Chronicles of the Invaders 1: Conquest (23 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

T
he sound of voices raised in anger leached through the closed doors of Governor Andrus’s private office. Balen, as the governor’s private secretary, should have been inside bearing witness to what was taking place, but now he was rather glad that he had been excluded. There was enough rage to spare in that room, and he didn’t want any of it to be aimed in his direction. Anyway, he was able to hear all that was being said perfectly well. The doors were thick, but they weren’t
that
thick. . . .

•••

“The shuttle went down twelve hours ago, and you’re telling us that there is still no trace of my husband?”

The voice was that of the Archmage Syrene. She had put aside her formal robes, and was dressed in a simple dress of red silk. There were dark patches beneath her eyes. It was clear that she had not slept the previous night.

“Or my daughter,” said Lord Andrus. “You forget that she was also on that shuttle.”

“Your daughter is a traitor,” said Sedulus, who was standing next to Syrene. He wore an unadorned black suit and a matching knitted silk tie. It struck Andrus as odd that Sedulus, who hated the humans more than most—and was similarly hated by them in return—should have embraced their fashions so wholeheartedly. His shoes were polished to a high sheen, and the only item of his dress that gave a hint of his position was a tiny gold pin in the left-hand lapel of his jacket, a pin in the shape of a fist clutching a bolt of lightning.

“Nevertheless, she remains my daughter,” said Andrus evenly.

“One might almost believe that you condoned her actions,” said Sedulus.

“I will not disown my daughter because of a single failing, no matter how grave,” replied Andrus.

His head ached, and he had slept no more than the Archmage. As the senior Military commander, he was in charge of the search for his daughter and the Grand Consul, even though it was a search that he had a vested interest in seeing fail. Meanwhile Syl was a prisoner of the Resistance, which was little consolation. He had spent a decade fighting them, and now the life of his only daughter was in their hands.

“None of this matters!” shouted Syrene. “Your daughter is of
no
consequence. My husband—and his safe return—is the priority here. Why have you not sent in waves of soldiers to sweep the land? How can one of the most important figures in the Illyri Empire be a suspected captive of a band of terrorists?”

Lord Andrus sat back in his chair.

“I don’t think you grasp the difficulty of the situation to the north,” he said.

“Well,” said Syrene, “why don’t you just explain it to me?”

•••

The Military interceptor flew high over the Central Lowlands, heading north for the Highland Boundary Fault—or the Highland Line as the locals called it, the ancient rock fracture that bisected the Scottish mainland from Helensborough in the west to Stonehaven in the northeast. The Line was the natural divider between the Lowlands to the south and the Highlands to the north and west, but the Illyri had their own name for it. They referred to it as “the Moat,” for beyond it lay bandit country. It was one of a number of regions across the globe that they had found impossible to police, and its inhabitants had largely been left to their own devices. While the Illyri had managed to maintain significant bases at Aberdeen and Inverness to the north, and a smaller mountain base at the Cairngorms Plateau, these were basically just besieged fortresses, surrounded by hostile, aggressive populations. Although the main offworld route out of Edinburgh lay over the Highlands, such flights were conducted at relatively high altitude whenever possible, and were consequently out of the reach of the Resistance’s weapons. Low-level shuttle flights to Aberdeen and Inverness tended to take what was known as the “scenic route” over the North Sea, well out of reach of the land. Keeping the base at the Cairngorms Plateau supplied was costly and dangerous; even the comparatively short hop west from Inverness to the Cairngorms base was known as the Suicide Run.

Thus it was that the interceptor was trying to remain low enough to spot any signs of what might be the Highland Resistance and their Illyri captives, and high enough to avoid providing an easy target. It was also flying slowly enough to more easily spot anyone on the ground, yet fast enough not to be hit by them if they proved to be hostile. It was a delicate balance, and one that was near impossible to maintain.

On board were the pilot and copilot, along with an eight-member Illyri extraction team, all heavily armed and armored. Their instructions were clear: if members of the Resistance were sighted, they were to be engaged and at least one of them captured alive, in the hope that, under interrogation, they might provide some clue as to the whereabouts of Grand Consul Gradus and the traitor Syl. The problem, as those on the interceptor well knew, was that the Resistance did not wear uniforms, and did not travel in convoys advertising their identity. There was, in reality, no way to tell who was an active member of the Resistance and who was not until the shooting began, and by then it was generally too late. The easiest thing was to assume that
everyone
beyond the Moat—men, women, children, and possibly even sheep and cows—was a member of the Resistance unless they could prove otherwise.

