by Chris Walley
Merral shook hands solemnly with Fred Huang, Nate the pilot, and Louis. There was a lot that he wanted to say to each of them but he felt he couldn’t. Then he turned to Erika, and by the metal hull of the hoverer they faced each other in the near total darkness.
“I hope,” he said, “that we shall meet by the lake tomorrow.”
“Perhaps,” she replied in a solemn way. “But I am less sure. I fear our diplomatic efforts are doomed. But they must be done. If we perish . . .” She faded away into uncertainty. Then when, moments later, she spoke again, Merral was heartened to hear that her tone had acquired a new, thoughtful confidence. “And so, if we do perish? What better way than in the pursuit of peace? After all, we would follow a good example.”
In the darkness, Merral could vaguely see her reach out and trace something on the fluttering flag by her side. Then a gleam of starlight caught the fabric, and he was able to discern that, in the symbol of the Assembly, she was touching the Lamb.
A few minutes later the Emilia Kay lifted off and, keeping as low as possible, made its way southwest round the crater rim to the third and final site. Merral stood at the back of the cockpit for the approach to this last landing zone where Frankie’s team would be unloaded and the ship and the reserve team would wait until dawn. As slowly as she could, Perena flew in a winding path up a rugged river valley broken by waterfalls, rapids, and vast boulders.
When the scan of the area revealed nothing untoward, Merral approved a landing. From the images he had seen in the planning stages, he knew it was a difficult landing zone, a deep hollow set amid high cliffs. He held his breath as Perena took the ship down vertically, nudging it gently sideways in a series of little taps until it came to rest.
After long seconds of scanning screens and readouts, Perena stroked switches and the ship’s engines became suddenly silent. Amid a flurry of orders to the engineer, she got up from her seat and, stretching her arms wearily, came over to Merral. “We can still take off within five minutes if we need to,” she said. “But I want to check our site. Let us survey it together.”
Merral found his armored jacket under his seat and put it on. It was an action he had left to the last moment not just to give him more comfort—it was hard and inflexible—but because he felt that putting it on was symbolic: it was an admission that fighting now seemed inescapable. And when will I get to take it off?
Leaving Frankie and his men to get the sled out, Merral climbed out of the ship with Perena and peered around in the intense darkness. This was by far and away the darkest site so far, and it was only with difficulty that Merral could make out anything at all. Here they were so deep down into the dry gorge that the sky above them was just a torn, star-filled strip between sheer black walls of rock.
Perena switched on a powerful flashlight and pointed it around the cliff sides.
“It will do,” she said, her voice seeming to echo around the gorge. “There are bits of loose rock above, but the ground is stable and the night is dry. I think we are safe here. We’ll await your signal. I’ll have the engines ready to fire up from six. All being well, I will be with you within fifteen minutes.”
“I hope that’s fast enough,” Merral said, feeling that down there the air was as still and heavy as if it hadn’t moved since the Seeding.
“The old lady will do her best,” Perena said. “But there are limits. I can’t just pull up straight out of here. I need to check all systems are working acceptably. And I will have to approach you carefully.”
“Well, take no more risks than needed. You know the rules we agreed to.”
“Yes. And as soon as I know it has gone to a fight, I’ll summon the medical support.”
“Thanks.”
Through the still darkness, Merral heard Anya call out his name lightly.
“Over here!” he answered.
“Well, I’d better go back to the ship,” Perena said, reaching out for his hand and squeezing it.
In the darkness, Anya came over and stretched out an arm to touch him softly.
“A strange night,” she murmured.
“One of the strangest in the history of the Assembly,” Merral replied, feeling strangely tense and excited.
“Indeed so, but I was—I suppose—thinking more personally.”
“I see,” he said, trying to sound matter-of-fact but suddenly aware that all his feelings were in total confusion. Here in this dark, still cleft with the stars so high above, it seemed that he was in another world from the rest of Farholme.
