THE REFORGED TRILOGY: BOOK 3 — HAMMER OF TIME
Chapter 4: Silenced Songs
“Don’t go looking for stuff you don’t want to find.”
– Anandrou “Gripper” (233 PA)
Logan and Gripper hired a ride into Hanjirrah. It was a waste of time and money to drive to the city just for mainstream access, but necessary. On most planets, the worldwide computer network was accessible from orbit, but Mir didn’t bother investing precious cenmarks in extending the mainstream.
Modern Mirran culture was still centered on family and tribal bonds, Logan noted as they passed through the huge, painted city wall, and tended to focus solely on local problems and ties. Mir spent more into global defense than any world but Axis, the CWA capital. There was a military network accessible from anywhere on Mir, but without his bounty hunter’s license, Logan couldn’t use it. So that meant going into Hanjirrah.
Domes and arches in Mirran browns, greens and blues flickered past outside the taxi windows. It was another hovering van, since they were the only rental vehicles large enough to carry Gripper. The lanky young alien sat as far away from Logan as he could… which wasn’t far. Even in the large taxivan, Gripper was just too big to make much space. He checked his computer. The device looked tiny in his rough brown paws.
“I’ve got a signal,” he said in a shaking voice.
“Good.”
Logan stopped the taxi driver and paid with a handful of white plastic cenmark chips. The bald Mirran’s striped forehead furrowed as he counted the meager tip, but he didn’t argue. The locks all snapped shut behind Gripper and Logan, then the driver swerved hastily back into the street, cutting off a lumbering Starwind hauler and a bus with flashing green lights. No one honked or shouted at each other.
It had been a mistake to come to Mir, Logan thought, not for the first time that day. He had hoped that the Mirran’s natural caution would work in their favor, but…
There was no point in dwelling on past mistakes. Vorus had reminded Logan painfully of that particular lesson back on Prianus. All he could do now was move forward. Logan led Gripper toward the station the bus had just left. There was a sandwich shop wedged between a luggage store and an Ixthian redprinter. Gripper perched precariously on a stool at one of the patio tables.
Logan took a seat beside Gripper and waited while the Arboran opened up his folding displays. The view from the shop was uninspiring. The road rose up four tiers high, cars and trucks and street trains racing by on null-fields. Logan could see across the road only in splintered fragments between one vehicle and the next. There was a starport depot, the sort of large warehouse that catered to starships, supplying ducting and fuel, food and water and spools of wire and tape — the things that held ships and their crews together.
The sort of crew Logan now found himself a part of. It had been only six years since Hallax — one of Gavriel’s red-robed Emberguard — ran Logan Centra through, killing a young cop and creating a bounty hunter in his stead. Six years since Logan had worked with a partner, been a part of the Prian police force. Since he left Jess, the woman he had every intention of marrying.
With the exception of Logan’s bounty marks — all of which he quickly turned over to the Alliance military or local police — he had been more or less alone for six years. But now everything was so different… Logan raked his fingers through his hair, still damp from the shower. A drop of water tickled down the back of his neck.
“I’m all set up. So… what exactly am I supposed to look for?” Gripper asked.
“Anything strange in local or Alliance news,” Logan answered. “Probably violent. Xartasia means to use those Devourers for something and I don’t think it’s planting a garden. We only need to look back nine weeks.”
“Nine weeks? How come?”
“That’s how long ago Gavriel summoned the Devourers.”
“Oh,” Gripper said unhappily. “Right.”
The Arboran set to work using the parameters Logan had given him, typing delicately with his huge claws and muttering to himself. Gripper shook the computer as his mainstream link froze.
“Um, this is going to take a while. That’s a lot of data,” he said. “There’s no search term for strange. Sorry.”
Gripper delivered his apology with a cringe, like he was afraid of being shot for the delay. Logan’s right hand crept down to the Talon-9 on his hip. Without his license, there were many places he could no longer legally carry the weapon. Logan’s jaw clenched so hard that his teeth throbbed.
“Fine,” he said in a tight voice. “Just get the information. Download half of it to a datadex so I can look through it, too.”
Gripper cringed again, failing to understand Logan’s anger. He fumbled a datadex — nearly as claw-scarred as his computer — from a huge, oil-stained pocket and began sending information to it. A tiny indicator light flashed green as the datadex received Gripper’s data.
