Xiantha (The Ammonite Galaxy Series, Book 3)

Chapter 15

AS THE CAGE she was in reached the Summit Platform, Grace felt herself float down and rejoin her body. Instantly she became aware again of the supreme discomfort she was feeling, the cold, the damp, the biting gag in her mouth, the difficulty breathing through it. She opened her eyes and looked out, outwards from the rexelene container, from the metal cage, out into the black sky and the stars.

For they were almost above the stratosphere now. The northern lights were still visible, especially the red Elves, but they were looking down onto them. The sky in front was black, outer space, and dotted with an infinity of stars and galaxies.

Grace caught sight momentarily of the Pictoris, in the Giant Crab Constellation, all those light years away. She remembered the avifauna – Six’s booby birds – and felt a wave of sadness that she would never have the chance to visit them again. Her eyes took in the huge orb of Cian, much bigger than it had ever been on Valhai, and the crescent of Cesis with a red Almagest glowing brightly behind it. Valhai wasn’t visible, at least from her position, and that saddened her too. She would have liked to see it one last time. She grimly blocked the thought of the people who might miss her and wondered what Diva would do in this situation – not that Diva would ever be stupid enough to get herself into a situation like this! Finally she made herself stare as defiantly as she could at Atheron. There was no other way to fight back. Even Diva would have found no better weapon.

The Sellite caught her fierce glare, and laughed. “Do you really think I care if you look at me?” he gloated, making Xenon turn around in surprise from his own contemplation of space. “As if I care for one small girl! You are simply an impediment. Nothing more.”

Grace kept her eyes fixed on his, and tried not to blink, not to break that fragile connection for even a split second. She had no particular goal, no particular plan, but it made her feel that at least she was doing something to help herself. A very little thing, true, but it was something. She endeavoured to transmit how very much she despised him, how she thought him a traitor to his world, how she hated what he had become.

Finally Atheron walked over to her, and ripped the gag off. “What?” he demanded. “What is it that you want to say to me, girl?”

Grace was gulping in great gasps of air gratefully, and found at first that when she tried to speak she couldn’t. Her tongue had furred over and swollen up inside her mouth. It took her almost a minute before she could vocalize any words at all.

“Your plan won’t work!” she told him.

“Of course it will work! I have thought of everything.” The head of the education house stroked his beard. “It is true that it would have been easier if we had been able to get you into to one of the space shuttles, and up to the trader waiting in orbit, but – all in all – things have worked out pretty well. Your great friend Arcan is out of action—”

“Only temporarily.”

“Rubbish. You saw what happened to him! He literally turned to jelly!” Atheron laughed, showing his exultance.

Grace shook her head. “Arcan is still whole, on Valhai,” she insisted. “You have only put a tiny part of him out of action. And for how long? You don’t know, do you?”

“I have already arranged for the orthogel entity to be taken care of, on Valhai. It will be long enough, believe me, to give me time for what I have in mind. And your . . . your precious Arcan is now powerless to stop me. Sell will belong to the Sellites again by the time I have finished, and Xenon and I will be ruling the whole binary system! All I have to do is expose him to the new orange compound before the alien recovers. That is why we have been producing more.”