Dusk (52 page)

Men were going to die today. And they would die from
Cyrus’s own initiative. The need to turn around, to order the whole
thing off, arrested him, but he shrugged it off. The deaths would
be hard to stomach, as they should be, but one thing the escape had
taught him is that it would be a much easier supplement to swallow
if the men that died were not his own. Whatever was going on here
was bigger than any of them. It was bigger than the Echelon, the
Ashans, and—perish the thought—even his own son. If the Ashan
pyramid and the underground city were truly built by some
civilization more than a half-million years ago, it could even be
larger than all of humanity. And if a handful of megalomaniacal
men, for their own sordid purposes, sought to inveigle an idea that
affected all of humanity at the expense of human life, those men
needed to die. It was a grim truth to embrace, but it was a truth
nonetheless. If things went as planned, that truth would not have
to be realized. But Cyrus did not have to live an Eos-life to be
old enough to know that the best laid plans of mice and men often
went worse than awry when lives were on the betting table. He tried
to push all this to the back of his mind, but it settled in like a
mag-lock bolt. But soon enough, the gooseflesh, the jitters, and
the lip-biting would give way to survival instincts, martial
training, and field tactics, and at the end of it all, they would
be successful, or success would no longer be an issue. That
ephemeral comfort had been enough to keep him looking toward the
darkening sky that reached out to him from the end of the thinning
atmosphere. He just prayed everyone else had found the same
pause.

Jang could see all the ships moving on
various partitions of the holomonitor from his deck. There were
three individual holoscreens around him. It was like Conquest on
galvacet, and the idea, as nerve-wracking as it should have been,
exhilarated Jang to the point where his fingers quivered with
excitement.

And then, the last of the eight ships was in place.
There was no need for silence in their current position, but he
needed to get used to it, so he subvocalized anyway, “The chicken’s
in the bread pan peckin’ out dough.” Jang wasn’t even sure what the
code meant, but Cyrus said it had something to do with some ancient
music sphere. It was almost guaranteed that even if his
countermeasures did not spoof the Echelon’s broadband scanner, no
one on Asha would know the line meant that everyone was in place,
and now was the time to commence their individual orders. He found
himself oddly comfortable in this space that was barely large
enough to house him with all the decks and monitoring equipment.
But nestled inside the secret compartment in Cyrus’s ship was the
best place he could be to communicate to everyone. Using the
Echelon’s own communications system would be easier at the source,
and it would generate less notice from anyone who happened to see
the bandwidth he was using. Somehow, knowing that made sitting in a
compartment the size of a lav stall much more palatable, even
though it made his toes numb. Then Jang forgot about his toes and
his own anticipation began to rise as he felt the slight shift as
the craft he sat in lifted from the ground and began on its
way.

Cyndyl watched the ground beneath them pass
by in waves. She had seen the interiors of the cities a few times,
and each time she was overwhelmed by the ominous sprawls of
buildings and drab constructs and the grav-levs that moved in long
lines that wove between them like lasers. All the sights, the
artificially lit aves, the monstrous domes that robbed the cities
denizens of the glory of the sun, were, to her, abominations. Being
born in the sunlight of Avalon, she could barely believe the
stories she had heard of human fetuses reared in manufactured
amniotic sacs, of people passing their entire lives without ever
feeling the unfiltered rays of the sun, and of the innumerable
dead, logged and filed in droves in the stagnant necropolis,
waiting without dignity to be recycled into nutrients for the
artificial soil of the common fields. The very thought of it, as
Ashan dunes rose and fell beneath them, filled her throat with a
slight twinge of bile.

She had never been sent to apportion a bier ship
before. There was something slightly dubious about the nature of
their mission, but to her, as they sped on their course to
intercept the ship carrying the body of a man the Knight of Wands
called Doctor Villichez, this mission was payment of overdue
respects to the dead. And as the target blip appeared on the
holographic imager, Cyndyl gave the command to activate Taewook of
Cup’s signal scrambler. In a few moments, they would spare the body
of Knight of Wands’s colleague from an unnatural fate, and they
would set the plan in motion that would save the Knight of Wands
himself.

