The Namura Stone (22 page)

Six felt his heart expand, threatening to take his breath away. Just the touch of her hand could do that to him! He looked down at her and smiled. Even though he knew she was still gasping to get her breath back, he still had to smile. “Ready?”

He knew what answer she would give, and she didn’t disappoint. “Of course,” she said instantly. “Whenever you like!”

His eyes crinkled, softened for a second, and met hers. There was a moment’s precious hiatus in all of the noise around them. Just a fragment of time when only they were important, when all else disappeared and lost its immediacy.

It was only one small point in their timelines, but it was one that would hang there, crystallised, immortalized forever.

Then Six tore his gaze away from the person he loved, and fixed it on the crowding Dessites in front of them. He lifted his sword above his head.

“FOR KWAIIIIDE!” he shouted, and flung himself at them, his bloodthirsty wife at his heels with an intimidating battle howl of her own.

LEDIN HAD STRUCK out immediately at the Dessite holding Grace. The sight of the pain on her face had caused his heart to stutter, but made his determination only stronger.

He lunged at the offending alien, his sword aimed directly at the centre of its neck. It twisted away, turning so that the whole of its broad back faced him. At the same time, it straightened its membranes, releasing a stream of liquid. It was obviously continuing with the torque on Grace, too, for her muffled screams could be heard from behind the membranes.

Ledin hastily pulled part of his tunic over the mask pack, and shouted for Bennel’s help.

The companion ran over. “What?”

“Look! It has turned to face the wall, and hunched over, so I can’t get at its neck! It is tearing Grace apart. Quickly! What can we do?”

Bennel darted to one side and returned with one of the dark poles which the Dessites had used against Arcan earlier. “Here, let’s see if we can get the end of this underneath him,” he suggested, pulling the pole forward. They struggled for a few moments, and then managed to situate the point of the dark stick underneath the lower membranes of the alien. It either didn’t notice, or didn’t want to move, for it gave no sign of awareness. Bennel darted to a nearby stack of memory discs and pulled away a length of cooling tube, testing it for strength. “We need to position this underneath the pole, so that it acts as a fulcrum, and then jump together on the pole. That should tilt him over nicely. If we administer a sharp push just when he is tilted, it should be enough to tip him out of that corner.”

Tallen, who was fighting the remained Dessite, found the time to stare sideways at the pole indignantly.

“You two are going to war with a stick? What sort of warrior does that?”

Ledin glared at him. “One who wins?” he suggested.

Tallen looked disgusted. “It is not the Namuri way,” he sentenced with firmness.

“Yeah, yeah. Tell us about it another time.” Bennel and Ledin had continued to work, and now had the fulcrum set up. They nodded at each other.

“Now!”

Together, they stepped onto the black rod and, with some difficulty, managed to keep their balance. There was a moment’s wait, because the membranes gave way under the force they suddenly felt, but then the pole pushed at the flat part of the torso of the alien, and it gradually tilted over to one side.

Ledin waited, and then gave it as heavy a push as he could manage. It tottered a couple of steps, and then crashed down to the floor, where its membranes rippled helplessly, and Grace was able to scramble away from it.

Bennel drew his sword again, and Ledin grabbed at Grace, to pull her to him.

“Are you all right?” He examined her face worriedly.

She closed her eyes and breathed out slowly. “I think so,” she murmured. “Though that Dessite just stretched me a couple of sizes taller.”

Ledin pressed his lips together. He and Six had spoken about giving up their own lives to save Arcan’s before, but it was somehow much, much harder to envisage giving up his wife’s life. He looked away and blew a small sigh of relief.

“Right. Let’s …”

His words trailed off. There were now dozens of Dessites in the chamber; their chances of escape looked to be in the range of minus nil to zero.

Ledin and Bennel held their swords in front of them, and Ledin pushed Grace behind him. Anger sparked in her eyes; she searched quickly for her own catana which she had dropped. When she spotted it, she moved over and bent, with some pain, to pick it up. Then she stepped alongside her husband, her head held high.

“I’m ready,” she said.

The three of them exchanged a long look, and then moved with determination towards the waiting aliens, some of whom had managed to retrieve the rest of the black poles and were still successfully curtailing Arcan’s movements.

Tallen turned to the alien in front of him, the smallest of smiles on his face. Fighting with levers! Toppling your opponent over! He shook his head. Then he raised his sword, ready to deal in a more time-honoured way with his opponent.

The Dessite reacted to his first lunge with the sword, and the blade bounced harmlessly off one of the black poles, jarring Tallen’s hands as it crashed into the solid stick.

The Namuri circled his opponent warily. He was quite ready to die, eager even, but he drew the line at being torn in two by some sort of giant sea cucumber with frills. It was not, he felt, the honourable death that all Namuri craved. It would not, he determined, be his.

He considered his options. This alien – one of the biggest of all of the Dessites in the chamber – must tower over him by more than twice his own height again. It was going to be difficult to reach the susceptible neck region.

Tallen blinked. He was finding it hard to ignore the pressing wall of Dessite minds, too. Although it was being effectively blocked at the moment by the trimorphs and the canths, it was still there, and seemed to impose its solid will on part of him too. It made his brain foggy, his actions cloudy, his will falter.

The eyes of the huge Dessite seemed to peer into his own. The wrinkles were deep flaps – ridges of skin which completely circled them in concentric rings.

Tallen shook his head. This was getting him nowhere. His job was to protect the orthogel entity, to stop the Dessites. With a fierce growl, he lunged again at the alien, and his sword penetrated the body in front of him.

