wine. 'But I do know that of the government's secret,
hush-hush projects, there was one whose success rate
was way out in front, and that's who I think Pyatkov's
got with him. Probably wants them moved to a safe
house near Trond, or further north, knowing my luck.'
'Enhanced,' Akesson muttered darkly. 'It was terrible
what they did to those children.'
Solvjeg sat forward. 'When I was young and still at
school, one of my closest friends got herself pregnant by
a young man from a neighbouring town, a very pretty
boy who could dance most dashingly and play the
bala . . . anyway, she and her parents were distraught,
but at that time Zhilinsky was promoting his New
Children's Programme, with government backing,
encouraging women not to have abortions but to
donate the unwanted offspring to his Programme, even
before they had reached full term.
'They never admitted in public that Zhilinsky's sur-
geons were trying to create Human computers - they
used words like adjustment or modification or enhance-
ment. Eventually the whole truth was made public when
the failures could no longer be concealed. One of them
was especially heartbreaking, a young woman of nine-
teen who had tried to kill herself forty times or more,
even though assessments showed her to be a calm,
rational mathematical genius - 95 per cent of the time.
The other 5 per cent she was monomaniacal, self-hating
and self-destructive. When she was discussed on the
radio and in the papers they showed her picture and
gave her first name, which my close friend recognised
right away as her daughter . . .'
A name emerged from Theo's memory. 'Maria . . .
Groenvold,' he said.
Solvjeg smiled. 'Yes, that's right, and her daughter
was called Ulrike - perhaps some of Mr Pyatkov's com-
panions might remember her.-..: .'
Akesson held up a hand for silence, and a moment
later Theo heard the sound of a vehicle outside, tyres
crunching on gravel.
'I'll make sure,' Akesson said, heading out to the hall.
Donny, meanwhile, was already on his feet and standing
closer to the other doorway. Theo and his sister looked
at him askance.
'Hey,' he said. 'Just in case.'
Then Akesson appeared at the door, beckoning them
to follow.
The hallway was busy with Akesson giving orders to
some of his staff while Pyatkov, wrapped in a fur-trimmed
greatcoat, ushered several unsmiling people, three men
and two women, through to another room off the hall.
The Enhanced were wearing thin indoor clothes which
probably accounted for their morose expressions, yet
there was also a certain hauteur to their demeanour and
they regarded no one else as they trooped through the
hall. Solvjeg watched them a moment then put a hand
on Theo's arm, smiled and followed the newcomers.
Observing this, Pyatkov shrugged.
'I'm afraid that your sister may find them a little
close-mouthed,' he said to Theo. 'They've exchanged
barely a dozen words with me since I got them out of
the Delta Facility, and that was over twenty-four hours
ago.' He loosened his coat. 'In any case, this is a short
stopover, five minutes then we have to get back on the
road. And I need both of you to come with us, and any
help from your Diehards, Major, if there are any in the
area.'
Theo and Donny exchanged puzzled looks.
'Expecting trouble on the road north, Vitaly?' said
Donny.
'Not north, Captain, but east,' Pyatkov said stiffly.
'President Sundstrom reached a secret agreement with
the Imisil ambassador that, in the event of a de facto
takeover by the Hegemony, particular researchers would
be offered political asylum by the Imisil. Their ambas-
sador is currently in talks with Kuros, which means that
an Imisil shuttle is sitting on a runway at Port Gagarin
right now - we have to get there with all speed, bypass
security and see the Enhanced safely on board that shut-
tle.'
'Is that all?' Theo said. 'What's so special about these
people?'
'Aye,' said Donny. 'What's their gimmick?'
Pyatkov's lips were set in a thin line. 'I cannot reveal
what I know, but I can tell you that the Hegemony must
never find out what is in those Enhanced minds.'
Donny looked at Theo. 'Must be that recipe for rein-
deer haggis - telling ye, the rumours I've heard . . .'
'Barbour, can you be serious for . . .'
'Okay, Pyatkov,' said Theo. 'Then why are we hand-
ing these people over to the Imisil? Are they really to be
trusted?'
'Yes - the Imisil government has nominated a
member of the Intercessor Council as their guardian.'
'The who?' said Donny.
Pyatkov frowned. 'An interplanetary organisation
which, I'm told, has a high reputation for honesty and
impartial arbitration.'
Theo shrugged and glanced at Donny, who rolled his
eyes then took out his handgun.
'A 50-calibre Chokhov,' he said. 'Just the thing to
encourage honesty and impartiality.'
Checking the magazine, he snapped it back in, then
winked.
Theo laughed and turned to Pyatkov. 'Some of my
men will be waiting at the observation point near
Membrance Vale.'
'We can divert to pick them up without losing time.'
