The other agent leaped back, rushing to draw his laser. He looked upward, astonished, but the evening sky was clear, and nothing announced this new form of precipitation. What just happened under his very eyes defied logic, although he should have expected that. Baila had told them that the final battle with Arghail had begun; no wonder that stones were falling from the sky at the order of the god of darkness!
The agent jumped sideways, checking for danger, while he opened his transmitter to report the incident. Before talking, however, he looked upward, right when the second boulder thrown by Gill was about to reach his head spikes. The massive rock promptly smashed his face. Without a sound, he spun on his heels and fell facedown over the first agent.
Without even wasting a glance on them, Gill ran to his jet to leave the place before the reinforcements arrived.
In his rush, he ignored all the speed limitations—but since the artificial intelligence was disconnected, no one could protest the offenses.
It became darker, as much as the firewall allowed, yet the streetlights in the city weren’t working. Only the three great pyramids in the center were magically lit by the rivers of fire carried by the tarjis.
The road to the town was empty, unlike the exit lanes blocked by abandoned jets. Gill couldn’t storm his way into the city without being noticed. The last thing he wanted was to rush into the barriers—Baila had surely warned the tarjis about his arrival. Besides, he had a better chance of sneaking on foot behind the circles, with a little help from the bracelet…
And there was another “small” problem: he had no idea where exactly the acronte was hiding… but he had a guess.
Once he reached close to the city, he looked for a good spot to abandon his jet. He saw a refuge on the magneto-highway and slowed down, but then he spotted a small farm trail nearby. The flashing sign in the left corner of the windshield advised him that the alley was magnetized. He drove until his jet was hidden from the main road, and he parked it behind some thick bushes.
As he started to walk toward the city, Gill greedily breathed the scented air of the fields, tempted to lie down and sleep right there, on the ground. He felt he had no energy to keep going, but he had to do it: the future of Antyra depended on him. Or, at least, the future of its rotten government.
Gill walked a good distance without using the grid, afraid that someone might see a jump. After passing the first domes on the outskirts, he saw the first barricade a thousand feet away, and he was amazed how large and organized it was. He quickly hid behind a building, feeling pretty dejected that he might never find a way to cross the circle unnoticed.
He thought his eyes were playing tricks on him, as he had the feeling that the darkness was getting thicker around him. Exhaustion’s to blame, he thought wearily. In that very moment, something made him raise his head… and he froze in a silent scream, for what he was seeing was the end of the world!
Everywhere around the star system, the holy body of Beramis unraveled like rotten fabric, ripped in irregular stripes. In some places, the dying flames got tangled, and for a brief moment, they became even brighter than the old barrier. The stripes seemed to stretch to infinity, sucked by the hungry immensity of space, and Gill had the overwhelming feeling that the whole Antyran universe was disintegrating.
He wanted to find out if Baila would really follow through on his threat and open the skies for him. Well, his “brilliant” curiosity was handsomely rewarded. A Sigian bracelet was discovered, and it didn’t matter that it was on the arm of an archivist hostile to the Antyran gods, as long as the Sigians themselves couldn’t escape their fate. What chances did he have without the resources of the Sigians, without a way to fly to Mapu? The smartest thing would be to destroy the bracelet right now, he thought again. But he knew he couldn’t do it. Not until he saw the river of shadows.
The crowd on the first barricade finally noticed the frightening phenomenon. The tarjis fell on their knees, raising their arms to the sky. One by one, they began to mutter the covenant.
The Shindam’s troops abandoned their chameleons, finally seeing what a mistake they had made to fight Baila. In a few moments, they disappeared like a flock of licants scattered by the vardannes.
This madness ends right now! I’m going to sleep, no matter what, Gill decided. With the gods about to return to Antyra, Regisulben was finished anyway. Soon, the gray spaceships would appear from the depths of space, and no grid would be able to protect him from their wrath. How could he fight an alien invasion alone?
Alixxor was probably the worst place to hide, as they’d likely arrive there first, but Gill was unable to think clearly anymore. He turned back and walked slowly to his jet.
He reached his vehicle almost in the dark, the first true night after more than 1,250 years. He changed the shape of the chair so that he could nest inside comfortably, then pulled his tail from the back pocket. Just before closing his eyes, he looked one more time at the sky through the open hatch. Suddenly, through the last throbs of the dying halo, he saw a point of light. Then another one, and another one. As the time passed, more and more appeared, some bright, some barely visible. For the first time in 1,250 years, the stars were rising!
CHAPTER 7.
Blink… blink… The red eye squinted when the tachyon signal reached the probe. Blink… blink… The message was recorded and relayed almost instantly to the closest world, a rail-planet around Lacrilia.
The red eye was in fact a bright-red sphere spinning frantically inside a mindlessly complex lattice. If a hypothetical observer might have had the chance to examine the black device that hosted the sphere, he may have found that it wasn’t just black but a black darker than the darkest depths of the universe. The strange cover was built to absorb the photons from the entire light spectrum and convert them into matter to avoid detection. It was a spy probe of unbelievably advanced technology!
The eye worked for the next few hours, faithfully relaying everything it detected. The signal came from a point in space where no star existed, so it could only be a ship or a spying device of some galactic civilization. Nothing should have been there; the area was far from any galactic highway or inhabited planet. Despite that, the place wasn’t exactly devoid of interest, proof being the very presence of the probe in that forsaken corner of the universe.
The red eye scanned the point of origin over and over again, trying to glimpse the source of the transmission. But it could only find that the signal was modulated in a peculiar frequency, largely unused by the builders of the probe or by any other known world, and surely encrypted.
The expansion of the firewall surprised it like this, and no conversion mechanism could save it from cremation. Its cover avidly drank the three-million-degree heat wave like it was designed to do, and the probe exploded in the sea of fire. Just before dying, it managed to transmit that last piece of information.
Had it not been destroyed like that, the red eye would have seen something right at the point of origin, where there was nothing a moment ago: a new star was shining in the galaxy. Its name was Antyra!
All the morning, Gill watched wave after wave of belated refugees running from Alixxor. They were walking on foot, holding hands to avoid getting lost in the crowd. Most of them didn’t carry much luggage, their only concern being to run as far as possible from the city damned41 by the prophets.
Of course, their fear was irrational, Gill thought. Alixxor had the great pyramids, the murra trees, the million tarjis roaming the streets, and above all, Baila was there. No gods in their right kyis would open fire on the city and kill them all. In fact, Alixxor was probably the safest place in all of Antyra…