Book Read Free

Participant Species: Asher in Ordered Space Volume I

Page 15

by John M. D. Hooper


  The next three courtyards were eerily quiet. No Cythrans, either male or female, were wandering around here. In the third courtyard, the two men stopped for a moment to catch their breath. “Think they’re forming up, up ahead?” Asher asked Kaz.

  “Must be,” came the reply. “Didn’t think it would be easy, did you?”

  They took the next-to-last alley cautiously. Kaz was in the lead when they came to the courtyard. He peeked around the corner and turned back to Asher with a grim smile. “I count twelve,” he said. “Most armed with those damn peashooters.”

  “My net says that the skinsuit can probably take a hit from one of those,” said Asher.

  “Yeah, probably being the operative word.” Kaz pulled his hood up over his face, letting the mesh settle the suit against his features and harden until it became a makeshift helmet and mask. “Hate fighting with this thing on.”

  Asher, doing the same, said, “I don’t know. At least I don’t have to look at your face anymore.”

  Kaz gave him the finger, then turned it into a count. Three, two...

  On one, both men rounded the corner and sprinted for the other side of the courtyard. Asher fired over the heads of the line of Cythrans, who were poorly arrayed to stop them. It was obvious that these people knew almost nothing about fighting with projectile weapons, because they were just taking uncoordinated potshots, not terribly concerned with concentrating their fire. Asher’s pulse gun charges hit the buildings around the east and north sides of the courtyard, disintegrating chunks of the mud walls. In just a few seconds, the whole open space was full of billowing dust. The Cythrans, blinded, fired even more wildly. Kaz struck one that was blocking the alley they were headed for with the butt of his rifle, leaving it crumpled on the ground. With that, they were through and into the alley.

  The four purple-clad Cythrans who had met them in the spaceport a short while earlier were standing alone in the center of the Qwadaleemia’s creche-courtyard. “I knew it would be you who were coming,” said Qwadaleemia. “There is nothing here for you, Hokozana men.”

  Kaz, who was covering the alley that led back the way they had come, let Asher do the talking. Fortunately, the Cythran guards they had met in the other courtyards did not seem anxious to press on after the humans.

  “There’s no time for drawn-out negotiations, Qwadaleemia,” said Asher. “Your planet will be destroyed in less than seven hours. We need to get to your ship and get out of here. You and whoever you can take with you.”

  Asher didn’t need his net to tell him that Qwadaleemia was drawn aback. She leaned in and looked at him closely, then looked to her equally-flustered creche-mates. “What—,” she burbled. “What? Who? The whole planet?”

  “There’s no time,” Asher said, yelling in the hopes that that would translate the urgency to the Cythrans. “A race called the Ferethers are coming to blow this planet to oblivion and there really is nothing anyone can do.” Realizing what he had said, he took a deep breath, and slowed down. “I am sorry, really I am, but we’ve come here to try to save something. You and you creche-mates, if you want to come with us.”

  “And if we don’t want to? If we don’t trust you?” said another of the Cythrans. Garueeria, his net reminded him.

  “It won’t matter, because you’ll all be dead. As will Kaz and myself. So we can just sit here and wait for the end, or we can go get your ship.” He looked closely at Qwadaleemia as he said this.

  “But the Sissilbeni is at the spaceport,” said Wadameetra. “The mob is there, and they won’t let you though.”

  “You know I don’t mean the Sissilbeni. I mean the other ship. The one you’ve been building. The first Cythran vessel, owned by the First Cythran Spacelift Corporation.”

  The four looked at each other and whirled their tendrils in some kind of conversation—perhaps a code—that Asher’s net was unable to follow. Finally, Qwadaleemia turned back to him. “Very well, Asher. We will take you to the Sessareia. On the way, you will explain what is going on, and we will decide whether we believe you or not.”

  The four uniformed Cythrans, Asher, and Kaz climbed into Wadameetra’s groundcar. A second groundcar, summoned by radio and piloted by an unfamiliar Cythran female, pulled up behind them. Into this piled a second adult female, three juvenile females, and two males—one of whom was Sarudeero. This was apparently the entire creche.

