The IX (14 page)

Cathal MacNoimhin’s entire stature swelled with pride. His eyes flashed and he snapped, “And we would have had them too, if it wasn’t for that fey storm. They think us wild and stupid. Animals, incapable of rational thought. They were wrong.”

Legionnaires and savages eyed each other, posturing, flexing their fingers and chests before Marcus admitted, “Oh, you can fight all right. I’ll give you that. Caught us with our pants down, too. Dirty way to fight. But effective.”

“Victory is victory,” hissed a brutish hulk standing next to Cathal. Covered in tattoos and wearing the purple and green tartan of Clan Underwood, he cut an imposing figure, even among the outlandish gathering of his kindred.

“Peace, Kohrk,” grumbled Cathal, “they cannot doubt our quality or methods. It is the living who write history. Not the dead.”

“I don’t think there’s any doubt you can both fight,” Mac continued, diffusing an awkward situation, “both your peoples were . . .
are
experts in your own particular style of warfare. And history does indeed give testimony to the legacy of your efforts. It’s amazing to think that your battle continues to be the subject of debate so many centuries after the event. They’ve even devoted university study articles to ‘Whatever happened to the Ninth and their eagle?’ Those films were the least of it.” He chuckled in appreciation. “At least we all know now, eh?”

Marcus was swayed by a sudden thought. “Where
is
our eagle? It was safely among our lines the last time I saw it, with Sextus Nerva, our aquilifer. Did he make it through?”

“He’s here,” Mohammed Amine answered, stepping forward from among the throng. Nodding curtly, he added, “Please excuse me. I am second-in-command of the city’s defenses, and our strength and deployment comes under my office. Your eagle made it, too. It’s safely tucked away in the vault. With your permission, we would like to use it as the sigil for your particular intake.”

“Because we’re the ninth group?”  Marcus asked.

“Mostly.” Mohammed paused to consider everyone present. “But as Doctor Solram just mentioned, you are also the last help we will ever receive. We’re hoping your standard will represent a fitting symbol of your efforts here on Arden, as you may be our best hope yet.”

That statement caught them cold. When no one replied, Mohammed used the silence to his advantage. “As you might imagine, powering a machine capable of spanning a galaxy is taxing enough. For that device to also be able to pierce time is another thing all together. You will all now be aware of the fact that you were snatched prior to your certain deaths, and not only relocated geographically, but also temporally. Even the most sophisticated of the candidates to be brought through previously were jumped hundreds of years into their future. For those of you from Caledonia, we’re looking at a five thousand year window. Understand, such a procedure places a huge drain on our resources, for the Architect must not only maintain a constant supply of energy for the Ark itself, but also for the city’s defenses, and the everyday functioning of its infrastructure.”

“Wasn’t that part of the Architect’s original strategy?” Mac asked.

“Yes. But the Ardenese didn’t expect the Horde to be able to withstand the best the AI could find. The gateway was designed to constantly probe the energy lattices between our worlds, and to home in on the mortality signatures of those showing the
most outstanding potential for their needs. Then, once every two to three years, it would activate and pull the most suitable potentials through en masse, usually from three closely related, but alternate time-frames. The Architect hoped the lull between intakes would reduce the amount of concentrated life-force within the city to a bare minimum, thereby reducing the Horde’s frenzy. But it didn’t. They kept coming. The city wall, along with some of the more important strategic posts within it, is comprised of the densest material we’ve ever encountered. The Ardenese called it lydium. It’s so incredibly compact that nothing should be able to penetrate its structure . . .”

“But it’s weakening.”

“I’m afraid so. As the respective leaders of your people, you’ll all be given the specifics in our first major briefing together, tomorrow morning. In a nutshell, the Horde appears willing to sacrifice every last one of its members in the frenzy to get through. They’ve lost millions against the shield wall and don’t seem to care. We’ve even seen them storm it and climb over themselves in an effort to reach the ramparts before their biometric thresholds disrupt. It’s a crazy strategy, but in the end, it’s one that might work. Even a few of those monsters could screw us.”

“Why do you think they do it?’ Mac was sure the other man was keeping something back. “I’ve only read a brief report on this enemy, the Horde, but from what I can tell, if they got in, they’d drain us all until we were dead, yes?”