Anya grasped his arm tightly. “Look, I’m worried about you, Merral. I’ve come to care about you.” She paused, and he could hear her breathing. “Of course, now is the wrong time to say this. And you probably don’t want me to say it.”
I do. But he didn’t say anything.
“But it’s just now,” she said, “facing what you face, I, well, just wanted you to know. . . .”
If only I could freeze this conversation until after everything is over. Then another voice within him said that she was right, and that when you were faced with the prospect of death, there were things that it was appropriate to discuss.
Merral was suddenly reminded of his meeting with Theodore, the man from Maritime Affairs. It had been that odd evening, the night before Vero and he had left for their trip up the Lannar River. The night before his world changed.
“I thought . . . ,” he answered, “that, er, you and Theodore were . . .”
“Him?” In the darkness, he knew she was smiling. “No, he’s not my sort really. Or so I’ve decided. Now.”
His heart seemed to bound, but with the surge of excitement came a cloud of unease about his relationship with Isabella back in distant Ynysmant. Anya—and suddenly Merral realized he was thinking of her as his Anya—was talking to him. “And you? I thought there was something with this Isabella?”
Merral felt a stab of awkwardness at hearing Isabella’s name mentioned. She seemed so far away now, so remote from this present, very private moment. She and Ynysmant might have been on the other side of the galaxy from this dark, secret cleft. She was, he felt, so much a part of the past. And surely, he told himself, that past, like his title of Forester, was gone.
“Once . . . there might have been,” he whispered. “But not now. There is nothing special between us.”
As he said the words, Merral reassured himself that what had happened there had a been a lifetime ago, before the world went to bits. Besides, he told himself, it had never been with parental approval. And it only remained for him—for them both—to sort out the final details of their return to being merely good friends. And with that, he pushed Isabella out of his mind.
Merral looked at Anya’s dim outline. Suddenly he snatched her into his arms, his armored jacket strange and stiff against her yielding softness. He ran his fingers through her wild hair, sighing at the touch of her arms around his neck. He wanted to hold on to her and be with her. There was nothing sweeter he could think of than Anya. And this night, with its threats and tensions and its brevity of time, seemed to make it all much more precious, just as darkness heightens the smallest light.
For an immeasurable time, he stood there holding her, until a low voice called out his name from somewhere by the Emilia Kay.
“Look, it’s nearly time,” he said quietly, wondering why everything had to happen at once.
Their lips gently kissed.
With an extraordinary reluctance, he forced himself away from her, telling himself that there was much to be done. Then, his mind in turmoil, Merral walked carefully back over to where the sled was now hovering just above the ground with a gentle whisper. In the darkness he could make out the men moving against each other as, weighed down by equipment, they settled clumsily into their seats. Between the sled and the Emilia Kay, he could vaguely make out the men of the reserves spilling out of the ship and stretching themselves.
From the front of the sled, Frankie called out in a muted voice, “Captain, if it’s all r
ight with you, I think we ought to leave.”
Suddenly Vero quickly embraced Merral. “Come back safe,” he said.
“I’ll do my best,” Merral replied, feeling that he sounded utterly feeble.
Then after Maria, Lucy, and Perena hugged him, there was a longer and more meaningful hug from Anya.
“See you at the lake,” she whispered.
“Maybe it will all work out,” he muttered. “Perhaps we will be invited to breakfast.”
He felt, rather than saw, her wrinkle her face in amusement. “Given what we know of their eating habits, I’d say it’d be a good time to fast.”
Then, after a brief but precious grasp of her fingers, he clambered on board and was tugged toward a bench seat near the front, just behind Philip and Frankie. With a chuckle, someone that Merral decided could only be Lorrin Venn passed him a helmet, and he put it on. He tightened the strap and fastened the security belt around his waist, took the offered weapon, and put its cold metallic mass carefully down between his feet.
Then the chaplain was praying over them.
“Amen,” came a low chorus of voices from the sled’s occupants and the bystanders.