The Dessite dropped one of the two sticks it was still holding, and the membranes closest to the sword grabbed out past the hilt, fastening onto Tallen’s hands. He gave a shout and tried to pull back. But he was caught, struggling fiercely, and the large alien was pulling him in, wrapping more and more of its membranes around him. He felt a furious sense of failure.

However, the capture had made the Dessite drop the other rod, which created a small gap in the Dessites’ makeshift defenses. Arcan was now in a position to flow around the poles left in his proximity. The orthogel entity quickly made his way over to Tallen’s attacker, and it took him only a second to cover Tallen and transport him through the orthogel to the other side of the room.

Tallen looked up at Arcan gratefully. “Thank you.”

“It was nothing.”

Tallen saw that the orthogel entity was shining. “What is it, Arcan?”

The shape in front of him shimmered. “Do you know what this is?” A blue stone appeared in front of him.

“Of course. It is a namura stone. The symbol of my clan.”

“It is rather more than that.”

“I know. We believe that the namura stone holds the soul of the land, and the spirit of the Namuri. It is unique.”

“It certainly is. I have just passed a carbon nanographite rod to release you, and that part of me close to this namura stone felt no trapping effect.”

Tallen stared. “You mean …”

“For some reason this substance impedes the carbon nanographite trap. I think I may be able to escape.”

The Namuri leapt to his feet. “Arcan! That is great news!” He looked around, and saw that the others were at that very moment attacking what looked to be an impenetrable line of Dessites. “Then … help the others. Quickly! The timing couldn’t be better.”

A shadow ran through the orthogel entity. “It may not be that easy,” he said slowly. “There is only this one small namura stone, and I need time to find out how to take advantage of this, how to utilize this one small impurity to tunnel out. It is not clear to me how much the stone will be able to withstand. I am looking into it now.”

Tallen nodded. He wished he had his own namura stone with him, but that was back in the village. He could see more of the Dessites approaching. They had picked up several additional black rods and were bearing down again on the orthogel entity. He would not be free to move around for very long. The Namuri boy dipped his head.

“Then, look fast, Arcan. We may not have very much time.” He smiled in the direction of the orthogel, and then raised his sword again, turning away. “I have to go – the others need me.”

Arcan flashed. “I will do my best. It is our only hope. Otherwise I shall have to use the explosives.”

“Good luck!” The words of the Namuri seemed to evaporate in the air as the black nanographite rods again began to force Arcan back. But the orthogel entity was better able to resist now, and, far in the depths of his being, he was frantically examining the possibility of breaking the quantum trap he was in.

Part of Arcan was aware of the danger his friends were in. He could feel their desperation as the sheer numbers of the large aliens began to overcome them. They were fighting bravely, but their future was already written. What could six small bipeds do against such opponents? They had been more than lucky to survive so far.

No, the orthogel entity knew that it was now up to him. He had to either use the explosives to destroy all of them or find a way out of the trap. If he used the explosive, his friends would never be able to come back. He himself would probably survive: the part of him left on Valhai would be able to regenerate cells, over time. He would certainly be badly wounded, he might be maimed forever, perhaps, but it was unlikely that he would die. The same could not be said for Grace, or Six, or Diva or Ledin, or Bennel or Tallen. Arcan darkened. It was time to use the enormous brain which he had been blessed with, and find a way out – for all of them. He withdrew inside himself, removing his brain cells as far away from the fighting as he could. It was time to think.

THE OTHERS WERE never going to last long against the Dessites. The sea-going aliens didn’t need weapons; they were extremely dangerous as they were.

Six was aware that Diva was tiring. His own thoughts, because of the spray and the mental fog of the Dessite wall, were cloudy. However many times he shook his head to clear it, the sensation of dizziness remained. His hands still stabbed at the aliens before him, but it was as if somebody else were inside his body, somebody who lived a long way away, who was manipulating him from outside the Ammonite galaxy. Each instruction his brain sent to his muscles seemed to take aeons to be obeyed. It was like trying to think through jelly, walk through honey, fight through curtains of hanging creepers.

He tried to hold his head up, tried to protect Diva, tried to fight for her life, and for his own. But where one Dessite withdrew, another took its place. More spray was released into the air, and it became even harder for them to see what was happening, whilst their Dessite opponents were able to pinpoint them with more and more accuracy.

He struggled on, moving by sheer determination alone. Beside him Diva was doing the same. She was no longer smiling. There was a certain greyness about her eyes, a tautness about her mouth. Even though she was wielding her dagger with great accuracy, she was unable to inflict very much damage on the aliens, and she knew it. It was all she could do to avoid their ever-grasping membranes, to keep herself out of their reach.

Her breath was coming raggedly, now. She was ready to drop, but would not let herself. The end was coming; she could feel it. Every bone in her body knew it. Still, she fought on.

Grace slashed to right and to left, holding her catana with both hands. She could hardly see anymore and so couldn’t tell how much damage she was inflicting on the enemy, but she knew it wasn’t enough. Her eyes were finding it hard to see through the liquid spray which was sticking to the mask pack, but she wasn’t going to stop; she could hear her husband still fighting at her side and she wasn’t about to give up now.

Ledin thought that the sound of his wife struggling to survive would kill him, if nothing else did first. He hated himself for putting her in danger, was sure that he could have done something to avoid this. But now it was too late. There was no hope. It was over, and some part of him, deep inside, was already dying of shame. He was still willing to forfeit his own life, but his mind could not accept the loss of hers.

Bennel heard the sounds of the battle from far away. He wielded his sword as best he could, but his mind was already with Lannie. He could see her, and the children. They were waiting for him on the green slopes of Mount Palestron, where the air was pure, and breathing was easy.

They all fought on, waiting for the end.