Vengeance (32 page)

The door clicked open.

Azoh stood in the doorway.

“I am sorry for all this,” she said, gesturing around at the locked room. “I asked for you to be kept isolated until I could talk to you.”

“My team? Are they okay?”

“They are okay, just cuts and bruises,” she said. “Your jets destroyed our tanks just in time. Your friends are waiting right next door.”

“I am sorry about Azoh-zu,” he said.

She held his gaze. A single tear ran down her cheek. “I try to see all possibilities, to plan and prepare for every outcome, but my vision was poor. I failed. I failed Azoh-zu.”

“You did all you could,” Chisnall said, knowing that no words could be enough.

“And yet his life was not lost in vain,” Azoh said. “This tragedy, the loss of such a child, perhaps more than anything else, was what swayed the High Council.”

“I am truly sorry,” Chisnall said. He stood and embraced her, unsure of the protocol, but not really caring. She accepted his embrace without hesitation, clinging tightly to him.

“His
zoh
was very strong. Perhaps he sensed that I was in danger. He was so small, but somehow he felt so protective of me.”

Chisnall nodded.

“Or perhaps …” She broke off and took a moment to continue. “Perhaps he was smarter than that. Perhaps he saw what would happen if he did follow me and how that would affect the High Council.”

“You think he sacrificed himself?” Chisnall asked.

She shrugged, tears flowing freely now. “We will never know. Perhaps he was just a frightened child.”

She pulled away a little, regaining some composure. “Your people are on a journey and it has been a long one,” she said. “From savage animal to savage man, from savage man to true being. Compassion and peace are the future of your species. Greed and violence will fade into your history.”

“I hope so,” Chisnall said.

“I do not hope,” Azoh said. “I know this to be true. I see the future of your people.”

“How can you see this?” he asked.

“I see it in you,” she said.

“You flatter me,” he said.

She smiled. “The next stage of your people’s journey will be just as long and the changes just as dramatic. The Fathers will return when it is time for that stage to begin.”

Chisnall lowered his head, his mind whirling with the knowledge, with the magnitude of it all.

“How do you know this?” he asked.

“Because that was when the Fathers returned to us,” she said. “Now I have a question for you.”

He waited.

“With the death of Azoh-zu, each of the five Bzadian races will be presenting their candidates for selection,” she said. “As you know, this is a great honour for us. These candidates will be selected for traits that we admire: compassion, selflessness, humility and courage.”

“I regret that you have to go through this process,” Chisnall said.

“As do I,” Azoh said. “But it must happen, and immediately. The training and selection process will take place over the next few weeks, even as our people seek to negotiate with yours. As we carve up the world and attempt to broker a fragile peace. But there is an opportunity now, for a much stronger, a much longer-lasting peace.”

“How?” Chisnall asked.

“I will propose to the High Council a sixth candidate for Azoh-zu.”

And now her meaning was clear.

“I would not be a worthy candidate,” Chisnall said.

“We agree on many things, but on this we disagree,” Azoh said. “You have proven yourself a very worthy candidate. And the
zoh
is strong in you.”

“The strangeness?” Chisnall asked.

“All of the candidates will have
zoh
to varying degrees,” Azoh said. “Part of the training and the selection process will be to determine just how strong the ability is in each one.”

“Would the High Council even accept me as a candidate?” Chisnall asked. “I am too old; I am too … human.”

“It is my right, and my responsibility, to supervise the selection process,” Azoh said. “The council may fight me, but they will not win. But I think they will see the importance of this. If you were to be successful, and to become Azoh-zu, it would create a unity between our peoples.”

Chisnall considered that, considering what had been said.

“If the High Council will accept me as a candidate, I will try to honour Azoh-zu’s memory,” he said.

Azoh moved close, face to face. He could feel her breath on his face. He could see a tiny pulse in the corner of her eye.

“When you become a candidate, you are isolated from the outside world,” Azoh said. “If you were to be selected, the person you are now will cease to exist. You understand this?”

“Yes,” Chisnall said.

“It is a big commitment,” she said.

“I accept it,” he said.

“What about your family?” she asked.

“I will tell them. They will understand,” Chisnall said.

“You will not have the opportunity to tell them,” she said.

“Yes I will.” Chisnall smiled. “They’re waiting right next door.”

Monster was the first to emerge from the building, into the swirling smoke and uncertain air outside. Price was immediately behind him, conscious of the lack of a weapon: no coil-gun adding its weight to her back; no side-arm on her hip. It had been so long that she felt almost naked without them.

Bzadian soldiers watched them curiously.

Barnard, Wall and Brogan emerged next, blinking against the harsh sunlight, filtered only slightly by the gauzy haze of the smoke. They were herded into lines, awaiting their transportation. The entire city was being evacuated; the wildfires were approaching on three fronts.

Price stared at the entrance to the building for a long time, as if expecting to see someone else emerge. But she knew no one would. Not The Tsar or Wilton, who had sacrificed their own lives to protect the lives of others. Not Emile. Not Hunter. And not Ryan Chisnall.

“You remember our first-ever mission together?” she asked no one in particular.

“I do,” Monster answered.

“It seems so long ago now,” Price said.

“Like lifetime,” Monster said.

“We won’t see him again, will we?” Price said, blinking away tears from the smoke.

Monster said nothing. His arms slipped around her waist from behind and he pulled her close, clasping his hands across her stomach. They remained like that, watching the empty doorway, until their attention was distracted by harsh cawing as a trio of large birds flew overhead, fleeing the fires to the east.

