Conquest, Page 5

  “I suppose it could explain pulses being used on the Galateans, but if the humans had succeeded in unlocking Illyri weapons, we’d have heard about it,” said Danis. “I’m certain.”

  “So what’s your theory?”

  “I think Thaios put a pulse weapon at full power into his own mouth and pulled the trigger.”

  Andrus winced at the thought. The degree of vibration caused by such an act would certainly be enough to explode a skull.

  “But why? Just so he wouldn’t be captured? That speaks of a surprising degree of self-sacrifice. After all, the Diplomats would have used his tracker to find him within an hour.”

  In recent years, all Illyri on Earth had been fitted with a small subcutaneous tracker, usually implanted in the right arm. The tracker could be turned on at will, since few Illyri wanted their every movement to be known and monitored. Syl, for example, rarely turned on her tracker at all, even—or rather, most particularly—when she was on one of her little unauthorized trips beyond the castle walls. As far as she was concerned, it was to be used only in a case of the worst possible emergency, and most of the time she hardly remembered it was there at all.

  A discussion had arisen about whether trackers should instead be implanted in teeth, or even in skulls, perhaps as part of the Chip, the thin electronic membrane that all Illyri had attached to their brains at birth, enabling them to interact electronically with their environment, from simple tasks such as calling up virtual screens or translating alien speech to complex operations like piloting spacecraft or operating weapons systems. It also monitored their health, constantly scanning for signs of disease or illness. Unfortunately for Syl’s mother, her early version of the Chip had not been able to recognize the malarial infection that eventually killed her.

  The use of trackers had been kept secret for a while, but it was believed that humans had recently either figured out the fact of their existence for themselves, or had been told of them by Illyri deserters. Encoding Chips with trackers had been briefly tested in Mexico, but the operation was painful, the tracker too susceptible to the brain’s electric impulses, and it had led to Illyri captives having their heads removed by Mexican gangs to prevent their rescue.

  “I have no idea why Thaios might have killed himself,” said Danis. “Then again, it saved me the trouble. He was little better than a spy for his uncle.”

  Andrus didn’t bother to disagree. Instead he cataloged all that he had been told: a dead Diplomat who appeared to have somehow secretly communicated with his superiors before killing himself, and Galateans seemingly killed by pulse weapons. If there was a pattern, he failed to see it.

  “Call in favors,” he told Danis. “Find out—discreetly—if Birdoswald was an isolated incident. I want details of casualties among officers of the Diplomatic Corps over the last six months. I want to know if pulses have been used on our own troops anywhere on Earth. I want answers!”

  Andrus killed the lens connection, and sipped his wine unhappily.

  •••

  At Birdoswald, Danis had to make do with coffee from a flask as the rain began to fall. Around him, the dead Galateans had started to smell. He sighed deeply.

  A soldier’s lot, he thought, was not a happy one.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  T

  he Diplomatic Corps had taken over the old Glasgow School of Art for its regional headquarters, and it was there that the Securitats had their Scottish lair. The building had been the first commission given to the great Scottish architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh, resulting in a mixture of Scottish baronial architecture and Art Nouveau motifs. Beautiful but imposing, it stood at the edge of a steep hill, and took the shape of a letter E. The panes in the big industrial windows on its northern side had been replaced by toughened glass, capable of withstanding a blast without shattering. When a massive truck bomb had exploded outside the building years before, the glass had not even cracked, and concrete blocks now prevented vehicles from gaining access to the area. The surrounding spiked walls were more for show than anything else. Like all Diplomat facilities, the building was protected by an energy shield. It was state-of-the-art; its advanced design meant that the nausea associated with the prototype shields—which made those beneath them feel ill, and had long since been mothballed because of the queasiness they caused—did not arise.

  Naturally, the Diplomats had not seen fit to share their improved shield technology with their Military rivals.

