Dead Star (The Triple Stars, Volume 1)

by Simon Kewin

  She began to suck in telemetry. Ondo had been right: instead of a single Cathedral ship in orbit, there were three of the vessels, moving in close formation around the planet on an equatorial orbit. At this distance, she was seeing images of events that had taken place twenty minutes previously. She waited twice that long, drifting under reaction drive, metaspace projectors spun-up in case attack ships showed up at her coordinates.

  “We need to plot a course down to the surface,” she said to the ship. “A vector that takes us through the defence network but that gets me close to Senefore.” She didn't want to spent days or weeks trudging across the planet to reach the carnival city. From what she'd learned, celebrations were already ramping up.

  The ship took a few moments to reply. “I see a possible route, but it is not without risk.”

  “Show me.”

  The vector plotted by the Dragon looped round to the far side of her current orbit, then approached with the sun always between her and the planet. She would be visible if Concordance were monitoring local space properly, but they often did not. Being small and weak had its advantages: Concordance knew the chances were remote – approaching zero – that she or Ondo or some other renegade would turn up at any given time.

  From the star, they would make a series of reaction-drive hops between the inferior planets, again keeping Migdala out of direct line-of-sight. The final approach to the planet, and the subsequent atmospheric insertion, would be the moment of greatest risk. She would be visible to Concordance sensors, and she'd be too near the star to make an immediate escape into metaspace.

  Fortunately, from Ondo's analysis of Concordance's presence in the system, she had good knowledge of the positioning of enemy observation devices. If she made sure she wasn't silhouetted against the sun or any obvious background stars from the perspective of Migdala, and stuck to the seams between surveillance cones, she had a reasonable chance of getting to the planet undetected.

  It was good enough.

  Of course, she'd thought they were safe when they landed on Maes Far. It was entirely possible she was following the trail Concordance wished her to follow.

  She was helped by unfolding events on the ground. Inter-ship Concordance comms traffic was encrypted using algorithms Ondo had never been able to crack, but the sheer scale of them flying up from assets on the surface or in the atmosphere told their own story. Wide-scale events of great concern to the trio of watching Cathedral ships were unfolding. Selene could see a lot of it for herself: her own sensors showed mass population movements across the planet's six continents as crowds converged on major population centres for the celebrations.

  She was halfway between the third planet and Migdala, no astronomical bodies shielding her from the Concordance ships two light minutes away, when the Dragon intercepted an unencrypted message stream.

  “It's being broadcast to the entire planet,” said the Dragon's voice. “It's clear Concordance wants everyone to see it.”

  “Show me.”

  Images filled her mind's eye: a First Augur, a member of Concordance's high priesthood, was on board one of the ships. Two grey-robed Void Walkers stood behind her, their faces expressionless. Selene's flecks identified the woman quickly enough: Secundus Godel. A knot tightened somewhere within Selene's chest. She would kill them all, but this one especially. The one who had directed Kane in his acts of barbarity.

  Godel was young, surprisingly young, or so her appearance suggested. Her skin was a deep, storm cloud purple, a metallic shimmer to it. A native of A'chtion, her flecks whispered to her. A world where people change skin colour in accordance with social rank. Purple suggests the highest status of all, although the distinction will probably be lost on most people. She is using her colour display to claim dominance that she should be, or considers herself to be, Primo. A subtle but also not very subtle challenge to Carious. Whether he understands this, and simply chooses to ignore it, is unclear.

  First Augurs rarely appeared in public; normally they were hidden away in the secret enclaves of Omn, controlling galactic events from afar. Godel's words were Mind-translated into local dialects and idioms as she spoke. Selene's flecks translated them back into galactic common.

