Chapter 29 - The Plans of the Enemy
Kryslie was not unconscious when the Ciriot picked her up – just very, very weak. She kept her eyes closed, except for a quick peek, now and then.
The Ciriot had appeared like wraiths – from somewhere. She did not believe they could teleport, so they must have cloaking technology as good as or better than what the Aeronites had. This was a chance to find out how they came - that was if they were taking her somewhere and not just intending to finish off killing her. She was relieved that none of the six Ciriot had her father.
These creatures were so confident of their dominance, that they did not expect her to escape, and the Ciriot that was carrying her did not seem to notice his energy being drawn from him.
She was fully recovered, though she still didn’t completely understand what had happened except that the Guardians had quenched the clinging flames, and kept her alive. Her clothes had burnt, but her skin was untouched.
A ship was, indeed, their destination. It was big enough for more than the six Ciriot, and looked like a large ovoid, sitting on four tail fins. Inside, Kryslie was taken to a compartment and in there, she saw a motley collection of other prisoners. There was a mix of mutants of all descriptions, Aeronites, Tymorean commoners, and all were hung by the wrists from manacles hanging from the low ceiling. She was treated the same, and left there.
Once the compartment door was slammed shut and the locking mechanism was engaged, Kryslie tested the restraints and simply snapped them, first from the hanging chain and then from her wrists. She took time to examine all her fellow prisoners. Some were dead, others moaning incoherently from pain or terror. The few who were conscious and quiet, asked for release and she obliged.
“Stay here,” she told them. “We are in no condition to take them on yet. I suggest you brace yourselves, they are going to lift off.” No one disputed her; they recognised her for who she was. Even undressed as she was, they looked at her with undisguised hope.
She had a chance to learn about the Ciriot, and she wasn’t going to wait.
The ship launched, by powering directly up into the Tymorean sky. The gravity force was fierce, and all the moaning captives mercifully blacked out.
When the g-force abruptly vanished, Kryslie knew they were in orbit, but the feeling of weightlessness did not overly affect her. She found her body was instinctively reacting in ways Reslic had trained into her. While her fellow captives were floating and looking ill, she floated to the door and examined the locking device – a wheel and two rods. She had no trouble manipulating it from the inside. With a wrench on the manual winding handle, the door swung open. She held it so it only opened enough for her to slip out. Once in the narrow passageway, she reclosed the door and went left, away from where she sensed other life. She found her way to the drive chamber and examined the unfamiliar machinery. Memories surfaced, from either Xyron or Reslic’s memories. She made sense of what she saw, and went to study the control board – a computer with Ciriot glyphs. As different lights flashed, she correlated changes in the orientation of the ship with the lit buttons. Knowledge came to her of the steps needed to bring the ship down, but Kryslie was sensing the ship was falling planet-wards already. She decided it was safer to return to the compartment with the prisoners, rather than risk being found loose. Once again, she braced herself, and when the ship landed gently, she hid using the simple skill of standing very still and cloaking herself with power.
In the Ciriot ship, it wasn’t completely effective, but it also wasn’t necessary. None of the Ciriot came to check on the prisoners.
Kryslie felt the vibration from the movement of the Ciriot as they left the ship, and waited until the stillness and silence returned before she ventured out again. She saw the outer door standing open, and edged towards it. What she could see, as far as she could see, was a scene of desolation. In all directions, the landscape was black, scoured down to the rock. Nothing organic remained in existence. The Ciriot were not in sight, but their trail lead around to the other side of the ship. Before she stepped out, she checked for a guard. In doing so, she found where they had left their disguising capes and cowls, and took one without a qualm. It would be a disguise, and a form of covering. Once outside, she moved around the ship and the only non-natural structure came into view. It was dome, made of metal and glowing faintly. Since there was a dense layer of smoke hanging in the air, the glow was not from sunlight, so it must be from a defensive screen. All six Ciriot, were walking towards the dome, in their black armour, without the disguising capes and cowls.
