Angel Stations (48 page)

‘The technical term is gamma-ray burster, but that information’s correct.’ Sam explained his findings about the war between the Angels and the other, unknown species. ‘There’s every reason to believe these creatures who fought against the Angels and lost are responsible for it in some way.’

Elias shook his head. ‘What would they gain by killing everything in sight? This is a lot to take in.’

Sam nodded towards the Citadel. ‘It starts to make sense when you know that whoever created the Citadel incorporated a means to protect it – and this entire planet – from the burster event. There are machines called Facilitators that act as watchdogs over the whole thing, intelligent enough to debate the actions that should be taken, depending on particular circumstances. The Facilitators were removed from the Citadel a long time ago, probably by the distant ancestors of the Kaspians themselves. Now we need to get at least one of them – just one – back inside there, or else the shield won’t activate, and everything above the local equivalent of a snail is going to be incinerated within a few weeks.’

Trencher gripped Elias’s arm with surprising strength. ‘Vaughn stole years of my life, Elias, and now I really want to make him suffer. I’m sick of his taunting and his games. We won’t let him win, do you understand me?’

‘I understand you. How many stand against us?’

‘A lot, and Vaughn is in charge of them. He’s here, Elias, in flesh and blood.’

Elias looked uncertain. ‘If he’s anything like you, then he can’t be killed.’

‘That remains to be seen,’ said Trencher. ‘Remember what I said, Kim and Sam know the way in. At least one of these aliens needs to go with them. Make sure it does, Elias, and make sure it then activates that shield. Do the right thing, my boy. You always did.’

Elias glanced around at the men and women who gathered nearby. ‘Are they all from the Station?’

‘That’s a whole other story,’ muttered Trencher.

Elias studied the kids with guns and felt his heart sink. Civilians. Well-armed civilians, but how would they really feel when they came face to face, bullet to bullet, with their former friends and neighbours?

The best solution was to prevent things from getting that bad.

Elias climbed up on a landing strut of one shuttle craft and waited until they noticed him. Gradually they all fell quiet, after Sam yelled for their attention.

‘Hi, folks,’ he said. ‘I guess you all know why you’re here. Listen, within the next few hours, a lot of people – including the Kaspians – are likely to die when the radiation strikes. Sam here has been investigating a way to stop it. That means we’re all going into the Citadel, we’re going to switch on a defence shield, and then we’re going to come out again. All of us.’

Sam then came forward and addressed the small crowd. ‘Ernst Vaughn has misled you for too long. He has put himself in the place of God, and aims to become a destroyer of worlds. God would not require such sacrifice as proof of love or devotion. Yet Ernst Vaughn does. That makes him the true Adversary. Those who oppose us are our friends and neighbours. But if we have to, we must defend ourselves, not only for our own sake, but for the sake of this world on which all of you were born.’

It seemed strange that the alien who had captured Elias and Kim should apparently choose to come to this far-off, desolate place. Most of the time the creature stood quietly with the other, slightly smaller Kaspian, both watching with those huge unreadable eyes.

The smaller one was the key, both Sam and Trencher had told Elias. He had to get it in there alive. But the older one with the jewels in its ears would also suffice. Somehow the process wouldn’t work without the presence of an alien.

Ursu

Ursu had entered a world he knew he might never understand. From talking to Roke it did not take long for him to realize that the other was, in fact, someone of considerable importance; an imperial emissary, no less. And although they were not overtly being kept prisoner, the prospect of enduring forty nights of ice by escaping in any direction was as effective as the bars of any cell. Though Roke was someone important in Xan’s empire, here in this strange place, on the very edge of this empty black city out of time and legend, they found their roles strangely reversed. It was Ursu who had struggled to bring the Facilitator to this place, Ursu who had successfully evaded the armies of an empire – with, admittedly, some help from the Shai.

They were moving now. The female Shai came to him, speaking words both incomprehensible and alien. Out of habit, Ursu laid a hand on the surface of the Facilitator, and understood exactly what she meant. They were now going to enter Baul, and there would do that which needed to be done. Roke watched them both with old, tired eyes.

