4. The Devil in Store

Amarrian LTJG Maramer kneeled in the shade of the circular depression, the malinite rocks radiating intense heat. Sweating, he kept his pistol trained on the two women standing along the far wall. The other four pilots were equally as deadpanned, waiting for the sandstorm beyond to end, for the sun to finally set on this Emperor-forsaken planet, and for the two women to do . . . something.

They stood back-to-back, each tall and thin. Red hair flowed from their heads in a strange breeze seeming to affect only them, looking very much like a mirror of each other. He wondered if they were sisters-of-blood. Their tattered clothing flowed in that strange breeze that had surrounded them, and even though they were in the full onslaught of the daylight, they were not sweating. Hell, the one had even taken off what was left of her torn boots, standing barefoot on the scorching sand.

"I'm not getting anything," one of the pilots said. He tapped the PAD unit again, but Maramer knew the malinite would affect their systems until they escaped these rocks.

The ground rumbled again, a little heavier than before. Though they had gotten used to it, no one doubted the seismic proclivity of this area, and that it was ready for . . . something to happen. The outcropping used to run lava, but malinite took thousands of years to solidify so whatever lay immediately beneath them was not lava.

"One of us should go back to the ships, and call for back-up. I don't want these two getting away." Maramer said it, but immediately felt stupid -- five strong Amarri against two thin women, one barefoot and the other no longer in possession of her pistol. "Who's volunteering?"

"Volunteering?" One of them laughed. "I am not military. I got in on this hunt for whatever bounty is on their heads. I already volunteered," he continued, sweeping his hands into the air. "But if I do not go, we will likely roast here and nothing will be gained."

I'll go too," said another, a fat pilot with balding head.

"No, you stay. That would leave us too few to guard them."

The fat pilot laughed. "Afraid she'll jump ya again?"

Maramer stood, glaring at the pilots. He didn't dare tell them that there was no bounty for these women, really just suspected of black-marketeering. He needed all of the pilots to help get these women out.

Blood from his forehead and along his left arm had caked since being jumped from above by the one woman. He stared at them and wrinkled his nose at the strong Matari scent. His family owned many slaves, educating them to be better people, but he never got used to their scent.

The heat, the impatient pilots, all got him moving. Enough of this waiting – he strode to them, reaching out to shake something, anything out of their mouths. His hand began to burn, and he yelled out.

"What the . . .?" The other pilots said in unison, pistols ready, eyes scanning the women, the rocks, and the sky. "What's wrong?"

Maramer kneeled, his right hand clutched in his left, close to his chest. The searing pain had vanished, but he could see blisters forming even now. The two women hadn't even moved, nothing read across their faces at all. He blinked as he saw it again, something he dismissed as ludicrous. Yes, there . . . he could see their breath, like they were standing on the meadows of a winter's morning.

"Lance!" He stood, trying to adjust the pistol into his left hand. He scanned the rocks above, but saw nothing. The other pilots stood around gawking. "Someone is using a lance to shield them. Keep an eye out!"

That was the key to their unusual disposition, Maramer realized. The lance was set to shield, creating a barrier around them with those inside protected from heat as the lance drained the heat from the inside of the bubble to the outside -- the Emperor's best weapon, but also a formidable tool in the enemy's hands.

The ground rumbled again, this time loudly. The pilots started to panic, looking as if about to run. "Stop! The lance can't fire at the same time. Whoever's using it isn't about to let us hurt them, so stop running like rabbits and get up onto those rocks."

The four pilots looked at Maramer, the two women still standing back-to-back, and darted into an openings in the outcropping wall. The ground continued it's rumbling, but this time a keening sound began to fill the depression. Even the women winced as the sound grew.

The four pilots started to scream, and Maramer started toward the closest opening, but found the sound was echoing and increasing in intensity within - the poor bastards. The sound would drive them mad and then kill them all. He kept his back to the rocks, alternately looking at the two women, and the rocks above. He had to kneel as the keening increased, and he fell over in agony and unconsciousness.

He dreamed of the Emperor, old and new, and of the two red-haired women who danced around him like the fire crickets of his home world. He swatted at them, but they always danced out of the way, moving as if they already knew where his hand would be before he struck. Maramer saw himself lying on the grass outside his childhood home now, spreading out and enjoying the warmth beneath him like the embrace of the Emperor. His arms and leg became heavy, spread out as if reaching for every point of the compass.

