Sufficiently Advanced Technology (Inverse Shadows) (38 page)

And they were his rivals, Dacron realised... Angrily, he pushed that thought back, but it would not be denied. He was not a Pillar, sworn to keep Scions out of his territory. And yet the bookseller was right. The Scions
would
come after them.

“Do it,” he ordered, bluntly. The flickering light form high overhead revealed that Elyria and Joshua were still being taken further into the mountains. “And then we have to ride on.”

He forced himself to watch as the booksellers cut throats with an almost perverse glee. It made sense, he supposed, and he couldn’t really blame them, but it still bothered him. The Confederation would have found a better solution to the problem they posed...

... Except there was still no real solution to sociopaths. They could only be isolated, once they had been identified, and by then it was often too late for their victims. Darius didn’t have the luxury of coddling its criminals. And where magic was concerned, it was difficult to hold them prisoner permanently. Dacron had proven that himself.

“Mount up,” he ordered quietly, once the killing was done. Memories or not, would the
Gestalt
want him back? And would he want to rejoin it? He climbed back onto his horse and pressed it into a canter. “It’s time to move.”

CHAPTER
T
HIRTY-
O
NE

Night was falling when Elyria opened her eyes.

She’d fallen asleep, despite the horse’s motion, in what had felt like early afternoon. Now, darkness was falling on the land, leaving the mountain peaks cloaked in shadow. She twisted her head to look beyond the small party and saw an oddly regular mountain right ahead, hidden between two larger peaks. There was little on the ground but rocks, as if nature had never managed to get a proper grip on the soil. She couldn’t even see signs of animal life.

Joshua was still asleep, his body bruised by the long ride. She hoped that he’d be all right, although she knew that it wasn’t likely. An unenhanced body would take hours, perhaps days, to recover, even assuming that there were no other problems. If they’d accidentally broken a bone, they’d have to repair it with magic or leave it to fester. Elyria shook her head wearily as the horses slowed down, heading directly towards the strange mountain. The lead rider bellowed a command into the air and the party stopped completely, the horses neighing in relief. They’d been pushed hard ever since they’d left the Scions behind.

One by one, the riders dismounted, one of them casting a spell that generated a pearly white sphere of light hanging in the air. Elyria shivered at the reminder of magic’s existence, as she felt hands pulling at her bonds, releasing her from the horse’s back. She almost slid forward before the hands pulled her backwards, pausing just long enough to cut the ropes around her ankles before dropping her onto her feet. Even with her enhancements, it hurt and she stumbled against the horse, before a pair of strong hands held her upright. Twisting, she turned to look at her captor and frowned in puzzlement. There was a...
blandness
about his face that was somehow disconcerting.

Joshua looked dreadful as he fell to the ground, his legs no longer able to support him. Elyria glared at their captors until one of them picked Joshua up, slung him over his shoulder and headed off towards a darkened cranny in the mountainside. Carefully, feeling her body rapidly recovering, Elyria picked her way after him, helped along by a shove in the back from her captor. It crossed her mind that she shouldn’t show anyone just how quickly she could recover from mistreatment. If they thought she was still weak and broken, she would be able to make her escape before they realised the truth.

The darkness seemed to swallow them up for a long moment, before a second globe of light flickered to life, revealing metallic walls and signs written in English. Elyria cursed herself for a fool; the moment she’d seen the mountain, she should have guessed what it was. Mountains that regular simply didn’t occur in nature. The writing – AIRLOCK FOUR – only confirmed it. She was entering the colony ship that had brought the locals to Darius. In hindsight, they should have spotted it from orbit and marked it down for investigation... but maybe it looked different from high overhead. The snoops wouldn’t have worked in the Dead Zone.

Joshua gasped, trying to wet his mouth. “Where... where are we?”

“I’m not sure,” Elyria lied. She didn’t want to mention the colony ship out loud, not when there were so many listening ears. Just what the hell was going on? “Their base, I assume.”

