The Seek (21 page)

She took one last reccy of the group before she put her head down on the sleepskin. The group had fanned the outcrop as instructed, in a careful imitation of the defensive laager. Mirren sat atop one edge of the highest boulder; Kendis the other. Between them they had a three-sixty outlook. They knew the signals; and everyone knew the drill. As she checked, she could see Asha had already taken his Som, and that the others were reaching for theirs, taking the appropriate dosage for when their watch was scheduled.

All was well with the world; whatever this mad new world was. They would sleep, and then go to collect the others. And Kyn would not, as she took one last look across the wild green world before her, let herself believe that this new Eden could possibly be theirs.

She reminded herself, as the Som reached its sticky fingers out for her, that there was a reason it was called Eden 13. There had been twelve other times The Seek had gotten this far before failing.

And there was no planet in the universe on which 13 was a lucky number.

Pietr always said the first battle was the hardest, the second the saddest, and the third the most brutal. Kyn didn’t know what that meant about your tenth, except that she felt numb inside as she faced down the three huge Tyverian warlords that confronted her
.

Tyver was well and truly over the refugees of Earth stealing its vientamite, trading with its established partners and generally being a right nuisance. And who could blame then? Certainly not her. She absolutely understood how annoying it was to have people from far away come and want to steal what was yours. So she had no particular beef with these warlords
.

Except they stood between her and the pod
.

And her wounded Magister lay behind her
.

They advanced the way Tyverians do, unprotected this time by their Hunter Gatherers
—
slow but enormous, the poison glinting on their inbuilt weapons, their massive claws, circling her in a tight formation designed to make up for their lack of stealth and speed. They may have been big and slow, but they weren’t stupid. And they had developed a rock-solid method for survival in this brutal universe. Their enslavement of the ice vampires, the Hunter Gatherers, was pure genius. Their military tactics were old school but effective. And their bodies themselves were the stuff of child’s nightmares. Or even grown-up ones, Kyn reflected
.

Kyn may have been alone, and compromised by her need to protect what lay at her back, but she had one thing they didn’t. Maybe two. Speed, and grace. She leapt almost without thinking once they were in her kill zone, landing on the shoulders of the largest and using her scythe to swipe at the head of the one to his left. She caught his eye and his enraged bellow ricocheted across the ice. But the big warlord wasn’t taking her use of him as some kind of launching platform lying down. He swept at her with an enormous poison claw, narrowly missing her inner thigh
.

She jumped again, this time back flipping to land at a spot just behind the third alien. He spun, but too slowly. She punctured his delicate internals through the soft spot just above his buttocks and wiped her sabre clean before he had even turned. When he did, he could only slide to the ice in front of her, bleeding out yellow on its pristine canvas
.

The one with the injured eye charged her like a bull, skirting around his slain comrade, while the one she had mounted lumbered beside him. She delayed a fraction of a second too long and the uninjured beast slashed at her face, missing, but catching her across her breastbone, just above the place where the guardvest began. Almost instantly, she felt the poison start to work its horror on her nerve endings and she knew she had to be quick. She would be incapacitated in around five minutes
.

She grabbed the creature’s claw before it properly withdrew and wrenched it maliciously across its body, breaking the bone in the arm before using the claw to tear the thick hide of the one with the injured eye. Warlord skin was tough, but their claws were sharp. The assaulted creature screeched in agony before joining his comrade on the ice. That only left one, but he sure was pissed
.

Poison infiltrated her blood, blurring her vision, and starting a ringing in her ears. She had to get him down, pick up her Magister, and get to the pod before she lost the power to move. But now she was so slowed down that even this lumbering thing could get the jump on her. She needed wiles. She feinted sluggishly to the left, and watched the creature reach out to swat her. But she rolled as she went down, tackling his legs and pulling him down onto the snow. Before he could react, she drove the sabre she held into his upper thigh, before pulling it out again and going for the soft spot
.

