Resolution, p.40
Resolution,
p.40
‘You mean, you can’t find a bed for the night?’
‘Um...’
‘Is this happening too fast for you?’
‘No. Yes. I think so. Go slowly, would you. I’m feeling fragile.’
‘Don’t worry, dear. I will be gentle.’
<
~ * ~
52
NULAPEIRON AD 3426
Tom stumbled along, led by Ankestion and Likardion, scarcely processing their route through blue-shadowed, square-edged tunnels and darkened halls, or the way that three shadow-figures - more clone-brothers - joined them one by one as they proceeded in the direction of the rendezvous.
We‘re lost.
Elva was on the terraformer sphere, on Axolon Array with Jissie and the senior commanders. He should be with her—
They came to a halt, Ankestion dragging Tom down into a crouched position. Tom was about to whisper a question, then stopped: not so much from stealth as from the realization that he no longer cared.
Elva, my love. I’m sorry.
Everything was formed of blue-grey stone. Before Tom and five clone-warriors, a straight narrow footbridge of that same stone led to a dark cross-corridor beyond. The bridge spanned a kilometre-long hall, close to the flat ceiling.
There were sounds of movement from below, the sense of breathing, yet no voices spoke. Mixed aromas of food arose: fleischbloc and a fruity tang, overlaid by something else that was sour and unpalatable. Ankestion looked grim.
Absorbed components, feeding in the hall.
Nothing else could account for the presence of hundreds, maybe thousands of human beings out of sight in the hall below, carrying out their actions without speaking. But even as Tom came to this conclusion, a single educated voice said: ‘This is outrageous! My family are innocent.’
Ignoring a tug at his tunic, Tom crept forward and slowly looked over the footbridge’s parapet, down into the hall. He saw row upon row of long tables, at which five hundred or more uniformed soldiers sat spooning some viscous liquid broth out of deep bowls. Off to one side was a vast food processor block, bigger than anything Tom had seen as a kitchen servitor. Attendants stood ready to dish out more food.
But it was the silver-haired man with the elegant goatee who caught Tom’s attention, and the woman with him. She was too scared to speak, but clutched the back of a small lev-chair inside which a young boy was sitting. The boy looked pale and infirm, his breath coming fast and shallow in panic; he was obviously in the chair for medical reasons, unable to stand.
‘Please ...’ The elegant man pleaded with one of the Absorbed components standing in front of him, as if the component were still a person, with a human being’s sensibilities. ‘If you could allow my wife and son to go past, I would be happy to stay as guarantor of their ...’
His voice trailed off.
Tom’s skin tightened.
No...
There was nothing he could do.
For Fate’s sake, get out of there.
But the air was already blackening, roiling, and then the man’s eyes rolled up in his head. His wife’s stare whitened as her eyes also rolled. In the lev-chair, the young boy opened his mouth as if to yell at his parents, but his vocal cords were frozen.
What happened next was almost too swift to perceive.
Unnatural synchronization meant that the man and his wife and two of the waiting attendants moved simultaneously. The man hauled the useless boy out of the lev-chair; the woman helped swing the boy to one side, then throw him.
One attendant caught the boy as the other flipped open a hatch, and the boy went sailing inside the processor block before he could scream. The hatch banged shut.
Oh, Fate ...
The boy’s corpse, hidden from view, was already sliding apart, dissolving and merging with the broth inside, before Tom could even understand what had happened. Then horror clenched him.
No. He was your son.
But the beings who had sacrificed the boy were no longer capable of seeing their son as anything other than damaged organic matter, whose only use could be to provide nutrients for the operating components of the greater whole: the Anomaly of which they were part.
Clone-warriors pulled Tom back from the edge before his gagging reaction could betray their presence. A stone hand clamped across his face. Then they were half-carrying him across the bridge, moving bent over but fast, until they reached the cross-corridor beyond.
Two more clone-warriors were waiting at a seven-sided junction which was otherwise deserted. They stared at Tom as he tugged himself free of Ankestion’s grasp, leaned against a wall, and gave spewing vent to sour vomit, spattering onto blue-grey stone.
Oh, Destiny.
Another paroxysm took hold of Tom, and then another, as the remainder of his stomach contents hurled themselves outwards, beyond his ability to control.
After several minutes, he stepped away, wiping his lips with the back of his hand.
‘Warlord?’ Ankestion used Tom’s title, though it broke the mission rules. ‘Are you all right?’
Tom looked back at the mess. One of the clone-warriors had already pulled off his surcoat and was using it to mop up the evidence. Another joined in.
‘No.’ Tom turned to Ankestion. ‘No, I’m not.’
