The Orphaned Worlds

by Michael Cobley

  ‘Your tale is astonishing, Captain Silveira,’ said the Duizhang. ‘And your claims and motivations are closely in tune with the needs and hopes of the Human Sept. Can you provide any proof as to your status and identity?’

  ‘I do have a personal rubric, honoured Duizhang, but I doubt that you have the equipment to decode it.’ He indicated Kao Chih. ‘Pilot Kao can vouch for some of the time I spent on Darien.’

  ‘I must state that I am not persuaded by our guest’s elaborate and tortuous account,’ said Tan Hua. ‘The various imputations and assertions so frequently strain the limits of credibility that the purpose of their messenger is brought into question. Perhaps both of these collaborators should be handed over to the Hegemony Potentiary.’

  Kao Chih was aghast, not just at Tan Hua’s arrogant dismissal but also Kang Lo’s apparent lack of opposition.

  ‘Such a decision would not be advisable,’ said Silveira, his smile cold and dangerous.

  ‘It is not your place to determine our security arrangements,’ Tan Hua said, voice rising.

  ‘Neither is it yours!’ said Kao Chih. ‘Duizhang, I beg you …’

  ‘Silence!’ cried Tan Hua, pointing at him with a spidery finger. ‘You will be silent!’

  Then the Roug Qabakri stood and the uproar died.

  ‘Questions remain,’ it said. ‘I was with the Duizhang when the Silveira ship approached. I saw the form of it and the contours of its hyperdrive field. Human Silveira, is your vessel a product of the Eddison-Carlyle yards on Mars in your species’ home system?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  Qabakri turned to Tan Hua and the Duizhang. ‘Such sophisticated vessels are constructed exclusively for the intelligence services of Earthsphere. I am satisfied as to the veracity of Human Silveira’s statements.’

  ‘I am relieved to find myself vindicated,’ said Silveira. ‘If I may impose still further on this council’s patience and wisdom, I would request that Kao Chih accompany me to Pyre. He is capable and resourceful and would be able to allay the fear and distrust of any colonists that we encounter.’

  Kao Chih smiled at this but Tan Hua’s eyes flared with anger and he was about to speak when the Roug got in first.

  ‘Your reasoning is sound and your alacrity of purpose is apt. I propose a third member of your expedition – I propose myself.’

  Silveira’s surprise was mirrored by the Duizhang Kang Lo.

  ‘Honourable Patron, there may be considerable danger in this,’ he said. ‘You would be risking capture or death at the hands of the Suneye monoclan.’

  ‘Respected Duizhang, just as Human Silveira aims to convince his superiors of the need for intervention, so must I persuade my own. The Upper Index knows of my intent and they likewise caution restraint, but I am resolved. Your answer, Human Silveira – will you accept me aboard your craft?’

  ‘I would be honoured and gratified to do so.’

  The tall Roug stood, gave a stately bow to Silveira, then looked to the Duizhang and Tan Hua. ‘I would seek your approval, respected ones.’

  ‘I approve,’ said Kang Lo. ‘May your journey be fortunate and your return safe and swift.’ He looked to Kao Chih and the others. ‘These concealing robes are no longer necessary.’

  Tan Hua said nothing, merely bowed his head in assent. Then the Roug Qabakri murmured something to the Duizhang, who nodded and clapped his hands once. The Roug then left the chamber via the same screen-hidden door he entered by.

  ‘The risk of discovery dictates that this expedition commences without delay. Captain Silveira, if you accompany Assistant Commissioner Liangyu he will convey you back to your vessel. Pilot Kao, please go through the door behind that screen. Mandator Qabakri wishes to speak privately with you.’

  ‘And what about me?’ came a sharp voice from the back of the room. ‘Jelking humans, no manners!’

  ‘I beg your forgiveness, honoured Voth guest,’ Kang Lo said hurriedly.

  ‘Apologies, Duizhang,’ Kao Chih said. ‘This is Yash, former captain of the cloud-harvester Viganli.’

  ‘Still a captain,’ Yash said loudly. ‘Just without a ship, for the time being.’

  ‘So tell me, Captain Yash,’ the Duizhang said. ‘Is it your intention to accompany your colleagues to Pyre?’

