The Golden Queen

Chapter 14

Everynne led the others through the gates on the way to Dronon. After making love to Gallen last night, it seemed that everything was ruined. Both Veriasse and Maggie knew of the tryst, and somehow it had all turned into a fiasco. Now, as she drove, she thought that perhaps it would all end. Perhaps today she would die, and thus put to death her guilt.

The vibration of the airbike mirrored her shaking. Her nerves were frayed, jangled, and she found that her teeth chattered even though it was warm.

She drove the thousand kilometers through Cyannesse at top speed, hit the gate and roared through Bregnel into the early afternoon. Veriasse cried out in shock when he saw the devastation, and all of them drove through the place in horror.

In the daylight, everything was gray and foul. Blackened human bones rotted in the streets, and dronon war cities squatted all across the countryside like dead beetles. Everynne counted twenty of them in the distance.

The air was so foul, that Gallen stopped beside a bubbling lake, got a pair of oxygen exchangers from his pack. He gave one to Everynne.

Veriasse gazed out over the countryside. His eyes were glazed with tears. “Look at all the hive cities. The dronon were building a vast military presence here.”

“It looks as if the people of Bregnel decided to wipe them out at any cost,” Everynne said.

Veriasse shook his head sadly. “I feared this was coming. The battle to free Bregnel was not going well. They could not have loosed the Terror more than two or three days ago. If they had only waited, perhaps this could have been avoided.”

“Let’s go,” Everynne said. “Let’s get to Dronon today.” She gunned her thrusters, sped away.

Everynne let her mantle switch through open radio frequencies, trying to catch a clue as to what had happened. She locked onto only one dim channel, far away, probably a transmission beamed from satellite. It broadcast the warning, “Resistance fighters have loosed a Terror. Please take appropriate measures.”

The only appropriate measures were to take flight and leave the planet.

Everynne looked out over the wastes in horror, thinking, If we go to war against the dronon, this is what it will be like. Terrors loosed upon hundreds of worlds. Fleets of starships bombarding planets with viral weapons.

Veriasse and Gallen drove side by side, sharing an oxygen exchanger from breath to breath. An afternoon wind kicked up, raising black clouds of ash that swept over the plains. Everynne hurried down the road, passed three skeletons that were half standing, half kneeling, fused together as if they had held each other for comfort in that last moment just as the burning wall of fire swept over them and the invasive nanoware burrowed through to their bones.

Everynne knew that as long as she lived, the images she saw on Bregnel would haunt her.

They broke through the next gate to Wechaus, headed down a snowy trail in the mountains. It was early morning here. They had not gone a hundred meters when they rounded a corner, spotted bloody paw prints in the snow, and Gallen shouted, “Halt!” raising a hand.

He idled his airbike, sat looking at the prints: a bear had rolled on the ground, leaving behind marks of blood and mud, compacting the snow except in one small circle. Within that circle was one firm red print with two scratch marks beneath it.

“Bear tracks,” Gallen said. “Orick’s here! He left a message.”

“Orick?” Veriasse asked. “But I didn’t show them how to get to Wechaus.”

“Maggie’s a smart girl,” Gallen said. “And you spent enough time looking at routes on your map that she could figure it out.” He pointed at the paw print. “The marks are a code. Back home, when I guard clients, Orick walks up ahead. No one ever bothers a bear, and he can smell an ambush better than any human. He leaves a print by the roadside if the path ahead is clear, but he leaves scratch marks under it if I’m to take warning. One scratch means something has him spooked. Two scratch marks means he is certain that an ambush waits ahead.”

Everynne studied the bloody marks, worrying. The poor bear had to be terribly wounded. “But who would be lying in wait?” she asked. “The dronon?”

“Perhaps,” Veriasse said. “When last I was here, their numbers were not great on this world, but after our escapades on Fale, they will be more wary. We should move forward cautiously.” He pulled out his incendiary rifle, and Gallen did the same.