The interior of the colony ship felt weird. Elyria had studied early colony ships and knew their basic outlines; but the locals had added their own stamp to the metallic hull. Magical lanterns lit the corridors, rather than standard lighting; the metallic deck was marked from horses being taken in and out of the craft. And the air stank of something she couldn’t identify. It struck her, suddenly, that the locals hadn’t really realised what they were doing at all. They’d colonised the ship as effectively as a tiny crab might colonise a discarded shell from a larger animal. But they couldn’t build her like for themselves; they might not even realise what she actually
was
.

That wasn’t unprecedented. Some colony worlds had turned the early colony ships into temples, or palaces, knowing that no weapons they possessed were capable of breaking through their metal hulls. Others had simply stripped the ships and then left them as monuments to the achievements of their ancestors, or turned them into museums. Darius, it seemed, had hidden the ship and then turned it into... what? A base for rogue Scions?

Joshua looked around, rather dazed. “It’s like your station, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Elyria said, flatly. Joshua was far from stupid – and he knew, thanks to her, that Darius’s population wasn’t native to their world. It wasn’t hard to deduce what the colony ship was, once one made that mental leap. “I think it is.”

If their captors realised what that implied, they said nothing. Instead, they stopped outside a heavy metal door and pushed it open with naked force, rather than the systems that would have opened the door automatically. Inside, there was a large room, a bed and a small amount of fruits and vegetables. In one corner, she saw a stone bath filled with water. The entire scene was illuminated by a glowing ball of light floating up near the ceiling. She recoiled as her hands were grabbed, just before her captor slashed through her bonds and pushed her into the room. A moment later, Joshua’s hands were also free and he was shoved inside. The captors took one last look at them and then pushed the door shut, slamming it with an ominous thud. It only took a single glance to realise that pushing it open would be difficult, even for her.

She caught sight of Joshua’s wrists and cursed. “I think you need to soak,” she said, after a quick examination. He didn’t seem to have any broken bones, but cutting off his circulation for so long would be bound to have unpleasant effects. And his body was covered in bruises. She poked a finger into the bathtub and discovered that it was surprisingly warm. “Can you use magic?”

Joshua shook his head, grimly. “I can’t even light a candle,” he said. “Master Faye...”

He looked up at her. “Do you think they were telling the truth?”

“I’m not certain,” Elyria said, reluctantly. She rather suspected that the Scion
had
been telling the truth, if only because it fitted the known facts. And yet it was clear that they hadn’t known as much as they thought about Darius. The whole operation would definitely go down in the history books, right under the heading ‘how not to do it.’ It wasn’t a pleasant thought. “Get undressed and into the tub. Now.”

Joshua gave her a sharp look as she helped him to undress – his fingers weren’t working very well – and lifted him up, lowering his body into the water. Hopefully, the heat would encourage his circulation to start flowing again, while she looked around to see if their captors had overlooked anything. A set of cupboards revealed nothing more interesting than tiny piles of rags, which might have been left there since the colony ship had landed. There were no weapons or even edged tools she could have used to try to escape. A quick check revealed that there were no air vents or Jeffries tubes in the compartment. The only way out was through the heavy door.

“Trapped,” she said, finally. “What happens to make you unable to use magic?”

“I’m not sure,” Joshua admitted. His voice sounded more composed, now that the bath was slowly soaking out his aches and pains. “Master Faye never taught me the spells. One of them prevents anyone else from using magic in a particular room, another can be cast on an individual, but needs to be constantly replenished. It doesn’t last for very long.”

Elyria considered it for a long moment. “How long does it last?”

“Depends on the magician,” Joshua said. “I understand that the more powerful ones can free themselves, given enough time to concentrate, but I don’t know how long it takes to just wear off.”

“Too long, I suspect,” Elyria said. “Although if they just wanted to kill us, they could have done it by now.”

She stood up and started to pace the compartment. One group of Scions – perhaps under the orders of Master Faye – had shot down the shuttle, presumably intending to kill them. When they’d discovered that the occupants were still alive, they’d captured them with the avowed intent of turning them into harmless slaves – and then another group had attacked the first group, intent on capturing Elyria and Joshua for themselves. That group had taken them right to the colony ship and then... what?

