Children of Zanar 1: The Zanari Inheritance Read online

  ‘Yeah, well, the soundproofing in the cabins isn’t as good as I thought.’

  Thea’s lips quirked. ‘I’ll have a word with Sienna about giving our young novice a break.’

  ‘Possibly a good idea. Obviously doesn’t explain why you’re up though?’

  ‘I started worrying about Kaya. You know how that kind of thing goes.’

  Jinny nodded solemnly. ‘You think about something that worries you. Then you find all you’re thinking about is your worries. Then you start coming up with disaster scenarios about your worries. Then–’

  ‘Yeah, Jinny, I get the–’

  ‘– the next thing you know you’ve cleaned all your guns and you’re out looking for–’

  ‘Jinny, I get the picture, you can–’

  ‘– a worry to shoot.’

  ‘My worries aren’t available to shoot,’ Thea pointed out.

  ‘Blow up?’

  Thea shook her head, smiling despite herself. ‘Okay, worries temporarily banished. I’m not going to be able to take care of them properly until she gets here though. And I can’t help worrying about what they’re doing to her.’

  Jinny nodded and slumped into the co-pilot’s seat. ‘I know. Neither can I. I even think that’s why Sienna’s being so enthusiastic about her “training.”’

  ‘Maybe. Probably. I just wish I knew what was happening to Kaya…’

  Monteagle’s Prize, Hyperspace.

  The noise and the lights hammered at Kaya from, it seemed, all sides. She was never exactly sure when it started, because she had no idea what the time was at any point, but she got the feeling it ended not long before breakfast. Though she was also not sure whether she nodded off after the sound stopped, but–

  She would have screamed if her mouth had not been full of spongy plastic. Instead, she tumbled off her bunk and banged her helmet against the deck and… Maybe that was not a bad idea… Pulling her head back, she began bashing her helmet against the decking.

  After a dozen attempts, about all she had managed to do was prove that the helmet seemed to be armoured, and padded. The last point was good. Kaya found the bunk by touch and worked her way to one end of it. Then she turned around and charged, head down, at the opposite wall. She could not even hear the clang which she figured had to sound when she hit, but she picked herself up and ran back the other way.

  7/2/483.

  ‘She has bruises on her arms, shoulders, and knees,’ Monteagle growled.

  ‘That’s–’ Jay began, but Monteagle was not finished.

  ‘The helmet prevented brain damage, but the medics say she compressed several vertebrae in her spine. The swelling is causing pressure on her nerves. They’re treating her with anti-inflammatory drugs and monitoring her life signs in case there are problems with her autonomic nervous system. They think she’ll pull through, but there may be some permanent damage. They won’t know until the swelling subsides.’

  ‘That’s bad, but why wasn’t she monitored and why are you angry with me?’ Jay suspected he knew the answer to the last part, but playing it innocent was probably for the best.

  ‘We didn’t think she needed watching, considering that she was restrained and isolated. And you know damn well why I’m blaming you for this, you son of a bitch!’ Monteagle was no longer growling. He seemed to be well past growling. ‘You rigged a program into the restraint controls to blast her with noise and lights for four hours a night when you were sure no one would notice. Unfortunately for you, the techs were able to figure it out five minutes after they went looking.’

  Jay examined his ‘partner in crime’ carefully and made a fairly fast assessment: Monteagle wanted blood. He had lost men and equipment on Teladish: they had been in-system long enough to know that. Now he might lose the one thing he had got out of the entire debacle: Kaya. Jay had a strong feeling the Bowrains would just want Kaya’s gene sequence and a fresh corpse would be fine, though they might get a higher price for a live zanari. That, however, was highly debatable: the Bowrain family had any number of reasons for wanting any zanari they came across dead, but Kara was something a little different…

  ‘I don’t think you’ve really grasped the threat she poses to everyone aboard this ship,’ Jay said. ‘You know what two of her friends did to your base. You know they don’t give up, ever. Faced with certain defeat, the Zanari Protectorate–’

  ‘Refused to surrender to the inevitable?’ Monteagle said. ‘Funny, I told her that. She said they sued for peace before the nuking of Zanar.’

