Then Donnchadh sat up and opened her eyes once more. The familiar interior of the Fynbar was all around. She looked to her right, at Gwalcmai’s tube. The top had not opened yet. She smiled. He always was slow to rise after the deep sleep. She removed the muscle stimulators from her lower body, then carefully lifted herself over the edge of the tube and set her feet on the floor.
It was cold. And damp. Donnchadh shivered and grabbed a robe that was hung near the tube, sliding it over her head and shoulders and pulling tight a cinch at the waist. Then she slipped on a pair of leather sandals. They reminded her of the old lady in the south of this island who had made them and Donnchadh smiled once more, until she remembered that all the humans who had been alive when she entered this spacecraft were now dust.
She shivered and turned to Gwalcmai’s tube, impatient. There was the hiss of the lid unsealing. As the top swung open she went over. As Gwalcmai sat up, a slightly confused look on his face, and his eyes closed, she leaned forward and kissed him on the lips.
“A good way to awaken,” Gwalcmai said, his voice hoarse and cracking.
Donnchadh grabbed his clothes and handed them to him as he finished removing his muscle stimulators and exited the tube. “Perhaps one time you will wake before me.”
“Perhaps,” Gwalcmai said without much conviction. He dropped to the floor and quickly did fifty push-ups, getting the blood flowing.
“What do you think has happened?” Donnchadh asked as she went over to the copilot’s seat and powered up the computer.
Gwalcmai shrugged. “I’ve no idea.” He pulled his sword out of its sheath and checked the edge. “I hope that the metalwork has improved in the past five hundred years. This thing would not last one blow against an Airlia sword.” He actually had an Airlia-made sword, from his time as a God-killer, on board the Fynbar, but did not take it with him most of the time as it was so obviously an anachronism that it would draw unwanted attention.
Always the practical one, Donnchadh thought as she shut down the tubes and the computer that governed them. In thevat behind the tubes were two more fully grown clones, their limbs almost entwined, they were pressed so tightly together. She stared at them for several seconds, realizing that someday she would inhabit the female one of those bodies. She found it interesting that the two were face-to-face. Gwalcmai came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her upper body. “Even they know our love,” he whispered in her ear. His lips came close to the back of her neck. “The surface will wait.”
It was raining as the hidden door set in the standing stone slid open. That was nothing unusual. What was unusual and stopped Donnchadh and Gwalcmai in their tracks was the fact that the stones they had set in place had been surrounded by a circle of wooden stakes set upright in the ground. Each stake was between six and ten feet high. And, of particular notice, on the top of each stake was a human skull, the bone bleached white by the sun and rain.
Donnchadh and Gwalcmai stood still as the door slid shut behind them. They slowly turned, surveying the area, but there was no sign of whoever had erected the stakes or placed the skulls there.
“They could be long dead,” Gwalcmai said.
“They could be,” Donnchadh agreed. She’d known that the stones sitting in the middle of the grasslands would attract attention from humans passing by, but not enough to attract attention of the Airlia. Apparently, for someone, that attention had turned into a form of gruesome homage. Or a threat, Donnchadh realized with a shiver not caused by the cold rain.
“Come on,” Gwalcmai said, stepping forward.
Donnchadh noticed that he had drawn his sword. They made their way onto the plain, heading south.
Metalworking had not improved much at all on the outer ring of Atlantis, they discovered shortly after landing there, having taken passage on a trading vessel. Gwalcmai found no sword much better than what he had had made the last time they were there. In fact, things in all areas appeared to have gotten somewhat worse, if anything. All they had known were long dead, but the black market and underground network were still alive and well. Human greed had not changed in five hundred years.
They integrated themselves into this fringe of society with more alacrity than the previous time, given their experiences. They learned that the Airlia were hardly ever seen anymore outside of the palace, and that even the high priests and Guides had begun to isolate themselves on the center island, as if the Airlia and their minions were drawing into themselves, away from their mission and the demands of the outside world.
The stories of the Grail and the promise of eternal life for obedience had faded into myth, as if the Airlia cared little for what humans believed anymore. Donnchadh took that as a sign that the Airlia here, having had no new communiqué from their home system, were losing track of their mandate. Her hope had been that they would feel abandoned.
Apparently they did, but rather than be troubled by it, they appeared to be quite content with being out of the interstellar war with the Swarm and to rule the humans immediately around them as Gods. Donnchadh learned this by infiltrating the center island and mixing with those uncorrupted by the guardian. There were still many high priests and Guides in evidence, but their mission seemed more one of service toward the Airlia than spreading the word and influence of the aliens.
Donnchadh felt a little bit of satisfaction in that the Airlia plan for this planet seemed to be stalled, but there had been no apparent response from the Airlia Empire about the loss of contact with the outpost.
Now she and Gwalcmai must do as they had always done — wait.
The guardian on Mars was in contact with not only the Master Guardian on Earth and the transmitter but an array of sensors on the planet’s surface. They did not have to be very sophisticated to pick up the incoming spaceship as it passed the outer limits of the solar system, especially considering that it made no attempts to disguise its approach.
It was an Airlia mothership and it had been on sublight vector for the Sol System for over ten years — the amount of time the Airlia estimated to allow the transition from light to sub — light speed to be far enough away not to give the Swarm the opportunity to find the system. Traveling just below the speed of light, the mothership began to decelerate as it passed Pluto’s orbit. Nestled around the nose of the mile-long ship were nine smaller ships, shaped like a bear’s claws, curving inward from a large base to a sharp point. They were the Talons, Airlia warships, designed to defend the mothership and attack other spacecraft and planets. They weren’t capable of faster-than-light speed, so for long journeys they were attached to the mothership like remoras.
As they came in, an override code was sent from the mothership to the guardian on Mars via the interstellar array. A link from the mothership’s Master Guardian to the Mars guardian was quickly established. Data was uplinked and analyzed. The recurring fake transmitter program that Donnchadh had implanted in the guardian was quickly discovered and disabled.
Since the only one who could have programming access to the Master Guardian was the Airlia High Commissioner on Earth, the program had to have been put in place by that individual. The only reason such a program would be used would be to fool the Airlia who worked for the High Commissioner into believing contact with the empire was being maintained, when in reality the High Commissioner had no desire to remain in contact with the empire.
Such an act was treason. There was no other explanation.
The mothership’s commander, Artad, came to that decision within minutes of examining the data. He quickly issued orders.
Once inside Pluto’s orbit, the nine Talons peeled off the larger craft, deploying around the nose of the mothership in a protective formation as it headed inward toward the sun.