The Line of Polity (47 page)

"Ambient temperature's low. From previous experience,
too
low. And there are no electrochemical signatures ... nothing out of the ordinary," observed Mika.

"You're saying it's definitely dead?" said Cormac, who had stopped to change his oxygen bottle. "No ambivalence in the readings, like there is in Dragon's conversation?"

"I think... yes, I am sure," said Mika.

"Okay, we'll give you an hour here — so find out what you can," he said.

Mika looked round at him. "Only an hour, why?" she asked.

"Now that question sounded almost natural," Cormac replied. "It's a shame that the answer is quite obvious." He held up his empty oxygen bottle, and then tossed it aside. Mika went quickly to work.

Eldene allowed the ATV to roll to a halt as it broke through into the clearing. Thorn, who was inspecting the turret gun magazines from a drop-down ladder, swore then released his hold to land on the floor in a crouch. Fethan had reached the weapons-control chair before him and held the targeting visor ready to press against his own face.

Eldene looked round. "Something's happened to them," she said.

Thorn came smoothly upright and was beside her in a second, one hand leaning on the console as he gazed through the screen.

"Ease us forward," he said. Then with a glance back at Fethan, "Stay on it."

The last of the flute grass parted before the vehicle, to reveal a mossy clearing around a low outcrop of limestone nested amongst black plantains and the nodular volvae of rhubarbs. What lay near this outcrop was identifiable as the armoured car that had fled them, but only just so. It had teen torn apart: the back end, along with one axle still bearing shredded balloon tyres, lay to the right, a section containing a torn-open engine and one tread lay in front of them, and the remaining tread, cabin and guns seemed to have been put through a mincer, then pounded into the ground.

"They must have been carrying planar explosives or something," said Thorn. He glanced at Eldene. "Stop us here. I want to have a look at this."

He and Fethan were out through the door, even as Eldene was shutting down the motor and applying the brake. Before following them, she studied the scene a moment longer — such a savage wreck, but no burn marks ... She left the ATV with her pulse-rifle held across her stomach, and with its safety off.

"Has to be a planar load," Thorn was saying. "I can't think of anything else that would make such a mess."

Eldene noted how Fethan scanned the surrounding grasses, his gaze coming to rest at last on an only just visible channel pressed through it. The old cyborg then tilted his head and listened intently.

"Where are they?" Eldene asked.

Thorn glanced round at her. "What?"

"Where are the soldiers?"

With a puzzled expression Thorn stepped closer to the wreckage to study it. He prodded at a shredded tyre with the barrel of the pulse-gun he had drawn, Eldene standing now behind him, nervously surveying their surroundings.

"Not there," said Fethan. "Over here." The cyborg crooked a finger at them.

Eldene and Thorn walked over to him and gazed down at what he indicated on the ground. The moss here was red, as such mosses often were, but this red was wet and glistening and recognizable as human blood — which she'd seen enough examples of quite recently. Also, scattered here and there, were small diamonds of human skin and fragments of bone. Fethan squatted down, picked up one of these fragments, and held it up to show how one edge had strange concave serrations, as if someone had drilled a line of holes before breaking the bone along them.

"Back to the ATV. I'll drive," he instructed. Then, pointing off to the right, "We go that way."

"What is it, Fethan?" Eldene asked, feeling something crawling up her spine.

"It's almost pointless to run if it comes after us," he replied. "In the mountains I had cover, and that was a small one."

"Quit with the mysterious bullshit," said Thorn.

"Hooder," said Fethan, pointing to their left. "It's about half a klom over there, as far as I can estimate, digesting its meal." Indicating the wreckage, he finished with, "And, judging by what's happened here, that meal was just an entrée."

