The Abyss Beyond Dreams (85 page)

‘Uh, no, not really, sir. Sirs! It switched to the Erond line. My signalman was forced to open the points for them. He had to; she held a gun to his head.’

‘So nobody got off?’

‘No, sir. I don’t think so. It barely stopped.’

‘Okay. Now, where is the county regiment headquarters?’

*

The Dios county regimental headquarters was a huge four-storey stone building stretching for over two hundred metres along Fothermore Street at the centre of the city. Behind
the façade were several acres of grounds dominated by the broad parade ground, then various stables, barracks, officers’ quarters, a shooting range, stores, even a small regimental
museum, and of course the armoury, all laid out in a neat grid and surrounded by a three-metre-high wall. Eighteen hundred years ago, Captain Kanthori had decreed that all regiments should fortify
their compounds in case their county ever came under siege from Fallers. People would have a refuge until help arrived.

The Dios regiment had loyally maintained its fortifications for all those centuries. Slvasta was very aware of that as he led his troop along Fothermore Street. There were no pedestrians left on
the road; people had been clearing out of the way from the moment he left the train station. News of his arrival had flashed across the city; now ex-sight played over him from behind a thousand
locked doors.

Up ahead, there was a final outbreak of loud knocks and thuds as the big iron-bound shutters were slammed across the windows of the regimental headquarters. The huge solid gates in the archway
entrance at the middle of the façade had been shut several minutes earlier.

As he drew closer, he saw the rifle barrels emerge from narrow slits in the stone, making the building bristle. He looked at Captain Philious beside him. ‘Talk to the brigadier.’

‘Perhaps.’

Slvasta turned to him in astonishment. ‘What?’

‘I don’t believe we’ve had the discussion of what happens after.’

Andricea stepped forward, drawing a wickedly sharp dagger. ‘You little shit.’

‘No.’ Slvasta held his hand up. Andricea scowled, but sheathed the dagger again.

‘What do you want?’ Slvasta asked.

‘What are your plans for my family?’

‘Normalization.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘You start life again level with the rest of us. Work hard, earn a living.’

Captain Philious looked at him in contemptuous amusement. ‘Great Giu, you really believe that, don’t you? Just how naive are you?’

Bethaneve stepped up. ‘All right, here’s the deal. Amnesty for everyone involved in the revolution, no matter what their crime. Your family are released from our custody, and you
keep one third of all your estates and shares, crud like that. You devolve true power to a democratically elected parliament with a written bill of rights guaranteeing civil liberties for all
citizens.’

‘Are you crazy?’ Slvasta demanded. ‘You’d let him keep his money? That gives him power.’

‘Take away their constitutional position, and they’re just another bunch of useless hedonistic aristos. We’ve destroyed Trevene’s organization, my people made sure of
that. Nobody’s going to follow him if he mounts a counter-revolution. In fact, let him try. It’ll use up his money even more quickly.’

‘No!’

‘Half of my estates,’ Captain Philious said.

‘Done.’

‘I said no,’ Slvasta snapped. He glared at the Captain. ‘Talk to the brigadier or your whole family will be executed.’

Captain Philious regarded him coolly. ‘One ’path from me and everyone on this street dies from those guns, myself included. Actually, no ’path from me will probably have the
same result pretty soon; the regiment is getting a bit nervous, in case you hadn’t perceived. The three of you are all that’s left of the revolution’s leadership. It dies with
you. The countryside will rise up under my relatives and march on Varlan. I expect the bloodshed will last for years.’

‘The Fallers!’ Slvasta yelled in an agony of anger. ‘They have the quantumbusters. They will kill us all!’

‘Then you have three choices. Keep me alive with a decent estate to maintain my lifestyle while you elect your genuinely democratic parliament, and the Dios regiment marching on
Nigel’s nest. Death in the next couple of minutes. Or the Fallers victorious.’

‘That is not a choice.’

‘You swore an oath, Captain Slvasta, an oath to defend Bienvenido – all of Bienvenido – against the Fallers. The same Fallers who manipulated you and your friends into
overthrowing my government, leaving this world in political chaos, all so they could snatch the greatest weapon of all. Your revolution was a fraud from start to finish. Now is your chance to put
things right.’

