Resolution (50 page)

‘Being Absorbed.’

There was a distant crack of graser fire, and a high-pitched scream, suddenly cut off.

‘Move it.’ From somewhere, Elva had gained a graser rifle. She ejected the hafnium core, checked its status bar - ninety-five per cent - and snapped it back in. ‘Druvan and Biltwin, you’re point. E-and-E pattern beth-3. Got it?’

‘Ma’am.’

With hand-signals, she directed the troopers.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ the officers answered.

‘Then go.’

And the designated team leaders were directing their teams:
‘Go-go-go.’

Time to get out of here.

Choking dust billowed in the corridor outside. From the Chevaliers’ collars, protective membranes grew slick and shiny across their faces. They ran crouched, Tom and Elva and the girl Jissie in their midst, heading through the confusion with desperate determination.

Faster now, as the dust cleared, they sprinted along a marble corridor while behind them the rearmost troopers went down on one knee and opened fire, just as a percussive
thump
sounded. The Shockwave knocked everybody flat.

Shapes moved in the roiling clouds of dust and floating debris.

‘Move it.’ Elva was standing up alongside Tom, dragging Jissie upright. ‘Come on.’

Grasers spat behind them.

‘Right.’ Druvan pointed. ‘Go right.’

There was a cross-tunnel and the group went right. Three men broke away, digging at their equipment belts, one of them climbing up a toppled statue to reach the ceiling.

‘Setting booby-traps,’ muttered Elva. ‘Bastards’ll get a nice surprise.’

If they don‘t just materialize in front of us.

Tom guessed that the Anomaly could not manifest itself just anywhere: that there were constraints in the geometry of the Calabi-Yau crawlspace beneath ordinary reality.

Graser fire sparked and cracked.

Elva had ordered escape-and-evasion, not stand-and-fight. ‘We haven’t lost them yet,’ said Tom.

One of the troopers spun around, then collapsed, inert. Dark blood spilled from his nostrils and ears.

‘Fate damn it.’ Elva turned to Druvan. ‘Are there any lev-bikes
not
in barracks?’

‘In the Outer Courts, near the crypto chambers. But the barracks are a lot nearer. We could go down the—’

‘What if the Enemy has plans of the Palace?’

‘Impossible.’

‘Not if Ambassador Lord Khaliran was something other than he appeared.’ Elva hefted her rifle. ‘And I think he was.’

‘No, not him.’ Tom remembered his vision of the ambassador’s slain daughters. ‘One of the aides, maybe.’

‘Surely not...’ Elva’s eyes blinked rapidly. ‘Ah, damn it. The one who sat to Khaliran’s left. His body language ... I didn’t see it at the time.’

As a group, they shifted again into a diagonal corridor, while the sounds of fighting grew louder behind them; but it was simply fiercer, not closer.

‘None of us saw it,’ said Tom. ‘We didn’t know.’

But I should have done.

The floor trembled, and half of the Chevaliers tumbled over.

‘The Inner Courts,’ said Druvan.

‘Breached from beneath.’ Tom’s gaze met his in sudden understanding. ‘
That’s
why it manifested downstratum first.’

They picked themselves up and broke into a staggering run.

In the Outer Courts it was quieter, and they tumbled onto silver lev-bikes, Tom and Jissie each taking a place behind a Chevalier, while Elva mounted an armoured bike of her own.

They rose like silent hunter bats and skimmed through long brown-stone tunnels where they caught glimpses of people running for cover, panicked by the distant screams and bangs. It was tempting to think that fast lev-bikes meant a better chance of getting away, but such reckoning was dangerous.

This was the first phase of escape-and-evasion. Academy training had drilled into Tom the following dictum: that most people get caught because they shift into the second phase too soon. It is pointless to pick up speed if the Enemy knows where you are or can follow your trail or predict your route. They will surround you before you reach reinforcements or a pickup rendezvous.

