Empress of Eternity (25 page)

20 Siebmonat 3123, Vaniran Hegemony

Duhyle didn’t quite use the “bigger hammer” theory to rebuild the synchronizer. He did calculate exactly how much power each component in the current assembly could take without failing, melting down, or otherwise malfunctioning. Then he started modifying. That resulted in subassemblies angling off from the body of the device.

At one point Helkyria looked up from her makeshift console and at his table.

Duhyle grinned at her. “You did tell me that speed and reliability outweighed compactness and efficient design.”

She smiled back, warmly, and went back to work.

Twilight was dropping across the canal by the time he checked the last connections and cleared his throat.

“You’re finished, Kavn?”

“I hope so. And you?”

“I’ve done what I could. I’ve been waiting for you. I didn’t want to break your concentration. Is it ready?”

“As ready as I can make it. I never asked what you had in mind.”

“No, you didn’t. For that, I’m grateful. There’s a pattern in the systems, but what exactly completing it will do…of that I’m not certain.”

“You must have an idea.”

Helkyria nodded. “If Thora’s correct, and she seems to be, then gaining full control of the system might grant us access to the canal’s internal systems.”

“Ah…what does Thora have to do with that?”

“Time…There’s no way the canal can exist as it does. Therefore, it doesn’t.”

Duhyle shook his head, then abruptly stopped. “The ancients did something to place it somehow outside of time?”

“I don’t see how that’s possible, but if she’s correct, it might be possible to anchor the canal across a continuum of time, not all time, but at points across hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of years, perhaps at so many points that it would seem continuous.”

“But the energy…?”

“…had to come from somewhere.”

“Where, ser, if I might ask?” asked Symra from where she stood at the top of the ramp.

“There are a number of possibilities, but we won’t know which one unless and until the synchronizer works.”

“What do you want us to do? Captain Valakyr—”

“Like all good junior officers, she wants to do something. The question is what will be most effective. We will find out shortly.” She looked at the subcaptain. “If you’d have someone bring us some rations and something to drink…? We need a break before we test this.”

“Yes, ser.”

After Symra left, Duhyle asked, “Have you thought what we do if this doesn’t work and we get to Baeldura’s deadline?”

“I have.”

Duhyle waited.

“We refuse to give up the station. Unless we can stop them, the Aesyr won’t stop using the Hammers, even if we surrender. They’ll just keep using them to get their way. Their actions already prove that. If they’d used just one Hammer strike and held back on the others, I’d be more inclined to trust Baeldura’s word, but they’ve already used the Hammers here several times, and we have no idea where else they’ve employed them.”

“Isn’t that playing turtle?” he asked.

“Unfortunately, but the First Speaker agrees.”

“I thought she wanted us to negotiate.”

“That was before she discovered that Aesyr mobs in Asgard cut down forty Vanir with axes. Now both she and the Magistra of Security see no reason to negotiate. None of us trust the Aesyr, and certainly not Baeldura, for all of her public reputation for honesty. She may be beloved, but it’s only by the Aesyr.”

“You knew that before Baeldura made the ultimatum.”

“I did. We needed the extra time.”

Neither spoke.

Duhyle started to say more, but then heard Symra’s boots on the stone of the ramp.

“Ser…I brought the ration paks and some tea. It’s only warm…”

“That’s fine. Thank you,” offered Helkyria.

Only after he’d eaten the entire ration pak did Duhyle realize just how hungry he’d been. Then he stood and stretched, looking for somewhere to put the carton because the cycler was down on the lower level.

“I’ll take those,” offered Symra.

“Thank you.” Duhyle handed her the carton and the mug.

“It will be a while before everything’s powered up and checked,” said Helkyria. “You should be here.”

“I’ll be right back, ser.” Symra headed down the ramp with the empty cartons and mugs.

“She’d be watching and listening from the ramp anyway,” Duhyle pointed out.

Helkyria nodded. “Let’s start powering up. If this works, we won’t have that much time to figure out how to manage what we discover.”

“You were rather effective with that flaming blade,” Duhyle pointed out. “Couldn’t you try something like that?”