  In the school’s basement mortuary, two masked and gloved technicians stared down at the headless body of Sub-Consul Thaios. Even in the temperature-controlled environment of the mortuary, Thaios’s remains had begun to rot. His skin was covered with black and purple blotches, and a stench arose from his flesh. This was unusual, to say the least. Under other circumstances, a full autopsy might have been in order to investigate the exceptionally quick decay. But an autopsy would not be carried out. The orders received by the technicians for dealing with Thaios’s body were very different.

  “You’re sure about this?” said the first technician.

  “I just do what I’m told,” said the other. “I know better than to ask questions.”

  “But he should be accorded a proper service, not . . . this. He’s Consul Gradus’s nephew. There’ll be trouble when Gradus finds out.”

  His colleague glared at him. He was older, and more senior.

  “Don’t you understand anything, you young fool? The order came from Gradus himself. Now just get on with it. He stinks.”

  The younger technician began to close the body bag, then stopped.

  “What are they?” he asked.

  “What are what?” said his colleague.

  “Those.” He pointed a gloved finger at Thaios’s chest. It appeared to be covered in tiny red threads that poked from his pores. He hadn’t noticed them before. He stroked them with his hand, but the filaments were so delicate that he could barely feel them.

  “I don’t know,” said his partner. “And I don’t want to know. Forget that you ever saw them, and I’ll do the same.”

  No more protests were heard. Together the two Illyri sealed the bag and wheeled it to the furnace room. There, as ordered, they burned the body of Thaios. As it turned to charred meat, they heard footsteps behind them.

  “Is it done?” said a female voice.

  “Yes,” said the older of the technicians. Had the new arrival been anyone else, he would have been tempted to make a joke about Thaios not just being done, but well done; hearing that voice, however, killed all thoughts of joking. It would be safer to make his silly comments later, in private, for the woman in the black-and-gold uniform of the Securitats wasn’t likely to laugh. She was Vena, the most senior Securitat in the United Kingdom, and possibly the most terrifying member of the secret police between here and Illyr itself. Vena had never been seen to laugh, and she only rarely smiled. Ice ran in her veins, ice and scalding steam, echoing the twin silver streaks that adorned her shaven head.

  “And nobody examined the body?” she said, and her voice was as sharp and direct as a dagger.

  “No one. We put him in a secure locker under a serial number, with no name. We did as we were told.”

  “Good.”

  “Funny how he decayed so quickly, though,” said the younger technician, and beside him he heard his colleague give a sharp intake of breath. So close. They’d been so close. He’d warned him about questions, warned him time and time again.

  He barely registered the weapon that appeared in Vena’s hand. It was too late to react, too late to do anything but die. The pulses that killed the two technicians came close together, the thick basement walls smothering the sound.

  And they joined Thaios in the flames.

  CHAPTER NINE

  D

  espite the gratitude she felt for her father’s gift, Syl still had no intention of sitting in class for h
er birthday, but neither could she simply wander the castle’s corridors all day. That would be pointless.

  She knew the castle better than almost anyone else, including perhaps her father’s own security detail. She had been exploring the old fortress ever since she was able to crawl, and had discovered spyholes and listening posts created centuries before, when courtiers had eavesdropped on the deliberations of kings. She had even found the secret area behind the fireplace in the Great Hall, the grand room in which her father often met with visiting dignitaries. Boarded up for the visit of a Russian president during the previous century, the spyhole’s existence had been forgotten until Syl had stumbled across a mention of it in the archives. It was her place now, and she would sometimes retreat there to read or listen to music, cocooned in the darkness. At other times, she would spy on her father’s meetings if the timing suited, but for the most part they were so dull that she rarely bothered.

  Nevertheless, from her snooping she knew of events on Earth that Toris never shared with his students. She was aware that, like so many empires before them, the Illyri had given up on taming Afghanistan, which would have been more worrying if the Afghan people hadn’t themselves divided into opposing Islamic factions—just as various Christian groups had elsewhere—and then turned all their rage upon each other. The humans’ argument was always the same, regardless of the god or gods they worshipped: if their god had created all living things, then had he not also created the Illyri? Or was it only Man who was made in this god’s image, Man who was central to all creation?