It was done, he was down, but the adrenalin from the battle and the bitter aftertaste of fear rushed her. She stabbed him twice more, hearing his death moans but finding she couldn’t stop. Again, again. She wanted him dead, she wanted him down. The weapon made ugly sucking noises as it ripped in and out of his flesh. So many things, so many things that wanted to kill them, kill her
.

So many enemies. So much blood
.

It rushed at her
—
all the fear and loneliness; all the years out in space. And now, this. A whole year as an Avenger. Ten missions and the end of any innocence she ever had left
.

Die, you fucker. Die, die, die
.

She stabbed him three more times
.

Until
.

‘You done there yet?’ Jedro’s voice was ironic, even through his agony. ‘ ‘Cause they might have some buddies, y’know, and I’m kinda paralysed here.’ He was making light, but Kyn could hear the crisp edge of pain in her Magister’s voice. ‘And I’m thinking you might want to use your energy to haul our asses over to the pod, rather than taking it out on poor old dead-as-a-doormat there.’ He wheezed this last, and Kyn awoke from her kill-fever with a start, realising he didn’t have long
.

She skated over to him on the ice, awkward and ungainly as the poison ravaged her balance. ‘Sorry, Magister.’

‘I reckon you’ve got two minutes,’ Jedro said, his face the unnatural purple of Tvyerian poisoning. He pointed to the pod, sitting a hundred yards away on a little ice shelf. ‘Can you do it?’

She nodded. ‘There’s nothing I can’t do,’ she said, with a confidence she was far from feeling. It hurt worse than almost anything Kyn could remember, but she bent down and picked him up, slinging him over her shoulder, grateful it was Jedro and not one of the bigger men. She half staggered, half stumbled up the slight rise to the shelf, his limp body banging against her back as she did. She counted in her brain as she did it. She would not rest; she would not drop him. She would not have anyone say he did not make it because it was her he was with
—
her, a girl
.

By the time she reached the pod and slammed the control on the little pad on her comms, she was almost sure both of them would die. Her last conscious act was to drag them both aboard, close the hatch and set the autopilot from her comms
.

When she woke, she was in the medbay and three sweet-looking, grey-haired women were gathered around her. It was hard to comprehend their presence, there were so few older people in New Earth, and there was something about these three. They projected an aura of great wisdom, and kindness
.

Kyn’s mouth was almost impossibly dry. She had no idea who these three were, but she croaked ‘water’ at them through blistered lips. One lifted a small hydro to her lips, muttering, ‘Slowly, Kyntura.’

‘Is he dead?’ Asking the question hurt even more than the act of saving him had
.

The woman who had handed her the drink shook her head. ‘No, Kyntura. He’s…he’s in bad shape. But he’ll live to fight another day.’

She closed her eyes. Thank God
.

But the woman wanted more. She was tiny, like someone’s grandma in an old fairy-tale, from the time when the people of earth still told fairy-tales; when such tales contained the worst beasts one could imagine, and not their daily lives. Her silver hair was kept in a short crop, lightly feathered around her face. Her eyes were brown and very pretty, her features fine and her skin still quite smooth. She would have been quite a beauty. ‘Do you know who we are, Kyntura?’

Kyn considered them, then shook her head
.

‘We are The Council.’ The tiny woman said the words, but the others nodded their agreement
.

Kyn struggled to keep up. ‘The…the Council?’

One of the women laughed. She had a grey bob, and was very elegant. She reminded Kyn of Madame Roucheau, whom she had last seen seven years before. ‘The very same,’ she said. Kyn recognised this woman, and she searched hard through her injured brain
.

It fell into place with a startling clarity. The one who had berated Pieter when he had let them watch the Apocalypse. Kyn bit her lip
.

‘You’re women?’ It was all so hard to compute. ‘Why? And why don’t I know this?’

The third woman shook her head. She still had some of her own colour in her hair, which had clearly been a very deep black. Her skin was brown and her eyes were almond-shaped and kind. ‘Why is because we engineered this,’ she said. ‘We were scientists, and it was our plan. The Escape. The Mother Earth strategy. And now The Seek.’

