“I didn’t volunteer. Hegirith Oand-ib said I was the only one who could make sure you didn’t come after him. I was more or less drafted.”
Now it was Aiben’s turn to be hurt.
“What makes you really think you can stop me from going after him? Do you know what he’s planning to do?”
“I know, he told all of us. It’s hard, Aiben, but you’ve got to go while you can.” She was doing a bad job of sounding convinced herself.
“You want me to leave while Oand-ib and the others face Magron and his shock troops?” Aiben pressed palms against his eyes. He willed himself not to clamp his jaw and ball his fists. “How can I do that? How can I turn my back and run like a scared dog when everyone I have ever known risks their lives to protect Besti?”
“They’re not risking death for Besti, Aiben. They’re risking it for you.”
He shook from head to toe. “I can’t…”
“The Protectorate will remember Besti as the beginning of the end for them, Aiben. You’re our only chance to stop this war now. Promise me you’ll go.”
She was doing a better job of being convinced now.
“I don’t want to be the only chance, Achanei.”
“It doesn’t matter what you want. Fate’s already sealed you, and like it or not, we’re depending on you.” Now she was shaking. “And so is Nairom.”
“What? What do you mean by that?”
“Hegirith Oand-ib told me to tell you as a last resort only.” She bit the side of her lip again.
“Tell me what?” Aiben pulled his arm free of her hold.
“Nairom’s aboard the Ma’acht Vor. He’s the one who gave Hegirith Oand-ib the code to Mora Bentia’s hyperportal.”
Aiben stood there for several seconds as if he hadn’t heard what Achanei had said. Thoughts of Nairom flared up in his mind and new meaning to his friend’s behavior the night of his departure became clear. He started to feel light-headed.
“Is he a prisoner?”
“I don’t know if he is or isn’t, but he’s probably under Magron’s control by now. We have no way of knowing how much Magron really knows about you, so the sooner we act the better.”
The memories that coursed through his thoughts from shalal hiliz were so strong now that he couldn’t deny what they were telling him. Magron was following the storm of the Nograthi’aak and he would pull Nairom along in the current with him if no one stopped him.
A low-pitched hum broke his deliberations as Achanei thumbed the switch to charge her rifle. Flames of pain licked the inside of Aiben’s arm.
“You’ll need to go to Tain-Balmor and find Lev-9. He’s a mechanoid. I think he’s a friend of Hegirith Oand-ib.”
“I know him. I’ve met him a few times before.”
“He’s hired a ship to take you to Mora Bentia. Just promise me you’ll go.”
Before Aiben could say anything more, her lips pressed against his. She kissed him hard, passionate. Then pushed him away, rushed into the lift, and stabbed the button to close the doors.
“Wait!” Aiben called after her. Tears streaked his face now. “Come with me to get im shalal.”
“I can’t go with you, Aiben. Don’t come after me either.”
Doors groaned shut and she was gone. It was the first time she had kissed him, and probably the last.
CHAPTER 6
Tain-Balmor was the largest company ever to hold membership in the Merchant Guild. In fact, they controlled large portions of it. Tain-Balmor’s corporate proving grounds had produced many of the Guild’s Masters. Aiben hadn’t been sure how to find Lev-9 among the thousands of resources the company employed on Besti. It would have been an insurmountable task without some luck, or knowing the right information, or the right people to talk to.
As it turned out, Lev-9 hadn’t been hard to find at all. The mechanoid had been waiting for him at the main entrance of the mile-high, steel and glass pyramid that housed the company’s offices on Besti. Aiben hadn’t asked how long the mechanoid had been waiting there.
“We need to hurry, Aiben.”
They now stood next to a hoverflyer parked in one of Tain-Balmor’s many private garages of polished steel that smelled like the sterility of corporate care. The floating vehicle bounced up and down on a cushion of air as Lev-9 piled various pieces of baggage in its storage compartment. Aiben turned to look at him. Black metallic chitin plated the human shaped mechanoid. Super-strong, carbon-composite cords made the movement of his jointed hydraulics possible. Most prominently non-humanoid, was a rotating band of sensors that ringed his head and provided his main means of sensory input. It fixated on Aiben.