  ‘She wasn’t there.’

  ‘No, she wasn’t. And neither were we. History is written by the survivors, and the Bowrain and Karraph families were survivors with a strong desire to justify genocide. And those women you say will be looking for her were there when Zanar fell, and they were the ones who told the girl what happened.’

  ‘They were trying to–’

  ‘Just don’t,’ Monteagle snapped. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not setting her free to wander the ship and our deal will continue. However, she will be kept unconscious in medbay, in a null field, until we arrive. You are confined to quarters until we arrive at Giltanish Prime. Your cabin’s terminal will be restricted to entertainment only. If you leave your cabin for anything other than a shipwide emergency, I will confine you in the brig. If you go anywhere near the medbay without a missing limb, my staff have orders to shoot you. Are we clear, Sor Colder?’

  ‘Quite clear, Colonel Monteagle,’ Jay replied contritely. Inwardly, he smiled.

  Sister Clementina, Giltanish Prime, 8/2/483.

  Thea stood at the table in the lounge, moving her eyes between the sensor-display echo on one of the room’s screens and the large-scale printed-out map of the island that Cassandra had provided the data for. The magnified image on one of the screens was showing a cliff face that fell into the ocean and Thea was examining it as a possible point of entry.

  ‘Isn’t that going to be a bit dangerous?’ Nirayla asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Thea replied. ‘That’s why it’s an excellent choice. There are unlikely to be sensors on the cliff since no one in their right mind would go that way when there are plenty of beaches to land on.’

  ‘Oh. I hadn’t thought of that.’

  ‘Hopefully, neither have the Monteagles.’

  ‘But then you’re going to be on the island where there are sensors.’

  ‘At night. I’ve a camouflage suit which should make it extremely hard for them to spot me.’ Thea lifted her head and gave Nirayla a quick smile. ‘I have done this sort of thing before.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course.’ Nirayla still thought the idea was crazy. On the screen, she could see waves crashing into the base of the cliff. The island had been the top of a volcano at some point in the past, but that was a long time ago and the ocean had been beating against it ever since the fires had died, or moved on to the next island northward in the chain which was over a hundred kilometres away. The cliff had formed when a section of land had collapsed into the sea; it was sheer, very vertical, and there was no beach below it. Nirayla knew little enough about climbing, but she knew the ocean, and getting out of the water safely was going to be hard.

  ‘There,’ Jinny said. She was just watching the display, unconcerned with the map. ‘They’ve got a couple of men patrolling along the clifftop.’

  ‘Mark the time,’ Thea said. ‘We’ll see what the cycle is.’

  ‘That’s the first we’ve seen in thirty minutes. They aren’t on a short patrol cycle.’

  ‘I doubt they have the manpower to mount extensive patrols. That’s what the sensors are for.’

  Jinny gave a nod and carried on watching the screen.

  ‘So what happens now?’ Nirayla asked.

  ‘We watch and learn until it gets dark,’ Thea replied. ‘You should go up on deck with Sienna and have a relaxing afternoon in the sun. What’s left of it anyway. I go in tonight, and tomorrow you and Sienna will be visiting the elder Monteagle. Just a senior Sister and her
novice out on a tutorial pleasure cruise, stopping off to visit an occasional client of the chapter house.’

  ‘Me?!’ Nirayla squeaked.

  ‘You’ll be quite safe. Sienna will make sure you are, and she won’t be doing anything Monteagle could get suspicious about.’

  ‘And if anything bad does happen,’ Jinny said, ‘they’ll have to deal with me as well as Sienna. Until then, I’ll just be your overworked crew who is just so thankful to have some time off while you parade around the island. I think I’ll just lie on the foredeck and sunbathe. I might even go topless.’

  ‘You think that’ll distract the guards?’ Nirayla asked.

  ‘Huh. They’re men, aren’t they?’