“Kavn…I told you. I didn’t do that. At least, I don’t remember doing it, and I have no idea how to replicate that. I’m hoping that if we can get to the next level of commands, we might be able to use the canal for directed forces that way…but I don’t know.” For a moment a combination of off-black and green colored the tips of her short hair. “System power…”

“System power on.”

“Disabler one…”

“Disabler one…removed…”

By the time Symra hurried back up the ramp and stood behind them, they had the system fully powered and were ready to employ the beefed-up synchronizer.

“Beginning search probe…” Helkyria pressed the stud.

The work space/laboratory exploded into a brilliant silver light so bright that Duhyle could see nothing, nor could he access any of the systems. He closed his eyes against the intensity that was far more than mere glare. For several moments, he thought that the light would dim. It did not. Instead the brilliance increased so much that his closed eyes began to tear.

Then the light vanished. A darkness as intensive and as intrusive as the light had been enfolded him. He wanted to protest that darkness couldn’t behave like light, that it didn’t have a wave form or photonic behavior.

That was before both heat and chill shook him so that he was burning and shivering…and plunged him into depths that were neither hot nor cold, light nor dark…

8 Tenmonth 1351, Unity of Caelaarn

When he woke, lying next to Maarlyna, Maertyn knew that he had to get back to his research. Yet, in some ways, the whole idea felt futile. Maarlyna, simply by being receptive to the image or the ice-sport, or whatever the woman in red happened to be, had uncovered more of a novel nature in a few moments than he’d discovered in more than a year and a half. Even before he moved, Maertyn smiled, if ruefully. He’d already enlisted her aid. Why not bring her into the research more fully? With that thought, he eased out of bed, looking back at Maarlyna, who opened her eyes at his movement and smiled sleepily.

The rest of rising, breakfasting, and beginning the day was uneventful, until Svorak appeared just after midmorning, stepping into the station and holding two items. “No messages today, excepting a letter from Shaenya’s sister, but the canal-runner driver thought you might like to see the morning newsheet from Daelmar.” He handed the single sheet to Maertyn. “Strange doings in the capital.”

Maarlyna reached out and took Maertyn’s arm. He held the sheet at a slight angle so that she could read it as he did.

Maertyn looked up from the sheet. “Very strange. Thank you, Svorak.”

“We just thought you should know. Will you be needing anything, sir?”

“Not at the moment. Perhaps later.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll be working in the shed for a time if you need me.”

“That’s good to know.” Maertyn smiled, but did not say more until the lighthouse-keeper had left the station.

Maarlyna released her hold on Maertyn’s arm. “The Council will overrule the Administrator, won’t they?”

“Why do you think that?”

“Tauzn wouldn’t have made the appeal unless he had the votes.”

“You’re likely quite correct, dearest, but there’s little we can do from here. Perhaps we should don winter jackets and walk out and observe the ocean.”

Maarlyna glanced toward the ramp leading down to the lower levels and nodded. “I’ll be just a moment. I’ll get your jacket, too. The green one?”

“The dark green one, please.”

Within a few minutes, the two were walking toward the light house overlooking the canal and the ocean. Each breath created a faint ice-mist in the still air of late morning, and an icy corona wreathed the pale early-winter sun.

“You didn’t want to say anything in the station,” Maarlyna finally offered.

“No. I don’t see any point in getting Shaenya and Svorak upset. Not yet, anyway.”

“Do you think Tauzn will come after you?”

“He might. He’s known to be vindictive.”

“He wouldn’t like the way you escaped all his agents…is that it?”

“He’s the kind who’d regard that as a personal affront, especially the fact that I managed it without killing anyone.”

“What about the lorry driver?”

“I doubt the accident killed him. The lorry wasn’t that badly smashed. I think Ashauer’s men did when Transport cleaned up the accident.” Maertyn stopped short of the worn bricks of the light house and glanced northward across the canal. All he could see beyond the icy gray waters and the gray-blue stone of the far walls were the whites of ice and snow. After several moments, he turned westward, where a few whitecaps dotted the swells of the ocean.

