Bile and Blood, page 12
Lilesh had confiscated her gun. The custodian had tried to give her another, but a harsh look from Lilesh had made him think twice. She said Palia would learn more if she had nothing else to rely on. Palia had to agree, but she still felt defenceless.
Movement flashed in the shuttle’s ceiling viewscreen: two jets streaking through the sky, bright against the dark clouds above. Engine roars followed in their wake, muted through the transport walls. Palia followed their path until they vanished over the lip of the mesa in front of them and waited for explosions, but all she heard was gunfire. A moment later, the jets appeared again, curving around to the right and back. Just a scouting run, then.
Cammel had shown her the map, given her the brief. That mesa was all that separated their forces from the Protectorate in the dust bowl below. It jutted out of the desert floor like a stamp had punched it out from beneath, towering over a mostly flat landscape. The rebels, the Munabi locals, were holed up around the underground base Palia had visited last time, outnumbered and surrounded on all sides but for the route into the deep desert. The Protectorate wanted to take back the nexite mines out there, but they had to take and hold the base, first. It wouldn’t be long, without intervention – they had captured an artillery complex at the tip of the mesa, which let them rain as much fire as they wanted upon rebel forces. A lot of those rebels were stuck fighting in a town on the surface, which Palia understood to be not much more than rubble at this point. If they wanted to find the remnants of the mechanised division, it would be easier to spot them from a high vantage. If they wanted to get far without getting blasted to pieces, they had to take the complex.
Palia glanced at the woman, who seemed the very image of calm but still played host to that snake of energy, coiling, ready to strike.
Palia breathed out to begin the process of calming down.
Caught mid out-breath, Palia frowned.
Palia gritted her teeth and tried not to get annoyed by the slew of justified insults.
Four more jets passed overhead, then another four, then another. The vibrations hummed through her bones. This time, they fired. Flames burst into the air at the top of the mesa. Dust and smoke spurted after them. The shockwave passed through the shuttle, reverberating deep in her bones. They would be heading up there, soon enough. She picked up an undercurrent of tension from the soldiers around her. Experience and training in peace time was one thing, and maybe some of the milites had fought during the Rythian war, but there hadn’t been a planet-side war in living memory that Palia knew of. Perhaps they had just realised that themselves.
Of the twelve that had flown over, eleven jets circled back.
Lilesh paused, ear cocked towards the radio.
‘—craft down,’ it said. ‘Two batteries taken out on the ridge. Estimate one remaining. Turret neutralised. Lift in three.’
Bek leaned over to the man next to him. ‘That three seconds, or—?’
The transport jolted, and puffs of noxious gas dodged away from the engine exhausts as they rose into the air. Palia followed the gas clouds’ movement on the wall viewscreens until they disappeared beneath the opaque floor panels. Their shuttle hovered, suspended in the morning air, a hundred other transports arrayed in front and to either side of them. Every one of them waited, the air filled with the hum of their engines, until the jets had swept back overhead for another run. Then the row of lifters right in front of the mesa rose, white shapes against the sheer brown cliffside, their payloads of artillery pieces dangling from strops beneath them.
The jets passed overhead again, but a missile streaked out from the top of the mesa and struck one of them side on. It splintered in mid-air, nose splitting from its fuselage, scattering a rain of debris over the lifters below. The main bulk of it continued and exploded somewhere over the top of the mesa. A sick feeling settled in Palia’s gut.
The row of shuttles in front of them rose just as the lifters reached the lip of the mesa. Around her, the soldiers in her squad readied their weapons. Despite the jet exploding above them and the underlying tension, they were remarkably calm. One of them told a joke that she missed the bulk of, and some of them fell into snorts of laughter. Bek laughed with them, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. Was he trying to fit in naturally, or out of habit as a spy?
The shuttle rose. The shuttles in the rows ahead of them stretched in a neat diagonal sheet to the top of the mesa, like someone had strung beads on wires connecting the sky to the ground. Palia fixed her gaze on the first row as the lifters edged forwards with their payloads strung beneath them, becoming exposed to the enemy at the top. They all flew clear. She watched for flashes over the edge that might indicate a strike, but the sky remained overcast. Still, with every metre they climbed, her heartrate rose. She turned her attention inwards, fixating on the nerves that danced there and letting them stay instead of trying to slide them away. It didn’t work. The more she looked at it, the more she felt it, and green motes began to slide beneath her skin.
Palia frowned at Lilesh across the hold, then one of the milites cried out in alarm. Whipping her head around, Palia found him and followed his stare up. A black shape hung over the edge of the mesa, almost straight above them now. It bounced against something and rolled fully over the edge, trailing black smoke behind it. Their transport jinked left to avoid it, but the shape separated into chunks as it fell. It was one of the lifters, and the rain of debris it shed now was the artillery it had been hauling to the ridge. A massive gun barrel tumbled towards them, end over end.