  ‘Actually, we don’t know the gender balance,’ Thea pointed out.

  ‘Mostly men,’ Nirayla said. ‘From what I’ve heard anyway. There are a couple of women, but most of them are men.’

  Jinny grinned. ‘And this is why we have the local girl with us.’

  Nirayla returned the grin. ‘I thought it was just to distract Sister Sienna from her worries about Kaya.’

  ‘That too.’

  Monteagle Island, 9/2/483.

  Getting onto the rock face and staying on it for the first three or four metres while the waves tried to suck Thea off had been non-trivial. However, she had managed it and from there things were a lot easier. Thea was a naturally good free-climber thanks to a flexible body, her training as a soldier, and the fact that her telekinesis helped her keep a grip where she should have slipped, and she was at the top of the cliff less than twenty minutes after swimming to the bottom of it.

  I’m at the top, she said in the silence of her mind. No sign of guards. No indication of sensors. Moving in.

  Good luck, Sienna’s voice said into her mind.

  Luck was not really a factor, but Thea accepted the gesture with a returned sense of warmth and darted across the ten-metre clearance band which had been maintained between the cliff’s edge and the wooded land beyond it. The undergrowth was a little on the strange side. It was all Earth-standard plant life, aside from a few shrubs and a couple of trees which had been found on other worlds and transplanted. Giltanish Prime had had nothing native larger than algae even before the Ishara Complex had come in and sterilised everything. On the island, however, the plants were forced to contend with salt blown in from the ocean, relatively low rainfall, and soil which was both thin and very fertile. It created thick undergrowth of fairly stunted plants. The trees in particular were short and seemed to have decided to put down a lot of roots. And, as Thea worked her way inland and northward, it became apparent that the trees had to deal with periodic storms which had a lot of power behind them. There were a number of fallen trees making clearings which were thickly overgrown with low plants but seemed to have little in the way of saplings.

  Thea’s primary aim was to check out Garaka Monteagle’s home on the island, hence her northward motion. Garaka’s place was inland from the north beach; Xaviran had his place to the south, placed back from a beach and a small, bulwarked marina. Sienna would get a proper look at Xaviran’s place in the morning, but they needed to know about Garaka’s. The map showed a road leading around the far side of the island from the cliff, joining the two compounds. There seemed to be no faster way to get from south to north, but Thea was also looking for trackways which might provide alternative routes. There was also the landing pad, closer to Garaka’s house and set on a levelled area beside the perimeter road.

