They stood there like that as the telegraph operator continued sending the message, and then a longer time passed as they waited for a reply. Finally, the machine began clacking and the operator began writing it down, one letter at a time. “We will comply, so long as you guarantee that no harm is done to my daughter,” said Nilon at last, reading from the pad. “It will take time to bring the General here. We will have to arrange a ceasefire, then send a messenger. It may take several hours.”

     Nilon looked at the clock on the wall. It was nine fifteen in the morning. It would be around half past ten in Marboll. He wrote another message on the note pad and handed it to the operator. ‘You have six hours before we curse your daughter half way back. If you have not surrendered by dawn tomorrow, we will curse her the rest of the way back.’

     He then gestured to the guard, who released Ardria’s hand. The fear returned in a rush as the parent bond was broken, making her stagger back, gasping, close to panic. An impulse almost made her bolt for the door. To just run, all pride and dignity forgotten. It took a tremendous effort of will to overcome it. There was no safety out there. There was no escape. She felt her heart hammering in her chest and knew there was the wild look of a trapped animal in her eyes.

     She forced herself to look at the King, to meet his unsympathetic gaze and found that, to her surprise, there was sympathy there. Sympathy and a look of admiration, as if he knew the courage and strength it had taken to remain in control of herself. Then he nodded to her, the acknowledgement of an equal. “A Princess indeed,” he said, more to himself than to her.

     “We're done here for now,” he then said. “Return the Princess to her quarters, and let me know the moment we get any word from Marboll.”

     Both the guards nodded, and then the Princess walked in stately dignity to the door before the guard had an excuse to lay a hand on her again.

☆☆☆

     King Leothan stared at the telegraph machine as if it was a mad dog that had just bitten him. “There are going to be code words,” he said. “So they know they really are talking to the people they think they are. I don't suppose their CO was among the prisoners we took.”

     “I’ll check,” said Amberley, “But I don't think we’re going to be that lucky. And even if we are, it'll probably take a lot longer than six hours to get the codes out of him.”

     “So the moment we start talking, they’re going to know I'm not the Carrow General.” He looked up at the clock. “That means the Brigadier's got six hours to rescue her.”

     “He doesn’t know there’s a deadline. We don't even know if he’s in the city at all.”

     “We know he wasn't with her when she entered the city. He wasn't killed with the rest of her escort.” He picked up the notepad the telegraph operator had recorded the conversation on, read back what Ardria had said to him. “Everyone who came with me from Marboll is dead,” he read back. “She's telling us the Brigadier's not dead, and he won't need a deadline. He’ll want to get her out of there as quickly as possible. He may already be on his way to her.”

     There was sympathy and understanding on Amberley's face, though, which the Feld Marshall immediately hid, replacing it with a carefully neutral look. Right, thought the King. It was a father's love and fear for his daughter that was talking. Amberley knows the truth, though. He knows what a long shot it is.

     Amberley knew the King had guessed his thoughts and looked uncomfortable. “I'll go take a look at the prisoners,” he said. “You never know, we might have gotten lucky.” The King nodded and he turned to go.

     The Field Marshall stopped as a messenger appeared in the doorway, dressed in a travelstained cavalry uniform. Two members of the palace guard were with him. They must have cleared the way for his rapid passage to the King. “Your Majesty,” he said breathlessly. “I bring word from Telleridge watching post. There are Radiants on their way here, to Marboll. Hundreds of them.”

     “So, it’s happening,” said Amberley. “What we've been waiting for all this time.”

     “They were hoping the Carrowmen would destroy the city for them,” agreed the King. “Why risk their own lives when they can get humans to die for them? How did they find out so fast?"

     “One of the Radiants with the Carrow army was seen departing eastwards immediately after we blew up the trenches. It was going fast, on a gale of its own creation. The Radiants must have had a force assembled just east of Telleridge, just in case.”

     “How the hell didn’t we know about it? Hundreds of Radiants in a great crowd up in the sky...”

     “It's been overcast for the past few days. The clouds must have hidden them.”

