Michael Cobley - Humanity's Fire book 1

by Seeds of Earth

  value your experience and military insight, even your

  dissenter's viewpoint. But there's something else yon

  bring to our clandestine scheming, something that could

  prove crucial.'

  Theo laughed. 'Somehow I don't think you're refer

  ring to my charm and boyish good looks.'

  Sundstrom gave him a sidelong look.

  T believe that you and your old friends from the

  Corps call it "the assets".'

  Still standing, Theo almost froze but made himself

  relax. 'The assets?'

  'A substantial quantity of arms and ammunition went

  missing after the Winter Coup, along with explosives,

  tech gear, and some vehicles. Now, assuming that this

  materiel has been stored at various locations in the

  vicinity of the colony townships, it's entirely possible

  that such hideaways may have come to the attention of

  some intel-gathering arm of government. In which case

  that data could be sitting in files that will shortly

  become, as I've already indicated, somewhat less than

  secure. Of course, if these stores turned out to be empty

  then such files could be closed and erased without

  delay.' He smiled. 'I don't know why you held on to it -

  perhaps you harboured long-term ambitions, or maybe

  you kept it so that it wouldn't fall into other hands.

  Either way, I'm glad that you did.'

  Theo smiled blandly. 'Holger, I am at a loss to know

  how to reply to all that,' he said. 'But I shall give it care-

  ful consideration.'

  'That's all I ask.'

  'There is one small favour you might do for me,' he

  said.

  'Which is?'

  Theo smiled. 'From your communications with the

  Earth ship, were you told anything about the Forrestal

  and the TenebrosaV

  'That was one of my first questions,' Sundstrom said.

  'But it seems that they have not been found - the dis-

  tinction of first contact is ours.'

  'After which we will come under the microscope, no

  doubt.'

  'Why is that?'

  'To find out how our experiment in cultural admix-

  ture turned out,' Theo said. 'The original colonial

  project back on Earth computer-modelled a wide variety

  of national-cultural combinations, with the aim of find-

  ing those most likely to be able to survive conditions on

  alien worlds. And to build a worthwhile society.'

  Sundstrom gave a rueful grin. 'Scandinavians,

  Russians and Scots - what were they thinking?'

  A moment later the female assistant entered with

  Theo's overcoat. He donned it, shook the president s

  hand and moments later found himself outside the villa

  again. It was darker and colder now and he felt a dis-

  tinct nip in the air as he left the villa grounds by I

  tree-shrouded pair of gates designed to look like the

  entrance of an adjacent property. The spinnercab he had

  ordered earlier was waiting at the side of the road, and

  took him downhill towards the city. Hammergard was

  spread along a narrow isthmus which separated Loch

  Morwen from the Korzybski Sea and the ocean beyond,

  both bodies of water glimmering with reflections of the

  night sky's starmist hues. But Theo was dwelling on

  Sundstrom's closing remarks about the Diehards, not to

  mention the assets, which was something of an unset-

  tling surprise. And yet the president had decided to tell

  Theo that the assets were vulnerable, a revelation that

  could have only a limited number of implications, all of

  which spelled trouble.

  He had the driver let him out on the Loch Morwen

  shore road in the city's Northvale district. With the hum

  of the spinnercab fading as it returned to the city centre,

  Theo took out his comm as he headed up the sideroad

  that led home. It was an older, larger model, its sang-

  wood case scored and darkened from use, but the

  exterior belied its customised, upgraded components. A

  few thumbpresses later the blue oval screen read

  'Welcome To The Crypt', and when he raised it to his

  ear he heard jaunty bagpipe music for a moment or two

  before someone answered.

  'Aye, whit is it now}''

  Theo cleared his throat. 'Rory, it's me.'

  Silence for a moment. 'Ach, sorry about that, Major -

  I just had Stef on the line from Tangenberg bitching

  about the trainin' rota because he wants tae watch the

  Earth ambassador arriving on the vee and I thought

  that wiz him again—'

  'That's okay, never mind,' Theo said. Rory McGrain

  was his deputy, quartermaster and researcher all rolled

  into one. 'Listen, we'll need to roust out some loaders

  and crews tonight.'

  'Won't be easy, chief. What's it for}'

  'Sundstrom knows about the assets.'

  'Aw, naw . . .'

  'Or more accurately, he knows that government intel

  knows about them, so we have to move them all

  tonight.'

  'Hell's fire, chief - are we gonna have to shoot our

  way out}'

  Theo slowed as he reached the leaf-wreathed stair-

  way leading up to his hab.

  'That's the funny part, Rory -1 don't think there'll be

  anyone watching the caches, never mind getting ready to

  jump us. Listen, I'm at my house right now. Have

  Ivanov or Janssen pick me up in fifteen. And one more

  thing - see what you can find out about a special forces

  guy called Donny.' He gave a brief description iron

  memory.

