“We’re about sixty seconds from our gate,” Veriasse warned. “Gallen-” he began to say, but the young man was already playing his part. He lowered the hood to the hovercraft and got out his incendiary rifle, flipped it on so that its indicator glowed red.
For a moment, as Gallen’s black robes flapped, Everynne caught glimpses of the silver bangles of his personal intelligence, the lavender of his mask, and Gallen reminded her of Veriasse. But he turned and she caught the profile of his face, and the illusion dissipated. Everynne gazed across the desert. Three kilometers north of the gate was a line of low yellow hills. At any moment, three phalanxes of fliers would stream over the hills at four thousand kilometers per hour. The vanquishers would have less than three seconds to take cover.
Veriasse focused on the gate. The hoverbus hummed, bouncing as it hit small thermals. In the distance, Everynne spotted a flash of sunlight reflecting from the flier’s windshields, and she began counting: three, two … one. The saucer-shaped fliers were in a tight V, fifteen of them; suddenly the formation split and the fliers veered east and west. Antiaircraft fire erupted from the vanquishers’ outpost at the gate. Everynne watched gray pellets rain from the fliers, beacons designed to fool intelligent missiles.
Then the incendiary bombs landed. They were so small that Everynne did not see them drop. Instead, the ground around the gate erupted into a wall of flame that leapt thirty meters into the air. Everynne found it hard to believe that anyone or anything could survive that inferno, but Veriasse had insisted that the fliers make a second pass, and then a third.
By now, their hoverbus had reached the turn where the highway veered west, but Veriasse simply kept his northern course, slowing dramatically; the hover bus leapt from the shoulder of the highway.
The engines roared, straining as they raced down a small ravine, throwing up clouds of dust. The second wave of fliers was sweeping over the hills now, sooner than Everynne had anticipated, and they dropped a barrage of conventional explosives. Dust and burning bodies pitched into the air, twisting in a great whirlwind. Smoke and fire obscured the nearly indestructible gate, but Everynne pulled out her key and pressed the open sequence. The light under the arch shimmered.
Already the flames from the incendiary bombs were beginning to die. The third and final phalanx of fliers closed over the hills, spraying out their ordnance, an oily black substance that civilians referred to as “Black Fog.” It had no toxic properties, but absorbed light so completely that in seconds the sky turned black.
A black cloud boiled toward them, and Veriasse stared in concentration as they hit the wall of darkness. Everynne felt as if her eyes had been painted over. At first she could see no light at all, yet they were hurtling toward the gate; she feared that Veriasse would crash into a post.
Some vanquishers must have heard their hoverbus, for two balls of white fire whizzed over Everynne’s head. She screamed and ducked. Gallen returned fire at the unseen targets. Veriasse shouted, “I can’t see the gate!”
Gallen fired his incendiary rifle; a fireball of actinic light spattered one gate post, only twenty yards ahead. Veriasse hit the reverse thrusters, shouting, “Run for it.”
Everynne leapt from the hovercar. It was so dark, she could see only the fiery light above the gate. Orick tried to leap out of the hovercar but slipped. He yelled, “Damn!”
Everynne turned but could not see the bear. Maggie, Gallen, and Veriasse could be detected only by the faint shimmering of their masks; they floated above the ground like wraiths. Maggie grabbed Everynne’s hand, urging her to hurry forward, but they tripped over the body of an ogre. Everynne was just struggling up when the creature grabbed her ankle. She screamed and simultaneously the thing shouted weakly, “Vanquishers to me!”
“Gallen, help!” Maggie cried.
Everynne tried to kick free, but the ogre held her tight. Orick, hidden by the inky blackness, roared and pounced on the creature. The vanquisher let go, and Everynne heard more than saw the ensuing scuffle.
Suddenly the vanquishers surrounded them, too close to use incendiary rifles, faintly visible in the light from the arch. Gallen and Veriasse pulled out their swords and began swinging, but the vanquishers were armored. By the time Veriasse and Gallen brought one down, three more had taken its place.
Everynne had no choice. She reached into her pocket, pulled out a ball of glowing light. “Stop!” She stood defiant, holding the ball high, though her heart was faint.
“You vanquishers, do you see this?” she asked. “You know what it is?”
“A Terror,” one vanquisher said, a sergeant in heavy armor.
“If you don’t surrender now,” Everynne said, “I’ll destroy this world. My mantle is linked to eighty-four other Terrors spread across the galaxy, including one on Dronon itself. I’ve already initiated the arming sequence. They will begin detonating in three minutes, unless you surrender now! You will not have time to issue a warning. You will all die!”
Everynne gasped for breath. She did not know if the vanquishers would fall for her ruse. She was a Tharrin, dedicated to peace. All her training, all the engineering her ancestors had built into her, screamed that even to risk destroying a world was wrong. Yet she held a Terror aloft, hoping the dronon would treat her threat seriously.
From the darkness, a dronon limped forward. The fire had burned its wings, and it dragged one hind leg. A familiar clicking began as mouthfingers tapped its voice drum. “I am broadcasting your demands to Lord Annitkit, our supervisor on this world. He will contact the Golden Queen, Tlitkani, and learn her will in this matter. It will take several hours to learn her reply.”
“You don’t have that long,” Everynne said. “We’re leaving.” She turned to the others. “Get through the gate, now!”
She began inching backward through the crowd of vanquishers, moving carefully. It might be that Lord Annitkit would order them to kill her, risk losing eighty worlds in order to keep the thousands they had gained. But Everynne had to hope that he would take her threat seriously. The dronon were often as paranoid as they were violent, but they loved their queen. She did not know of a dronon who would risk the chance that his queen would be killed.
The dronon vanquisher rushed forward, and a segmented hand erupted from the hidden compartment in its battle arm, grasping her arm, pinning Everynne to the spot.
“I do not believe you will detonate the Terror,” the dronon said. “A Tharrin would not destroy a world.”
“Can you be so certain?” Veriasse shouted from behind the dronon. “Others of our people have detonated Terrors on your worlds. My mantle, too, has the access codes for these weapons, and I am not a Tharrin. Believe me, if you do not let us go, we will kill your precious Golden Queen.”
The dronon hesitated. He seemed to be stalling as he waited for further orders. “If you have a Terror on Dronon, why have you not used it? I do not believe you have another Terror.”
Veriasse strode forward, put his face close to the vanquisher’s, and looked into its eye cluster. “Perhaps we only take our orders from a higher source,” he whispered threateningly. “Perhaps we do not completely comprehend their plans for your queen. I only know that I am not free to contravene those orders. Friend, take your hand off the woman’s arm. If she drops the Terror, it could break open. We wouldn’t want any accidents.…”
The dronon held Everynne’s hand. It had a tiny metal device clipped to one of its feelers, and the device buzzed. The dronon addressed Veriasse and Everynne simultaneously.
“Lord Annitkit demands your word of honor that if we release you, you will relinquish your attack on Dronon!”