Chapter 25

 

Smoke was pouring into the air faster than the atmosphere regulators could clear it away. Shapes loomed out of the thick, soupy air as the fleeing Ntja scrambled up a stairway to the level above the flight deck. She leapt toward them, her knives glinting dully in the subdued lighting, and another towering warrior fell back with a yelp, its thick, black blood spraying up into the ceiling.

Angara came down in a predatory crouch and paused for a moment, lowering herself against a skeletal stairway leading from the flight deck of the executive docking bay up to the entrances on the raised mezzanine level. The chaos swirling around them was nearly complete, with shouts and cries echoing off the low ceiling as the Variyar warriors pushed the Ntja defenders back toward the exits.

The deck behind her was littered with dead; rivulets of blood tracing a many-colored pattern over the floor plating. In the drifting smoke it was impossible to tell if they were doing well. Except that they must have been, given that the resistance was falling back, and the surviving horned warriors with their heavy armor and tall, bladed weapons were pressing up the stairs and grav-lifts onto the raised area around the sunken ship deck. But the bodies were piled high around her, those sporting the bronze enhancement blisters of the Ntja and the black, back-swept horns of the Variyar in near-equal numbers.

The flight deck had been filled with Council soldiers, their squat transports forming defensive positions along the outer lip of the chamber. The pilot of the first Variyar attack ship had placed his heavy, armored charge directly between two of the ships on the deck and smashed through, ripping a hole in the defensive perimeter. Warriors had poured out, taking the Ntja line from behind, and opened more holes in their defenses. She had been able to slip the Yud’ahm Na’uka up and over the tangled mess, sweeping it around, defensive weapons blazing, to touch down gracefully in the open space beside the bent and smoking hull of the first Variyar ship.

The battle had devolved quickly after that, as K’hzan’s demonic forces flooded the bay. The suppression shields had dropped soon after they arrived, silencing her shoulder guns before she even got a chance to use them, and the work had gotten close and bloody. The crash and clang of heavy swords on graceful polearms had echoed through the chamber, a glittering counterpoint to the shouts, screams, and moans of the fighters. But even this chaos was to be expected. The only dissonant note in the battle had been Justin, whose barely-contained nervous laughter had surged to prominent, puzzling life several times since they had jumped onto the deck.

In the noise and violence of the moment, she had been unable to ask him what he found so amusing, but she assumed it had something to do with the war cries of the Ntja, as the laughter would invariably slip his control each time a particularly loud sample erupted from their foes. She had never seen the large, snub-nosed fighters in action before, but she saw nothing particularly funny about their howling, barking challenges.

Justin, apparently, found it hilarious.

Once again the dark-skinned Human had been enjoying the efficacy of his small handgun, saving his shots for pivotal moments in the fighting while hovering around just behind her for most of the battle. She knew he had saved her life at least twice. The Ntja had threated to overrun her forward position, only to be blasted off their feet by the small Earth weapon wielded by the cackling Human.

“How close are we to the control center?” It was taking some getting used to, seeing Justin without the implants that had leached the color from his eyes. She was finding that she preferred their dark, natural color.

She shook her head. What business did she have with any kind of preference? And for a Human?

But there was too much to do, and not so much time she could waste any examining her own confusing feelings.

“Very close, only a few moments’ walk.” She put one hand up to temper his growing smile. “But there will be many Ntja between here and there.” She nodded up to the mezzanine, nearly empty now as the Council forces fell back to defend the control center. “We’ve still got quite a bit of fighting left to go before we can get you through those doors.”

She did not want to think about what might happen if they made it to the control center and found the blast door closed. They needed the Skorahn more than ever, without Marcus. Justin had shown no affinity for the medallion at all, and only the defenses of Penumbra, under their control, were going to save them when the Council fleet came back around.

“Commander.” The guttural voice caused Justin to jump, but it was just another piece of information to her mind, as she tried to maintain some semblance of control around herself. She turned and nodded to the Variyar warrior standing behind her.