‘Lilesh!’ Palia snapped.
Lilesh raised an eyebrow as if questioning what she was meant to do about it, then rolled her eyes and raised a hand. Empyrean fire flashed along her arm, straight up through the ceiling viewscreen and into the falling barrel. Glitches splayed across the broken viewscreen, but Palia could just make out the barrel’s shape sloughing away as it fell.
The viewscreen died. For a moment, all was still, then something slammed into the cockpit. The shuttle rang like a bell. Palia jerked sideways in her harness, the motion sending pain shooting through her neck. They began to spin, and air rushed in through the breach alongside the pained screams of one of the pilots. Palia could see his pain. It speared into the rest of his body from his legs, great stabbing lances of it, cooling almost like lava into a hard mass where his legs ended. Then it siphoned away, wending a trail to Lilesh to join the winding snake as she tore his dying soul from him.
Palia stared at the woman, who shrugged out of her harness as if they had just landed on firm ground, despite the spin pinning them to their seats. Air whistled through the hole she had seared in the roof. Every half second, the cliff flashed past behind her. Close. Very close.
Lilesh jerked her chin towards the hole in the roof. ‘Shall we?’
It took Palia too long to realise what she meant, but a fraction of a second later she began struggling out of her own harness. ‘Everyone up!’
The soldiers, who had been bracing for impact, hesitated before following her example. One kissed the rings on his left hand. Another ran a finger along the gems set into the flesh of her ear.
‘You don’t need your ancestors,’ Palia said, dredging up more confidence than she felt entitled to. ‘We’re getting out of here.’
The moment they were all free of their harnesses, Lilesh raised a hand and sent another condensed bolt of empyrric fire through the roof.
Palia cried out as her feet were swept from under her. She flew along the pressure differential and out through the new gap behind Bek and Tessa. In her panic, she felt the Empyrean press against the confines of her soul. It crashed against her skin, trying to break free – so she blinked into focus and let it. As the sheer cliff rushed towards them, she created a shield.
They slowed. She could almost touch the side of the cliff, if she stretched. But now they fell down instead of across, at a rate of inches rather than metres per second. Palia spotted a ledge below, but her shield hadn’t reached it yet. As she watched, the green flow that formed it began to drain away, along with her panic. The latter redoubled when she caught sight of Lilesh floating in the air beside her, the flow tethered to her core.
All twelve of them touched down upon the ledge, and immediately pressed themselves back against the reassuring solidity of the cliff. Palia tried to work some moisture back into her mouth, but there was something invasive about having the Empyrean stolen from beneath her feet, even if it was well intentioned, even if it saved her life. It wasn’t like Palia could have saved them all. She might not even have saved herself. She couldn’t meet the soldiers’ eyes. She was a fraud, a joke of an empyrric, here to satisfy her own goals at the cost of everyone else. The thought should have made her guilty, but she was done with guilt. She got angry instead. Angry that she couldn’t do more. Angry that Ferrash might be in trouble. Angry that Lilesh had taken the pilot’s soul to fuel their escape and hadn’t been quicker to stop the barrel hitting them.
Palia hissed and peered up the side of the cliff. The impact and fall had seemed to take forever, but they had only fallen a hundred metres down the face. Flak bloomed in the sky above – clearly the Protectorate had put up a renewed offensive, maybe after hiding some of their units from the initial bombardment, keeping them in reserve to avoid retaliation. She couldn’t see a clear way to reach the top. Either they would have to climb, or someone would have to pick them up. Foiled before they could even get to the battle proper.
She turned to Lilesh.
Lilesh sent,
With that, the archivist coiled energy around herself again and rocketed upwards, taking all eight of the soldiers with her in a flurry of alarmed shouting and windmilling limbs. That left Palia on the ledge with Bek and Tessa. Palia stared at them, then at the figures darting over the lip of the mesa, then back at Bek and Tessa.
‘I...’ Palia opened and closed her mouth, flailing for words. Anger bubbled up inside her, clamping around her throat, boiling in her gut. ‘Both of you, hold onto my arms. I don’t want to drop you by mistake.’
Both of them hesitated. Bek’s eyes reflected green back at her, and she looked down to see flames licking around her arms. The rage burned brighter. However much she tried to embrace it, she didn’t know what that meant. She didn’t know how to stop herself feeling angry at being angry. She didn’t even know if that was what she was supposed to do.
‘Just hug me or something, okay?’
Bek shrugged and flashed her a half-grin behind his helmet’s clear faceplate that might have made her scold him if this were any other situation, then folded his arms around her. Uncomfortable at the wave of relief it brought her, for another human to hold her again, Palia cleared her throat.
‘Tessa?’
The arsaeria, who wore a cap-style helmet and mask for lack of a helmet that fitted over her horns, hesitated. Palia didn’t want to look. She didn’t want to see what the woman felt. But she saw fear, and mistrust, and a little hate.
