Chronicles of the Invaders 1: Conquest (26 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

S
yrene’s image appeared in Sedulus’s lens. Even in the midst of the disaster that constituted the last couple of hours, he knew better than to ignore the Archmage’s incoming communication, but he would have given anything not to face her at this precise moment. He had, in the space of little over an hour, lost one cruiser, one skimmer, one transporter, one drone, twenty Securitats either dead or injured, along with a handful of Galateans and Agrons, and one Sarith Entity, although the latter was more personal than any of the other losses. Already the light was fading, and with the darkness the rain returned. The Agrons might have been able to function despite it, and even pick up the trail—for they detected particles in the air as much as on the ground—had the land around the farm and its surrounds not been sprayed with a chemical-based compound made from hot peppers, which attacked the Agrons’ sensitive scent glands, rendering them useless for hours. Sedulus had fed two of them to the Sarith Entities in an effort to suppress the Entities’ growing wrath.

Their anger was evident as he approached them in their sealed compartment, the Agrons desperately trying to escape from their harnesses as they understood what was about to befall them. This time, the three Entities had risen to face Sedulus, even ignoring the cowering Agrons for several long seconds, until their insatiable hunger finally got the better of their anger.

Sedulus turned his back on their feeding. Usually he enjoyed watching them eat, entranced by the purity of their hunger. He did not want to destroy the Entities, but he would if he had to. It was he alone who controlled the support suits, and he had made sure that they had a self-destruct mechanism built into them as part of their design. Whatever race had marooned them on Sarith had devised a particularly cruel torment for the Entities. Sarith was a barren, brutal environment, entirely without life and with an atmosphere poisoned by carbon monoxide, and yet the Entities were able to survive there unsupported. In an oxygen-rich environment like that of Earth—or even Illyr—they would die within minutes, but only on such planets would they be able to feed, and so Sedulus had designed the support suits, and in that way had made the Sarith Entities his creatures.

But what the remaining Entities did not know was that the death of the first of them shortly after their arrival on Earth had not been caused by a suit malfunction, not in the truest sense of the word. The suit had done just what it had been programmed to do, which was to kill the Entity inside it on Sedulus’s command.

The test had been necessary, for Sedulus had no illusions about the nature of the Entities.

The same could have been said of his relationship with Syrene, except that, while he thought he had some inkling of how the Entities functioned, the Archmage remained a mystery to him. Even her image in his lens radiated a compelling authority.

“Report to me,” she said. “What news of my husband?”

“We picked up his trail, Archmage,” said Sedulus, “but we encountered some . . .
obstacles
to further progress.”

If medals had been given out for understatement, Sedulus thought, he would have been weighed down with metal.

“Explain.”

He had been hoping that it wouldn’t come to this, but there was no point in lying to the Nairene, not unless he wanted to die painfully in the very near future.

“We’ve taken casualties,” he replied. “The Resistance has proved more resourceful than anticipated.”

“Or you have proved
less
resourceful. How close are you?”

“We are only hours behind them, but we’ve temporarily lost their trail. I have drones in the air.”

A lie, but a small one. He had
one
drone in the air, mainly because he had only one drone left. He might as well have tried to find a fish in a vast lake by trailing a single, unbaited hook.

“I have lost contact with my husband,” said Syrene.

Sedulus frowned. This was news.

“Could he be . . . ?” He did not say the word, but he thought it:
dead
.

“No, but he has closed himself off.”

“Why?”

“To spare himself pain. To protect himself, and his cargo.”

Cargo
. Such a careful word to use. Even here, in a secure communication with the Diplomat’s head of security and, by extension, Syrene’s own head of security, she was cautious.

“I will find him, Archmage,” said Sedulus.

“I know you will. I have confidence in your sense of self-preservation, because you know that if you don’t bring my husband safely back to me, you should probably throw yourself on the mercy of the Resistance. They will be kinder to you than I will.”

Sedulus bowed in understanding.

“One final thing,” said Syrene. “It appears that you might have been incautious in unleashing your pets and leaving survivors. There is already radio traffic. Andrus knows that you’ve breached the First Protocol. He wants you summoned back to Edinburgh. In fact, he wants you to be arrested for war crimes.”

The First Protocol had been determined at the start of the great Illyri conquest. It stated that hostile organisms should not be introduced into advanced alien ecosystems in order to avoid contamination. Sedulus, and many like him, regarded it as something of a joke; after all, what were the Illyri themselves but hostile organisms? Similarly, Galateans and Agrons were hostile within the restrictions imposed on their behavior by the Illyri. The Protocol politely ignored such an obvious hypocrisy, preferring to concentrate on the potential for disease and infection, or, in the case of something as unknowable as the Sarith Entities, the capacity to annihilate an entire civilization.

But then the Protocol could not even begin to grasp the reality of the Illyri mission on Earth, and what lay behind it.

Nevertheless, there were those like Andrus who tried to adhere to all of the Protocols: the First; the Second, which forbade the killing of civilian noncombatants; and the Third, which denied the Illyri the right to kill child combatants or even to use enhanced interrogation methods on them, and which had already been dispensed with by the Grand Consul. All of these restrictions had led Sedulus, as a young officer, to doubt the conduct of the Illyri conquest of Earth, until the truth had been revealed to him, and he had learned patience, for the rewards would be great.