The smell that pervaded the air was familiar. Kryslie recognised it as the substance that had fallen on her and caused the clinging flame.
“Burnfire,” Kryslie murmured, recalling the name Jordan had given it. This desolation was what was left when it was used. She wondered who had done the damage, Aeronite or Ciriot, and where she was.
Adjusting her eyes again, Kryslie saw the glowing trails left by the Ciriot going from the ship to the dome, but no others. If this was a Ciriot place, none of them had been there since the burning. Then she saw the Ciriot were all drawing weapons. She began to follow them, keeping low and in line with the ship. The arrogant creatures never even glanced back. They did not expect anything to be alive in the blackened area.
Kryslie caught up to the rearmost Ciriot, studied the armour and what she could see of the equipment it wore. Just before it entered the dome, she raced forward and struck. The faint noise did not carry in the dead air, and the creature had no chance to click a warning.
An analytical part of her mind, told her it had been a clean kill. She quickly lifted the dead Ciriot and carried him partway around the dome, ensuring she was not seen from any of the viewing ports.
Quickly, efficiently and without remorse, Kryslie removed the items that she could use, and systematically damaged everything else. The weapon that spewed burning fire went into a pocket of the black cape. She kept the disintegrator in her hand and a very sharp knife tucked under her arm.
Then she considered her next move, and decided to creep further around the dome, keeping to the patches of scoured rock, and avoiding the gritty ashy residue that would show footprints. She stopped at a locked rear entrance. A short burst of the disintegrator solved the lock problem, but she moved away a bit, around the curve of the dome, and kept her senses alert for a reaction. None came. She returned to the door, eased it open, looked in and then slipped into a storage room.
Now she could hear pleas, screams, consternation, and the mechanical device that translated the clicked orders. The pleas and the translation were in the Aeronite language, an older or changed form of the main Tymorean dialect.
It was obvious that this was a scientific outpost, and the scientists here had little resistance to torture, for one was talking as fast as he could. Between sobs of pain and terror, he was trying to save his life by telling of the machine they tended. He was babbling and pleading for the intruders to leave the controls alone. It was also apparent from the wording of the pleas, that the Aeronites thought the intruders were Tymorean.
Kryslie opened the storage room door a fraction. She saw a Ciriot toss a man aside, and move to the machine. There he manipulated dials and levers with the intent of a vandalising child. She waited no longer to act. Moving into full view, she shot five times in rapid succession and the five remaining Ciriot fell silent and still.
The four Aeronite scientists stayed cowering on the floor, recognising her as a Tymorean Royal and expecting more torture.
“Get up!” Kryslie ordered. “All of you. I want you to turn this machine off.”
The bravest of the terrified men said, “We can’t. Your soldiers started the program. It can’t be stopped.”
“Those creatures were not Tymorean, but Ciriot,” Kryslie told them. “And it is ridiculous that you cannot stop this machine. What if I destroyed it?” She aimed the disintegrator at the machine to give them the idea, and had all four men gabbling at her, trying to warn her against it.
The machine was terrain reformer and while she listened to the mingled speeches of the terrified men, information about how the machine worked came into her mind. It used the planet’s natural energy field to spread the programmed changes.
“Quiet!” Kryslie ordered. Her loud voice startled the men into silence. “Tell me what area it was programmed to change and why the area around here is lifeless.”
When all four tried to explain at once, Kryslie insisted, “One of you!”
The explanation also explained why the men were still terrified of her. It had been set to transform the third continent only – to make it like Aerdna in climate and flora. The settings had been painstakingly balanced, using small-scale experiments in other places to set the parameters. The Ciriot had wilfully played with the dials and touch pad, and then started the bastardised program.
“Check what it is now set for,” Kryslie asked in a modified voice. The men skittered to obey her, and each turned pasty white and began to sweat. None of them wanted to speak.
“That bad,” Kryslie spoke in an unthreatening voice, and put the disintegrator away. “And you cannot adjust it?”
