Splintered Suns

by Michael Cobley

  Pyke peered at the wide corridor up ahead, now lit up in a wavering beam of light coming from the front of the drone. Their swift travel sent a musty breeze through his hair.

  “Any idea who our pursuers are?” he said.

  “Local dreg-catchers licensed by a sub-prefectory of the Council of Warrens but hired by some offworld group calling themselves merchant speculators. However, I’ve seen their ship over at the docks, and that’s no trader! Van Graes should have warned you.”

  Pyke grimaced ruefully. “He did. He even sent one of his bodyguards along with me. Don’t suppose you noticed if he’s …”

  “I was tracking from a distance, and picked up heavy firing after he was snatched, then his vital signs zeroed. Killed two and badly wounded a third, though.”

  “Vaughan was a tough one, right enough. No give in him …” Unaccountably, he found himself yawning like a bear. “So, being a Construct drone, I’m guessing that you’ve got some kind of razor-sharp plan that’ll get us to the port docks … y’know, if yer going that way …”

  “Since it seemed that the pair of you were operating without a discernible plan, it seemed prudent that I have one,” the drone said. “The dreg-catchers have already set up monitor points at all the main foot-traffic junctions—custodial laws allow them to do so. On the other hand, presumption of non-guilt permits any attempt to evade capture, as long as no laws are broken. I am carrying you both to a disused shipping undervault which affords access directly onto the dockside. When we reach the vault I will reconfigure to look something like an unremarkable piece of luggage before we use maintenance passages to reach your berth. Will that suffice?”

  “Sounds damn fine, as plans go, and I’m happy to endorse it,” Pyke said. “Just one tiny wee puzzle in all of this—why the interest? What is a Construct drone doing out here at the arse end of the galactic nowhere, helping out little ould me?”

  The drone’s flight took them across a black chasm in the corridor. Pyke felt a dusting of powder and grit fall into his hair from above and he ruffled it with his fingers.

  “Your employer, Van Graes, has been hunting for a relic called the Angular Eye for several years, and the Eye has been a matter of interest to the Construct for considerably longer. When we learned that Van Graes had tasked you and your crew with its retrieval, I was sent to assess your circumstances and take any appropriate action.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know what this eye thing is that you’re on about,” Pyke said, trying to sound puzzled. “But thanks for getting us out of that jam, all the same.”

  Aye, see?—two can play the vague words game.

  Runken Burlet, who had been quiet the entire time, suddenly spoke up.

  “This offworlder, Pyke, came to my door asking for the same thing that a string of others have previously demanded—samples of my flesh, blood and spit out of which he intends to fashion some manner of key.”

  “Interesting,” said the drone. “Among your forebears, were there any biovault builders?”

  “My great-great-great-grandmother,” said Burlet. “She put her heart and soul into her work.”

  “I can see that,” said the drone. “And just think—somewhere far off among the stars there is a locked compartment waiting for Captain Pyke to come along with a key. As the Geskel wise ones say, not all certain things are certain!”

  A listening Pyke smiled as they flew along the shadowy passageway. Aye, right, carry on. Just let me get Burlet back to the ship, ply him with something from the extensive drinks locker, then I’ll unleash the full powers of the Pyke cunning and guile—I have not yet begun to cajole!

  The Construct drone’s plan was indeed a fine one, more than perfectly adequate to the task of getting from point A to point B and thence to point C. But the drone had not reckoned with the dreg-catchers’ skills or the cold, implacable purpose of those they worked for.

  The first part of the ambush was sprung as the drone and its passengers sped towards the end of a corridor which opened into the main shipping undervault. Five metres from the corridor end a restraint field snapped into visibility directly in front of them. At the same time small beam turrets popped out from concealed wall cavities and began peppering the drone’s rear shield.

  “Hold on tight!” said the drone.

  Brilliant flashes of harsh light began stuttering from the nose of the drone’s hardfield shell just instants before it struck the barrier. Pyke felt the drag as the drone’s momentum slowed greatly, but the restraint barrier was flaring and energy discharges stabbed outwards in electric webs, almost as if the drone was drilling through it.

