Into the Light by Jane Wallace

When the guards were a safe distance away, Cantor relayed a ‘hold steady’ command to the rest of Alpha. He wanted to check the status of the other groups. Switching from Fenne’s view to Zendra’s, he saw that Charlie group were skirting the oval dome of the main production line. It was an odd-looking design for a factory: dismal khaki and made of overlaying hexagonal sections giving the impression of an armoured tortoise. Cantor knew the sections were made of photosimilating ceramic which soaked up the weak rays of the Altan system’s suns. It looked fragile but, in reality, was harder than diamond. They would need every gram of Scorpion to break through it.

The peculiar structure dominated the picture from the camera on top of Lauden’s head. Cantor watched Bravo’s progress as the unit dodged and ducked its way towards its final target. When they reached the pair of low windows which were to be their entry point, Cantor switched off.

’Move on,’ he ordered Alpha by invox. Fenne returned an affirmative and started off, running low as he followed the sweep of the hangars round and up towards North Field. They had planned that Fenne would bear the lightest load and set only two cookies in the top field before heading up to the perimeter fence to prepare a way through for the trike. Dbou and Cantor were to focus on placing the explosives in the southern buildings and at selected points around North Field before meeting with Fenne in a copse close to the breached fence. There they would mobilise the trike and escape to the space port where Odin waited for them.

Dbou waited until Fenne was out of sight and then set off around the western wing, stopping to stick the first of her five cookies to the base of one of the main hangar’s support struts. Each cookie had a blast range of five hundred metres. Three per field would have been enough but Sevin, ever cautious, had doubled up, saying he wanted to be sure they did the job. Cantor had agreed. It made no difference to him how many there were. Flicking the button was the easy part – getting out alive was more complicated.

Cantor tugged at the trike carry-strap which was rubbing against his shoulder, blinking away a sudden giddiness. He felt for the five discs hanging off his belt, reassuring himself they were still there. There was no other reason to delay. He forced himself to peer around the barrels and survey the way ahead. It was good to go.

He ran the twenty metres back to the hangar wall, unclipping a cookie with clumsy fingers and keying in the activation code. He clunked it on to the sheeting to which it clung with a magnetic tenacity. Following in Fenne’s tracks, he traced the eastern shoulder of the main hangar around then up, heading for North Field. He moved faster now, his pace lithe and swift, his mind a machine focused entirely on the task, happier now he felt more in control. He concentrated on efficiency of movement, energy - even breath. The cookies were on a forty-five minute countdown which gave no time for error. Cantor was not planning on being around when they blew.

ζ

With his pneumatic assistant in charge of decrypting Reverre’s files, Sevin split his downtime between the mess and the Briefing Room. The mess was much livelier, although tempered by the anticipation of a major operation the next day. In the Briefing Room, a single clerk sat at a folding table in the corner, watching the hardscreen of the improvised comms desk. Sevin checked on the Special Ops team’s progress every hour. The pod status reports showed the crates reached the storehouse with their contents stable.

On his last visit, Brodie was in the room, standing over the clerk’s shoulder. He looked up as Sevin entered.

‘Respirators are off - they’re out of the pods!’ he said.

‘Good,’ said Sevin, wishing he was with them. He flexed his shoulder, telling himself it didn’t hurt.

‘The real work starts now, of course.’

Sevin nodded, distracted by a peal from his digipad which told him that his presence was required elsewhere.

‘Back in a minute.’

‘Don’t take too long, it’s about to get interesting.’

Sevin dropped down the two levels to Lauden’s cabin which he had left firmly locked while the program was running. As he entered, he saw on the viewer that Enigma had returned and was sitting cross-legged on her virtual sofa. He sat down at the desk.

Sensing his arrival, Enigma threw back her head and smoothed her long hair with a desultory hand. ‘I’ve got what you want,’ she said, holding out a small black box. Its lid raised and a flood of documents spewed out then layered themselves neatly on a coffee table by her feet. The mass of typography had arranged itself into an order Sevin could understand. It was a memo, dated just two days before, addressed to Raveneye and signed off Magus. It read:

’Dawn breaks on the tenth of the sixteenth. Be ready.’

Sevin scowled. What the hell did that mean? The damned computer had given him yet another code.

‘Do you like what you see?’ purred Enigma.

Sevin punched her shutdown command. Tenth of the sixteenth? It didn’t make sense, not in Standard time. He thought through other timeschemes. In the Gharst calendar, that could mean the tenth day of the sixteenth month. He worked it out – holy grut, that was today, or what was left of it. What did they mean by dawn? He needed more information.

He pushed the first memo aside and started on the next. This one said: ‘Seize the prize when the True Light shines.’ It was the same format, sent to Raveneye from Magus. The True Light was obviously a reference to the Gharst or the Gharst religion but what was the context, and what did it have to do with Reverre? He riffled through the rest of the correspondence. There were hundreds of documents, all in the same obtuse language. He gritted his teeth. This was going to take time.

