Shouting, Greg waved and saw the pilot mouthing something while pointing at his ear. Realisation struck and Greg fumbled with the earpiece’s stud controls, and was suddenly assailed by a jabber of voices.
‘… yes, I have him! He is safe …’
‘So why’s he no’ replyin’, then …’
‘Sorry, Rory,’ Greg said, catching the end of the rope ladder snaking down from the zeplin. ‘I must have muted the channel somehow in all the commotion.’
Rory laughed. ‘Commotion, aye! Right, see ye soon.’
A swift climb hand-over-hand and he was inside the gondola, dragging himself into the compartment then pulling the ladder in after him.
‘Lot of noise and clouds,’ Varstrand yelled over his shoulder. ‘Looks like success for you, I think.’
‘Hope so,’ he yelled back.
As he hauled in the last of the ladder, the Har was gaining height and moving towards the ravine, so the hatch was still open when the ravine and the waterfall came fully into view. He paused, staring down through a haze of drifting dust at the astonishing sight. As he’d hoped, the massive overhanging rock pillar had fallen onto the lip of the waterfall and smashed an irregular section of it, perhaps ten feet back, sending tons of rock plummeting into the gap below. But that wasn’t all – the explosions had cracked the ravine wall and undermined it, causing it to collapse into the ravine. From this height it looked as if some gigantic blade had carved a long gouge out of the ravine wall, dumping a lengthy mound of rubble along one side, crushing and shredding a swath of trees and bushes, burying every piece of foliage. Looking down, Greg felt a stab of guilt at having caused such wanton destruction in this pocket of Darien’s ecology.
Varstrand, though, was practically whooping with delight, praising Greg’s demolition skills in Finnish and Noranglic. Rory was equally impressed when he climbed up into the gondola ten minutes later.
‘Job done, chief! When you’re doin’ a bit of remodelling, you don’t mess about!’
‘Aye, but I wasn’t planning on knocking down half a mountain’s worth and creating that eyesore.’
‘Och, give it a year or two and ye’d hardly know anything was out of place.’
Greg frowned. ‘What’s keeping Alexei?’ He fingered his ear-piece for the proximity channel as he leaned out of the side hatch and into the rushing backwash of the Har’s right prop. Alexei was standing next to Pauly several yards off to the side and Greg understood. ‘Are you staying behind?’ he shouted.
‘Yes, just to be sure that our friends don’t pay us any more visits. Kharasho?’
‘Kharasho, okay! But be careful, both of ye!’
He waved to them then slid the hatch shut and shouted at Varstrand to get aloft.
‘Do you want us to be heading back to the mountain?’ yelled the Finn over his shoulder.
‘No,’ Greg said as he and Rory settled into the rickety passenger couches. ‘Take us over to the western end of Glen Claudius and find somewhere to moor, up high with a good view of the gorge.’
‘As you say.’
Greg turned to Rory. ‘Let’s find out what Vashutkin’s been up to,’ he said, and switched his earpiece to the long-range comnet then cycled to Vashutkin’s channel. ‘Alexandr, this is Greg Cameron. Are you receiving? Please respond …’
‘Ah, Gregory, my dear friend! – I was just about to notify you of our successes. The entrance to the Augustus valley is now closed! It took two sets of charges, and a bit of fighting, but it is done.’
‘Any sign of any enemy air support?’
‘No, nothing.’
‘Many casualties?’
‘A few, some wounded …’
‘Okay, Alexandr, listen – some enemy troops broke through in Glen Claudius so please tell the mobile squads to move up to the western end of Claudius. We’re heading there right now …’
He broke off as Rory grabbed his arm and pointed out of the cockpit windscreen. ‘Chief, what the hell is that?’
Tusk Mountain was directly ahead, its lower eastern flank less than half a mile away. Following Rory’s outstretched hand Greg saw a bright spot moving up over the steep, rocky ground. Frowning, he grabbed a pair of binoculars from where they dangled from Varstrand’s dashboard, and trained them on the mountainside. A moment’s refocusing and he was seeing it clearly, a patch of brightness flowing up the slope, over boulders and scree. As he watched, it accelerated, sped up towards the strong-hold’s barricaded entrance then slipped out of sight behind a tumble of rocks.