  No armed Cythrans from nearby courtyards made any attempts to stop the loading. Qwadaleemia, evidently noticing Asher’s concerned glances at the alley exits, said, “We have told them—well, we have told them something. Obviously not what you have told us us, but something. They wait to see what will happen next.”

  What happened next was the two groundcars lurching forward together and barreling out through the large northern exit of the courtyard. On the wider road, they turned to the east and raced along between the buildings. The street was deserted, but Asher saw many eyes watching them from open doorways. It struck him for the first time that none of these people would be alive in a few hours. After an orbital bombardment they and the entire city around them would be reduced pretty much to dust and ash.

  They had gone back eastwards, roughly in the direction Kaz and Asher had come from, although along a more northerly track. This meant there was relatively little city between them and the open plain. It took about three minutes for them to exit the canyon of the city street onto a dusty road leading through the same fields of blue-green plants Asher and Kaz had landed in.

  Qwadaleemia, seated to Asher’s left, now turned to him. “So, Asher. Speak now. What is going on? Who are these Ferethers and why do they plan to destroy Cierren Cythra? And what is your plan for us?”

  Asher explained as best he could. When he got to the part about the Cythrans being a bioengineered weapon designed to destroy or replace the Ferethers, he drew nothing but the Cythran equivalent of blank stares.

  “Designed?” said Faraneeta, who was seated in front of Asher. “What do you mean designed? By whom?” If Cythran tendrils could convey skepticism, hers were doing so now.

  “We don’t really know by whom,” Asher replied. “The exobios—the scientists who have studied your biology—say that there is no doubt. They’ve run all kinds of statistical models, and they are pretty sure that you were created by implanting altered Ferethers into the forest-dwelling Cythran natives about eighty years ago. Since then, you have evolved, both physically and culturally, at a rate that can only be explained through engineering. Your people have been manipulated from the very beginning, by someone from beyond Bright-Dim. We think the plan was to use you as weapons against the Ferethers, although it’s not clear how. Perhaps many years of social engineering were planned to turn your culture against the Ferethers and make you more warlike. When the Zvezda scouts discovered your system, the timeline was thrown off and you were put into play too early. The Ferethers have made the same calculations we have, and they have come to destroy you before you can become a threat.”

  Garueeria and Faraneeta were both still obviously skeptical, and more than a little hostile. Only Qwadaleemia seemed to have absorbed what he had said and to actually be considering it. Finally, she said, “Your story seems beyond far-fetched to me, Asher. Still, I cannot see what you would gain by lying to us. Those other humans, the green-and-gold ones, they came to poke and prod, even to kidnap and to kill. You from Hokozana treated us with respect. That might have been subtlety, but I think you were honest—at least you and Kaz and Lori. For my part, I will go with you. I will take the Sessareia into orbit. Once there, we will have to see what happens next.” Turning to her creche-mates, she conversed with them in the same coded language they had used in the courtyard. Whatever she said, it seemed to work. The others, while obviously not happy, agreed, reluctantly, to go along with Qwadaleemia.

  The two groundcars flew down the dusty road, passing out of the blue-green fields into a flat area of scrubby trees. There, they made a sharp turn to the south and continued along a nar
rower track—without slowing much—for about eight kilometers. At the end of the track, they came to ramp that led down into a cavern under the plain. Asher was reminded of the Long House, but this was not the same place.

  “The Little Yellow House,” said Qwadaleemia. “Ancestral home of our creche. That is, unless our past is a lie as you say.”

  They scrambled from the groundcars and proceeded down the ramp. The Little Yellow House was a featureless cavern perhaps eighty meters in diameter and thirty high. The only light streamed down from a large skylight in the roof. In the middle of the space, taking up maybe a quarter of the cavern, was the first Cythran-made spaceship.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The ship was small, much smaller and much sleeker than Sissilbeni. It was a black spaceplane built on a delta pattern for high-speed flight in-atmo. It also clearly boasted a small fusion torch system. If it performed anything like it looked, it would be a match for any Hokozana scout.