  Suddenly the barrier was gone and the drone leaped forward. Straight into the second part of the ambush. Flickering arabesque flashes came from several directions, temporarily dazzling Pyke at the same time as the drone said, “Cunning brutes!—I’ll k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-r-r-r-r-rrrrr …”

  The machine’s hardfield shell winked out and Pyke found himself tumbling to the hard concrete floor. The drone came down with a crash, bounced and rolled over a couple of times before fetching up against a square pillar. Half dazed, Pyke hauled out his blast-repeater as he struggled to his feet. He spotted Runken Burlet several paces away, staggering towards a set of broad doors at the far end, until someone shot him between the shoulder blades with a large red and white dart. Almost immediately an opaque bubble appeared, enclosing his head and upper shoulders.

  In fearful recognition, Pyke looked quickly around and spotted several armoured figures drawing near, aiming weapons, cast into sharp silhouettes by spots spaced along a side wall. Then he felt one of the darts hit him in the back and he knew the jig was up. The bubbles were low-intensity forcefield containments, just strong enough to maintain an airtight seal as a sedation vapour was released from the dart. Burlet had already succumbed so, as the first wisps curled through his own bubble, Pyke reholstered his blast-repeater, sat down against the nearest pillar and presented the middle finger to the approaching dreg-catchers. As his captors surrounded him he started roaring out the first verse of “The Boys Of Kilkenny.”

  He made it to the third line before his eyes stopped focusing and fine coils of mist gently smothered everything in soft grey nothingness.

  Pyke broke off from his narrative and said, “Who’s making that row?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Dervla, the planet Ong, outside Cawl-Vesh

  It was Kref’s booming voice that reverberated throughout the cave and interrupted the captain.

  “Quick, Chief, everyone!—there’s a ship or something coming—they might have found us!”

  All around, eyes widened in alarm and hands dived into pockets, hastily fumbling for weapons. Dervla, feeling sharper and less feeble than when she’d awoken, started to reach for her blast-repeater then remembered—it was back in that museum office. Now feeling unarmed and therefore half naked, she looked around at the others. The rest of the crew had taken up positions near the cave mouth, using stone troughs as cover.

  “Ancil!” she hissed, throwing a pebble at him.

  He looked round, his face a picture of annoyance, then saw who it was. “What’s up?”

  “Don’t have a burner—left mine back on that office floor …”

  Ancil nodded, reached into a nearby holdall, rummaged around for a moment then brought out a handgun and tossed it over. Dervla caught it and the two clips that followed. It was a copy of a popular Hegemony sidearm, scaled down for smaller hands and physiques, but by the time she had it loaded up with both magazines the panic was clearly over. Having crept outside to steal a look, Pyke was now strolling back in with a grin on his face.

  “False alarm—it’s the shuttle-barge you guys left over at the city landing ground. Oleg must have engaged the remote nav …”

  Dust and grit were swirling in the barge’s suspensor field helices as the crew trooped out onto the cave’s ledge. The barge had anchored itself in place with a couple of stasis hooks, and Dervla was inching her way out of the cave
just behind the rest, shielding her eyes from the sunlight. As Pyke approached the craft the access hatch popped and swung up, letting out the sound of an incoming call. Pyke gave the rest a look of mock surprise then ducked inside and thumbed the comm reply as he slipped into the pilot couch.

  “Hello there—Epicentre of the universe, God’s gift speaking—how can I help you?”

  “Hello, Captain,” came Oleg’s unflappable reply. “I’m moderately pleased to find you back with us.”

  “Well, it’s pretty splendid to be back among these rascals, let me tell you!” Pyke said. “Thanks for sending the barge, by the way, which seems to have been restocked with supplies and gear, almost as if we weren’t about to pack up and scarper back into orbit …”

  “There is an explanation for that, Captain. While all communications with the Cawl-Vesh vicinity were blocked by the duststorm, I was contacted on subspace by our employer, Mr. Van Graes. He asked for an update on the mission and without disclosing too much I gave him a summary of events.”

