was getting worse. This was the second bomb Anthem and his knights had found in a week. The Gharib police had been by to collect their bribes but offered no help in dealing with the bombs. How long would Anthem's randomized patrols keep them ahead of the Kaellisem bomber?

Another Arcadian shadow raced over the city towers and the emptied street below. Anthem and the rest of his remaining knights dropped at once to one knee as Maeve landed. Logan followed suit, bowing his head as much to avoid looking at the fairy queen as out of respect. The throbbing, searing heat in his damaged illonium hand was nothing next to the feeling in his heart.

It's just a fluid pump,
Logan reminded himself.
It doesn't feel anything.

That was a lie. The computerized heart hammered achingly behind his ribs as his eyes rose disobediently to Maeve. The fairy queen's black hair was damp and unbound, spilling like ink across her shoulders. One of the royal handmaidens landed with a puff of dust behind her queen. It was the smaller one, Dain, and the girl was panting hard with the effort of keeping up.

"Logan, what happened?" Maeve asked, her voice sharp with fear.

"All is well, my queen," Anthem answered. "We found another bomb, but Coldhand has dealt with it."

"Is he hurt?"

Maeve ran to Logan before Anthem could answer and reached for the Prian's burnt left hand. Logan snatched it back and shook his head. "Don't touch it," he said.

Maeve's hands remained extended. "Why not?"

"I'll burn you."

"It's fine," Gripper told Maeve. "The acid's all been neutralized."

Logan made a mental note to shoot the Arboran just as soon as Maeve wasn't looking. Dain squeaked in agitated fear. She lunged at Maeve, then seemed to think better of tackling her queen, even away from the perceived danger, and fell still. Maeve did not seem to have noticed the girl at all. She took Logan's hand in both of hers. The ruined illonium crumbled under her delicate touch. Logan didn't let himself wince as the raw sensory wiring was suddenly exposed to the hot, gritty air of Stray.

"Can you replace it? Do you have the supplies?" Maeve asked Gripper.

"Not on um… hand," he answered. "It's shielding. Illonium mostly only gets installed where there is going to be massive radiation or weapons' fire. The Blue Phoenix uses phenno for radiation and we don't have any guns."

"How long will it take to get some?"

Maeve's skin was smooth and warm and just slightly damp with sweat against Logan's. Or was that his imagination? There was no way that the crude cybernetic sensors could feel so much. Did he miss touching Maeve so much that he was making things up?

Yes.

"I'm not sure. A few days?" Gripper was saying. "I can message Unbreakers. I'm sure the Blues can get some."