Empire of the Fallen, page 35
‘Yanna ly’Rah,’ han’Kanar said. ‘Where did that trumped-up cretin say you were from?’
‘By the Ancients, fleetmaster, show some respect!’ Kolvaar all but wailed.
‘I told him I was from Ven’Ya but… in truth, I do not remember. I recall there being a Ven’Ya, one of the core worlds. Perhaps I lived there once, but… my memory is hazy. All I remember is smooth obsidian stone, and then… light. Then we were in the forests on Kurwen,’ Lyra said in a dreamlike, if slightly shaky voice.
han’Kanar made a noise like he was hacking up a ball of phlegm. ‘Lorn, you represent the Conclave of Will,’ he growled, rounding on ja’Guhrn. ‘The gormana, over a thousand planets’ worth of kaygryn, will be subjected to the teachings of this’—he eyed Yano distastefully—‘lunatic. Don’t tell me he has you fooled along with the voice of the shen’ah?’
There was an uncomfortable pause as ja’Guhrn looked to Kolvaar.
‘There is something, some kind of power play going on here,’ Smith whispered in a voice laden with fascination. ‘Rutai says ja’Guhrn is the weakest, and Kolvaar and han’Kanar hate each other, judging by their body language.’
No shit, Yano thought. ‘Why do you not let the Emperor decide?’ Yano asked as innocently as he could.
All eyes turned back to him. han’Kanar looked like he was about to explode.
‘You are not fit to even speak the Emperor’s name!’ he roared, advancing a pace.
‘Vagr, this display of aggression is most wearying,’ Kolvaar said, his crimson robes rippling in the breeze. He had abandoned the chaise longue and was standing in front of the window, looking out over the Imperial city. His lower hands were clasped behind his back, while his upper arms were folded across his chest. ‘I think the Emperor would be most interested to meet vos’Shan.’
‘He is not vos’Shan! He is a fraud!’
‘What possible further proof could you require?’ Kolvaar asked.
‘You and the Prognosticators have planned this,’ han’Kanar said darkly. ‘He is a plant. You have pulled the wool over the Emperor’s eyes with your religious nonsense. You seek to outmanoeuvre the other Conclaves.’
Another silence descended like a thick, heavy blanket smothering a fire. Yano got the feeling that what had just been said could not be unsaid.
Kolvaar made a sound that could have been a weary sigh, and turned back. ‘Fine,’ he said resignedly. ‘You are right; the Book of Lon does not provide for a consort for vos’Shan. If you require proof, take the female. Have your kaygryn do whatever disgusting things it is they do to her. If she breaks, then we shall question his highness. If she does not, then that will be proof.’
It took Yano a moment to realise what they were planning to do. When he did, a stab of adrenaline fired through his guts.
‘I will not have her harmed,’ he said, taking a step towards Kolvaar. ‘If you believe I am who you say I am, then you know that if you hurt her, the Ancients will be most displeased.’
He had no idea if what he was saying made even the vaguest sense, but in the end it did not matter. Kolvaar would not be moved; he simply nodded to han’Kanar, who grinned with savage triumph.
‘Time for an end to this charade,’ he snapped. The door at the far end of the room opened and a pair of guards walked in.
‘Ah, shit,’ Smith said.
‘Shall I—’ Seka began, but Smith cut her off.
‘Lyra, we won’t let anything happen to you,’ Smith said.
‘Get off me!’ Lyra screamed as the two guards grabbed two of her arms each.
‘Let her go!’ Yano shouted. Kolvaar moved to intercede.
‘It is all right, Highness,’ he soothed.
‘Stop calling him that!’ han’Kanar shouted.
‘Get off me!’ Lyra shouted again.
‘Lyra, go with them like you have nothing to hide!’ Smith yelled over the comlink. ‘We’ll come and get you! Don’t worry!’ Smith shouted.
‘Smith, for fuck’s sake—’ Seka started.
‘Enough! I have command override. Lyra, go with the guards. Yano, stick with Kolvaar, or however the fuck you say his name. Lyra, we will extract you before they lay a finger on you. Yano, follow the trail and see where it leads. Remember why we are here, goddamn it!’ Smith roared.