  'That must have been some meeting ye had up at the

  palace,' Rory said. 'Am I right in thinking that this

  ambassador's meet 'n' greet isna all it seems}'

  'Rory, you don't know the half of it.'

  And as he hurried up the wooden steps, he thought -

  And I don't think I do either.

  3

  LEGION

  It was a contract survey ship called Segmenter that

  found the planet Darien while studying the perilous

  gulfs of the Huvuun Deepzone.

  Through tangled swirls and curtains of interstellar

  dust and debris, Segmenter had painstakingly (and

  clandestinely) plotted and scanned and measured for

  several long weeks before stumbling over an uncharted

  star system, complete with four planets, one of which

  was habitable. Since this part of the Huvuun was cur-

  rently claimed by two antagonistic civilisations, the

  Brolturans and the Imisil, there then followed a tense

  hour or more during which the system was scanned

  for any other ships, beacons, probes or sensor nets.

  Once it was clear that there were no such hazards in

  the area, Segmenter moved in closer while its crew set

  to work.

  Data soon began arriving: a variant-three habitable

  world, with a cluster of medium-tecli-level settlements

  and also a large habitable moon. The planet's sentients

  were confirmed as Human, and their rudimentary infor-

  mation network revealed a population of approximately

  2.75 million. The moon was inhabited by an indigenous

  biped sentient specie
s called the Uvovo, who coexisted

  with an extensive forest ecology . . .

  A full report was compiled by one of Segmenter's

  scanners, then passed up to the captain. He saw at once

  that the Human element made it too important for his

  remit and had the report encrypted and dispatched via

  Tier 2 hyperspace comnet to the headquarters of the

  Suneye Combine, the huge interstellar corpora tic 1

  which had contracted Segmenter's services. From there it

  flashed to the Office of External Measures on Iseri, the

  supreme homeworld of the Sendruka Hegemony. Six

  hours after leaving Segmenter, the report's contents were

  being discussed by the highest Hegemony figures and

  their AIs, and policy formulation was well under way.

  But the Segmenter's, captain was not above trying to

  sell the same goods twice and had quickly found a cus-

  tomer at the rogue port of Blacknest. Pleased with his

  new acquisition, the datadealer deposited a tidy sum in

  a secure account, then streamed the data directly to a

  number of patrons with standing orders for informa-

  tion on new planets.

  One patron was a Kiskashin line-pirate on Yndyeri

  Duvo, a 2nd-echelon world in the Erdindeso Autarky.

  His reputation for selling anything to anyone had gained

  him a string of customers for whom the word 'eccentric'

  was merely a starting point. And amongst the most tac-

  iturn was one he had named Lord Mysterious. Lord

  Mysterious had appeared nearly twenty years ago with

  a solid tap of Piraseri credit and a terse description of his

  information requirements tagged with a secure, localnet

  address on Duvo's sister world, Yndyeri Tetro, The

  Kiskashin was a phlegmatic merchant, and as long as a

  customer's credit held up he had no interest in finding

  out much more about them. So as soon as the Darien

  report blinked into his portable dataspace (while he was

  haggling with a tekmarker over the cost of band-depth

  for the coming hexad) he recognised this as the kind of

  thing Lord Mysterious had specified in his gatherer pro-

  file. But rather than sending it on immediately, he

  abstracted it and pondered the contents: a long-lost

  Human colony discovered in the middle of the Huvuun

  Deepzone with the Imisil in one corner, the Brolturans in

  the other, and the Hegemony looming over it all - hmm,

  a risky place to be, without a doubt, and fascinating.

  The Kiskashin did not know any Humans, but if any

  contacted him with a lucrative proposal in mind he

  would certainly-be open-minded about it.

  And just in case some of his other clients might be

  interested in this little morsel, he slotted the report into

  one of the slower outgoing queues. That would give him

  time to examine it later and assess its resale potential.

  After all, business is business.

  4

  CHEL

  Every time he stepped aboard a Human vehicle, Chel

  found himself having to learn forbearance anew. They

  were hard, hollow things, completely lacking in the

  vitality of organic life yet endowed with cunning engines

  that drove them along their way. When the government

  zeplin set down at Port Gagarin, Chel breathed more

  easily as he hurried down the gantry to the hard ground

  of the sunken landing bay. It was difficult to trust to a

  thing that neither breathed nor had a beating heart, a

  thing that had no lifesong.

  Yet we must have been very different in the long-dis-

  tant past, he thought, gazing back up at the dirigible.

  Once, the Uvovo worked with cold, dead stone and

  built places like the temple on Waonwir. What kind of

  people were we then?

