The Lodestone Trilogy (Limited Edition) (The Lodestone Series) (114 page)

The door had been left open, and he could hear the sound of voices drifting up from below. He swung his bare feet to the bare wooden floor and began casting about for his boots and trousers. They were nowhere to be seen. Maybe they had been knocked under the bed? He got down on all fours, put his face to the floor, and began peering into the gap beneath the bed. There was a strip of cloth and something that looked like a bobbin, but nothing that resembled a pair of size nine boots.

McCann muttered a curse to himself. As he did so, he felt a tingle in the back of his neck—a presence behind him. He jerked his head around to see a round olive face and wide, brown eyes peeking at him from behind the door jamb. The face was staring at the sight of two large white buttocks jutting out from the bottom of the bed. McCann screwed his face up.
“Shoo.”
The little face disappeared.

McCann pulled a sheet off the bed and tied it around his waist like a sarong. A further search of the room did not uncover the rest of his clothes. He went to the door, but the juvenile Kelanni was gone. He padded out onto the landing and went to the head of the stairs. The voices from below were louder now—more audible.

The first voice was female “... were ya thinkin’ of—bringin’ ’im ’ere?”

A male voice answered—gruff and somehow familiar. “We ’ad no choice. ’E was out of it. We couldn’ just leave ’im there t’ be taken by th’ cold or th’ murghal. B’sides, I ’ad t’ know... ”

“You ’ad t’ know what?” the female voice demanded.

“What a ’u-man was doin’ off their island an’ all th’ way up in th’ Cathgorns. ’Ow did ’e get there? What’s ’e up to? ’Ow many more o’ them are there?”

“That’s none o’ our concern,” the female returned. “The Directorate is responsible fer them kinds o’ doins. They could take yer licence away.”

A new male voice entered the discussion—younger, and filled with trepidation. “They wouldn’ do that, would they, Yonach?”

“The high-ups favour them new hunters wi’ their fancy new equipment,” the female continued. “There’s a number of ’em sees Yonach as fuddy-duddy an out o’ date. They’d just as soon flush ’im away, wipe their backsides, and think no more o’ it.”

“Y’don’t understand what’s at stake ’ere, woman,” Yonach replied. If the ’u-mans ’ave left their island an’ come ’ere, it could lead to another war.”

“That’s just why we needs t’ get a hold o’ them right away,” the woman insisted. “I spoke wi’ Palanna this mornin’. She says it’s all over th’ village. People are sayin’ you bro’t in a ’u-man last night an’ are shelterin’ ’im.”

“I don’ trust them officials,” Yonach said. “I wouldn’ turn no one over t’ them, not even that pasty-faced creature upstairs.”

“I don’ wanna hear it,” the woman ruled. “You take ’im to Kieroth an’ deliver ’im to the Directorate right now. I won’t ’ave you risk this entire family fer some cursed ’u-man.”

An odd grunt signalled the death of the conversation. The engineer’s mind worked rapidly. If the Directorate got a hold of him, then he was under no illusions what that would mean. Wang had already warned him that if he were captured by the Kelanni, then he would be on his own. Moreover, the Captain would not want to risk information about the Accumulator Device getting out, especially since they were so close to completing it. McCann strongly suspected that certain agencies in Kieroth would be alerted and he would meet up with an untimely ‘accident’ not long after.

The alternative was scarcely any rosier: going on the run on a hostile planet with no clothes. He could steal some clothing, he supposed. Of course, with no Speaker Ring, there would be no way to summon Helice for a pick-up. He would have to try and contact one of their Kelanni operatives in Kieroth in order to relay a message, and they were notoriously difficult to locate, for very good reasons. To make matters worse, he had absolutely no idea of where he was or which direction the town lay. The only thing he was certain of right now was that he needed to get out of this place before the drach showed up.

He turned on the landing and spotted the Kelanni child who had peeked at him earlier. The alien boy was dressed in a long nightshirt and had large round eyes that were fixed on the bearded hu-man. McCann smiled encouragingly. The youngster responded by giving him a swift kick in the shin and then running away.

The engineer rubbed his leg, cursing silently to himself, before hobbling back to resume the search for his gear, with what little dignity he had left.

~

Keris beat out the last of a half dozen small fires that had broken out across the Reach’s deck and turned to survey the chaos. She did not have Patris’s know-how when it came to the ship, but most of the damage appeared superficial—a hole in the deck here, a burnt patch there. Most of it was in the upper part of the structure—above the water line—and miraculously, the mast and sail were intact. During the bombardment, the ship had drifted under its own momentum and was now lodged safely in the deeper waters of the inlet. Random chance had worked in their favour. Of course, there was no guarantee they would be immune from further aerial attack, but for the moment, the skies were clear.

She looked down once more to see Lyall and Alondo approaching. Alondo was grey-faced.

“Any sign of Shann or the boy?” she asked.

“I’m afraid not,” Lyall said. “Their avionic was blowing smoke as it headed inland. I lost sight of them after they passed into the hills.”

“We have to go after them right away,” Alondo urged.

“Agreed,” Keris said.
If they’re still alive.
Without two of the component carriers, the mission would be lost. Determining their fate was now top priority. However, she also saw an opportunity to put forward her original proposal once again. “You two should head out and find them. In the meantime, Boxx and I will determine where these hu-mans have stashed their weapon.”

Lyall glanced about the deck and lowered his voice. “What about the drach? Do you think it’s safe to leave Patris with them?”

“We have no choice,” Keris declared. “Don’t worry. I’ll deal with the drach, if necessary, when the time comes.”

Lyall seemed about to object but finally responded with a nod. Keris turned towards the sterncastle to gather the rest of her equipment.

