The Lodestone Trilogy (Limited Edition) (The Lodestone Series) (130 page)

No doubt Keris would say that the success of their mission was the only thing that mattered. Still, survival was certainly preferable to the alternative. “Don’t worry. We’ll just sweep any remaining hu-mans aside with that vortex arm of yours.”

Alondo shook his head. “I don’t think that will work. The moment they realise that these devices have been disabled, there’ll be nothing to prevent them using those lightning weapons of theirs. They’ll cut us down in an instant.”

Shann forced a smile. “I thought you were supposed to be the optimist of our group.”

“Sorry,” he said. “But I also happen to have played a lot of shassatan. The game forces you to think strategically—to assess odds.

And right now, the odds of us getting away from here in one piece are not good.”

She fixed her gaze on the blood-white disc as if she could make it turn red by sheer willpower alone. “You’re starting to sound like Rael.”

Alondo laughed. “He is a remarkable young man, isn’t he?”

Shann rounded on him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing, I... I just meant that... well, he has a fascinating way of looking at things. I wish I had a tenth of the knowledge that he possesses.” He looked like fish struggling on a hook. “If by some miracle we do make it out of here, I would love to spend more time learning about the wonders of this world.” His face suddenly brightened. “Of course, I haven’t forgotten my promise to help you find your parents, either.”

“They’re dead.” Her words fell to the floor like a shattered pane of glass.

“How do you... ?”

“I saw it during my experience in the dome of grey mist.”

Alondo looked as if he were on the brink of tears. “I’m sorry, Shann.”

“It’s all right, really,” she soothed. “Actually, it gave me something I would otherwise never have had—the chance to say ‘goodbye’.”

There was a long pause. Then Alondo looked at her in earnest. “You know that my other promise holds good, don’t you—the offer to stay with Mother and me for as long as you wish.”

“I know. Although I need to find Gal first and make sure she’s all right.”

Alondo nodded. “My mother promised before we left the farmhouse near Lind that she would find your adoptive parents and let them know you were safe. If there’s one thing she’s good at, it’s finding things and people. Trust me, if your Gallar is still alive, then Hedda will find her.”

A companionable silence fell between them once more. The two discs remained a stubbornly opaque white. At length Shann frowned. “It should have worked by now. Something’s wrong.”

“The four components worked perfectly with the other two weapons,” Alondo pointed out. “There’s no reason they shouldn’t work now. Let’s just be patient.”

As time stretched to breaking point, a worrying thought occurred to Shann. This was the same sphere that Keris had attacked with such gusto in her earlier efforts to detonate the devices prematurely. If she had damaged it somehow...

Without warning, her disc flickered and came on before winking out again. She saw her own sense of alarm reflected in Alondo’s expression. Before either of them could respond, a sound began. At first it was little more than a bass rumble at the limit of their hearing. As the sound grew slowly, inexorably, in pitch and volume, Shann’s mind went back to the Cathgorn Mountains and their flight from the tower. Rael had activated his homemade lodestone grenades and tossed them towards the advancing murghal. The low hum had risen to an intense whine. And then...

She gripped Alondo by the shoulders.
“This device. It’s going to explode.”

Alondo’s pale grey eyes grew wide as the full realisation of her words hit home. “We need to get out of here.”

Shann shook her head vigorously. “There’s nowhere we can go. Rael told me that there’s no limit to the energy that thing can produce. If it goes up it will destroy this island. It might very well take half of Kelanni with it.”

“Then we have to try and shut it down. Did Rael happen to mention how we might do that?”

The noise grew louder... louder. Like the death scream of some immense creature, it invaded every corner of her conscious mind, making it difficult to think. She longed to clamp her hands over her ears—to shut it out.

Alondo’s face was directly in front of hers.
“Shann?”

She finally managed to get the words out. “Rael told me that once the lodestone reaction starts, then nothing in the world can stop it.”

<><><><><>

Chapter 19

“We don’t know that for sure.” Alondo the optimist. Alondo the morale booster. More than anything else, she wanted to believe what he was saying. “These devices are of hu-man design. They might not operate in the way Rael thinks.”

The gathering clamour emanating from the bronze globe had been joined by another sound—a mechanical alarm, rising and falling like a funeral lament. Shann had to yell to be heard. “Rael worked it out with numbers. I don’t know how, but I’ve never known him to be wrong about these things. If he says it can’t be stopped, then it can’t be.”

“Well, if that’s so, then we have nothing to lose by trying, do we?” Alondo turned to face the huge bronze sphere and began probing its surface with his fingers.

“What are you doing?”
Alondo and Shann both whirled around to see a slight hu-man with short wavy blonde hair and soft blue eyes, dressed in a pure white coverall. Susan Gilmer.

“How did you get here?” Shann asked.

“I ‘borrowed’ this,” she rolled up her sleeve to reveal a green band etched with a gold design, “from one of the crew. Everyone else has cleared out. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” Alondo returned. “We set the components, but they didn’t work. Then the weapon started making this sound. Shann says it’s going to explode.”

“Let me see.”

Alondo moved aside to allow Susan Gilmer access to the weapon. She walked a short way around the perimeter, pressing the surface at a given spot. A panel silently slid open to reveal an array of multicoloured lights and a small screen with unknown symbols drifting across it. She chewed on one of her knuckles, engrossed in the display for several moments, before starting to push buttons.

