The engine's hum cut through the cabin.
"Recall!" shouted Panair as he dived for the driver's chair. "Seats!"
Avir realized the order was meant for the passengers. She staggered toward the nearest upright seat and dropped herself into it. The door opened and two of the Beholden all but fell inside. The door closed and the transport righted itself. The tires ground against the debris and the transport lurched forward into the melee. Artifacts scattered left and right to get out of its way. More stones thumped and cracked against its sides. Silver on the Clouds waved her club at them as they barreled past, her face flushed and distorted in anger.
She'd try again, Avir knew it. She was Aunorante Sangh.
How many others like her are mixed among the artifacts? Weariness pressed against her mind. There's no way to tell. Nal can take them all apart gene by gene, and there still probably won't be any way to tell.
And we've based themselves in their midst. The fear inside Avir redoubled. She tried to be ashamed of it, but she couldn't Being afraid made too much sense right now.
"Are we receiving from base?" she asked Panair.
"Still receiving, Contractor," he replied. "The situation there is secure."
They approached their half-converted base. It looked calm. The shuttle still hung on the tether, glowing like the captive star it was designed to imitate. Only a few artifacts populated its steps and they scattered into the nearby buildings as the transport drove into the plaza.
As soon as Panair brought them to a halt, Avir jumped to her feet and hit the door control. She remembered her helmet and gloves lay on the floor of the transport somewhere, but did not stop to collect them. She strode down the transport ramp and up the base steps. Ivale followed behind her, collecting more data for his unfavorable report of her activities. She didn't care. There was no time to waste.
She had believed the artifacts to be merely lost and confused. For some of them that was doubtlessly true, and those, the true work of the Ancestors, had to be preserved. But some of them were the shameful blood, and those had to be eliminated, and all their progeny with them.
Avir headed straight for the comm terminal. Behind her, the remainder of the security team carried the support capsule containing Broken Trail across to Nal's station and set it beside the empty holding tank. The Unifier was marched in, too, and he gaped at the bustling Vitae and huddled artifacts.
Avir decided she could ignore him for a moment. She needed direction. She needed reassurance. She needed to tell someone that the Aunorante Sangh were alive and well and that the war that had ended in the Ancestors' Flight had been joined again.
Beside the primary comm terminal sat the backup unit. It was internally powered and small enough to be carried by one person. Avir picked it up in both hands and headed for the rear of the Temple, trying not to care if anyone's gaze followed her.
Beyond the main chamber were the living quarters and the kitchen. They were little more than alcoves blocked from a central foyer by more of the rough-woven blankets. In the middle of the foyer, though, a stone staircase had been built down into the earth. Avir took the stairs carefully. They were unevenly worn from years of feet descending this way.
The cellars here were not the work of the Ancestors, but they were the result of some astoundingly careful work by the artifacts. The flagstone and plaster were all tightly sealed, creating a row of chambers that were dark and cold, but dry. Each one had a wooden door shut with a surprisingly complex iron lock.
The chambers were full of books. Some were obscure convoluted texts of what passed for religion or history among the artifacts, but most of them were lists upon lists of genealogies. For all the artifacts had forgotten, they had never lost the fact that they had been bred for their functions. Even the rebellion of the Aunorante Sangh had not been able to wipe out the artifacts' need to keep their creator's work as intact as possible.
Lights had been fastened to the ceiling and their glow thinned the shadows on the reddish stone walls to grey ghosts. The only sound was the soft murmuring of the team's Historian in one of the rear cellars as he catalogued what he had found.
Avir picked an empty chamber and shut herself inside with the ancient books. She wedged the comm terminal on a shelf and stood in front of it. For a moment, she just enjoyed the silence and the familiar intimacy of solid walls.
She could have done this up above, but it was easier to think down here, and she had no idea what the Assembly was going to say to her.
Avir opened a line to the Assembly's waiting terminals. Every comm line into the chambers was answered by a Witness now that the Reclamation had begun. No word between the teams on the Home Ground and the Assembly would be lost.
"Good Morning and also Good Day, Contractor Avir," said the Witness when the screen cleared. The image was good, if distant. She could see the glint of her own reflection in his camera eye.
"I have a first level emergency situation," said Avir. "I must speak to the Assembly immediately."
The Witness stiffened and relaxed so fast, that for a moment Avir was certain it was her imagination.
No, I startled him.
She had just enough time to see his hand move across his own board before the image shifted.
The Reclamation Assembly looked small and unreal on the flat screen. She had stood before the Assembly hundreds of times, but she had always been surrounded by accurate projections in the Assembly Chamber of the Hundredth Core. Even the Witnesses with their cameras trained on the screen she spoke through looked ridiculously far away.
"You have declared an emergency, Contractor Avir," said the Moderator. "The Assembly is awaiting the details."
Avir didn't even try to compose herself as she gave what could only loosely be called a report. She wanted the assembled representatives up there in the encampment to know about the screams, and the anger of their artifacts, and the Vitae blood that had been spilled. She wanted them to understand the scale of the miracles that they stood on top of.
When she ran out of words, she received nothing but silence from the Assembly. She was glad of it, because it was a signal that she had gotten through to them.
Finally, one representative, a Senior Engineer with smooth mahogany skin and long hair that was the same color as her sepia robes, signaled for time. A red light appeared above her as the Moderator granted her request.
"Does the Contractor have a recommendation for a course of action in the light of these events?" asked the representative.
"I do, Representative," said Avir slowly, "but it is not a pleasant one."
"What is it?" the Moderator prompted her.
"Moderator," said Avir, "we deliberately chose to begin the Reclamation of the human-derived artifacts by mimicking the authority example that their social groupings had created to deal with the lack of the Ancestors' direction. The authority example they have created, the "Nameless Powers," is all-encompassing and all-powerful and is recorded in their mutated oral history as forcibly removing sources of rebellion."
The attention of the Assembly was so focused that Avir could begin to feel it in her spine. It strengthened her, exhausted as she was, and it reminded her who she was. Her voice fell into properly smooth cadences.
"It is, therefore, my thought that if we wish to continue to make use of this authority example, we need to remove the rebellion. All of it.
"We need to remove the city."
Now there was noise. Representatives muttered into their own intercoms or shuffled keys on their own boards, trying to call up data to support or strike down what she had just suggested. Avir waited for the flurry to pass, just as she had waited all the other times.
A Historian signaled for time and was acknowledged by the Moderator.
"How many artifacts are in the city Narroways?" he asked.