“You know whom he wants to kill, eh?” Selat’s moldy breath whispered.
A small twinge of guilt stung Nairom, but his anger overcame it. “Get on with it, Selat. What do you want from me?”
“Are we proceeding as planned, General?” The venom with which Selat spat out the title stirred up the memory of how he had played Nairom’s benefactor during promotions.
“I have no doubt Aiben will flee for Mora Bentia.” Nairom tried to block out the odor emanating from the creature, but even with help of his nanomechs, his nostrils flared in uncontrolled opposition.
“Good, don’t fail me, Nairom,” Selat hissed. “Remember, once you have eliminated Magron for me using that accursed weapon, I will take care of Hezit and you will be the Protectorate’s new Supreme Commander.”
And when I have eliminated you Selat Teeloo, I will be its leader.
One of Selat’s eyes twitched and he cocked his head sideways towards Nairom, almost as if he had read what was on his mind, but there had been no cyberlink between them to convey it. Nairom still wasn’t sure after all this time if Selat was even capable of using a cyberlink over the hypernet. Selat had never been forthcoming about it, and when the three were present together, Magron always spoke aloud instead of through the medium of thought. Nairom couldn’t say how the two communicated when they were alone.
Presently, without further warning, Selat loped off. Nairom suspected the creature feared Magron would become suspicious if he were gone for too long from his side.
After Magron Orcris and Selat Teeloo had broken free of the Ma’acht Vor in their landing craft, Nairom ordered the command crew to take the battle cruiser and position them at the hyperportal. Nairom stood at the very fore of the control deck, wrapped around by a floor-to-ceiling translucent view portal, his face mere millimeters from the glass that separated him from cold, uncaring vacuum.
He peered out across space to the filth-encrusted industrial planet that had once been his home. From his vantage point, he could see the world’s terminator slicing the gray globe into exact dark and light halves. The light side looked every bit as peaceful and calm as it had the day before the invasion. Nairom knew the view was deceptive. High-yield energy weapons spit streaking bolts of light into all of Besti’s major cities on the dark side, criss-crossing the hemisphere like highways of lightning.
Nairom pushed aside the battle stats that came rolling into his mind from the cyberlink. He no longer had to concentrate on the invasion’s progress now that Magron was going planet-side. He was alone for the moment with his own thoughts. Feelings of guilt and pain welled up from the pit of his stomach as he looked out towards Besti and remembered his childhood there. He kicked the emotions back down into the well of darkness that he now carried with him.
Oand-ib had always been harder on him than on the others. Their teacher had pushed him beyond his capacity and had never been satisfied with his performance. He had been required to endure great pain and suffering at the Citadel, and as a seldom reward, received minor praise from Oand-ib. Aiben, in contrast, exacted great admiration from their teacher with very little effort or skill on his part.
When the old cybermancer had asked him to get the code to Mora Bentia’s hyperportal, and revealed to him Aiben’s destiny, he had been wroth to find out he had been pushed to be the best, so that Aiben, less skilled than he, would be the true hero. However, he saw that infiltrating the Protectorate would be his chance to leave behind the Citadel and Oand-ib’s power over him.
His only regret, at that time, had been taking out his anger on Aiben who their teacher had groomed for the job instead of him. His only regret now was that he would have to use Aiben to accomplish his own plan to usurp control of the Protectorate.
If circumstances were different, Nairom might have cyberlinked with Aiben to make sure he had escaped the invasion. Magron was a powerful cybermancer, though, and Nairom feared that the Agar Hegirith’s prowess with the cyberlink would alert him to his betrayal. Magron might even discover Aiben’s presence on Besti, or even his mission, which was a risk Nairom couldn’t afford. He knew what Magron would do to Aiben if he caught him. He had seen too many deaths at the hands of this cruel dictator not to.
He hoped that Aiben would be rational enough not to follow their old fool of a teacher against his new master. He couldn’t let the thought of it overtake him. He had to believe that Aiben was following the plan Oand-ib had laid out for him. If he did, it would keep him out of the path of Magron’s war-thirsty crusade.