He coughed, waking, spitting sand from his mouth. He felt sluggish, but thanked the Emperor that the keening sound from the malinite rocks had faded. He then noticed that his hands and feet were tied to the ground, staked out.

He struggled, but the ropes were secure. The sun was beginning to set, and he heard the sounds of movement around him in the rocks. Heat continued to warm the circular depression, radiated from the rocks, probably enough to last through the night.

Insects started to hover over him as he attempted to pull the stakes from the sand, but they were deeply buried and did not move. The little buggers had a strong bite, and he heaved violently to scare them away.

As the first moon rose, he saw the insects flying en masse in the shaft of light that was slowly easing its way towards him. He began to buck against the ropes, hoping beyond hope, the Emperor save him, for the insects would surely eat him alive.

**

Airgoidh and RageChild each woke at the same time, rubbing and coddling their ears.

The sound had been terrible. They were seated in a cave of scoured malinite, which was taking on a strange green hue even as the looked around in semi-wakefulness.

Thankfully cool, it was not as cold as the lance bubble had been near the last. Mostly natural, the cave had many accouterments of man, mostly Matari symbols for freedom and death were painted on the walls, and a large metal pole lay across the mouth of an inner cave, deep in the darkness.

"Hello sisters," a voice said, echoing in the cave from no discernable source. "Welcome to the Cave of the Sun Warden."

Airgoidh recognized the voice, and stood with her bare feet sinking slightly in the cave muck. "Sister? Where are you?" She did not jump when the hand touched her shoulder, although RageChild spun on her heels, ready for the attack.

"Calm yourself sister RageChild. None here but the Rona." Gaelbhan reached out and made the symbol of the Paratwa, a semi-circular movement reminiscent of a crescent moon, followed by the palm outward at the center.

"Your leaving taking from the Sect raised many a hair, sister Wulf," RageChild said, shaking off the sand and muck. "Some in in the Sect that would hunt us down if the Amarr were not the primary targets."

Gaelbhan clutched Airgoidh, and then turned to RageChild. "The hunt? The moons in the sky hunt even the sun. It is a good thing then that one cannot handle war on so many fronts. The Cycle be done."

"The Cycle be done," RageChild replied, affirming the last words of the Faith of Cizin.

I am sorry for the delay in rescue, and the use of the shield." Gaelbhan motioned down for them to follow her along the cavern wall. She raised the lance, which lit the way in pale blue light. "I would rather that the locals found their corpses dead by natural causes rather than by lance fire."

"What was that keening?" RageChild asked, following last.

"The old lava vents get filled with wind vapors, which become superheated in the daytime. The vapor causes the whole vent to become an air pump, and so the sound. The Amarr will be found, trapped in the outcropping, having ventured too close and tarried too long. I have already confiscated their ships, and turned off the tracking modules. The probe was already buried beneath the sands."

"What of the other pilot?" Airgoidh asked, grinning.

Gaelbhan said nothing, but the fleeting image of his bones bleaching in the sun came to them all. Airgoidh stumbled on the pipe that lay at the mouth of the inner cavern. "What is that?"

"The youngsters come here and try to dare each other over the line. It is said beyond that pole there be monsters!"

"Are there, sister?"

"Only us."

The inner cavern was filled with a pool of unknown depth, but a narrow path led around the left hand wall into darkness. Dripping water and splashes of tiny cave creatures were the only noises. The light from the lance began to reflect off the quartz in the walls, and Airgoidh felt as if they were walking on a path among the stars. Gaelbhan maintained a fast stride, which RageChild found refreshing. In the inner compounds of the Sect, one had to walk slowly, in reverence. It took a great deal of time to reach anything there.

As they rounded the farthest bend of the water pool, Gaelbhan stopped, looking out across the water. Truly, the water seemed as deepest space, the quartz reflections filling the water with the imitation of stars, mere sparkling embers. "Look there, sisters, and be ready."

Gaelbhan pointed to the far wall.

A moment passed, then a brilliant light flooded the cave from behind them. Even turned away, the light was as intense as any sun. The cave vanished beneath a layer of bright white as the light struck quartz within the walls, reflecting from pool to wall to pool. In the center of the pool, on a raised dais, a large geometric sculpture stood in a channel of light so intense that all three could only steal glimpses of it. The top most section was definitely pyramidal, but they could not see well enough or long enough to determine the shape of the bottom portion.

