The Marque’s defenses were on high alert. The Archmage had ordered that no ship was to be permitted to land unless first cleared by her. All vessels approaching the Marque were to be tracked by its weapons systems, and automatically targeted. If they did not break off their approach, they were to be destroyed.
The Marque was huge, and thousands of Sisters lived within its walls. Ani had exiled or isolated all of Syrene’s loyalists, and taken care of the spies that Dyer had cultivated, but even she could not purge the Sisterhood of every possible source of opposition and dissent. There were those who resented her for her youth and her arrogance, and others who hated her simply for being Earth-born. Some were ambitious and dreamed of being Archmage, and some knew that any such hopes for themselves were futile, but were angry and bitter enough to destroy that which they could never aspire to be.
Vena had found one such Sister, just one, and had carefully groomed her during the years of Ani’s rule, keeping her identity a secret, holding her in reserve for just such a day as this one. Her name was Soler, and she and Ani had one thing in common beyond the robes that they wore: Soler, like Ani, had loved the Gifted called Tanit.
Now, as the two approaching Securitat ships were ordered not to land, and the guns of the Marque locked on them, Soler—clever, hurt, bitter, and a genius, in her way—activated the virus that had been lurking in the Marque’s defenses for almost a year. Guns were rendered impotent, landing pads left undefended, and doors remained unlocked. By the time Toria tracked her down and killed her, the first cruiser had touched down, and the Marque’s hallways were already echoing with the sounds of screaming and dying.
• • •
The second Securitat cruiser was some minutes behind the first, having been delayed by congestion in the routes off Illyr as Diplomatic and Civilian craft reacted in panic to the Military assault. The cruiser was now unable to find a safe landing pad; as soon as the breach in the Marque’s defenses had become apparent to the Sisterhood, the Nairenes had rushed to manually secure as much of their stronghold as they could, barricading doors and parking lifters and loaders on the landing pads, making it impossible for a ship to use them without incurring damage. With no other option, Keyra, the pilot of the cruiser, had ordered her gunner to aim for a light loader that was currently lying on its side on a pad adjoining one of the Marque’s huge greenhouses. This meant bringing the cruiser down until it was almost level with the loader; Keyra didn’t want to leave a crater on the pad that might endanger her cruiser. The gunner, Corae, hit the loader side-on with a heavy pulse blast, reducing it to scattered pieces of metal and clearing the way.
Sisters emerged from a doorway beside the pad, and began firing handheld pulse weapons at the cruiser. Corae turned the cannon on them, reducing them to their constituent parts just as she had done with the loader.
“Prepare for landing,” said Keyra. They were the last words that she ever spoke. The Revenge’s first torpedo struck before the cruiser had even touched the pad, and the second turned it into only a memory. While it burned, the Varcis came in beside it, and the Mechs emerged to join the fight.
• • •
The explosion from the cruiser’s destruction shook the Marque, sending dust down upon Vena and her surviving Securitats. The Sisters had been sturdier in their defense than Vena had anticipated—in fact, had she not known better, she might have said that it was almost as though they had been anticipating just such an assault, and only Soler’s sabotage had facilitated Vena’s entry into the Marque. In the aftermath of the blast she tried to raise Keyra on her communicator, but to no avail, and she understood that no reinforcements would be coming to join her. Pulse blasts came from in front and behind, and a Securitat fell to the ground beside her. Vena returned fire, killing the pair of security Sisters before her. She instructed the four remaining Securitats to dig in and hold back the Sisters, for Vena was almost at her destination. All was not lost. If she could capture the Archmage, the Sisters would be forced to stand down while Vena negotiated their surrender.
But, in truth, Vena knew that she would not allow Ani to live, just as she knew that she herself would never escape the Marque alive, not now. And what did it matter, after all? If the Military had managed to get through the Melos wormhole, then the war was over, and a reckoning was coming for Vena and those like her. There would be no mercy for her, just as she would show no mercy to Ani Cienda. The Archmage would not outlive her.
Vena arrived at Ani’s chambers, marked on the map that Soler had smuggled out to her. If Ani was not here, then Vena would just make her final stand in this place, but she was certain that this was where Ani would have sought refuge. Soler had told her that the Archmage’s chambers functioned as a secondary control room if the main one was seized. From there, the Archmage could direct and coordinate the defense of the Marque.
Vena hit the door release. A Sister turned to face her, and Vena recognized Liyal, one of Ani’s devoted bodyguards. Liyal fired a pulse, but it was off target, while Vena’s was not. Her shot took Liyal in the chest, killing her instantly.
Vena moved quickly into the chambers. To her right knelt a Sister in red robes, apparently meditating before a wall of ancient books. Vena stepped toward her, and the Sister started to rise. Her veil fell away, and Vena saw the face of Ani Cienda watching her calmly. Screaming, years of barely controlled rage pouring out of her, Vena threw the Archmage to the floor, then holstered her pulser and pulled the knife from its scabbard. She grabbed Ani by the hair, not even stopping to wonder at the lack of fight in her. Vena raised Ani again to her knees, exposing her neck, then drew the blade across her throat. There was a gush of blood, and Ani’s body shook.
Vena released her hold and stepped back, watching the body fall, waiting for Ani to die at last. The Securitat was breathless, panting, but she was smiling too. Finally, it was done.
The Archmage’s body grew still. The blood stopped flowing, to be replaced by a stream of milky fluid that slowly became a trickle. The Archmage slowly stood, and now Vena saw for the first time the scarring behind her ear and around her hairline, and noticed that this figure was slightly shorter than Ani Cienda.
Vena backed away from the Mech, shaking her head in disbelief, and as she did so a terrible pain shot through her body, beginning in her back and working its way through the core of her being until it seemed that it must surely erupt from her chest. There was a coldness to it, and then the chill was gone, and there was only the warmth of her own blood flowing from the wound. She turned slowly. Meia stood behind her, and in her hand was a blade not dissimilar to Vena’s own: a little thinner, perhaps, but just as sharp. Somewhere in the distance all firing ceased, and there was only silence.
“Any last words?” asked Meia.
“Bitch,” said Vena as Meia’s knife finished its work.