‘Tessa,’ she said, trying to keep her voice level, ‘it’s okay. I won’t hurt you.’ Not like I hurt Austela.
Tessa didn’t believe her. Tessa didn’t trust her. But stuck between stranding, a long drop and a potential escape, Tessa chose the lattermost. She stepped up behind Palia, slipped her arms around her waist and clung on.
Palia let out a deep breath. Then, without trying to overthink it, she let all her anger and nerves and fear bleed out from her fingertips. She fixed her eyes on the sliver where sky met cliff above them.
She hoped it would be enough.
Chapter Seventeen
Ferrash woke with a start and cracked his head against the side of the box the moment he tried to move. He froze, listening for signs of movement outside, for anything that might give away how much danger he was in.
Nothing. Just darkness, the muffled hum of electronics, his own breathing.
He must be imprisoned somewhere other than this box, surely. His mother must have moved him. Maybe he was in the Green Jail, and any second now a couple of procurants would open him up and use him for practice. Maybe she had turned him over to the committees and he was in the Freezer, which he himself had kept supplied with dissidents and terrorists over his years as the Reiart. Resting crumpled at the bottom of the box with his shoulders curved awkwardly in the corner, Ferrash reached a tentative hand out to the box wall to check. When his skin came into contact with the nexite, the box systems interfaced with his implants.
Always build in failsafes – it was the rule just after not falling into your own traps.
Ferrash frowned. He double-checked the data. Triple-checked it. It couldn’t be right, but his logs hadn’t been tampered with. He was still in the hideout under the mountain, still in his box, and still alive. Why?
He swayed to his feet, groggier than sleep would usually leave him thanks to whatever Ayt had drained from him. He had dreamed of Palia again. Flashes of memory played out behind his eyes, bringing the frustration of not understanding her creeping back into his awareness. He reached for the syringe in his sleeve, remembered it was empty, found none in his pockets. Great. Sighing, he used his failsafe system to unlock and open the door.
Definitely still the hideout. The mugs spilled during the fight with his mother lay on the floor. The base’s generators still hummed through the archway, so she hadn’t left him to freeze to death. The thought of her leaving him alive by accident was only a little more outrageous than her doing so on purpose. Killing someone was the simplest thing an empyrric could do.
Ferrash took a couple more steps away from the box, scanning his surroundings. Was his mother here somewhere, watching him? The same way she had let him believe he would escape Munab when he was young, had waited until he was almost away to reveal she had known all along, had let him fall in love only to snatch it away as another lesson to him? They weren’t memories he liked dwelling on, but in this moment they were almost comforting – a reminder of what Ayt Mannae was capable of, of who she really was. There had to be some cruel trick to this, and she would reveal it later.
Once Ferrash made sure she wasn’t hiding in any of the other rooms – aware that she could just remove all memory of it if he found her – he made his way down the corridor and tried the hatch. Unlocked, it swung open, dislodging the latest drift of snow. Freezing air bit into his face, gave it a good gnaw. It convinced him he was awake, but the thought didn’t fill him with joy.
What now?
The sliver of doubt chilled him more than the air. He drew a deep, shuddering breath. Think, Ash. Think. He wanted to go into damage-control mode, but he didn’t have time. Proglimen was meant to be in today’s committee meeting, in his position as Proctor. Proglimen was dead. If Ferrash didn’t show up wearing his face to impersonate him, everything he’d planned would be over. Maybe it already was, but he had to operate on the assumption his mother hadn’t reported him, or there was no way he could continue to operate at all.
So, with growing trepidation for everything that could go wrong in the next twenty-four hours, he booted up a pair of skis from beside the hatch and stepped out onto the mountain.
* * *
Ferrash made his way to a safe room first, far enough from the Tower of Voices to be comfortable but close enough that a tram could get him there in time for the meeting. The safe room had a tiny bathroom in it, and he huddled in the slim gap between toilet and sink so he would be able to see the mirror. He cut his hair short to match how Proglimen’s had been. Hunks of it fell away until nothing remained to hide his scars and his neck felt cold and naked.
Reaching into a coat pocket, he pulled out the bag Ducat had given him and upended it over his palm. The reconstruction mesh slid out, landing in a heap of scraggly red-brown fabric, feeling almost wet against his skin.
He pinched out an edge coloured lighter than the rest between thumb and forefinger, then pressed it to the spot just behind his right ear. With a nudge from his implants, it connected. It felt like his skin writhed with bubbles where it touched, and Ferrash pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth to suppress a shudder. These things were fine once you got used to them. He folded the rest of the mesh around his ear and across his face, smoothing it into place with his free hand. It burrowed into his flesh, itching so intensely around his eyes that tears tracked a haphazard trail down his covered cheek. When he had it over his other ear and all the way round his neck, he drew his hands away, leaned over the sink and let the accumulated revulsion out in a wordless noise of disgust. Then he splashed water on his face and looked into the mirror.
