there? What's yer name, by the way?'
'Still here, Hermes. My name is Axel, and we've got
you on satellite tracking . . . my God, and we see those
missiles! Bail out, Captain . ..'
'Wish I could, Axel, but I'm stuck here for the dura-
tion - right, here we go ...'
On the external monitor Donny saw a huge spread-
ing cloud of silvery chaff while a decoy dropped away
on a dying curve towards the moon's green face. And he
grinned as both missiles took the bait and plunged after
it.
'Very smart, Hermes, very cunning . . .' said the
Pilipoint comsman. 'You're like the magician, yes? The
hand is quicker than the eye . . .'
'Maybe so, laddie, but I don't reckon that wee shell
game'll work a second time . . . and he's just launched
another pair . . .'
'I see them, Captain - tell me, are you the man who
stole the Earther's shuttle?'
'Heard about that up here, Axel? Aye, that was me
a'right, a bad yin through and through!'
'We've heard what's been going on downstairs, all
those Brolturan troops working hard to keep Darien
free from unrest and protest and such nuisances as free
speech,' said the comsman. 'I have no doubt that in time
we too will be similarly blessed. But tell me, why are you
doing this?'
'What, bearding the lion in his den, y'mean? I guess
ye could say I was overcome with a sense of public duty
and a calm appraisal of the crisis ... but that wouldna
be true.'
'It would not?'
'Nah, it was pure, unadulterated loathing. Ye know
what I really hate? - being lied to. Soon after the
Heracles arrived, that Hegemony envoy Kuros toured
the colony, giving speeches about the Sendrukan
Hegemony's deep sense of liberty and freedom and their
boundless desire to spread freedom throughout known
space and beyond .. . aye, right! All the time he was
coming out with that self-important, sanctimonious
cack, him and his minions were planning how to get us
down on our knees, how to make things so bad that
we'd be happy to have their boots on our necks, just so
long as the bombings stopped . . .'
'I saw one of Kuros's speeches,' said the Pilipoint
comsman. 'It was a real performance but it did not seem
right for us, as if he was performing for another audi-
ence ...'
'Excuse me, Axel, got some missiles to take care of
here ...'
Donny could feel the sweat trickling down the side of
his face as he watched a dark blue display where two
bright specks moved nearer to his position while associ-
ated readouts gave figures for velocity, distance and
altitude. In the cockpit's enclosed darkness, the pilot
console was a strange, muffled cubbyhole crammed with
glowing, touch-sensitive controls and displays, with
small vidscreens showing external views while the over-
head holo gave the wider tactical sweep. The next
countermeasures sequence was running, suspensors and
thrusters were online and ready, and the navigationals
were tracking the enemy interceptor. From the previous
encounter the shuttle's expert system overlay had quan-
tified the missiles' minimum turn radius so now it was
down to timing.
And a mountain of luck.
Then the missiles, gaining with every microsecond,
crossed a certain trigger boundary and the countermea-
sures activated, another chaff burst, silver clouds of
glittering, reflective strips spreading behind the hurtling
Hermes like a silver comet's tail. As before a decoy was
dropped, but this time the missiles ignored it and stayed
on target while the interceptor began moving closer, as if
the end was near. Then it too crossed an invisible line
and the shuttle's forward suspensors came to life, kick -
ing the shuttle's nose up and over as the thrusters
roared. The combination of momentum and extreme
force vectors threw the Hermes into a brutally tight ver-
tical turn.
G-force shoved Donny down into his couch. Over the
wheeze of his breathing he heard the infrastructure com-
plain before the autoalerts began - 'Warning, exceeding
performance tolerances ... minor structural failures in
subassemblies 19a, 21d, 37k . . . major structural failure
will occur in thirty seconds or less . . .'
Then the Hermes was out of the turn and heading
back, upside down. The Brolturan pilot had seen
Donny's crazed attempt at an acrobatic manoeuvre and
had merely banked slightly to avoid a repetition of the
earlier force-field collision. But Donny was still ahead of
him and about to cross over his oncoming flight path.
And that was when the countermeasures released the
last of the chaff on maximum dispersal. And when the
interceptor plunged into the spreading, silvery, instru-
ment-fogging cloud he met his own missile coming the
other way.
On his rear external monitor, Donny saw the dual
explosion flashes, an eruption of light and ignited gases,
and an expanding shell of vapour and wreckage mixed
with glittering fragments of chaff. He was about to
breath a sigh of relief when he noticed that one of the
flying pieces of debris was leaving a hot gas trail and
curving round in his direction.