  The Illyri, meanwhile, considered themselves simply to be creatures of the universe, so such arguments would have been meaningless to them had they not brought with them such violent repercussions. There had been some discussion about outlawing religion entirely, but this had been tried on other conquered worlds and the results were always the same: suppression concentrated the power of belief. But religious extremism was an ongoing problem, and too often it appeared to be motivated less by faith than by a hatred of anything and anyone that was not like itself.

  And in her hidey-hole, Syl had wondered if Man had not been made in the image of his god but had instead shaped a god in Man’s image: violent, wrathful, and vengeful. It was all rather grim, she decided, and her birthday was certainly not a day to be spent eavesdropping on even more gloomy news from a hole in a wall.

  Listless, she wandered into the lounge beside her bedroom. The house in which she and her father dwelt had originally been built for the castle governor in 1742, and had remained a governor’s residence for over a century before the post was abolished. It had then served as a hospital until the position was reestablished in 1935, and now an Illyri governor slept in its bedroom and ate in its dining room. It was a handsome building, if a little cold in winter.

  Out of habit, Syl picked up a book, but put it down after only a few paragraphs. She wanted to be active. She wanted to do something. She moved to the window, swept back the heavy drapes, and looked down on the busy courtyard. This had been transformed into a landing pad for the governor and other important visitors, and shuttles, skimmers, and interceptors used it regularly.

  Syl watched the traffic for a time, all of it routine, longing to climb aboard a shuttle and go somewhere, anywhere. Yet she wasn’t supposed to leave even the castle’s environs unaccompanied. While the Royal Mile area of Edinburgh was less dangerous for the Illyri than elsewhere, they were still objects of vaguely hostile curiosity at best. It was not unknown for stones to be thrown at them, and worse could happen once the castle was out of sight.

  But dwindling away inside these walls felt like a death all of its own.

  It started to rain. The heavy droplets splashed against the window, and the courtyard cleared as everyone ran for cover. That solved it then: she should read, and forget about going out . . . but what a waste that would be. It hardly seemed worth all the grief she’d doubtless get for skipping school if it was only for a day spent cooped up in the castle.

  She walked back to her room and kicked open her closet. Like most young Illyri, her wardrobe consisted of a mix of Illyri dress—mainly long robes for non-Military and security personnel, whether male or female—and Earth clothing, although her father disapproved of nonregulation garments, even on his own daughter. But the Illyri were being changed by Earth, just as Earth was being changed by the Illyri. It was inevitable, in a way: wine, whisky, illicit tobacco, and even human fabrics had made their way back to Illyr along with the other prizes of conquest. Silk was especially prized by Illyri of both sexes, along with certain furs, including mink and fox. They were largely symbols of wealth and influence, for only those with power had both access to the valued items and the means to transport them back to Illyr.

  But the human clothing gave Syl freedom of movement in the city. Yes, she was tall, but not unusually so, not yet. Her skin had not yet reached the full golden glow of maturity, so she just appeared lightly tanned. She had tinted glasses to hide her eyes—sunglasses were better, but it didn’t look like today was a day for shades—and a crazy velvet hat to conceal her lustrous hair. Now, grinning to herself, she dressed in jeans and an old coat; with her hat fixed firmly on her head, she reckoned she easily passed for a foreign student—Italian, perhaps, or Spanish.

  “My name is, uh, Isabella,” she said to her mirrored reflection, putting on a dreadful Italianesque accent. “Buongiorno, Edinburgh.”

  Quickly she stuffed the human clothing into a backpack and made her way to the courtyard through the quietest corridors of the castle. She changed her clothes in a bathroom close to the Argyle Tower, then put up an umbrella, and slipped out into the rain. Nobody stopped her as she left the castle; the guards were more concerned about those who tried to enter than those who were leaving. If she was lucky, and there were guards she knew on the gates when she returned, she would be able to convince them not to report her to her father. Syl was particularly good at bending the sentries to her will.