She was not sure when they had started calling her ‘commander’, but she could appreciate their confusion. She was not entirely sure what she should be called, either. She certainly was not acting as a very good bodyguard for Marcus, anyway.

A moment of despair threatened to crack her battle focus, and she shook it off. Right now it did not matter what her place here was, only that she was defending the city that had provided her a home when nowhere else would.

Commander had a pretty nice ring to it, though.

“The administrator’s shuttle has reported in.” It was hard to read a Variyar’s expression; the hard, flat planes of their face barely moving from the snarling sneer nature had given them. But whether it was something in his eyes, or his tone, or maybe she was just getting better at understanding her stoic allies, she thought this one seemed uneasy.

His words came back to her and a cold knot in her stomach she had been doing the best to ignore loosened just a little bit. “Are they safe? How are they? Where are they?”

The Variyar’s black eyes widened in an expression she really wished she could understand, and he looked away. “The administrator’s transport failed before they could reach their destination. It was forced into an improvised landing some distance away.”

“Improvised landing?” Justin pushed his way between her and the towering warrior. “What the hell does that mean? They crashed?”

The flat black stare failed to subdue the Human, and the Variyar blinked once before replying. “Yes.” He said, his gravelly voice low. “They crashed.”

The look Justin gave her as he turned away was haunted. But there was no comfort she could give at the moment, and she only touched him lightly on the shoulder while turning back to the warrior.

“Was there any report after the landing?”

 “Nothing, Commander.”

That meant, for all they knew, Justin was their only hope now. They needed to fight their way through to the control center as quickly as possible and get that medallion around his neck. With luck, he might be able to get the defensive array to turn on the Council’s forces yet.

She felt her stomach drop. It wasn’t much of a hope, she knew.

 

*****

 

There was no air left in the transport. There had been a moment of horrific, cyclonic winds as they crashed, everything had gone dark, and then the smoke had been whisked away, along with the last remnants of atmosphere. Something snapped over Marcus’s face, wreaking havoc again on his night vision, and then everything came into stark relief as a bright, sharp light flooded into the tumbled passenger compartment through several rents in the hull of their downed ship.

There were no internal lights, none of the viewing fields were active, and without windows, there would have been no light at all. He heard the coughing and the shuffling of bodies nearby, but the sounds came to him muffled as if heard from a great distance. He turned and saw many of the Variyar warriors rising, shaking off the effects of the crash and reaching for their stored weapons. Many more remained scattered across the cabin, unmoving.

Turning back to the nose of the craft he was shocked to see the pilot’s chair empty, an enormous slumped shadow collapsed in the angle of the floor and the bulkhead. Marcus stared at the shape in confused silence and then made to rise, but his body would not obey him. As he looked down at his restraints in mild confusion, a shape maneuvered past him and bent down to the check on As’vhikudu. Sihn Ve’Yan’s dark robes created an odd effect as she moved through the slashes of hard light, sliding in and out of shadow.

“You need to get up now, my friend.” Marcus looked dumbly to the side, mildly alarmed at how slowly his head seemed to be responding, to find the bright little form of Khet Nhan bending over him. The little alien’s face looked worried, his big eyes reflecting vermillion light back from the bright bars hanging in the air around them.

He felt the restraints across his lap and chest give way. He slumped forward, almost falling onto his face, but the little mystic caught him with strong, wiry arms and coaxed him up into a standing position. “We need to leave here, I think. You mentioned the Sanctuary, to As’vhikudu?”

Marcus looked down at the furry features, then over to where the robed and hooded figure of the little creature’s neophyte was rising like the Grim Reaper over the body of the pilot.

He had mentioned Sanctum, hadn’t he? But why? He couldn’t remember. In fact, he couldn’t remember much. He wrinkled his face up in thought, trying to batter at his memory, to dredge any little detail up that might explain his current situation. It felt like something sticky was stretched across his face.