“Did you hear me?” Lev-9 said. “We need to hurry if we want to make it to the spaceport before the Protectorate does.”
Aiben’s mind crunched on the artificial data implanted there. He was still struggling to understand it. He had to force himself to focus on what the mechanoid was saying. He moved around to the back of the hoverflyer to help guide a case of supplies into the vehicle.
“Sorry, I was lost in thought.”
“You need to concentrate on our immediate situation. Our life depends on it.” Lights along Lev-9’s sensor band flickered as if to punctuate the statement.
You must find it. I must face Magron Orcris before he destroys us all.
“I should’ve gone with him, but he didn’t want me to. He even left someone behind to keep me from following him. I almost didn’t come.” Aiben squeezed his eyes shut, tight, until they stung. He took a deep breath and a slight tremble rippled through his body. He felt a little self-conscious for reacting like this in front of a mechanoid he really didn’t know.
“Oand-ib chose to face Magron Orcris alone,” Lev-9 said.
“Don’t you feel anything? He’s your friend too, right?” He forgot his embarrassment.
“We’ve been comrades for many years, yes. He’s a master roboticist. His mind knows our systems intimately. His consulting will be missed by our Guild.”
“But without our help, he…”
“Your teacher is counting on you to carry through without him. I don’t know our destination, and you shouldn’t tell me until we are in hypertransit. Even if I did know, I still couldn’t get the Haman weapon myself. He’s sacrificing himself so you can get it.”
“Why does everyone keep reminding me of that?” Aiben’s face heated up like a splotch of blood under a snow-white cloth. “I just can’t believe what he’s trying to do.” Aiben shook his head. Lev-9 responded with silence.
In those last few moments, Hegirith Oand-ib had shown him his destiny. He was trying to accept that incredible responsibility imposed upon him, one he didn’t want, nor felt he deserved, especially if it meant Oand-ib’s death. How much did Lev-9 really know about the grand plan that had commandeered his fate? For now, at least, Aiben would remain quiet about it.
They stored the last of their containers in the hoverflyer’s rear compartment and climbed into the control cabin. Lev-9 fired up the powerful electromagnets that would slip them along the highway to the main spaceport in the center of the city.
“Let’s go before I change my mind and really go after Hegirith Oand-ib,” Aiben said.
He buckled himself into the safety harness. The low-pitched hum of the hoverflyer drowned out the sound he made as he choked back the tears that ambushed him once again. It was then that Aiben knew he would never see his old teacher, his anab, alive again.
The latticework of Roonagor’s metropolitan landscape had come alive; the city was under full-scale attack. Clawed troop carriers and hovering assault vehicles clambered their way through the forest of ruined concrete and steel buildings. They spewed out soldiers to wreak their havoc and energy beams to cut into any of the enormous buildings still standing. The edifices toppled in on themselves in mushroom clouds of debris. They left avalanches of boulder-sized wreckage in their wake as they tore their way to the center of the city.
Thick dust
kicked up into the air and created an asphyxiating tide that swept forward. It threatened to choke to death any living thing caught in it. The shock troops wore nanomech-powered battle armor that grew over their faces and filtered out the noxious particles. They continued their invasion unimpeded.
By the time the small hoverflyer shot out of a crumbling side street towards the spaceport, Magron Orcris’s forces were mere seconds behind them. Besti’s port was a network of interconnecting landing pads and docking bays floating in the middle of the city. Bridges radiated from the center like spokes and connected to garages and port authority buildings on the rim. Hoverflyers of all shapes and sizes were pouring into the port simultaneously.
Lev-9 maneuvered their flyer down a spoke into the chaotic crowd of pedestrians and vehicles already congesting the landing pads. Most of the people had come to escape the battle in their own ships, or to find other means, legally or illegally, of leaving the planet and making a run for it.