  ‘I’d sooner drink a rygot’s ear-effluent,’ said Yash. ‘I would rather remain here on your very, eh, nice rock and maybe get a ride over to Agmedra’a. If that’s okay, uh, sir. I need to see a Piraseri about a line of credit.’

  Kang Lo nodded thoughtfully. ‘I believe that we can be of service, for a small fee. In the meantime, Pilot Kao, proceed – the Mandator awaits you.’

  Through the door was a smaller room with plain walls the colour of straw. The Roug Qabakri sat on a low bench before a wide decorative unit consisting of many small shelves and niches – some held figurines, others small pot plants, or a piece of rock or a small heap of sand marked with patterns, or lit candles, or a cluster of digicomponents. A hammer, a folded piece of blue cloth, a shallow bowl of water.

  ‘In some ways your species is not so dissimilar to many others across and beyond the known reaches of galactic space,’ the Roug said. ‘Some share or even exceed your obsession with militarism and the systematisation of violence, for example, while a good number are as compelled as you to construct complex conceptual artworks from structured sound vibrations. So it is with philosophy, games and their rules, exchange media, the sensation of taste; most species encompass all these cultural facets to one degree or another but Humanity has this ability to produce individuals who specialise in one or another of these facets and thereby create innovation.

  ‘My own species’ experience is very different. For a great stretch of our history we attained our collective progress by borrowing the advancements, creations, even conceptual notions of other races.’

  Kao Chih was surprised, intrigued and uneasy all at once. He had thought that the Mandator wanted to discuss Tumakri, perhaps to go over the moments of his death in more detail. This, however, was unexpected and, he suspected, utterly atypical, as was the silence that grew as if awaiting a response.

  ‘From what little I know, respected one,’ he said, ‘all cultures borrow from each other and good ideas become a kind of common currency.’

  ‘You misunderstand my use of the word “borrowing”.’ The Roug rose from the bench and turned. ‘I shall demonstrate – come over to stand facing me, Human Kao Chih.’

  His sense of unease deepened. Swallowing, he went over and stood before the slender, spindle-limbed sentient, trying to remain outwardly calm while his thoughts raced and his digestion churned. The Roug, more than a head taller, gazed down with its strange, finely meshed eyepieces.

  ‘Please, raise your hand.’

  He did so.

  ‘Now, watch carefully and be unperturbed – you are in no danger.’

  Qabakri raised one nine-fingered hand, mirroring Kao Chih’s stance, then was still. There was a long moment of becalmed, trancelike fixity, bereft of sound or breath or thought. Then the change began.

  First it was the Roug’s upraised hand, its grey-brown hue lightening to pale pink as the spindly fingers shortened, four of them shrinking into the hand as it altered shape. And there it was, a human hand at the end of a Roug arm. The transformation accelerated and in seconds the Roug’s entire body seemed to be melting, shrinking here, filling out there, ending with the head, now lower, whose features rippled and twisted, became human, became familiar, became … his own face.

  Kao Chih gasped, snatched his hand away and stepped back. The Roug now looked exactly like him, clothes too.

  ‘It is a great privilege for you to see the drimaga, the greater morphing. No individual from an indenture sept has witnessed it in over three millennia.’

  ‘I am … surprised … yes, just a little …’ he said, feeling an almost indescribable shock at seeing his own mouth speak yet still with the Roug’s paper-whisper voice.

  ‘No, Human Kao
Chih, I see that this demonstration disturbs you. I should have chosen another template.’ Even as he spoke his features altered, hair lengthening into braids while a neat black moustache appeared. It was the face of the Duizhang, Kang Lo.

  ‘Forgive me, respected patron,’ he said. ‘But why are you revealing this to me?’

  ‘You are the last kindly companion that Tumakri knew before his death,’ Qabakri said. ‘As a species we are continually aware of the mutability of things, that the young rely heavily on the seniors to provide form, stability and structure. As Tumakri’s journey-father it was my responsibility to provide him with his wearshell and to monitor his progress. When he was chosen to accompany you on the mission to Darien I knew he was too young and too unready – he had not even begun the fluxion tutoring. Higher determiners than I deemed him fit for the task, however, with consequences that you experienced first-hand.’