Suddenly, Marcus felt like there was a plastic bag stretched over his head. He stopped breathing, convincing himself that he couldn’t, and his body dropped into a terrified crouch. He panicked, hands rising to claw the thing off before it could suffocate him.

“No!” Nhan said, slapping his hands away and then grabbing his wrists. “It’s just the emergency rebreather membrane!”

Marcus stared at the creature in uncomprehending dismay. He grunted with the effort, trying to raise his hands to his face. Why was Khet Nhan trying to kill him?

The slap rocked him back on his heels and he staggered, looking up in shocked pain to see Ve’Yan standing before him. Her mouth twitched as if she was having a very hard time fending off a smile.

“It’s a field generated by your collar.” She said the words slowly, and that helped. It didn’t help that she said them as if she was talking to an idiot child. “It’s the reason you’re not dead right now.” She gestured to the hull breaches, and the true horror of his situation came crashing down on him.

He should be dead. They should all be dead. They were exposed to vacuum, to the unforgiving void that surrounded the city beyond the safety of its towers and the Concourse.

“No one told you about the emergency systems built into almost all clothing worn in Penumbra?” The genuine curiosity in Nhan’s voice did nothing for the Human’s self-esteem.

And as he stood there, being held up by the diminutive but terrifying little mystic, the sting of the girl’s slap still tingling across his cheek, he remembered. Remembered the briefings, one of the first conversations he had, in fact, with …

His heart skipped a beat. Iphini Bha had told him about these emergency precautions. He had been impressed with a technology that would have seemed like magic on Earth, but was so simple to the Galactics that they sewed them into the collars and cuffs of their everyday clothing.

He looked down and now he could see the faintest shimmer of a field surrounding his hands as well.

He was safe from the vacuum.

“Administrator, we cannot stay here.” One of the Variyar had approached while he was suffering his minor breakdown. The surviving warriors, about ten in all, were gathering at the rear of the transport, around the main access hatch. He tried to see some rank insignia or some other way to tell the demon-faced fighter from his friends, but there wasn’t anything Marcus could see.

“Where did we land? Are we close to Sanctum?” It was coming back to him now, although he still couldn’t tell why, exactly, he had suddenly decided the ancient ship in the middle of the city was where he should be headed. Something was pulling him toward that silent, slick black wall.

“We have landed midway between the Red Tower and the Ring Wall. We have a long walk ahead of us if you wish to reach Sanctum.”

“And the Ntja will not be cooperative.” Another Variyar called out from the group, his angry-looking face looming from the shadows.

“They will come, and soon.” Nhan nodded with a quick, jerking motion, rubbing his hands together. “Ambassador Taurani will want confirmation of your death. Time has never been our ally in this endeavor, but our situation is far bleaker now than it was before we were forced to alter our course.”

“If we are going to run,” Ve’Yan looked sour as she spoke. “We have to run now. But why Sanctum? An ancient ship, with no defenses, and countless vulnerabilities? What possible significance can it have for us now?”

Marcus stared at her, his mouth open. In this harsh light she looked far less Human than she normally did. Her skin, milk-pale, was too smooth, and the black designs that traced down the sides of her nose and across her cheeks looked far more like scales or plates than tattoos, this close. He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Her eyes flared at his honesty, and then narrowed, but as she leaned forward to respond, one of the Variyar shouted.

“Here they are!” The words echoed dully through their tactical communications net, and the Variyar warriors hefted their weapons, using the tears in the ship’s body to peer out into the harsh light. Several detonations rocked the wrecked hulk that surrounded them, and the tall demons pushed the muzzles of their weapons through the cracks to return fire, their black eyes flaring with eager light.

“We need to leave now.” Nhan pulled him toward a large gap where the entrance hatch had been twisted partly away. “Plenty of time to discuss contingency plans once we survive the current crisis.”

More impacts rocked the dead transport, and the bolts sizzling from the Variyar rifles was a near constant hiss in the background.

Marcus was staring at the Variyar weapons in confused fear. “Why are the guns working? Why isn’t the city suppressing them?”

