Her father, head of House Feillion, loved her like no other. She was his only daughter, and although her brother was heir, their father treated her with the same respect. He even gave her better opportunities on Feillia Prime. Even so, he had been afraid to let her out into the galaxy.
It took the death of his brother and the coaxing of his naval commander, a close family friend, to make Jorod realize she had outgrown Feillia Prime. There would be advantages to teaching her ways beyond those of the Noble Houses. She had known exactly what she wanted to do. She would finish the training her uncle had started.
Achanei would never forget meeting the other cybermancers her first day on Besti. One in particular caught her attention and never let go of it. He was confident and strong, yet he had an air of vulnerability about him she had never experienced in a man before. There was even a hint of sadness about him. He drew at her, never having known such men from the courts of her homeworld. His name, she would later find out, was Aiben. Thoughts of him rolled around inside her head that entire day and she made up her mind she would get to know him.
Later that same night, she wandered the halls of the Citadel, trying to acclimate herself to her new surroundings. The sound of cracking sticks came from one of the rooms nearby and drew her through a sliding door standing halfway open. The smell of polished wood floor, worked-up body, and hot oiled metal pummeled her. The room was empty except for a man who moved in the center of it with a mechanoid.
She lowered herself cross-legged onto the slick wood and watched flesh and steel dance in combat. The man was wielding a pair of ornate fighting sticks carved from cheeba, chipped, and notched. The mechanoid, possessing an A.I. that wasn’t sentient but adaptive, was whirling around him, a pair of old beaten cheeba sticks clamped in appendages that were a blur. The man’s own sticks were always there to intercept and parry each blow.
It looked like an impossible ballet of wills. The man finally fought his way through the mech’s defenses and slammed the end of one stick into its deactivation plate. The mechanical opponent fell silent. Aiben dropped to his knees panting.
Achanei clapped furiously. Aiben looked up and frowned at her.
“Sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have come in on you like that.”
“I knew you were there the moment you came through the door,” he said.
“I wasn’t trying to sneak up on you. I know better than to try that with a cybermancer. I meant sorry for invading your privacy.”
“Sure.” He mopped his forehead with the back of his hand.
“That was incredible,” she said, undaunted. “I’ve never seen fighting forms like that before.”
She stood up and ventured the rest of the way into the room. She stretched out her hand to him and offered to help him up, although she knew he didn’t need it.
“You’re one of the new halath’hi, right?”
“Yes.” Achanei wiggled her fingers. A lop-sided grin played across her lips. “Come on, I’m not going to bite you.”
Aiben’s frown became more intense, but he gripped her hand and let her pull him to his feet. She had seen that same look on other men she had approached first. Later, he would joke that he couldn’t have refused her. She was just too beautiful. She teased him right back. He had lost to the power of love-at-first-sight.
His eyes were searching green, flecked with brown. He was well-toned and wide-shouldered like the men she’d known at court, but in contrast to them, his hair was semi-long, a mix of bronze hues, matted with sweat from the work-out. She found it attractive, having been raised among men who cut their hair military style. She found him very handsome, but that first hint of sadness, not his looks, had hooked her interest.
“How can you move like that?” She followed him over to the side of the room where he wrapped the cheeba sticks in a multicolored cloth.
“I hear you’ve already had some cybermancer training, right?” He stuffed the sticks into a bag and threw it over his shoulder. He looked at her for a brief second, and then looked down at his feet.
She nodded. “Uh, huh.”
“But you’ve never had training in hez alim?”
“No, I haven’t. My uncle was pretty old. He was the one who trained me. He’s dead now and that’s why I’m here. My father’s friend taught me a few fighting forms from my homeworld, but I can’t do anything like you just did.”
“It’s the nanomechs. You learn how to use them to increase your senses during a fight. Hez alim is about seeing, hearing, and feeling things sooner than a normal person would and reacting to them faster. You have to be careful, though. If you depend on the nanomechs too much and you get distracted, you might not hear them and you’ll get hit in the head, or worse.”