'Also I don't even have a weapon.'
'That will not be a problem,' Pyatkov said. 'I brought
a selection.'
A few minutes later, as the Enhanced filed back out,
now wearing scarves and hats donated by Akesson,
Theo went to say goodbye to his sister. She was standing
with one of the Enhanced, a slender woman with short
black hair and attractive if sombre features. As Theo
approached, she solemnly shook Solvjeg's hand and
went to join the rest outside.
'Her name is Julia,' Solvjeg said to him. 'She remem-
bers Ulrike and said that she was like a comet among
shooting stars . . .' She faced him. 'Are you going too?'
'Yes,' he said. 'It seems that Pyatkov still has need for
an old dog of war ... we're going to break into Port
Gagarin and get these folk aboard a shuttle that is wait-
ing to take them up to the Imisil ship in orbit.'
She nodded, gnawed her lip, then shook her head. 'I
cannot tell you that you're too old for this, because in
truth it's only your body which is too old for it!' Just
then, Donny handed him his coat, which he put on. 'I
am not your wife, only your sister, but that gives me the
right to tell you, Theodor Karlsson, to come back alive,
with or without your shield!'
'Ja, little spear-maiden - who would dare disobey
such a command?'
They embraced, then Theo hurried out to where
Pyatkov's transport, a battered-looking freight bus, was
waiting with its twin flatwheels running. Fine ra
in was
sweeping and swirling down with a gusting breeze,
making golden haloes of flying motes around the farm-
house pathway lamps. He leaped up the entry steps, the
door concertinaed shut behind him and they drove off
into the night.
51
KAO CHIH
He stared with a kind of morose hope out of the view-
port at the hazy stars, which were few and far between -
only the nearest were bright enough to pierce the cloudy
veils of the Huvuun Deepzone. Also, they allowed the
navigationals to make some kind of approximation of
their position after each microjump - the last three had
zigzaggingly carried the Castellan towards the subsector
where the Darien system was most likely to be, going by
the ship's archive of tiernet news.
But those were the last three out of twenty-four
microjumps. The hyperspace jump from Shafts to Yonok
with its midjourney dropout to normal space had not
gone as planned when the exit left them dozens of
lightyears inside the Huvuun and unable to get an accu-
rate fix on their location. That was a day and a half ago,
since which time Drazuma-Ha* had been employing
point-phase variations in the microjump computations
while the jumps themselves had to be 42.8 minutes apart
because that was how long the tesserae power cells took
to self-recharge.
And for Kao Chili, it was stressful, the waiting, the
build-up to the six- or seven-minute microjump, the
moment of stomach-churning disorientation at the start
and the end, then the moments it took the navigationals
to plot their unreliable position. No, it was beyond
stressful. As he sat there, staring at those few, haze-
haloed stars, he could feel a tide of impatience starting
to swamp his reason.
'Have the concise data been computed, Drazuma-
Ha*?'
'Yes, they have, Gowchee.'
'Then let us make the jump, now - we're getting
closer with every jump, so let's not waste any more time
than we have to.'
'I must point out that engaging the hyperdrive before
the power cells have recharged will cause a drain on
our irreplaceable fuel reserves. And there is no guaran-
tee that we will maintain our progress towards Darien,'
'I realise that, but just this once I feel that we should
go, now, without delay, immediately.'
'The cells will be recharged in another twenty-eight
minutes, Gowchee. Can you not wait that long?'
'I'm afraid not.'
'If you wish, we could play one of the ship's games to
help pass the time for you.'
'Thank you for the offer, Drazuma-Ha*, but I would
be incapable of concentrating. Please engage the hyper-
drive - we may even be lucky enough to come within
range of one of those cloud-harvesters.'
Three times during the earlier microjumps the
Castellan's sensors had picked up at the outer limits an
occasional solitary vessel with an odd emission curve,
which suggested that it was sometimes 150 metres
long and other times 2.5 kilometres long. By the third
sighting Drazuma-Ha* had identified them from a
popnet infodoc he had archived years before as cloud-
harvesters, ships that scooped up the interstellar dust
and debris with kilometres-long energised fields. They
were industrial vessels owned by large-resource corpo-
rations and operated by AIs or small crews. More
important, their drives were T2-capable, as were their
shuttlecraft - one of those could execute far more accu-
rate microjumps.
'We can rely on that occurring with as much certainty
as arriving perfectly in orbit around Darien,' the mech
said. 'However, I perceive that my refusal may lead to an
unpredictable outburst on your part. . .'
'I protest, Drazuma-Ha"' - I am merely . . .'
'No, I do not wish to be the cause of any extreme
reaction . . .'
