The Orphaned Worlds (42 page)
It was the Holy Armada. Julia felt gripped by despair, not daring to glance at the others, unable to bear the sight of their faces.
But then the picture panned right, magnification blurring forward. Small glittering objects hanging against the planet’s blue-grey swirls suddenly leaped into close prominence. Close support ships and maintenance tenders darted like minnows alongside the leviathan bulk of the Brolturan battleship, poised whole and undamaged in its orbit, its hangars deploying interceptors, its decks of weaponry targeting the invading Spiral craft. The frame pulled back, showing the massive vessel against the planet.
‘Sadly, I’ve already had several terse messages on the subject of the signally untouched Brolt ship.’ Talavera’s smile was razor-edged. ‘They range from sombre vows of punishment to howls of enraged hysteria.’
Julia, feeling a measure of relief, crossed her arms and sat back. ‘I can’t say I’m sorry.’
‘It’s not me you’ll need to be saying it to …’ Talavera began, then broke off, raising one hand to her ear as if listening. Then she smiled. ‘In fact, it may not be necessary.’
On the screens a bright point appeared and flared suddenly. Filters cut in and the image adjusted to show an expanding cloud of debris with a knot of blazing white-hot energies at the core. All were silent as smaller ships, caught in the shock wave, spun and collided with one another while secondary explosions flashed, revealing huge ragged sections of superstructure wheeling away.
‘Seems that battleship was using one of its heavy beam projectors to hit a target on the planet’s surface. Your missile interrupted its second volley.’ Talavera laughed. ‘I think the cosmos must run on irony.’
The other Enhanced averted their eyes. Julia noticed that Arkady, standing a foot or two away, had lowered the gun, letting it hang by his side. Desperation got the better of her but even as she steeled her nerves and was on the point of lunging for the weapon, Arkady’s hand snapped up, muzzle aimed squarely at her face. He had scarcely altered his stance or the position of his head.
‘Peripheral vision is a wonderful thing,’ said Talavera. ‘But so is a talent like yours!’ She indicated the screens, the scene of devastation, repeating and looping, close-up and slow motion. ‘Your work was a success – one capital ship destroyed, the other crippled and nearly defenceless.’
‘The Earthsphere ship is still … intact?’ Julia said. ‘How is that possible?’
Talavera pointed the control, and some of the screens changed to show the
Heracles
, its prow and most of the forward section a charred, twisted wreck, exposed innards leaking vapours and fluids in trailing white clouds of frozen crystals. Smaller craft were swooping in towards it, firing off bolts of energy while the ship itself was slowly spinning around its axis.
‘Seems the Earthers somehow detected the second missile’s approach, went evasive and got less than half a click away when it detonated. Wrecked their prow, fried most of their systems and all their weapons. Right now they couldn’t defend themselves against a hull-scrubber … well, look at that …’
On screen, the Earthsphere ship, its spin halted, had ignited its main reaction thrusters and was moving off, still under attack from Spiral Armada gunships. Suddenly, a streaming shimmer enclosed the
Heracles
, which then leaped forward in an eyeblink of brightness that shrank away to nothing. Talavera shook her head.
‘Have to hand it to that captain, knew what he was doing, used the bows to shield the rest of his ship and his engines from the missile blast. And now he’s off into hyperspace, leaving the Covenant Order of the Spiral Prophecy in possession of the high ground!’
Julia gave no response, instead looked up at Arkady, standing still as a statue, face expressionless, gun still trained on her.
‘Arkady, what happened?’ she said. ‘Arkady, we’re your friends …’
‘Be calm, sit down, everyone be calm.’
Julia stared icily at Talavera. ‘What did you do to him?’ There was a sly smile. ‘Oh, he came to me, dear Julia, and laid bare your efforts. Must say, those polymotes are so clever – you’re going to make me such a great deal of money!’
‘So why is he like this?’
Talavera moved up close to Arkady, smiled and stroked his unresponsive face. ‘Poor boy had a change of heart – instead of overpowering Thorold, he went back out to warn you. Well, I put a stop to that and persuaded him to keep to the plan, with a little improvisation.’