“Navigation Officer!” Nairom called out across the control deck without turning around. His breath formed an opaque fog that clung to the cold glass. Moments later, a junior navigation officer in the Protectorate navy came to stand at his right hand, announced by heeled boots clicking together. The scraping sound of the man’s pressed uniform and the clean chemical odor it exuded irritated Nairom. The juxtaposition of it to Selat’s horrible smells emphasized how he had to endure the creature’s presence.
“Sir?” The junior officer stood at rigid attention.
“Are you prepared to upload the lock-out code for the hyperportal?” Nairom’s eyes took in the man’s appearance from head to toe, satisfied with the discipline they found there despite the smell.
“Yes, sir! Ready on your command.” The young officer shifted his weight from one foot to the other in the general’s presence.
“Good, bring the portal back online and get ready to send the code when I give the order. I want to be ready to leave this backwater system behind when the Agar Hegirith communicates his success. There’ll be no delay, understood?”
“Yes sir.”
Nairom waved the man’s dismissal and the officer spun on his heel in retreat. The smell of his uniform trailed behind him.
CHAPTER 5
By the time Aiben weaved his way out of the tunnels burrowed beneath the Citadel, back into the great hall, fear had stirred up the city dwellers into a sky-scraping frenzy. Thunder rolled through a thick cloud of disquiet as everyone verbalized the angst that hung in the air. Roonagorian silk robes, living streamers of color, twisted and meshed as the crowed flowed around one another. In this multihued mayhem, several small skirmishes had already broken out where elbows and shoulders had bumped through the wrong group of people at the wrong time.
He bounced up on his toes and craned his neck over the throng of people to see if the Citadel’s apprentices were making their way towards the fights. None of his fellow halath’hi were anywhere in the crowd. Roonagor’s citizens were on their own today. The Guild allowed ordinary citizens only in the great hall of the Citadel, where they usually came to see the beautiful hanging tapestries and admire the skill of the artists who had left their mark in frescos and paintings adorning the walls and ceilings.
As long as Aiben could remember, there had been guards posted here. They made sure the visitors’ curiosities didn’t extend beyond the aesthetic decorations and kept them from other areas of the Citadel where they might disrupt the daily work of the Cybermancer Guild. He had spent six long months as one of the Citadel guards, dealing with the insatiable desire of the Roonagorians to poke their noses as far into someone else’s business as they could without being thrown out on their ears.
Aiben toyed with the idea of jumping into the fight closest to him to break it up. He had done it enough times while serving as a guard, but the situation was quite different now. He had never seen so many people so frightened and angry at one another at the same time in the same place. He would have to find the other halath’hi before trying to calm those seeking safety within the walls of the Citadel. However, he had to take care of other things that were more important first. He had to find Oand-ib and stop him before it was too late.
Aiben pushed through the crowd, careful not to draw attention by being more forceful than necessary.
Although the audio-visual impressions in the great hall were dull in comparison to the explosive sensations of sha
lal hiliz and the Splitting of the Consciousness, the stimuli from the frantic Roonagorians was enough to engage his senses. Sweet perfume and sour sweat saturated the air. Tatters of fabric whipped at the bare skin of his face and arms. Ribbons of silk looped around his legs to catch him and trip him. A hundred conversations wormed their way into his head and forced his mind to catalogue snapshots of the city-dwellers’ fear.
“Why aren’t the cybermancers protecting us?”
“I don’t want to die.”
“We aren’t going to survive.”
“There’s no hope.”
Aiben pushed aside the intrusions and concentrated on what he needed to do next. At the far end of the great hall was a lift that would take him to the uppermost levels of the Citadel where Hegirith Oand-ib and the halath’hi trained in a large practice and all-purpose meeting area. The halath’hi kept their bodies fit in the assembly room when not honing their minds. He was sure to find other people of his order there. He aimed for the lift, but had to sidestep a huddle of men ready to burst into a ball of heated rage.