  “Greetings, and the peace of Omn shine upon you, citizens of Migdala. The festivities of the Carnival of Masks are nearly upon us, and I bid you all to reflect on the true meaning of the celebrations as revealed by the priests and sages of the Revelation Temples. This is a time for pleasure and for family, but also for calm reflection and devotion. A period of peaceful celebration of Omn in his two guises: the loving parent who forgives past transgressions, and the judge who punishes those straying from the path. Think on these deeper spiritual meanings as you celebrate the turning of the year with your loved ones. May Omn watch over you and guide you.”

  From the cultural data she'd downloaded, Selene knew the Revelation Temples were a global sect that was, effectively, a front for Concordance on Migdala. The Temples long-predated the rise of Concordance; Vulpis's followers had simply subsumed the sect, adapted it to their own ends rather than destroying it, and imposed their own vision upon it. Slowly, over the years, they'd altered the ecclesiastical underpinnings of the Temples until their teachings aligned with worship of Omn and subjugation to Concordance. It was a radically different approach to the one she was more familiar with: the imposition of order backed up by extreme violence.

  Intrigued, Selene switched to sampling the video feeds streaming from the surface, looking down upon the lines of people thronging the seven bridges that led to the centre of Senefore. The crowds contained many revellers already in their colourful and outlandish masks, but there were nearly as many devotees of the Temples: people not wearing masks, but clad in red robes of various designs. Some wore only a splash of red, perhaps to demonstrate their allegiance. It seemed to her there was a wariness between the two sets of people: they walked in their own groups and didn't acknowledge each other. There were also a large number of soldiers watching the crowds from low-altitude observation platforms. From afar it was hard to be sure, but she read a mixed atmosphere down on the planet: a mounting excitement at the celebrations to come, but also a tension. Children ran excitedly around, only to be called back and held close by their parents.

  The message from Godel to the planet began to broadcast again. Selene switched the feed off and prepped for atmospheric insertion. She'd toyed with the idea of launching some sort of suicide attack on the three Cathedral ships, take Godel down with her, but she suppressed it. Time for that another day, perhaps.

  There was a scatter of lone-wolf asteroids on eccentric orbits between the third and fourth planets, the ancient remains of a planet whose debris hadn't yet been sucked up by the remaining bodies. She manoeuvred the Dragon onto the surface of one of them, positioning the vessel in the shadow of a peak of grey rock that would conceal it from Migdala for 75% of the small planetoid's spin. She would take a lander the rest of the way; it was a tiny sliver of metal that, hopefully, Concordance monitoring wouldn't notice.

  Ondo's analysis had shown where gaps in Concordance's planetary monitoring network would open and close briefly, as sweeps from different sensors brushed past each other. They were tiny, transient blind spots, the traversing of which involved a carefully choreographed speed/stop/speed sequence of movements, like hopping from rock to rock across a stream – except that it was a three-dimensional puzzle rather than two, and the gaps appeared only briefly in accordance to complex patterns. Following them took Selene into high orbit above Migdala without apparent detection.

  She kept the planet between her and the three Cathedral ships at all times. It was night beneath her, with no lights visible at all as she passed over the planet's equatorial ocean. A significant tropical cyclone was tearing across the body of water, a swirling vortex one hundred kilometres wide, picking up energy as it headed for one of the planet's major land masses. She'd studied it as she approached, its central eye and flailing arms reminding her
strangely of the view of the galaxy from the Refuge. The storm was growing into a monster; there would be few carnival celebrations for people living in the coastal regions in its path.

  The cyclone could, however, provide her with cover as she dropped to the surface. The eye of the powerful storm would give her an effective blind-spot from orbiting Concordance sensors unless they were positioned directly overhead, and the high winds and atmospheric disturbances would shield her lander from ground and air-based installations. Assuming she survived the journey through the maelstrom, she had a chance of reaching the surface undetected.

  She gritted her teeth as she dropped to the surface, arrowing her way into the eye of the storm. The lander vibrated and boomed around her; it felt like it was going to shake her skeleton to its constituent bones. She forced herself to remain calm, breathe slowly. After everything that had happened to her, she doubted whether she'd ever find such journeys easy. Once again, she tried to occupy her mind by focusing on the lander's structural integrity readings and external sensor sweeps. It didn't help much: the storm meant that she was blind, too, and watching spreading amber alerts about depleting energy hull power levels did little to put her mind at rest.