‘This isn’t persuasion!’ Julia shouted. ‘You couldn’t persuade him to behave this way in just minutes …’
‘But my entire ship is devoted to methods of persuasion!’ Talavera said, her features alive and intense. ‘Drastic methods, certainly, and when you’re forging a new reality sometimes you have to go to great lengths in order to be convincing. But yes, you are right – you can’t change someone’s mind in just a few minutes, unless you put someone else in the driver’s seat. Or something else.’
She took a small dark blue vial from a pocket and held it up to one of the overhead light strips. What looked like fine powder shifted within and Julia felt an uneasy chill.
‘They’re such innovators, the Hegemony,’ Talavera went on. ‘Nanoengineered particulate mechanisms, designed to enter the brain and take over the voluntary physical centres and parts of the cognitive regions. These little workhorses are an entire magnitude smaller than your polymotes. Working together in great numbers they can easily simulate the host’s normal demeanour.’ She patted Arkady’s cheek. ‘Oh, he’s still in there, hearing and seeing everything. He just has no control over what his body does.’
‘What do you want from us?’ Julia said, fighting to keep her voice calm. ‘We’ve seen your secrets. We know about the containments.’
‘You have? Aren’t they amazing? You wouldn’t believe the trouble I went to, having them built by a reliable black-sector monoclan, then getting them shipped out to the Aranja Tesh.’ She paused to look at them all individually, as if pleased to see the hate and the contempt in their eyes. ‘I know what you’re thinking. You think that with your great intellects and those cortical processors in your heads you can defeat the Hegemony’s nanodust. Well, please go on thinking that because failure is so instructive. Wouldn’t you say, Julia?’
On the shuttle compartment’s screens, the destruction of the Brolturan ship played over and over again, from the missile payload’s initial detonation, slowed down to a near-glacial ballet of chaos. A knot of blazing white energy blossomed in the huge ship’s flank, roared through the interior, shafts of actinic radiation bursting from ports and hatches in those infinitesimal instants before the raw, expanding fury tore open the hull in a hellish eruption.
Legs trembling, Julia stood. ‘I don’t know how your dust will affect us but I promise you that we will fight you every step of the way. We will not create more destruction for you.’
Talavera gazed down at the vial in her hand and smiled faintly. ‘I know you Enhanced – in fact I think I almost know you better than you know yourselves. Give you a big fat juicy problem full of unexplored scientific implications and you just can’t resist. You’ll all do your best work for me, I know you will.’
‘It will be a cold day in hell first.’
‘But Julia, the new reality we’re forging will be a paradise. Trust me.’
At the narrowest point of the glen, Greg was crouched on a ledge halfway down a tall, rocky buttress, fixing in place a second shaped charge, about thirty feet below the first one. Alexei was on the other side, planting more along the lip of the sheer cliff, hoping that they would unleash an avalanche. Once the charge was solid, Greg wiped his face then looked across the treetops to where Alexei sat on a jutting boulder. Exchanging waves, he moved down and back towards the western end of the glen, descending into its rocky tangle of roots and hardy bushes through which a rain-swollen stream gushed.
It was mid-afternoon, a day and a half since Vashutkin’s appearance, and the sun was blazing down from a near-cloudless sky, sending bright shafts into the humid glen. The air was redo-lent of bark and leaf, of sap and blooms, and was abundantly abuzz with insects, stirred by the calls of birds and other small forest denizens. A beautiful Darien day which, unfortunately, he would have to disrupt.
Greg found Alexei waiting for him up on a flat boulder that protruded from the side of the glen and provided a good view back to the notch. Greg held up the signal trigger, which was the size of a key fob.
‘Ready?’ he said. ‘Counting down from three … two … one …’
The explosions were simultaneous. Soil and pulverised rock burst out from the charge locations. The rocky buttress shattered and fell into the glen, flattening a swath of trees while a mass of earth and rocks and uprooted trees swept down from the other side. Flocks of screeching birds erupted, some dispersing to other perches, others climbing to circle overhead.
Then a voice crackled over Greg’s earpiece. ‘That you done wi’ Glen Nero, chief?’
Greg grinned. Rory had decided to name all the eastern valleys after Roman emperors.
‘Eh, aye – I don’t think we’ll see any mobile armour coming up this way.’
‘That’s grand. Now if the both of ye could get over to Glen Julius it would be appreciated, like. Got a wee bit o’ a situation here.’