Slvasta wanted to throw himself at the Captain, tear him apart. His rage sent blood pounding in his head under tremendous pressure, threatening to burst his temple open. All he saw was the
undead corpse of Coulan, sprawled on Balcome’s station platform, the Faller’s terrible, calm confidence as he spoke of their impending liberation. Then the Faller-Ingmar sneered
victoriously up at him from the pit, reaching right out of the nightmare that never ended.

‘We will burn you from our world,’ he told the filthy memory loud and clear. ‘I swear it. No matter what the cost.’

‘Is that your answer?’ The Captain’s voice was so calm it was mockery.

‘Slvasta.’ Bethaneve was holding his arm, her face and mind alight with concern. ‘We will have eliminated the Captaincy. Maybe not how we thought, but there will be change now.
People will have a voice; they will have justice.’

‘Yes,’ he whispered.

‘What?’ Captain Philious asked.

‘Yes!’ Bethaneve said, incensed. ‘We will march on Nigel’s nest. Together.’

‘For a moment there, you had me worried.’

‘And you will remain in our custody until this is over and we are back in Varlan, where the agreement will be signed.’

‘Naturally.’ Captain Philious turned to the daunting wall of the regimental headquarters, with dozens of rifles following his smallest move. ‘Brigadier Doyle,’ he
’pathed, ‘could you step out here for a moment, please?’

*

Two hundred regiment troops came with them, led by Brigadier Doyle herself. The Dios station manager hurriedly organized two trains, one to carry the horses in long open
trucks. Terrestrial horses only, Slvasta insisted. Within an hour, both trains were steaming fast for Erond.

*

They came to the first bridge twenty minutes after leaving Erond – an old stone spandrel arch over a modest, but fast-flowing river. There was a three-metre gap in the
middle where explosives had blasted the stones apart. Most had fallen into the water, while others were embedded in the muddy banks.

When the regiment came galloping down the road, there were dozens of people milling round trying to decide what to do. The road on either side was clogged with horses and carts. Slvasta rode his
horse to the start of the bridge, forcing people out of the way. He stared at the gap for a long minute. Behind him the regiment came to a halt, ex-sight straining forward to find out what the
problem was, their horses whinnying, stomping about anxiously.

‘They’ll have blown every bridge on the way to Adeone,’ Javier said, reining in his horse beside Slvasta. ‘You know that, don’t you?’

‘Yes. And we can’t allow that to stop us.’ Without warning Slvasta urged his horse forward, ’pathing relentless orders into its nervous brain. It galloped along the
stones, the gap seemingly expanding as he drew closer. Then the horse was jumping, and the water was a giddy eight metres below. He landed on the far side, clearing the gap easily.

‘Come on,’ he bellowed.

Laughing wildly, Javier charged his own horse along the broken bridge.

*

Fergus and Marek accompanied Kysandra, trekking over the river at the side of the Blair Farm compound, then along a narrow trail that mod-dwarfs had laboriously cleared through
the woods. They rode sturdy terrestrial horses, each leading another horse, laden with bags.

She’d never actually explored this part of the countryside before. It was wild land, undulating to create marshy vales and dense spinneys. Nobody had ever filed a claim on any of it, at
the county land office; taming it would take decades and cost more than any revenue a farm would ever generate. Far ahead, the foothills of the Algory mountains rose above the jagged rock outcrops
and the sparse, wind-bowed trees.

They made good time, their horses walking steadily through the tangled scrub and soft grassland. It was a gradual climb eastwards, with the slopes gradually increasing their gradient and height.
A pair of ge-eagles glided languidly overhead, scanning the terrain ahead. Nothing much moved – a few nests of bussalores, some feline daravan slinking about. Birds wheeled through the air,
startled by the intrusion.

The sun was low in the west when they topped a tall rise, where spartan raddah bushes formed a meandering spine along the ridge.

‘This should do,’ Fergus announced.

The three of them dismounted. They stood facing the sinking sun, looking across the land they’d just traversed. Kysandra’s eyes filtered out the glare as they zoomed in on Blair
Farm, thirty kilometres distant. It wasn’t her farm any more, the sweet homestead where she’d been born. This was a giant artificial square of neat buildings sliced into the valley,
surrounded by a geometric pattern of fields.
Like something a machine built
, she thought. Which wasn’t a bad way of describing it. It was strange to be looking at it, acknowledging
what an accomplishment it was, how much work and effort had been expended, and knowing that it was about to vanish in a firestorm.