  Nevertheless, she fell out of the bottom of the hurricane still in one piece, plummeting into the turbulent depths of the night-time ocean. Now the water would shield her. She sank to two hundred metres, then set the lander to head west, away from the path of the hurricane and towards the continent upon which Senefore lay. She would be there in four hours, arriving just as the rays of the rising sun lit up the continent's mountain tops.

  She picked a deserted beach and swam the last kilometre from the lander to shore. She instructed the craft to sink to the sea-bed and wait for her to return. Or, if she didn't reappear within two weeks, to attempt the journey back to the Dragon and away to the Refuge to report to Ondo.

  Above the tide line, the sand beneath her feet retained some of its warmth from the day before, oozing pleasantly between her toes. This was a tropical continent in the middle of summer, and temperatures would rise sharply through the day. Ocean scents of salty water and rotting seaweed filled her nostrils. She worked her way up the beach towards a line of swaying trees, their curving trunks bare and their leaves high crowns of rubbery fronds. The shifting sand made for slow progress; it was like trudging through snow, but the warmth of the rising sun on her neck was pleasant, and the curious, questioning cries of unseen birds lifted her spirits in unexpected ways. Migdala was beautiful, and it was another planet that once she had never heard of and had had no way of visiting. The thought sent a grim smile across her face. Concordance had given her this.

  She knew from Ondo's surveillance streams that she could skirt the impenetrable green wall of the rainforest ahead of her. Eventually, she'd reach scattered communities and tracks that would take her to the periphery of the continent's ground-transportation network. From there, she could slip into the crowds converging on Senefore.

  Some aspects of the plan had troubled her. On Maes Far, she would have been spotted very rapidly if she'd attempted such a thing: everyone had simple tags embedded under their skin to grant access to buildings and transportation and for use in shops.

  Ondo had assured her there would be no such problems on Migdala. “The world is more rebellious than Maes Far. People on Migdala wouldn't take kindly to being tagged and monitored, even if it would make life easier for them. So long as you're disguised and can pay, you should be able to use the transportation system without being spotted.”

  “Unless they're looking out for me.”

  “If they are, I doubt you'll get as far as a public e-track service.”

  Her appearance caused no comment as she boarded one of the silver high-speed trains, mask in hand and sunglasses covering her eyes. There were one or two appraising glances from younger passengers, males and females so far as she could tell, but they were gazes of frank sexual appreciation rather than suspicion. This far from Senefore, at least, it seemed everyone was in party mood. Selene sat next to a mother and her young twins, both already wearing identical skull masks, excitement clear in their high voices. Selene found she could understand their idiom perfectly thanks to the knowledge she'd downloaded. That was good.

  The mother smiled at Selene as she sat down but said nothing. She set about peeling a series of round, yellow fruits to give to her children, who crammed them into their mouths with clear relish. The train carriage filled up rapidly with boisterous, laughing people, young and old, and soon they were speeding their way westwards to the capital city. Selene stared out of the window as fields and rivers flashed by, her own reflected face projected onto the scene.

  She wondered if Kane, the man who became a Concordance Void Walker, and who had tormented and killed her father, had ever walked down those roads, climbed those green hills. If, somehow, the places flashing by might help explain how he had become what he had.

  Old Senefore was built on a round island in the middle of a lake, the remains of the caldera of an extinct volcano. The city had long-outgrown the island to cover the slopes of the hills surrounding the body of water. The inland lake was protected from storms and high waves, and over the years people had sunk piles into the lake bed to build homes and shops and temples upon stilts alongside the seven great bridges. The largest and most impressive mansions had floating gardens of pinky-white and orange blooms bobbing between wooden walkways. Many boats, both powered and rowed, flitted across the glistening water, laden down with teetering pyramids of brightly-coloured fruit, or silvery piles of fish pulled from the lake. For merchants, carnival was clearly a time of plenty.