The interceptor veered northwest over the Grampians toward Fort William, where there had once been a small Illyri base until the Resistance had blown it off the map. Beneath the craft lay Loch Rannoch, still and silver in the morning light.

“I have movement,” said the copilot.

“Where?” said the pilot.

“Northern shore of the loch. Four—no, five humans, heading east. You want to take a look?”

The pilot adjusted course.

“It’s why we’re here.”

“That’s not answering the question.”

The pilot grimaced. “Just put the guns on them. I have the ship.”

The copilot activated the weapon system, and the twin-barrel heavy cannon beneath the interceptor spun in its housing. The craft zeroed in on the humans, and the copilot fixed them in his sights. The 20mm guns were capable of firing two thousand rounds per minute. They could reduce a human being to shreds of meat within seconds.

As the interceptor drew closer to the banks of the loch, the humans became clearer: three males and two females. The males were carrying fishing rods, the women tackle boxes. They stopped and stared as the interceptor approached them. Carefully they put down their fishing equipment and raised their hands.

“What do you think?” said the copilot. “Our orders are to stop and question.”

The pilot viewed the terrain dubiously. The ground was soft from the rains, and once they landed, their cannon would be virtually useless. They would be entirely reliant on the weapons of the extraction team.

One of the humans started waving wildly, smiling as he did so.

“We’ll—” the pilot began, but whatever he had decided was destined never to be heard.

The Resistance were students of history. Before the arrival of the Illyri, the United Kingdom had not been successfully invaded since the arrival of William the Conqueror in 1066. The men and women who fought in the Highlands had no direct experience of guerrilla conflict, but they had been taught about the battles their ancestors had fought against the English. They had also studied the campaigns of the mujahideen against the Soviets in the previous century, and the difficulties the Americans had subsequently encountered in Iraq, and Somalia, and Afghanistan. One of the lessons they had learned was how to bring down aircraft using rocket-propelled grenades. RPGs had originally been designed for use against tanks, but the addition of a curved pipe to the rear of the launcher enabled them to be directed at an aircraft hovering above from a prone position.

Two RPGs fired at the interceptor simultaneously, one from bushes to the east, and a second from a small copse of trees to the west. Snaking trails of smoke behind them, they struck the craft at the front and rear. The first entered through the cockpit window, while the second hit the shuttle’s port engine. The last thing the copilot saw before the interceptor exploded was the fishing party diving for cover after signaling for the start of the attack. The debris scattered itself across Loch Rannoch, and was swallowed along with the dead.

Within a minute, the waters were still again.

•••

Just outside Pitlochry, by the shores of the River Tummel, the last soldier was running for his life. Behind him, the rest of the extraction team lay dead or dying; the pilots had been killed before they could even get out of their seats. They had been drawn there by Ani’s tracker, kept in a lead box to shield its signals and transported to Pitlochry by motorcycle before being removed and used to lure the Illyri into a trap.

The soldier’s name was Varon. He had been posted to Aberdeen for the previous six months. In that time, half of his platoon had been killed or seriously injured. Although he had been on Earth for only eighteen months, he now counted as a veteran in the Highlands.

Varon hated Earth, but most of all he hated Scotland. He came from the desert planet of B’Ethanger, at the heart of the Illyr system. He was built for heat and sand, not rain and mud. He had not stopped sneezing since he arrived. Today, at least, it was not raining. It had seemed like a good omen when the extraction team had set out.

Bullets kicked up dirt to his left, but Varon did not look back. If he could get out of range and find cover, he might be able to hold off the Resistance until a rescue party could be sent out. He had his blast pistol and heavy rifle. The rifle was charged for two hundred rounds, and the blast pistol was good for another twenty. If he needed more than that to stay alive, then he really was in trouble.

There was a low stone wall ahead of him. He dived over it headfirst, and almost knocked his brains out on a gravestone. He was in an old cemetery, littered with lopsided and broken monuments that reminded him of rotten teeth. There was plenty of cover here, but it would be as useful to his pursuers as it was to him. Still, better this than no cover at all, he thought, even if being in a human cemetery made him uneasy. The Illyri had always cremated their dead. They did not leave them to rot in the ground. It was another reason to regard the humans as a barbaric race.