A waitress in a very short skirt that showed off a great deal of slim, striped leg veered away from their table when she saw Logan and Gripper. Fine. Logan didn’t want anything. He drummed impatient illonium fingertips on the table. The thick gray metal clanked loudly.
The Mirrans built their walls to keep danger out, but trapped other, more subtle dangers inside. Mir was a coreworld. Last night, outside Maeve’s window on the Blue Phoenix, Logan had seen a sky as full of stars as sand on a beach. On Axis, they shone brilliantly even in the middle of the day, filling the heavens from horizon to horizon with twinkling silver points. But Hanjirrah’s morning sky was a uniform and flat yellowish green. Mirran city walls trapped pollutants inside, making the air thick and fetid. It seemed to cling to his skin and made Logan want another shower. Mir was far warmer than his native Prianus, and more stable, less prone to icy storms and tectonic upheaval. But Logan suddenly missed the mountains and black skies of his homeworld with an aching intensity.
Logan wondered if this was how Maeve felt. If Xartasia did, too.
The Mirran waitress was whispering nervously to her manager, a Lyran with patchwork black and white fur. His yellow eyes and then muzzle turned toward Logan. The short wolfin man nodded to his waitress and then stalked across the patio, ears lying flat against his skull. Logan stood up as the Lyran approached, cybernetic hand clenched.
“Is there a problem here?” he asked.
“I hope not,” said the manager. “But your friend needs to leave.”
“Gripper?” Logan asked.
He was used to being the problem and Logan looked over at the Arboran, who finally lifted his huge nose up out of his work.
“Why?” Logan asked.
“He’s frightening my customers,” said the Lyran. “I don’t know what he is and I don’t care, but I want him gone.”
“Oh,” Gripper said. His tone was that of a child all too accustomed to being reprimanded for someone else’s petty crimes. “Yeah, sure. Just let me get my stuff–”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Logan interrupted. “You haven’t done anything wrong, Gripper. You don’t have to go anywhere.”
The Lyran didn’t actually snarl, but his furry chops peeled back from curved white fangs. The Lyrans were not prey animals and never had been. The manager’s eyes went to Logan’s cybernetic left hand and narrowed.
“Look, you mutts,” he growled low in his throat, “I want you out of my shop right now. You haven’t even ordered, so just leave without a fuss.”
“Come on, Coldhand,” Gripper said. “Let’s just go.”
Logan pulled out his wallet and threw one of his few remaining red hundred-cenmark chips down on the tabletop. “Bring us something to eat. No meat for Gripper.”
“Mister, I think…” But the Lyran didn’t finish his objection. He scooped up the money and hurried away. Gripper exhaled loudly as the manager left.
“That was a lot of money,” he said. “I… I could have just gone, you know.”
“Why? He was being a xenophobic idiot. What did you find?”
“I’m not really sure,” Gripper said.
He handed over the datadex. The light on the bottom had gone from green to blue, indicating that the memory was full.
“There’s been loads of news over the past few weeks,” Gripper said. “I couldn’t even narrow it down by planet.”
Logan nodded and then began thumbing through news stories: unrest and rebellions on Arrideen when the CWA withdrew some funding, a mine collapse on high-gravity Orsin and another police raid on the Sipho underground that left seventeen dead. People died every day throughout the Alliance. Three weeks ago, there had been an outbreak of rughalla on Andris Gia with twenty-nine dead. A high-speed null-inertia commuter train had derailed on Varnum. Eighty-three dead.
The shop’s Lyran manager returned with a pair of large sandwiches and two tall glasses of lemonade. Gripper finished his food in three huge mouthfuls and downed the lemonade with a single swallow. Logan pushed his glass across the table and Gripper drank it gratefully. The Lyran store manager hastily brought more.
Mir’s thick air was heavy inside Logan’s lungs and sweat dripped in crooked, itching tracks down the back of his neck. He kept reading. There was an industrial accident on Vii. Fifty-nine dead, more than three hundred injured. Seventeen crates of experimental fuel rods stolen from the nearby planet of Vii-Xa, where Starwind Enterprises kept and shipped most of their products.
Logan scanned the Vii-Xa story a second time and frowned.
“Why did you include this one?” he asked, turning the datadex to face Gripper. “No one died or was even injured.”
“Oh. Um,” Gripper said. He looked embarrassed and Logan had to wait for him to go on. “Well, I thought the Devourers might… you know… need stuff. They don’t just eat people, right?”
