Empire: Book 2, The Chronicles of the Invaders (The Chronicles of the Invaders Trilogy) (7 page)

CHAPTER 12

A
ni wasn’t sure what to do about her friend Syl. Yes, they’d come here together, joining the Sisterhood to escape certain death, and yes, they knew something wasn’t right about Syrene. But they’d barely seen the Red Witch since they’d arrived, and even then she’d been surprisingly pleasant once they’d landed on the rock over which she reigned. Syrene herself showed them to their quarters, pointing out the fine Egyptian cotton sheets that she personally had supplied, direct from Earth, “so that you’ll feel at home,” and the soaps that were in the bathroom, scented with real French lavender. She’d even placed a mounted photograph of Andrus beside Syl’s bed, and another of Ani’s parents beside her own, but Syl had turned the antique silver frame facedown for the first few weeks, until finally Althea had wrapped it in tissue and put it away.

No, Syrene wasn’t all bad, even if Syl couldn’t see it.

The rest of them were only trying to help, to educate them in the Sisterhood’s ways. Yes, even Tanit. Honestly, if only Syl could see how gentle Tanit had been earlier, how kind, or how hard the tutors were trying to teach them everything that they knew; if only she could see how much being here could benefit them both, but Syl seemed determined to hate everyone and everything that was the Sisterhood. Sure, it didn’t help that there were those who insisted on calling Syl “Smelly,” but it was a childish slight, and Ani felt worn down by Syl’s constant suspicion and negativity.

Did Syl not listen in history class? Why would she not acknowledge the great bravery and immense sacrifice the Sisters had made in the name of all that was good about the Illyri?

In the early days, the Nairene Sisterhood had been based on the homeworld, Illyr, where the order had started as something of an asylum for women who did not fit in, a refuge for unmarriageable females, awkward females, the argumentative, the opinionated, and all who might cause a ruckus in a gender-segregated society. The Sisterhood quietly provided a shelter and a home, and thus troublesome females were safely shut away from their world, where they could not question its ways or sow their dissent.

But the Sisters were not content with seeing out their days idly, and so they read. They read
everything
. (And Syl loved books, reasoned Ani; she loved learning, just like the Sisterhood. So why couldn’t she just fit in?)

Those crones and shrews of old had collected manuscripts, memoirs, and histories, cataloging and filing, and then they gathered more words still, and they wrote their own. They drew intimate family trees, and studied bloodlines, ancestry, genetics, and heredity.

They mapped the stars and the orbits of the moons above them, and they analyzed the soil and stones beneath their feet. They nurtured plants in the extensive gardens of the original Convent of Arain, and dissected them until they understood their workings, and then dissected in turn the creatures that made their homes among the roots and leaves. In time the Sisters extended their expertise to the plants of other worlds, growing, reaping, learning, creating miniature alien environments crafted from crystal and quartz. The Sisters built, they experimented, they explored ideas, they made extensive notes, and gradually the convent grew into a library, and the library grew into a repository, and the Sisters could ask any price for access to their vast store of information. Scribes, leaders, and philosophers came to them for their wisdom, and the Sisters and their growing network of convents became essential to the world that once shunned them.

In time, the Sisterhood’s beginnings as a cloister for burdensome females was forgotten, and it became revered. Its convents attracted only the most brilliant Illyri girls, and while the Sisters were willing to offer advice and access to their records, they preferred to have as little as possible to do with outsiders.

And yes, Ani was happy to admit that bad elements may have crept
in, but surely they could be eradicated, given time, and there was still so much to marvel at, so much to admire. After all, look at what the Nairenes had already achieved; look at the troubles they’d overcome!

Because things had changed for the Sisters with what became known as the Fall, when tyranny overtook the Illyri. At the time it was decreed that all knowledge was to be eradicated—books, recordings, moving images, art, music—and the Illyri Empire rebuilt from fire and ash. Academics, writers, musicians, artists, all were executed. Anyone with an education beyond the most basic was imprisoned, exiled, or killed. Many were worked to death. Families were torn apart. Whole cities burned.

The Sisterhood, by their very nature, became targets for the Fallen. Their sanctuaries were sacked, the Sisters raped and killed, their beautiful old volumes and carefully preserved documents providing fuel for their funeral pyres.

It was then that the seven most senior Sisters decided to leave. They filled seven shuttles with the most valuable items from their collection, and digital copies and downloads of everything else. They had no room for any of the Novices or the other Sisters, but none complained, not even the youngest of them, for they understood the necessity of their sacrifice.