     The messenger nodded. “The winds they summoned tore the cloud cover apart. We saw them, high up on the sky. So high they looked like stars. So many of them!”

     Leothan nodded, running his hand through his hair. “How long ‘til they get here?”

     “Sire, I rode as hard as I could, but they summoned a gale to blow them along. They must be just hours behind me.”

     “How are we with the incendiary ammunition?” he asked Amberley.

     “Still a few days yet before they start running off the assembly lines. They hit the mine, as we expected. They never suspected it was a decoy, that we were putting our main effort elsewhere, but even so...”

     Leothan nodded. “And the scientists? Their electric messiah?”

     “Last time I checked up on them they were still getting nowhere. Sire, we have no way to defend ourselves against the Radiants.”

     The King paced across the room, his head bowed. Their moment of victory had been so brief! It wasn't fair! He caught himself angrily. Life wasn't fair! He was the King! That meant it was his job to deal with whatever the world threw at his kingdom, no matter how unfair it might be. He got a grip on himself and turned to face the Field Marshall. “At least we got most of the civilians out. There’s that. How long would it take to get everyone else out?”

     “With respect, Majesty, I don't think that would be a good idea,” said Amberley, though. “It's not the city they want. It’s us, the people. If we try to evacuate, they'll chase us down across country. We've got a better chance here. We've got cover here. Buildings and tunnels we can hide in.”

     Leothan nodded. “You're right, and we know they can be killed. We need fire, lots of it. How many of those ballistae do we still have?”

     “Not enough, but we'll deploy those we have. I'll put them inside the entrances to buildings, where they can't drop things on them. They'll be able to protect the people hiding behind them. I suggest Marboll Tower. It's by far the strongest building in the city.”

     “Agreed,” said Leothan. Marboll Tower had been a fortress back in pre-industrial times, before the rest of the city had grown up around it. Every wall was ten feet of solid stone, and the ceilings between levels were scarcely thinner. It had been designed to defend against catapults throwing boulders. The Radiants wouldn’t be able to tear their way through the roof, as they had in less solidly constructed buildings. The only way in would be through the entrances, where the ballistae would be. “Pull everyone back to the tower. Everyone in the city. We'll make our last stand there.”

     “What about the Carrow prisoners?”

     Leothan cursed, he'd forgotten about them. “Barricade them in the stadium. Barricades it'll take them a couple of hours to get through. Demolish part of the building, perhaps. Block the exits with rubble. Keep them under guard until the very last minute, then pull the guards back to the tower. I'm guessing the Radiants won't be too discriminating about who's Helberian and who's Carrow, and even if they are, they’ve got no way to give them orders without an adoptee to translate. I'm guessing they'll just kill every human they come across.”

     Amberley nodded. “Let the Radiants dirty their hands killing helpless prisoners. I like it!” He bowed to the King, then turned and left the room at a brisk march.

     “Okay, you men,” Leothan then said to the telegraph operators. “You heard the plan. Get to the tower.” He then turned to Darnell. “Spread the word to everyone in the city. Retreat to Marboll Tower.” The man bowed, then sent his two runners off to obey.

     Darnell himself remained with the King as he also left, heading for the Ministry Building to get his wife and children.

☆☆☆

     “We're pulling out!” said a loud, commanding voice. “Everyone goes to Marboll Tower!”

     Andrea turned to see a new soldier standing in the lab’s doorway, gesturing impatiently for everyone to leave the room. The guards obeyed without question, all except the one left to watch over the prisoner. “What about him?” she asked.

     The prisoner also looked up curiously, but then a wide grin burst across his face. “They're coming!” he said in delight. “I can hear them in my head! The Radiants are coming!” The guards stared in alarm and moved faster, almost running, while the prisoner laughed in triumph.

     Andrea and Shanks looked at each other in alarm. “We can't leave,” said the head scientist. “This might be it! The breakthrough!”

     “And it might be another dead end,” replied one of the soldiers. It was Private Todd, the one they'd gotten to know the best. He was quite chatty, it turned out, and liked to come over and engage them in conversation while they were working. “How many times have you said that? That this might be it, the breakthrough? And it never is. Comes on, let's get out of here.”