  “Amazing,” said Asher. “How did you build this? Where are the factories? I mean, the solid-state circuitry alone—”

  Qwadaleemia smiled, or accomplished the Cythran equivalent of smiling, anyway. “Most of the components and the propulsion apparatus we bought over the past several months from some somewhat unseemly individuals whom we met on Zvezda One. The body shell we assembled here from many of those tubes of viscous carbon polymer material the Zvezda people use to repair the exterior of the station. We found some of them conveniently lying around. She is, as you surmised, ready to fly. Our plan was to take her up to Zvezda One within the next couple of weeks. Of course, then things...changed...up there.”

  “Well, it’s remarkable that you managed to assemble it. I have to say, I’m a little glad to hear that you didn’t build the components or the engine from scratch. That might have been a bit on the scary side.”

  “Does it make you doubt your decision to come back for us?” asked Qwadaleemia. “As I understand it, it is our technological intuition that makes you Hokozana people covet our friendship so. The same ability made those green-and-gold DiJeRiCo monsters want to prod us, poke us, take us apart to see how we worked. Now you tell me we were made by some unknown hand, that our talents are not natural but engineered by another. These Ferethers fear us for it, if what you say is true. Do you not fear us? What we might do? What we might become?”

  “Qwadaleemia,” said Asher, “I’m not paid enough or given enough clearance to know what I should or shouldn’t fear. We have people with large brains and even larger computers whose job is to predict what is going to happen before it does. What I know is I’ve seen people die up there, Hokozana people. I’ve seen the Ferether fleet and heard the predictions—made by those same brilliant minds—of what they will do. I can’t stop them. Kaz here can’t stop them. No one up there can stop them. All I want is for it all to have been for something. I can’t save this planet, but I can save you and your people, or rather, help you to save yourselves. After that, I can’t say what will happen, and I’m not even going to try.”

  The Cythran looked at him, a pondering look, his net informed him. Finally, she gave an assenting twirl of her tendrils. “Very well, Asher. I will take you at your word. Let us get into orbit. After that, we will see what happens.”

  With the whole Cythran creche in the passenger and cargo compartment, there was barely any room for Asher, much less Kaz. They had to hook themselves into the cargo netting in the hopes that it would provide some protection and stability in the event of sudden acceleration. The Cythrans arrayed themselves in the crash seats, which were clearly better designed for their bodies than anything Asher had seen in a human-built vessel. Still, remembering what had happened to Miraneeria on their previous escape from Cierren Cythra, Asher was concerned that Cythran anatomy wasn’t cut out for the rapid maneuvering that might be necessary if they cut it too close to the arrival of the Ferether fleet.

  A quick check of his net showed that they should have about an hour’s window left before the Ferethers would reach orbit and begin to deploy their bombardment vessels. His uplink was low bandwidth to avoid detection by Ferether sensors, but he received enough information to know that they would have to wait twenty-one minutes for the planet to rotate enough to put its bulk between their launch and the approaching fleet. That seemed like the only way they were likely to avoid detection, so he communicated the delay to Qwadaleemia through Sarudeero, who was working as a runner between the pilot compartment and the cargo bay. It hadn’t occurred to Asher before, but obviously a standard voice intercom system wouldn’t work for the Cythrans, with their part-visual language.

  The slow process of getting information through to Sarudeero and waiting for him to relay it to Qwadaleemia then return with an acknowledgment was frustrating. Still it did help pass the time. The twenty minutes seemed to tick by over the course of an eon. Asher glanced at Kaz to see if he mirrored Asher’s own nervousness, but the big man seemed to be asleep. Finally, after a seeming eon that Asher’s net informed him had taken fifteen minutes, the ship began to ascend through the large skylight in the cavern roof. The VTOL capabilities of the Sessareia seemed as good as those of any late-model shuttle, and Qwadaleemia was very nearly as good a pilot as an experienced Hokozana scout. The wings cleared the edges of the skylight by only a few feet, but the ascent never wavered.

  Once out of the cavern, Qwadaleemia put the ship into a slow spiral climb, trying to gain a bit of altitude without risking being spotted by the Ferethers’ long-range sensors. Asher felt the arc of the spiral in his gut, and was grateful that the acceleration was gradual.

