The Empress

Eighteen

Nina Droad left Aldo’s hotel room and returned to her own. She wondered, with every step she took, what had come over her. She was not normally a woman who slept with men she had only just met. In fact, she generally slept alone. But something about Aldo had fascinated her. Unfortunately, she suspected he had fascinated dozens like her before. Perhaps hundreds.

Wondering about herself and Aldo, she dressed in her normal riding garb, strapped her twin swords at her sides, and headed down the street to meet old Hans at a cafe. They’d arranged the meeting days earlier. She’d given her mounted escort of knights the rest of the ten-day off, and they’d dispersed to enjoy the sights of Lavender City.

Hans was late, but when he arrived, he appeared uncharacteristically distraught. “Milady, have you been out of contact?”

“Yes, I suppose I have,” Nina admitted. She’d turned off her com-link for ninth-day, not wanting to be disturbed. “What’s the matter?”

“The mechs, madam. They’ve been seen entering Twilight not far from here. They march while we dally here in this somber canyon.”

Nina jumped to her feet. She did not apologize to Hans, it would be unseemly to do so. “Summon my riders. We must take the field.”

“Should I call for air support?”

“No. We will handle this. It is our charge to do so. No one else is to get the credit for stopping this assault.”

Hans looked doubtful, but he did as she asked. His wrinkled hands were soon tapping at his com-link.

As she paid the check and they left the cafe, Nina admonished herself sternly. Aldo had been a pleasant, but costly distraction. She wondered what it was about the outworlder that had attracted her so. He had cost her both time and strategic advantage. Shaking her head, she mounted up and moved quickly to a gathering point, where her knights were instructed to join her.

The enemy were not like humans, she reminded herself for the thousandth time. They did not seek rest, sexual pleasures, nor any other distraction. They were utterly focused on their inhuman goals. Despite their small numbers, they were dangerous due to their diligence, if nothing else. The only puzzling act they’d performed was the pointless slaughter at Dolleren. Oddly, they’d hurt their own cause there, by galvanizing the council into action.

Within less than an hour, the grumbling knights had formed up and together they rode out of Lavender City. Many of them had blotchy faces and bleary eyes after many hours of carousing. Nina didn’t care. The enemy would not lag, and therefore to compete with them, she would expect no less from her men. She planned to drive them hard, and herself even harder.

Sixty-Two marched at the head of a vast column of mechs. They traveled at a ground-eating pace, although not so fast as aircraft might, nor even mounted knights. Loping across Twilight in a heavily wooded region, their plan was simple. They would try to cross the hundred-odd miles that separated Sunside from Nightside as quickly as possible. With luck, the humans would barely notice their presence before they’d reached their goal.

Nightside. For Sixty-Two, the colder, darker half of the planet had come to take on nearly magical sheltering qualities. After long months spent out in the grit and blazing heat of Sunside, the cool dark of Nightside seemed fabulous in comparison. In Sunside, they were relatively exposed and there were many more industrial sites with human habitation. Mines, solar collection facilities and the like dotted the landscape. The humans had a commensurate level of surveillance equipment in the region to watch over their interests. Thus, it was only a matter of time before they were located and rooted out, no matter what gully they squatted in.

Nightside was different. There wasn’t much there other than ice and stone, and drilling in frozen ground was more difficult than digging in hot sand. In addition, every person and piece of equipment required more energy to operate in the freezing environment. Cold is by definition the absence of energy, and working in Nightside therefore required a constant source of heat. There were a few roving complexes on Nightside which sought rare elements and frozen gases, but for the most part, it was empty. Sixty-Two hoped to flee there and escape the next blow that was sure to come in retribution for the massacre at Dolleren.

The mech army crossed into Twilight and traveled the first forty miles into an increasingly lush landscape without incident. Then they came to the Queen’s Highway, a cobbled road that ran in an endless textured ribbon around the terminator line of the entire planet. This single road was continuous, and it was said some pilgrims forever marched its length, circumnavigating the globe once every year or two for their entire lives.

The highway was a busy artery of commerce and that worried Sixty-Two. He knew that he had to cross it, and that there was regular traffic on it, even in the wilderness regions. To make matters worse, they were crossing at a point fairly close to Lavender City.

They waited until the midnight hour, in local terms. There were no real ‘times’ on Ignis Glace, as every hour looked the same as the last when one looked toward the sun, which was permanently frozen on the horizon. But humans required regular intervals of wakefulness and sleep to function properly, so they had invented a timing system. As it was best for everyone to keep a common schedule, hours were arbitrarily arranged and had been worked out long ago. Traffic from the city, therefore, should be the lightest during the midst of the sleeping time.

