Champion of Mars (21 page)

“The Royal Dock,” he says.

“Yes,” says the Emperor. “You remember?”

Yoechakenon nods. For many lifetimes, he was of the pilot clans. Extinct now, along with their calling. No spacecraft have flown from here for thousands of years, since the end of the Third Stone War, and the Quinarchy’s prohibition of space travel.

Sadness squeezes me in tight coils. Once a marvel of engineering, the Docks of Mars were renowned across the domains of Man, a huge dome fourteen thousandspan in diameter. Their heyday is long past, the time when ships from hundreds of worlds came and went from here dim even to the spirits of the Second World, and our memories are long.

The mirrors and glass are broken, the metalwork crumbled. Artistry is hidden behind veils of dust and sand. In many places the Dock’s richly decorated roof has caved in, leaving gashes of natural rock showing; damp, angular wounds that will never heal or be mended. The portals to the deeper harbours yawn black and foreboding where once all was light and glitter. The lesser hangars are for the main part gone, their arches broken by the oppressive weight of time, their burdens spilled across the floor in fans of scree.

Saddest of all are the heaps of twisted half-metal skeletons, dotting the floor or hanging wretched from the walls. These are the bones of ships and their cradles. Most of the ships passed centuries ago, their spirits gone on to be other things and become forgetful of the joys of the endless night between the stars, their gargantuan mortal forms decaying into unrecognisable heaps of dust and filth.

Amidst the crumbling remnants, a score of the thousands of docking cradles are still recognisable as such. Their spirits are strong, and they have clung to life. The shreds of the ships they held are still evident as rotting swags of tissue hanging from the cradles’ proud structures. The cradles’ arms are held high, the surety of the spirits within – that they will one day again embrace a living craft – keeping them whole. I can feel their minds watching us incuriously. They are so single-minded in their vigil that their presence can be felt through the damper field, boring through it as the awl of a carver bores through soapstone. These survivors are uninterested in the affairs of men and other spirits. They crave only to hold the space-chilled skin of a ship once more, and are willing to wait until the end of time to do so.

They are jealous of the three that still hold ships.

The ships are massive, grown over decades generations ago from half-metals and genomancy. One has given up recently, some time over the last few hundred years I estimate, the animating spirit departed or dead, and now the ship lies slack, its hull gaping open. Ribs poke through necrotic skin, and the air is heavy with the must of its decay.

But the other two, these are whole, and I am amazed. Their hulls shine still with reflected starlight. They are proud. They have not succumbed to ennui. They wait, tirelessly numbering the years until they can voyage the interstellar seas again. They are the last of their kind, the remainder of a fleet that could once block out the sun with their number, crafted with technologies long gone from Martian ken. They are beautiful, and their presence fills Yoechakenon with melancholy for what they are, and what he once was.

He knows one as Nikambziok, the other as Tsu Keng. His heart swells with sorrow and happiness in equal measure at the sight of the second.

Around the two whole ships are signs of intense activity, of which the light orbs are but a part. Piles of debris have been cleared away. Machines stand idle by the dome walls: half-metal joiners, genomancy knitting rigs, branching pipes like arterial webs, nutrient pods, cutting lances – all the things needful to large-scale construction and starship replenishment. I wonder where the Emperor got them from, these arcane machines. I wonder who demonstrated their function. Hundreds of imprints of booted feet track through the dust and roof-fall.

The Emperor gestures towards Tsu Keng.

“The slipship Tsu Keng. He is to be your transport. If the damper field were not so strong, he would doubtless tell you how much he wishes to fly once again, despite the risks. You can probably feel his eagerness anyway. I cannot.”

“Yes,” says the champion, quietly. “Once, he was my ship, and I his pilot.”

“This I did not know. Fate works with us,” says the Emperor. He is gladdened by this, vindication strengthening his papery voice. He turns to a console, recently installed by the look of it, and Yoechakenon sees that the Emperor sports a long, crescent shaped scar on the back of his head. It is thin, only now revealed in the brightly lit hangar space.

He has cut out his connection,
he thinks to himself.
This
is
insanity.
And he wonders if he has been cast down the wrong track of fate
.