The shuttles blasted off from Illyr as the Fallen stormed the gates of the Convent of Arain, and headed for Avila Minor. One was shot down before it could leave the Illyri atmosphere, and another crashed on the moon and was utterly destroyed. The other five landed just as the sky was fading to dusk. The moon was cooling after the scorching heat of the day and the night creatures had not yet begun to feed. The Sisters, who had studied the geography of the moon, hid themselves in an ancient cave system. They survived on rations, and by hunting, and thus began the Marque. Of course, the Fallen sent troops to find them, but they had not studied Avila Minor as the Sisterhood had. The sun burned them to blackened bones by day, and at night the creatures that lived below ground came out and fed on the remains.

In class, when the Novices were told of the Sisters’ triumph, spontaneous applause had broken out, and even Syl had joined in the cheering.

But it had quickly died down when they had learned that two of the First Five had also perished in that first year.

The remaining three planted seeds, and cultivated the seedlings, growing them beneath the ground in the small ecosystems they’d perfected on Illyr. They scavenged their shuttles for equipment, and slowly they created a home for themselves.

The Fall could not last. The Fallen’s primitivism did not spread to the outlying colonies, and in time those colonies came to the aid of the homeworld, but the Fallen refused to surrender, and even in captivity they vowed to keep fighting. Mass executions followed, and some still believed this final bloodletting, while ending the war, had scarred the Illyri soul forever.

Eventually a shuttle was sent to rescue the Sisters and return them to Illyr, but they refused to leave, knowing full well that what happened once could happen again, for history repeats itself. So they sold the land on which their ruined convents once stood. They demanded compensation for their losses from the new Illyri government, and received it. They poured all of their wealth into extending and fortifying the Marque, utilizing the complex system of caves and underground passages that riddled their moon’s rocky strata like a honeycomb. The First Realm was duly constructed, housing the earliest library, along with living quarters for the Sisters. This was said to be where the five most senior Sisters, successors to the First Five, still lived to this day, led by Ezil, the oldest of them all. They had become hermits, devoted to learning, and nobody had seen Ezil or the other four leaders in public in many years.

Still, Ani thought about them often, and sometimes she felt their presence in her dreams, and wondered about the fantastical knowledge they must possess and the things they could teach her. But while Ani wondered, Syl scoffed and sneered. Syl’s attitude made Ani feel lonely and isolated, and forced her to turn to the other Gifted for company and support.

Had she been a little older, and a little more mature, Ani might have realized that this was precisely the Sisterhood’s intention.

CHAPTER 13

N
ight fell. Outside the Marque, the scorched red desert of Avila Minor came to life as the sands cooled. The moon was utterly dark. Only the Marque held light, glittering in the windows of the buildings and towers above the surface, and, in the older Realms, shining from mountains and hills that had been transformed within, hollowed out in the earliest years of its construction.

In the blackness, the hunting began.

•  •  •

The shuttle descending toward the moon was heavily shielded, its technology so advanced that even the majority of those at the highest levels in the Military—and certainly those in the Diplomatic Corps—had no idea of its existence. It came in low, invisible to the radars of the Marque, and landed within sight of the Twelfth Realm.

From the sands nearby, drawn by the vibrations of the vessel, emerged a heavily armored arthropod known as a cascid. It was the size of a large dog, the tracheae through which it breathed fed by the oxygen-rich atmosphere of the low-gravity moon, thus enabling it to grow bigger than comparable species on Illyr or, indeed, Earth. Its mandibles were large enough to crush the head of a full-grown Illyri, and sharp enough to cut through bone and metal. It approached the shuttle curiously. It had no conception of fear. There was only hunger.

But the shuttle was too large for the cascid to attack alone. It released chemical secretions, summoning others of its kind to overwhelm the prey, and soon the desert around the shuttle was alive with the creatures, each releasing its own secretions in turn until the whole
swarm was driven into a frenzy. Finally, seemingly in unison, they moved in to attack the shuttle.

A series of small vents opened in the shuttle’s underbelly. A low hissing emerged from them, followed by jets of white gas expelled at high pressure. Within seconds the approaching swarm was enveloped in clouds of liquid nitrogen, freezing them in place, creating a bizarre arthropod sculpture, as though the creatures had been hacked from ice. The panicked secretions of their dying were enough to discourage others from approaching.

The gas dispersed.

The shuttle waited.

•  •  •

Elda’s quarters were among the smallest and most basic in the Marque, as befitted a Novice who was little better than a servant. She had a bedroom, an adjoining bathroom that was barely larger than an upright coffin, a single crate that served as a rough table, one hard chair, and a bed that was more comfortable without its mattress than with it. A closet for her possessions took up so much of the remaining space that she had to turn sideways to move between it and her bed.

Elda had lived in that room for four years, but she would live there no longer. The backboard from her closet lay on the floor. From the space behind it she had retrieved a small locked box, and now its contents were spread out on the bed. They included an ultrathin darksuit that had been squeezed into a cylinder little bigger than her thumb; a short, sharp killing blade; and a pulse weapon disguised as a pen, with an electronic beacon built into it.