Sixty-Two and his mechs hid on the Sunside of the highway in a large grove of suntrees. These growths were common throughout Twilight and had adapted themselves to grow very tall. At the top of their trunks they grew parabolic, umbrella-shaped structures of leaves which aimed unerringly toward the sun. The trees were thus able to photosynthesize very effectively-at least until another of their kind grew up in front of them, like woman wearing a very tall hat at a theatrical performance, and blocked their life-giving window of sunlight. Suntree groves resembled vast towering audiences, all jostling and craning their necks to see a distant performer.

Midnight passed, but Sixty-Two let another hour slip by just to be certain. The waiting bothered only him, Lizett and the few other mechs who had the mental capacity to feel anxiety. For these few, it was torturous. The rest stood still and worried about nothing.

Finally, they saw by their scanners that no metal object had passed along the road for more than ten minutes. Sixty-Two quietly broadcast the signal to cross the road. Diffidently at first, then in a swelling rush, thousands of mechs thundered out of the forest, crossed the cobbles on clanking feet, then vanished again into the cool gloom of the suntree forest where it continued on the other side.

Garth was asleep when Ornth finally halted the seemingly endless march along the highway. Sleeping with one’s eyes open was something of a learned behavior, but it was possible. Exhaustion had set in after days of wakefulness. Garth had gained the capacity to dream even while marching and staring straight ahead.

Ornth suddenly halted, but that alone didn’t startle Garth awake. That act, by itself, should have made it easier to sleep rather than harder. What caused him to return to consciousness was the nightmare that played before his drifting eyes.

His dreams had been peaceful and sweet, but now they were invaded by a horde of strange hulking shapes. These man-like things, most over eight feet in height, strode with amazing bounds on the metal legs as thick as struts. Their broad flat feet drummed on the cobbled road, making an incredibly loud din, like that of a thousand steel hammers striking stones in a random pattern. Occasionally, a foot that struck the cobbles sent up a small shower of bright orange sparks.

It was these sparks, Garth thought later, that penetrated his dreaming mind and brought him back to reality. He realized slowly that the nightmare scene in front of him-what appeared to be a thundering stampeded of wild machines-was in fact reality.

Garth began screeching in terror inside the joint mind he shared with Ornth.

Shut up, or discipline will be applied, Ornth admonished him.

We are going to be killed! Run from them, or they will trample us!

No, I think not, Ornth replied. Standing still has done us well so far.

So saying, Ornth turned their head and looked over their shoulder. There, behind them, were more of these strange robots.

Is this some kind of migration? Garth asked.

I’m not sure. But I’m certain this qualifies as an unusual event. Therefore, it is what I’ve been seeking.

What?

We shall speak with them. I request your assistance and advice in communication.

Garth was speechless for a second. He watched as Ornth pulled a tiny lantern from his kit and flicked it on. He raised it overhead, using Garth’s own treacherous, skinny arm to do so. He waved it back and forth, signaling the passing army of machines.

How could this be? Garth wondered. How could he have been saddled by a Tulk who was suicidal? It was bad enough to be ridden, to have one’s body suborned by a hostile creature. But to have it lead one into danger, and then court it openly…this was too much.

Garth’s mind broke. He screamed, he wailed, and he gibbered inside his own mind.

A signal went out, passed from mech to mech via a broadcast system that used very low power. Only mechs within a short distance could pick it up from background radiation and make sense of it.

Sixty-Two learned from the signal that somewhere behind him something had gone wrong. He did not know what it was, as the message was only a tiny blip of radio, and was non-descriptive. It could have been a malfunction. A mech could have stepped into a hole and broken a leg strut. Or, they could have been spotted by aircraft or ground vehicles, despite all their precautions.

Cursing internally, Sixty-Two halted his own headlong rush. He ordered his mechs to press ahead, to move across the road as planned en masse. He would go back alone to investigate once the army had passed by into the safety of the deeper forests. Wondering why the gods of fate hated him so, he turned and made his way through a rushing horde of mechs.

He passed under the gloomy shadows of the suntrees back toward the Queen’s Highway. The road was deathly still when he arrived. The birds, insects and even the ground-screamers had fallen silent. The wildlife had been terrified by the event, no doubt, which was beyond their experience. When faced with the unknown on Ignis Glace, creatures tended to fall silent and hide.

When Sixty-Two reached the edge of the suntrees and poked his head out of the foliage, he looked first to the left, then to the right, back toward Lavender City. He saw nothing amiss. There were no broken down mechs, flailing on the cobbles. There were no aircraft in the sky, looking for them.

