“Helm, back us off,” Betombe conceded. “COMOP, please tell our other ships to back off too.”
“Shall I cease fire?” Tactical asked.
“Yes. Divert any non-essential power to charge the main beam capacitors.”
Laselle looked startled. “If we use the cutter against this thing, and it doesn’t work, we’ll be a sitting duck.”
“Seems to me this kind of situation is exactly why we have the damned thing in the first place,” Betombe said.
“But Sir—”
“We don’t have much choice, Commander. I do not intend to allow that craft to finish whatever it was doing in Blacktree’s atmosphere.”
“We don’t even know what that was… why it’s here.”
“It’s clearly hostile. Blacktree’s own ships were firing on it when we arrived.”
The lights on the command deck dimmed by more than half, and Helm’s holo darkened until only the basic thruster controls and positional grid were lit. The main reactors were channelling all their energy output away from the engines and non-critical systems.
Tactical broke the expectant silence. “We’re still taking fire. Defences are down to minimal power; those shots are going to start getting through.”
“Employ the same trick we used at Gousk; have the rest of our ships provide a flak barrier for us.”
“The bogey has cleared the atmosphere; making for high orbit,” said COMOP. “It’s more of a threat to us now.”
“Capacitors are ready for main beam.”
Laselle placed a hand on Betombe’s arm. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“I don’t see any alternative. Tactical: target whatever area you think is most vulnerable, and fire.”
“Firing main beam.”
In an almost silent instant, the only sounds were the ringing of the hull and the whir-thump-thump of the defensive turrets, tracking and firing on incoming ordnance.
Outside the ship an almost invisible beam of intense energy strobed on and off. Love Tap poured the entire collective output of his reactors straight forwards, burning into the intruder in a rapid series of searing pulses.
“Their hull is breached; I’m seeing internal explosions. I estimate less than one percent structural damage… but they are moving off.”
“Interdiction has stopped,” Laselle said. “Must have been them after all. They’re opening a wormhole for themselves. Fleeing.”
“What’s our condition?”
“GNG has stalled, and main conventional drives are down.” COMOP swept through his systems overview. “We’re not going anywhere, but we can still manoeuvre on reaction thrusters. C-MADS are offline, as are the forward auto-cannons. We have enough power to run a handful of gauss guns and missile tubes, and there’s enough residual energy in the capacitors for another brief burst.”
“I think we might need it,” said Tactical.
“Explain,” Betombe snapped.
“The Viskr capital ship, Admiral. It’s turning back towards Blacktree.”
“I’m seeing a radiological spike,” Laselle added. “Their ship-to-surface missiles just went hot.”
“They’ve launched!”
“Take them out! Take them out NOW!”
Betombe was on his feet, standing behind Tactical. He watched helplessly as the missiles streaked away from the Viskr cruiser and arced towards Blacktree’s atmosphere.
Love Tap opened fire with a barrage of tungsten slugs and missiles of his own, as did his remaining companions. One by one the Viskr missiles exploded.
“Too slow.” Betombe watched fiery impacts bloom against the already ruined hull of the capital ship. “Reorient us for main beam. We’re going to bleed those capacitors dry.”
“They’ve launched a second volley. The ship is moving to block our intercept solutions.”
“Fire the damned cutter!”
“Still five seconds before we’re pointing at them.”
“Two missiles have gone atmospheric,” Laselle said. “We can’t stop them from here.”
“Does Blacktree have any surface-to-air?”
“I don’t know, Sir.”
“Cutter on target, Admiral.”
“Fire then! For goodness’ sake fire!”
Love Tap emptied his capacitors into the undefended Viskr cruiser, carving a chain of molten holes through bulkhead after bulkhead in the space of a few seconds. Explosions rocked the capital ship’s frame, and it began to list.
Tactical looked up from his holo, his face grim. “Impact detected. I’m sorry Sir, but the first missile… no, both missiles have hit. Nuclear detonation at a single site.”
Betombe felt the way back to his station, eyes fixed on the battle map, and sat down wearily.
“Worlds, what have they done?”
“They’re going up in flames,” COMOP said. “We must have breached their reactors.”
“How many of the enemy ships remain?” Betombe’s voice was hollow.
“Two. Light vessels; not jump-capable.”
“Order our escorts to run them down.”
Laselle was still poring over the sensor readings from the planet. “Admiral, they’ve actually missed every single one of the major cities.”
“Thank the worlds for that!”
“I don’t think it was an accident,” she said. “If they’d wanted to nuke a major population centre, those missiles couldn’t have been farther off course.”
“Then what did they hit?”
“From records, looks like it was an area of arable land at the outskirts of a small agricultural town.”
“So they did hit a population centre?”
“I don’t think so. I think the town itself was collateral damage.”
“Well… what were they aiming to hit?”
“Crops? Livestock? I’m afraid I have no idea. Why would anyone nuke fields?”
“Can we—” Betombe managed to say, right before his vision wobbled and everything went black.