Cyrus spun the craft around and backed it
into the docking moor. When he did finally leave this Orbital, it
would most likely be in a hurry, and having to rotate the lev on
its z would only be a waste of time—time they might not have. As
the ship rested against the moor, Cyrus heard Jang’s voice mimicked
by the network computer, “Setting the spoofs now. I’ll be in the
entire system in ten minutes.”

Cyrus thought about telling Jang not to rush.
He did not realize that the subvocalizing unit picked up even
unintentional signals until Jang responded, “This is like trying to
get into a whore’s pants. All you need is the right assets.”

“Cut the chatter, monkey boys,” came through
Cyrus’s earwig in Uzziah’s voice as Cyrus stepped out of the ship
to face four armed Eurydician soldiers in vacuum gear.

“Welcome back, beta-hound,” one of them said
over the speaker in his suit, and even through the distortion lent
by the face shield, and the gain on the amplifier, Cyrus recognized
the last voice he had heard on his first trip to the Orbital.

Cyrus was a little surprised by the familiar
voice that made the blood vessels in the back of his head throb in
remembrance, but he should have expected it. What he had no reason
to expect, after they had searched him and he had been led—with
more respect this time—into the hallway adjacent to the docking
bay, was Dr. Winberg, dressed in full Eurydician regalia. He wore a
pendant of a hexagon on his chest above a name plate and a number,
which must have been chosen by him, 24601—the prisoner that had
somehow become a hero.

“I trust your landing this time was much
more… pleasant,” his lips formed his trademark smirk as he offered
his gloved hand to Cyrus.

Cyrus shook his hand reservedly, hoping his
reservations would be perceived as confusion rather than distrust,
especially since he did not know which emotion held the most sway
over his reaction.

Cyrus nodded and then waited to see where
they were leading him. He knew the bier ship would not arrive for
another half-hour, but they could not have known he knew, and he
was interested to see how they would stall him. Two men walked
before them, and two men afterward, but they seemed to defer to
Winberg. They led Cyrus to an observation deck overlooking the sun.
The windows of the deck were tinted to protect against the direct
light from Set, but even through the tint, the rays of sun on his
face felt like the long missed touch of someone dear. As they
approached the glass, Winberg waved his hand, and their escorts
stopped behind the line where the tiled floor ended and carpet
began.

Winberg pantomimed a gesture, the men took three
more steps back, and then Winberg led Cyrus to the edge of the
glass. “Beautiful isn’t it?”

Tanner watched the others as they passed
through darkness across the barren, featureless plain. The chill of
the Miasma pierced to the marrow. It wasn’t just cold, it was
something more sinister, more venomous—and he was all too
acquainted with it. It was the same desolation he felt in the
awkward years before Laureateship. The time in his life when he had
rebelled against his ailing mother before he had begun practicing
kung fu, before he had accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and
savior. Part of it was the Eos. Being separated from the light with
no reprieve in sight made him shiver, but deep down, he knew his
anxiety was only the tip of the laser bit before him.

As Jang announced the approach of the Echelon
ship they were tracking, he had expected at least a little
chest-beating and sword-biting, but everyone was solemn, as if they
processed in a funeral, and their austerity was calming. They were
walking into the laser-mesh of a grove-harvester. They were
well-trained and had seen some combat, but only Uzziah had seen
anything like what was about to actualize before them. Tanner
himself had been in some rough spots, especially before the
Arcology, but even he was unprepared for what the Miasma held for
them.

He breathed in and then out again, focusing
his qi and steeling himself. As the cold breath was purged from his
lungs, he noticed the others were doing the same. Paeryl stood at
the windshield of the lev, stalwart in the face of the darkness
that had completely consumed them more than an hour before. There
was something about Paeryl that reminded Tanner of Cyrus. Apart
from a little loud, he had never seen Paeryl be anything but calm,
and yet there was something in his eyes, something about the way
the corners of them creased when he smiled, that indicated to
Tanner that Paeryl truly was not to be crossed—that was how he had
gained the deference of the hearty Apostates, even the high-strung
Six. Perhaps he too had a bear shirt in his closet.