He turned his head on buzzing servos and looked again. Then his orbs fell upon an unexpected and distinctive sight.

A lone figure stood less than a hundred yards distant in the middle of the road. He held aloft a small glowing light on a thin, flailing arm. He stared right at Sixty-Two, and seeing that he had been noticed, he slowly allowed the arm to relax and droop back down to his side, where it flapped oddly.

Sixty-Two stared at this strange individual for a moment. He did not seem armed, nor did he seem to be frightened-not exactly. The man stared back, with a burning gaze that was no more human than the stare of a mech. The man twitched as he stood, giving tiny spasms that made his cheeks, fingers and even his bare toes jump and quiver.

“Who are you, human?” Sixty-Two asked.

“I’m Ornth,” said the strange, thin man. “I object to being referred to as ‘human’. I would judge that I’m less human than you are, mechanical man.”

Nina and her hundred knights rode hard all night long along the Queen’s Highway. They eventually reached a point that was distinctive, where reports had come of mech movements. The evidence was abundant. There were broken cobbles, twisted bolts lying on the roadway, and a thousand damaged suntree fronds. The mechs had been here, very recently, and they’d crossed the highway.

“What could be their purpose?” Hans asked at her side. “They’ve robbed no one. They’ve moved with unusual stealth and speed.”

“They are going somewhere,” Nina said. “This must be a deep strike. They seek to do us some great harm, of that I’m certain. They know we don’t have air support any longer. Every ship has gone up to meet the aliens when they arrive. They sense our weakness, and are seeking to take full advantage.”

“But where are they headed? Could they be circling around Lavender City to invade it?”

Nina laughed. “I don’t think they are that bold. We have gun emplacements there and thousands of armed militia would muster within an hour. Even if they disabled every perrupter on the planet, they could not win that battle with their current numbers.”

“Then I do not understand. There is nothing but groves of suntrees for many miles.”

Nina nodded, wheeling her mount in one direction, then another as she surveyed the landscape. She found a single item of interest among the many cracked cobbles. She dismounted and picked it up.

“What’s that?” Hans asked.

“A hand-light. It still glows-and over here, I see a single discarded sandal. But there is no blood. How odd.”

“Someone was here?” Hans asked. “Someone encountered the mechs?”

Nina’s mind flashed ahead, jumping to a hundred conclusions. Like her father, she could see things others could not. Like her mother, she was not a trusting soul.

“Someone met the mechs here,” she said. “It only makes sense. They must be working with humans.”

“How could that be?”

Nina stared at Old Hans, but did not see him. She turned back to the evidence and walked over the land carefully. She’d hunted big game in these forests a hundred times, and tracking the mechs was far easier than tracking a wild beast. “There’s no blood. There’s only a signal light, and a lost sandal. The man was not trampled out of hand. He was not slaughtered, nor was he ignored. The mechs have never treated someone in this fashion before. He was either taken by the mechs, or he’s fled somehow.”

“It seems like a stretch, milady.”

“Yes, I would agree, but there must be some reason why they came here. Why did they meet this person who signaled them at this precise moment? I don’t believe in fate or coincidence. I believe in careful planning, contrivance and deceit.”

“As you say, Baroness. What do we do now?”

“We gather our forces, and we follow them. When we find them, with luck, we will destroy them all this time.”

Nina and her knights followed the trail into the forest carefully, lest they be ambushed by the mechs, who outnumbered them at this point. She knew they would have to proceed cautiously, never making contact with the mechs, but never losing their trail. When she had all her forces together, then they would make their strike. She hoped it would be the final, fatal blow to the rebellion. After all she’d heard from Aldo, she’d begun to fear she might need her forces to defend her world against the invading aliens. Aldo seemed to believe they might make it past the Nexus space forces and make planetfall. In such a situation, she would be the sole defensive organization of any real size on this side of the planet.

As she rode, she worried about what the enemy was up to. They had to have a goal, but she had no inkling of what it might be. The evidence that they were working with humans was extremely disturbing. Could this mech rebellion have been orchestrated by a Twilighter? If so, it was treachery of an entirely new order. It was one thing to sell out one’s neighbor for advantage, but to sell out one’s own species-the very thought was monstrous to her.

Nina’s mind reeled with possibilities as she pressed deeper into the somber forests. As they moved closer to Nightside, the suntrees grew thicker and taller so they could reach up and drink in the distant, life-giving light. With every mile, the land grew cooler and darker. She didn’t like this side of the planet, finding the desert sunshine of Sunside infinitely preferable to the regions of permanent shadow. But she was determined to follow this trail wherever it may lead.