The little creature continued to pull him toward the hatch. “I imagine, outside of the city’s halls and walls, there is nothing Penumbra can do. A suppression field takes a great deal of energy, and usually requires a massive array to project. The city must use the materials of the towers and corridors to project its internal fields.” He waved a paw vaguely around them. “Out here there’s not enough of the substance of the city around us to suppress the weapons.”

He didn’t know why, but hearing about limitations of the city always bothered Marcus. He paused, but Nhan pulled him more forcefully, and Ve’Yan gave him an ungracious push from behind.

“Where are we going?!” Marcus shouted, adrenaline pumping furiously through his veins despite the sounds of battle being nearly muted in the vacuum. “We can’t run all the way to Sanctum!”

The hatch crashed open, again with far less sound that he felt it should have, and they rushed out, moving behind the ship where its bulk would provide cover from the incoming fire. Marcus glanced back at the track the transport had made as it crashed, and he paused in awe at the devastation. The scar on the roof of the Concourse beneath them stretched back for more than a hundred yards, and passed through the corner of a tower, strewing wreckage in a wide fan stretching out from the point of impact.

It was a miracle the pilot had managed to save as many of them as she had.

Marcus looked around, but nothing he could see was familiar. When he had worn the medallion, knowledge of the city had seemed second nature to him. Once he had gained some familiarity with the Skorahn, he had only needed to wonder about something and he knew immediately where it was and how to get there. Here, wandering the outside of the city, he felt hopelessly disconnected from any kind of help or safety. And this far from the control center, moving farther away with each step, he wasn’t likely to regain access to the medallion anytime soon, either.

An expanse stretched all around him, towers rising from it, reminding him of the streets of a city back home, but only in the vaguest sense. There was no regular grid pattern, no long thoroughfares or boulevards. The towers rose up all around, and the flat spaces in between, if he thought of them as streets, were zig-zagging, random affairs.

Above them stretched the towers, and then the empty blackness of space. Marcus’s mind spun as the sensation crashed down upon him. For months he had been surrounded by the materials of the city. A faint crawling sensation along his spine made him wonder if he hadn’t developed the beginnings of agoraphobia in his time in Penumbra.

The light around them had a harsh quality, with no air or dust to defuse it. Shadows were harsh and razor-sharp, giving the whole scene a more alien aspect than anything he had seen since Angara had forced him from Earth.

Several towering warriors kept to the edges of the crumpled ship, snapping shots off into the bright, hard-lined distance. The rest of the Variyar formed up around Marcus and the mystics, looking to him with their flat black eyes for guidance. Nhan looked hopeful and curious, Ve’Yan’s lip was curled in disdain. 

More impacts struck the far side of the transport; it was only a matter of time before they found themselves flanked, taking fire from either side. He closed his eyes, trying to cudgel useful information out of his brain. He didn’t have the medallion anymore, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that the city wanted to help him, if he could only find the right way to ask.

His head jerked back up. “We need to get down into the Concourse.” He pointed to the building they had struck as they augured in, its interior blasted open to the void. “Through there, and then down.” He turned to Nhan. “The rail line looked pretty extensive. We should be able to catch a car nearby. How close does it come to Sanctum?”

Nhan shook his head, his hands raised as if fending off an attack. “We have not been here long, Administrator. We know less about the city than you do.”

One of the Variyar stepped forward. “The rail lines do not stretch out into the bronze plains. They end at the reservoir ring, at the Ring Wall.”

Marcus nodded. “Well, if we get that far, we’ll worry about the next step.” He pointed at the blasted hole in the tower again. “Get us there, first.”

 

*****

 

Angara wedged herself into the corner at the latest jog in the long hallway leading to the control center. The red-tinged shadows provided only the illusion of safety, however. They had been able to force the Ntja back, but they had paid for each step. She checked her knives, her lip curling in anger as she saw that one of the monomolecular blades was chipped, probably from the metal bubble she had forced it through to brain her latest victim.