"The Gate of the Sun Warden, ancient temple built by the Rona Paratwa."

"Built by the . . .?" RageChild shook her head. Whoever heard of ronin congregating together long enough to build anything other than a stack of Amarri corpses. Being Rona meant a solitary path . . . except for those who found their tway.

Gaelbhan turned into the light and disappeared within. Airgoidh followed, then RageChild, still leery of such a claim. The light had appeared from a short tunnel lined by strange globes containing burning gases. The light eased into standard room normal as they passed through this tunnel, and they were now inside a complex burrowed from the malinite rock. Inside a cavern larger than they could imagine, stone buildings and footpaths lead outward in a spiral.

"The panel is this way," Gaelbhan said, dropping the lance to her side and striding down the path between the rock houses. The houses gave way to oddly shaped rock gardens, some just sitting in the sand as if dropped from the heavens without regard.

The panel that Gaelbhan spoke of was a computer of some kind, but neither Airgoidh nor RageChild could determine its origins. The burnished metal and touch screen seemed rather quaint, but the builders of this place were certainly older than many of their own legends.

Gaelbhan ran her hand along the left side of the panel, which then lit up. A cruel screeching sound came from the panel followed immediately by a lit display.

"That's a language," Airgoidh said as shifting symbols moved from left to right. "I don't know how I know, but that is a language."

"Yes it is, sister," Gaelbhan replied. "I have only begun to recognize it as such, and most of it I cannot translate. After a bit of effort I have discovered something of what the Paratwa once were."

"More rhetoric?" RageChild's face betrayed her interest in the subject, but weary of being preached at, a sentiment Gaelbhan shared.

The display grew reddish and a sun appeared to the right. Lines of white light and a rotating symbol were all that remained as the display stopped, seeming in wait-mode. Gaelbhan began to speak, touching the rotating symbol. "This display is very old, like I said, built by ancients. It is not original to this place, having been created perhaps even before the collapse of the EVE Gate. I suspect it belonged to the the first Paratwa in the regions of Eve. How it got here in this backwater I do not know."

The rotating symbol disappeared as another took its place, a gray horn like icon that floated out and to the center of the panel. Odd text appeared next to the icon. "I only just discovered this, although I do not know why or how. When I first found this place, the panel would not even display. That was nearly four years ago."

"Four years?" Airgoidh turned, looking out across the cavern. "When you were still Dean of the RMS?"

Gaelbhan nodded. "I discovered this place in old texts, but kept it hidden from those I trusted. I felt a strong attraction to this cavern, and like my sister-of-blood, I often saw it in dreams. Here," she pointed to the single icon. "This one represents the Rona, a single body, as yet unjoined with a tway."

Touching the icon, another symbol appeared as the Rona glyph dropped to the bottom of the display. "This is the Tway Glyph." "Now joined and whereas two bodies, both sharing one mind." RageChild seemed extremely interested, and her previous tone had died.

Gaelbhan touched the second icon, and a third glyph appeared, but once again emerging from the Rona. "Sister Airgoidh, you are not of the Sect of the Ra, so these things may seem strange to you, but this icon is important to us all. You have heard of the Paratwa, but only as ghosts and myths. Let me tell you of how things were in those days before the EVE Gate.”

Gaelbhan spoke of the Paratwa, more a lecture on history than an impassioned speech.

“The Paratwa before the first jump to EVE Gate were decidedly different in the ways that they were created. They were created and cloned, and they were the result of experiments concerning the McQuade Unity."

She could see that Airgoidh and RageChild did not recognize that phrase. "We can discuss much of that later, but first I wanted to show you how this third icon is linked. See the line here? It appears from the Rona glyph, and is connected to it."

"A child?" Airgoidh asked.

"A family member, like a sister or brother."

RageChild's eyebrows rose. "This Unity you mentioned . . . we learned from the Sect that Paratwa were discovered to actually be twins in those early days. In truth, Cizin, The Transitional One, created the unity of the minds throughout the universe, all to better rebalance the whole. Are you saying that Paratwa are born in more than two bodies?"