Elda caught sight of herself in the mirror above her table. Oh, Tanit, she thought, if only you could see me now. The Elda who had haunted the tunnels and corridors of the Marque—cleaning, scrubbing, watching, listening—was no more. The young female in the mirror stood tall. The look of perpetual fear that she wore as a mask was gone, and in its place was only grim determination. Four years, now about to end. Four years of making herself so inconsequential, so unambitious, so mundane, that the Sisterhood had virtually ceased
to notice her. And because she was entrusted with the filthiest, most boring of tasks, the kind given to only a handful of others apparently like her—the slow, the clumsy, the talentless, the ones who, in a different age, would have been painlessly killed for failing to live up to the Sisterhood’s high standards—she had been allowed access to areas of the Marque forbidden to other Novices. Elda possessed keys and codes shared only with the ordained Red Sisters, and she had used them wisely. True, she had failed in one of her tasks—to discover the precise whereabouts of Ezil and the other four senior Sisters, or even if they were still alive at all—but she would bring from the Marque other information of value and importance. Most of all, she now knew that Syrene was working to develop the psychic abilities of young female Illyri, something previously unsuspected outside the Marque. Elda also believed that she understood the reason why Syrene had initiated this program.

Finally, she had succeeded in mapping most of the Marque, and also possessed the details of its security systems and the disarm codes for the shields. For the first time in centuries, some of the Marque’s deepest secrets would be revealed, and the great labyrinth would be vulnerable to its enemies. All this, achieved by a female who had known only contempt in that place.

Her true name was not even Elda, although she wore Elda’s face. The real Elda had died seven years before, taken from her loving parents by a weak heart. But before her death could be announced, Elda’s parents received visitors in the form of a pair of senior Military advisers. Elda’s father and mother were both loyal members of the Military who had watched the rise of the Diplomatic Corps with unease. Even in their grief, they lived only to serve. They agreed to hide the fact of their daughter’s death, and to accept another in her place: a young Illyri female who looked exactly like their lost child thanks to the wonders of ProGen skin; whose genetic profile had been manipulated to pass even the most sensitive of tests; who spoke and acted just as their own Elda had done. In fact, so brilliant was the replication that, in time, they almost forgot she was not their own child, and when at last she was accepted into the Sisterhood, they mourned their daughter for a second time.

Elda: the female in that bare room in the depths of the Marque had worn her identity for so long that she had almost forgotten her own. No matter. Who knew what form she would take once she was gone from the Marque? The Sisterhood and their tame Diplomats would be hunting for someone who looked like Elda, so Elda would have to disappear. The process would be painful, but necessary.

She stripped and put on the darksuit over her naked body, then dressed herself again in her Novice’s robes. She would leave them forever at the door of the Twelfth Realm through which she had chosen to escape. The darksuit would disguise her from most of the desert creatures. In general, they had poor eyesight, and relied on heat, movement, and sound to track prey. The darksuit would take care of the first two issues, but she would have to rely on her own stealth for the third. As for those animals that could see well in the dark, her pulse weapon might have been small, but it packed a huge charge. Anything that tried to eat her would end up as a spray of blood and gore on the desert sands.

She put her blade in the wide pocket of her robes, checked her belt and pouch, and took one last look around the room. She felt no emotion at all. Already she was done with this existence. Yet even in this moment of departure and escape, Elda had recognized the possibility of failure. There was only one person in the Marque for whom she felt any affection, only one who had ever given any sign that she, like Elda, was no friend of the Sisterhood: Syl Hellais. With that in mind, Elda had taken a moment to ask a final favor of Syl. It was in Syl’s locker at the gymnasium: an amulet containing an engraving of Elda’s mother, or the woman whom everyone believed to be her mother, along with a note requesting that Syl find a way to get it back to her on Illyr. If Elda managed to escape the Marque, the amulet would be an additional record of her discovery. If Syl did not manage to return it to Illyr, nothing would be lost.

But if Elda did not make it out of the Marque . . .

Elda closed the door behind her, disabled the lock using a low pulse from her weapon, and then slipped the pulser up her sleeve. The more time that went by before her absence was discovered, the better. A
Sister’s quarters, even those of a Novice, were considered her private realm—a realm within a Realm, as the older Sisters liked to put it—and any intrusion was frowned upon. The sealed door would cause delay and confusion, and breaking it down would require the consent of two senior Sisters. It was all valuable time that would enable her to get farther from the Marque.

The Marque was always busy, even at night. While it quieted down during darkness, it never completely slept. The accumulation of knowledge could not, would not stop. So it was that few glances were cast at Elda—silly, dispensable Elda—as she moved along the walls, her head down, her dull eyes barely shining in the reflected glow of the lights.