Clone-warriors would continue to fight or operate flyers or carry out any task even as they vomited, if they ever did: that much was clear. But they did not expect that level of determination in people who were not of their kind.
The boy didn’t even scream ...
‘I won’t be all right,’ continued Tom, ‘until the Anomaly is out of our world. For ever.’
The clone-warriors looked at each other.
‘Come on,’ said Tom. ‘We have work to do.’
They met at rendezvous gamma without incident. Then all twelve clone-warriors, along with Tom, made their way to a natural cavern where a small opening was hidden in shadow. One by one, they crawled into the borehole on hands and knees.
It took them most of an hour to make their way along its twisting length. Their progress was slow because of hard effort and the need for silence, but eventually they came out onto a ledge overlooking a vast cavern, almost as big as the caverns of Realm V’Delikona.
Below them, an entire army filled the cavern floor.
Troops moved around large blocks of equipment: heavy weaponry, mining devices, basic supplies. Perhaps a thousand Enemy soldiers were encamped.
Ankestion pointed. A strip of black water, a service canal, ran through the cavern. Automated cargo-bugs floated on the canal, moving in a slow steady train.
After a moment, Tom nodded. The Enemy troops were near the battle-front and therefore alert, but no army expects to be infiltrated from behind. And no-one could move more silently than Ankestion’s clone-brothers, or an Academy-trained infiltration agent like Tom Corcorigan.
One at a time, the clone-warriors descended - slowly, so very slowly -from the ledge. Tom followed, spidering from one hold to another, holding very still when he rested. Their clothes were the right colour to blend with the brownish-grey rock: Trevalkin’s agent had thought carefully before leaving the garments in the supply cache.
You train your people well, Trevalkin.
Finally, Tom and the twelve warriors were hunched behind a tall container on the cavern floor, almost within touching distance of a full regiment of Absorbed troops, waiting for Ankestion’s signal.
The warriors slipped from container to stone outcrop to container, unnoticed by the milling soldiers. Soon, they were just metres from the canal. To their right, it disappeared back into a tunnel in the rockface they had descended; to their left, it arrowed through the Enemy camp.
The clone-warriors moved off at five-minute intervals. As each man reached the water’s edge he crouched very low, reached into the dark waters, and rolled silently into them. When it was Tom’s turn, he concentrated on breathing, taking huge quiet inhalations, then one last gulp as he tipped forward and went down, cold waters closing all around him.
Tom went deep, until his fingertips touched the bottom, and then began to swim.
After three minutes submerged in water, yellow fluorescence was pulsating in Tom’s eyeballs and he was desperate to breathe. He could not rise, unless he wanted graser fire to blow his body apart. There was a whole army up there.
Swim.
Tom hauled himself onwards.
Just swim.
Desperate to inhale ...
Ignore.
No. Absolutely imperative that he—
Not there yet. Ten seconds more.
Swimming. Still swimming.
You said ten seconds.
I lied.
Again. Another ten seconds.
Can’t swim any further. Breathe now.
No. Push it. Ten seconds more.
Now.
No. Push ...
Now?
Yes.
And Tom rolled to the surface, face into the air, inside a tunnel away from the cavern, burning with primeval joy as he sucked in life again.
At the edge of the canal in a deserted tunnel, the clone-brothers washed off the remainder of their disguises. Most of the theatrical make-up had failed to survive the swim. Soon, they were purple-black in the dim light, their graphite eyebrows invisible.
They made their way forward, until they came out into another cavern, where microwards were deployed upon the ceiling, and the main Collegiate defences were arrayed: graser cannons and armoured troops, dug into the heavy emplacements.
It was almost nightshirt, and neither Tom nor Ankestion had any intention of being shot by the people they were trying to help. They settled down out of sight, and waited for the darkness.
Two hours later, half a regiment of Collegiate Dragoons failed to spot thirteen shadows flitting through their lines like ghosts. Within minutes, Tom and the twelve clone-warriors were past the first defences, and into one of the Collegium’s Outer Courts.
At the centre of the Court stood a glistening membranous tent, framed with narrow ribs: a commander’s tent. The clone-warriors slipped inside, and Tom followed. They found empty chairs set up around a briefing table, and no-one in sight. They looked at each other, grinned, and sat down.
It was twenty minutes before the commanding officer, his uniform draped with silver braid, entered his own tent and stopped dead.
‘How do you do.’ Tom remained sitting. ‘My friends and I have an appointment with Viscount Trevalkin, in Chronos Court. To save misunderstandings, perhaps your people could escort us?’
For a long moment, the officer could not speak. Then he went down on one knee and bowed, and greeted Tom in a way he had not expected.
‘Warlord. Thank Fate you’re here.’