‘Before you evade the bastards’ -
Tom remembered the rasping voice of his instructor, Lahfti -
‘you gotta bleedin’ disappear, right?’

They skimmed down a long ramp, moving fast. Slipstream tugged Jissie’s red hair around her face. Tom’s own breath was whipped away and his eyes watered as he tried to focus, checking her safety: her small hand was wrapped in the rider’s equipment belt. Safe enough.

The chamber flickers.

Tom shook his head. The memory-remnant formed the start of a koan, a Zen paradox learned during his stay in the monastery where monks’ zentropes had reacted so very badly with the logotropes in Tom’s mind.

The flame is still.

It seemed real, that vision of stone walls and candle and a perspective very different from normal; then a lurch brought Tom back to the moment.

En masse, the bikes hurtled without a sound through a tight banking turn and were flying down a broken slope, heading for a wider cavern system. Tom glanced over. Stamped on young Jissie’s features was a fixed mask of determination.

Snowy edelaces drifted high overhead, too disturbed by the lev-bikes’ sonar disruption to consider dropping down to hunt.

The lev-bikes slowed, close to the ground.

‘Drop Tom here,’ commanded Elva. ‘And the girl.’

‘What are you doing?’

Tom clutched at the rider but the saddle shifted, morphing, and it bucked Tom off. He hit the ground rolling - shale, not great to fall on, but he had experienced worse - and came up to his feet. The girl, Jissie, took the hint and slid off.

Then the entire troop of Chevaliers ascended, their lev-bikes hanging too high up for Tom to leap.

‘I need to set a false trail.’ Elva stared down. ‘Sorry, my love. But I’m good at this.’

‘Destiny. I
know
that. But we have to—’

‘I’m not abandoning you. Run that way’ - Elva pointed into a broken tunnel - ‘for three klicks. You’ll find a docking area. If it’s not been compromised, there are submersibles that will get you away.’

‘No.’

‘Fate, Tom. I’ll
be
there. But we have to make it look as though we’ve gone another way. The Enemy knows what it’s doing ... So we’re going to track wreckage and induction signatures in the conductive-ore deposits in Voelsing Cavernae. It’s a false trail, all right?’

‘And then you’re doubling back.’

‘Yes.
You
have to go on foot, just in case. But you’d better run, or I’ll be there before you. Have you got that, my Lord?’

Tom stared up at her.

‘Yes, my Lady. And you know I love you.’

‘Of course you do. Right.’ Elva turned to her troopers on the floating bikes. ‘Ready? With me.’

The bikes wheeled overhead, then shot off in formation towards a far tunnel. Tom continued watching even when they were gone from sight.

After a time, Tom felt a tug on his sleeve. A smudged face with wide eyes was looking up at him. ‘We have to reach the ... rendezvous.’

‘Yes, Jissie.’ Tom squeezed her shoulder. ‘Yes, we do.’

Together, they moved off at a brisk walking pace, heading towards the tumbledown scree which led to a narrow tunnel and perhaps to safety.

Along the way strange visions assaulted Tom, knocking him aside with the force of physical blows. Seconds later, he was unable to recall exactly what he had seen or felt.

What’s happening to me?

Tom stumbled.

‘I’m sorry ...’ His voice degenerated to a mumble.

He ought to make Jissie go on, but she was young and might not survive alone.

‘Lean on me, sir.’

There was a kaleidoscopic flash of red and black and sapphire, and Tom fell again.

‘Get
up,
my Lord.’

Forcing himself to his feet.

It was an age before Tom and Jissie came out at the head of a ramp, and stared down at the docks and the dark confusion which swirled there; and Tom knew they had made the trek in vain.

Refugees thronged the wharf, tens of thousands of people whose lives had shattered in an instant, trying to board a tiny fleet floating on dark-green placid waters beneath raw stone cavern ceilings. There was no possibility that more than a tiny fraction would leave this realm before the Anomaly subsumed the entire populace into its hungry, spreading self.