“I never met Tauzn,” Maarlyna said, “but the few times we encountered Administrator D’Onfrio, he seemed more concerned, more accessible.”

“D’Onfrio’s just as political, but not quite so ruthless, and the way things are now, that might be his undoing.” Maertyn continued to look out over the ocean, not really seeing it.

“What does Tauzn want?”

“Power.”

“Why can’t he just wait? Isn’t he likely to win the election for EA?”

“He’s the most likely candidate, but that’s more than a year away, and matters could change. Right now, people are worried and concerned. If he can use his power to convince everyone, especially the returnists, that action against subversives is necessary, and that the restrictions against geo-engineering are foolhardy in a time of crisis, he’ll create the illusion of action when everyone else is seen as doing nothing, and that will insure his election.”

“It will also insure the loss of civil freedoms…won’t it?”

“Their curtailment at the least, and perhaps more. He’ll justify it by making the remaining lords the scapegoats.”

“You’re the most visible…”

“And that’s a sad commentary—a deputy assistant minister of science as the great opponent of change, who stands in the way of progress in a time of crisis.” He shook his head and turned, looking back at the station and then to the south. There was something…

In the sky to the southeast, above the pines and the south, he caught sight of a long black shape with thin longitudinal red stripes and a black gondola snug on the bottom of the midsection. Behind it was another.

“Maertyn?” Maarlyna turned and stared. “Maertyn!”

“Ashauer didn’t know the half of it,” he said. “Those are Gaerda dirigibles, and there’s only one reason they could be heading this way.” He looked to Maarlyna. “Can you lock everything in the station against them?”

“I could…but we can’t go anywhere. We can’t stay there forever.”

“I’m hoping we won’t have to,” he replied. “I don’t think they can fly around here for days without someone noticing and looking into it. They think they can just walk into the station and take me away. They don’t know you can lock the station. In thousands of years no one’s been able to do that. But Shaenya and Svorak need to leave. Send them to the Reserve station, the one to the south on the coast. It’ll be hard going through the snow, but if they try to take the canal back to where the road leaves it, the Gaerda will catch them.”

“Why would they hurt them?”

“The Gaerda wouldn’t want any witnesses around. I do think they’d hesitate to wipe out a Reserve station as well, especially if they don’t know whose tracks are leading there. Now…get them out of here. I’m going to set the light house beacon on emergency.”

Without another word, Maarlyna ran toward the station.

Maertyn took several hurried steps, then pressed the numerical code into the light house lock. He opened the door and stepped inside, moving to the small control board, where he pressed the orange
EMERGENCY
stud.

As he left the light house and re-locked the door, Maertyn could hear Maarlyna’s voice.

“Svorak…Shaenya! You have to leave! Now! Just pull on your boots and jackets and go! Run for the Reserve station to the south. The black-shirts are coming. The guards are only three kays away. You’ll be safe there.”

Maertyn hurried toward the station, looking to the southeast through the clear air, but the dirigibles were still a goodly distance away, perhaps even as much as twenty kays.

Maarlyna was shifting her glance from the two airships to the station door and back to the airships when Maertyn joined her.

“I told them to hurry.”

“I heard you.”

Svorak was the first to join them, running from the maintenance shed, his eyes also taking in the airships as he halted short of Maertyn. “Sir…you sure you won’t be wanting us here?”

“The best thing you can do is get to the Reserve guards and tell them what’s happening. You can’t help here.”

“Please…go,” added Maarlyna.

“Lady?” asked Shaenya as she stepped out into the chill, struggling into a heavy gray jacket.

“You need to go…and hurry. You need to get into the trees before they can see you.”

The older couple hurried across the gray-blue of the canal wall and then began to follow tracks in the snow, doubtless made earlier by Svorak in checking the wind turbines. Before long they had reached the low pines and were out of sight.

Maertyn studied the dirigibles. They looked to be slightly more than ten kays away. “We need to get inside. They may well have long-range weapons.” He took Maarlyna’s arm.

“You think they’ll shoot at a distance.”

