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CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

As my father used to say, The best way to get inside a secure facility is to be invited. Unfortunately, such invitations are likely to involve guns.

The trick to keeping the people behind those guns from getting suspicious was to make it look like you’d succumbed to their superior skill and vigilance instead of deliberately and purposefully walking into their open arms.

In this case that should be easy. Without the fancy EarthGuard camo suit I should be quickly tagged by whoever was monitoring the city from the Tower’s Upper Rooms.

Sure enough, I’d been darting between buildings and crawling behind weed clumps for barely fifteen minutes when I eased my eyes around a corner to find myself face-to-face with a trio of tenshes standing in a line pointed straight at me. I quickly backed up, as if trying to avoid them, only to be faced by five others who’d come up behind me and were standing in the same spear-like formation. I thought about making a break for it and forcing the Ammei to chase me down, decided it would just mean getting captured tired, and lowered myself onto a patch of clear ground to wait.

Up to now most of the tenshes I’d seen had been hanging around with various Ammei. I thus naturally expected that the guards handling these particular groups were close enough to be on top of me in a minute or two.

But they weren’t. I ended up sitting for nearly six minutes, staring at the two sets of silent tenshes, before three Ammei finally came into sight around the building’s corners, lightning guns pointed at me exactly like the two lines of tenshes. “Hello,” I said, making sure my empty hands were visible as I got to my feet. “I understand you’re looking for me. I don’t suppose any of you understands English?”

There was no answer. One of the Ammei twitched his weapon in the direction of the Tower. “Understood,” I said, turning that direction. “Nice day for a stroll, anyway.”

We picked our way through the ruins to the nearest subway ramp, the tenshes ringing us in a loose escort pattern. The Ammei herded me down the ramp, where three more guards and the usual four-car train were waiting. Either I’d been under observation well before the tenshes showed up, or else First of Three was pulling out all the stops to bring me back to the fold. We all climbed aboard the train and headed inward.

The eight tenshes, their task apparently finished, stayed behind on the surface.

We reached the end of the line and headed back up to ground level. My guards steered me toward the nearest corner of the Tower, where we climbed the short ramp to the door, passed between the two guards on duty there, and once again I stepped inside Imistio Tower.

Or Imistiu Tower, as Selene’s Kadolian called it. Needle Tower.

At least now I had an inkling of why the Ammei had named their home that.

Third of Three and Rozhuhu were waiting for us in a short, arched corridor made of intricately fitted stone. “The First of Three is angry with you,” Rozhuhu said, the last word all but lost in the boom as the doors were slammed shut behind me. “Selene of the Kadolians has asked for your advice.”

Third bit out something. “The Third of Three demands to know where you were hiding.”

“You have a whole circle of Gemini portals out there,” I said. “Where do you think I went?”

There was a slight pause, and I had the unpleasant sense that that might have been the wrong answer. Maybe some of the portals led to places I wasn’t supposed to know about, let alone visit. “The Third of Three demands to know where you were hiding,” Rozhuhu repeated.

“How about we make a trade?” I offered. “He tells me why Selene of the Kadolians and Fearth of the Patth are his prisoners, and I’ll tell him where I went.”

For another long moment Rozhuhu just stared at me. Then, he turned and spoke to Third. Third replied, and the discussion was on.

I looked at the guards now gathered around me. The wording of my offer had been about eighty percent bluff—Rozhuhu and Third would hardly admit out loud that Selene and Fearth were prisoners. But whether it was that phrasing or the offer itself, it was apparently not a situation they’d anticipated.

From somewhere came a melodic four-note riff. The two Ammei broke off their conversation and Third began talking quietly, apparently to himself. There was a pause, more conversation, and then Third gestured to Rozhuhu. “Come, Roarke of the humans,” Rozhuhu said, gesturing my guards to move in closer. “The First of Three wishes you to witness the destruction.”

I felt my stomach tighten. “Destruction?” I asked carefully.

“The destruction,” Rozhuhu said, and there was something in his tone that sent a fresh shiver up my back, “that you have brought upon yourself.”

* * *

Way back when Selene and I first arrived on Nexus Six—only a couple of days ago, but it felt like at least a month—Huginn and I had zeroed in on Imistio Tower’s mysterious Upper Rooms as a definite place of interest. He’d followed up that conversation by sneaking into them on his own that first night, bringing back a limited but intriguing report.