Paeryl’s shoulders were tensed, his form statuesque,
but if he did possess a bear shirt, he had not yet put it on. That
was an excellent sign. If Paeryl could keep it together, everyone
would. But Tanner had a deep suspicion, one that no lev drive could
stop from sinking, that before this day ended, they might all need
a bear shirt of their own.

“You picked a hell of a day to come up here
and rouse the rabble,” Winberg said, keeping his face toward the
glass. He cast his oily smile at Cyrus as he turned his head, but
there was an odd sincerity to it Cyrus had not noticed before.

“What makes you say that?” Cyrus asked,
trying to keep the puzzlement from expressing itself on his face:
Winberg was stalling, but for what? Cyrus ran all the modes of
ambush he could think of in his head as a check against his own
plan of attack, but he was left only with bewilderment—it seemed as
if his plan so far could cover any anticipated ave-blocks, but he
couldn’t help feeling like he missed something.

“We are anticipating a rash of stellar flares
today, and they tend to wreak havoc on low level communication
devices,” Winberg added, scratching his chest with his right hand.
Cyrus watched Winberg’s hand without averting his eyes to it and he
noticed him slip a few fingers inside his shirt as he scratched.
Cyrus began to tense, but he rolled his shoulders back to try to
hide his reaction.

“You fanned up quite a stench with your
theatrics Mr. Knight of Wands,” Winberg smiled again, a little more
uncomfortably this time, but he continued to look at the starscape
beyond the edge of the planet. Before Cyrus could respond, Winberg
continued, “They figured out what really happened shortly after you
escaped,” his tone and inflection were different now, as if he were
now having a different conversation. “However, they were intrigued
as to how you organized the escape with the Apostates—especially
after they discovered the Knight of Swords was your son.”

Cyrus looked directly at Winberg, making no
attempt to hide his gaze this time, “How did you rise in the ranks
so quickly?”

“Actually,” he paused to smile at Cyrus, and
again it was the awkwardly honest smile, as if his face could not
quite figure out how to communicate candor, “my acceptance and
promotion was primarily due to your antics on the Advent. After
they found the truth and combed the Paracelsus, they found
everything that I had told them on the Advent to be true. They kept
me around as a control of sorts, but they were forced to promote me
to Hexad because I knew too much.” He began scratching again as he
turned back to the stars, but this time, his fingertips crossed
beneath his lapel much more forcefully.

“So why would they send you to meet me here?”
Cyrus said. Winberg was up to something, but the sincerity in his
eyes led Cyrus to believe that his trickery was not targeted at
him. Winberg was several types of abhorrent to Cyrus, but
bold-faced lies and dubiety did not seem in keeping with his
repertoire.

“Because the increasing attacks of your new
friends and your direct challenge on the Torus himself have cast
suspicion upon me,” the smile came again, but he continued to face
the window and scratched his chest. “I don’t blame you for that.
I’ve seen enough of you to know that, though our approaches are
different, we are more alike than either of us would be comfortable
admitting.” He coughed and patted his chest firmly—in the exact
spot he had been scratching. “They were going to close the louvers
on you and the others and release the hounds. I convinced them it
would not work. It didn’t save you, but it bought you time. Now I
need you to return the favor.” He cleared his throat and rubbed his
chest again, but spoke before Cyrus could answer, “The bier ship
should be at the space lift in five minutes.” His tone was
completely different.

“Tell your men to stay away from it and me
when the ship arrives to avoid any trouble,” Cyrus’s voice
resonated off the window.

“Are you threatening us Dr. Chamberlain?” he
asked in the same haughty tone that came between chest rubs.

“You may not know me well, but you know me
well enough to know I don’t bluff,” Cyrus met Winberg’s gaze again.
Something was going on, but for once, it did not seem like Winberg
was his enemy, so Cyrus played along.