That was true. Logan wolfed down a few bites of sandwich and returned his attention to the news. Gripper’s idea was a good one. Whatever Xartasia and her Devourers had planned, they probably needed equipment or supplies. It was not much of a lead and actually expanded their search instead of restricting it, but Logan was determined not to fail Maeve again.
Reports of an unknown attack on one of Harukin’s deep-space observatories. Logan scanned the headline again and brought up the story. Four weeks ago, the Sanford-Belson Observation Platform had gone silent. When authorities went to investigate, they found only a few pieces of debris. Of the rest of the satellite and its two hundred personnel, there was no sign.
Logan reread the account. It didn’t contain very many details, but there was a list of related stories at the bottom. Seven of them. Logan had Gripper pull each of them down from the mainstream. All seven were about missing space stations or starships located in deep space. There had been no recorded attacks, only sudden and absolute silence from their staff. In each case, there were few — if any — remains left behind to investigate.
“Sounds like the Devourers’ style,” Gripper said. “No leftovers. Do you think it’s them?”
“There aren’t many who could make entire space stations disappear,” Logan agreed. “The ships, maybe, but the Harukin and Koji stations weren’t small installations.”
Demolishing them was within the Devourers’ power. Logan remembered the brutal efficiency with which they brought down his well-armed and armored Raptor. And he had been prepared. Space stations taken by surprise didn’t stand any chance at all against the Devourers’ superior weaponry and ruthless aggression.
“What do we do now?” Gripper asked. “Do you know where to go yet?”
“No, not yet,” Logan answered. “I usually know more about my mark than this, about their crimes and goals.”
“But Xartasia was a Nihilist,” Gripper protested. “You know all about them!”
“Xartasia was never really a Nihilist. She used Gavriel and his people to get what she wanted. Gavriel never truly knew her, and neither do we.”
Logan pushed his plate away and kept reading. Gripper gulped hard and did the same.
Xartasia sat on her black throne, white skirts spread around her like the petals of a flower. The points of her glass crown glittered with brilliant rainbows under the lights. Dhozo stood behind her, arms crossed over his huge chest. His nanite armor swirled and billowed like smoke, deceptively delicate as the tiny machines gathered and transmitted a constant stream of information.
A group of Arcadians knelt at the foot of the dais. The knight in front of them wore shining glass armor. Calathan had long, braided blond hair and dark, intelligent blue eyes, and reminded Xartasia just enough of her beloved Anthem to make her rather fond of him.
Calathan’s otherwise handsome face was marred by angry red scars left by a raging Lyran. The coreworlder was long dead, but the mark of his claws remained. And the anger of that attack drove Calathan still. He had been a Nihilist, one of Gavriel’s oldest converts from the cult’s early days on Prianus. Even now, Calathan wore black and red scarves wrapped beneath the glass armor that Xartasia had given him.
“We have the Devourers now, Your Majesty,” Calathan said. “Yet we have passed by a dozen Alliance planets, attacking only the outlying fringes! You have at your wingtips the very definition of destruction, my queen. Why do you use it with such restraint?”
The scarred knight’s tone was respectful, though there was a current of true need beneath. Xartasia looked up at Dhozo, but the Devourer’s face was hidden behind his swarming black armor. Still, she knew that the hulking monster felt much the same as Calathan. Maybe more… It was only by Xartasia’s orders that the Devourers didn’t begin their feast with the growing number of Arcadians who followed her.
“I am not Gavriel,” Xartasia said. “Our design is far greater than simple destruction. Restrain yourself, Sir Calathan.”
The knight in black conferred quietly with the other Arcadians. When he turned back to Xartasia, his eyes were fever-bright. “But why, Your Majesty? What can there be for us anymore? Is death not all that remains?”
“Your glass-shelled morsel has a point, little queen,” Dhozo said. His voice rasped unpleasantly. “We can consume any of these planets in a matter of days.”
Xartasia rose gracefully to her feet and spread her long white wings.
“No,” she told Calathan and Dhozo both. “What we have lost, we will yet regain. You want the secrets that your people have lost, Dhozo, the secrets of magic and the Waygates. And we shall have the White Kingdom, our home and heart, once again.”
There was a rising scale of surprise from the knights. Calathan’s scarred face lit up with almost childish delight.
“The White Kingdom, my queen?” he asked. “We will return?”