~ * ~
53
NULAPEIRON AD 3426
Instantia Hall was long and spacious, a right-angled triangle from whose polished walls slender buttresses protruded. The ceiling arced, light and airy; but despite the clean lines, the overall shape suggested broken symmetries and odd intrusions.
Be on guard in this place.
Tom was alone. General Ivion of the Dragoons had invited the clone-warriors to his chambers, along with his own staff officers. An escort had left Tom here.
A doorshimmer evaporated. In the archway, Magister Strostiv bowed.
‘So you got out of Realm Buchanan,’ said Tom.
‘Aye, my Lord Corcorigan. Or should I say Warlord?’
‘Perhaps you should.’
‘Ah...’ Strostiv took a pace forward. ‘You wonder how I escaped intact.’
‘The Anomaly descended quickly.’
‘You don’t need to tell me, Warlord. I was there.’
Tom blew out a breath. This was getting them nowhere. ‘My apologies, Magister. How did you escape?’
Strostiv’s laugh was short and cynical. ‘An old friend of yours got me out.’
Tom looked around the hall, hiding his thoughts. Odd glass flanges and panels reflected strange, sliding combinations of unsettling hues.
‘Trevalkin,’ said Tom. ‘I should have guessed.’
‘As a strategist and organizer, he’s extraordinary. If we survive ... this ... then I expect we’ll offer him the Chancellorship.’
‘Good for him.’
Strostiv gestured. ‘This way, my ... Warlord.’
But as they walked past one of the strange glass panels, a vision moved inside it, and Tom could not look in any other direction but inside the illusion.
Around the table, in a raw stone chamber, a family laughs. There is a fleshy man, in his mid-thirties but with the heaviness of middle age that often envelops non-athletes, and for a moment Tom jerks in recognition - Father! - but he is mistaken. The man turns and Tom sees ... himself.
A bulkier version of himself who lifts a bowl of broth in both hands to drink. Opposite him, Elva, likewise softer-looking than he has known her, drinks and compliments the woman standing over them, whose red hair is streaked with grey.
‘That was marvellous, Ranvera,’ Elva says. ‘You‘ve excelled yourself this—’
Mother!
Tom ripped himself away from the shimmering glass.
‘What did you see, Warlord? The past or the future?’
‘I saw myself - Tom surprised himself by revealing the truth - ‘the same age as I am now. Poor but happy, living out life in Salis Core. A different life, Strostiv.’
And Elva was there.
But Elva had lived in the same district, working as a member of the astymonia patrol. If Tom had never met Pilot deVries, then the Oracle would not have descended to their humble stratum, would not have taken Mother ... but Tom might still have met Elva. Life could have turned out that way.
Strostiv sucked in a breath. ‘That’s ... unusual. To see a different Fate.’
But the man I saw, thought Tom, wasn‘t me. He was soft and useless.
If he wanted to save Nulapeiron, Tom Corcorigan would have to be a very different kind of man.
‘Chronos Court,’ added Strostiv, gesturing towards another door-shimmer, ‘is through there. The Viscount will be waiting for us.’
‘Marvellous.’
Other visions swirled in Tom’s mind as they entered Chronos Court.
Dead carls litter the floor. Fighting men and creatures of the Anomaly swarm through the vast hall, despatching the wounded of both sides. And on those three gigantic plinths—
On one of them, the wreckage of a destroyed shuttle belches black toxic smoke. But the other two plinths stand bare.
Tom moaned, squeezing his eyes shut, feeling Strostiv grasp his sleeve. ‘Are you all right, Warlord?’
In one of the two escaped shuttles, Kraiv is in the cockpit behind the pilot’s seat, staring down at the receding ground. His face is half-covered in glistening blood. Outside the membrane window, another shuttle is visible, flying alongside, matching speed.
Tom brought his attention back to the moment.
‘I’m fine.’
The carls had just taken their captured shuttles into the air, without waiting for Tom’s signal. Tom’s vision suggested that Anomalous forces had mounted a counterattack, trying to recapture the shuttle bay, and the carls had been forced to take off early.
None of this helped.
And Tom wondered, as he sat down to face Trevalkin, whether Collegiate sensors could detect the flow of information through the Calabi-Yau dimensions of realspace, and knew that the Warlord sitting here was no longer just a human being, but something similar to the Seers which Oracular engineering programmes occasionally produced.
‘Greetings, Warlord.’
‘Viscount. How interesting to see you.’
‘I can see we’re going to have a friendly conversation, filled with reminiscence and nostalgia.’
‘We’re on a timetable, Trevalkin. A tight timetable.’
In the shuttles, the pilots - both of them carls - redplane the acceleration, ignoring the soft moans of the wounded lying in the cabins behind them, knowing they dare not slow down.
