[05] Elite: Reclamation (31 page)

The moment passed. Octavia stepped back, regarding him with a satisfied expression.

‘Choice made,’ she said, smiling. She turned to a nearby elegantly curved table where a crystal decanter filled with a mauve liquid sat surrounded by a series of tumblers.

‘A drink? A toast to possibilities.’

Dalk made his way across to her, watching her carefully. She poured them both a drink and sipped hers as she handed a tumbler to him. She held out her glass in invitation.

He clinked his against hers.

‘To possibilities,’ he echoed.

***

Salomé was exhausted, dripping with sweat. It was hot. Too hot. She couldn’t tell how long she’d been forced to walk. It had felt like interminable hours. Her feet were burning and sore, unused to walking barefoot. Within minutes of leaving the cell she could tell she was being led above ground. She heard the wind blowing around her.                  

They’d been leading her along by means of the noose, yanking at it every so often in order to adjust her direction. At times she’d felt the path go steeply upwards. She must be in the mountains. Were these people responsible for the beacon? Was it a lure? Some kind of snare to trap the unwary?

She staggered and would have fallen had she not been caught by someone behind her.

She was pulled ungracefully to one side and forced to kneel. Sounds of the men walking around her reached her ears. Hands fumbled at her neck and then the hood was pulled off.

Intense light assaulted her eyes, making her flinch and blink rapidly, a delicious cooling breeze swept across her. Her head was jerked roughly back and a leather flask was rammed into her mouth. Water splashed, she nearly choked, but desperately tried to swallow as much as she could.

After a couple of gulps the flask was pulled away. She gasped for breath, looking around her.

The men were arranged in a circle, with her at the centre. As she watched, the one with the flask settled down to join his companions. They faced outwards with their backs to her, kneeling in a similar fashion, staffs in their left hands. A low humming tone came from each of them.

They had arrived in a clearing, surrounded by a border of scraggy looking vegetation.

So there is some plant life after all.

She’d been unlucky to have crashed in the desert.

To her right the ground dropped away precipitately, they were at the edge of a steep escarpment. The star seemed to be in about the same place as she remembered when she set out from Hassan’s ship. A day had passed, but how long was a day on this world?

Her gaze travelled around. Ahead she could see the path snake up around rocky outcrops. They were climbing out of a valley up the side of a mountain. Salomé could see the mountain range reaching into the distance, snow-capped and forbidding peaks jutting upwards into a clear magenta sky. They were the same mountains she’d seen from the desert. Was the beacon nearby?

High above she could make out some kind of dwelling, set against the sheer edge of the mountain. It had the look of a domed temple, carved from the rock itself. It might have been impressive once, but it gave a strong impression of neglect and age. The path headed in that direction. Was that her destination?

The heat overcame her and she swayed, falling to one side. Dimly she felt the men get to their feet and try to rouse her, but she was too far gone. She slipped into blissful unconsciousness, only vaguely aware of being hoisted up.

The next thing that roused her was a constant swaying and a sharp burning pain in her shoulders, wrists and ankles. They’d pulled the hood back over her head. She tried to move only to find she was now tied hand and foot. They’d bound her to a pole, slung like an animal ready for slaughter and they were carrying her between them. The clack of their staffs echoed off the mountain walls, a rhythmic beat that pounded onwards, ever up the mountainside.

She tried to count, but her mind could barely focus. A hundred steps easily, perhaps thousands …

The clack stopped. She felt hands brush across hers, the sound of a knife cutting. She fell to the ground with a thump, the breath was knocked out of her. She was hauled to up and pulled along by her arms, her feet dragging behind her. Everything darkened abruptly and she felt cool. She must have been dragged into shadow.

A deep sonorous voice chanted a question.

‘The Elders greet you. What is this that you see fit to bring it before the assembly?’

She heard one of the men reply in the same manner.

‘A trespasser from the void. Found walking the barrens.’

There was a brief pause.

‘Let them be unveiled.’

Salomé felt her head jerked up and the hood was pulled away. She looked directly into the eyes of another of the men, superficially similar to the ones she had seen before, but wearing an ornate headpiece made of woven green threads of plant material. Two others sat beside him on a stone dais, similarly but less ostentatiously dressed. All three held staffs of wood about a metre and a half long.