They followed Orick’s footprints down to a small valley; among the snow-covered rocks they found evidence of a great battle-scorch marks from incendiary rifles, bloody tracks.

The torn body of a vanquisher lay in the snow, his naked green flesh ripped by teeth, clawed by strong paws. His incendiary rifle lay nearby, yet Everynne searched the ground with growing discomfort. The signs seemed to indicate that more than one vanquisher had fought here. Everynne could make out tracks of at least three of the giants. But if there had been only one casualty, then it seemed that Orick had fought in vain.

Veriasse looked up at Everynne. His face was rigid, fearful, and Gallen seemed equally disturbed.

Veriasse powered down his airbike, leapt off, and surveyed the site. “The dead vanquisher was taken off guard,” he said after a moment. “Orick ripped out his throat, and the vanquisher pulled his incendiary gun and tried to club the bear off, perhaps fired in hopes of attracting attention. Then the vanquisher pulled a knife and drew blood, but by then it was too late.” Everynne looked at the frozen corpse. There was a certain look of surprise in the creature’s dead face, a blankness in his orange eyes. Veriasse took up the vanquisher’s bloody knife, cut open the creature’s belly, then stuck in his hand. “The corpse is still warm in the bowels. He can’t have been killed more than a few hours ago.”

“These tracks are crisp around the edges,” Gallen said, pointing to the tracks in the snow. “They had to be made last night.” He got off his bike, studied the site.

“It looks as if the vanquishers set an ambush here. They waited several hours, then Orick came up behind, killed this one. The other two ran that way!” He pointed north, shook his head. “But I can’t imagine them running from an unarmed bear.”

“They didn’t,” Veriasse said. “Those tracks are too evenly spaced, too confident. They’re not the tracks of someone sprawling headlong in fear. I think those two left before the battle took place. Perhaps they were drawn off, or were redeployed. In any case, they left their companion alone, and Orick attacked the vanquisher from behind.”

Everynne searched the hills above, scanning for more signs of the enemy; thick snow covered the rocks. The vanquishers could not travel through this terrain without leaving a clear trail, but Everynne could see no other footprints-only the one trail coming up from the road, and the vanquisher prints heading north parallel to the highway.

Gallen said, “After the battle, Orick didn’t bother to follow these other two. Instead he left us his message, then headed back down the trail.”

“Of course,” Veriasse said. “Orick knew he couldn’t win a battle against two vanquishers, but felt he had to leave us a warning.”

“What are these vanquishers doing here? How did they anticipate us?” Gallen shook his head in disgust.

Everynne was not surprised to find the vanquishers so alert. She and Veriasse had used their key to travel to over twenty worlds in the past six months, and many of those worlds had been under dronon control. It had seemed only a matter of time until the dronon caught them.

“You know,” Veriasse said as if to himself. “Maggie stole Gallen’s key and experienced a temporal loss on her travels once again. Given this loss, the vanquishers who met us on Tihrglas can only have come from our own future. Which explains why they are obviously searching for me and Everynne. Somehow, the dronon learned our identities. We will have to be doubly cautious.”

Veriasse wiped his bloody hand on the snow, put his gloves back on. “We’ll have to disguise you,” Veriasse said to Everynne. “On Wechaus, the lords do not wear masks, and this will make it difficult. Unpack your blue cloak, and tie the hood up to cover your face.”

Everynne dutifully pulled the clothes out of her pack, did as Veriasse said, even though with the bright sun the morning was not terribly frigid. When she finished, they started the airbikes, followed Orick’s bloody trail down to the highway and headed north.

They had not gone more than a few hundred meters when they saw bear tracks leave the road again to the east; other tracks showed where vanquishers had pursued Orick across the road from the west.

Gallen shouted when he saw the prints and took off following the trail with Everynne close behind. Not fifty meters from the road, they found the site of the last battle, and Everynne cried out in horror.

A heap of blackened bones was all that the incendiary blasts had left of the bear.