Gaelbhan touched the third symbol, and a fourth icon appeared and slid into position. "The McQuade Unity was the original experiment by humans on other humans, in truth Cizin's knowledge birthing in the minds of those scientists. In the beginning, Paratwa were discovered to be twins, but as Cizin endowed the scientists with greater knowledge, they discovered that the McQuade Unity contained sympathetic resonance in the embryos. They had previously believed that the embroyos separating into more than two divisible and complete entities was an error, but soon learned it was the natural growth pattern of Paratwa."

Gaelbhan turned to them, pointing to the fourth symbol as another line broke from it and moved left. A series of four dots appeared, and then lines, then two more dots above and below connected the thing together. As the panel stopped, lines connected the six dots, and the four Rona icons had moved to the far left. "The Paratwa are more than twins, more than anything we imagined before. The Unity of Mind is shown here. So, sisters, to answer your questions, we do not normally unite in just two bodies, nor three."

"We are four?" RageChild whispered.

Gaelbhan nodded. "We are four. These last two points represent the shared minds of the two pairs of tway. A Unity. And sister-of-blood, you are a Paratwa, a member of our Unity.”

Airgoidh seemed out of sorts, but Gaelbhan touched her shoulder. "We are blood sisters, you and I. We are mothered by the same parents, and just as you did, I had dreamed of you for years before we rescued each other from the Amarr. I do not fully understand this," she said, pointing to the panel, "and I can imagine you do not either. You were not of the Sect, but being of the Sect of the Paratwa Ra is not a requirement to be who you are. RageChild and I are Rona, the Cast-off. It is more important that we are sisters."

RageChild too clutched Airgoidh close. She had come looking for Gaelbhan here on Amamake for an explanation of why her sister-of-faith had left the Sect, and perhaps even to see if they were indeed tway. Now she learned that this young Brutor standing beside her, Airgoidh, was also her tway. "We are sisters, the three. Paratwa, Rona, the enslaved liberated. I do not fear this, and so I ask that you do not fear, sister. Remember the bright light within your mind as you dreamed of Gaelbhan, and how it guided you yesterday when you were chased on the sands by the Amarr - that is our strength, no matter how far apart we may be.”

Airgoidh seemed to settle somewhat, but RageChild realized the problem. “You two say you are sisters-of-blood. But you are Sebiestor, Gaelbhan, and she is Brutor as I am. How can she be from the same Sebiestor mother?”

Gaelbhan took on the look of a troubled mind, perhaps remembering how her mother had died. “Good sister, do not be taken in by the Amarrian science that pervades our schools. Our mother was the daughter of a Brutor and a Sebiestor, and for many that is a curse. I do not speak of it to others for that reason. Despite the Amarrians belief in us as genetically simple animals, I am Sebiestor and she is Brutor because of our mother’s mixed genetic heritage. The intentions of Cizin are unknowable as a whole, ut his genetic manipulation has evident through the universe.”

Gaelbhan untangled herself enough to touch the Unity glyph, and a series of three separate lines of text appeared in the center of the display. "But enough of that. What do you make of those?"

A moment passed, but both Airgoidh and RageChild answered as one even though they did not understand the language. "Coordinates."

"Yes, sisters, coordinates to the most amazing discovery of my lifetime. A Unity Temple amongst the stars, here in Amamake." She laughed, and felt free of many nagging doubts. "We will rest, then let us away to these coordinates. I have something very special to show you."

**

Zayard found four of the Amarri, each gripping the others in a tight ball, their faces ones of pain and madness. Stupid. The malinite howling would have caused that, he knew, but where was the fifth pilot?

He wandered a bit in the outcropping, stepping into a circular depression and cool air.

The sun had risen, but had not reached down into the depression as yet. Zayard found his fifth pilot there, on the ground, hardly a bit of flesh on his bones -- sand partially covered him. The Matari moved in closer, disgusted as he found bugs crawling around in his skull, the cause of this one's condition.

"Should listen to the public warning system," Zayard said to the pilot, shifting away sand to see if any of the Amarr's gear might be worth salvaging. "We didn't install that thing for our amusement, ya know." The antenna and automated equipment sat on top of his bar in the settlement, really the only place with a full-time staff member of the Peoples' Front in this part of the universe.

Finding nothing, he stepped back and stumbled over a protrusion in the sand. He kicked at a stake in the ground, then found the other three along with the ropes that attached the skeleton of the Amarr to these stakes. "So, death by intentional torture."

No big loss.

cont...