η

Fifty metres to go, forty, thirty – the knowledge that he was almost home gave new energy to Cantor’s legs. Exhilarated, he pulled up short inside the protective clump of trees designated as the post-mission rendezvous. Pausing for breath, his back to the ribbed bark of a majestic conifer, he inhaled the green and earthy smells. He wondered if the others had made it out safely. The lights of North Field did not extend this far and it was darker in the heart of the wood, making it impossible to discern individual shapes with the naked eye.

‘Alpha Leader from Alpha Three, come in,’ said Dbou in his invox.

‘This is Alpha Leader, go ahead.’

‘Are you on loco?’

‘Affirmative. State your position.’

‘Centre loco. There’s a clearing fifty metres in. It’s secure.’

‘On way.’ Cantor trod carefully in the given direction, hands held in front of him, pushing past branches and overhanging fronds. Gnarled tree roots veined the way underfoot, causing him to trip several times before the vegetation opened up into a mossy patch some ten metres square. Dbou appeared at the far end of it as a riot of colour on his thermal imaging, waving an arm.

He crossed over to her, extracting his eyeshields.

‘You did it?’ he asked the grey blur, keeping his voice down. The stillness of the encroaching trees made it seem as if they were listening.

‘Mission complete, sir.’

‘Me too. Any sign up of Fenne?’

‘Not yet.’

Cantor checked his timepiece. There was twenty minutes left on the countdown. ‘He’s got the long job. Let’s give him another five minutes before we start worrying. Meantime, let’s get this trike together.’

He shrugged off his back pack, feeling for the individual pieces. He found the large square and unzipped it, locating the ripcord and pulling it hard. He stood back as it inflated into a ridged wheel which reached almost to his elbow.

‘Bravo One to Alpha Leader, come in,’ said Lauden in his invox.

‘This is Alpha Leader, go ahead,’ said Cantor.

‘Mission accomplished, going to second stage. Bravo out.’

‘They’ve got the Scorpion down,’ Cantor told Dbou as she slotted the engine and the drive shaft together in the microscopic light from a pin torch.

‘Good.’ Then she extinguished the torch. ‘Movement in trees at six o’clock,’ she said, reaching for the Stirling handgun in her belt.

‘It’s okay, it’s Fenne,’ said Cantor.

The corporal approached. ‘All done,’ he said, his eyeshields winging back. ‘I’ve weakened some links in the fence so we can ride straight through.’

‘Well done,’ said Cantor. ‘We’ve got fifteen minutes left so let’s get the hell out of here. Finish the trike while I update with the others and then we can go.’

Cantor turned away to concentrate on the action from Bravo and Charlie. He selected Zendra’s feed first. They seemed to be in a car park. There were multicoloured transits stationed on both sides of a cul-de-sac between buildings he guessed were the laboratories. The camera itself was fixed at its entrance, scoping the vehicles then taking an encompassing view of the outside road, with its odd square of lawn, to the china turtle of the assembly line behind. Cantor assumed from the camera’s behaviour that Zendra was acting as look-out, which meant her two juniors were dropping off the cookies at the end of the blind alley, right in the core of the complex.

Cantor wondered about the duplication of effort but dismissed the thought as he made out the two agents dipping between the transits en route back to the entrance. Satisfied they had been successful, he was about to tune into Lauden when the picture from the Charlie camera started to joggle. He fiddled with the control panel in his sleeve but he couldn’t stabilise the image. It wasn’t until he saw a squad of sturmgangers running into the car park that he realised the malfunction was caused by Zendra struggling against a captor.

‘Gods above!’ Cantor swore as he saw the nearest pair of Gharst raise their blasters and take aim. The camera tracked to a splotch of Coalition bodysuit on the trunk of a buttercup-yellow transit. Then the sturmgangers put up their blasters.

Zendra had found voice connection. ‘Alpha Leader from Charlie One!’

‘I see you. Run for it!’

‘Can’t. They’re holding me. They shot the others.’ In the background he could hear an order being given in Gharst.

‘No!’ he heard her say, then the feed rollercoastered around the buildings and sky until it blacked out.

‘Grut, grut, grut!’ Cantor gibbered Lauden’s callsign into the outvox at the same time as he activated the Bravo stream. He started talking as soon as he made contact.

Lauden cut him short with ‘I read you Alpha Leader. We got the same problem.’ Four sturmgangers pointing blasters filled Cantor’s screen. He jumped as if the enemy were in front of him and cut the connection, retracting his visor.

‘What is it?’ asked Dbou.

‘They’ve captured Bravo and Charlie units. Charlie Two and Charlie Three are dead.’