Ursu again found his way back to Roke’s side as they started off. They moved quickly up a steep path that ran along the perimeter of the legendary city. The mountains that separated Baul from the rest of the world were visible on the horizon, their astonishingly high peaks cutting deep into the sky. The increasingly steep path led over the ridge of a long hill that extended root-like far out from the main part of the Citadel. Sheer black cliffs fell away below them, a precipitious drop.

If they were to be attacked now, they were in an extremely vulnerable position, but they passed on unharmed, unseen – for the moment.

Elias

Elias moved ahead of the rest of them, feeling as if he were leading a band of armed children. Coming over the top of the incline, he gazed down at an entrance to the Citadel. One of several entrances, Kim had explained but, according to Sam, this was the quickest access to where they needed to be. And with the burster wave only hours away, time was now everything.

There were several shuttles scattered along the wide stony ramp that led up to the entrance. Elias’s heart sank; Vaughn was already here. He could see figures moving about down below, and wondered if one of them was Vaughn himself. His hand instinctively tightened around the barrel of his rifle. There were enough armed men and women visible to ensure that the people coming up the trail behind Elias would be outnumbered, outgunned.

He brought up his rifle and peered through the telescopic sight until he could pick out individual faces. Nobody that looked like Vaughn, however. Shit, he was probably already inside the Citadel. Elias scanned the whole area, particularly where the ground rose up on the far side of the ramp, in case Vaughn had positioned snipers.

He then studied the cavernous entrance through the rifle’s sight. This far north, the sun sat low on the horizon, and in twenty minutes it would no longer shine directly onto the entrance and the path leading inside.

He lowered the rifle, noticing how Vaughn’s shuttles were parked some distance away from the entrance. The path Elias stood on led down a perilously steep incline to a point no more than three metres from the entrance itself.

Elias retreated the way he had come until he rejoined the waiting column of his own people.

‘I’ve got an idea,’ he began.

The only problem was getting the precise timing right, since they’d be cutting things very fine. In a little over an hour, deadly radiation would begin creeping over the surface of Kasper, a silent, invisible killer.

Kim, Roke and Sam, with Ursu, still clutching the Facilitator, were to continue along the path, remaining out of sight. The rest of them, led by Elias and Trencher, headed back in the direction they had come, following a route that would take them in a wide circle, and into the rubble and boulders fringing the far side of the entrance ramp.

As they eventually moved in among the massive boulders there, Elias halted the young Primalist rebels, and explained to them what they must do.

Kim

Kim didn’t understand the significance of the Facilitator until Sam explained it to her. It was still hard to believe until she then spoke directly with each of the two aliens. The flood of visual information and knowledge she received was not unlike that experienced by eating Books. Except this time, the information surged through the Angel artefact, not through her own bioware. Her understanding of the two aliens, why they were here and the role each played in their world, seemed to grow tenfold in seconds. Absolute communication, she thought; not verbal, not entirely visual, but on some deeper level. She was learning to see the universe through the eyes of aliens.

As they came to the topmost point of the path Elias had scouted out earlier, they fell quiet, and watched the activity around the shuttles parked by the entrance, but cautiously from a hidden vantage point. Kim studied the Citadel entrance, and the sheer rock face rising above it. Someone positioned up there would have a better view of what was happening below. Kim cast her eye over the myriad boulders scattering the slope that dropped away from the entrance, but could see no sign of Elias’s group. She guessed that was a good sign, for if she couldn’t see them, maybe nobody else could either.

Time was running very short. Whether or not they succeeded in reactivating the shield, they needed to be inside the Citadel when the burster wave hit.

‘Now we wait,’ said Sam firmly.

Elias

Even the smallest of the surrounding boulders was about half the size of a Goblin, so they had even better cover here than Elias had expected. He spoke quietly to Trencher, then they both looked around for good firing positions.