  The short nightflight from Waonwir, which the

  Humans called Giant's Shoulder, to Port Gagarin was only

  the first stage of his journey. He was met at the landing

  bay exit by a breathless, harried-looking young Human

  female who introduced herself as Oxana as she quickly

  guided him along enclosed walkways to one of the big

  loading bays. There they boarded a large, ponderous

  freighter named Skidhbladnir, its appearance so battered

  and grimy as to make the government zeplin seem pristine

  by comparison.

  Once inside, Oxana apologised for the rush, blaming

  incompetent couriers, and gave him his tickets for the

  rest of the journey.

  'It should not take more than six or seven hours, and

  there are five stops along the way before you reach

  Invergault, where you will be met by someone from

  Ibsenskog. When you are ready to return, simply send us

  a message from the monitor office in the town.'

  'I shall remember, Oxana,' Chel said. 'My thanks.'

  'Think nothing of it, Scholar,' she said. 'Safe journey.'

  After she was gone, Chel sought out the padded shelf

  that was his accommodation while the thuds and shouts

  of loading continued down in the main hold. A short

  while later the hold door was finally raised and the

  cargo zeplin lurched as its moorings were uncoupled.

  Engines droned and the shelf vibrated faintly beneath

  him, then a swaying sensation told him that they were

  aloft and under way.

  However, Oxana's six or seven hours turned into

  nearly nine. As the freighter flew through the night and

  on into the morning, Chel managed to doze for a span,

  once he had grown accustomed to the dead hollowness

  of the Human craft. He almost grew used to the rattle

  of the hawser drums, the cries of the hefter crews, and

  the sounds of cargo being shifted. But by the time the

  Skidhbladnir arrived at Invergault it was an undeniable

  relief to clamber down to the zeplin station's small plat-

  form, with the cargo dirigible hanging overhead,

  creaking on taut cables.

  Invergault was a small town sitting upslope from i

  pebbly cove near the end of a steep-sided sea loch. Like

  most of the Eastern Towns, it was a meeting point and

  marketplace for hunters, fishers and trappers. As he

  descended from the platform, he noticed that almost all

  roofs now carried windspinners, as well as large afftcg

  roots affixed to their chimneys and flues, absorbing the

  ash and fumes from hearth and cooking fires, chan-

  nelling heat into other uses rather than letting it escape

  Chel knew from his teachers that, before the Humans

  sent their craft up to the home of Segrana, the colonists

  had been enthusiastic over-exploiters of natural resources

  and had scarcely practised any kind of wardenship. After

  the Accord of Friendship, the Uvovo were able to help

  the Humans to give up certain wasteful, destructive

  habits by showing them how to cultivate and use the

  many kinds of sifter root. This opened the way to the

  establishment of the seven daughter-forests, from which

  a change in cultural attitudes slowly percolated through

  the Humans' society. Wardenship of the natural world

  gradually became part of their custom an
d tradition.

  On the pebbly slope near the zep station, Chel was

  met by a young female Uvovo dressed in plain green

  garments and wearing a Benevolent amulet. She looked

  anxious surrounded by the taller, bulkier Humans, but

  her face brightened when she spotted Chel. She intro-

  duced herself as Giseru and led him up to a lohig pen

  where an elderly Human stocksman tethered out

  riding pair and lashed on the saddles with almost care

  less expertise. Moments later, Chel and his guide were

  heading out of town and along a broad, rutted track

  that led into a bushy gully and the wooded hills beyond.

  Chel had to suppress the urge to laugh as he gripped

  the reining rod and followed Giseru through the trees.

  Lohig were six-legged creatures whose segmented bodies

  were protected by bony plates, and whose large dark

  eyes were veiled by flickering inner eyelids. Beneath the

  canopies of Segrana, they usually grew no larger than

  hand-size, but such marked divergence was found in

  several strains of plants and animals common to Umara

  and its forest moon. Chel had spoken with a few

  Human ecologists and heard them speak excitedly of

  this or that theory which tried to account for these dif-

  ferences. While they acknowledged that once the Uvovo

  had inhabited both planet and moon, they failed to

  understand that Segrana too had once held sway on

  both worlds and that the loss of that blessed presence

  was the root cause. The Humans spoke of 'die-back'

  and 'extinction events', but Uvovo legends told of a vast

  and terrible conflict, the War of the Long Night, a strug-

  gle between the Ghost Gods and the Dreamless which

  led to the burning of the world that Humans now called

  Darien. Human record-keepers and teachers knew of

  the Uvovo's legends but did not understand them, just as

  they came to visit the high homes,of Segrana but did not

  hear her song.

  He smiled ruefully, knowing that was not strictly

  true. There were a few whose perceptions ran a little

  deeper, like Lyssa Devlin or Pavel Ivanov, who might

  one day glimpse the outlines of the greatness of Segrana.

  Yet there was one Human, a female scientist called

  Catriona Macreadie, whose qualities of intellect might