“When our work is finished,” Xartasia said. “When your work is finished, Sir Calathan.”
He swept one trembling wing across his chest. ““Yes, Your Highness. What are your orders?”
“Well, it sure looks like it could be them,” Duaal agreed. He slid the datadex back across the table to Logan with a thought, without touching it. “But it’s still not actual proof. I doubt we can take it to the Alliance.”
“Unless we can figure out where they are going next,” Maeve said. She sat beside Logan — distractingly close — and smelled good. “Perhaps we can warn their next target and convince the CWAAF to intervene.”
“We can’t convince CWAAF to do anything,” Logan said.
Gripper nodded. “We’ve been trying since we got back to Tynerion two months ago. We need proof.”
“But if we can get to Xartasia’s next target before her, we may be able to warn the local law enforcement,” Logan said. He found himself unexpectedly nervous, hoping that Maeve would approve of the admittedly tenuous plan.
“Then, if we’re at all lucky — which I wouldn’t bet on — we’ll have some witnesses that we can take to CWAAF,” Duaal said. “Right?”
Logan nodded. “Yes. That’s the plan. If we can figure out the Devourers’ next hit.”
“That’s kind of where the plan falls apart,” Gripper admitted. “We don’t know where they’re going.”
“We might be able to help with that,” Xia said from the door.
She walked into the mess with Panna close on her heels. Xia sat, but Panna bit her lip and paced. Maeve looked at the girl with concern plain on her face. Was there something wrong with the Arcadians on Mir?
“What happened?” Maeve asked.
“We found some Arcadians just outside Hanjirrah,” Xia said. “They can’t afford to live inside the wall, of course. They’re cheap labor on the roads and electrical lines that run between the cities.”
“But they left!” Panna interrupted breathlessly. “Not all, but a lot of them.”
“Left?” Duaal asked, his dark brows furrowed. “To go where?”
“They’re going to join the queen of the White Kingdom, apparently,” Panna said. “She’s offered a home and a purpose to all Arcadians who will join her. A lot of them don’t believe it, but enough do that almost half of the Arcadians in Hanjirrah are gone!”
Maeve recoiled as though physically struck by the news.
“Xartasia?” she gasped. “She…? I would never deny our people a home, but…”
“How did they intend to reach Xartasia?” Logan asked. “They don’t have ships or colour, so the Arcadians must have some other plan. Is she on Mir?”
“I don’t think so. They said that Xartasia arranged a ship,” Xia reported, shaking her head and making her antennae wave. “The pickup was two days ago in Lameaux. Those who went to Lameaux haven’t returned, so the Hanjirrah fairies think that they got away… Or that it was all a trick and now they’re dead.”
“Either way,” Panna finished darkly, “they’re all eagerly awaiting the next chance to flock to the White Queen.”
“The White Queen?” Maeve asked.
“That’s what they’re calling her,” Xia said. “The next pickup is supposed to be on Sunjarrah. I’m not sure when… Most of the Arcadians can’t afford passage off Mir, so they don’t really care when the Sunjarrah pickup is supposed to happen.”
“Sunjarrah?” Logan asked. “That’s a Mirran colony. It’s not far from here, but Sunjarrah isn’t one of the planets where the Arcadians appeared a hundred years ago. Not many will have emigrated. Xartasia won’t need to stop for long to collect them.”
“What about the ship and deep space station attacks?” Gripper asked. He brought up the news stories they had found that morning on his computer. “Where does that fit in?”
“I don’t know,” Logan answered. “But if we can get to Sunjarrah and catch Xartasia in the act — whatever it is — we can find out.”
“Now hold on just a minute,” Duaal said. He was on his feet and frowning. “I want to stop that bitch and her big freaky friends, but if we do catch up to them, then what? Your plan to help Xartasia’s next targets and then use them as witnesses is great and all, but first we have to be able to help. How? The Blue Phoenix is a cargo ship, Logan. We’re unarmed and not even that fast.”
“I’m not sure yet,” Logan admitted. “But what else can we do?”
He looked at Maeve. She sat unmoving in her seat, her silver eyes still wide in shock. Duaal put his hands on his hips and sighed.
“You’re right,” he said. “I hate it, but I guess we better get up into the black. Sunjarrah’s not far, but Xartasia’s got a head start on us. Everyone buckle the hells up and get ready to fly.”