Justin was panting heavily beside her. He had run out of his last reserve of ammunition for his primitive firearm some time before, and had picked up one of the heavy falchions carried by the Council troopers. She smiled at that. He had chosen one of the massive weapons in an attempt to impress her; she was almost certain. And ever since, he had been dragging the clumsy chunk of metal, completely incapable of wielding it effectively, but too embarrassed to leave it behind in favor of a more realistic blade.

“We’re almost there.” He was trying very hard not to appear winded, but his eyes were weary, and his dark skin had taken on a grayish pallor.

Around the corner they could hear the Ntja working themselves up into another countercharge. Justin seemed to find no further amusement in their harsh, barking shouts.

This time, when they came, there would be no Variyar with them to help blunt the attack. K’hzan’s warriors were forming up several jogs behind them, not yet ready to make the next attempt against the enemy. She had moved up to check on the Ntja, and Justin had followed her.

“I think we should go back.” She turned to him, jerking her head back the way they had come. “We will be of no use here alone if they attack now.”

Justin tried to give her a reassuring grin and hefted the slab-like sword in what he probably thought was a jaunty manner. “You don’t think we can take one for the team, give the big boys a rest?”

She was not sure if he was making a joke or if he had lost his senses, but the question was rendered moot as the howling down the hall rose to a crescendo that shook the walls. They were upon her before she could brace herself.

The first Ntja to come skittering around the corner was holding his falchion in two hands like a spear, thrusting it at them before he had even cleared the edge. His slobbering lips were pulled back from sharp, glistening teeth, and the small dark eyes gleamed with malice. He only sported a couple of the metallic enhancement domes, smaller than others they had seen. He was a low-status line soldier, incapable of higher-level tactical reasoning.

She allowed the long blade to slide past her, hyper-aware that Justin was on the other side, and then simply dipped one knife into his eye socket with a graceful gesture that saw the thug stumbling forward, dead on his feet. She spun beneath the next slash, hearing it whistling in before she could turn, and rammed the other knife up into the folds of flesh that covered that soldier’s neck. Dark blood sprayed out in a fan and he slumped to the side.

She stayed low, her knees bent in a crouch, and the blades flashed out, slicing upward and gutting the next two to pound around the corner. She stood, but three of the soldiers rushed her at the same time and she was overwhelmed. There was no way they could bring their long swords to bear against her in the tight confines of the hall, but their sheer weight bore her down to the hard deck plating. Shadows flashed above her as others jumped over their tangled pile, and her eyes flared as she realized they were going for Justin.

“Get the Human!” The voice was guttural, muffled by the bodies piled above her, but the words were unmistakable. “Kill him!”

They knew who the real threat was.

Angara screamed in frustrated rage, pushing her knives over and over again into the unyielding flesh that surrounded her. They writhed and pummeled at her, but could do nothing to stop the little blades. Unfortunately, even as she killed them, they slumped down over her, pressing her even more forcefully into the floor.

Somewhere above her she could hear shouts and growls and the dull clang of heavy Ntja falchions against each other. With each sound, her desperation grew, and she pushed herself through the tangle of leather-clad arms and legs, rising at last from the pile of bodies as if she were emerging from some foul ocean.

Justin grinned at her. His shoulders were heaving with his labored breathing, his face and arms were running with black Ntja blood, and he was using his stolen sword as a prop to hold himself up, surrounded by the hacked and mangled bodies of the remaining Council troops.

“You didn’t think I could do it.” It wasn’t a question, but he smiled wider, and she was nearly overcome with the desire to wrap him in her arms.

She forced herself to shrug. “I figured you’d hold your own.”

That got a reaction, and he stood a little straighter, gesturing to the bodies at his feet. “That’s it? I don’t get any credit for all this?”

His eyes had a wild cast to them, and she reminded herself that he was not a warrior. The Human before her had never killed another living being before this day. Given that, it was nearly miraculous that he was holding up as well as he was.

“You were incredible.” She kept the smile off her face, looking into his dark eyes with all the sincerity she could muster. But there was no repressing her instincts completely. “Of course, these were all small ones.”