  There were several objectives to complete and maybe six hours of good darkness to get them done in. Keeping an eye out for likely places to hole up during daylight hours, Thea moved on as fast as she could through the undergrowth.

  ~~~

  The landing pad was a concrete platform with thick sidewalls to handle the backwash from reaction drives, and a fairly lightweight comms and sensors package mounted on a mast outside the walls to handle terminal guidance. There were a couple of turrets with miniguns mounted in them, but the fact that the weapons had been unidentified by the Sisterhood suggested that they were shut down if something was on the pad. It was, if Thea could get in undetected, a theoretically viable ambush location, but she would have no way of knowing exactly when Kaya would be arriving or how many people would be with her. There was also no way Thea could put the Sword down on the pad which probably had an upper limit of three hundred tonnes, with that being a tight fit.

  The roadway from the landing site to the house had been surfaced and cleared to either side. An ambush was barely possible, but it meant a dash across open ground to attack and the possibility of attempting to get into an armoured vehicle when the occupants had a hostage.

  No, it was going to have to be an infiltration op on the house. Thea was sure Kaya would be taken to the house, though ‘house’ did not seem to quite cover what she found when she got to it.

  Garaka Monteagle’s compound did have a fairly large house in it, but there were secondary buildings surrounding it, and a three-metre wall surrounding those. Thea climbed one of the short trees near the edge of the cleared perimeter around the wall and used that vantage point to get a better view, relying on her camouflage suit and her immobility to avoid detection. Because detection was a possibility thanks to the automated turrets on the corners and midpoints of the walls. Thea recognised the type and felt a little better: they were not the latest models and while their weaponry was just as deadly, their sensors were less than perfect.

  There were solar panels and what Thea suspected was a small fusion plant within the compound walls. At a guess, the reactor was there as a backup. Maybe it got used more in winter. Maybe the panels got hit by storms more often than Monteagle liked. There was also what looked like a barracks unit, a small one for four to six guards. There had been no sign of foot patrols since Thea had arrived, and she suspected that meant they relied on the sensor arrays after dark. A light in a blocky building beside the barracks suggested that they had a guard on duty through the night hours, however.

  The house itself was a two-storey structure with a swimming pool directly behind it. Someone had tried to make it look attractive, but there was only so much you could do when you were designing something to be a fortress as well as a home. The windows were smaller than Thea would have gone for, and on the ground floor they were barred. All the lights were off and there was no seeing inside since there were heavy shutters down over the doors and windows.

  Working her way around to the front of the house was not easy given the cleared areas, but there was a screen of trees between the house and the beach, which made things easier, or at least viable. The compound gate, and there was only one, was in the front wall and looked as though it had been designed to survive an impact from a nuke. There were turrets on either side of it.

  The front of the house was stepped. The upper floor was set back a little to allow for a sun terrace on the roof of the lower floor. That put the personal rooms up on the top floor for sure. That made sense so long as the windows were armoured. Someone wanting to get in had to go through the more heavily fortified lower floor. Unless they just went up the outside to the terrace and broke in from there… There had to be something more to that terrace.

  ~~~

  A fist-sized rock floated gently over the front wall of the Monteagle residence and onto the sun terrace. Thea had managed to guide it over the wall without anything noticing the movement, but to keep line of sight she had had to keep it higher than she would have liked as it crossed the gap to the building. Really, it was quite amazing no one had noticed. Or maybe a relatively small, cold object had not appeared that bright on the sensors. Whatever, she had her chosen tool in place and, as yet, there was no sign of anything strange on the terrace. Clenching her will, Thea picked up the pace, slamming the rock across the terrace and into the nearest window.

  Twin turrets erupted from the tiling, miniguns swinging out to search for whatever was attempting to beat its way in through the window. The heads swive
lled almost frantically before settling into a resting pattern and then, presumably when the operator could find nothing on his scanners, they retracted back into their housings.

  The terrace looked exactly as it had done for just under a minute before a door opened onto the terrace and two figures carrying assault rifles walked out. Neither of them was in armour and one of them was a woman. They searched, but by that time, Thea had secreted her rock behind a planter. They found nothing and retreated, likely putting the impact down to a bird or something.

  Thea lay back on the tree branch she was using as a perch. Okay, so the response time on the guards was not exactly spectacular, but that might improve if there was an obvious threat. Concealed turrets could be an issue. There could be more of the things and she was unlikely to know about them until they appeared and started firing.

  Well, there was nothing much to do about that for now, and at least she knew it was an unknown factor. She would find herself somewhere to lay low for the day where she could, hopefully, keep an eye on the compound and just keep watching.

  ~~~

  Nirayla was nervous as she stepped off the bridge which Jinny had placed onto the jetty the Sister Clementina was moored at. She had never really tried to fool someone before, not like this, not in real life. Training, yes. There had been plenty of training in ensuring that someone could not penetrate the veneer of calm Sisters habitually wore, but this…

  A man appeared at the end of the jetty, clad in smart casuals and flanked by two men in similar clothing carrying guns of some kind slung at their sides. Nirayla figured that the man had to be Xaviran Monteagle because he seemed to be the leader and he was smiling. He was tall, over one hundred and eighty centimetres, and heavyset, but he was starting to age noticeably and gravity was beginning to pull on him more in some places than others. His face had a craggy quality, handsome, but aged with quite noticeably thickened eyebrows, and there was grey in his dark, tightly trimmed hair. He, at least, was unarmed, but he was the man they were trying to trick and–