“No, Sir…um…Mam…um…”
“If you tried, what might happen?”
“Better to let it run and then try again,” the bravest of the men gulped.
“Is it still set for just this continent?” She received a cautious nod.
“Is part of this process the use of Burnfire on the land?” Kryslie asked.
Another set of nods, but the men were fearfully watching the walls of the dome flex as if they were in the path of a violent wind. Kryslie could sense that they were.
“Pack your stuff. You have five minutes, not a second longer. You cannot stay here.”
“We…we aren’t prisoners? You aren’t going to kill us?” the brave man ventured.
“No.” Kryslie said tersely. “If your planet, Aerdna, is going to survive, it will need its scientists. I’ll take you back to your baseship. You would have done better to use your brains to find ways to help your planet, but obviously your Warlords don’t appreciate science except as a weapon.”
She sensed resentful agreement. “Hurry!” she reminded them.
The men had the sense to don protective suits and right on the specified time they followed Kryslie out of the dome. Things had changed. The blackened landscape was now overlaid with a faint energy glow. The air was no longer still, as wind howled into the vortex where energy was being consumed. The air carried the gritty black dust.
On the walk back to the ship, Kryslie used her personal energies to walk against the strong wind, and the scientists followed closely in her wake, the leading one gripping the back of her coveralls and the others holding on to each other. They did not sense the conflicting energies, as she did. They felt the wind, she felt the warping of the natural aura as it resisted the shape the machine wanted to force on it. The ambient energy was vile, and she would not draw on it.
As they drew closer to the ship, they found themselves in its lee. The wind was less strong for it was streaming past the ship.
Inside the ship, everyone sighed with relief from the effort of walking there.
“Find a seat, strap down,” Kryslie ordered. She went first to the hold where the prisoners were, and systematically freed the rest of them. The dead, she gently lifted to one side. The injured, she helped to a seat around the hold.
“Do your best to hold on,” she told all who were conscious. She did not have any energy to spare, or the time, to try healing the injured.
“Help them I will,” one of the misshapen mutants spoke up. “Know of you, I do. Hold promise, I do.”
“Thank you,” Kryslie said, sincerely. She smiled at him, and returned to the main control chair, left empty by the latest arrivals. They had scuttled to obey her, and still looked afraid of her.
Kryslie didn’t care if they were; she just needed them to obey her.
“Can you fly this?” one of the scientists dared to ask her.
“Can you?” she countered, and would have welcomed a positive answer.
She heard, but ignored the low denial. Her mind was studying the controls and comparing them to the myriad of images that she was ‘remembering’ from the Governors’ memories.
Xyron knew of aircraft from thousands of worlds, and finally one image matched what she needed to deal with. The other images were forgotten, and only the information about the one ship stayed in her mind.
The ship belonged on some obscure planet way out on the rim of settled space. The Ciriot must have stolen it from there.
Tyring not to look as if this was the first time she had tried to fly an aircraft, Kryslie ran her fingers over the controls and the engines started. As she recalled each step of the ships operation, more interior systems came to life – the nav computer, the internal pressurisation, the air recycling and the comm. system.
Then, as the wind continued to press on the ship, Kryslie activated the blast off switch and quickly grabbed the steering controls.
When the Ciriot had landed the ship this time, they had brought it to rest on its side, so when the propulsion system was activated, the ship was propelled along the ground, until Kryslie heaved on a lever, brought the nose up a little, and they lifted into the air. Once she was at a safe height, she used one hand to manipulate the navigation panel. It gave her enough information so that she could head in the general direction of the main continent.
Out of the forward view window, Kryslie’s adjusted eyes watched the roiling energy fields as they flew over the barren landscape. Glancing from the view, back to the controls, she tried to locate the cloaking field generator. But Xyron didn’t know of it and nothing looked ‘tacked on’.
She didn’t verbalise her thoughts. They didn’t need to be reminded that this ship was likely to become the target of three races of beings. Unless she could cloak it or communicate with the Tymoreans.