He was sputtering, his returning smile faltering, when her ear began to itch with a warning of an incoming message. She held up her hand to silence Justin, nodding to the Variyar now moving up past them in the corridor, and listened to the report.

“Sanctum?” She tried to make sense of that. “Why would they go to Sanctum?” It was an old, decrepit ship; the oldest in the city. There was nothing to lend it any sort of strategic value at all.

Unless …

An image of the Alcove and its ancient black wall flashed into her mind; a towering doorway that had never opened to anyone in the history of the city.

No one knew what was behind the wall. Maybe Marcus knew something she did not? At least she knew he had survived the crash.

She turned back to the task at hand. The control center was close, and the resistance was folding. She looked over at Justin, collapsed against the wall behind her. He straightened again as she turned, pretending he had been standing tall all along, and looked around him with a nonchalance that would fool no one.

“Marcus is okay.” She owed him that news before they continued. “I think he’s got an idea.”

Justin’s face lit with relief, but then hardened. “Is he coming back this way? I’d rather not have to try to use the damned necklace if there’s any other option.”

She shook her head. “He’s got another idea, but there’s no telling if it will work, even if he can get through. We need to keep working to get you to the Skorahn, in case he fails, or…”

He looked at her for a moment, but then nodded before she was forced to finish the thought.

“Okay, well, let’s get to it, then.” He jerked his chin down the hall. “Care to take the lead? I don’t feel like I have anything else to prove at the moment.”

She looked at him, and half a dozen possible retorts fought for space on her tongue. But then she looked down at the dead enemies he had stacked on the floor, and she nodded with a slight smile.

“I can do that.”

Around them, the Variyar prepared for the final assault on the control center.

 

*****

 

The hatch over his head seemed innocuous considering what could lay on the other side. Marcus looked back at the line of beings following him. The two mystics stood nearest, Khet Nhan eager to continue, Sihn Ve’Yan resigned to whatever lunacy he forced upon them next. The young Thien’ha had turned sullen as they moved. Her dour anger seemed to grow, however, whenever they clashed with Council soldiers.

They had made it to the breached tower by eliminating the small squad of Ntja that had first come to investigate their crash scene. He had never actually seen the enemy, beyond the flashes of energy slashing out from an entranceway to a nearby tower. The Variyar had saturated the shadows beneath the overhang with their own rifle fire, and soon the blasts had slackened off.

Once inside the damaged tower, Marcus had followed his instincts, feeling almost as if he were moving through familiar territory again, although he had never visited this part of the city. They had gone down through the service tunnels, into the vast, echoing space of the empty Concourse. Apparently, Taurani had locked the city down, and once the fighting started, even those few who had been allowed to roam freely had retreated behind whatever safety they could find.

The rail line was as he remembered … or thought it should be. His memories and his expectations were blurring in a confusing way that he did not even try to articulate to the others. They took two of the service cars, which responded quickly to verbal commands, and met only token resistance from two more parties of Ntja.

Sooner than he wanted, the service rail had brought them to the very edge of the Concourse, and they were now standing at the Ring Wall. On the far side was the bronze expanse of the empty plains surrounding Sanctum. In his overflight with Iphini Bha, he had been distracted during their approach and departure, but he was almost certain that they had quite a long walk ahead of them, with no cover at all to hide them from the wary eyes of the Council forces.

He shrugged. There wasn’t much else they could do at this point. They had seen the Ntja shadowing them, and he knew by now the corridors between him and the Red Tower were probably filled with the enemy.

“If we turn back now, we die.” Ve’Yan’s spat the words in a bitter tone. “We don’t have a choice.”

Marcus turned back to the wall before them, stretching over thirty feet up to the roof of the Concourse far overhead. The hatch was similar to the blast doors that protected the control center or the primary docking bay, but there was no heavy security system that he could see. He put his hands up against the cool metal, fingers splayed, and bowed his head.