Unsurprisingly, few of the Primalists who had sided with them showed much enthusiasm for shooting at people they had grown up with. Elias watched as Matthew went amongst them persuasively, stiffening their resolve.

Kim

‘There he is,’ she said. Sam looked up quickly, as did the two aliens. She could just make out Elias’s lonely figure walking out from between a couple of boulders, towards the Primalists still crowded around their shuttles.

Elias

As he walked slowly towards them, the Citadel entrance gaped beyond them like the mouth of hell. ‘Hey there,’ he called out.

Someone barked out something Elias couldn’t make out. He continued steadfastly forward, conscious of the weapons levelled at his chest.

‘My name is Elias,’ he said, finally stopping. One of them stepped a little closer.

‘If you’re carrying any weapons,’ growled the Primalist, ‘drop them now.’

Kim

The curious Primalists had all shifted around to the far side of the parked shuttles, looking towards Elias with their backs to the Citadel entrance.

Kim glanced at the others, and realized she didn’t need to say anything. They moved rapidly in a line down the steep path, towards the giant entrance.

Elias

‘I’m unarmed,’ said Elias. ‘I want to talk to whoever’s in charge here.’

‘Who sent you? Who are you?’ Various voices spoke at once.

Elias noticed with satisfaction that none of them seemed to be paying much attention to anything but him. The parked shuttles blocked most of the view towards the entrance, so if Kim and her party were coming down the incline, he couldn’t yet be sure.

Don’t fuck it up
, he prayed, as two of Vaughn’s men came forward and began checking him for weapons.

‘Look, I just want to speak to the man in charge here. If he’s who I think, we go back a long way.’

‘Vaughn? You want to speak to Vaughn? You won’t find him here. He’s down inside the Citadel.’

‘Shut up, Stephan,’ growled one of the others. ‘We’re the ones asking the questions.’

Too right
, thought Elias.
At least one of you has some brains
.

A shout came from somewhere and all heads turned. Elias saw a woman come running up to them, breathless. ‘There’s a whole bunch of people heading down by the side of the entrance. I think they must be with him.’ She was pointing at Elias.

Stephan’s eyes widened, and he swung his rifle like a club, aiming it straight at Elias’s head. Elias reached up and caught the end of it firmly, holding it still, while he punched his attacker hard under the chin. Stephan’s jaw clicked ominously and his eyes rolled back in his head. Then several men grabbed at Elias, and he went down under a hail of fists and gun butts.

Kicking and punching, Elias kept trying to get back on his feet.
Shit
, he thought.
No good after all
.

A single shot cracked through the still air, and then another.

Elias heard a bullet ricochet somewhere nearby.

The men and women attacking him froze, as if in a brief tableau. As he looked past them, he realized some of Vaughn’s people were already heading for the Citadel entrance.

Go
, he thought.
Go
.

Kim

Damn! Somebody was shooting at them.

Sam hurried them on. ‘Get in, get in,’ he muttered, deliberately placing himself between them and the distant shuttles.

After the daylight outside, the gloom inside the colossal entrance was truly appalling. Sam urged them on, deeper and deeper into the vast tunnel that led downwards from the entrance. They hurried into deepening blackness while the Primalists who had sided with them supplied covering fire from the boulders nearest the entrance.

After a few minutes, only a vague greyness existed behind, to remind them there was a way out of there at all. Kim had forgotten that the entrance tunnel curved slightly here, in a long, gentle spiral into the Citadel’s core.

They stopped for breath, listened and waited. There was no longer anything to be heard from above, but she didn’t allow herself to be lulled into a false sense of security. She lowered a small backpack to the ground, and fumbled through it until she found one of the torches they’d brought from the shuttle Elias had hijacked.

Sam reached out to put a hand on her arm before she could switch it on. ‘Not now,’ he said. ‘The light could lead them right to us.’

‘Hell,’ she said, exasperated, ‘we won’t be able to find our way through this place in the dark.’

‘That’s not a problem,’ he said. ‘You’re going to have to trust me.’