“That’s correct. They gain strength and vitality from a wide variety of energy sources. The human body’s chemical and electrical processes are like a snack to them. While it’s not directly fatal per se, their feeding shuts down the brain and its ability to pass the everyday signals that keep our autonomous systems going. Obviously, without them, we die very quickly.”

“And what then?”

“I’m sorry?”

Mac moved through the crowd to position himself in front of the ninth bas-relief. Gesturing to it, he repeated, “And if the Horde
do
manage to breach the city and kill us all, causing the Reverence to inscribe our names here, on this stone, what then? We’ll all be dead and they’ll have no source of vitality, will they? Will they be trapped here?”

Mohammed appeared uncomfortable with the question. Taking a deep breath, he glanced toward Ayria, admitting, “We’re not exactly sure . . .”

Dissatisfied grumbling rumbled through the assembled men.

Signaling for patience, Mac cut them dead. “Let the man speak!”

Miraculously, everyone complied.

Mohammed struggled to find the right words. “What I’m trying to say is, I and a growing number of our strategists think the Ardenese were wrong in their original assessment of the enemy. Because of their single-minded savagery, the Horde was able to overrun thirty planets in twenty-seven star systems in a relatively short period of time. They were relentless, displaying the basest of instincts in their exigency to consume everything in their path. We’re beginning to suspect that urgency hid some form of hive-mind mentality that is not only very astute, but cunning, too.”

The room remained silent, hanging on every word.

“Define
cunning
, and what that has to do with us?” Mac urged, correctly guessing the question on everyone’s lips.

“The record shows that to reach Arden, some of the Horde hid away on fleeing ships. Many of those vessels had been stationed on the outer colonies and were in flight for over two weeks. Some didn’t return for months, remaining on standby in deep space until called to assist in the ensuing siege. In each case, it wasn’t until they landed on Arden that the enemy finally revealed themselves.”

“So they can choose to stop feeding?”

“Yes.”

“Voluntarily?”

“It looks that way. They muted their bodies into a condition very similar to hibernation. That’s how they were originally discovered. Suspended in some kind of neural-net that allowed them to exist in an undetectable dream-like state.”

Mac was intrigued by that information, and turned away, deep in thought.

“So what happens if they kill us all?” Houston chipped in. “You think they’ll go back to sleep like a pack of bears waiting for someone else to stroll by?”

“If we lose, we won’t be the last food source they could gain access to.” So quiet was Mohammed’s reply that the men standing at the rear barely heard him.

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t forget, the Ark’s inside. It contains the remaining essences of the Ardenese people. Men, women, children. Flora. Fauna. All of it. Although it’s protected within an artificially created tear in the space-time continuum, it’s still there. And the Horde might be able to sense it.”

“Oh, that’s just great!” Exasperated, Houston threw his hands into the air. “We’re trapped in the only diner on the prairie. Talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire. It’s just not —”

“You’re overlooking something else, too.”

Everyone’s attention snapped back to Mac. He had the distinct look of someone who had just swallowed something disagreeable. Pointing to the artifacts about them, he explained, “If the Horde is as switched on as you suspect, what makes you think they aren’t after the Tec? They are beings of pure energy, after all. Do they have enough to operate the gateway? A portal to a juicy new world they could manipulate time and time again—no pun intended—to guarantee a never-ending feast of unimaginable proportions.”

Mohammed and Ayria were clearly shocked. It was plain no one had thought of this strategy before.

“Is that possible, Mohammed?”Ayria gasped. “Could we have overlooked something
this
obvious?”

Mohammed’s jaw flapped open.

Mac wasn’t finished. “Come to that, doesn’t the Architect have a failsafe fitted to prevent such a calamity? A self-destruct button? Or isn’t that an option while the Ardenese still exist in retro-vitrio? I’ll be damned if I’ll just lie down and die while a bunch of monsters are set free to ravage my world.”

“It’s something I’ll make sure we look into immediately,” Mohammed mumbled, “thank you for your . . . insight, Lieutenant.” Glancing at the doctor, he shrugged and added, “Its prime function
is
to protect their species at all costs. God! How did we miss it?”