Then switches were flicked and the whispering of the sled’s engine grew to a slight hum. There was a soft tug underneath him as the vehicle began to move at little more than a fast running pace over the ground.
His heart torn by a dozen emotions, Merral looked back as they slid northward out of the gully, and one by one, the faint lights of the Emilia Kay vanished behind him. Then he swiveled round on his bench seat and faced forward.
Ahead of us, in less than seven hours, lies a confrontation about whose outcome not one of us has any certainty. We face unknown foes of unknown powers with unproven weapons and untrained men.
It was not a comforting thought.
39
The sled moved steadily northward toward the Lannar Crater in almost total silence. It was so dark that Merral could make out very little clearly. There was a constant sense of trees and bushes racing past, and occasionally branches and leaves would whip against the sled and rattle off helmets or hands. Almost the only noises were the soft whistle of the air, the low hum of the engine, and the gentle rustle of grass and small shrubs against the sled’s underside. Their passage was so quiet that more than once they startled animals. Once, a herd of deer bounded away as leaping shadows. Another time they stopped abruptly, and ahead of them Merral made out the shape of a large bear lumbering irritably out of the way.
Normally Merral would have found the journey invigorating, particularly after being enclosed inside a ship. He had always loved being out in the open, and this journey with the stars above and the fresh clean air with its scents of pine and heather all around should have been enjoyable. Tonight, though, everything seemed to conspire against any enjoyment. He had to keep his head down to avoid being lashed by branches, it was impossible to find a decent position for his legs in the cramped space, the armor made his spine ache, and soon, as they climbed higher, he was very cold. Repeatedly, memories of his fight with the intruders at Carson’s Sill came back to him, and he found himself quailing at the prospect of battling against those terrible creatures. And what he fought against then had now been supplemented by this new flying monstrosity. Unease also nagged at his mind about what had happened between him and Anya. The memory of her embrace left a warm glow. Nevertheless, in another part of his mind, he told himself that he could perhaps have handled it in a better way. He had somehow allowed himself to be caught unawares by events. It would have surely been better to have resolved matters with Isabella first.
After ninety minutes, his troubled reflections were broken when they stopped in the midst of a pile of gravelly dunes overlooked by a high, saw-edged line of summits. With groans of relief, everybody clambered out and stretched to restore circulation.
Merral checked the dimmed digital map with Frankie and Philip. He saw that they had slowly climbed up from the landing site but still had the main part of the southern Rim Ranges to negotiate.
After ten minutes they set off again. Over the next hour, they wound their way through the mountains, climbing ever higher and going round great fragments of rock beside which patches of snow still persisted. Above them the stars seemed to burn ever more brightly, and in the deep cold everybody huddled next to each other, grateful for even the slight warmth transmitted from the man on either side. They slowly descended into the crater proper. The high, sharp-edged blackness of the bladed peaks was now behind them. They descended gulches and ragged screes to the crater floor, and as they did, Merral found himself ever more troubled. He tried praying, but that gave him no peace, a fact that unsettled him still more. He sat there shivering, trying to keep warm and wishing that, one way or another, it was all over. Slowly, the bare angular rocks gave way to a flatter and more swampy area, and for some time the sled pushed through tall reeds, while in the waters below, unseen creatures plopped and jumped as the sled glided over them.
On the other side of the marsh, they stopped again amid clumps of dwarf willows and, on a bank covered with thin sparse grass and moss, stretched out trying to massage cramped muscles. Frankie sent a brief coded message, compressed into a fraction of a second’s tight directional transmission, southward to the Emilia Kay. A few moments later, the terse acknowledgement came back from Maria Dalphey. All parties, the message said, were on schedule.
They continued on, and as the ground rose again, Philip was forced to steer the sled in an increasingly circuitous route in order to keep them low in valleys. Merral tried to doze but found that he could not.