The Seek was new, but Kyn didn’t have an issue with it. What else did they have? It was find a new home, or spend eternity being chased across the skies
.

The brown woman went on. ‘The men had their turn
—
the politicians, the talkers. That stuff didn’t work. It didn’t keep the children of Earth safe. And so we took over.’ She patted Kyn’s hand gently. ‘And you don’t know because no-one knows.’ She smiled. ‘Well, almost no-one. A small number of the Commanders. Pietr did.’

‘Did?’ Something slippery back and bitter slid into Kyn’s throat. She turned her face to the wall. She would not ask
.

‘He’s gone, Kyntura.’ The brown woman’s voice was very soft
.

‘How?’ She didn’t want to know. Not really. There could be a thousand ways he could have died, and none of them would have mattered. All that mattered was that he was gone
.

‘He was doing something,’ the brown woman said. ‘Something important, as Jedro was. But Jedro had you.’

There was a moment’s silence as Kyn closed her eyes to consider what they were saying. Jedro had her. Pietr died somewhere else, alone
.

The woman wasn’t finished. ‘We came to tell you. He asked us to. But we would have come anyway. To give you this.’

Kyn tuned back and the woman held a small box out to her. Kyn flapped an arm uselessly, the poison still strong in her system. The woman flicked it open, and there, nestled inside, was the unmistakeable green medallion of the Valor Roll
.

‘For what you did down there,’ the first woman, the tiny one, said. ‘Saving Jedro.’

‘I don’t understand why he was there, all by himself,’ Kyn said
.

The faces of the three women closed over
.

‘And I guess I never will,’ she muttered to herself. She glanced at the medallion, squeezing her eyes shut and imagining Pietr’s face if he’d seen it. He didn’t hold much stock in trinkets. The thought of him cut great swathes of pain through her stomach, reaching up into her chest and threatening to spill out of her throat in long, screeching sobs. ‘I need to rest,’ she said, closing her eyes so they would not see her cry
.

‘Of course,’ the brown woman said
.

All three bowed low and turned to go, but the tiny woman turned back. ‘You are not alone, Kyntura,’ she said. ‘You are under our protection.’

Kyn almost laughed, trying to imagine what these three women could do for her in a universe of predators, now that Pietr was gone. He had been the only one she had ever had who could protect her. Even her own father had left her. She wasn’t a fool; she knew her father had done it to try to save her. But in the end it had been Pietr who had protected her, who had fought for her, fought for them all. He was rough, and hard, and there was nothing well-mannered or careful or considerate about him
.

But he had saved them all
.

She scrambled for some grace. ‘Thank you,’ she said, hearing the stiff, cold bitterness in her voice
.

***

The Som nudged her awake. Her senses were immediately fully functional and on high alert. She shook her head in wonder. It sure was some drug. A boot in her line of vision tapped impatiently.

‘C’mon, Captain,’ its owner said. ‘It’s our watch.’

She almost groaned. There had been no other choice. All the Avengers were partnered — a three-sixty watch required two. She rolled her skin up wordlessly and stuffed it in her pack, ascending the outcrop by his side. The temperature had dropped dramatically during the last two hours, and night frost coated the rocks they crunched over. As they reached the highest boulders, Kendis and Mirren dropped down beside them.

‘All clear?’ Kyn wasn’t feeling particularly chatty.

Kendis and Mirren replied as one. ‘Yes, Magister.’

Cripes. She hoped they weren’t going to start finishing each other’s sentences.

‘Anything?’

Mirren shook her head. ‘Nothing incoming on vis, or scope,’ she confirmed. ‘But there are lights on the horizon.’

She pointed in the direction and Kyn flicked open her scope. Yes, dim yellow light, a settlement of some kind, although small, judging by the pattern of light. A camp? She thought quickly, glancing at the stars and estimating direction. Not their guys. And nothing about this in the logs from the mission.

‘Check,’ Kyn said, leaping up onto the boulder and surprised by Symon’s agility as he followed suit beside her. ‘Did you report it?’

Mirren nodded, tapping her comms. ‘To Earth Five and to the camp.’