Standing behind the Captain's chair, Aberil studied with cold satisfaction the screens and readouts in front of the man. Lellan had failed to take the spaceport, and would now be caught between hammer and anvil. The
Lee
and
Portentous
carried two armoured divisions each, and they would provide the hammer. The forces contained in the three remaining ships —
Ducking Stools Gabriel,
and
Witchfire,
the last of which he was presently aboard — were the anvil against which the rebellion would be crushed. It annoyed him now that he had chosen to board one of the ships carrying the fleet of landers, but he had not expected Lellan's failure to take the spaceport, and had not wanted to be stranded in orbit, merely conveying his orders to the attack leaders. Gazing around at his staff officers and orderlies, who were clinging to the rope nets ranged behind the seated command crew of the ship, and who would soon accompany him to the surface, he nodded with satisfaction then sent:

"
God defend the right, only when the right cannot sufficient defence make. Captains of the
Lee
and
Portentous,
take your ships down and begin the attack.
"

Back through his aug he got a wash of approval. General Coban on the
Lee
sent back:

"
We'll take the fast-track launchers out first — that'll give them something to chew on while we bring out our tanks. Then they'll know we've arrived. God defend the faithful.
"

Aberil winced at Coban's abrupt and cursory, "God defend ..." — the man, like so many other officers in the army, did not have a sufficient fear of his superiors to convey the required sincerity of tone. It was something that, after this present situation was dealt with, he would have to look into. Presently, General Coban was too experienced and useful to alienate.

Now turning fully to his chosen staff Aberil addressed them aloud. "We must allow these fighters their head in the coming battle, but in the future they must be brought back into the fold. Too long, I think, they have forged their own path within the confines of
Charity.
"

There was much nodding and grim-faced agreement — he had chosen these people himself, and knew them to be of like mind. He enjoyed their company, and with them knew exactly where he was: on top.

"Now it is time for us to disembark. Our landing will be in the wilderness one hundred kilometres south of Valour, and from there we shall sweep in, our line impenetrable."

"First Commander Dorth, what of those rebels who flee to the caverns?" asked Speelan — a thin and intense individual about whom Aberil sometimes had his doubts also.

"In the end there is always Ragnorak, but Lellan will know about that and therefore not allow her forces to retreat. She'll realize there will be no quarter given, and none expected."

"Should we pursue them down below, if they do flee?" Speelan asked.

"No, we merely seal the entrances and carve RIP on the rocks above."

After the dutiful laughter, Aberil towed himself along the ropes to the exit tube leading from the bridge, his officers and orderlies following close behind. Soon, by the convoluted ways of this mu-class ship, they came to the chaos of the lander bays, where men in white and pale blue uniforms covered in samples of scripture found some relief from cramped landing craft where they were racked as closely in the bays as bullets in a magazine. Many of these men, Aberil noticed, were praying, whilst others found more comfort in checking their weapons and body armour. It irked him that none of them became sufficiently silent and attentive at his approach, and that those who bowed or saluted seemed to do so with nonchalant lack of respect.

The command lander was twice the size of all the others, containing as it did communications equipment, heavy Polity pulse-cannons, as well as the luxury of grav-plates and some civilized space. Aberil was glad to be back aboard and, as he took his seat beside the pilot's — with its screens and logistics displays — he once again felt totally in control. Anyone from outside the Theocracy would immediately have noticed the lack of communications equipment, but then such people would come from a society where wearing an aug was still a matter of choice.

"
General Coban, status?
"

The General snapped back over the ether, "
Two hours and we'll be down. Lellan's forces seem in disarray: some are heading back to Valour, and some are just rolling back out into the wilderness.
"

Aberil checked his screens and saw that this was true. He turned to his command crew, who were seating themselves at their various consoles.

"What is your assessment?" he asked a fat mole of a man called Torthic, who was the logistics officer of the group.

"Seems like a falling out amongst thieves," the man replied as he checked the data he was receiving. "Either that or the head has been cut off. We know a carrier was destroyed in the initial attack."

Aberil linked into the public address channel of his aug: "
All troops return to landers. We begin descent in one half of an hour.
" Then he sat back and contemplated the coming obliteration of the Underground. He really hoped Lellan was not dead, as he had been so looking forward to meeting her, in the flesh. But if she were dead, there would be plenty of other prisoners to provide instruction and entertainment back on the cylinder worlds.