He intended to search for the deep, prayerful center of thought that had allowed him to operate the doors to the docking bay when they were making their escape. But as soon as he closed his eyes he felt a click behind his forehead and the surface beneath his hands gave one quick jerk and then fell away from his hands, rising up and away, into the wall.

The unmistakable shimmer of an energy field buzzed into being over the doorway, and the harshly-lit expanse of burnished bronze stretched out before them.

“We will need to watch for air cover.” The tallest of the Variyar muttered. He kept looking back at the vague figures lurking in the shadows behind them. “They will be in contact with their other forces. They will know where we are, and where we are going.”

Marcus nodded, his eyes fixed on the tiny lump of bronze glittering in the distance. The outer Wall of the Concourse swept away to either side, the tall shapes of the city’s towers rising up behind it in both directions. To the right the Wall diminished into the distance until it ended abruptly, over a mile away, at the precipitous Gulf. To the left, though, the wall stretched away, and then curved forward, encircling the vast empty space, until it reached the Gulf on the far side of Sanctum, tiny in the distance.

There was nowhere to hide out on that plain.

“There’s nowhere to hide in here, Marcus.” Khet Nhan’s voice was soft; it was as if the little creature had read his thoughts. He put a soft paw on Marcus’s shoulder. “If we stay here, this is where our cycle will end.”

Ve’Yan snorted, shaking her head with a violence that surprised him. “As if you have any further care at all for the cycles.” She shoved Marcus’s shoulder and pointed with one long finger out into the glaring light. “If we are going to go, let us go. Let us not dress it up in mystical terms, or pretend we are struggling valiantly in the service of something greater than ourselves.” She glared at Marcus, her face more pale than usual. “If we turn back now, we die.”

He didn’t fully understand her anger, but he nodded. What she said was true.

Glancing back over his little band, he was heartened to see the brawny Variyar ready to follow him out into the stark light. Their horns gleamed, their eyes aglow with the prospect of more violence.

With a nod, he pushed one shoulder through the energy field, felt the plane of the surface pass over his body, and the small field snap into place over his head. Flexing his fingers, he was glad to feel the now-familiar tightness there as well.

Outside on the bronze plain they moved at a brisk trot, the Variyar spreading out before and around him, seeking for targets. No avalanche of blaster shots fell upon them from the top of the Ring Wall behind them, but glancing back he could make out the shapes of Ntja standing there, watching, their weapons held ready across their chests.

“Why aren’t they shooting?” The flesh between his shoulder blades crawled.

“I believe that is a question best left to the dark silence.” The leader of the Variyar muttered. “So long as they are not shooting, the answer can do nothing but discomfit us.”

“Perhaps they know our quest is useless.” Ve’Yan spat.

“Perhaps they do not know enough to fear our quest,” offered Nhan.

Marcus found himself wishing he had a stronger impression one way or the other.

If there was some threat to the Council in his visiting Sanctum, with the amulet locked away in the control center with Taurani, he didn’t know what it was.

 

*****

 

The sounds of battle rang down the hall, as if the fighting might round one of the corners before them at any moment. Khuboda Taurani, Ambassador Plenipotentiary of the Galactic Council to the Free City of Penumbra, ran his tongue over the stiff brush of his brill in satisfaction. They had not yet reached the control center.

And now they never would.

He gestured with one arm, enjoying the dramatic sweep of the sleeve as he moved, and a score of Ntja soldiers in the black uniforms of Ochiag’s fleet moved past, holstering their guns and drawing their heavy, clumsy blades. Judging from the clangor down the corridor, the suppression field was in full effect here.

“Ambassador,” an Ntja soldier with extensive enhancement domes pushed through the reserve squads guarding him. The creature sketched a vague salute and stood stiffly, waiting to be recognized.

Taurani’s reputation for strict discipline and decorum had clearly spread to the fleet.

“Yes?” He turned to the newcomer, keeping his glittering eyes down the hall. As soon as he heard from his vanguard, he would be moving out toward the control center, where the Skorahn awaited him with the prospect of a well-deserved distraction in the person of the cowering Iwa’Bantu deputy.