  When the twenty-one minutes were up, the in-atmo jet engines cut out abruptly, and Qwadaleemia allowed the plane to glide for a few moments. Then the torch ignited and the Sessareia shot forward like a projectile from a gun. The gs piled on, pressing Asher and the now-wakeful Kaz back into the rear wall of the cargo bay. Asher concentrated on keeping his spine straight and immobile, so as not to give inertia any excuse to try to drag bits of him in different directions. The burn lasted for three or four minutes, before a light came on at the front of the bay. The gs dropped off and they reached a steady cruising speed. Asher saw Sarudeero unbuckled from his crash seat and go forward into the pilot compartment. After a few moments, the little Cythran came back to him and Kaz. “You go forward, please? Join Qwadaleemia in control place?”

  Asher unhooked himself from the cargo net and helped get Kaz free as well. Then two Hokozana men went out through the hatch at the front of the cargo bay and clambered along a narrow passage to the pilot compartment. As they went, Asher felt the familiar movement in his stomach that signaled the beginning of weightlessness. Sure enough, by the time they got up to the front of the ship, he and Kaz were floating. Sessareia was in orbit.

  “Well, Asher,” said Qwadaleemia, looking back toward him and Kaz from her spot in a well padded crash seat in the center of the pilot compartment. “Here we are in orbit. The question is, now what?”

  Asher glanced out of the large plastiglass viewscreen and saw the grayish-green surface of Cierren Cythra rotating far below. He estimated that they were in a fairly high orbit, but still far below Zvezda One. The vibration of the ship told him that the torch was silent, sitting in standby and waiting for the command to burn again. “Orbit is the first step, but we’re nowhere near out of the woods. We risk detection as soon as we come out of the shadow of the planet.”

  “Just over five minutes, then,” said Qwadaleemia.

  “What can we burn for that is exactly that way?” asked Kaz, pointing out through the hull of the ship toward the void of space. “What can we head for that will keep the planet between us and them?”

  “I know of nothing,” said Qwadaleemia. “All my flights have been between Marateen and Zvezda One. Now you ask me to go in a completely different direction, seeking space I know nothing about.”

  Asher accessed his net. He had no uplink to Hokozana anymore. The fact that comms had been cut indicated how close the F
erether fleet must be to the planet. Still, he had the rather clunky Zvezda system model that he had downloaded on his very first day in Bright-Dim. He had it place a dot about where the ship was, on the opposite side of the planet from the station and the approach route of the Ferethers. A quick calculation showed him an asteroid about two-hundred-and-fifty thousand klicks out. He gave Qwadaleemia the coordinates. “Can you hit that with a short burn? We can’t have the torch lit when we come out of the shadow, or they’ll spot us quick.”

  The Cythran pilot did something with a weird control console that hung down from overhead directly in front of her face. “I can burn for three minutes, twenty-nine seconds, she said. If I cut off then, the torch will be dark before they can see us. Better strap in,” she indicated a webbing system on the wall of the fuselage in the passageway to the cargo bay. “Eight seconds of maneuvering then I burn.”

  Asher kicked off and flew to the webbing. He got there as Kaz was strapping in. With a few bursts of the maneuvering thrusters, Qwadaleemia brought the nose around. “Three, two, one, burn!” The ship kicked hard, dragging Asher backward along the passageway before he was properly secured. He grabbed at the webbing and clung on as hard as he could. The alternative was to tumble backward into the cargo bay and slam hard against the rear wall.

  That three-minute burn was possibly the longest of Asher’s life. Inertia dragged so hard at his grip on the webbing that he was sure his arm was going to separate at the shoulder. Kaz, properly secure, could only watch, concern etched on his rough features.

  Finally, the torch cut out, and inertia eased. Asher pulled himself back up to the pilot compartment and let himself float free in the passageway. The pain in his shoulders eased almost instantly. He had always found that weightlessness was the best cure for aches and pains. His nerves were still talking to him, but with the pressure gone they were no longer screaming. “Are we on track, Qwadaleemia?”

 

‹ Prev