Fenne muttered an oath and the two agents waited for Cantor’s order. Cantor hesitated, unsure whether to choose fight or flight. His instinct was to run, but he knew he should try to help the others. He thought about what action Tem Sevin would take. Sevin would try to rescue them, without a doubt. But then Sevin was a hero and Cantor was … pragmatic. There were three of them against a full contingent of Gharst, it would be suicide. Two of Charlie were dead, the prisoners as good as. It was better to save themselves than risk further casualties. In any case, there wasn’t time.

‘Get on the trike,’ he told them, jabbing at his sleeve to find the secure channel to HQ.

‘What about the others?’ said Dbou.

Cantor ignored her. ‘Operation Sure Strike is compromised,’ he spoke into his outvox. ‘I repeat, Sure Strike is compromised. Bravo and Charlie are captured. Alpha group is withdrawing. Out!’ He cut the call. Fenne and Dbou had disobeyed his orders and were still standing beside him.

‘What are you doing?’ he said.

‘Something coming,’ said Fenne. In the distance was a grumbling of engines. Fingers of light were feeling through the lattice of branches.

‘What’s that?’ said Cantor.

‘Rough-roaders. Gharst - headed straight for us,’ cried Fenne.

‘Trike now!’ ordered Cantor.

Fenne hoisted himself onto the thin bar of the driver’s perch and gripped the handlebars. Dbou jumped on to the right-hand cradle and kickstarted the ignition as Cantor clambered into the seat over the rear left wheel, seizing the A-frame.

‘Go!’ he yelled. The trike leapt forward, crashing through the undergrowth as it bounced over the uneven ground. Cantor had to let go of his cradle’s rigging to shield his face from trailing vines, feeling every bump and shudder of their passage. A violent lurch threatened to fling him from the vehicle and his helmet flew off. He grabbed at Fenne’s shoulder and clung on, bowing his head into his elbow, trying to anchor himself to the bucking trike. The roaring of the rough-roaders was growing louder, their headlamps penetrating the woodland and lighting up its hidden places with an omnivident beam.

Then, like a flash of inspiration, the trees thinned out and they could see the edge of the copse. The going flattened and Fenne accelerated. Despite its heavy load, the trike burst out of the tree cover, flumping down on to the soft grassland and revving up across the wide reach of pasture that separated them from the perimeter fence a kilometre away. Cantor looked behind them. The trike had no lights but the Gharst were tracking them somehow. Since they had left the copse, the rough-roaders had lost interest in the trees and were veering around them, hot on the trike’s trail.

‘We’ll be alright if we get to the fence! Hole’s too small, they won’t get through,’ Fenne shouted back at him. He too had lost his helmet but none of his determination. In the occasional flash of the stalking headlamps, Cantor could see the doggedness in his face. He hoped Fenne was right. The perimeter fence was coming up fast, an intimidatingly high construction of old-style wire and pillars he presumed were energised. Behind them the rough-roaders were catching up, the reach of their headlamps a few metres from the back of the trike.

‘They’re gaining on us. Speed it up!’ yelled Dbou. Fenne obliged, the trike thundering head-on towards the electric lines.

Fenne drove straight at the wires and Cantor closed his eyes. There was a bone-jolting crash as the front wheel impacted the barricade, then a wallop as the fence parts smashed into the ground and, like a miracle, they were through, riding free towards the concealing murk of the brush in front.

Cantor looked behind. The rough-roaders were stalled at the hole and weren’t following. He laughed, scarcely believing their luck. Even if the Gharst pursued them on foot, it was unlikely they would catch up with the trike. Facing forward again, his hair flapping in his eyes, he saw the forest yawning open before them. They would be safe inside. Fenne pushed the trike to maximum speed as they hurtled towards a break in the rapidly approaching trees. The ashen-gray branches seemed to extend like welcoming arms.

Then two sets of headlamps switched on.

Fenne tried to divert the trike from the dazzling light as chainguns mounted on the bonnet of the concealed rough-roaders opened fire. Fenne screamed as his torso caught the full force and he let go of the handlebars. They careered madly towards the blazing cannon, Cantor desperately trying to gain control over the trike, Dbou fighting to offload the burden of Fenne’s corpse so she could reach her handgun. Then, in a random scatter of shot, when the trike was fleetingly sideways on to the firing line before Cantor could turn it around, a single pulse hit the trike’s cell stack.

The world slurred into slow-motion. Cantor registered a look of sheer surprise on Dbou’s face, profiled against a new background of burning orange. Then the fireball engulfed them both. As the scraps and the sticks of the trike soared skyward, the first cookie on South Field detonated, leading the others in a fireworks display of valostraals exploding, one after another.