“We have reports from some of the striker teams moving through the city. The Human administrator has broken through the cordon and is making for the center of the city.”

“Former administrator.” He spat the words at the cretin, and was gratified to see the beast cringe at his tone.

Sanctum. Why would Marcus Wells be heading to Sanctum? The barbarian had surprised him at every turn, so he tried not to set too much credence in his initial impulse to dismiss the move as a hopeless ploy. Certainly without the Skorahn there was nothing the Human could do at the old wreck.

And yet, for some reason, the idea twisted at something in the back of his mind.

“Well, at least we’ll know where to find him when we clear things up here.” He shrugged, forcing himself to relax. There was nothing the Human could do without the medallion, no matter where he was. “Tell the striker teams to follow, but not to engage unless he leaves them no choice. When the time comes, I very much intend to be in on the hunt.”

“Yes, Ambassador.” The big soldier nodded and backed away before turning and trotting down the hall.

“Ambassador, the way is clear.” One of the Ntja formed up around him tapped a gleaming bronze hemisphere erupting from the flesh near his ear. “The Variyar are being held several jogs down the corridor. We are cleared through to the control center.”

The rigid lines of Taurani’s face twitched, as if they intended to form a Human smile, and he would almost have been willing to let them, if they could. Everything came down to this moment. K’hzan Modath had revealed himself to be the recidivist traitor everyone in the Council had always known him to be; his clandestine fleet had been revealed at last, and when Penumbra was awakened against him, he would be crushed between the city’s defenses and Ochiag’s Peacemaker fleet.

His long strides took him past the point guards and to the control center. The scars from the escape of the Humans and their allies were still dark around the blast doors and along the walls of the corridor. He almost told one of the following soldiers to make a note to have the mess cleared up, but then his spirits lifted even higher as he realized that he would soon be gone, with no further need to suffer the ugliness. As soon as he took care of Marcus Wells and his people, Taurani intended to leave this benighted backwater behind and return to the Council for his reward.

As he moved to enter the control center he met an Ntja soldier coming out. It was dressed in the brown uniform of the diplomatic guard, a puzzled look on its animal face.

“What?” He barked, trying to ignore the cold grip on the back of his neck.

The soldier cocked its head at his tone or his word, looking blankly at him through its rheumy little eyes, but said nothing.

With a snarl, Taurani pushed past the big oaf and into the beating heart of Penumbra. The bodies had been removed, the mess cleaned up as best the soldiers were able. All was silent at the moment, as the battle was being controlled from advanced command nodes throughout the city, and, until it had followed the Variyar fleet, from Ochiag’s command ship overhead.

The light was dim, the viewing fields of the various stations humming and glowing with a neutral gray. A bar of only slightly brighter light was falling out of the administrator’s office, where the security door was open, and the privacy door ajar.

With a sinking feeling Taurani moved toward the door. Iphini Bha should have been at the door, cringing and groveling for his amusement, holding the Skorahn up in shaking hands.

The cold had risen up and over the crown of his head. He rushed the last few steps and threw the door open, a savage curse for Bha in his throat.

A curse that died, its ghost escaping as a whisper, as he surveyed the room.

The towering, purple-furred form of his body servant Iranse lay stretched out on the floor. His face bore a vague expression of surprise, somehow also conveying mild annoyance. But he stared up at the low ceiling with a single dull, unmoving eye. His other eye was a red ruin, the butt of an ancient stylus standing proud of the wet, wrinkled flesh as pale blood traced a gentle stream from the corner of the eye, matting the fur there, and flowed to the small puddle gathering beneath his head.

The paintings on the wall were jagged, filled with angry reds and yellows, but they were sinking as he watched, a dark blue, almost black shadow seeping up through them, drowning out the brighter colors. He paid the art no mind and scanned the room for the sake of form. He already knew what he would find.

Of Iphini Bha and the Skorahn there was no sign.