“What should I do?” he asked. While Andrus had no authority over Sedulus on Earth, he could create difficulties back on Illyr.

“Do exactly what you’re doing now. Search for my husband, and bring him back safely to me. Send one of your officers to me with a full report of all you’ve discovered so far, and all that you’ve lost. Andrus will be dealt with, in time.”

And the Archmage’s image vanished from his lens.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

H
idden in the undergrowth, Meia watched the comings and goings at Eden. Her entire body was encased in a camouflage darksuit that altered its color to match not only her surroundings but also the fluctuation in natural light. Her keen eyes recorded all she saw: the changes of the guard; the movements of the Illyri scientists and technicians who had taken over the facility; and the security procedures that were in place, all controlled by Securitats. The problem for Meia was that entry to the facility appeared to require both a retinal scan and a fingerprint test, for like humans, the Illyri had distinctive prints on their fingers.

Eventually, as daylight vanished and a light rain began to fall, Meia found her victim and made her move. She had already created a hole in the fence large enough to slip through, and the descent of night aided her. The female scientist wore the seal of the Securitat-controlled Scientific Development Division on the left breast of her coat, and a hood shielded her from the drizzle. Meia considered trying to take her alive, but thought better of it; there might be a struggle, and while she would undoubtedly prevail, she could hardly drag the scientist’s unconscious body across the parking area to the entry door. Anyway, Meia hated the Securitats, scientists or otherwise, and the SDD was notorious for the cruelty of its experiments. These were scientists whom other scientists disowned.

So it was that minutes later, Meia approached the entry door wearing the scientist’s lab coat with the hood covering her head and shielding her face. She moved fast; she had very little time. It was not the fingerprint that concerned her, but the retinal scan. Retinal scanners used a low-intensity light source and a sensor to scan the pattern of blood vessels at the back of the retina, as each eyeball, like a fingerprint, was entirely unique; the error rate for retinal scanning, however, was only about one in ten million, while for fingerprints it was one in five hundred.

There was no guard on the door. There was no need for a guard, for the scans did everything.

Meia placed the scientist’s severed right index finger on the fingerprint reader, and received a green light in return.

“Ready to commence retinal scan,” said a voice.

She glanced around quickly to make sure that no one was approaching, then held up a single eyeball, extracted from the skull of the dead scientist and impaled on a spike of inorganic matter at the tip of Meia’s left little finger. The scan commenced.

Retinal decay occurred fast in a corpse, and the Illyri scanners were sensitive enough to detect not only the retina’s minute array of blood vessels but also signs of life, so while the scanner examined the blood vessels, it also shot a rapid series of light beams at the eyeball. A dead eye would not respond to them, but a living one would.

Unless, of course, the dead eye was under Meia’s control. Her fingertip twitched the dilator pupillae, imitating the nerve action that caused the pupil to expand and contract.

The voice spoke again: “Welcome back, Dr. Sidis. Please proceed to sterilization.”

The sterilization room wasn’t difficult to find; it was mere footsteps from the door. A series of instruction diagrams on the wall indicated what was required, including an order to leave all weapons outside the area. Meia had anticipated as much, and had left her blast pistol back at her interceptor. She stripped down to her underwear and placed her clothing in a locker, but not before activating a small incendiary device, timed to explode and destroy everything in the locker within two hours if she did not disarm it. If for any reason she had to make a swift escape, she didn’t want any traces of her identity to be discovered. She passed through a sterilization chamber that bathed her body in ultraviolet light as it cleansed her of potential contaminants. Beyond the chamber were racks of loose white suits, each with self-contained breathing apparatus. It was better than she could have hoped for. The suit wouldn’t conceal her features entirely, but it would help.

Meia had chosen this time to enter the facility because, from her observations, it seemed to operate on a mostly daytime schedule. She had seen a lot of Illyri emerge over the hours, and they had not been replaced by a similar number. Nighttime, therefore, was quieter.

Sealed pathways linked the various parts of what had once been the Eden Project. They all looked identical to Meia, but they clearly looked identical to many of those who worked there too, for at each junction was a map display showing the location of the junction and identifying the surrounding areas. There was a restaurant, assorted labs, a gymnasium, and various rooms marked only with numbers and letters. Meia didn’t know what she was looking for, and was considering trying to find someone to ask—possibly in a painful and probably fatal way—but decided that the place to start, in the absence of someone to torture, was one of the geodesic domes, which towered above the other buildings like the eyes of some great buried insect.

She had begun tracing her route on the map when a hissing from behind her announced the opening of a door. She risked a glance over her shoulder, to see two white-suited Illyri emerge from a dark, low-ceilinged room behind her. She glimpsed glass cases, and unfamiliar forms within. The Illyri didn’t even seem to notice her as the door closed behind them.