The Protectorate’s war machine had already reached the rim of the spaceport, howling through the city like a wind before a storm front. The advancing gale swept up most of the people before they made it to their ships. Electric-blue cannon fire zished down the transit-ways, stirring up the remaining hysterical crowd with multicolored explosions from several hoverflyers. The living mass wavered back and forth as people hit by the azure beams went down underfoot. Zenzani soldiers pushed through what little resistance remained and started scrambling down the spokes.
Aiben eyed the desperate crowd surrounding their flyer as the troops closed in on them. Although his primary training in the Cybermancer Guild had been to interface with computer systems such as the hyperportals, it had also taught him other skills to a lesser extent. One of those skills was the use of nanomechs as biological protective and regenerative agents on the behalf of others. Seeing so many citizens suffering tugged at him to use those rudimentary skills, but he knew it would be futile.
Lev-9 stopped the flyer and disembarked with a bounce. He stood motionless in front of the vehicle and looked at a pile of smoking rubble. The walls of a blackened building had crumbled like a burnt crust before them. A destroyed freighter lay half-buried beneath fragments of cement, steel, and glass.
Aiben yelled at Lev-9 over the horrific bedlam, but the mechanoid didn’t respond. He allowed one last nervous look back at the wounded and fleeing citizens. Soldiers had already broken through at the edge of the crowd and their beams were sweeping down a path like scythed wheat. Raw fear hurled him over the side of the hoverflyer and propelled him to Lev-9’s side.
“What are you doing? If we don’t get moving, we’re going to die!”
The screams, the explosions, and the cough of energy cannons were deafening. Not more than twenty feet from them, a burst struck the ground and sent shattered cement and dirt into the air.
“Come on, let’s get to our ship!”
The carnage had swept away any thought Aiben ever had of staying behind.
Lev-9’s cranial ring rotated until the optical sensors centered on Aiben’s face. The photoreceptors stared at him for several seconds. Then, without a word, the ring swiveled back towards the destroyed spaceship that lay buried there.
“You mean...”
“Our transportation,” Lev-9 said.
“You have a back-up ship to get us off-planet, right?”
A sudden burst of pain hit Aiben’s arm.
“I think Oand-ib hired just one freighter.”
“Now what are we going to do?” Aiben said.
“I was hoping you had a suggestion.”
Aiben felt a familiar presence in their surroundings. Even in such thunderous confusion, his nano-enhanced senses remained tuned to the stimuli they were intimate with. He scrutinized the crazed multitude, but couldn’t see Ballis anywhere. He stretched out the nano-sensors tickling his mind and swept them across the crowd. About a hundred feet to their left, his friend hunkered down behind a toppled statue. He was clutching a rifle in the crook of one arm and waving at Aiben with the other.
“Aiben, over here!” The cybermancer’s ear filtered out Ballis’s baritone from the background noise. He grabbed one of the carbon-composite cords wrapped around Lev-9’s arm and pulled him in the man’s direction.
“This way!”
Man and mechanoid sprinted towards the statue. They navigated through a barrage of energy bolts, and leapt over the broken stone like foxes fearing for their lives in a hunt. They crouched down behind the fallen figure beside Ballis.
“Do you still remember how to use one of these?” Ballis picked up a dirt-encrusted rifle and thrust it in Aiben’s direction.
“Sure, I can handle it,” Aiben lied. “I’ve had some training shooting energy rifles, you know.”
Aside from hez alim, and a few courses using antiquated weapons like the one that Achanei had carried from the Citadel, the Cybermancer Guild didn’t really train their halath’hi in the ways of combat.
“These aren’t just practice rifles, Aiben. That’s real firepower there. They shoot armor-piercing plasma laced with nanomechs that will burn right through Protectorate armor. Don’t ask me where I got them.” Ballis was in his element, a hardened war-dog under fire.
Aiben hefted the rifle and turned it over in his hands, trying to get a feel for the weight. He very much doubted Achanei’s rifle had been armor piercing. In fact, he suspected Besti’s military couldn’t even afford such weapons.
“It shouldn’t be too hard to figure out.” That was desperation speaking.
“Maybe I should’ve spent more time teaching you the finer art of combat instead of how to fix a shield regulator, huh?” Ballis winked. “I shouldn’t have relied on those cybermancers to teach you how to fight.”