He kept his eyes averted, not to come across as confrontational in any way. The very act of avoiding them, however, caught the attention of one of their group. He hadn’t pushed by but two more people when the man recognized him and grunted in his direction.
“Hey, cybermancer! Where are your comrades? Where is the Guild Master of the Citadel? We demand you do something to protect us!”
Within the Citadel, and sometimes outside of it, members of the Cybermancer Guild wore loose fitting pants and a tunic that clasped with loops and knots up to the throat. The color was black or charcoal depending on the rank of the cybermancer. A hooded cloak of similar tone sometimes covered the uniform. Aiben was still dressed in his street clothes and only those who had seen him dressed in both circumstances should have been able to identify him as a cybermancer. He thought he recognized the voice, even in the mayhem, but didn’t dare look back.
The hairs on the back of his neck bristled as he thought about such a large crowd running him down. He wouldn’t be able to minimize injury to others. He pressed forward, trying his best to appear as if he weren’t the target of the man’s attention. The web of nanomechs surging through his body gave his muscles the strength they needed to speed him to the lift before his accuser could generate enough momentum in the crowd to overtake him.
A quick retinal scan and a DNA sampling from his palm-print opened the door. Reinforced steel doors slid shut on the faces of an angry mob. One of the faces, his accuser, was Raatha, the man who owned the ship he and Ballis had been repairing.
Aiben was holding his breath. He let it puff out. Alone inside the lift, thoughts of Hegirith Oand-ib seized him. The old teacher would have scolded him for not breathing.
I have to find Oand-ib before it is too late.
The ascension took only a few seconds, but it felt like forever. Aiben’s mind raced to work out what he was going to say to Oand-ib once he found him. He had to convince the Hegirith not to go against Magron Orcris alone, but to let him go along into battle and strengthen their chance for survival. Either that, or convince his anab to escape and flee to Mora Bentia with him where they could find the Haman device together. The thought of having to find im shalal and possibly having to face Magron alone shot icicles of pain up his arm. When the lift doors opened into the Citadel’s practice hall, his heart sank.
Aiben had hoped that the practice hall would be full of the halath’hi he hadn’t encountered in the catacombs or the great hall, all being instructed by Oand-ib on what to do next. Instead, he found a jumble of cheeba chairs, some overturned as if vacated in haste. They surrounded a flickering holocaster ticking off numbers and statistics from the battle’s progress throughout Besti. He slumped against the lift doors. Discouragement swept him up as he watched the focused sparkles of light spell out the city’s doom. He would have to scour the entire Citadel and hope that he wasn’t still too late.
“Hope you aren’t planning on wasting time just standing there.”
Aiben’s heart skipped two full beats. She was sitting on one of the cheeba chairs, pushed up against the wall a few feet from the lift. She was dressed in the hard, but flexible nanomech-laced armor the halath’hi wore during physical training. She fingered an old, battered, energy rifle she had gotten from somewhere. She turned it over in her hands as if inspecting it for the first time.
“Wow, you’re a sight for sore eyes!” A wide smile split Aiben’s face.
He had become fast friends with Achanei over the past year. She was beautiful, intelligent, and his emotional crutch. In a way, she had filled the vacuum Nairom had left behind. They had a lot in common, they laughed together, and they spent most of their spare time trying to be with each other. She had healed some of his emotional wounds with her companionship. It was what he thought love was supposed to feel like, but he hadn’t been brave enough to admit it to her yet. Neither had Achanei.
“That would be me,” she said, but her own lopsided grin looked forced.
“Where is everyone? The lower level is jammed full of angry people. I haven’t seen anyone else for the past half-hour.”
“They’re all gone.” The counterfeit smile faded and she wrung her hands as she stood up.
“What do you mean gone? Where’d they go?”
His eyes locked with hers. They were a green blaze, exotic from a faint epicanthic fold. She was as tall as Aiben, normal height for an inherent female of House Feillion. Some of her features that enthralled Aiben were her fair skin and the soft curve of her jaw, which she had exposed by pulling back her golden hair.
