Resolution (67 page)

Too late.

Growing huge in the sky, the intruder let rip a beam of energy in front of Kian’s vessel. Kian reacted fast, spinning the great bronze bird off to one side as the alien hurtled overhead.

The strange vessel had blasted a smoking trench across the yellow tarmac.

‘Oh, Christ. Kian!’

But the bronze vessel was stuck in sand, unable to back up or reach a clear length of runway.

While in the sky, the intruder was arcing around.

Ready for a second strafing run on a big heavy target that could not move.

‘Shit shit shit.’

Kian fought through the interface, knowing there was no time to leave the ship and run, desperate to use those immense engines, feeling the whole vessel lurch as sand enveloped half the undercarriage.

‘No.’

The display whirled in urgent primary colours, and
both
intruders rendered as blood-red ellipses arced in for the final approach.

Two of them.

From the halted truck, Dirk could only watch the Zajinet fighting vessel dive towards Kian’s halted ship.

No. Please God, no.

Then a silver delta-winged vessel burst out of the sun, and its graser gatlings split the air with a hundred sun-bright beams and swung towards the intruder.

At the last moment the Zajinet tried to evade, in a daring sideways dive.

But the silver vessel tracked the move and the blazing beams struck and everything was over. The Zajinet intruder blew apart in a cacophony of fire and light that no observer that day would ever forget.

The silver ship arced upwards into the blue sky, glowing with brilliant light.

Was gone.

Only emptiness, the desert, and smoking wreckage remained.

The TDV driver helped Dirk down onto the tarmac, kept hold of his upper arm. Dirk wavered a moment, then pulled himself upright.

‘Thanks.’

‘Huh.’ The driver wiped grease from his forehead, turned to stare at blackened debris strewn beyond the runway. ‘Who was that?’ And, looking up to the empty sky: ‘And what the Devil was that silver ship?’

Dirk’s laugh was weak but proud.

‘That was my mother.’

‘Oh.
Bozhe moi.’

‘And it’s a good job she didn’t get
really
mad.’

<>

~ * ~

41

NULAPEIRON AD 3426

Warlord Primus Tom Corcorigan began his war of retribution.

You will not have my world, Anomaly.

For the first phase, nothing would be different. Avernon’s whereabouts were unknown (except possibly to Trevalkin, who was out of contact) and Tom’s researchers had gone as far as they could without extra guidance. They needed the spacetime-manipulating technology that existed only in the Collegium Perpetuum Delphinorum. The weaponry available to the freedom forces - whether launched from terraformer spheres in Nulapeiron’s skies or fighting on the surface or in the occupied strata - was conventional.

The Anomaly retained all the advantages: able to materialize forces (both human and alien) without warning, subject only to geometric restrictions impossible to determine; Absorbing human components into itself in a process no-one could get close enough to observe without falling prey to it (and some two dozen volunteers had tried); and its mentality was so far beyond its minuscule opponents that its purposes remained unknown and unpredictable, the power of its advance overwhelming wherever it chose to concentrate its forces.

And yet, perhaps one thing had changed.

For now the human freedom fighters had a single commander: coordinating through many layers of delegation and imperfect communication, but still with a single mind and a single purpose.

Humanity had a Warlord Primus.

You will not take my world!

A Warlord who could See.

Slowly, communication webs strengthened, extruded finer tendrils into the world. Tightened.

In the command centre of Axolon Array, tactical displays now shone constantly, attended by teams of planners and advisers relaying advice and instructions to those who fought the war below.

Most of the senior officers put their emotions to one side as they disposed forces in fraught situations, measured gain and loss strategically and expressed them as numbers: topographically vital tunnels and broadways held, percentages fallen and wounded. At night, they could only imagine as they tried to sleep what the human cost of their decisions might be: the screaming of a wounded resistance fighter with her leg shorn off as graser beams spat overhead; the courier’s terrified run through dank tunnels as the Enemy closed in; the dark insidious rape as a force beyond humanity entered a soldier’s mind and turned a man into a component.

But Tom did not need to imagine these things.

Blood glistens on the stump. Above, her thigh is creamy and unblemished, her garments burned away, the skin untouched. The graser has half-cauterized the severed arteries and she scratches at the stump, far beyond pain, praying she can squirt her life-blood onto rubble before the Anomaly comes to take her.

Tom could See them.

Splash as his boot goes into a puddle. Echoes up ahead where shadows fill the tunnel but there is an opening to his left and he ducks through. Crawls, rolls, is on his feet once more.

Cold and shivering. The soldiers are closer now.