Chronicles of the Invaders 1: Conquest Read Free Page A

moved, he would be exposed.
    “Throw out your weapon,” said the same voice. “Then stand up and show us your hands.”
    Thaios was suddenly very tired. He had been so ambitious, so anxious to progress. This was all such a waste.
    The order to surrender came again. The humans were drawing closer. One of their shadows almost touched his boot.
    Thaios put his gun in his mouth.
    “I’m sorry,” he said. The human nearest him frowned, but it had not been to him that Thaios was speaking.
    “Stop him!” yelled a voice.
    It was the last thing Thaios heard before his head exploded.

CHAPTER THREE
    T he following morning, Syl walked quickly through the hallways of Edinburgh Castle, the soft silk of her trousers swishing against her legs, her face set in an expression that she thought of as determined but those who were responsible for her would have wearily described as “obstinate.” It was a word used often about Syl. Perhaps, the young Illyri told herself privately (and rather hopefully), she took after her mother, the beautiful Lady Orianne, who had been both willful and charming, a combination that made her quite impossible to resist.
    Syl, by contrast, was still working on the charm component. And beauty? Well, her father told her beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and that to him she was the most beautiful creature in the world—indeed, in all worlds. Of course he would say that! The truth was that she was not unpretty, but her features still held the unformed softness of youth, coupled with an unnerving intensity in her eyes and a sharpness in her manner. The effect wasn’t helped by the fact that Syl wasn’t given to smiling just to please people—because smiles could be much better employed than that—and she only laughed on occasions that truly merited it. And how else was she to behave? she asked herself, for she had no intention of smiling for no reason, or wasting time laughing at stupid jokes. Anyway, Syl took the view that laughing at something just to be kind usually meant the joker would plague you with another attempt at humor, and you’d have to laugh again, and so the cycle would continue until she either died of boredom or killed someone, and frankly she couldn’t be sure which might happen first.
    And yet much tolerance was shown to Syl, for she had been conceived among the stars, and as the first Illyri child born on Earth, she was a living link between the homeworld of Illyr and the conquered planet. Of course, it helped that her father was Lord Andrus, governor of the islands of Britain and Ireland, and by extension all of Europe. Like all Illyri females, though, Syl bore the name of her mother’s family. She liked being Syl Hellais. Syl Andrus sounded, well, ugly.
    Britain had been the obvious base for Illyri operations in Europe: even before the invasion, it had been a country obsessed with surveillance, both obvious and secret. Its streets were infested with security cameras, many of them with facial-recognition capacity, and the actions of its citizens were constantly being monitored by government departments. The Illyri had hardly needed to change anything upon their arrival. The same was true for the other most powerful nations: China, Russia, the United States. The governments of Earth, aided by populations too lazy or trusting to care, and obsessed with putting every detail of their lives on the Internet, had helped to give the Illyri control of the planet.
    Andrus was also responsible for the overall administration of Europe, and the governors of the other European nations deferred to him. Technically, he enjoyed equal status with the administrators of similar large territories, including Africa, China, Russia, Australasia, and the Americas, but he chaired the Ruling Council, which gave him a deciding vote on every important decision. Effectively, Governor Andrus was the most powerful man on Earth, although Syl knew better than to say “Do you know who my father is?” to get