The Seek (24 page)

Tabi rolled her eyes. ‘Isn’t it obvious?’

Er, no. Clearly not to Gustas, and not to Kyn either.

‘It was their place,’ Tabi said. ‘That’s what you think, don’t you?’ She nudged Dona. ‘They were the ones who died off.’

Dona nodded, saying nothing, but she looked sad.

Gustas snorted. ‘What, so a few of them escaped, but not the rest?’

‘There are precedents, Primo,’ Asha said drily. Then he rubbed his hands together. ‘Thank you, Dona,’ he said. ‘It was a good brief. What does it mean for us today?’

Gustas took over. ‘All you need to know,’ he said sharply, ‘is that at first they just attacked when we went on resource runs certain places.’ He held his fingers up in the inverted commas sign again. ‘To the “sacred sites”.’ He snorted again before continuing and Kyn thought what an unimaginative oaf he was. He probably prided himself on it, not realising imagination was the lifeblood of any good fighter. You needed imagination to be able to foresee what might come, the angle they might strike from, the possibility of eluding them. Without it, you were predictable. Without it, eventually you were dead. She tuned back in as he droned on. ‘But lately, the last few days, they’ve been tracking us. And then today, your attack…’ He trailed off.

‘They want us gone,’ Kyn finished for him.

This seemed to be the one point on which Dona and Gustas agreed. They both nodded vigorously.

Kyn closed her eyes for a moment, weighing it all. When she opened them, they were all watching her. Gustas, dully awaiting instructions. Dona and Tabi, curious. Asha, stretched taut, his body on high alert. And Symon, his face impossible to read. His eyes were half-closed and very focused on her. She almost felt like he was testing her, waiting to see what she would do before he made his mind up about something.

She turned to Dona. ‘What about the lights? The ones we saw on the horizon last night?’

Dona nodded. ‘We’ve seen them before,’ she confirmed. ‘But not always in the same place. We don’t think they’re Haitites. They don’t need light.’

Kyn groaned inwardly.
Great, someone else
. ‘Any ideas who?’

Dona hung her head, and shook it. ‘No, sorry,’ she said, sounding defeated. ‘Whoever it is, they’ve never bothered us.’

Kyn assembled all the pieces in her mind. What she knew for certain is that she needed higher level direction. This all needed to be laid out. Decisions needed to be made. And this camp, perhaps this planet, was not safe until a new battle strategy was devised.

‘Do you feel you have enough?’ Kyn studied Dona meaningfully. ‘To explain it all to them?’ Everyone knew whom she meant. The Council.

Dona nodded.

Kyn motioned towards Tabi with her head, a question on her face. She was using her finger to flick through the notes Dona had made on her V-pad.

Tabi met Kyn’s eyes and nodded. ‘It’s good,’ Tabi said. ‘It’s thorough. It’s enough.’ As Admiral-class, Tabi was the ranking Explorer on this mission.

‘We move out immediately,’ Kyn said, smiling briefly at Dona. ‘We get back to the pod. We take this shit home. Let the powers-that-be work out what comes next. Most of all, you guys need a rest.’

And it was true. As Kyn had entered the camp, she’d felt the slump. What was left of the group that had been stationed here during the last two months were at a low ebb, although they had rallied on seeing her.

It wouldn’t last. They’d suffered a lot of losses. She needed to take them home.

She glanced at her comms. ‘Synchronise,’ she barked at the five people standing around her. ‘On my count, sixteen hundred oh five. Four, three, two, one.’ Five tiny bips indicated they’d synchronised. ‘Good,’ she said, pleased with the tiny victory for efficiency. ‘Forty minutes, we move out.’

A sudden scream from the front of the camp lashed through Kyn’s spine. It was desperate, and terrified, and sickeningly familiar.

Mirren.

Kyn had her sabre cocked in a second, and was dashing in the direction of the stream with Symon and Asha at her heels.

She flung out a hand to Asha as they ran. ‘No,’ she yelled, pointing back towards Tabi and Dona.

He paused, his face at war.

‘It’s the right thing, Asha,’ she hissed, ‘Don’t overthink it. We need them; we need the data.’

Asha nodded and turned back.