“You will depart immediately, before the Quinarchy becomes any more suspicious.” The Emperor presses several of the console’s inlaid stone buttons and speaks into an ornately carved orchid. “Prepare for the champion’s departure.” He turns to Yoechakenon. “We must break free from the tyranny of the spirits. I know that you will do what is necessary.”

A twin line of scarabs march toward the two men, their suit lights and faceplates glimmering in the darkness. They push a couch-like object with high sides – a stasis pod. One approaches. He bears the pips of a Praetorian captain upon the left pauldron of his armour. His helmet comes apart to reveal a broad, mistreated face, his honour tattoos obscured by a web of scar tissue. “The dampers are in place all the way down to the east hangar, Your Majesty; the Quinarchy has no idea of what is transpiring here.”

“What of Kaibeli? We are reduced to a connection of the second degree. I need her back with me,” says Yoechakenon.

“The Lady Kaibeli will be transferred when my liege gives the command.”

“She must remain in the arena until you are ready to depart,” says the Emperor. “As soon as she is withdrawn, the Quinarchy will know that I have defied them.”

“You have also had your connection cut out,” says Yoechakenon, pointing to a mark similar to the Emperor’s, bisecting the rear of the man’s skull.

“As have all the men here, Yoechakenon,” says the Emperor. “Of their own free will. All those who refused our offer of freedom had the memory burned from them. I will not waste the lives of good men, no matter how misguided. This you should be aware of, and grateful for.”

“You damn yourselves to the eternal darkness,” says Yoechakenon, addressing the scarred Praetorian. “How are you to live beyond your time if you cannot access the Second World?”

It was not the Emperor who answered. The scarab Praetorian snapped a salute and asked for permission to speak. The Emperor waved his hand.

“We have heard what the Emperor has said. He is our liege, and he will deliver us from the grip of tyranny, and make Man mighty again. The Quinarchs are liars, and keep us from our true destiny. We only seek to better Man’s lot; immortality with a false destiny is a blasphemy. The Great Library has been perverted. Without the Librarian, it delivers false destiny.”

“Are you ready, champion?” asks the Emperor.

Yoechakenon looks around the chamber, remembers it as it once was. He does not believe, as these men seem to believe, that its glory and purpose can ever be restored. He nods.

The Emperor licks his lips eagerly. This is his time, now. He is doomed, and the terror of his death wars with purpose within him. “Deactivate the damper field,” he says. “Prepare to transfer the Lady Kaibeli to the ship’s systems.”

There is a subtle shift in the air. The world leaps into harder clarity, and the whisper of the Great Library intrudes into Yoechakenon’s mind. One by one, the lesser spirits that attend him awaken. The sense of a great mind close by enwraps him.

“Greetings, Krashtar Vo,” says Tsu Keng, and his voice booms through both worlds. “It has been too long.”

“It is longer still since I was known by that name,” says the champion.

“You are always and forever who you were and who you will be,” says the ship. “We none of us have any choice in the matter.” There is a tensing in the Second World, and a relaxing, as of a great cat stretching.

“To where are we bound?” asks Yoechakenon.

“To Arn Vashtena,” says the ship. “Deep in the Stone Lands of Mars. There we may find information regarding the location of the Great Librarian of Mars.”

Yoechakenon is surprised, I think. To break the Veil of Worlds and travel to those lands of Mars the Stone Kin claim as their own is regarded as impossible. “That is a perilous transit,” he says. “I see now why the Emperor brings me a stasis couch. But what of you, Tsu Keng?”

“You will be safe out of the flow of time.”

“I asked, what of you?”

Tsu Keng does not immediately reply. When he does, it is with certainty as unshakeable as the heart of the world. “I will fly,” he says.

“You will perish, surely.”

“I will fly,” repeats the ship. Its voice vibrates in the bones of men and the stones of Mars. “You require a slip field to penetrate the Veil of Worlds. I possess one. I tire of waiting in port. I will fly.”

“Your Highness! We are discovered!” cries one of the scarabs.

The Emperor follows the man’s gesture to a point on his robe. Amid the crowd of closed eyelids, one eye looks unblinkingly back. His spirit soul-twin, Kunuk, has awakened. Perhaps he was never truly asleep. The eye blazes with rage.