She was standing in the shade of a courtyard, hewn from the solid rock, bordered by rough pillars that supported the enormous weight above. The floor was dusty and uneven, marked with dark stains. She could see crudely-made baskets arranged around the walls, containing meagre supplies of vegetables. There was water too, in a stone trough. She blinked, squinting, trying to see clearly.

Other detritus littered the floor. With growing horror Salomé made out gnawed bones, the remnants of ribcages and, arranged in a stack, a collection of discoloured skulls. Some were whole, others cracked and broken. She jolted back in shock, taking in the gaze of those empty eye sockets with a short yelp of fear.

The man recoiled in surprise.

‘A woman.’

‘She carried things forbidden,’ one of the men beside her added, lowering her rucksack from off his back and tipping the contents onto the ground. The water bottles, rations, her tatty overalls and the radio fell out, bouncing in the low gravity, before lying still at the leader’s feet.

The radio.

Salomé struggled forward, but was pulled back sharply.

‘Tech.’

The leader spat vehemently with an expression of supreme distaste.

‘Tech is forbidden, void dweller!’ he sang at her. ‘Why do you bring this abomination to us? Tech is evil, tech is despair, tech is death!’

The men around her took up the chant.

‘Tech is evil, tech is despair, tech is death!’

‘I didn’t bring it to you …’ Salomé began. She found herself reviving in the cool air of the courtyard.

At the sound of her voice the zealots around her yelled, their leader clasping his hands to his ears in apparent shock.

‘She is uncouth,’ he sang, his voice shrill.

‘I crashed in the desert!’ she shouted, not heeding them. ‘I have no quarrel with you, let me go.’

At an unseen signal something smashed into the back of her knees. Her legs crumpled and she found herself on her knees in the dirt. As she looked up the leader had stepped up to her.

His hand closed around her neck and lifted her up. She could see the white of his eyes, yellowed and bloodshot.

‘Your crime is heinous, void dweller. You will be sacrificed for the good of the brotherhood.’ He raised his head and sang to his companions. ‘Prepare a pyre! Her crime becomes a blessing!’

Memories flooded her mind again; the sombre man, his hand at her neck, hurting her in exactly the same way as he stabbed her with his sword.

Rage suffused her, how dare these primitives treat her like this? The leader’s staff resolved in her vision. She stared at it, imagining her fingers closing around it, hefting it. Movements, familiar and practiced, swirled in her consciousness. She knew how to use it! Blocks, strikes, parries, thrusts … somehow she knew.

No more submission.

She grabbed at it.

A deft twist and it was hers. Her first move was an abrupt upwards blow to the leader’s outstretched arm. He yelled in surprise, released her and backpedalled away. Salomé instinctively brought the staff around, smashing one of her escorts in the neck and another in the leg, before stepping away.

More yells. A frenzy of movement. Her vision clouded with furious red.

The zealots came at her. She raged back, a spinning dervish of lethal uncontrolled fury. Bones shattered, wrists broke, skulls cracked. Yells turned to screams of fear. Her movements were precise and controlled with no compassion; relentless, determined, brutal and callous. The bodies of her victims fell at her feet.

She heard a strange, piercing high-pitched wail; a screeching, rending noise of wrath and indignation. Startled, she realised it came from her. Her vision cleared. She saw her own hands, bloodied, cut and bruised, the bodies of half a dozen men writhing painfully at her feet. The others were backing away in fear, chanting at a low ebb.

‘Let me go,’ she managed, spitting blood from her mouth. ‘Step aside.’

The zealots continued to retreat but made no other move.

She sensed movement behind her. Cursing, she spun around only to receive a dizzying blow to the face. She staggered back, half-blinded by pain. She lost her balance and heard running foot falls. She felt herself wrestled roughly to the ground, the sharp dirt grinding into the skin of her face as a hand pressed her head hard into the ground. She felt a knee in her back and her arms were pulled up behind her and quickly secured. Someone grabbed her by the hair.