— 05 —
You Don’t Choose
Rendir Throam’s mothers had exposed him to the Fiesta de San Pedrito every single year of his life so far, but he remembered no occasion further back than his sixth Solar amongst the living. The year 3714 — by the Earth Legacy Calendar — was for him a period of many first memories.
It was the third day of the festival. His parents were not taking him to school, even though this particular morning was the beginning of a beautiful Friday. Not that Rendir had noticed there was anything terribly amiss; school was a phenomenon of which he had thus far sampled only a few months, and the experience had not yet wormed its way into his consciousness as a new reality. He did not feel responsible enough for his own whereabouts to consider himself missing, nor did he yet grasp the concept of public holidays.
Walking between Peshal and Lamis, holding one of their hands in each of his, Rendir beamed back at the glorious sun. Only a couple of hours ago it had been beneath the horizon; already it had climbed almost half as high as it would be when the day climaxed.
He strained to see the thin sliver of moon the house holo had told him was also somewhere up there, but from this particular part of space it was too thin and too close to the overpowering radiance of Sol to be seen.
Rendir recognised the avenue they were strolling down, and smiled to himself. Straining against his mothers’ hands, challenging their faux reluctance, he dragged them towards the East-230 observation platform.
They always let him go right to the outer wall, pretending with wide mouths and scared eyes that he was hanging precariously over the edge of the city. He also pretended; pretended not to know. Even at his young age he was perfectly well aware that there was a safety barrier hidden beneath him.
Today felt different though, and when he released their hands he simply ran to the wall and peered over it, standing on his tip-toes.
The light glanced off the calm waters of the Bay of Chimbote, forcing him to squint. He held up his hand in front
of his face until his eyes adjusted a little. Far beneath him a scattering of leisure skiffs and streamlined yachts were mere specks on the water.
The sun had already burned away the thick oceanic fog that wreathed the land throughout most of the night. Even on the ocean-facing side of the city, hidden as it was in the vast shadow of the tower, altitude and air movement had driven away the damp from every nook and cranny. Only the garden foliage and deliberately sheltered gauze traps now held back reserves of the pre-dawn moisture. Between the sun and the air, and the ducting, light channels, and passageways which honeycombed each floor of the structure, the rest was lost forever.
Rendir did not care about that. He saw nothing inconvenient about a month which was cool enough for comfort yet threatened no rain whatsoever. To him, it just was. Worrying about what was and what is and what could happen he left to the adults.
“Come on Ren, let’s keep going. You’ve seen this view a hundred times.”
Rendir knew that Lamis was sometimes called his Canal Mother, though not by friends of the family. He knew not what it meant, nor that it related to his own person.
She took his hand and turned back towards Peshal. Peshal smiled at them both, a serene and loving expression, as she caught them unawares with her holo.
“Oh. Oh, I wasn’t ready!” Lamis said.
“It looks more natural. Unposed.”
“Still, I prefer some warning. And I’ve not put my face on yet.”
“You don’t need to,” said Peshal. “You’re beautiful just the way you are.”
Lamis smiled coyly. She pulled a stray strand of dark hair back over her ear.
“But…” Peshal prodded her holo with a hopeful finger. “It’s not really worked.”
Lamis and Rendir looked at the image that she held out to them. The holo had exposed the sky wonderfully, in a thoroughly believable shade of blue. Their solid black silhouettes rather spoiled the uniformity.
“Oh, that is a shame,” said Lamis. “Come along Ren; we’re fleeing your mother.”
“One day you’ll wish we had more images of the family,” Peshal called, as Lamis made a mock effort to run away with their son.
• • •
Before she went after them, Peshal stole a last glance out over the bay, across to the archaeological site that was the silent heart of old Chimbote. Not for the first time she thanked Lamis for convincing her to relocate to Earth. She had never felt so much at home as she did in the towering City of Peru.
As a place to live it had truly contradicted all of her expectations, as well as challenging her misgivings. She hated heights. She hated being around large numbers of people. She hated being on or near open water. It was fair to say that she had dreaded what it might be like. And yet here she was living a kilometre and a half above the shallows of a major ocean, along with fifteen million other inhabitants… and loving every second of her new life.
Peshal had been a third-generation native of Shuul before she defied social convention by coming to live permanently on the homeworld. For someone with her colonial experiences, the unique cultural melting pot of one of Earth’s gargantuan tower cities was breathtaking.
Amongst Peru’s fifteen hundred habitable levels lived a passionately swirling mixture of people. One could always hear Hispo or sometimes even old Spanish when out in public. Some still spoke Quechua, although Peshal could only just recognise it. Once she had heard an utterly unfamiliar tongue and was told it was Shuara, a language spoken by a tiny minority of the Ecuadorian folks taken in by Peru.
And the food! She had never tasted anything like it. For centuries, Chimbote had made its name by redistributing the bounty of the ocean. These days, now that the Restoration Project had finally turned around the great ecological slumps of the past, that bounty more or less met the protein needs of all Peru. The marine life on Shuul, on the other hand, she had found just as unpalatable as it was visually repellent.