Thirty seconds later, she was there, and she realised with a jolt of surprise that Symon was beside her. She wanted to tell him to wait as well, but one look at the set of his face told her it would be a useless request. The scene that greeted them froze Kyn’s blood.

Kendis, blood oozing down one side of his face, stood on a rock at the entry to the camp. His face was set and his eyes closed, and a long black spear was pressed against his heart, held in place by the lean, strong arm of a Haitite. The creature looked unperturbed by the dozen Avengers gathered in front of him, thirty yards or so from where he stood. It was flanked by five…no, six…others. It swept the encampment with his free hand and gestured towards the sky.

You didn’t need to be an Explorer to decipher that one.
Leave. Go back to where you came from
.

Kyn stepped forward and the creature made an unmistakeable gesture with the spear, drawing back from Kendis’ heart, then bringing it in again quickly, halting just before the death blow.

Move again, and I’ll kill him
.

The gathered group of Avengers turned toward Kyn, not so much literally, but she felt all their eyes and brains on her.

What now, Magister?

Well, the first thing she needed to do was get closer.

She dropped her weapon and inched forward, making a gesture with her hands to communicate that she was ready to trade places with the boy. The creature which held the spear turned slowly to face her. Its features were very smooth — long flat eyes, plasticky skin, taut cheeks, fine slash of a mouth — so its emotions were difficult to discern from its face. But its body was the giveaway — the tiny jerk in its right arm, the stiffening of the back. It was surprised.

Kyn made the gesture again, and moved forward even more slowly.

The creature let her advance, unmoving. Seven sets of flat black eyes against burnished orange faces blinked at her.

As they watched her, Kyn felt frozen in some kind of montage.

Time seemed to stretch, slowing down with each breath.

Kyn moved very slowly; her hands up, her face open.

And then Mirren made her move.

With a running leap, she was atop the shoulders of the one holding Kendis hostage to the tip of his spear, knocking it out of his hand and unbalancing him with the one swift move. Kyn registered the girl’s face as she leapt — focused, lethal fury.

Mirren’s decisive act was the herald’s call, and the Avengers burst into action, running and leaping towards the Haitites on the ridge. The Haitites in turn advanced smoothly, and Kyn had a sudden vision of a tide — ancient and unstoppable. There was something so ruthlessly minimalist about their movements. She flew towards Mirren and Kendis, registering as she did that Avengers were racing to combat all over the ridge, engaging the intruders, two Avengers to every one Haitite.

It was second or two before Kyn reached Mirren, but the girl was already in a deathroll with the one who had held the spear to Kendis. The boy held his sabre aloft, waiting for a clear place to bring it down. His face was bleeding badly, obscuring his vision, and Kyn could see he was trying to ascertain how to intervene without further risking Mirren. Just then, the creature gained the upper hand and reared up, its long neck drawing back while elegant fingers closed around Mirren’s throat. Kendis lunged with his sabre, but the creature flicked him off like fly, sending him sailing through the air to land on a low, flat boulder nearby.

As Kendis struggled to right himself, Kyn saw a moment. She stepped forward and drove her sabre towards the space behind the creature’s ear. It squealed and turned, but plucked the sword out and away, swiping brutally at Mirren, and landing two solid blows. Mirren rolled away and leaped to her feet, and the creature turned its focus to Kyn.

They circled each other, Kyn letting the world slow to this — watching the thing’s slow, deliberate movements, its unhurried grace. She could feel the latent power and wisdom in its cells. This was some impressive physical machine. It was beautiful. She needed to understand it, learn it. She feinted a little, left and right, watching it regard her unhurriedly, realising it was doing the same. Imprinting her physical pattern on its fighter’s inner eye. They were locked in a dance as old as time. A war dance; a death dance.

And only one of them would survive.

As her glance flicked over to Mirren and Kendis, Kyn saw that they were battling another creature, but the two of them were working well together on it. The combination of their light moves and almost psychic anticipation of each other’s shifts was puzzling the Haitite; its head was shaking as though it was troubled by a gnat. As it turned one way then the other, they landed a small series of blows.

Kyn’s momentary distraction was all the creature facing her needed. It swung towards Kyn, its body elastic and confusing. In a second, it had Kyn’s throat in its long fingers, squeezing until the bones of her neck creaked and all the breath rushed away. Kyn reached out wildly with her hands, but its arms were too long to allow her purchase.