It did not take her long to reach the service exit. Few Sisters—those responsible for maintenance and engineering apart—ever ventured down to the lower levels. After all, what reason would they have to leave the Marque and wander out on to the sands? The service exits were only used by those performing repairs, and even then only rarely, for the Marque was built of the finest, strongest materials. Elda had discovered that some of the older service exits were not even fitted with alarms. Heavy doors and rather dated locks were considered security enough, although it had still taken Elda three years to gain access to the keys to two doors in particular.

Now, standing before the door marked L4, she cast off her robes, removed one of those slim silver keys from her belt pouch, and inserted it into the lock. She had to trust that the shuttle would be waiting, just as they had promised. Activate the beacon, they had told her all those years ago, and a shuttle will be waiting for you at the agreed spot within two hours. It will stay there for a further two hours, then leave. If you are not on it when it departs, we’ll assume that you’re dead.

Elda waited for the key to unlock the door. Nothing happened. She wiggled it, but still there was no satisfying click as the bolt undid itself. She took it out and examined it. It was definitely the right key. She had marked it just to be doubly certain. She had even performed a dry run the night before, and the door had opened easily. Yes, she could head
for the second exit, but it would delay her. She could still make it to the shuttle, but it would be close—uncomfortably so. She tried the key one more time, but with no result.

“Damn,” she said to the darkness.

And the darkness replied in the voice of Tanit.

“I think you mean ‘damned.’”

Elda spun, the pulser slipping easily into the palm of her hand as she raised it to fire. Tanit’s face hovered in the gloom, but before Elda could activate her weapon, her hand erupted in pain. She looked at her fist and watched in horror as an unseen force crushed it, the fragile bones breaking, the knuckles splintering into shards inside her flesh until her right hand was reduced to a jointless, useless thing, packed inside a glove of skin. She screamed in agony and sank to her knees, but the pain did not stop. She both felt and heard the twin snaps as the radius and ulna in her lower arm began to fracture, then the humeral bones at her elbow, and finally the big humerus in her upper arm. Pressure followed on her scapula and clavicle, until Tanit shouted: “Stop!”

Through her tears, Elda watched as Sarea joined Tanit. Sarea looked disappointed that Tanit had put an end to her game so quickly. Nemein followed, and then the others—Iria, Dessa, and the siblings Mila and Xaron—all staring down pitilessly at the wounded Elda, her right arm hanging useless by her side, the thin fabric of the darksuit like a vise against the shattered limb.

“Search her,” ordered Tanit.

It was Nemein who did it. She found the blade, and the second key. More important, she discovered the small stick drive containing all of the secrets that Elda had unearthed over the past four years. Needlessly Nemein brushed Elda’s wounded arm, causing her to scream again. Even then, as she faced her tormentors for the last time, Elda was amazed at Nemein’s casual, senseless cruelty.

“I suppose you think that we’re going to interrogate you,” said Tanit. “You know, ask who sent you, who you really are, that kind of thing, but we’re not.”

She squatted so that she could look Elda in the eyes. She spoke without hatred, without passion, only pity.

“You see, we don’t care. Even now, at the end, you don’t matter. You’ve failed, just like your little friend Kosia before you. She told us everything right before we killed her—everything but your name. Unfortunately, she died before she could share that with us. But all that she revealed led us to believe that she had an accomplice, that there was another spy in the Marque. So we watched, and we waited, and we discovered you. I have to confess that I was surprised. You disguised yourself well. But now, like Kosia, you’re going to die.”

She turned to Nemein.

“Give me the knife.”

Nemein handed the blade to her. Elda waited for it to pierce her flesh, but it did not. Instead Tanit used it to cut away the darksuit from Elda’s upper body, stripping her to the waist. She wielded the blade carefully, almost tenderly, so that the knife did not cut Elda’s skin but left only slight red marks upon it. Tanit even avoided touching Elda’s wounded arm, content to leave the remains of the darksuit upon it. When she was done she examined her handiwork, and nodded approvingly.

“Much better,” she said. “And you have a cute figure. It’s a shame that you had to hide it away for so long.”

Tanit reached into a pocket of her own robes, and produced a new key, shining and needle-thin.

“I think this is what you were looking for,” she said. “The locks have been changed—as have all the security codes—but you’ve probably figured that out by now. Actually, we were concerned that you might have tried to leave last night. Yes, we were watching you even then. We could have taken you earlier, I suppose, but it was more fun to wait until you thought you were free. Oh, and about our most recent little encounter: consider your burns a farewell gift from us.”

Sarea and Xaron stepped forward, and forced Elda to her feet. Tanit handed the key to Nemein, who unlocked the door but did not open it, not yet.