“Probably not, but I’d rather not tempt them.” He reached out and pressed the stone, since the door had already closed. Once they were inside, and the stone was resealing itself, he turned to her again. “Can you lock all the doors and all the windows except the upper one on the south side? That way we can watch what happens.”

“I think so…but then what?”

“We’ll just have to see, but it will be obvious fairly soon what the Gaerda troopers have in mind. I think they intend to march in and take over the station. They’ll have some pretext for taking me. They’re sending two dirigibles so that they’ll have enough men to keep the Reserve guards from stopping them.”

Maarlyna stepped up to the wall and held her hand there. Then she crossed the main chamber and did the same on the north side. “They’re both locked.”

“Good. Now, let’s go up.”

Maarlyna stepped away from the wall, then paused, looking down at a sprig of greenery. She bent and picked it up, slipping it into the small chest pocket on her jacket when she straightened.

“What’s that?”

“Mistletoe. Shaenya must have gathered some for the year-end.”

“She is superstitious that way, but I suppose it’s harmless.”

Maarlyna only smiled as she walked beside him.

Maertyn had the feeling that she’d seen something he hadn’t…again.

Once they were on the upper level by the open south window, after Maarlyna had locked the north window, they watched the black airships slowly descend as they neared the station.

After a moment, he touched her shoulder. “I didn’t ask…you could have gone with Shaenya and Svorak.”

“You didn’t have to ask. You can’t lock the station. How could I let them take you? They’d kill you and stage it so that you looked like you were trying to escape. After what you did to escape Tauzn’s agents before, who could dispute a story like that?”

Maertyn had to admit that she was most likely right about that.

“You never abandoned me. I should leave you?” she said gently. “And…somehow…it also feels wrong. This is the only place I’ve felt I belonged since…”

“I know…I’ve known that from the time you walked in…even before, I think. I don’t know why, but it was important that we…you…have familiar furniture.”

She reached out and squeezed his hand.

Shoulder-to-shoulder, they continued to watch as the first airship dropped to within yards of the stone of the canal wall less than a hundred yards to the east of the station. Black-jacketed troopers began to slide down lines into the snow bordering the stone of the canal. All of them bore rifles in slings.

A deep voice boomed from a speaker on the dirigible. “This is a custodial mission. No one will be hurt. I say again. No one will be hurt. Under the emergency authority of the Unity, Protective Services is taking possession of this government facility. If you do not resist, no one will be harmed…”

Despite the language, Maertyn couldn’t help but note that once the troopers landed, they immediately had their rifles at the ready as they moved toward the station.

Maarlyna reached out and touched the stone, stepping back slightly as it slid from itself to re-form as a solid surface. “They didn’t look peaceful to me.”

“They always start out with weapons ready,” Maertyn pointed out. “What bothers me is the number of troopers and dirigibles. If it’s a mere custodial issue, why does it take as many as hundreds of troopers to handle one lord, his wife, a lighthouse-keeper, and a staff woman?”

“They were expecting you to resist, dear, because they know what they’re doing is wrong, and they know you’ll resist wrongdoing.” After a moment, she asked, “How long do you think we should wait before checking to see what they’re doing?”

“I’m guessing at least a day. The light house is flashing on emergency and its transmitter is doing the same. The Reserve guards have a satellite comm-link, and they’ll report, especially after Svorak and Shaenya reach them.”

“Why is the Council letting them do this?”

“I don’t know…unless Tauzn has them all terrified that they’ll have some sort of fatal illness or accident. We might as well go down to the main level and have some tea…or something.”

As they turned from the locked stone of the window, a figure appeared—the woman in scarlet. She stepped toward Maarlyna and spoke.

“You are the key.”

As the words came from her mouth, Maertyn could not hear them so much as see them in his mind. And…again…he had the sense of another figure. For just a moment, he thought he glimpsed a figure in silver…or was it silver-gray? He blinked, and the second figure vanished.

“The key…?” murmured Maarlyna.

“The key to what will be…and is…”

“What about the black-shirts?” asked Maertyn, hoping the woman might offer more information, as she had at the tube-train station.