  The Roug shook his head. ‘I feel it is now my responsibility to take up his role. Although Tumakri was the wrong choice, it was correct that one of us went with you then just as it is now. The ancient Forerunners handed down the duty of guardianship to my species, a duty we have allowed to lapse in recent times. It is clear to me that we are duty-bound to right the wrongs inflicted on your people. As I declared earlier, it is my mission to persuade the High Index to act, even as those upstarts the Sendrukan Hegemony send their gunboat in an attempt to intimidate us!’

  Mandator Qabakri straightened and his form darkened, narrowed and stretched and moments later had returned to his slender, thin-limbed physique, with its dull bronze cloth windings and the coppery meshes concealing the eyes.

  ‘Respected Qabakri,’ said Kao Chih. ‘Tumakri was a capable and personable companion and it was an honour to travel with him. I look forward to travelling with you, also. And am I right in thinking that you wish your transforming ability, this drimaga, kept a secret?’

  ‘You reached the conclusion by your own reasoning, thus proving its rightness.’

  ‘Then a secret it shall remain.’

  ‘Time presses in upon us, Human Kao Chih. We should now hasten to the Silveira’s craft.’

  As they moved towards the door with the Roug in the lead, a thought occurred to Kao Chih.

  ‘Respected one,’ he said, ‘do you trust Silveira?’

  ‘Like loyalty, trust must be earned,’ Qabakri said. ‘Silveira’s explanations lack a certain authenticity. Watch him closely. Take note of what he does not say and what he does not do. Such observations will guide you.’

  GREG

  He had just returned from a meeting with Uvovo Artificers on the third sublevel, and was hurrying up the main hall when a section of the main access barrier gave way. A twenty-metre corridor lay between the stronghold’s entryway and the hall, where an inner barricade had been erected. As Greg dashed over, a log splintered and a boulder fell away from the entrance’s improvised wall of rubble and rock. Metallic claws scraped and tore at the gap from outside, widening it.

  ‘Back to the main stairs!’ Greg yelled, shrugging off his long coat as he ran.

  Those Humans and Uvovo who had been carrying rocks dropped their burdens and headed for the tall doors at the rear of the hall, while a dozen or more men and women readied their weapons at the inner barricade, a lashed-up redoubt of logs and bracken. Practised eyes squinted down the barrels of rifles and shotguns that three days of sporadic siege had proved to be largely useless against a combat robot at anything greater than point-blank range. Eleven fatalities were the grim corroborating evidence, two of whom had got close enough with their weapons to do some damage but, unfortunately, not enough.

  Alexei Firmanov looked around at Greg, gave a single nod then hefted the Brolturan rifle and handed it to him. Alexei’s face, streaked with grime, was hollow-eyed from lack of sleep and from grief – his brother, Nikolai, was one of the fallen and to Greg it seemed that two lights had gone out, not one.

  The Brolturan rifle was a beam weapon and was capable of stopping one of the combat bots with a couple of well-placed bursts. Unfortunately, the Tusk Mountain defenders possessed only two and the charge levels on both were running low. They were also long and heavy, being designed for ten-foot-tall Brolturans, and in Human hands were about as manageable as an oversized elephant gun. Someone had attached a supporting strap which Greg slung over his shoulder and chest just as the combat bot smashed its way through the entrance barrier.

  Greg swung the long black and grey barrel round, eyes on the integral target screen, lining up the crosshairs on the bot’s armoured midsection as it stalked down the long passageway. It opened fire with heavy-calibre slugs and Greg dropped behind the inner barrier, nodding to a couple of the Diehards crouching at the other end. They leaped up, drew back and hurled fist-sized bundles which unfolded in flight, weighted nets that wrapped themselves around the advancing mechanical.

  As it stumbled to a halt, the rest of the barricade defenders opened up with rifles and shotguns, setting off the small explosive packs woven into the net. The first explosion threw the mech against the wall, the others knocking it across the floor. None could damage it but combined they could disorientate its sensors for several seconds, long enough for Greg to bring the Brolturan rifle to bear.

  He was standing now, bringing the big barrel round, fear of missing tearing at his resolve, at his concentration. He had managed to bring down two of these machines already, the first time out of pure luck, the second when he fired from a sitting position. But now he was prepared and had to follow the plan.