“The Protectorate has already started attacking Roonagor.” She gestured to the muddle of holograms dancing in the center of the room. Her forehead wrinkled and she bit into the side of her lip. “About an hour ago, Hegirith Oand-ib asked us to help the military defend Roonagor any way we could. He sounded desperate for us to delay them.”
“Then the Seven Guilds are sending reinforcements?” Maybe it wasn’t going to be as hopeless as he had first thought.
“No, Hegirith Oand-ib said it would be too late by the time anyone arrived. The hyperportal has already been shut down, remember?” She was straining to keep her voice from cracking. “Even if it weren’t, the Expeditionary Guild wouldn’t muster enough freestanding troops for our credits and we couldn’t pay the Transportation Guild fees to get them here either. Seems help has a price we can’t afford. The war has become too expensive, even for the Cybermancer Guild. Besti is not the most politically or strategically aligned planet, you know.”
Aiben’s knees wanted to buckle under him as they had during shalal hiliz. “Why was he so desperate to delay them if we’ve been left on our own?”
“To buy time for you to escape.”
His hope exploded into tiny bits. Aiben slumped into the chair Achanei had just vacated. He buried his face in his hands and let the events of the past couple of hours rocket through his head. Everything was happening too fast. He felt like a stormy ocean had caught him in its waves and he was steadily losing the ability to tread water. He had to think so he could make a decision.
“Where did everyone go?” He looked up at Achanei after several seconds. Tears were already rimming her eyes.
“Most of them have suited up in practice armor and have gone out to face Magron’s troops.” She didn’t say it, but he knew she wanted to be out there with them.
“And Hegirith Oand-ib?” He already knew the answer.
“He went with them, of course.”
A tear broke down her smooth cheek. Aiben dropped his head to hide his own eyes.
“How long ago did they leave?”
“Not more than a half-hour.”
She reached out to grab his arm, but her fist closed on thin air. In that moment, he had made his decision and launched himself across the room at the practice lockers lining the far wall. He located his locker, yanked it open, and rummaged inside it. He pulled out flimsy
pieces of fabric that nanomechs would form into a hard shell to fit his body. He heaped some pieces on the floor, tugged others onto his arms and legs.
Although the greater part of their training at the Citadel concentrated on honing their minds in the hypernet with a cyberlink, the cybermancers also kept their bodies in form by practicing their particular art of shadow fighting, hez alim, which had been passed down for generations from origins unknown. The flexible armor would give him protection from certain types of energy blasts, but mostly, if he had to engage in hand-to-hand combat, his body would be ready to endure the pain so his mind could take control of his actions.
“Where did you get that weapon? Help me find one. Come on, we have to hurry if we are going to catch up to them.” Aiben shook as he hurried to don more pieces of armor.
Achanei’s hand pressed into the center of his back. Her pleasant perfume and the odor of her worked-up body mixed around him. It would have captivated him under normal circumstances, but it just reminded him of the panic in the great hall. She twisted him around and two great emerald eyes drew him in. He wanted to plunge into them and lose himself. He wanted to swim in those pools forever and never come out. He wouldn’t have to care about Magron Orcris or cybermancers ever again.
“Aiben, listen to me.” Her hand moved around to clasp his forearm. This time she succeeded. “You have something else you need to take care of.”
“What did Hegirith Oand-ib tell you?” Aiben dropped one of the hardened sheaths he had been holding to his shin. It clattered to the floor and melted.
“He told me there’s a weapon the Guild can use against Magron. You’re the only one who has the information to get it for them.”
“If you knew that, why are you still here waiting for me? Why didn’t you go with them?”
“Someone had to make sure you wouldn’t follow them.” Her chin came up and hurt drew her eyebrows together.
“I’m sorry,” Aiben muttered. He couldn’t look her in the face. “I can’t believe you volunteered to stay behind to keep me from going.”