Yano set his teeth. Lyra visibly calmed herself as the guards pulled her towards the door. han’Kanar looked triumphant.
‘I will see you back here, priest,’ he snapped, and he followed the guards and Lyra out of the room.
Kolvaar turned to ja’Guhrn. ‘You had better tell the Conclave of Will. Choose two kaygryn that you trust—’
‘If any harm comes to her…’ Yano said, interrupting.
Kolvaar turned to him. ‘Patience, Highness. You are the key. You are the one the Book of Lon promised us.’
‘Oniser—’ ja’Guhrn tried.
‘Go, now!’ Kolvaar snapped. ‘We do not have much time. Vagr will not take long with the female.’
Adrenaline gnawed at Yano’s guts. I hope you know what you’re doing, Smith, he thought, subconsciously clenching his hands into fists.
‘Come, Highness,’ Kolvaar said when they were alone.
Yano looked at the kaygryn. His expression was difficult to read, but it seemed the priest truly believed he was vos’Shan reincarnated.
‘Where are you taking me?’ he snapped.
‘We go to meet the Emperor.’
LAST MAN STANDING
‘The UN will never suffer the ignominy of subjugation during my lifetime. There will be children on the streets with railguns before I let it happen.’
Jurgen Thorvald’s infamous ‘Children in the Streets’ speech to the 327th Mechanised
Footsteps echoed off cold walls of smooth, dark grey. Above, holos gave poor impressions of windows to the white sky above. Here, inside Hermit, the sounds of the subsiding battle were soft, robbed of their violent clarity like muffled timpani. Somewhere in the bowels of the facility, an alarm droned.
Aker led the way, her Mantix bleeding streamers of smoke where the boiling firescape had charred it. Sears followed with the relatively bulky ultra-high-gain comms set, and Gia brought up the rear with her charged blade. She turned frequently, watching their backs, waiting for the sound of smashed security doors and alien boots on grey marble flooring.
‘Stay on comms,’ Aker snapped as they jogged through the deceptively open spaces of the installation.
Sears obliged, tiredly reciting the same mantra over and over again: ‘This is Hermit broadcasting on all ECA channels, requesting immediate assistance from any UNAF forces in the area, how copy?’
With every crackle of static that answered, every fuzz and squeal of jammed bandwidth, Gia’s heart leapt as she dared to hope for the tinny sound of a naval comms controller in orbit, but she knew that they had reached the end of the journey. What had started on distant, isolated Reya Vasar would end here, on distant, isolated Hermit, bookends to a trilogy of violent volumes: Reya Vasar, Vonvalt, Cicero. Every planet she touched turned to ashes.
‘What do they even do here?’ Gia asked, more to distract herself than anything else.
‘They weren’t kidding when they said we weren’t allowed to know,’ Aker replied. ‘Sigurd didn’t even know.’
Aker ducked left through an open corridor. To their left, glass-fronted offices stood dark and empty. To their right, tables and chairs and empty takeaway coffee cups sat in the atrium. At the end of the corridor, amidst a swirl of holographic signage, was a heavy blast door. Above it, a single red light pulsed like a glowing heart.
‘Open up!’ she shouted to the intercom next to it.
‘What’s happening out there?’ a frightened male voice responded.
‘We’re evacuating the facility,’ Aker responded matter-of-factly. ‘Burn everything you can. We’ll take the tunnels out.’
‘We can’t just le—’
‘Everyone here will be killed in the next two minutes unless we leave right now,’ Aker snapped. ‘Open this door immediately.’
There were a few seconds of silence, and then the heavy magnetic locks slammed open and the blast door slid slowly, heavily to the left. The gap was just wide enough for a person to squeeze through, and the three of them did just that.
‘Who are you?’ Aker asked the man on the other side. He was tall and thin, and wore a scruffy shirt and shorts.
‘Ty Hvare,’ he said as the blast door closed behind them. His eyes searched Sears and Gia. ‘What’s happening out there? We’ve lost all comms and access to the net.’
‘The kaygryn have overrun the facility,’ Aker said, looking around the corridor they had just entered. It was wide, square, and well-lit, and curved down to the right. Gia’s HUD had provided her with a schematic of the base, and she was surprised to see how much of it was subterranean.