The grounds of the cemetery sloped upward, and he followed the gradient. If he could make it to high ground, he would have the advantage. He skirted a huge tomb that dwarfed the other resting places, and stopped short.

There was a young woman kneeling by a grave about thirty feet from where he stood. She was putting wildflowers into a plastic vase. She looked up at him as he appeared. Varon raised his blast pistol and stepped forward. As he did so, his right foot knocked against a metal object. He glanced down and saw the hand grenade.

“Ah,” he said, and then he was gone.

•••

By the end of the first day of the search, the Illyri had lost two interceptors and a skimmer, and had suffered more than thirty casualties, twenty of them fatalities. When the advance base on the Cairngorms Plateau came under extensive mortar fire, it was rendered temporarily unfit for use. The losses were the most significant suffered by the Illyri in a single day since the early years of the invasion.

The message had passed quickly through the Resistance in the Highlands: we have a valuable prize. The Illyri want to get it back.

Stop them.

•••

“So,” said Sedulus, “what you’re telling us is that you are powerless to act beyond the Moat?”

“Not powerless, no, but we can operate only with great difficulty,” said Lord Andrus. “And while the situation is most dangerous beyond the Moat, it’s not much better once you travel more than a few miles north of the Glasgow–Edinburgh line. The truth is that the Grand Consul’s shuttle could not have gone down in a worse location.”

Sedulus was silent for a moment. He looked at Syrene. She nodded.

“I am sure that you have not forgotten your recent conversation with Grand Consul Gradus,” said Sedulus to Lord Andrus. “The Diplomatic Corps now has jurisdiction on Earth. The Military is at the command of the Corps.”

“My understanding was that all such authority lay with Grand Consul Gradus,” said Lord Andrus. “In his absence, I am once again responsible for decisions here.”

“I’m afraid not,” said Sedulus. “The Grand Consul left instructions that command should default to the ranking Corps official while he was offworld. The Archmage Syrene will confirm this.”

“It is true,” said Syrene. “I witnessed my husband giving the order myself.”

“In his absence, therefore, I am in command, not you,” said Sedulus.

“I object most strongly—” began Lord Andrus.

“Your objection is noted,” said Sedulus. “I have decided that I will take total charge of the search for Grand Consul Gradus—and, indeed, your daughter.” He glanced at Danis. “Neither have I forgotten your own little traitor, General Danis. She will be found.”

Danis did not reply. The only sign of his inner tension was the slow, rhythmic tapping of his right foot on the carpet.

“For now,” continued Sedulus, “all Military craft are to withdraw from the Highlands and return to their bases. This will be a Securitat operation.”

“What do you propose to do, Marshal Sedulus?” asked Andrus. “Scour the Highlands yourself, mile by mile?”

“It is tempting,” said Sedulus. “But I have enlisted the help of more experienced hunters than I.”

He stood to leave, and Syrene did the same, taking his arm.

“The Highlands,” Sedulus concluded, “are about to be subdued.”

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

S
ometime later, Syl heard a vehicle pull up outside, but the window in the outbuilding faced away from the noise and she could not see what was happening. Just Joe and Paul came for her shortly after the engines died, and she was brought to the comfortable kitchen of the cottage. There she found Tam, Heather, and two men she did not recognize, but who were now introduced to her as Mike and Seán. Heather pointed to a seat at the table, and Syl took it. Seán leaned over and offered his hand. She shook it.

“Fine strong grip on you,” he said.

His accent was different from the others.

“Thank you,” said Syl. “I think.”

“Sit down, Syl, and don’t mind him,” said Heather. “He’s Irish,” as if this explained everything one could possibly want to know about the man.

There was a big battered teapot in front of Seán, and he poured Syl a cup while he spoke.

“Just visiting,” he said. He pushed milk and sugar toward her, but she added only the milk.

“Seán transports weapons for us from across the Irish Sea,” said Just Joe. He watched Syl to gauge her reaction.

“Why are you telling me this?” she asked.

“A gesture of trust,” replied Just Joe.

“And they don’t mind if the Irish guy gets it in the head if you do talk,” added Seán.