     The two scientists glanced at each other again, each trying to read each other’s face. Trying to see how brave the other was. “You go,” said Andrea at last. “I'll finish this. Turn it on, just to see...”

     “No way!” replied Shanks. “If you stay, I stay!”

     “Neither of you are staying,” said the new arrival. He strode over and grabbed each of them by an arm, pulling them towards the door. “Get to the tower...”

     While everyone’s attention was on the tussle between the soldier and the scientists, the prisoner reached down and gave a hard yank on the chain holding him to the wall, pulling it out from where he'd loosened the cement holding the end in place. The guard closest to him spun around in alarm, reaching for the gun at his hip, and the prisoner swung the chain at him hard. It wrapped itself around the guard's neck, making him cry out, and the prisoner jumped forward, pulling the man's gun from its holster.

     The other guards, pausing in the doorway at the sound of the tussle, went for their guns, but the prisoner turned his stolen gun on them and fired several shots, the detonations echoing like thunder from the stone walls and floor. Two of the guards went down straight away. The third, Todd, fired two shots back, but the prisoner was using the body of his first victim as a shield and the man cried out as the bullets tore into him. The prisoner then fired again and Todd went down, a neat little hole appearing in his tunic above the heart and a geyser of blood erupting from his back.

     The soldier who'd been manhandling the scientists had also drawn his pistol, but he didn't run directly towards the prisoner. He didn't want the prisoner hitting the scientists as he shot back at him. He ran obliquely as he fired, therefore, one bullet hitting the prisoner in the luminous green arm, another piercing him in the belly through his thin, cotton vest. The prisoner's finger tightened on the trigger one last time before he died, though, and a bullet took off the top of the soldier's head. The bullet then continued on, hitting the apparatus the scientists had been working on. There was a spark as metal hit metal and a whine as the bullet ricocheted across the room, hitting the far wall before falling to the floor, finally spent.

   The two scientists stared at the scene of slaughter with shocked horror. “Those Above!” gasped Shanks, his eyes staring. “Those Above! Those Above! Those Above...”

     “Shanks!” snapped Andrea. “Get a grip! See if anyone’s still alive.”

     She cautiously approached the prisoner, who was still holding the stolen gun in his dead hand. She reached down to pick it up, then threw it across the room. The glow of his skin was already fading, she saw. Soon, it would begin to turn slightly transparent as the flesh prepared to break up into globs, each one wriggling off in search of a damp spot where it could make a new life at the very bottom of the ladder of life. That was how all life ended, unless the very cells were killed by fire or poison. All life except Shanks, she thought, turning back to look at her subordinate where he was stooping to examine the guards. He would just rot when he died. There was no chance that any part of him would ever be human again. What would that be like? she wondered. What would that knowledge do to someone?

     “They're all d-dead,” said Shanks, trembling, standing again and staring around at the corpses. “They're all dead. All dead...”

     Andrea went over to him and took hold of his arms, squeezing gently. “Are you okay?” she asked. “Were you hurt?”

     He shook his head. “You?”

     “I'm fine.” She then turned to examine the apparatus. The bullet had hit one of the coils, severing several copper wires, and then torn through ones of the cooling pipes, which was dribbling water. “Let's get this fixed.”

     “What about them?” cried Shanks a little hysterically.

     “Forget about them. They're dead.”

     “We've got to tell someone!”

     “Everyone’s busy. They've got their jobs, we’ve got ours.”

     “We can't just leave them lying there!”

     “Drag them out into the corridor, then. Then get back and help me with this. We haven’t got much time...”

     “Men are dead!” cried Shanks in outrage. “And you're worried about...”

     “You heard him!” said Andrea angrily, “They're on the way! Radiants! A lot more people are going to die unless we get this thing working. I'm sorry they’re dead but we’ve got to get our priorities right. The King's depending on us. So do what you've got to do. Drag the bodies out into the corridor, say a few words over them if you want, and then get your arse back here and help me fix this thing.”

     Shanks stared at her for a moment longer, then nodded and went to grab the shoulders of the nearest man.