‘What’s the problem?’ he said as he and Alexei began heading up the glen.
‘Snipers – I’ve had tae change my spot three times already.’
‘Brolts or DVF?’
‘Pretty sure it’s our guys – they know the ground, and, eh … I think young Pauly’s bought it. Not seen him for near an hour.’
‘Right, we’re on our way back to the
Har
so we should be with ye soon. Keep yer head down …’
‘I’m way ahead of ye on that one.’
‘There is trouble?’ Alexei said as they hurried through the trees. ‘They’ve sent DVF snipers into the glen and now Pauly’s not been heard from for an hour.’ Greg tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice. Paul Svenson was a crack shot; he was also just sixteen years old and an orphan, both parents murdered by Brolturan sweep squads. He had been eager to go to Glen Julius and Vashutkin had said yes, to which Greg had reluctantly agreed.
‘Maybe we should get one of the mobile squads over there,’ said Alexei. ‘Pin them down if they’re trying to come through in force.’
‘Not yet,’ Greg said. ‘Not until we hear from Augustus and Claudius. Got to be sure they’re bottled up first.’
There were four accessible routes to the eastern slopes of Tusk Mountain, coming from the Kentigern foothills and the coast.
Glen Nero, now blocked; Glen Julius, a steep-sided rocky defile which led up past a series of waterfalls; Glen Claudius, a winding gully that forked at a craggy hill; and Glen Augustus which was an actual proper valley with only one possible choke point, at its entrance nearly two miles away. Vashutkin and his demolition team were heading there now and if they failed it would be up to Greg and the mobile squads to hold off the enemy advance for as long as possible before retreating to the Tusk Mountain stronghold.
And then we have to hold that against mounting odds
, he thought.
With our salvation depending, apparently, on the actions of one man, Robert Horst. Or so the Sentinel claims
.
The
Har
was a cigar-shaped dirigible moored in a natural clearing. Her pilot, a Finn called Varstrand, was sitting in a folding chair, dressed for the sun in a singlet and shorts while still wearing a battered flying helmet complete with goggles.
‘Sun is good for skin,’ he said, slapping his skinny chest. ‘Vitamin C, yes?’
‘Fruit’s what you need, Varstrand,’ said Greg. ‘But right now, we need to get over that ridge and a few hills – and we need to go now!’
Varstrand grinned, stood, folded his chair and slung it over one shoulder.
‘
Ei hätää
, my friend! – don’t worry. The
Har
is a fine and agile ship – we’ll be there fast.’
A few minutes later they were strapped into creaking wire-and-wicker couches positioned behind the cockpit, which was only separated from the rest of the gondola by an openwork wooden partition. The dirigible’s twin props gave out a conversation-challenging harsh buzz as the zeplin lurched, tipped backwards then swung free as the craft gained height. Greg had given Varstrand a basic hand-drawn map of landmarks and features, which had been tacked to the instrument panel, thus obscuring a few gauges. But the pilot seemed unconcerned as he worked his controls, keeping the
Har
on a careful heading, coasting just over the treetops.
Rory was still available so between his directions and peering at the map, they found a particular grassy shelf part-way along a high ridge. After agreeing a rendezvous back along the gully, Greg and Alexei climbed down a rope ladder, hair and clothing flapping in the backwash of the idling propellers. Once feet were on solid ground, waves were exchanged, the ladder was hauled up, and the
Har
swung round to head off to the west, its underside brushing the topmost leaves of the highest trees.
A rocky path led down a jagged notch in the crag. Greg could see tool marks where crude steps had been chiselled from the stone and wondered if this pinnacle had been a place of meditation for those long-vanished Uvovo. Or even to observe the canopy of colossal trees, the vast expanse of the world-forest-that-was.
Soon the path emerged into sunlight and became a narrow ledge sloping down the side of a sheer drop. The bare stone was searingly hot in the sun, and Rory was waiting there, crouched down in the brightness, long-barrelled sniper rifle leaning against his shoulder. He squinted up at them.
‘Ye want tae mind yer feet, gents. It’s a wee bit tricky when yer heading down.’
As they followed, Greg scanned the horizon and the sky as he had been compulsively doing all day, watching for the first sign of Brolturan air support. Personnel carriers, attack craft and combat drones – he knew that they had them yet they were conspicuous by their absence.