“They are swifter than I anticipated,” says the Emperor. “You must leave now.”

A bell begins to sound, low, sonorous and urgent.

“The alarm,” says the Praetorian captain, then, moments later, “My lords, we have reports of Delikonians on the canyon wall. They appeared out of nowhere, and are assaulting the palace directly.”

“How did they approach so quickly?” asks his second.

“They must have carved their way in through the rock.”

“That would have taken months,” says the Emperor, shaking his head. “And we would have detected them. They use the devices of the Stone Kin. They bend space and defy fate. This is how it ends.” The Emperor is calm. “The Quinarchy reveals its true face, and would use technologies it denies mankind to bring me down.”

“We will not be taken alive, then,” says the Praetorian captain. He appears resigned to death, ready to fight.

“Nor will we be returned to the stacks. The Quinarchs will allow none to become aware of their perfidy, and their punishment for our defiance will be final. It is all they intend for all of mankind, in any case,” says the Emperor. “My men, this is what we have long prepared for. The time of struggle is at hand. We will die, but we do so that this champion might save the remains of humanity.”

The captain issues orders and his men hurry to obey. “Energise the palace shield. Have the scarabs stand for battle. Cohorts two through five on internal sweeps; the Delikonians could come at us from anywhere. Re-engage and extend the damper outer field, enough to prevent the Quinarchs assaulting us through the Second World or turning our devices against us.” The second officer bows and hurries off, four Praetorians moving into a loose formation behind him. All about the hangar, men move quickly, armour growing about them as they go.

“Champion,” says the Praetorian captain urgently. “Please, the couch.” Two men stand forward and help Yoechakenon into the pod. A brief burst of energy discharge echoes round the hangar. It is impossible to tell from where it originates.

There comes a rumble. A tremor shivers its way through the hall.

The Emperor stands over the couch. He beckons behind him. Another Praetorian steps forward, sinks to his knees in a bow as he presents an object. The Emperor takes it. He holds it out to Yoechakenon, a dull-grey cylinder, unreadable symbols engraved in raised bands at the top and bottom.

“What now is a champion without his armour?”

Yoechakenon stares at the inert armour. It calls to him. A bluish sheen flickers across its surface. He hates it and longs for it at the same time. Hesitantly, he reaches out and takes it.

His palm prickles. The armour is pleased.

I am dismayed.

A Praetorian brings Yoechakenon’s glaive and gives it to him. The weapon shortens itself so that it may be brought within the stasis couch. His arms crossed, glaive in one hand, armour cylinder in the other, Yoechakenon speaks.

“Goodbye, Kalinilak,” he says.

The Emperor smiles his sad smile. The stasis field thickens about Yoechakenon, and that smile stays fixed forever.

Time slows. Yoechakenon can feel every part of his body with uncomfortable immediacy as every nerve, every organ, every component molecule is dragged to a dead stop. His valets set up a feeble struggle, but to no avail; shortly the sensations became agony. The play of time, force, and energy is arrested, and he becomes aware of the creeping death of the universe behind the manic dance of spacetime. It intensifies, until it feels as if every atom of his being is being forcibly restrained with hooks. A howl builds in his throat and remains trapped, and the moment stretches into eternity.

W
HILE
I
WATCH,
I also wait. I am there, in the head of Might, in the Window of the Worlds, in the Royal Dock, but I am also here in the Gladiatorial Quarter of the Arena.

My choir is disrupted by the damper field, and I must scold hysteria from my lower personalities who fret and weep at our separation from Yoechakenon. I calm myselves and wait. I must not allow the Door-ward to guess what transpires in the palace. Nearby the watchful presence of the Provost’s companion swirls. This is a place no human mind can ever go. Here I have access to what remains of human knowledge, and the world spirals away around me through eleven-dimensional space in fractal complexities no man could comprehend. The energy foundations of the Great Library blend out into pure multi-dimensional eleutheremics, and the consciousnesses of the spirits bleed into one another and into the body of the Library itself. Here I am not truly Kaibeli, but part of something greater, something so large it touches endless realms of possibility. Caged as I am in one small part of it, I can reach out and touch the hearts of both Mars’ realities, and see the endless cascades of probability splintering off each.