'That is quite ridic—' Kao Chih began to say, but
Drazuma-Ha"" activated the hyperdrive and the words
and sounds in his throat ran together into a fluttering
slur. Then there was that vaguely numb period lasting a
few minutes before he was tilted into the exit-surge of
spinning-sliding-vertigo, and when it faded he was still in
his couch, waiting for the mech to announce their new
position.
'I am sorry to have to tell you that we are now 7.9
lightyears further away from the target subsector,'
Drazuma-Ha'"" said.
Kao Chih made an inarticulate sound that was equal
parts anger and despair. 'How much longer can this
take?' he groaned. 'How much more can I stand?'
'At the current rate of consumption, fuel reserves will
be exhausted in eleven months and seven days, and the
air will remain breathable for another eight months and
twenty-four days, assuming that scrub filters are used.
Unfortunately, your food will only last for another three
months and nine days, provided that you restrict your
intake to quarter-rations.'
Kao Chih listened and nodded soberly while striving
against an urge to burst out laughing at the idiocy of the
situation. It was irrational, he knew, and a wild mood
swing away from the grimness he had been feeling just
minutes ago.
'Alternatively,' the mech went on, 'I may be able to
adapt one of the large equipment lockers for use as a
cryo-unit, or at least something that will lower your .. .'
The mech stopped in mid-sentence and bright field
rods stabbed out at the console. Screens flickered and
symbol arrays pulsed.
'A ship,' it said, 'has just appeared 1,823 kilometres
away. Its profile is that of an Erdishi midhaul freighter
but there is no ident signal and the thrust motors seem
to be only partly shielded. Their sensors have just found
us . . . they have ignited their thrusters and are heading
straight for us.'
'Have we got them on visual?' Kao Chih said as the
viewport hypershield rolled back. 'Are they responding
to hails?'
'Too far for realtime depiction ... and no comm traf-
fic at all.'
'What about the computations? Are we ready to
jump?'
'Yes, Gowchee, the computations are complete but
another premature jump would further deplete our fuel
reserves.'
'You may recall that we have no weapons with which
to fend them off, unless you want me to sit out on the
hull and throw empty gas canisters at them . . .'
'Their acceleration curve is very steep,' the mech said.
'That and the degraded state of the superstructure
means that the crew cannot be organic'
One of the screens flashed up an image of the
freighter and to Kao Chih it looked like a wreck. Those
parts of the hull still attached were charred and holed,
while pipes, feeds and cable sprouted from exposed and
shattered bulkheads. Something, either a collision or
a
weapon, had sheared off a slanted portion of the prow
while the port side was disfigured by a ragged gouge
from the bridge to the midsection. Seconds ticked past
and as Kao Chih watched, something bulky and metal-
lic clambered up that gouge, through torn and twisted
plating to the gaping bridge where it was met by another
two large mech shapes.
Recognition and an awful sense of dread made Kao
Chih's stomach feel hollow.
'Those are the droids from Blacknest!' he said.
'Your debt collectors! How did they track us here?
Why . . .?'
'Because they are very cunning and very persistent,'
Drazuma-Ha * said. 'There may not be sufficient time
for the cells to recharge. Brace yourself, Gowchee!'
And his senses spun and swung and plunged, then a
few minutes of stability, then another surge of dizzi-
ness . . . and he opened his eyes, holding onto the
armrests. Another jump, another shot at Darien.
'Why are they going to all this trouble for a bad
debt? . . .' Kao Chih paused, thoughts assailed by
suspicion. 'You said they were cunning and persistent -
how much do you know about these droids, Drazuna-
Has"? And exactly why are they chasing you?'
'I have encountered them before, in circumstances
not conducive to negotiation and polite behaviour . . .
Gowchee, the answers to your questions would demand
careful exposition. Please, allow me a few moments to
set up the jump computations then we may discuss the
matter.'
Frowning, Kao Chih sat back in his couch and folded
his arms. Then his bad temper waned as the tiredness he
had ignored made itself felt, and when he sighed it
turned into a yawn.
'If you are weary, Gowchee, perhaps you should rest,'
said the mech.
'My mind is unable to relax when faced with mortal
peril, Drazuma-Ha*. It is a Human foible.'
'How inexpedient for your species - perhaps you
should consider cyber-augmentation after all . . .'
Suddenly a console alarm started pinging. 'A ship has
appeared at 1,560 kilometres ... it is the freighter and it
is altering course in our direction . . .'
'This is not a coincidence, is it?'
'No, Gowchee - they are tracking us through hyper-
space somehow. Engaging hyperdrive - now.'
Again the disorientation, senses gyring, the pause,
the vertigo surge, and that momentary impression of
Michael Cobley - Humanity's Fire book 1 Page 49