An hour later, there was a final stop in a barren, gravel-strewn depression. Everyone dismounted, did more stretching exercises, drank water, and ate biscuits. Here, Merral noted, all the men seemed subdued, and an air of unease hung over everyone. At least two of the party kept their guns with them, and in the darkness he could sense people looking around warily.
Merral was lying down, trying to bring life to stiff legs, when one of the men came over to him.
“Sir, a question: You were a forester, right?” Merral recognized Lee Rodwen from his southern Varrend Tablelands accent.
“Yes, Lee,” Merral sighed, “and at this moment I would like to be one again. As you would want to go back to your farming studies.”
“Aye, true enough. But is it always this quiet up ’ere?”
Merral listened beyond the low whispers of the men and realized that he had heard no sign of either bird or animal for a long time. I have been too preoccupied. I must concentrate more on this undertaking.
“You feel something is missing?” he asked.
He sensed Lee looking around, sniffing the air. “Life, sir, is what’s missing. Birds, rabbits, foxes—anything. I’m no forester, but I am a countryman, and this is a funny place ’ere. Bleak. As if round ’ere, the Seeding went wrong.”
Merral listened again, hearing only the tense silence, as heavy as the air before a summer storm.
“No, Lee, the Seeding went right. But, if I can make up a word, perhaps it’s been unseeded.”
“Unseeded?” There was a pause and then the man spoke again. “Aye, that about feels like it. But sir, who—or what—unseeds what the Assembly seeds?”
“A good question, Lee.”
Then behind them there was a murmur of activity, and Merral was aware that people were starting to climb back into the sled. It was time for the final lap.
Forty minutes later, the sled glided to a halt in a shallow but steep-sided river valley. It was still dark; indeed, the night was now thicker and more impenetrable than ever before.
There were whispered commands from Frankie; the sled sank slowly to the ground, and the faint hum of the engine died away. Stiffly, but with great care, the men dismounted from the sled and, trying not to make the slightest noise, began taking out their weapons and their packs.
In low whispers, Frankie assigned duties. “Three hours sleep, one hour on guard
. If you’re not on guard now, go and sleep. Everyone keep your weapons next to you.” Then he turned and touched Merral on the arm. “If it’s all right with you, Captain, shall we go and take a look?”
Putting on light-enhancing goggles that, in happier days, Merral had used for monitoring wildlife, he and Frankie grabbed their guns and picked their way down the stony valley bottom. There was little vegetation, just straggly thistles and wiry grass clumps around the flanks of the sluggish shallow stream. After a hundred meters, they began climbing up a slope, trying not to slip on the loose stones. A few minutes’ labor brought them to just below the rounded summit, and there they hesitated for a moment.
If we are in the right place, Merral thought, then just over the top will be the lake and, on the other side of that, will be the ship.
Frankie gestured him forward. They crawled up on their hands and knees and, lying uncomfortably on the cold and pebbly ground, peered eastward.
With the image distorted in color and texture by the goggles, it took time for Merral to work out what it was that he was seeing. Before them was the rough descent down to the lake edge, and beyond the dark, immobile waters he could see the other shoreline. In the middle of that, like some sort of strange reclining ebony sculpture, was the intruder vessel.
“The ship.” Merral’s whispered words rang with soft wonderment and fear. At first, all he could make out was the general shape of the intruder craft. Even when Frankie passed him a fieldscope, he could still make out little more than he had seen on Vero’s images. There was the single front leg, the paired and larger rear legs, and between them, the forward-descending entrance ramp. He could see no sign of life but felt that in the irresolvable blackness around the ship there could easily have been any number of sentries.
Merral put down the scope. Although actually seeing this vessel added little new to what he had already observed on the images, there was nevertheless something almost overwhelming about the experience. The intruder ship had been progressively an abstract theory, a computer image, and a crude piece of imagery. Now, at last, it was a solid and tangible reality, and with that the whole operation had assumed a dire immediacy. After all, with a real ship went real battles and real deaths.