“That too,” said Just Joe. “Syl, tell me why you helped Paul and Steven escape.”

“Because they helped my friend and me during the bombings on the Royal Mile. And because they were going to be executed, and I wasn’t going to let that happen.”

“Why? Because they’re young?”

“Yes. And they hadn’t done what they were accused of doing.”

“How do you know that?”

“Paul told me, and I saw in his face that it was true. And even if they had done it, hanging them would still have been wrong.”

“What of the rest of the Resistance?”

“I don’t know the rest of the Resistance.”

“You know us. Would you see us hanged for what we’ve done? We’ve killed Illyri, and we’ll kill more. This is our land, our world, and we want it back.”

Syl had thought about this a lot of late, but she did not have an answer. The question was too complex. She was of the Illyri, and she did not want to see her people hurt, but she also understood that the conquest of Earth was indefensible. The Illyri might have been more advanced than the humans, and stronger militarily, but that didn’t give them the right to invade, to suppress, to take young humans as hostages, train them as soldiers, and send them off to fight the Illyri’s wars on distant worlds.

And many of those wars still raged, with no end in sight. This much she’d learned while hiding in the spyhole behind the Great Hall at Edinburgh Castle. The most brutal fighting of all was taking place on Ebos, a jungle planet on which every life-form, whether animal or vegetative, was actively carnivorous. But it had been found to have enough precious metal deposits beneath its surface to meet the needs of the Illyri for centuries. The dominant species on Ebos was a reptilian race vaguely similar to the Komodo dragons of Earth, had the dragons learned to walk upright, but much larger, infinitely more vicious, and with a chameleon-like capacity for camouflage so finely tuned that it rendered them practically invisible to the naked eye. Their ability to thermoregulate also meant that heat-detection lenses were ineffective in alerting the Illyri to their presence. While their weaponry was hardly sophisticated, it was surprisingly effective, their blades and arrowheads capable of slicing through even the thickest of body armor. Ebos was regarded as the worst posting in the Illyri Military. For the most part, Punishment Battalions and troublesome conscripts were the main source of workers and soldiers, and their casualty rates were astronomical. If the roles had been reversed, Syl knew, she would have been standing alongside the Resistance, just as Paul and Steven were.

And yet, and yet . . .

“I understand why you’re fighting, and no, I don’t believe in execution—for anyone,” she said at last. “We don’t execute our own people on Illyr, and I don’t see why we should execute those on other worlds. But I don’t want to see Illyri killed, and I won’t help you to do it.”

Her mouth was dry. She took a sip of tea to moisten it before continuing.

“My people think I’m a traitor, and if I’m captured, the best I can hope for is to be imprisoned far from this planet until the Diplomats decide to free me or make me disappear. I have no interest in betraying you. If I betray you, I betray myself.”

Just Joe looked at the others. Seán’s grin had never left his face, but it had never reached his eyes either. Syl sensed the danger in him. The ones—whether human or Illyri—who laughed and joked the most were often the worst, she had found. If you listened hard enough, the hollowness inside them echoed their laughter. Heather whispered something to Tam, who did not reply. Paul stood beside the fireplace, waiting.

“Well?” said Just Joe.

“Yes,” said Heather, with some force.

“Yes,” said Tam, although a little more reluctantly than his sister.

“Go on, then,” said Seán, smiling away. “Yes—but if she lets us down, I’ll kill her myself before I die.”

“Paul?” said Just Joe.

“You know my answer,” said Paul. “Yes.”

“Who knew you were all so trusting?” said Just Joe. “Yes it is, then.”

“Yes to what?” asked Syl.

“To you staying with us,” said Just Joe, “and not being handed over to one of the other groups as a bargaining chip for hostages. But understand this: Paul has stood up for you, and he’s guaranteed your honor with his own life. I hear what you’ve said, and I believe it to be true. But if push comes to shove, and you turn on us, the boy here will pay with his life, and you with yours. Am I clear?”

Syl looked at Paul, but he was staring fixedly at the table.

“Yes,” said Syl, for there was no other option.

Just Joe relaxed. The decision had been made, and there was no point in fretting about it any longer.

“Now,” said Just Joe. “Tell us about the Grand Consul.”