She nodded, half-listening, but fixated on him nonetheless. He continued to look at the ground.
Over the next several months, Oand-ib put Aiben, who was a senior halath, in charge of helping Achanei fine-tune her control over the nanomechs. She placed herself under his wing without argument. It took him a while to quit looking at his feet and to look at her. She continued to enjoy watching him in the practice hall, never having gotten good at hez alim herself. What she loved most, however, were the training runs he guided her on through the hyperportals. She found nothing more satisfying than cyberlinking to the hypernet and jumping portals with him at her side.
As they spent more and more time together, she opened up to him, searching for the root of his sadness. A wonderful friendship grew out of it. It wasn’t too long before he revealed to her the story of Nairom. It scared her to know the loss of his friend had affected him so much, but by then, she already found herself in love with him. After almost a year together, she was ready to admit to him her feelings, but could never do it. Just yesterday, she had decided she was ready to tell him when all of this had happened.
Achanei had been so preoccupied with the past, that by the time she had threaded her way through the devastation at the spaceport and reached House Feillion’s private berth, she didn’t even register the danger that was waiting for her inside the launch. Aiben’s words that first night in the Citadel about the dangers of being distracted had been prophetic.
CHAPTER 8
The hyperportals stitched together the Seven Guilds and Protectorate space with a network of holographic information. The chatter still being broadcast from the free Guild systems over that network painted a grim portrait of the Protectorate conquering yet another planet. Rumors abounded that Magron Orcris would force every cybermancer to join him, or die. Oand-ib would soon find out whether such talk was fact or fantasy.
The outlying structures of Roonagor splayed out like giant chunks of shattered pottery. A fresh column of hovering assault vehicles (HAVs) approached the city’s perimeter, vibrating harbingers of final judgment. Bits of seared, twisted wreckage swirled underneath the armored vehicles. Ground troops marched alongside, wearing nanomechanized armor, breathing life through the ultra-strong filters growing around them. Leading the dreadful formation at the point was the personal HAV of Magron Orcris, expelled from a drop ship that lay several miles behind.
A hundred feet forward from the advancing forces, amid the blackened crumbs of a toppled trading complex, a lone figure clad in maroon robes stood waiting. His garments fluttered in the wind like the wings of a giant bird of prey ready for a fight. The ill-equipped and depleted military force that the government had mobilized to protect Roonagor held back behind him along the edges of the demolished city. A group of frightened cybermancer students huddled there with them. They all hoped the robed man would save them from having to commit their lives to a lost cause.
Magron Orcris’s HAV came to a halt. Infantry and all military ordinance immediately ceased forward momentum. The hatch of the war machine rose and an armored warrior and a cloaked demon ascended from its depths. The malevolent cybermancer and his vile henchman picked their way through the battle-scarred ruins towards Oand-ib.
Soon
, the three stood midway between the tremendous Zenzani battle forces and the minuscule Roonagor defense forces. Selat Teeloo’s cloak mirrored Oand-ib’s robes and whipped around him in the wind as if they were ready to take part in the avian war dance. Magron’s armor caught the sun and reflected the devastation that lay all around them.
“I regret we didn’t arrive earlier, Yoren-dal.” Magron’s helmet dissipated from his head and melted back into his black armor. “I’m happy to find you here. I see you have used the hazarat shal after all. I trust your skill at it is adequate and your memories are intact. You do recognize me, don’t you?”
“I couldn’t forget you, Nograth.” It was the face of the Haman Agar Hegirith, the Lord Conqueror.
“I hope you’re surprised,” Magron said.
“No, not surprised, just disappointed.” Oand-ib swallowed down hard on the lump of bile welling up in his throat. It was more crucial now than ever for Aiben to fulfill the destiny that had been set in motion for him. To think that the Hegirith’hi Shez had almost given up believing that Nograth would ever return. “I was right to recognize your machinations in Magron’s actions. My only surprise is that you were able to come upon us without warning.”