She had only one choice.

She used her legs to twist her body, flipping it in the grip of the thing, so that white-hot pain drilled into her neck, but the force of the act obliged the creature to let go. As it did, she swept its legs away and leaped high to land hard on its face. The creature grunted and covered its eyes.

The tell was gold: the eyes.

Kyn feinted to the side, searching for her sabre and finally seeing it near the creature’s legs. She rolled swiftly, grabbing at it and missing it twice.

And then Mirren and Kendis were back with her. A quick glance revealed they had disposed of the Haitite they had been sparring with — it lay broken and bloody on the flat rock Kendis had landed on. But Kyn could have screamed at them; they would not be a help in this, only a distraction. And she was right — the creature used them, as she had known it would. It was a thing of intelligence and wiles; it knew they mattered to her. In seconds, the Haitite was upright, with an arm around both of them and Mirren’s sabre against their throats. It had a good grip; there was no escape.

Checkmate.

Kyn watched the two, standing still in the deathly circle of the Haitite’s long arms. Kendis’ chin jutted furiously, his face almost entirely covered with blood. Mirren’s face had shut down completely, just like it had that night at the bar. Her eyes did not close, but took on that faraway look that told Kyn she was removing herself.

It struck a chord deep inside Kyn: Mirren had decided this was it.

Kyn watched the two as the creature drew the sword back. Kendis reached for Mirren’s hand and she took it, finally closing her eyes. They felt it: the creature meant to kill them. Murdering them would give it the advantage. It understood that she cared about these two, and it wanted to destabilise her.

Well, it could get in line
.

The Haitite drew back its head and uttered a single, high call. Victory? A death call?

Whatever
.

Kyn’s sabre flew before the creature had time to slice their throats. The shot was perfect, and its arm lay twitching on the rock, still holding the sword, before it even registered her movement. In the second of surprise as it watched its arm, separated from its body, Kyn leaped forward and jumped high onto the creature’s back, driving her sabre down into those eyes that she knew to be vulnerable because of its previous defensive gesture.

The creature buckled, but Kyn drew back again and stabbed it twice more for certainty. This was not the wild slashing of her tenth mission; this was considered risk mitigation against a species she had not encountered before. She knew of some life forms whose limbs, eyes and even entire heads had could regenerate at will. She looked down at the body oozing orange into a viscous pool on the rocks. This one looked pretty dead, but then, you never could tell.

Mirren and Kendis stepped away from it, still holding hands for a couple of seconds before dropping them quickly. Kyn studied it a moment longer. As she did, she saw the things striping its smooth orange back. Scars?

She peered closer, feeling déjà vu close in on her as she studied the distinctive, criss-crossing triangular ridges.

Solar whip scars.

This creature had been tortured, like Symon. And like Symon, it had been an Enforcer of New Earth who had held the solar whip. Kyn’s vision blurred as she struggled to make sense of it. How? The Enforcers only had jurisdiction on Earth Three, and to hunt New Earth’s own criminals.

She frowned.

The lights in the distance — was that what they were? Their very own Enforcers, running some kind of separate, secret mission here on Eden 13?

She turned back to the rest of the group who were standing still, watching as the rest of the creatures retreated swiftly back over the hill.

Symon was standing very still, bent over one of the creatures, one of the long black spears in his hand. He pulled it out of the thing’s chest, almost nonchalantly, and even from here Kyn could see the bruise forming on his cheek and eye. She blinked, thinking about the strength and skill she had sensed in the one she had killed. She was a seasoned Avenger and it had taken all her strength, all her skill, to bring it down. She glanced back at Symon. What the hell was he to have taken one down solo?

‘Is it too much to hope we might have scared them off?’ Kendis half-smiled at Kyn through his bloody eye and mouth.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We’re going to have to fight our way out of here. I can only assume they’re regrouping. My sense is they didn’t come here prepared to fight, they just wanted to ask us to leave.’

And now she knew why. These creatures, these visiting beings who returned sporadically to their home to be with their ancestors, were being tortured. By Kyn’s own people, for reasons she didn’t understand.