  “Is that so? Did that include our losing the Angular Eye, by any chance?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  Pyke rolled his eyes skywards. “You could have, I dunno, been evasive or …”

  He was momentarily wordless, and Dervla knew what was going through his head, how Oleg tended towards a literal and somewhat independent frame of mind, along with a peculiar avoidance of dissembling. Oleg just couldn’t see the benefits of lies or evasiveness.

  “So how did he take the news?” Pyke went on. “I bet he was thrilled.”

  “He said that it was most unfortunate, and that he would have to speak with you as soon as possible. Which is why I despatched the shuttle.”

  “With all these supplies and so forth,” Dervla said as she squeezed past Ancil and dropped into the co-pilot’s couch. “Would I be right in thinking that Mr. Van Graes had a hand in this?”

  “Mr. Van Graes made some suggestions which I found faultlessly logical. Sending along a variety of resources seemed most prudent,” said Oleg. “He is waiting on one of the incoming channels, Captain—shall I patch him through?”

  Dervla let out a low laugh as Pyke gave her an arched-eyebrow here-we-go look.

  “Sure, let’s get the bollocking over and done with.”

  “Okay, Captain, one moment—Mr. Van Graes, go ahead.”

  Sound of a throat being cleared. “Good, my thanks—Captain Pyke?”

  “Mr. Van G, how are you this fine day?”

  “Slightly anxious since I’m currently trying to evade the attention of ruthless assassins.”

  Dervla and Pyke exchanged a look and sat up.

  “Sounds harsh,” said Pyke.

  “I would say so—my offices on the orbital Firmament Heights were firebombed and my launch was sabotaged, all not very long after Vaughan met his end on Geskel.”

  “I mourn his loss, Mr. Van Graes,” Pyke said. “He was fearless and full-hearted with it.”

  “I’ll see that his family are not left wanting.”

  Dervla leaned forward a little. “Mr. Van Graes, are you safe just now?”

  “For the time being—my yacht is on its way to Mars, with stopovers booked for all the major canyon cities. I, however, am aboard a colonist transport bound for Robinson’s World, one of the new treaty planets, travelling under an alias. Planetfall isn’t due for another day and a half so I’m out of harm’s way. Meanwhile, we must decide how to proceed.”

  “Or if we wish to proceed,” Pyke said.

  “Certainly, that is an option to be explored, and if you choose to play no further part in this project I will still ensure that you and your crew are paid the full amount as agreed. On the other hand, if you decide to stay with my project and see it through to its conclusion I would be happy to treble all agreed fees. Does that sound like an attractive offer, Captain—enough to hear my proposal, at least?”

  Pyke muted the audio pickup then looked over at Dervla and the others and said, “Well?”

  Predictably, the response was enthusiastic in the light of the triple payout offer. Dervla felt it was almost too generous, which provoked uncertain thoughts. Pyke raised an eyebrow at her again, and she shrugged.

  “So far we’ve dealt with about a dozen varieties of crazy,” she said. “Makes me wonder what else might be round the corner. But, yeah, I’ll listen to what he has to say.”

  Pyke prodded the comm controls. “Well, Mr. Van G, seems everyone’s dying to hear yer pitch, so the stage is yours.”

  “Excellent, but would you be so kind as to summarise the events leading up to your current situation?”

  “Not a problem,” said Pyke who then rattled off a decent enough report, although he omitted the whole bit about the mind-trap crystal, claiming instead that he was held captive by Raven Kaligari all the way from Geskel to Ong where everything turned into a whirl of confusion and accident. They lost the Angular Eye to Kaligari but at least managed to escape with life and limb intact (with no mention of the crystal being in their possession). At first Dervla was puzzled by his altered version of events, but reasoned that this might have something to do with risk and chance. That or he just wanted to keep it out of their deal with the man.

  “A remarkable blend of luck and misfortune,” Van Graes said once Pyke was done.

  “You don’t know half of it, Mr. Van G,” Pyke said with a mischievous grin. Dervla almost laughed out loud but clamped her hand to her mouth while the rest of the crew muffled their own hilarity.