Once they were underway and Kryslie was comfortable handling the aircraft, she asked the scientists if they knew where the nearest Aeronite base was. The four men exchanged glances; none of them wanted to be the one to reveal such a secret.
“It really doesn’t bother me,” Kryslie told them when it became obvious they wouldn’t talk. “I would be quite happy to land anywhere and let you walk there. On the other hand, I could continue to the palaces and let you be taken prisoner. You can think about it until we cross onto the main continent.”
She pretended not to hear the four talking softly. Finally, one volunteered coordinates.
“That isn’t Kellex’s new camp is it?” she asked the men. A glance back at them, told her she had unsettled them. The man who had spoken shook his head.
“Probably just as well,” Kryslie spoke aloud, but more to herself. “I have a major score to settle with him.”
And when she had taken Jordan and Vila back, she had used their mental reference, not coordinates.
She adjusted the crafts heading to arrive near the indicated area and kept her concentration on flying.
Occasionally, she tried to reach her brother’s mind. Something was preventing her. Perhaps it was the distance, or maybe it was because she was in the alien craft. She hoped that he and Llaimos were safe and her father too.
After a time, one of the scientists moved to the co-pilot’s seat and began playing with the computer devices. He brought up a kind of radar and the comm. system on which they only heard the clicking speech of the Ciriot. Kryslie wished she could understand it.
“What frequency are they using,” Kryslie asked him. She received in reply a technical explanation that began with, “It isn’t exactly a frequency…”
After a few minutes of it, she cut him off with, “Can you use it to tell your Warlords not to fire on us?”
The man nodded, fiddled, and spoke into a microphone. Kryslie heard the reply, but didn’t trust the promise of safe passage any further than when she dropped the Aeronites off. Still, the radar would warn her if she was going to have company and in the meantime, she would try to find shield and cloaking controls.
The Aeronites exited the craft with undisguised relief. They half expected her to change her mind and kill them after all. She waited until they were far enough a way to blast off again, and did so. She hoped her other passengers were braced for it. This time, she headed for Dira, knowing deep within her that she needed to be there, and wanting to leave the current area as fast as she could.
Her luck ran out half an hour later, when a flight of aircraft appeared on the radar screen, heading directly for her. Using the ship’s internal comm., she warned her remaining passengers that she was going to have to land and it might be rough.
Now her mind was full of techniques for outsmarting planes that were after her. She guessed the memories came from Reslic’s experiences. She went lower and skimmed the ground, finding a valley between hills and slowing to fly into it. As soon as she landed, she gave the order to leave the ship and run.
Not all the passengers were in a state to run. Some of the common born Tymoreans could hardly walk. Without being asked, the mutant passengers simply lifted these by making a seat between two of them, and the three ‘ran’ together.
Kryslie could not waste worry on those who were already dead. It was war, and proper burial rites were a luxury. She followed the last of her passengers to the scant cover of a grove of trees that was perched on the side of one of the hills. Once there, she directed the passengers to stay still.
The wind was beginning to rise there, and Kryslie was aware of the energies beginning to roil. They had barely outrun the edge of the terrain-reforming program, and it had not stopped at the edge of the third continent.
The pursuing jet fighters flew over. Minutes later, she heard a smaller number returning, doing a strafing run along the valley. The sound of the high-powered projectiles hitting the hull was louder than the engine noise, but the ship did not explode.
For the next run, two of the aircraft flew lower and dropped explosives along the valley. The ground rocked and the ship exploded.
Only when she could no longer hear the jet engines, did Kryslie allow anyone to leave cover. She gathered them together.
“The nearest town is twenty miles away. That is where we will go. From there, I can get you to a city.”
The twelve commoners looked relieved. The misshapen faces of the fifteen mutants might have been inscrutable. The one who had offered to tend the injured, took on a role as leader and stated, “City have us not. With you, go us. Fight with you, we promised. Strong we are.”
Kryslie studied them, felt their determination and accepted the offer. “Come then. To the village first.”