  The mech was levering itself back to its sprung feet, chest extensors cutting away what remained of the nets. He levelled the big gun, got its torso centred and let fly a double pulse of energised particles. A flash, a spray of sparks, and the mech spun away, limbs flailing, to land several metres back, smoking parts spilling from its cracked carapace as it lay still.

  For a moment. Then it rolled over to a four-legged stance and lurched forward into a gallop.

  ‘Greg! …’ came Alexei’s warning.

  ‘Ah know!’

  Fighting a rising panic, he hastily targeted the machine and fired off another double pulse. One missed, seared the floor, the other blasted away one of the heavy rear limbs, but still it came on. Gritting his teeth he moved forward, almost staggering with the gun’s weight.

  ‘Am I gonna have to ram this down yer neck?’ he snarled, firing again.

  By now it was less than a dozen metres away but this time the shots flew true. There were red flashes within the cracked torso, then a white flare and the articulated limbs gave way. Spitting sparks, the machine carcass rolled forward, bounced heavily, flopped over and was motionless. Then Greg heard the growing whine, swore and dived away, sprawling full-length on the floor.

  A deafening explosion thundered along the corridor, and Greg felt a shock wave of force and heat. Ears ringing, gasping for breath, he sat up and rapidly felt himself over for any shrapnel wounds or nicks. Nothing, but the combat robot had efficiently self-destructed, leaving behind a burnt-out, half-melted shell.

  ‘In the name o’ the wee man,’ he said hoarsely, half-stunned. Then a thought occurred and he stretched out to grab the Brolturan rifle, which he had discarded as he dived for safety. By the carrying strap he dragged it into his lap and studied the charge readout, a simple red bar showing it to be nineteen-twentieths depleted.

  ‘Dammit,’ he said.

  ‘Is running low, yes?’ said Alexei Firmanov as he came over and crouched nearby. Behind him, groups of Humans and Uvovo were hauling carts of scavenged masonry along to plug the hole in the entrance barrier.

  ‘Half a dozen shots left, maybe,’ Greg said, getting wearily to his feet. ‘The other one down in the sublevels had about twice that when I came back upstairs. When they run out …’

  ‘Perhaps we should send out a party to find Rory,’ Alexei said, but Greg could hear the hopelessness in his voice. Soon after their arrival at Tusk Mountain, Rory had left to track down the weapo
ns that Uncle Theo had ‘liberated’ after the Winter Coup and that had been relocated shortly before the arrival of the Earthsphere ship, Heracles. The next day Chel had departed in search of another buried Uvovo ruin, despite the killing machines that were now stalking the forests. Since then there had been neither sight nor sound of them. For a moment the fatigue and the despair threatened to overwhelm him, then his stubborn refusal to cave in came to the surface. He remembered what the Sentinel had told him about Robert Horst’s mission and determinedly held on to that hope. Horst has to succeed, he just has to, he thought. But in the meantime …

  ‘Aye, Alexei, maybe you’re right,’ he said, getting up, stretching aching limbs. ‘I’ll head up to the observatory and check out the lay of the land.’ He handed over the Brolturan piece. ‘You roust up four volunteers, not including Janssen – he’ll be in command while we’re away.’

  A half-smile creased Alexei’s face as he slung the big gun over his shoulder and trudged back to the inner barricade, while Greg plodded over to retrieve his coat from the floor. It was a heavy, calf-length affair of dark brown leather, a gift from a Norj woman whose two young boys Greg had carried up the last stretch of stony track to the Tusk Mountain stronghold. The coat had belonged to her husband, a Tangenberg drover who died during questioning in a Brolturan detention centre.

  ‘We can’t have our commander looking like an ordinary person,’ she had said, pressing it on him. ‘You must look impressive because we need you to.’

  Well, it was certainly warm enough from the padded lining, for which he was grateful given the ancient stronghold’s stony chill. With hands buried in the deep pockets he started up a narrow spiral of stairs that led to the smaller upper levels and the chamber from which odd stone slots ran to concealed openings on the craggy upper slopes of the mountain. Wired and camouflaged cams sent images of the approaches and the surrounding foothills and ravines back to screens in the chamber, known as the observatory.