A dull quiver ran through the ship and she stopped, dead. Could they be powering the ship up? No, that had to be impossible. Her implants were still dead... and if the Dead Zone had relaxed its grip, there was no way that the colony ship was still operable. Centuries of decay wouldn’t be a problem for the hull, but the control systems and drives would be completely useless. The Confederation would never try to reactive the ship just to get it back into orbit.

“Curious,” she said, finally. As absurd as it seemed, it had almost felt like a very faint shift in the internal gravity field. Except there was no gravity field inside the ship. Why would they bother when the planet’s own gravity would be more than sufficient? “Did you feel that?”

“There have always been small earthquakes out in the badlands,” Joshua said. He shook his head. “I don’t think they ever occurred inside the bailiwicks.”

Elyria frowned. She wasn’t an expert on tectonic effects – and the first surveys had suggested that Darius was geologically inactive – but she rather doubted that earthquakes were respecters of political borders. Natural disasters didn’t remain confined to one country unless the entire continent was politically united. On the other hand, the surveys could have missed something. The magic certainly meddled with the results sent back by the more advanced sensors.

“Odd, to say the least,” Elyria said, finally. A thought struck her and her eyes narrowed. “Or did Master Faye ever do anything to keep the earthquakes away from the city?”

Joshua looked honestly puzzled. “He was always happy to tell me how much he did for the population,” he said. “You’d think he’d tell me about earthquake deflection if he actually did it.”

Elyria nodded. Earthquakes could become powerful weapons with a little imagination; the capability to deflect an earthquake might also generate one to strike a particular target. If Master Faye or the other Pillars had had that capability, they would probably have used it on their rivals by now. Maybe self-interest had kept them in check, but self-interest hadn’t stopped Master Faye turning on the Confederation. And he’d murdered upwards of twenty Confederation citizens if he really had destroyed both bases.

She shook her head. The simplest explanation was that something else was causing the earthquakes, keeping them limited to the badlands. But what? And why?

“You should join me in the bath,” Joshua said, suddenly. Elyria blinked, and then realised that he seemed to be back to full health. “You need a wash too.”

And probably something else
, Elyria thought, with a certain amount of amusement. Joshua was so... obvious, but then he
was
barely seventeen standard years old. And physically mature, as the Confederation defined it. And it wasn’t as if they had much else to do.

She hesitated for a long moment, and then made up her mind. It was easy enough to remove what remained of her outfit – between the captivity and the long ride the local fabrics had been tattered to the point where they barely preserved her modesty. Joshua’s eyes went wide as he saw her naked for the first time, staring at her breasts as they were exposed to his gaze. To him, she had to appear almost perfect, despite the faint scars on her face. There was no doubt that she was far healthier than anyone born on Darius.

Carefully, she climbed into the bath and smiled at his eager gaze. “Relax,” she said, finding the attention oddly flattering. Outside a newly-mature adolescent from the Confederation, it was rare to be worshipped so openly. The Confederation’s citizens often became unimpressed with physical form; after all, it was easy to reshape one’s body to fit a personal aesthetic. “There’s plenty of time for fun.”

Joshua’s breathing deepened, reminding her of his enhanced libido. Or maybe he was just being a normal teenage boy from an unenhanced society. Quite why anyone had thought that enhancing sexual desire – and the production of sperm – was a good idea bemused her, unless they’d wanted more children born to magicians. But the locals had developed what amounted to a taboo against them... it made no sense, almost as if something was manipulating their society without quite understanding it. Or maybe without caring what else happened as long as it met its obligations.

His hands snaked forward to her breasts and Elyria smiled, unable to repress a thrill. It felt like it had been a very long time since anyone had touched her – and humans needed physical contact.

“Tell me something,” Joshua breathed, as he slipped closer. “Are all the women in the Confederation like you?”