The Ascendant Stars (36 page)

Yet she could not hide from events, and doggedly maintained a regular vigil. She saw the savage battles taking place in the space around Darien, spasms of unleashed violence that left behind expanding clouds of wrack and ruin, a spreading sea of glittering debris throughout which corpses were plentifully scattered.

She saw the encounter between the surviving Imisil vessel and the Hegemony warship captured by the Tygrans, in whose company was Greg. With Greg as sole Darien representative, a meeting was held on the
Retributor
to discuss cooperation on
repairs and supplies, and the fight that lay ahead. The Imisil commander was also there and lost no time in laying out the starkness of the situation.

By now, Catriona was able to use Segrana’s sensing abilities to discern some speech, and even some thoughts, although this only worked with Greg and the Tygrans. The Imisil commander told the gathering that a fleet of Imisil warships would be arriving in less than four hours, and about six hours after that would come the Hegemony fleet, estimated to consist of approximately six hundred vessels all told. Outnumbering the Imisil and the others by roughly twenty-four to one, this was in keeping with the Hegemony policy of deploying crushing force against any who infringed upon their interests.

Everyone there fell silent and the mood was sombre. Cat found Greg’s own cast of mind to be surprisingly positive, resigned to facing impossible odds yet determined in a roll-the-dice kind of way. While fearing for his safety, she felt strangely proud of him.

Aye, Mr Cameron
, she thought.
You’ll do, so long as you come home safe – and I get my body back!

But as she continued to observe she felt a faint, trembling unease, as if she herself were being watched. Then without warning, the gathering and all that she was aware of just slipped away from her, as if those great sensing abilities had been choked off. Her perceptions swam in a blur that started to resolve into the blue pillars of her dream-palace. But it too slipped aside, a slow smear of shadows and grainy images through which she glided, bodiless, unable to resist …

And then, all at once, she was embodied. Physicality felt oddly multifaceted, so crammed full with minuscule details of sensation. For several dizzy seconds she stood there, revelling in the solidity of
weight
, of feeling grass and twigs with the soles of her feet …

Then came the odours of burnt wood and vegetation, charred earth, wet ashes. She opened her eyes and saw she was standing at the edge of a stretch of black devastation. Bushes reduced to spidery skeletons, trees stripped to seared spikes, the forest floor a sodden grey waste dotted with vile-smelling pools.

You are in a memory
…

Catriona caught her breath – it was Segrana.

…
my memory of the destruction wrought by the off-worlders
…

‘It is like my memory of it,’ Cat said. ‘Segrana, forgive me, but I no longer … ’

…
wish to be Keeper? Understandable, but you underestimate yourself – you have strengths that are needed
…
the Other is coming for you with a Keeper’s task
…
give no more than the task requires and remember that you are my Keeper, not that Other’s
…

The charred forest turned about her, blurred and brightened, spun into a translucent blueness … and she was back in the dream-palace. A shadowy cloaked figure stood off to one side, waiting. Incorporeal once more, Catriona glided over to a nearby opaque blue pillar, putting it between her and her visitor.

**
I hope that my counterpart is well
** said the Zyradin.

‘Couldn’t really say, one way or the other,’ she said. ‘I’d have thought you’d know more than a lesser being like me.’

**
In certain ways I am a lesser being than you
**
You may know that I have a task which only the Keeper can accomplish
**
It is important and you must follow my instructions precisely
**

‘May I know what this task is?’

**
Like you, I have observed the conflict taking place out in space
**
The black ship that destroyed the Hegemony vessel interests me
**
With the Keeper’s assistance I will be able to gain a closer perspective and gather detailed information that would be otherwise unobtainable
**

‘Sounds like you want to use me as some kinda glorified telescope,’ she said.

**
No, my purpose is quite different
**
May we proceed?
**

She paused, curiosity warring with distrust.

‘Fine – let’s proceed.’

**
First, close your eyes and do not open them until I say
** Shrugging, she closed her eyes.

At once she felt a sudden swirl of sub-zero iciness all over her body for just a moment, then it was gone. But her spirits lifted at the thought of experiencing physical sensation again. Could the Zyradin be taking a contrary position to Segrana, such that she might get her body back? It wasn’t exactly her preferred circumstances but if the offer was made she knew that she would accept. In any case, it seemed obvious to her that any of the senior Uvovo Listeners would be more suited to the role than she.

**
You may now open your eyes
**

At first all she saw was blackness, perfect, indivisible, until she glanced to one side and saw the stars.

Panicky terror seized her, along with a reflexive gasping for breath, and a wild flailing … until she realised that her body was pale and translucent, that she had no skin to freeze solid in the hard vacuum, nor any lungs to be sucked empty. The inky blackness was the shadow side of a big piece of ship’s hull, floating in a cloud of debris, much of it still spinning, rebounding from other pieces, being struck by faster-moving ones, a constellation of collisions, a random sea of razor glitter.

Must be another spectacle of memories
, she thought to herself.
Another meticulous mirage
…

**
You are wrong
**
This is quite real and you are experiencing it directly
**

A vertigo reflex ghosted through her, a promise of nausea that never came.

‘If this is real,’ she said (or at least heard herself say), ‘you must be projecting my awareness beyond the planet’s stratosphere. Why? I doubt that it’s just so you can get a closer look.’

**
Segrana chose her Keeper well
**
An elevated Listener would have been overcome by terror but you have adapted and have begun to ask the right questions
**

‘An answer would be a big help, actually.’