Lowering the binoculars, Greg shook his head. ‘I don’t …’
Light stopped him, a brilliant white light that engulfed the mountain. Dazzling white light blocking from view the slopes, the rocks, the crags. A torrent of light, sending an unbearable flare into his eyes, cutting through to his worst fears.
Two and a half seconds later the shock wave struck, but Varstrand was ready, pointing the Har into the oncoming wall of heated air, gunning the engines to their maximum. A booming roar filled their ears and the gondola shook violently as if in the hands of a petulant child. Varstrand was snarling as he held on to the control column with a white-knuckle grip. Greg’s vision was blurred, his eyes watering, and somewhere Rory was babbling, holy crap, was it a nuke? was it a nuke? as the gondola shook around them. Ignoring his discomfort, Greg anchored himself to a hull strut with one arm while staring through the binoculars at the clouds swirling around the mountain’s upper half, and the fires burning within.
Then the turbulence was past and the dirigible surged forward. Up on the mountain high winds were whipping away the smoke in a long dark tail, stark against the blue sky.
‘Where to, Mr Cameron?’ said Varstrand.
‘Up there,’ he said, pointing.
‘But what about the radiation …?’
‘It wasn’t a nuke,’ Greg said. ‘No mushroom cloud, see? If it had been a nuke we’d have been burnt to a crisp by now. No, I bet it was a particle beam strike from that bloody battleship o’ theirs. Now, get moving.’
As they ascended, the dust clouds and smoke veils drifted aside to reveal the full extent of the destruction. Varstrand gasped, Rory cursed, and Greg stared in disbelief.
The particle beam had punched into the craggy slope where the stronghold entrance was, and left behind a burning hollow eighty, perhaps a hundred feet across. It was as if something had taken a massive bite out of the mountainside.
‘Now we know why they had no air support,’ Greg said.
‘But why send in they troops?’ Rory said. ‘Why no’ hit the place earlier when we were all inside?’
Greg shook his head and shrugged. ‘So they’d have some prisoners to play with, maybe?’
Varstrand brought them to a gentle boulder-littered slope a hundred yards or more from the devastated entrance. As they clambered down the rope ladder, Greg noticed a scattering of smoking rock fragments further down and lower still, near the tree line, an advancing line of green-garbed figures, pale in the drifting haze.
‘Aye, I can see ’em, chief. Didnae waste any time, eh?’ He pointed to the east. ‘And there’s more on the way.’
A cluster of carriers were coming in low across the wooded hilltops.
‘C’mon,’ Greg said. ‘No time to lose.’
They waved to Varstrand as the Har lifted clear, then quickly headed up the stony slope. Minutes later the smoke-swathed blasted hollow was in sight and a rocky clamber away. An awful dread was growing in the pit of Greg’s stomach, even as the enemy transports were touching down at the foot of the mountain. If they could gain the entrance, and if there were any survivors, could they mount a defence of the stronghold, somehow? In the fading hope that at the last minute of the eleventh hour Robert Horst would return to Darien with a mysterious salvation?
Then, as he began to climb over the rocks dislodged by the strike, doom fell upon them again, a second bright dot which appeared on the slope some distance above them and began sweeping down towards the crater. This ti
me the dust and smoke betrayed the targeting beam, a glowing, glittering spear that lanced down from the heavens, bright, inexorable.
Rory shouted an obscenity at the sky and leaped down from the rock barrier. ‘C’mon chief, we gotta get outta here!’
But Greg felt trapped between his own rage and the seeming impotence of his efforts in the face of such colossal power. How can we fight this? he wanted to say. How can we even outrun it?
Then the beam reached the crater, a fateful shaft of light. Rory let out a wordless cry and curled up in the lee of a jutting boulder, while Greg slid down behind several piled nearby, crouching with his arms over his head …
Instants stretched out into moments. The silence was expectant and terrible. Yet no sudden burst of ferocious light erupted, nor any buffeting shock wave. Cracking open his eyes, Greg saw no change in the light, until he noticed the sharp shadows cast by small rocks close by, shadows that fell towards the sun …
He jumped up and gazed into the sky. The heavens were dominated by a bright and now fading point of haloed light. He fumbled with the binoculars, thumbed the focus wheel, but still it seemed like a dot, its glow dwindling, and, perhaps, a hint of glittering fragments?