θ

After an hour of reading the decoded messages, Sevin had formed a clear enough picture of what Reverre had been plotting with his Gharst counterparts to bring the matter to a head. His digi had been bleating for the past ten minutes and he could ignore it no longer. Gathering a few print-outs, he locked off the media system, secreted the Enigma cache in the toe of one of Lauden’s dirtiest boots, and headed to the Briefing Room.

Brodie had winkled himself between the hardscreens and clerks into his usual spot opposite the autodoors. He looked up as Sevin entered. ‘Where the hell have you been?’ he demanded. ‘I’ve been trying to raise you for the last half-hour. You’re still on duty, man, even if you aren’t on the ground!’

‘I was investigating something, something important.’

’Important! What can be more important than your job? We’ve just had a distress call from the command group. Bravo and Charlie have been captured, some are dead and Cantor’s pulling the rest out – or he was, we’ve had no word since - and you’re investigating?’

‘Dead? Sergeant Lauden and Corporal Zendra – are they okay?’

‘They’ve been taken prisoner, we know that.’

Sevin relaxed. ‘We’ll have to get them out. But first, you need to see this.’ He waved the furl of papers in his hand. ‘Leave us for a minute,’ he told the mix of flight officers and Special Ops agents who were watching agog. They looked to Brodie who reluctantly jerked his head towards the door.

‘This had better be good, Major,’ he warned as the crew filed out.

‘It’s bad, very bad,’ said Sevin, walking over to where Brodie sat. He cleared a space on the briefing table in front of Brodie and laid out the documents. ‘Have a look at these.’

Brodie picked up one or two pages at random, deep creases forming in his forehead as he read.

‘What is this?’ he said eventually.

‘It’s a series of communications between Reverre and a Gharst spymaster.’

‘How d’you work that out?’

‘There’s various references.’

‘So you’re not completely sure?’

‘The outbound address is Herengelden HQ on Rheged. And it’s definitely Reverre they’re talking to. I got these off his comms platform.’

‘Sevin!’

Sevin held up a hand. ‘How I got them is irrelevant. What they say is vitally important. Reverre is involved with some kind of final assault they are planning. I think it’s today but I can’t be sure. If it is, they’ve got less than an hour, GST, to get it underway.’

‘This is all a bit far-fetched, Sevin. I know there’s ill-will between you and Reverre. How do I know you haven’t drawn these up yourself?’

’I can show you the evidence. Come on, sir, think about Operation Rebel Heart. The ambush at Oraman Bay, the disinformation about the masterboard loco and now this, all the agents caught in Sure Strike. It’s too much of a coincidence. And if Reverre is an informer, what does that mean for the clean-up operation? Maybe there’s a Gharst fleet headed our way right now to take us out as well as Vigilant and Vengeance.’

‘So what are you proposing?’

’Get Reverre in here and question him. Tell Vigilant and Vengeance to hold off until we’re sure there’s no counter-attack. And let me go down to get out what’s left of Special Ops.’

‘Alright, we’ll question Reverre and alert the other ships. But you’re not going down.’

‘What?’

‘Sevin, listen to me. If the gribs have picked up Zendra and Lauden, they’ll have worked out our strategy by now – or forced it out of them.’

‘Of course.’

‘Bravo activated the Scorpion before they were apprehended and there’s only fifty minutes left to run. I don’t know if the Gharst have got morphs smart enough to dispose of it, but I’m betting they haven’t. If you’re down there when that goes off, you won’t come back.’

‘I can get there and back in a heartbeat. There’s still time.’

‘There is not! Nine agents went down. Two are dead, three missing presumed dead and the rest captured. This is war, not some bleeding heart charity. I am not risking any more personnel or ships for four agents!’

’Quite right, I would do the same myself,’ said a voice from the autodoors. ‘Actually, let me rephrase that. I shall do the same myself, seeing as I’m in charge now.’ They turned to see that Reverre had entered the room and was standing by the autodoors with a rackarmen trained on Brodie.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Brodie said. ‘Put that down.’

‘I give the orders from now on,’ said Reverre, eyes glinting.

‘What nonsense is this?’

‘No nonsense.’ Reverre moved forward to the briefing table. ‘Listen to this.’ He switched on the intercom and the hiss of an empty channel filled the room. They waited a few seconds.

‘And?’ said Sevin.

‘You’ll find out.’

Reverre stood back, gun at the ready, keenly watching the other men. The opening bars of Die Rikkeneiger played out of the intercom and a man started to speak in Standard with a Gharst accent.

’This is the Erstleiter of the Gharst people – Marskall Reinn. Know this, all subjects of the Coalition planets, the war is over. Today your leader, President Augustis Qiron, has signed a surrender treaty giving ultimate power over the Charis and Altan systems to the Gharst. Rejoice, new citizens of the Rikke! The war has ended and the radiance of the True Light will illuminate your homeworlds forever. Dar richt licht sar schinken!’