Barnard was watching the birds also, Price saw, and there was something in her eyes. A kind of wistfulness that was so unlike her that Price might have laughed, if she had been capable of it at that moment. The expression softened the German girl. What was going on inside, Price could not know, although she could guess. She reached out and took Barnard by the arm, pulling her closer.

Barnard tried to shake her off. “I’m not much of a hugger.”

“Get over it,” Price said, putting her arm around Barnard’s neck and pulling her close.

There was silence for a while then Barnard said, “Wilton gave his life to save the people he loved. So did The Tsar. I’m not sure how I feel about that. Emile gave up his life aspiring to some ideal of being a hero. I’m not sure how I feel about that either.”

“You not alone,” Monster said.

Monster’s lips were by Price’s ear now, murmuring things that were just for the two of them. She twisted her head around and kissed him softly on the cheek.

Was it fair? After all they had been through, that somehow both of them had survived? When she looked around, all she saw was heartbreak and loss. Wall had lost a brother. Barnard had lost The Tsar, possibly the only person in the world she had ever truly cared about.

At the end of the line, Brogan stood alone. Isolated by who she was. By what she had done.

When Price turned back she saw that Wall had latched onto the group, Barnard’s arm around his waist.

“Thought you weren’t much of a hugger,” Price said.

“Get over it.” Barnard smiled.

Wall was gazing skywards and Price followed his eyes.

The trio of birds was disappearing noisily to the west. Above them, through the haze of smoke from the approaching wildfires, clouds had begun to form, swirling slowly around into a vortex, a whirlpool of white, gradually turning to grey, and spreading out through the dome of the sky.

“What’s going on?” Price asked.

“Is just clouds,” Monster said.

“Strangest looking clouds I’ve ever seen,” Barnard said, and for the first time since Price had known her, her eyes were full of tears.

Price watched her then found her gaze drawn back to the sky as the unnatural clouds continued to darken and spread.

“Brogan,” she said, and when Brogan looked at her, she said, “Get over here.”

Brogan hesitated, then began to walk towards them.

“Everything is way it meant to be,” Monster said.

And then it began to rain.

An unsteady and uneasy peace swathed the planet Earth for more than two full years following the events at Canberra in March, 2033. It had taken a glimpse over the edge of the precipice for both sides to see how deep and dark that chasm really was.

Disarmament began in 2034 and was finished by early 2035 when Bzadians and humans signed the final treaty.

But to get to that point took a lot of trust, and spontaneous outbursts of hostility flared up like spot fires in various parts of the globe as tensions rose and waned.

Two species, like twins separated at birth, gradually got to know each other.

The treaty-signing ceremony was held in the shadow of the great rock at Uluru. A place that had once been the heart of the Bzadian military machine.

It was attended by most of the top dignitaries from either side.

But there were some unexpected and uninvited guests also.

The immense spaceship that descended slowly through the clear blue skies was easily visible to the naked eye, yet had not been picked up on radar. This was later confirmed to be due to the design of the spaceship, pyramidal in shape, without any surface to reflect radar back to the transmitter. It was the original and the ultimate in stealth technology.

All the participants at the signing ceremony, waiting patiently in the cool July sun, found their eyes drawn to the sky as the craft descended.

What they saw – humans with shocked, awed expressions, Bzadians with smiles of understanding and recognition – was merely the base of the pyramid: a circle of blue fire inside an enormous square.

Everything about the Allied Combined Operations Group (ACOG) was a mishmash of different human cultures: tactics, weapons, languages, vehicles and especially, terminology. The success of many missions depended on troops from diverse nations being able to understand all communications instantly and thoroughly. The establishment of a Standardised Military Terminology and Phonetic Alphabet (SMTPA) was a key factor in assisting this communication, combining existing terminology from many of the countries involved in ACOG. For ease of understanding, here is a short glossary of some of the SMTPA terms, phonetic short cuts, and equipment used in this book.

ACOG:
Allied Combined Operations Group

AUTOCANNON:
A rapid-fire weapon that fires explosive shells

COIL-GUN:
Weapon using magnetic coils to propel a projectile

COM:
Personal radio communicator

FAST MOVER:
Fixed-wing aircraft such as a jet fighter

GPS:
Global Positioning System

KLICK:
Kilometre

LT:
Lieutenant

MIKE:
Minute

NV GOGGLES:
Night-Vision goggles

OSCAR KILO:
Okay

OSCAR MIKE:
On the move

PUKE:
Military slang for a Bzadian

ROTORCRAFT:
Helicopter with internal rotor blades at the base of the craft

ROTORBOT:
A small, unmanned rotorcraft

SCRAM-JET:
A ramjet in which combustion takes place in a supersonic airflow

SCREAM JET:
A scram-jet powered biplane capable of reaching hypersonic speeds

SLOW MOVER:
Rotary-wing aircraft such as a helicopter or rotorcraft

The following people won the grand prize in my school competitions and have had a character named after them in this book:

Emile Attaya,
Point View School, Auckland, New Zealand

Retha Barnard,
Albany Junior High School, Auckland, New Zealand

Daniel Bilal,
Woodcrest State College, Queensland, Australia

Holly Brogan,
St. Cuthbert’s College, Auckland, New Zealand

Ryan Chisnall,
Belmont Intermediate School, Auckland, New Zealand

Janos Panyoczki,
Kaiwaka School, Kaiwaka, New Zealand