Now wasn’t the time to bandy words with his friend, he took the comment in stride. “We have to get off-planet, Ballis.”
“That’s the idea behind you using that gun.”
Ballis motioned with the barrel of his rifle towards a docking bay that lay some fifty yards away. Something had already blown the door in, and through the saw-toothed hole, Aiben saw Raatha’s beloved ship. Raatha lay next to the door, smoking, reddish-black ooze pooling around him. His angry face from the Citadel’s great hall flashed in Aiben’s memory. Despite the man’s fate, a feeling of elation rushed over Aiben. They were going to make it.
Three Zenzani shock troopers suddenly mowed their way through a line of helpless Roonagorians and advanced towards the same bay. Excitement sizzled away in a fire of angst. If they tried to make a run for it, they would be in the troopers’ line of sight and cut down. Aiben’s eyes questioned Ballis. The man nodded.
“Are you crazy? We’ll be out in the open. They’ll see us and light us up for sure.”
“They’ll see us, but if we send the mech ahead to draw their attention, we can lay down cover. If they’re surprised enough, we can target them first. We just might pull it off.”
“How about it? Do you think you can do it, Lev?”
Lev-9 nodded his head. “I can’t take more than two direct hits, but I can do it.”
It was strange to see a mechanoid nod. Did his programming make him emulate a human like that, or had he acquired the habit by observation? Aiben didn’t have time to be that curious, though.
“Let’s do it then,” Aiben said.
Ballis reached into his pocket and extracted the ident-disc to access Raatha’s ship. The small, optical chit caught a ray of sunlight and scattered it. He angled it away from the revealing light and handed it to Lev-9.
“Aiben, you take the one on the far right, I’ve got the other two. Get ready mech...” Ballis raised a finger, waited, and then sliced it through the air. “Go!”
Lev-9 bolted towards the docking bay, his hydraulic legs pumped much faster than an ordinary human’s did. Ballis and Aiben popped up from behind their stone-carved shield and squeezed off energy bolts, one after the other, at the three soldiers.
Two of the trooper
s were confused at who their real target should be. They hesitated for a moment before bringing their weapons to bear. Ballis had just enough time to bring them down, smoldering holes burned in their chest armor. The third man squeezed off a shot at Lev-9 but missed the mechanoid. Aiben’s energy bolt had hit him in the shoulder and knocked his aim off center. A third bolt from Ballis’s gun felled the last man.
Aiben and Ballis were just seconds behind Lev-9. When they sprang through the jagged hole in the bay door, the mechanoid had already lowered the boarding ramp and disappeared inside. Several minutes later, Raatha’s hi-jacked ship rocketed out of the bay and accelerated to orbital velocity with the three refugees aboard.
Chapter 7
Transportation in Roonagor had ground to an utter halt. Achanei pushed through the confusion that congested the streets and left the Citadel behind. She struck out on foot towards city center where only the spaceport could help her reach Hegirith Oand-ib and the other halath’hi in time. Her family’s launch was stowed away there in a private berth. When she reached the rim of the port, she found it was even more crowded with desperate citizens than the Citadel had been. It would be a fight through a chaos of humanity to reach the docks and she wasn’t the only one that struggled to reach them.
Achanei had been palming her eyes as she ran from the Citadel. Tears had streaked her face, but her sprint had all but burned them away now, leaving only the salt to tighten up the skin of her cheeks. Her eyes were swollen, red, and itching. She wouldn’t let another tear run down her face until she held Aiben in her arms again. If that day ever came, she would admit to him how much she loved him. She had wanted to tell him in the Citadel’s practice hall, not knowing if she would ever see him again, but hadn’t dared. He would never have let her go if she did.
Until her arrival at the Citadel, she had spent her entire life on Feillia Prime. Schooling from one of the oldest and most far-reaching of the Noble Houses left in the Seven Guilds filled her youth. Her training encompassed everything from table etiquette at a court social event to infiltrating a rival House and gathering intelligence. Most fulfilling of all had been her tutelage at the hands House Feillion’s personal cybermancer, her old and caring uncle.