She screamed as she was yanked to her feet, the pain intolerable.

The leaders face loomed in her view. It was cut and bleeding, his left eye already swollen half shut.

‘Tech is evil, tech is despair, tech is death!’ he chanted, mere inches from her face.

Salomé dimly heard the others repeat the refrain. Her head was yanked to one side. The leader stepped that way. Salomé saw the radio, still lying on the ground. The leader raised his staff.

Without the radio …

‘Don’t!’ Salomé yelled, struggling forwards, feeling her arms pulled painfully back as the zealots held her tight.

The staff came down, smashing the radio to smithereens. The power pack crackled and sparked for a moment.

‘Tech is evil, tech is despair, tech is death!’

Tears welled up in her eyes. She tried to rise, but the strength that had consumed her was gone. She struggled helplessly. Without the radio she had no chance. They might as well have just killed her outright.

The leader turned to face her.

‘Death to the void dweller!’

It took her a moment to realise he’d spoken the words rather than chanted them. Somehow that chilled her. She looked up into his crazed eyes. Madness; pure and unreasoning madness.

He readied his staff, raising it above his head, preparing a lethal killing blow. Salomé stared dully at it, resigned to the inevitable.

No hope, no answers …

The leader’s chest burst into flame. He screamed in horror and pain. The staff was flung aside as he fell backwards. The zealots beside her shouted in alarm. Salomé turned to see a bright beam of light flash towards her. It hit another of the zealots and his clothing caught fire too, he ran screaming.

The others ran, shrieking their fear and fury.

She staggered and turned around, her hands still tied behind her back. She looked across the courtyard, seeing a figure emerge from behind one of the columns. She stepped back in surprise.

A man stood there, dressed in a tatty grey smock, matched with a makeshift wide-brimmed hat tied by string under his chin. A neatly cropped salt and pepper moustache and beard framed a swarthy face counterpointed by a bright pair of eyes that studied her intently. The man held some kind of gun. As she watched a beam of intense light flashed out and caught another of the zealots.

‘Presto, presto! We have little time,’ he said, beckoning urgently to her. His voice had the most peculiar accent.

‘Who are you?’ Salomé demanded, staggering towards him. He was short and squat, she found herself looking down on him.

‘Later, later. We need to be leaving before they return. Scare now, not last for long.’

The man produced a knife and cut the rope around her wrist.

‘There, free. Come, follow me, signorina.’

‘Wait, how can I?’

‘Trust me? Stay here if you wish.’ The man turned and vaulted onto the wall of the courtyard, jabbing a thumb in the direction of the vanished zealots. ‘They will kill you. Then they eat you.’ He hummed for a moment. ‘Maybe they do it the other way around. Hard to tell. They like women. More fat, less gristle, quicker to cook.’

Salomé stared at him. ‘Cook me?’ She looked around at the skulls and bones. ‘Oh god …’

She felt bile rise in her throat and swallowed, trying to clamp down on it.

‘Your broadcast,’ he explained. ‘You crashed, yes? Picked up your radio sig.’ He squinted at her confused look. ‘Come in disguise, point gun, bang bang, rescue bella signorina, comprendere?’

Zealots reappeared on the opposite side of the courtyard, yelling out their horrible chants. They had stones in their hands.

The man raised the gun again and the zealots stopped.

‘Get ready to run,’ he whispered to her.

The zealots advanced a step, their leader raising a hand clenched around a stone.

‘Come no closer,’ the man called, aiming his gun again. The zealots exchanged looks and then inched forward again. ‘I will not hesitate.’

One of the zealots raised his arm, poised to throw his stone. The man pulled the trigger of his gun.

Instead of a beam of radiation the gun emitted a spluttering hum that died abruptly.

‘Cheap Federation junk …’

The man adjusted something on the gun and tried again, but with an even more lacklustre result. The zealots mumbled under their breath and advanced towards them.

‘Ciao, miei amici!’ the man said, throwing the gun at them. Salomé saw him drop over the edge of the courtyard and disappear. The zealots turned their attention to her. Salomé hesitated for a brief moment before jumping and leaping after him.

‘Wait for me!’