**
In time
**
Look to your right and down
**
Do you see the very large ragged piece of wreckage?
**

She could. It was the size of a football field and was surrounded by a halo of smaller glinting fragments.

‘I see it.’

**
Stretch out your hand towards it
**
Imagine that you are reaching out to touch it and you will move towards it
**

Catriona followed the instructions and she did indeed begin to move. As she drifted out from behind the shadowing debris she noticed a sudden dimming in her vision. The sun’s direct glare was muted and dazzling reflections were softened.

**
Filtering the light protects your visual receptors
**
Do not be concerned about the lesser pieces
**
Push them out of your path or go around
**

The debris was of all sizes and almost all of it had edges or surfaces that were jagged, sharp and lethal, yet her opaque form seemed unaffected by grazing collisions or scrapes. There were other objects that evoked a mixture of horror and pity, the frozen bodies of the carrier’s Sendrukan crew. Most wore heavy vac-suits or flimsy emergency environment suits and most seemed dead from high-power energy bolts. Those large humanoid bodies were twisted into anguished contortions and everyone bore a layer of sparkling frost. It was like slowly wending her way through a silent zero-gee morgue.

Then her goal was before her. It looked like it had been ripped out of the Hegemony carrier’s structure by sheer force. Apart from the stretch of hull plating down one side, every other surface was a picture of destruction, torn bulkheads, snapped-off lengths of cabling, gaping and twisted air ducts, bent and severed pipes around which beards of ice had grown. She could see where the cleft crossed several decks and saw more bodies, motionless figures floating in corridors or frozen in death agonies while wrapped up in a sleeping recess, gaping mouths, grasping hands …

Catriona had seen many terrible things under the canopy of Segrana these last few days, but this sight stirred in her a crawling horror unlike anything she had felt before.

And the Zyradin wants to study this?
she thought.

**
Move round to the area of hull plating
**

As quickly as she could she aimed herself at that part of the wreckage and was soon floating directly over it.

**
Approach the hull surface and place your hand against it
**

‘How will this help you analyse the thing?’ she said. ‘Why not just take a few pictures, or whatever your equivalent is?’

**
It will serve my purposes and my curiosity
**

She drifted towards the flat surface, which was mostly a dark grey with metallic blue bands crossing part of it. She was facing an area with a block of what she assumed to be instructions in Sendrukan. She reached out her strange, milkily opaque hand and touched the flat greyness with her fingertips then her whole palm.

Well, I hope this is helping somehow
…

Suddenly she was enveloped by meshes of light, misty braids coiling around her and up and around the wreckage, swathing it in shining bands. Catriona was frozen in place, unable to move but sensing a buildup of something powerful. The shining braids began to brighten, everything seemed to tremble, and there was a dazzling burst of light and an abrupt moment of tranquillity, an instant of perfect silence …

… before a plunge into darkness, impressions of shadows, great trunks, masses of greenery, vine-woven mossy curtains – she was back in Segrana! – and before her, hanging in midair, that immense slab of wreckage with her hand still pressed against it …

**
Release
**
Release it
**

A second of incredulity, of mystification, of realisation, then she snatched her hand away.

The wreckage fell from her, smashing several trees into splinters before it struck the ground with a deafening crash.

It was only a fifteen-minute hop from the
Retributor
to the
Starfire
but Greg’s head was full of details from the meeting and he just couldn’t relax. The summary of the
Starfire
’s weaponry seemed meagre in the light of the Imisil commander Remosca’s revelation on the size of the Hegemony armada. Hundreds of warships among which there would be more carriers like the
Baqrith-Zo
, capable of fielding scores of interceptors, drones, smart missiles, a veritable cascade of war machines rushing towards them.

Greg had projected a kind of cavalier optimism mingled with anger and defiance, mainly because he did not want to face his own despair. As he sat listening to Commander Remosca laying out the bleak realities, something that Uncle Theo once said came back to him – ‘A ship tied up in the harbour is safe, but is that what ships are for?’ It was a folksy little saying but its nugget of wisdom was clear. He had once told the Tygran Ash that while Darien was worth fighting for it was the people who were worth dying for.

The gathering had agreed unanimously to stand their ground. Greg just hoped that the dying part would be slow to arrive.

Now, sitting in the
Retributor
’s pilotless shuttle pod – a short-range craft on loan from the Roug, apparently – his thoughts turned to the situation on the planet’s surface. There had been several attempts to establish contact with the Human rebels at Tusk Mountain but all effective channels were being jammed. The source of the jamming was mainly Giant’s Shoulder, which
wasn’t such a surprise now that the Legion agent and its combat droids were in control of the place. But Ash was not seeing the break in communication as an immediate crisis and wouldn’t authorise a shuttle journey to the surface. Nor would he order a bombardment of the Giant’s Shoulder defences, on the grounds that it might provoke retaliation which they could do without in the hours ahead. Greg was frustrated at these decisions but had to resign himself to them.

At last the pod reached the
Starfire
, the Tygran ship that had brought him from Nivyesta and which had been heavily damaged in action against the Hegemony carrier’s escort vessels. Although the hyperdrive was junk, the thrust engines had been partially repaired and some of the weapons were back online. They could move and they could fight, after a fashion.

The pod docked with one of the underside hatches, and moments later he was climbing from the pod’s weak deck gravity into a weightless airlock. It was a small, blue-lit chamber with a short ladder. The outer hatch thudded shut, sealed audibly, and the light turned red.