“That wasn’t too difficult. It’s been too long since we last saw each other, old friend.”
“It hasn’t been long enough.”
“Your feelings of moral obligation to these lesser beings still astounds me after all this time. Perhaps that’s what clouds your perception and is to blame for your inattentiveness during war. To find you here, still believing in the cause you call righteousness, this is not unexpected for a traitor.”
“I was never disloyal to myself. I always believed in Tulan’s way.”
“I suppose you were only dishonest in your service to me, but my plans have always been far beyond what you could have ever discovered by spying on me. The time has finally come, however, for you pay for your part in all of this.”
“I’ll pay any price if it brings your end.”
“Death by your hand? I think not.” An armored hand tugged a growing shatterproof hood over a smug face. Oand-ib shivered at the sound of metal scales scraping together.
“If not by my hand, then by those who believe as I do. Someone will eventually rise to the occasion if I can’t.” He regretted it almost as fast as he had said it. He willed the wind-swept flaps of his robe to tighten and craved for the garment to protect him from the mistake. It started to harden into a sheath of armor.
“You don’t mean Nairom, do you? Your failed mole? Yes, I know that the old spy has been playing the new spymaster. You won’t fool me twice, Yoren-dal. I regret to inform you that Nairom follows me now.”
If he knows about Nairom, Oand-ib’s mind raced, does he also know about Aiben? Realization was a cold chill coiling around his spine. Has Nairom set a trap that I have unwittingly sent Aiben to spring? Despite centuries of self-control, he almost caved in at this thought, but he was able to stay firm outward, if not trembling inside.
“No, not Nairom,” he told the half-lie. “There are plenty of cybermancers who know nothing of our history who will eventually take on the challenge if you continue to murder and corrupt our kind. Time will be the orator who finally announces your defeat.”
“Possibly. But today, time is mine to command!” Magron thundered. “I am the master of this planet now and you owe me your allegiance!”
Oand-ib remembered that voice from a thousand years ago.
“I’ll never join you. I choose death if you think you can kill me.” He knew he would die today, but it didn’t matter, his long wait was finally over. “Understand one thing, Nograth, whatever happens here today will be insignificant. It won’t stop what must be.” He prayed Aiben would be able to avoid any traps that could be waiting for him. With the hyperportal shut down, there was no way for him to contact his pupil and warn him. With Magron so close, he wouldn’t have been able to use shalal hiliz without compromising Aiben.
“You misunderstand what I am doing here, Yoren-dal. I don’t seek a way to defeat fate today, but only to exact my revenge!”
“Is your heart still so cold after all this time?”
“Pure devotion to one’s vision often kills compassion. Make no mistake; I’ll restore the glory of the Nograthi’aak!”
“Just so it can be torn down again?” Oand-ib’s fear sizzled away in the heat of rising anger.
“Let fate take me where it will as it always has!” Magron roared.
Selat Teeloo scurried several steps behind his black-armored master as two ancient consciousnesses collided with each other. Nograth’s mind sprang to life like the writhing and churning of crimson electrostatic lightning. It spewed energy bolts of thought that were needles of death. Oand-ib’s own mind erected an azure thought-shield to intercept the destroying lances. Where the two forces met, crackles of psionic energy sprayed out like purple fingers of fire.
The nexus teetered back and forth for several seconds until the lightning broke through the shield and slammed into Oand-ib’s mind with incredible force and blinding speed. The powerful mental energy wrapped itself around Oand-ib and crumpled him to the ground. The Roonagor defense forces watched as the master cybermancer fell, his life energy cocooned in death. A corrupt Haman mind seized what was left of Oand-ib’s mind and crushed it.
“Disappointing,” Selat Teeloo said. “Perhaps it is true that centuries of compassion diminished his power over time.”
Magron simply nodded silent agreement.
For several more seconds, no one in either force moved. The leaders of the Roonagor defense forces hoped that Oand-ib would rise like a phoenix from the burnt ashes of the city’s ruins. When he didn’t, the final massacre began.