  But that was for later. For now, she was sixteen, and away from the castle. She was free. So caught up was she in the pleasure of the moment, even as the rain continued to fall and a cold wind blew stinging droplets in her face, that she did not notice the figure that detached itself from the shadows by the Esplanade and fell casually into step behind her, hidden by the crowds.

  CHAPTER TEN

  P

  aul and Steven approached the Royal Mile, and Knutter’s grocery shop.

  Knutter was a minor asset to the Resistance, passing on information and providing a safe house for weapons and munitions when required. A cousin of his from Aberdeen had been killed in the early days of the invasion, shot in the act of throwing a firebomb at a patrol. As a consequence, Knutter was barely able to conceal his hatred for the invaders. He had little access to the Resistance’s secrets, though, and knew the identities of only a handful of its operatives. It was better that way. Very few of those who fought the aliens knew much beyond their own field of operations, for just as the Resistance had its informers close to the Illyri, so too there were those among the humans who were prepared to sell out their own for money, or advancement, or to secure the return of conscripts to their families. The less men like Knutter knew, the less they might accidentally reveal, or have tortured from them if they were ever caught and interrogated.

  Behind his back he was commonly known as Knutter the Nutter, because of both his short temper and his tendency to knock down those who crossed him by using his bulbous forehead or scarred crown to break their noses, a tactic known as “nutting” or the “Glasgow kiss.” His head was shaved, and his forearms were adorned with shamrock tattoos and the insignia of Celtic football club, even though he was a native of Edinburgh and the shop had been in his family for generations.

  What made Knutter’s store particularly useful was the fact that it provided a secret access point to the South Bridge Vaults, the system of over one hundred chambers in the arches of t
he South Bridge, completed at the end of the eighteenth century. They had first housed taverns and the workshops of various trades, as well as serving as slum housing for the city’s poor. It was said that the nineteenth-century serial killers Burke and Hare had hunted among the residents of the Vaults for their victims, selling the bodies for medical experimentation. Then, sometime in the mid- to late nineteenth century, the Vaults were closed, and they hadn’t been excavated further until the end of the twentieth century, when they became a tourist attraction. Now they provided a hiding place for guns and, occasionally, Resistance members who had been identified and were being hunted by the Illyri, although most fugitives preferred to take their chances above ground. The Vaults were grim and dank and said to be haunted, although in Knutter’s experience it was only those who already believed in ghosts who were susceptible to such fantasies. Knutter himself had yet to encounter anything, either human or alien, that could not be felled by a sufficiently hard blow from his own head. So far, his forehead had not passed through the face of a supernatural entity.

  But it was Knutter who first heard the noises from the Vaults after a few too many drinks, and it had caused him to briefly reconsider his views on ghosts—and, indeed, drinking. But the noises continued to sound well after he had sobered up, and he had also recognized the curious burbling, clicking language of the Toads coming through the cracks in his basement wall. It was then that he had informed the Resistance. Once its leaders had concluded that Knutter was not simply hallucinating, further enquiries were made among its informers. By piecing together various pearls of information, a chain of events was constructed, and it was deduced that the Illyri had been tunneling with great secrecy under the city, and had come close to Knutter, and the Vaults.

  The Resistance leaders were furious: a major excavation had been carried out quite literally under their noses, and they hadn’t known. Their system of spies and informers had let them down. The Illyri had managed to keep their tunnels very quiet until Knutter’s keen ear had picked up on what was happening. The Resistance had concluded it was the Diplomatic Corps and not the Military that was behind the excavations. They had enjoyed little success in infiltrating the Diplomats, for they tended not to use human labor, and most of their forces kept their distance from humans, except when they were fighting them, or arresting them, or killing them. If the Military had been engaged in digging beneath Edinburgh, someone would have informed the Resistance. Only the Corps could keep such a project secret, aided, perhaps, by the Securitats.