Hvare swallowed. ‘Shit,’ he whispered eventually.
‘Right,’ Aker said, and she pushed him towards the end of the corridor. ‘We really need to get moving. How many people are there here?’
Hvare began to move rapidly down the hallway, and the rest of them followed. Then an explosion rumbled the walls and floor, and Hvare started to move with real purpose.
‘Fifty,’ he said, running to the next blast door. He activated it, and it opened sluggishly to reveal another wide, bright corridor, this one filled with more glass-fronted offices. Now there were other people, most milling about waiting for news. Gia looked at them, dozens of nervous, sweaty faces, most wearing little more than shorts and t-shirts. From their expressions, the mere presence of military personnel inside the installation was a cause for great alarm. Warm body scans put the number at thirty-six, including Hvare.
‘All right,’ Aker muttered over their private comlink. She activated her helmet’s speakers. ‘Okay people, listen in. Cicero has fallen to the kaygryn.’ Gasps, at least one short scream, and nervous conversation filled the air. ‘Listen!’ Aker shouted, but it had little effect. When a second explosion rumbled the installation like a mild earthquake, the fear became palpable. ‘Li-listen!’ Aker shouted again. ‘There is an emergency escape route out of the installation—tunnels that lead to the floor of the valley. Right now that is your only hope of survival. We do not have much more than a few minutes. I need everyone to make their way to the tunnels now. Leave everything behind.’
Gia could see that, even in their panicked state, few of the scientists welcomed the idea of abandoning what could well have been decades of work. But, as usual, the urge to survive quickly won out. It wasn’t Aker’s gruff, NCO address, however, that roused them, but a third, much louder explosion that doused them in emergency red light and set more alarms to droning. Luminescent white arrows immediately appeared on the floor, directing everyone to the tunnel exits, doing Aker’s job for her.
The assembled scientists began screaming and panicking in earnest now, pushing and shoving each other towards the exits as people whose lives are threatened are wont to do. Holos were springing up on the bare sections of wall in calming mint green, flashing with incongruous messages of REMAIN CALM, and PLEASE EVACUATE THE BUILDING IMMEDIATELY.
‘Not you,’ Aker said, clamping a Mantix gauntlet on Hvare’s shoulder. The man spun around, his face a mask of pure wretchedness.
‘But the evacua—’
‘What do you do here?’ Aker asked.
‘Research!’ Hvare said stupidly, as the installation shook a fourth time. The explosions sounded closer now. Gia could hear things collapsing, the telltale sound of stone shattering against stone and the metallic clanging of falling rebar. The kaygryn were blasting their way in. There was no way the scientists and researchers would make it out of the facility in time; her IHD map put the tunnel entrances five levels below them, and none of the elevators were functioning.
Her hands gripped the handle of the charged blade tighter, like she was wringing a kaygryn neck.
‘Force shield is down,’ Sears said absently. Gia looked over to see the man studying a holo emanating from his wrist. None of the data on it looked promising.
‘What research?’ Aker asked angrily.
Hvare flinched. They were the only ones left in the hall now; the last of his colleagues had left via the door at the end. Gia tracked them on a three-dimensional schematic of the building.
‘It’s classified?’ he said dumbly.
‘Do you honestly believe that matters now?’ Aker asked softly. It was not the tack Gia had expected her to take.
Hvare stuttered for a second. Sweat was running in rivulets down his face. ‘We’re researching force shielding,’ he said eventually.
‘We have force shields,’ Aker replied.
Sears looked up. ‘PFS?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know what that means,’ Hvare said, looking at the comms officer.
‘What kind of force shielding?’ Aker asked.
‘Personal—oh, PFS,’ Hvare said. He started to gesticulate in a way that only scientists seemed to, warming to his theme despite their impending doom. ‘We’ve been researching ways to increase the effectiveness of the accretion of the exotic matter at a lower power cost. Making the power source smaller and lighter while still remaining efficacy.’
A loud buzz rang through the air—the unmistakable sound of phase fire. Gia whirled around. The blast door behind them was beginning to glow.
‘Shit,’ she said. ‘Liz!’
‘Time to go,’ Aker said, grabbing Hvare by the bicep and throwing him towards the exit. ‘Tell me your fucking research amounted to something,’ she shouted as they sprinted through the offices.