“How will we find you?” Lyall called after her.

“I’ll find you,” she said.

~

A quick search of an adjacent room turned up neither McCann’s boots, nor his trousers, nor his weapon, but it did turn up one item of significance—his datapad. It had been shoved carelessly in a drawer— no doubt by some primitive who saw it as nothing more than a useless trinket. The engineer returned to his room, clutching his prize, shut the

door firmly behind him, and sat on the bed.
Let’s hope these fools haven’t dropped it, or sat on it, or something.

He set the device reverently on the bed in front of him and spoke the activation command. “Inquiry.”

There was an agonising pause. Then the small screen began to glow.
“Applications working.”

McCann began to breathe once more. “Display current location on planetary surface.” A topographical map appeared with a winking red light at its centre. There were no features he recognised. “Overlay known Kelanni settlements.” There was no change on the screen. The red icon continued to flash patiently, as if waiting for him to make up his mind. “Is Kelanni settlement database still intact?”

“Affirmative.”

“Then why am I not seeing any settlements marked?”

“No Kelanni settlements lie within the display area.”

It’s a machine,
McCann reminded himself.
You have to tell it what to do, remember?
“Enlarge display area to fifty-kilometre radius.” Still nothing. “Enlarge to one hundred kilometres.” There. A flashing blue symbol at the southeastern edge. “Identify settlement in grid... Thirteen Delta.”

“Kieroth. Level four Kelanni settlement, located on Kelanni-Skell. Population, circa twenty-three thousand. Location of the headquarters of the Scientific Directorate, a pseudo-scientific ruling body which—”

“Stop.” The town was some distance away, but he could make it there on foot in three, maybe four days. “Can you tell me where my trousers are?”

“Please restate inquiry.”

McCann smiled. Confounding the all-knowing device gave him a perverse sense of pleasure. If the datapad was here, chances were the rest of his things were here also. Once he found them, he could get out of this place and start looking for a contact. “Discontinue.” The friendly window of light went dark. He started to get to his feet but never made it. The back of his head exploded in scintillant pain and the world went black.

~

Keris lay flat against an overhang of ancient grey stone next to Boxx and peeked over the edge, watching the goings-on below. A large building with a mono-pitched roof sat in a valley a hundred and fifty feet below her. It was constructed of stones of a lighter grey, but they seemed far too regular—too perfect to be natural.

The main structure was surrounded by a smattering of other buildings, lesser in size and presumably therefore in importance, and a knot of three parked avionics. Cables ran between the outbuildings, and there were buzzing and humming sounds coming from some other mechanical devices, the purpose of which Keris could only guess at. Of one thing, however, she was absolutely certain: she had found the location of the hu-man weapon.

She had suspected that finding it would be child’s play, and so it had turned out. Any device designed to accumulate and concentrate large quantities of refined lodestone would have to stick out like a sore thumb, even at a distance. Just as important, the direction would be towards the horizon—seemingly out of reach. Her cloak should prove as effective as a wayfinder.

She had left the beach of smooth round stones with Boxx in tow. Halfway up the path, she turned and had a view of Annata’s Reach anchored peacefully in the waters of the inlet and Patris sailing the launch back to the ship. Not long after, she blipped her lodestone layer experimentally and received her first positive contact. From then on, it was simply a matter of following a signal that grew steadily in strength. Here, virtually on top of the thing, the slightest exposure of lodestone felt like a kick in the shoulders. Whatever the weapon was, it was in that building somewhere.

She could see tiny figures moving about between the structures, singly and in groups. The lack of a tail indicated that they were humans, although at this distance, it was difficult to make a positive identification beyond that. She needed to gather more information— security, including guard patrols, locks, and points of entry and egress, as well as the layout of the compound and exact location of the weapon.

So far, her observations had not shown any organised system of guards, but perhaps that was not surprising. The hu-mans would surely know that Kelanni of this world had no ships, nor any other method of maritime travel. Out here on a remote island in the midst of the vastness of the Erigone Sea, they would not be expecting infiltration. There was no indication that security had been stepped up following the attack on the ship by the two hu-man aircraft, suggesting that both machines had been destroyed before they could raise the alarm. Lyall and the others would still have the element of surprise, provided of course that Keris did not inadvertently tip their hand.

Her best option would be to lay low till nightfall and go in under cover of darkness. Keris glanced at the sky. It was overcast, and the suns were not visible, but she judged it to be well past noon. She eased herself back from the edge of the overhang, stood up, and headed for the shadow of a nearby boulder to wait it out. Boxx took the signal and scuttled over, settling its head down on the rock shelf next to her.

Keris had always frowned on dishonesty. Both common sense and her training taught her that sometimes it was necessary in order to get the job done, but at the back of her mind, she always had the sneaking suspicion that resorting to deception increased the chances of a bad outcome. She had deliberately deceived Mordal, her mentor, which had set off a chain of events that had ultimately led to his death and the deaths of a number of others. At the time, her intention was to save lives, but that only reinforced the point that if you lie, you tend to lose control over what happens as a result—and then you have to live with the consequences.

She had not lied to Lyall about her reasons for wanting to scout the location of the hu-man weapon, but she had not been completely truthful either. Ever since she had learned of Annata’s scheme and of the instrument that had been divided into four separate components, Keris’s mind had been assessing the task from a tactical point of view. It was evident from the outset that any plan that required four persons to enter hostile territory and arrive unharmed at the same time at a prearranged location was fraught with the possibility of mishap. In the game of shassatan, you needed to have more than one gambit in mind, as the situation on the board could change from one move to the next. Annata had insisted that this was the only safe way of neutralizing the weapon.
But it was not the only way.