  Selene let the flood of people crossing one of the bridges pull her along. Still no one had challenged her or remarked on her appearance, and she'd uttered no words on her journey to the city beyond an occasional greeting or apology.

  The air of excited anticipation had, however, given over to a more watchful wariness among the crowd, just as she'd witnessed via the nanosensors. Those who'd brought masks now wore them, as if afraid of being identified. Selene wore her own. It was hot and heavy, tickling her cheek as she moved, and the narrow eye-holes restricted her vision. Revelation Temple disciples move in regimented lines around her, their robes blood-red, their gaze wary as they looked sideways at the revellers pushing past. None wore masks, and their robes were often adorned with a single, stylized eye. Others wore eye chains around their necks, or had third eyes daubed onto their foreheads in some brown-red pigment.

  Their scowls, Selene thought, were also masks in their own way. The temples hated the carnivals, saw them as degenerate, an expression of a godless evil. Consequently, the Templers gathered in the cities just as the revellers did, but to oppose what took place rather than to join in.

  “Turn your back on superstition,” one Templer called out at random, his words punctuated by the clang of the handbell he rang. “You who hide your faces reject the gaze of your Lord, denying the beauty of all that he has wrought.” They sounded like lines from some hymn or proclamation.

  The observation platforms bristling with the barrels of the local military forces became more and more oppressive. They didn't appear to be under direct Concordance control, but Selene had no doubt they would act if Godel gave the order. From what she could see of the weaponry, the soldiers would have little trouble mowing down the crowds thronging beneath them, turning the jostling stream of bodies into a carpet of bloodied limbs and torsos. There were also more and more large outdoor screens erected for the carnival. On each of them, Godel's speech was playing on a loop, her huge face scowling down on the people passing by.

  It was midday by the time Selene reached the central island of Senefore. The overhead sun was a glaring furnace nailed to the sky. The air was so humid it felt like she was chewing it, swallowing it down, rather than breathing it in. She bought a glass of an ice-cold fruit drink to keep her cool. She sampled the fluid with the tip of her tongue, checking it for toxins or allergens
. The liquid was benign; she could metabolise it safely. She drank it down, the taste sweet and acid tart at the same time, then ordered two more. The money bracelet Ondo had provided, loaded with electronic funds, appeared to work perfectly, convincing local retails systems that the cash it held was both trustworthy and effectively limitless. There were many stalls selling intoxicating drinks, spicy alcohol concoctions that were clearly extremely popular. She steered clear of these. She needed to keep a clear head if she wanted to properly understand what was going on and stay out of the clutches of Concordance. Her augmentations could metabolize alcohol at an accelerated rate if need be, but it wouldn't be instantaneous.

  She did need to eat after her journey to the city. An array of street food-vendors jostled for elbow-room with the drink sellers, offering just about every sort of food she could think of and quite a few she couldn't begin to identify. The spicy smells of the food made her stomach grumble in anticipation, despite her off-world biology. A fried purple-red fish, wrapped in a rubbery leaf so it could be eaten on the move, seemed popular. She bought one and nibbled at a sample. It was all good: proteins and carbohydrates she could consume without harm, and from which her biology, natural and artificial, could readily extract sustenance. She ate greedily, juices from the fish dribbling down her hands.

  The island was beautiful; the Senefore authorities had clearly gone to great trouble to maintain the original open squares and wide boulevards. The buildings were low, two or three storeys at most, and many were extremely ornate. Carved stone animals and the winding representations of vines adorned each surface. They were painted in a kaleidoscope of colours: pinks and blues and yellows. Many of the trees that Selene had seen on the beach grew among them, providing a welcome shade to those on the ground. Vividly-coloured birds with musical calls flitted between the trees, and fountains sprayed water pumped from the lake into the air, filling it with their cooling rainbows.