***
Magron’s command over the cyberlink shattered the quiet, yet turbulent thoughts churning in Nairom’s head. The directive meant only one thing. His teeth ground down on the howl of grief that threatened to detonate across the control deck. His muscles tightened to spasm, but he kept himself in check.
This was the only moment of emotion he allowed himself before chasing it all away with a fireball of resentment. He forced himself to remember that he hadn’t been the one groomed for a grand destiny. Because of that, he had already started down the path of treachery. There was no turning back now without suffering even graver consequence. From now on, he would need to be very cautious. One stumble could throw his entire plan into the light where Magron would see it.
“Navigation Officer,” he called to the man in the chemical-imbued uniform, “is the portal ready for hypertransit?”
“Yes, sir, it finished warming up several minutes ago. We’re ready to bring it all the way online.”
“Do it, and get ready to send the lock-out code.” He couldn’t delay any longer now. He hoped that Oand-ib had timed it right to allow Aiben to escape.
Rivulets of sweat slicked his palms. After they reactivated the portal and sent the restrictive code, it would take a full thirty standard minutes to complete the lockout of the complex, spatial-warping field. It would be the only window of opportunity for Aiben to escape the system before Magron’s galactic web of tyranny caught Besti forever in its grip. Until then, they would blockade the portal and send anyone trying to escape straight into oblivion.
A hologram of Besti spurt from a fountain of light surrounding the fore deck. The stage was set to play out the tragedy. The simple touch of a button spawned chaos. A flock of ships rose from the planet, a thousand birds sent into frantic flight by the sudden hope of fleeing a catastrophe. Sputters of fire pricked the blackness as Protectorate fighters clipped their wings one by one. Nairom scrutinized every ship that came into view. He expected the profile that Oand-ib had sent him to materialize at any moment. Shortly, a baby-faced deck officer sitting at a bank of flickering sensors called for his attention.
“What is it Ensign?” Nairom didn’t turn from the churning hologram. “It better be important.”
>
“Yes, sir. I have been monitoring the traffic leaving the planet. No one has made it past our blockade yet. There’s one ship, though, in grid 76 by 54 by 95 that’s eluded our fighters so far. If we don’t intervene, I think they might actually make it to the portal, sir.”
Nairom moved behind the man, his jackboots tapped out the rhythm of authority. If he tried hard enough, he might even remember the man’s name, but he didn’t need to know it to command his obedience. The junior officer’s index finger thumped the changing data-screen in front of him and traced out the ship’s zigzag path.
Nairom watched the small ship evade the fighters that snapped at it. The fleeing ship jockeyed back and forth, spun towards the oncoming enemy, and then arced away on its shot-gunned thrusters at the last moment. It was a zero-g ballet of expert control. A sweeping beam left sliced-up Zenzani fighters in its wake.
“Should I have weapons control target the ship when she’s in range?”
He didn’t answer immediately. It wasn’t the silhouette, which Oand-ib had sent him. Still, he thought he recognized the ship. Nairom snapped together a connection with the Ma’acht Vor’s sensor grid through a cyberlink, which fed into a secure channel. He zeroed in on the careening craft. Data poured into Nairom’s thoughts.
One of the ship’s sensors, modified for this very purpose, detected the particular energy signature of nanomechs. Aiben was aboard. He was relieved that his childhood friend’s idealism hadn’t sentenced him to death along with Oand-ib. Yet he was curious whether Aiben was taking flight to Mora Bentia as planned. Sensors also exposed a mechanoid and another human. Judging by the way that the ship was making good its escape, he suspected that human was Ballis.
“No, don’t target them,” Nairom said.
The ensign’s eyes widened. Instead of giving the man an explanation, he turned to address the Navigation Officer once again.
“How much longer before the portal’s code is burned in, Lieutenant?”
“Twelve more standard minutes,” the man said. “Should I take the hyperportal back offline before the ship reaches it?”