•••

For the next hour, Syl spoke of Gradus’s arrival, and of the Archmage Syrene. She told them what she knew of the Sisterhood, although much of it seemed to be familiar to them already. Mostly they were interested in the Grand Consul—how he acted, what he said, whether he had seemed strange or preoccupied at all, whether he had spoken of the attack on Birdoswald, and the suicide of his nephew.

And bodies: had there been any talk of human bodies?

But there was little that Syl could offer in reply to these enquiries, and she was glad of this. Okay, so she didn’t know very much about Gradus, and what she did know she did not like. But nor did she like spilling what she knew to the Resistance, for it really did mean that she was committing treason, that she was a traitor.

“Why don’t you ask him all this yourselves?” she said finally.

“We’ve tried asking him,” said Just Joe.

“Nicely, and not so nicely,” said Seán. “We didn’t get very far.”

“Show her,” said Tam. “Maybe she can explain it.”

Just Joe and Paul led her from the cottage to a second outbuilding, this one bigger than the one in which she had been kept, and more closely guarded. The door was unlocked at Just Joe’s order, and Syl entered with the two humans.

Gradus was seated in a corner, his hands tied behind his back. There was bruising to his face, and a cut on his scalp had bled badly. Despite herself, Syl felt sorry for him. She was about to admonish the humans, and demand that they clean him up, when she saw Gradus’s eyes.

They were almost completely white behind the nictitating membrane, which now appeared fixed in place. His breathing was very shallow, and his mouth hung open slightly. She approached him warily, and touched his skin. It was cold.

“What have you done to him?” she asked.

“Nothing,” said Paul. “Well, he was being questioned—”

“Beaten, you mean,” said Syl.

Paul did not continue, but had the decency to look ashamed.

“His body temperature dropped suddenly,” said Just Joe. “His eyes rolled up into his head, and that membrane thing became fixed. He stopped responding to any kind of stimuli. Pain, heat, touch: he didn’t seem to feel any of it. Is that natural? Is it something that your people can do under stress?”

Syl shook her head. She had never seen any Illyri behave in such a way.

“It’s possible that it’s something he learned from the Sisterhood, a way of protecting himself,” she suggested.

“He’ll be hard to get to the Green Man in that state,” said Paul. “We can’t carry him.”

“And we can’t stay in this place,” said Just Joe. “We’ve been here too long as it is. We’re moving at nightfall, even if we have to drag him on wheels.”

Syl and the humans left the outbuilding, and the door was locked once again.

“I’m sending you into Durroch with Tam and Heather,” Just Joe told Paul. Durroch, Syl had learned, was the name of the village they had bypassed earlier. “We have friends there, and we need supplies: medical mostly, in case we get into trouble, but we’ll need rice, dried soups, maybe some tea and coffee as well. There’s a shortwave radio at the chemist’s shop—you can use it to send a message to Trask letting him know that you’re okay. I promised him we’d put you in touch when we had the chance, but Heather’s radio has given up the ghost. Be as quick as you can. Any sign of Illyri, and you keep your head down and hope for the best, okay? Tam and Heather, not you, will make the call on whether anyone needs to start shooting.”

Just Joe walked away, leaving Syl and Paul alone.

“You staked your life on me?” said Syl.

“Well, you risked yours for me,” said Paul.

“I didn’t really know you then,” said Syl.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Syl looked down at her feet to hide her smile. “Just that now I’ve got to know you a bit, I might not be so quick to do it next time.”

“Hey, I’m not so bad.”

“Well, maybe I don’t feel that allowing your rescuer to be locked up like an animal is exactly nice.”

Paul shook his head despairingly. “Women,” he said. “You’re from a different species, and yet you’re still the same.”

“So you’re telling me you’ve given up on humans and decided to try Illyri females instead?”

“That’s not what I said!”

“But isn’t it what you meant?” said Syl, and suddenly she felt stupid, and a bit shy too.

“No!”

“Then why did you kiss me?”

Paul seemed lost for words. “I—I was overcome by the moment.”

“So it won’t happen again?”

“Not if you don’t want it to,” said Paul. He stuck his hands in his pockets. His face was furrowed with confusion. It made him look very young.

“That isn’t what I meant,” Syl replied, mortified, and turned to walk back to the cottage.

Paul watched her go. He looked even more confused, if such a thing were possible.

“What?” he said forlornly. “I don’t understand. . . .”