Now, I was getting the grand tour.

The place was just as Huginn had described: a single large room divided in quarters by chest-high partitions that allowed for some privacy when seated or lying down while still offering an unrestricted view through the large windows while standing. The partitions stopped a meter or so from the walls, leaving an open outer ring to allow occupants to move from one section to another. From my angle as I was ushered in I could see a bit into the two sleeping rooms—taking up the north and south cubicles, as Huginn had said—and into the food prep area in the western section. Contrary to Huginn’s description, though, the latter now boasted a small set of serving implements, as well as a group of boxes and tubes that looked like food and drink containers.

I’d guessed earlier that after Selene and I popped into town the Ammei would begin running full-day city surveillance. Apparently, I’d also been right about the Upper Rooms being the vantage spot they would choose for that activity.

Second of Three, Fourth of Three, and four more Ammei were waiting silently at the eastern side of the room. Second and Fourth were wearing their usual hats, while the other four had much smaller but equally ornate headwear that suggested they were of higher status than Rozhuhu or the guards. They were standing at the four compass points of the room, gazing out at the city through the windows.

“You have tried to bring destruction to Nexus Six,” Fourth said without preamble as Rozhuhu led me to him around the outer ring.

“Have I?” I countered. “Because I urge Selene of the Kadolians to refuse the serum until it has been properly tested?”

Second said something. “How do you know about the serum and the reticence of Selene of the Kadolians?” Fourth asked.

I felt a flicker of chagrin. I’d forgotten I wasn’t supposed to have been in on that conversation.

Still, as my father used to say, Knowing something you shouldn’t just means you heard it somewhere else. “I am adviser and bodyguard to Selene of the Kadolians,” I said as loftily as I could manage. “Being aware of dangers to her life and well-being is part of that job.”

The Amme at the south-facing window said something. “We will return to this question at another time,” Fourth said, gesturing me in that direction. “Come now and witness what you have done.”

I felt my heart pounding as I again walked around the perimeter of the room to the indicated window. If they’d found Ixil and his outriders…

But whatever drama was about to happen, the stage didn’t seem to be set. The inner section of occupied buildings, the portal ring, the devastation beyond—it all looked like every other time I’d seen it. I looked sideways at the Amme I was standing beside, and saw for the first time that his compact hat had a set of bulky flip-down lenses or goggles that he was peering through. “I need one of these,” I said, turning to Rozhuhu and pointing at the hat and goggles.

“You have no status among the Ammei.”

“No, but I doubt I’ll be able to see the destruction you brought me here to witness without them,” I pointed out.

He made an impatient sounding noise and gave a short command. The Amme at the western window came over to me, pulled the goggles from his hat, and handed them over. I nodded my thanks, held them over my eyes, and looked back out my window.

I’d expected the goggles to be telescopic, infrared, radar-scan, or some combination. But at first glance they didn’t seem to be any of those, or to be anything else, for that matter. It was only as my eyes adjusted to the view that I saw that the image was somehow clearer and brighter than it had been without them. It wasn’t anything specific I could put my finger on, but I could definitely see better than before.

Something in the ruined section near the portal ring caught my eye. I focused on it, noting that the goggles seemed to respond to my attention with an additional layer of enhancement…

I stiffened. Something was moving out there. Something I couldn’t really see clearly, yet paradoxically I could tell was human-sized, was moving inward toward the portals and the Tower.

A chill ran up my back. According to every official document I’d seen or heard of, the active camo suits Kinneman had given Ixil and me were the very best stealth gear EarthGuard had available. But for years there’d been dark rumors of something better, a ghost suit that came close to an actual cloak of invisibility. For those same years EarthGuard had pooh-poohed all such stories while at the same time pestering the Commonwealth government for the additional research money they claimed they needed in order to create such a thing.

Now, as I gazed across the ruined city, I knew that the denials and the funding requests had both been blinds. EarthGuard had ghost suits, all right. And whatever strings Kinneman had had to pull, whatever deals or trades he’d had to make, he’d found enough of them to equip his SOLA assault team.