The sun set upon the land, bringing the grey hour that served to highlight the flashing of weapons used in sporadic conflicts towards every horizon. After changing his location for the fifth time that day — more out of boredom than any need to elude pursuit — Stanton began to bring his stolen aerofan down into thick flute grass, saw something large thundering towards him with what he felt were not the best intentions, and quickly jerked the column up and away to get out of range. A great flat beak clapped shut with a sound like a mat being beaten on concrete. He caught a glimpse of an array of glowing green eyes below a domed head, the muscled column of a body with more limbs than seemed plausible, and a whiff of quite horrible halitosis. Pulling away, he heard something that sounded like someone swearing in a quite obscure language.

"A bloody gabbleduck!" he exclaimed.

"Say again," said Jarvellis over com.

"Gabbleduck just tried to get me. You don't normally see them around here — the noise from the spaceport scares off their prey, so they don't bother coming in."

"Lellan said something about that earlier: seems the fighting is attracting things in from the wilderness and down from the mountains. There's even been a report of a hooder going into one of the compounds and systematically emptying squerm ponds."

"Perhaps humans dying make similar sounds to those of their normal prey."

"Perhaps — or perhaps they've just decided that enough is enough with these damned squabbling humans."

"Be nice to think that," said Stanton. "But we'll probably find it's some frequency of radio emission or the smell of some explosive or incendiary that attracts them in."

"Aren't you the optimist."

"Yeah," said Stanton, bringing the aerofan down into the middle of an area of low vegetation — wide plates of blister moss and grey thistles, rhubarb volvae just opening to expose leaves like tightly screwed-up black paper — which was well away from any stands of concealing flute grass, so he had a clear view of his surroundings. "It's called experience," he added.

As the motor of the aerofan wound down into silence, a deep thrumming vibration became evident. For a moment, Stanton surveyed the fragmented cloud strewn across the darkening sky, before stooping to open his pack. From this he now removed a square flat package that opened like a small briefcase to reveal a flat screen and miniconsole — a touch-console clustered around a single ball control — as well as a small winged egg. The screen he removed and secured against a rail of the aerofan by means of its rear stickpad. The egg he tossed up into the air and watched flutter away like a sparrow. Soon the flying holocam had given him a perfect view of the spaceport and all the activity there.

"You got this, Jarv?"

"Yeah, busy little soldiers, aren't they? Lellan says it's two of their ships coming down — they should be in view within a few minutes. A swarm of craft are coming down from the remaining three, and should be landing about the same time, probably in the south."

"Shame we can't have a surprise ready for them as well," Stanton opined.

"You wouldn't want that actually, knowing now who's coming down with the landers. Be far too quick for him."

"
Him?
" said Stanton flatly.

"The same."

"Then I guess I'll be joining Lellan when her forces converge."

"And in the meantime what do I do?" she asked.

"As we agreed: you stay safe. Losing a father would be more than enough for the kid."

The
Lee
and
Portentous
dropped through cloud like giant cannon-balls through layers of torn tissue-paper. Partial AG made their descent less bricklike, and took some of the strain from the huge landing thrusters that even now were glowing red-hot in their cowlings. But, even so, the noise was tremendous, a hot wind blasting across the swamps below them, and the ground quaking. Stanton watched them pass overhead, one after the other: conglomerations of black and rust, now less like cannon-balls as their full construction was revealed. Gun turrets, viewing bays, locks, and engine cowlings could now be clearly seen; also visible were areas where their original spherical hulls had been cut away and ugly square or flat-edged extensions grafted on.

Whilst watching these two huge ships slow and turn above the spaceport on huge blasts of thruster fire, Stanton removed from the top pocket of his acquired uniform the miniconsole he had been using earlier. All its five displays were nominal, which meant that there was nothing blocking the U-space signal coming from the five cylinders, and nothing to block the signal pulse he could send at any moment. He watched the ships slowly descending, until they were out of sight behind the taller stands of flute grass, then he transferred his attention to the screen affixed to the rail of the aerofan. With this bird's-eye view he observed the ships come in to land — their weight actually sinking the entire spaceport a couple of metres into the swampy ground — then the subsequent activity as ramps and gantries were moved into place by great caterpillar towing machines, and cranes were rolled in to connect higher gantries.