‘We only got as far as a prototype,’ Hvare said, his terror-fuelled adrenaline enabling him to keep up with the exo-powered gait of the Mantix suits.
Aker looked back to Gia.
‘Take us to it,’ she said.
‘It’s on the lowest level!’ Hvare protested. ‘We’ll never make it! The elevators are out!’
‘We have to get there anyway,’ Aker snapped. ‘It’s where the exit tunnels are. Come on!’
They ran through the next corridor, this one a sloping accessway that curved down in a wide corkscrew pattern. All of the main lighting and power had failed now, and the air was saturated in dull crimson light that put Gia in mind of a tour of Dante’s Inferno. The end of the corridor opened up into another working space, this one filled with benches and racks of equipment and stasis fields. The smell of ozone filled the air.
They pressed on. Behind them, small chunks of roof began to collapse, smashing down among the priceless banks of consoles and equipment. Ahead, the sound of panicked footsteps and shouting echoed off the corridor walls. The rest of the scientists, another ten or so, had joined the evacuation. Gia saw that the holos in the workshop area were each displaying a solid blue screen, scrolling with lines of gibberish white text. The VIs were burning all the feeds, scrubbing exabytes of data from the core processors like murderers frantically quickliming bodies.
Like it makes a goddamn difference, Gia thought. The Imperial kaygryn, with their surpassing force field technology, would not care about the UN’s comparatively pathetic efforts.
‘How far did you get with this shit?’ Aker asked, following Hvare through the door at the end of the workshop. Now they were in another corridor, completely void of anything but dark red lighting and flashing directional arrows.
‘Just the working prototype,’ Hvare replied breathlessly. Sweat glistened off his forehead.
‘So it works?’
‘We can only get it working for a few minutes at a time away from the lines. The power drain is enormous. There’s a reason only starships can use them.’
They exited the end of the corridor into a wide hallway with multiple exits. Here, painted floor markings and luminescent wall signage directed them to six different areas. Once Gia was through the door, Aker barrelled back past her and slapped a high-explosive brick to the inside wall of the corridor. She was going to collapse the tunnel.
‘Is the prototype on the way to the emergency exits?’ Aker asked.
Hvare shook his head, then seemed to recant slightly. ‘Sort of. The primary workshop is the floor above but it’s on the other side of the installation.’
Something exploded above them, ringing loud and clear through the hallway. All four of them flinched. The detonation seemed to shake the very bones of the planet.
‘Plasma bomb,’ Gia breathed, looking over to Aker and seeing nothing but her own reflection in the woman’s mirror visor.
‘Why do they care so much about this place?’ Sears asked. ‘No offence, but it doesn’t sound like you got very far with this shit.’
‘Think about it,’ Aker said, studying the wall signage. ‘PFSs give them their edge. Without that, they’re no better than us. We might be in the early stages, but that doesn’t mean they want us to have it.’
‘We need to keep moving,’ Gia said.
‘You’re right, you do,’ Aker said. She walked over to Sears and started relieving him of all his personal explosives.
‘Liz, what are you—’
‘Hvare, take Trooper Raman to the prototype and fit her with it immediately. Sears, get to the scientists and lead them out. Gia, when you’ve got the PFS, join up with the rest of the evacuation and protect them for as long as you can.’
‘I don’t understand—’
‘Gia! Listen to me. I told you I would protect you and I will be fucked by a fat kag dick before I exhaust all of the options. Hvare, take Trooper Raman to the prototype now! Sears, you should be moving already, so why are you still here?’
‘Godfuckingdamnit,’ Sears sighed, slapping Aker on the shoulder and jogging to the door at the end where the scientists were fleeing.
‘Liz, you can’t leave me again,’ Gia said, fighting back tears, trying to stop her voice from breaking. The marine training meant nothing now. Now she was just an orphan once more, about to lose it all a second time.
‘Gia, there is really not much time,’ Aker said, her own voice betraying no emotion. She walked over to her and grabbed her by the Mantix shoulder pad. ‘Just live, please, for me. Go out there and find a guy or a girl and just live. The Ascendancy and the UN has taken so much from you. I won’t allow the kaygryn to take the rest.’