Cunning dog, he thought. Must've fired that at the
last moment, knowing that I'd got him ... well, ye've
not got me yetl
He nearly made it, at the tail end of a long, twisting,
dodging pursuit down through Nivyesta's atmosphere,
seeking every advantage, trying to lose the missile in
clouds, even trying to shoot it down with the laser
cannon. But on it came, doggedly undeterred and unwa-
vering. And as the chase descended, he kept up a
running commentary to Axel the comsman at Pilipoint
Station, never letting on how desperate his situation
was, livening up the discourse with merciless caricatures
of certain public figures, like Kuros who was 'the
Hegemony's interstellar bile duct', and President
Kirkland, 'the bowel movement that walked like a man'.
When the end came it was quick. He was flying north
at about 900 feet over Nivyesta's southern ocean, less
than 100 kilometres from Segrana's coast. Fuel was low,
most of the suspensors were burnt out, and he was getting
continual structural alerts as a result of the contorted
manoeuvres he had attempted. His last throw of the dice
was to try and ditch in the waters, but the missile found
him 50 feet up, rushing across the waves. There was a ter-
rible brightness... then a terrible darkness ...
Then forever claimed him.
55
CATRIONA
Through a black night of rain they searched for the
downed ship. A casing collector had spotted its descent
in late afternoon while he was ransacking the high web
festoons near Overglowatch. A wedge-shaped craft trail-
ing ragged flags was the description that was relayed to
Catriona, from which she knew that its braking chute
had torn after deploying. The chances of someone sur-
viving a crash landing under those conditions were not
good. However, there was a lot of dense, deep foliage to
absorb such a craft's kinetic energy, so assuming it didn't
hit an outcrop or an especially large tree, the odds
maybe weren't so bad.
Like most of her twenty-strong search party, Cat was
wearing a cowled coat made from a mixture of plain
fibre and silk - it was light and kept her cool and dry as
she rode on trictra-back with the rest. Following the
casing collector's directions, they were heading north to
the wide valley that lay between Girdle Ridge and the
Northern Uplands while water dripped, trickled and
spattered all around them. A cold, black night of rain,
with lamplight and the piercing beams of battery torches
striking clusters of gleams from wet leaves, turning
droplet-strewn webs into flashing regalia, rivulets into
rippling, silver snakes.
After another hour, one of the search parties reported
finding a trail of damaged forest foliage. Everyone con-
verged and hastened along the path of snapped branches
and severed trunks until it became a ragged furrow
gouged in the ground which finally terminated at the
foot of a big prul tree. The craft was small, less than fif-
teen feet long, so it had to be an escape pod from one of
the ships seen dogfighting far up in the sky earlier. Small
thruster nozzles were spaced along its curved stern,
while its hull tapered to a flat, narrow prow that was
solidly wedged under a gnarled prul root as thick as a
Uvovo's waist.
For a moment all the scholars and their Listener
paused and stared wide-eyed at the escape pod while
sending expectant glances her way.
Hmm, okay, so Mummy Pathmistress has to make sure
the alien box is safe, she thought, dismounting from the
trictra. By the time she reached the pod, with light from
lamps held nearby, she could see from the characters and
symbols on the hull that this had to be from the Heracles.
Without hesitation she rapped her knuckles on it.
'Hello - anyone in there?'
Immediately there were a few thuds in response, and
a man's voice:
'Thank God you found me! - please, can you help?
Something is jamming the hatch on this thing ...'
Cat laughed, realised that the big prul root was hold-
ing the pod shut.
'I can see what the problem is,' she said. 'We'll have
ye out of there in a wee bit.'
With a dozen Uvovo lending their strength, they man-
aged to drag the escape pod out from under the prul's
roots. A moment later the upper hull was pushed up
from within and locked into an open position. A grey-
haired man in a hunting jacket and camouflage trousers
climbed wearily out and sat on the edge of the recess,
pulling lumps of something white off his clothing and
tossing them into the pod. It took Cat a moment but
suddenly she recognised him.
'You're Greg's Uncle Theo,' she said.
He straightened in surprise, then peered closer in the
meagre light and nodded.
'Ah, Doctor Macreadie - an unexpected pleasure,
here in the middle of the forest.'
'What is that stuff?'
'Crash foam,' he said. 'It smells terrible yet I find
myself most grateful.' He looked at her and smiled. 'In
case you were wondering, Greg is alive and well, mostly.
He was slightly wounded yesterday ... or perhaps the
day before . . . but some of my people told me he's
mending well ...' He looked about him at the Uvovo
and the drips and trickles coming from above. 'Did
someone see me come down here, Catriona?'
'Aye,' she said, half-wishing he had said more about
Greg. 'An Uvovo from a town several miles away saw
your pod swooping over Segrana after those explosions
in the sky.'