When she was certain that they were gone, Meia swiped the late Dr. Sidis’s identity card through the locking device. The door opened immediately, and the same voice as before welcomed her by name. She wondered if Sidis’s ID provided unrestricted access or if an attempt to enter a restricted room or area would provoke some form of alert. She didn’t want to have to fight her way out of Eden. She favored a stealthier approach to her trade.

Her entry caused low overhead lighting to click on, illuminating a corridor formed by two parallel lines of glass cases, all filled with what appeared to be preservative fluid. Each case contained a mammal, arranged in ascending order of size. The smallest was a cat, the largest a horse, but all were horribly mutilated, their bodies swollen and distorted, as though their bones had been broken and improperly set, their musculature deformed by disease. The damage to their heads was worse; the skulls were split or, in some instances, entirely fragmented. Meia examined each one closely, and decided that the injuries had been caused by something erupting out rather than by any external force. At the back of the room she found smaller jars, all containing animal fetuses in various stages of development. Again there was severe damage to the bodies, although some were so small that she couldn’t identify the species concerned. She tried to find records of the procedures, surgical or otherwise, that had left the animals in their ruined state, but there were none. The room was nothing more than an archive, a storage space for a series of apparently failed experiments, but what had been their point?

At the back of the room, a little window looked out on one of the smaller geodesic domes. Inside, she saw what appeared to be fertilizer bags with plants growing from them. She focused, and realized that they were not bags at all. What she was seeing were bodies; human bodies that had somehow been “seeded,” although with what she was unable to tell. She returned to the main door and hit the
EXIT
button, then operated the
CLOSE
button almost immediately. A group of four Illyri passed, briefly visible as the gap narrowed. An electronically operated gurney hovered between them, and on it lay what was clearly a live human male, strapped into place.

Meia waited a few seconds, then left the room and followed them.

•••

The operating theater had an observation gallery, masked with smoked glass, and it was there that Meia watched what was occurring. Clearly something had gone wrong; there was a sense of controlled alarm about the four Illyri as they prepared the human for surgery. A mask was placed over the human’s face, and a scanner overhead revealed the entirety of the man’s internal workings on a screen to the left of the operating table. His skull was shaved bare.

“We’re losing vital signs,” said one of the surgeons.

Yet to Meia, the man’s life signs seemed stable: his heartbeat was a little fast, but otherwise he was in no immediate danger that she could see.

“He’s prepped for craniotomy,” said a nurse.

“Turn him over.”

The patient was expertly flipped, revealing the back of his skull to the surgeon, who traced the first incision, a long vertical cut from the crown of the head almost to the base of the neck.

Meia changed her position, the better to view the operation and the screen that displayed the man’s system. Something was wrong here. She craned her neck, and more of the screen became visible. Until now she had not been able to see the reproduction of the man’s skull, but suddenly its interior was revealed to her. She gasped.

Just then, the door behind her opened, and two male Illyri in blue scrubs entered the room. They too wore the insignia of the SDD.

“Dr. Sidis,” said the first. “We noticed you were in the building. We hadn’t expected—”

He stopped as he saw Meia’s face.

“Wait a minute, you’re not Sidis. What are you doing here?”

“I might ask you the same thing,” said Meia.

She was already moving as the second medic dived for an alarm button. His fingers brushed it, but it was his last act before he died, a kick from Meia cracking his skull. The first medic was luckier. He used the distraction offered by his colleague to spring at Meia. She saw a flash of steel, and then felt a burning pain as the scalpel slashed across her right arm, but before the medic could strike again, she caught him a glancing blow to the side of the head that sent him sprawling against a table in the corner of the room. The scalpel spun across the floor and was lost beneath a console.

Meia was now between the medic and the door. He stared at her. His eyes found the tear that the knife had made in her suit. Blood dripped from the wound, but there was also a spray of thick yellow fluid, and a piece of damaged tubing poked through the material.

“No,” he said. “That’s not possible. You were all destroyed.”

“Not all,” said Meia. “Not I.”

She knew the medic was going to spring. She knew before he knew himself. She saw it in his face, in his eyes, so that when he made his move, she was ready for him. Her fury surprised her. She never forgot her own nature, but the way the medic had spoken—his obvious horror of her, his knowledge of the ordered genocide—had awoken dormant feelings. As he sprang, her left hand shot out, the fist bunched tightly. The force of it caught him in the chest and pinned him hard against the wall, his toes dangling six inches off the floor.

He gurgled, spraying blood from his mouth. He shuddered, his eyes staring horrified at his own rib cage. Meia’s left arm was buried in it halfway to the elbow. The medic tried to speak, but no words came. Meia didn’t need to hear them anyway. Whatever he said would be meaningless. He was dying, and the dying always tried to cry some variation on the word no.

Meia withdrew her fist as the life left the medic. His body slumped to the floor, and his blood dripped from her fingers and onto his face. Somewhere in the distance, an alarm sounded. It was time for her to leave. Below her, the surgical team had evacuated the theater. Only the body of the human remained, his life signs now extinguished. His skull had been opened, and the cerebellum lay exposed.

But the thing that Meia had glimpsed on the screen, coiled like a worm around his brain stem, was gone.