And it was going to work, I saw with a sinking heart. Even with the Ammei enhancement goggles, even knowing what was out there, I could barely see the soldier moving through the debris. The Ammei were sitting ducks—

“There,” Rozhuhu said. “Watch there.”

I looked where he was pointing. A dozen meters to the left of the one I’d been looking at was another ghost, similarly making his way toward the Tower. I didn’t know how many troops Kinneman had brought, but with the ghost suits and the heavy weapons I’d seen in Alpha, they were setting up for an absolute slaughter—

Without warning a brilliant flash blazed across my vision. Reflexively, I jerked back, blinking away the purple afterimage.

To find the invisible SOLA soldier I’d just been looking at sprawled motionless on the ground. He was fully visible now, the ghost suit and the man himself destroyed by the lightning-gun blast.

I was still taking in that horrible sight when another flash lit up the ground. I shifted my gaze in that direction in time to see another soldier collapse, what was left of his ghost suit trailing smoke.

“See the destruction you have brought,” Rozhuhu said. “Watch them, Roarke of the humans. Watch them all die.”

“Stop it,” I bit out. “You’ve proved your point. Whatever you want from me, I’ll do it. Just let them withdraw.”

“What the First of Three wants from you is to learn your place,” Rozhuhu said. “What he wants of your warriors is their deaths. Watch and learn.”

I clenched my teeth, suppressing the curse I wanted to spit at him. I didn’t like Kinneman’s attitude and tactics, but I had no quarrel with the men and women under his command. To stand by helplessly and watch them be slaughtered one by one…

I swallowed hard as another flash lit up the landscape, this one slicing clean through one of the abandoned houses on its way to demolishing its target. I couldn’t save them. Rozhuhu had made that very clear.

But if I couldn’t save their lives, maybe I could at least figure out how it was being done.

Because while it was obvious that the spotters up here could see through the ghost filters, what was not obvious was how they were communicating that information to the gunners below.

Other flashes were appearing now as the EarthGuard soldiers realized their approach had been compromised and were shifting into counterattack mode. Resolutely, I lowered my eyes away from the carnage and over to the Ammei end of the shooting gallery. Midway between the Tower and the first ring of houses were a loose formation of Ammei guards, four of them within my field of view, lightning guns raised and ready. As I watched, one of them adjusted his aim a few degrees and fired, his shot again cutting through an outer building to take out one of the invaders.

How the hell did he know where to shoot?

They weren’t using radio. Standard EarthGuard procedure when launching an attack was to blanket the entire radio spectrum with static. No one up here was talking, which ruled out loudspeakers or individual sonic focusers. No one was pointing, which similarly eliminated the oldest and most straightforward approach to targeting. None of them were wearing goggles like mine, and anyway their targets were often out of their line of sight before they fired.

Telepathy? But if the Ammei were telepathic, why did they bother with language among themselves? I looked down at one of the other guards, this one walking sideways toward what I assumed was a better firing position. I studied him, looking for something—anything—that might give me a clue as to how they were pulling this off.

Another, more subtle movement caught my eye. Five tenshes, who’d been standing somewhere on that side of the guard, were also in motion, bounding away from the Tower and around one of the bushes in the wide lawn. As the guard came to a halt, the animals settled themselves into the same arrow-straight line I’d seen an hour ago out in the city while waiting to be captured. The guard stopped behind the rearmost tensh, lined up his weapon along their line, and fired.

And at the far end of the blast, yet another ghost-suited soldier fell dead.

I looked sideways at the Amme with the fancy goggles standing next to me. Now that I was watching for it, I saw his eyes shifting from the approaching SOLA soldiers to the Ammei shooters and back again.

No. Not to the shooters. He was looking at the tenshes.

I’d been right about the telepathy. Only it wasn’t between the Ammei.

Something cold and hard settled into the pit of my stomach. I’d speculated that the tenshes might be like Ixil’s outriders, able to download orders and upload memories when they were linked into their master’s nervous system. But I’d never been able to make that theory fit into the pattern of our interactions with both the animals and the Ammei themselves.

It had never fit because I’d been wrong. The Amme/tensh interaction was indeed telepathic, but only in one direction. The Ammei could give the animals mental commands and the animals obeyed.

And with that, the last piece of the puzzle that was Nexus Six fell into place.

I still didn’t know First of Three’s whole plan. But at least now I knew the players.



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