  “Well,” Van Graes continued. “The loss of the Eye is a serious setback, especially since it has fallen into unscrupulous hands. But there is a possibility, a small one, that it can be traced whenever it’s actually being used.”

  Pyke looked both sceptical and puzzled. “So, you’re saying that we need a tracking device to find a tracking device?”

  “Not as such—I already have an associate, an ally of sorts, on Ong who may be able to assist us in this matter.”

  Pyke raised his eyebrows. “Ah, so we’re not the first lucky team you’ve sent to Ong,” he said.

  “I would hardly refer to Lieutenant-Doctor Ustril as a team,” Van Graes said. “More a consultant with additional talents. But I get ahead of myself. Let me be perfectly open and candid—yes, the Angular Eye is a tracking device and, yes, I was hoping that we could use it to lead us directly to what might be called a treasure trove of the ages.”

  There was an extended moment of silence during which mock-surprise looks were exchanged. Pyke smiled—this was sounding familiar.

  “Suffice to say, Mr. Van G, you’ve got our attention. Do go on!”

  “Very well, but first a little history lesson. Nearly a million years ago, more than half the galaxy was dominated by the Arraveyne Imperium, led by a ruthless species called the Arravek. They were naturally blessed with psionic abilities but they employed advanced implants to enhance their talents, allowing them to control entire populations by controlling their rulers. Unchallenged for many thousands of years, their empire became all-powerful; their scientists reached successive pinnacles of achievement and the capital worlds of the empire attracted vast wealth, around which the Arravek Imperators and their coteries arrayed themselves. All the finest, most precious things were caught up in the maelstroms of power and eventually found their way to the very hub of the Imperium, the planet Olveyne.

  “And as is usual in stories like this, the Arraveki rulers grew arrogant over time and so full of hubris that when their nemesis made its presence known they could not conceive of anything capable of threatening their supremacy, their godlike existence. Until it was too late. Little is known about the destroyers of the Arraveyne Empire—they called themselves the Zayaloc-Nar and they were a nomadic, migratory civilisation. According to the few fragmentary records that still remain, an Arraveki Imperator and his battlefleet destroyed a squadron of Zayaloc hospital and creche ships laid over for repairs in a system well away from the Imperial border. There are several versi
ons of how this came about, but, whatever the details of the attack, the Zayaloc-Nar retaliated with devastating effect.

  “One by one the empire’s capital worlds were destroyed by planetoids and small moons which would appear out of hyperspace, already hurtling along a collision course. In a matter of days one of the largest and most powerful empires in galactic history was brought to its knees.”

  “Pretty harsh,” said Pyke. “And, er, fascinating, but I’m hoping we’ll get to the meat of this before long.”

  “My apologies—I always forget that my love of historical detail is not always a shared obsession. But, as you say, to the point.” Van Graes paused, as if gathering his thoughts. “Well, in the end, at the cusp of finality, only the Imperial capital, Olveyne, remained, guarded for parsecs around by armadas of warships, a few carrying fearsome weapons capable of splitting moons and planetoids. But what emerged from the depths of hyperspace was a gas giant, rolling through the capital system, vast and unstoppable. Most of the Arravek Imperators and governing nobility had defiantly chosen to remain, confident that the warfleets could protect them. And with the gas giant’s arrival came a mad, worldwide panic.

  “However, a few more precautionary nobles and scientists had commandeered a cityship, an immense vessel nearly two miles long, and filled it with the treasures of the Arraveyne civilisation, not just wealth and precious items but artworks, machines, technologies, secrets and wild theories …”

  “We get the picture,” Pyke said, lounging in the pilot’s couch. “This huge cityship, did it have a name at all?”

  “The Mighty Defender of the Arraveyne Heart, according to one account.”

  “Right, fine, so the Mighty Defender manages to dodge a mighty bullet, escapes the fall of the empire, crosses great stretches of interstellar space and crash-lands right here on Ong? This happens nearly a million years ago, yet the wreck remains lost, unseen, undiscovered? I mean, that’s one big, mean and deadly desert out there, but a two-mile-long ship … that’s a lot of parts, moving or otherwise, and in all that time something should have shown up.”