Rich gold sunlight shone on
Skylady
, its bold curving triangle shape sitting on top of the solid rocket booster stack. It towered over all the other buildings in the compound, a
glorious monument to hope. Kysandra felt immeasurably proud, looking at the old starship as it was about to be given a stormy ride back up into space, where it truly belonged.

I helped make this happen
.

But at such a terrible price.

She told her u-shadow to open a link to the starship. The connection was weak, with a very low bandwidth. ‘How’s it going?’ she asked.

‘Hello, ground control,’ Nigel replied. ‘Well, here am I, sitting on a load of pigshit, commencing countdown, may Giu’s love be with me.’

‘Er, are you okay?’

‘Yeah. Running the final test sequences on the boosters now.’

‘How long until you launch?’

‘Maybe five minutes. The systems are simple enough, but I have to be absolutely certain I can ignite all five first-stage boosters simultaneously. So far so good.’

‘Nigel—’

‘Don’t. We promised no goodbyes. Because I’m not leaving, not really. I’m out there, on the other side of the barrier, waiting to say hello. Remember?’

Kysandra closed her eyes, trying to keep the fear at bay. ‘Yes.’

‘And you know it’s true, because I’m—’

‘—always right. Yes, I think I know that now.’

‘That’s my girl.’

‘Where will we go? Out there in the Commonwealth?’

‘Ah, good question. Earth, of course, where it all began. Cressat, which is my own planet.’

‘Nigel! You do not own a whole planet!’

‘Do too!’

‘How?’

‘Told you I was rich.’

She was grinning at his silliness. ‘Yes, but—’

‘Uh, oh.’

‘What?’

‘The cavalry has arrived.’

Slvasta had been out in front on the whole ride from Erond. He was always the first to jump the gaps in the bridges, the first to force his horse into the raging waters when
the destruction was too big to jump. Javier and Tovakar and Yannrith were with him all the time. Just behind them, Bethaneve struggled to keep up, suffering from her lack of experience with horses.
Next was Andricea and the bodyguard troop forming a phalanx around Captain Philious and Brigadier Doyle, who insisted on riding with her Captain. Then came the bulk of the regiment, grim and
resolute, carrying the heaviest weapons their horses could manage.

By the time they passed Adeone, Slvasta knew his horse was barely going to make it to Blair Farm. It was sweating heavily, foam flecking its head and neck. Still he rode it onwards
relentlessly.

Finally, after hours of riding along the road lined by young follrux trees, he came to the unmarked turning. ‘This is it,’ he ’pathed everybody in the cavalcade. ‘Ready
your weapons, and watch out for ambush.’ With that he raced forwards, ignoring the aching exhaustion which punished his horse’s mind.

‘Wait. What’s the plan?’ Bethaneve asked, her ’path laced with worry.

‘Full frontal assault,’ Slvasta replied. ‘We have no time for anything else.’ The ruined bridges had told him that. If Nigel was intent on delaying any pursuit, then time
was critical. Besides, you never negotiated with Fallers, never offered concessions, leniency . . . You either killed them or they ate you. This wasn’t politics any more. This was his true
arena.

The thick forest with its trees snared in vines was familiar, as were the rush of tatus fly swarms. His ex-sight scanned the carbine holstered on the side of the saddle. Magazine loaded. Safety
on. His teekay carefully undid the strap, leaving it ready to draw at an instant’s notice, because he was nearing the turn in the track which came out on the slope above the farm
compound.

The promise that the frantic ride would soon be over enticed the horse onwards. And he burst out of the treeline to see the familiar valley spread out below him, awash with the rose-gold glow of
the setting sun.

It was his shock which made the horse rear up, whinnying in alarm. Slvasta had to cling on tight, attempting to soothe its simple panicky thoughts.

The fields on either side of the road were filled with mods. Hundreds and hundreds of them: dwarfs, horses, apes, stretching out along the edge of the forest; still and silent, and sitting down
(even the horses), all of them facing directly away from the farm. At first he thought they were all dead, but a fast scan with ex-sight revealed that, even more unnervingly, they were merely
drowsing. None of them turned to look at the horses dashing out of the forest.