‘What’s going on, chief?’ Rory said. ‘We’re still alive, not that I’m complaining, like.’
‘I think,’ Greg said, peering up through the binoculars, ‘that someone’s just blown the Brolturan battleship to bits.’
Grinning, he handed the bins to Rory, who quickly raised them and looked up at the pale dot. ‘That it, aye?’
‘Certainly is.’
‘Aw, ya dancer!’ Rory laughed out loud. ‘Yeess! Who d’ye think did it? The Heracles, maybe?’
‘Could be. Won’t know for sure until we get back inside the mountain so that I can have a wee chat with the Sentinel.’
Then Greg noticed movement on the mountain’s lower slopes and, shielding his eyes from the sun, he peered down. From this height it appeared that the DVF troops were withdrawing back down to where personnel carriers were landing, rear hatches already gaping. Retrieving the binoculars he took a closer look and yes, the Human troops were hastily piling into the carriers, which scarcely touched down before taking to the air again.
Greg laughed. ‘They’re pulling out! … I mean, they’re not even pulling back, they’re leaving the field altogether.’
Rory laughed madly and danced a jig, then yelled imprecations down at the retreating soldiers, interspersed with a few energetically thrown stones.
But through his own feelings of euphoria, Greg began asking himself why – even if that battleship, the Purifier, was wrecked or destroyed, why break off from a strategic engagement like an assault on Tusk Mountain?
Minutes later the last of the transports had lifted off to follow the rest back to the coast. Greg stared after them, frowning. Then he sighed.
‘C’mon, Rory. We’ll have to find out what the situation is, in there.’
Suddenly sombre, Rory nodded and together they climbed over the fallen rocks to where the original stony track had curved the last thirty yards to the Uvovo stronghold’s entrance. Except that now it stopped a few yards away at a precipice overlooking a huge bowl-shaped crater. Its surface was blackened, encrusted with charred soil and glassy patches of melted stone. Vapour drifted at the bottom and faint crackling sounds came from cooling rock. And there, incredibly, was a large, square opening in the curved wall straight ahead, its edges slightly warped, its interior sooty and dark, yet a couple of figures stood on the lip, shouting and waving. Could that mean that the rest of the stronghold was intact?
Just as he was figuring out how to get across, a high-pitched whine became audible and quickly grew louder. Suddenly, a compact, blue-winged craft flew into view, banked sharply and swooped down towards the scene of destruction. It slowed as it passed overhead then climbed and sped away eastwards. Greg already had the trusty binoculars up to track its progress, taking in such details as the W-configuration of its flying surfaces and the symbol prominently adorning its wings. It was a spiral overlaid with a narrow chevron, its apex touching the centre. It looked like no Earthsphere emblem he had ever seen but it did remind him of something else, a conversation with the Heracles’ xeno-specialist who’d said something about the Spiral Sages of Buranj …
PART THREE
26
KAO CHIH
The return journey to the Roug homeworld took about three hours via the faster Tier 2 hyperspace, yet to Kao Chih it seemed to last far longer. Impatience ate at him. In his mind he went over all that he’d seen on Pyre, the grinding poverty, the despair, the degrading squalor, people living like animals in a cage while their tormentors squeezed the last profitable drops from them. Silveira had already transloaded the data from his camera into the little spyship’s system and had promised to make a copy available to the leaders and people of Human Sept. Another would be passed to Roug officials as a partial explanation for Qabakri’s decision to remain on Pyre.
It should have been me, Kao Chih thought to himself more than once. He had wanted to stay behind but Qabakri had persuaded him to return and provide a ‘reliable testimony’. The implied uncertainty concerning Silveira’s reliability was not lost on him.
Finally, the Earthsphere agent announced that they would soon be emerging from hyperspace in the outer reaches of the Roug home system. Moments passed, along with that familiar brief wave of nausea.
‘That is it, we have arrived.’