He became more alert at this. 'Do you know what
happened up there? Did Pilipoint Station have any con-
tact. . .'
'I'm sorry, Theo, I've not been in touch with
Pilipoint but I did see some of the big show and heard
about the rest from others. Late in the afternoon there
were a few contrails high up, then there was a bright
explosion and, a few minutes later, halfway across the
sky, there was another. Not long after that your escape
pod crash-landed, and a short while later some Uvovo
on the south coast saw a huge explosion far out at
sea.'
Hearing this, his manner turned sombre. He nodded
and smiled sadly. 'It was supposed to be both of us in
this pod, but he tricked me and sent me off on my own.
Stayed behind to fight two Brolturan interceptors, from
that giant warwagon of theirs. And he beat them! - he
must have . ..'
'What are you talking about? Who beat them . . .'
'A brave man called Donny Barbour.' He looked
at her. 'Can you help me get to Pilipoint Station?
Perhaps someone there knows exactly how it all turned
out.'
Cat nodded. 'I can do that, Theo, though you might
like to stop off at one of the Uvovo towns for a rest and
a bite to eat.'
'That sounds good.' Feeling weariness in his limbs, he
wiped some water droplets from his beard and brushed
away a few more fragments of foam. 'I've heard that
folk on Nivyesta get around on the backs of giant tric-
tra - is that true?'
'It is, aye - you've not got a fear of spiders, have
you?'
'No, not as such.' He gave a rueful smile. 'I'll be okay.
So - which way?'
The Uvovo moved with them in unison as Catriona
led the way back to where the trictra had been tethered,
her own flashlight picking out a path through the wet
undergrowth.
'You must feel hardly involved in what's been going
on down on Darien,' Theo said.
'I wouldn't say that,' Cat said, smiling in the dark-
ness. 'We caught two Ezgara commandos yesterday.'
He stared at her, his pace slowing. 'You captured
them . . .'
'The first one exploded, killing several Uvovo . . . did
ye know that they have a binary explosive in their
bloodstream? Aye, very cunning, very vicious. Oh, and
they're Human too.'
Theo nodded gravely. 'Yes, that I knew. It raises a lot
of questions.'
'Doesn't it? We got to the second one and sedated
him before he could trigger himself, then we used some
extraction roots and what the Uvovo call a cleansing sac
to filter the impurities from his blood. Now he's awake
and alert - he understands Anglic but doesn't speak it
that well. Still, we managed to get a few interesting facts
out of him.'
She recalled how they'd had to restrain his arms and
legs with padded leather straps. He seeme
d so completely
at the mercy of his fear and anger, as if he had no under-
standing of self-control, and she and the rootmasters
suspected that the cleansing sac had removed something
else from his system besides the explosive component.
'His name is Malachi,' she said. 'He's from a colony
of Humans called Tygra, a highly militarised society,
going by a few things he let slip.'
'My God,' Theo said. 'Were they abducted by the
Hegemony?'
'Not abducted, Major. It seems that his colony was
established roughly 150 years ago.'
'A hundred and fifty years? But Humanity had
not. . .' He broke off, frowning for a moment before his
eyes widened. 'Doctor Macreadie, you're not suggest-
ing . . .'
Smiling she nodded. 'The Tygra colony was founded
by a ship from Earth called the Forrestal.'
Theo was silent, the astonishment in his face replaced
by a growing horror as he absorbed what she had said.
'The Forrestal's crew and colonists were a mixture of
northern and southern Americans, and Australians,' he
said. 'How could they be turned into the Hegemony's
shock troops?'
She shook her head. 'We're not getting much out of
Malachi at the moment, so these questions remain open
to speculation. But for now I think we should keep this
to ourselves. If it got out, how would the people of
Earth react? And what would the Hegemony do to the
Tygrans if they decided that the alliance with
Earthsphere was more valuable than a cadre of Human
janissaries, no matter how loyal?'
'You have a point,' he said. 'My God, I cannot imag-
ine what they went through.'
'Makes you wonder what happened to the third
ship, the Tenebrosa,' Cat said, and even as she spoke
the words she felt a quiver in the perceptive bond she
shared with Segrana. Was it anticipation? A hint of the
truth, or the echo of some lost possibility, fading
amongst the water-veiled trees? She smiled inwardly,
knowing that Segrana had a liking for convoluted
mystery.
'Well, if any of their descendants show up here,'
Theo was saying, 'we can start a club!'
She laughed out loud at that, thinking, Aye, would-
n't that be just amazing?
56
KAO CHIH
They were waiting, languishing, in a lesser sifting com-
Michael Cobley - Humanity's Fire book 1 Page 53