She had learned to cope with the bustling nature of the city. Sometimes, it did not seem busy at all. Even with Peru being occupied almost to capacity, there was plenty of room for comfort. Green space and recreational facilities were built in by design, as were open areas sculpted with cunning to seem much larger than they really were.
The ocean no longer bothered her. Her brain had realised after a while that she was just as far from it up here as she would be if she lived more than a mile inland. So all she had to worry about was the height, and it was perfectly possible to wander around Level 230 all day without coming anywhere close to the outer wall.
Except for occasions like this, on which she was prepared to allow Rendir’s exploratory tendencies to rank above her own admittedly irrational fears. At times like this, she took the opportunity to challenge her fear; a little each time.
Still at the outer wall, she forced herself to look down into the bay. Her fingers tightened around the guard rail until the blood was squeezed from them.
After a moment longer, she left to catch up with her family.
• • •
Lamis and Rendir strolled through the plaza, holding hands, taking in the sights and sounds. The central concourse was lined by people; men and women alike, sitting in a huge ring while they made preparations for the latter half of the festival.
Rendir stopped in front of a group who were chopping limes in half, squeezing out the juice, and throwing the rinds into huge tubs destined for the organic reclamation bins. He stood and stared until a woman smiled up at him, and she handed him half a fruit. The flesh glistened in the morning sun, and he pressed his lips and tongue against it. His face screwed up instantly, and the woman laughed.
Lamis was standing behind him, and laughed with her. “Be careful what people hand you, Ren.”
He dropped the lime into the nearest tub, disgusted, and the woman continued with her work; chop, squeeze, toss.
“Do you know what all this is for?” Lamis asked.
Rendir looked up at her with a blank expression. He was far too young to know.
“The juice will be used to make cerviche,” she said. “Cooking without cooking.”
Rendir contorted his face again. He knew with the certainty of youth that he was not fond of cerviche.
Lamis began talking to the woman who had handed him the offensive fruit, and Rendir lasted a few minutes before he became restless. Eventually his tugging at her hand became too persistent, and she followed his gaze to a group of children playing on the other side of the plaza.
“Go on then,” she said. “I’ll call you in a little while.”
He ran off to join them, and Lamis sat cross-legged on the floor. She scooped limes towards herself and joined in with the group effort.
Chop, squeeze, toss.
The festival was one of the highlights of her year. For as long as she could remember, the City of Peru had celebrated the patron saint of Chimbote, even though the vast majority of the population had no real ancestral connection to that ghost town. But celebrate they did, and every year the city was festooned with decorations, the air thick with fragrance, and the open spaces resonant with laughter and music.
She could spare a few minutes to help with the preparations, no matter how small the contribution. You get back what you put in, her parents had taught her.
Lamis had lost track of all time when Peshal caught up with her. Something about the repetitive task of slicing and juicing the fruit had sent her into a sort of semi-conscious trance, and her mind had wandered far.
“Where’s Little Man?” Peshal asked as she sat down next to her.
“Playing with some other children.” Lamis gestured towards them. She leaned towards Peshal and kissed her on the lips.
Peshal smiled, and began gathering some limes towards herself from the piles that were stacked around seemingly bottomless hoppers. She placed them on her skirt, in the hollow between her folded legs. Someone handed her a knife, and she went to work.
“Ahh, this takes me back,” she said.
/> “How far?” Lamis said, with a faint smile.
“About a Solar.”
Lamis had known what the punchline would be before it arrived, but she still chuckled to herself.
“Such wonderful memories,” she said, the sarcasm so subtle that a casual listener might have believed she really was lost in nostalgia.
Peshal rested her head on Lamis’s shoulder as they worked. The angle made the chore slightly more awkward, but the contentment more than made up for it.
They carried on in silence for a while, and Lamis had again lost track of time when she first became aware of a growing commotion. She stopped, turned her body, and Peshal was roused from a daydream of her own. She looked as though she too had been adrift in thought.
Across the concourse, some of the other men and women had stood up. They were all looking towards the outer edge of the plaza, where a frenzied knot of children was being prised apart by adults.
“Little Man,” Peshal said. She stood up, and limes rained from her skirts.
They both ran towards the fray. Lamis saw Rendir being pulled away from an older, larger boy, and went straight to him.
“Ren,” she said. “What happened?”
His lip was split, and his clothing pulled out of place, but he was relatively unscathed compared to his opponent. The bigger child had blood streaming from his nose, and an eye that was already puffing up.
Rendir blurted it out in an angry screech. “He called you sick. He said I was a dirty bastard creation.”
Lamis saw Peshal’s jaw drop, and the welling of angry tears in Rendir’s eyes. She took their hands and led them both a short distance away from the crowd.
“What a little horror,” Peshal said. “I hope his parents are proud.”
“I doubt it.” Lamis dabbed gently at the tiny trickle of blood that oozed from Rendir’s lip. “Got his comeuppance though, hey Ren?”
“I hate it,” Rendir said. “I hate it!”
“Of course you do Ren; it’s a horrible thing. But some kids really think that rubbish when they’re still young.”
“No, I hate being like this.”
Books One to Three Omnibus (Armada Wars) Page 34