Kao Chih had closed his eyes before the jump, and opened them to the sight of Silveira pondering an astrogational holochart of the Busrul system, using his finger to zoom into it and across and down and back. Pinpoints and symbol clusters in red, with a few in blue, littered a large area surrounding the gas giant V’Hrant.
‘Odd,’ said the agent. ‘There seems to be some kind of systemwide emergency going on. Most of these beacons and scanners weren’t active last time – I wouldn’t be surprised if we’ve set off …’
A trill of urgent notes sounded and the rare-heard voice of the Oculus Noctis spoke:
‘Enforcement Overseer Juthonag of the High Index has served you with a Response-Or-Summary-Internment writ.’
‘How insistent of them,’ Silveira said. ‘Open a channel.’
‘Now open.’
Silveira glanced and smiled at Kao Chih before speaking.
‘This is Captain Baltazar Silveira of Earthsphere Alliance Navy. How may I be of assistance?’
‘Your vessel is unknown to us,’ said a low, chorus-like voice. ‘Your intrusion in our system at this time can easily be construed as unfriendly and potentially hostile. What is the reason for your presence?’
‘We are acting under the special orders of Mandator Qabakri. We bear intelligence data objects of a crucial nature.’
There was a silent pause, then the deep vibrant voice spoke again.
‘I am instructed to convey you to the nexus of the crisis.’
From the transparent viewport Kao Chih and Silveira saw space quiver and distort as an immense V-shaped vessel revealed itself. A striated column of light sprang out from the flat grey prow to engulf the Oculus Noctis. Kao Chih felt nausea well up for a moment as the stars swung around their small craft, then realised that it was false motion sickness – Silveira’s ship dampened internal inertia.
‘This should not take long,’ Silveira said with his usual confident composure as the Roug ship charged across the system with his ship held in its grapple beam.
Minutes later, as a pale dot expanded into the dull, dark face of the gas giant V’Hrant, another far smaller speck grew rapidly directly ahead and became the rockhab Retributor. No sneaking in through Maintenance this time – the Oculus Noctis was peremptorily directed to a vacant berth in the new landing bay. As they disembarked onto the convex dockside, Kao Chih noticed a group of Roug emerge from a small, blockish vessel similar to the large V-shaped one.
Strangely, there seemed to be no one there to greet either th
emselves or the Roug, no security detail, no officials. They glanced about for a moment, received no attention from the few loaders and hull techs, then moved towards the main exit. Suddenly the doors parted and a knot of arguing people spilled out. One of them, a stocky bearded man in engineer’s red and black, broke away and quickly approached.
‘Honourable Kao Chih, I am Kung Wei, senior engineer. I must speak with you …’
A small woman in yellow and beige elbowed her way to the front.
‘Unfortunately, respected Kung Wei has no authority. I, on the other hand, am Shang Yi, environmental manager …’
A taller man in plum and black firmly pushed them apart and stepped forward. ‘Sadly, neither of my associates is competent to deal with matters of security. I am Captain Ji Yen, officer commanding Retributor security …’
Another babble of argument threatened to break out until Kao Chih, suddenly infuriated, said loudly, ‘Silence – have you forgotten your manners in the presence of our patrons?’
Voices tailed off abruptly, and embarrassed glances took in the Roug party now drawing near. Silveira arched both eyebrows and nodded approvingly.
‘Thank you,’ Kao Chih said amiably. ‘Now what has happened to bring about this unseemly behaviour?’
‘Everything has been turned on its head,’ said Shang Yi. ‘There are Roug patrons running the command bridge …’
‘They were taken,’ explained the security captain. ‘The Duizhang, the senior officers, many of the elders, all captured, kidnapped!’
‘It is without precedent in this age, Human Kao Chih,’ came the sharp, papery voice of one of the Roug as they approached the group of Humans. The officers made respectful bows, Kao Chih and Silveira too, and the senior Roug gave a stiff nod as it halted a few feet away, flanked by two companion Roug, each bearing what had to be weapons with long, segmented barrels.
‘Greetings, honourable patrons,’ Kao Chih said, trying not to stare at the escort. The sight of armed Roug was completely new.
The Orphaned Worlds_Book Two of Humanity's Fire Page 34