“So what about us?” Mac said. “You mentioned earlier we might represent the best hope you’ve ever had. Why? Aren’t
you
from a more advanced era?”

“Ayria would be the best one to answer that,” Mohammed replied. “You won’t know it yet, but she’s one of the longest surviving refugees.”

Stepping to one side, Mohammed allowed Ayria to take center stage again.

“I’m from the year 3314,” she began. “I was one of over four thousand souls brought here from the Vega Collective, a deep space project studying the viability of Reality-Fold technology. In my time, Earth had been filled to overflowing. The Moon, Mars, and Titan were thriving, self-sustaining, independent municipalities, and mankind had spread throughout our part of the galaxy. Although we’d developed faster-than-light drive centuries before, it wasn’t until we took to the stars that we realized how truly vast space is. Even FTL travel was considered too slow, so we were looking at ways to journey a lot further, much more quickly. Our star-orb, the
Discovery
, was a self-contained mini-world leading the charge in Reality-Fold design. Unfortunately, we pushed things too far, too quickly. Lucky for us, our flight path took us into the quantum thread employed by the gateway. We were snatched away as the ship exploded, and brought here.

“On materialization, we arrived with a great deal of salvageable kit. However, our technology proved to be our undoing. It was energy-based, of course. And as the group to arrive before us also discovered to their cost . . . we only made the Horde stronger.”

Mac frowned. “Hang on a second. So, you weren’t among the first ones here?”

“No.
They
were from over millennia into my future, 4450AD to be exact, and had been here for three years by the time we were taken. We thought everything would be all right, especially when we saw their weaponry. But then they told us how many of them had survived the original translation. Five thousand.”

“And how many did you find?”

“Just two hundred.”

“Two hundred? Jesus!”

“None of them are left now. And of my own group, only one other is still alive.”

“So how long have you been here?”

“Eighteen years. It seems those with the highest likelihood of survival are doctors, scientists, or engineers. Obviously, we tend to be kept away from the fighting.”

A murmur passed through the crowd.

Mohammed took up the story. “I came through with Commander Cameron on the seventh jump. We’re from the year 2345, and like everyone before us, our weapons were ineffective. The only good point in all this was the fact that several of our technicians were able to reverse-engineer the
Discovery’s
engines and adapt its null-point energy. Basically, Ayria’s people used it to generate the void through which two points in space can be linked at the sub-quantum level. It’s a very similar principle the Ardenese used to operate the gateway. Most of the drive survived the temporal shift, so we adapted it to form an ancillary shield about the city. It taxes our resources severely, but it’s effective, especially as it basically does what the Horde can do. Drain energy. When it’s activated, if any of those monsters attempt to breach the null-field, it disrupts their biometrics to the point of exhaustion. Needless to say, they avoid it like the plague.”

“Why don’t you just use the shield instead?” Lex asked. “I admit, I don’t understand the principles you’re talking about, even with these nanorobot things in my head. But commonsense tells me, if the enemy is repelled by the mere presence of this special field, wouldn’t it be safer to use it all the time?”

“It certainly would. But, as I mentioned, it consumes a great deal of power. If we used the shield continually, it would burn out the drive in less than a week. Our reserves would follow about a fortnight after that, even with solar backups. The gate wouldn’t be able to operate, the Ark would malfunction. We’d be at their mercy. That’s why we only use it where the wall’s integrity has been threatened. It gives the fermionic matter time to drain the excess charge away.”

“I still don’t see how that relates to us.” Mac said. “We don’t have anything near your level of technology. Not that it seems to matter, judging from what you said.”

“This is where it gets interesting.” Mohammed appeared brighter at last. “We’ve had a bit of a breakthrough. Although we didn’t know it at the time, one of our compatriots from the eighth intake brought a family heirloom through the gate with him. It stayed among his belongings for years, until a few months ago, in fact, when he was forced to use it as a last resort. It . . . unbelievably, it worked. And we’re not exactly sure why.” He walked toward the Reverence. “Regardless, it’s given us more than eight weeks of rest from a foe that has never shown the slightest inkling of stopping. Of course, your arrival here has stirred them up again. They must have sensed you, and the equipment you’ve brought.”