“What’s the matter with it?” Alondo called over the penetrating wail.

“I can’t say yet. Diagnostic of the Accumulator Device is still running. There are score marks on the casing, though, and some of the external controls have been damaged. Did you do that?”

“No,” Shann chimed in. “No, we didn’t. Is that what set it off?”

Susan Gilmer continued to peer at the display. “I’m not sure. If you didn’t do this, then who did?”

Shann ignored the question. “Rael says the lodestone reaction can’t be stopped once it’s started.”

There was a long, drawn-out pause. The constant whine from the sphere continued to rise in pitch, drowning out the competing alarm. Susan Gilmer finally shook her head. “These readings don’t make sense. Reactants are leaking into the intermix chamber, but the valves are still showing as closed, as are the backups. It could be a result of the physical damage. Or it could be a software problem—it’s hard to say.”

“Could the components of Annata’s device be responsible?” Alondo suggested.

“I don’t know... maybe.” Susan Gilmer tore herself away from the screen and its streaming output, plucking each of the four discs from the metal surface. The two lit ones died back to a dull white as soon as they were removed. She thrust them at Shann. “Take these and go. Quickly.”

“Why?” Shann demanded. “What are you going to do?”

“I can’t stop the reaction, but if I can manipulate the valves and control the pressure manually, I might be able to reduce the force of the explosion. However, I would strongly recommend that you get out of this building and as far away as you can.”

Shann’s mind reeled, but not because of the high-pitched shriek pummelling her eardrums. It was the shock of a creature, a member of a ruthless enemy race that had invaded her world, now offering to sacrifice her life for people she had known for less than a day. “But... you’ll be killed.”

Susan Gilmer smiled gently, blonde bob of hair framing her oddly pale face. Her expression was serene. “Better one of us than all three.”

Shann swallowed. “I can’t just leave you here.”

“You must,” Susan Gilmer said. “The others need you. And your injured friend here will need your help to move as quickly as possible. Now get out of here.”

Shann’s heart felt as if it was going to burst. Her vision began to blur as her eyes filled with tears. She found she could not look at the hu-man woman. Instead, she threw her arms around Susan Gilmer’s shoulders and held on tight. Kelanni and hu-man hugged one another in a bond that stretched across the vastness of the stars.

“Go,” Susan Gilmer urged. “And when you find McCann, please, give him my message.”

Shann released her and wiped away the tears with the back of her hand. “I will. Thank you... for everything.” She turned, pulled Alondo’s arm about her shoulder, and headed away from the spheres as quickly as Alondo’s injury would permit. Too late, the thought struck her.

I didn’t even tell her ‘goodbye’.

~

Get away! Get away! Faster, faster! Yet the faster she ran—the more she forced her tortured leg muscles to work, the slower her progress became, until it seemed as if she were running waist-deep though thick mud. Behind her, some unknown monster—an incarnation of scale and tooth and claw—shook the ground with its feet and the air with its mighty roar. Closer and closer it came until she could smell its acrid odour and feel its hot breath on the nape of her neck...

This time it was different. This time she was not going to wake up, breathing hard and bathed in cold sweat. This was real. Slowly, tortuously, she struggled along the iron walkway, Alondo’s arm draped about her shoulder. Behind her, the great bronze-coloured monster that Susan Gilmer had referred to as the Accumulator Device screamed in fury.

“Leave me.” Alondo begged. “Go, leave me, I’ll be fine.”

“Quiet.” They reached the iron stairs at the end of the raised structure and she helped him hobble down them. He bared his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut with every step.

“Look, Shann, you have to get far away from here. I’m only slowing you down.”

“‘Quiet,’ I said.”

They reached the bottom of the stairs and started across the immense floor of the hu-man facility. High up on the distant walls, flashing yellow lights complemented the rising and falling alarm. They were tiny insects, crawling away with agonising slowness from a conflagration of unimaginable proportions that threatened to engulf them at any moment.

Alondo grabbed her supporting arm and shoved it away roughly, nearly falling over in the process. His eyes had a wild look that she had never seen before. “No. I won’t be responsible for your death. On your own you can use the flying cloak to escape.”

She wanted to slap him, but restrained herself. “And how could I face Oliah, or the others for that matter, knowing I had left you behind? Now stop messing about and let me help you.”

Alondo’s round face creased up, but this time he did not resist the young woman’s supporting arm. “How come you no longer listen to anyone?”

“Because lately, I’m the only one that’s making any sense,” she retorted. “Everyone else seems bent on sacrificing themselves.”

“There are times when a person has no choice,” he pointed out.

She thought of Susan Gilmer, frantically working to control the titanic forces now building inside the Accumulator Device to give them a chance of survival at the expense of her own. “And there are times when they do.”

At the end of the deserted facility, a side door had been left swinging open. They moved through it and stumbled out into the night. The ear-splitting sounds coming from inside were less intense here but still clearly audible. There was still no sign of anyone.
Lyall, I hope you are far away by now.

She kept Alondo moving across the floodlit area and into the darkness beyond. The ground rose steadily before them.
Cover.
They might not be able to get clean away, but if they could find a boulder, an overhang, a cave—some place where they could shelter away from the blast...