The Ascendant Stars_Book Three of Humanity's Fire

by Michael Cobley

  An alert chimed. Gratach and Teshak exchanged a look and moved in closer to the device, contained within an opened-up transport case. A holoscreen appeared above a basic console. In its soft blue plane a shiny disc spun, a ready-state graphic, then was replaced by a pale-skinned man in a dark uniform, a monochrome image. He stared out at them.

  ‘The greatly esteemed Clarified Teshak,’ he said in a high, melodic voice. ‘And his companion must surely be the notable General Gratach … who is yet to take the ascension, if I am not mistaken.’

  ‘Quite correct, Clarified Dusorn,’ said Teshak. ‘It might be advisable to wait until we have been removed to a more controlled environment before completing our brother’s clarification.’

  ‘Of course,’ Dusorn said. ‘To that end, another vessel has been added to the carrier battle group, an attack ship tasked to retrieve you from the planet’s surface on arrival, with the tactical situation permitting.’

  ‘Understood, although I am unclear as to why we are conversing with your Clarified self rather than our illustrious superiors on Iseri.’

  A faint smile crossed Dusorn’s features.

  ‘Negotiations with the traditionalist factions have reached a delicate stage,’ he said. ‘Our superiors are under pressure and also under close observation, therefore responsibility for your continuity has been passed to me.’

  Teshak nodded. ‘Respected Dusorn, am I correct in thinking that you are currently on board a vessel, one of your Suneye automata, perhaps?’

  ‘Your perceptions overcome the limitations of our connection, diligent Teshak,’ said Dusorn. ‘I am indeed on the bridge of the Suneye implementation ship, Edge, and I am accompanied by another two craft, the Hook and the Point. We are in pursuit of a Vox Humana flotilla which is carrying the entire population of the Human enclave on Pyre, a clear-cut demonstration of plunder. As well as the loss of commercial assets, the abduction represents an issue of extreme political sensitivity, which is why we are tracking them down into hyperspace.’

  From his niche of darkness, Kuros noticed open puzzlement on Teshak’s face.

  ‘But the Vox Humana do not possess hyperspace boundary technology.’

  ‘True, but the Roug do.’

  ‘Ah, so they are now openly interfering in our design. They could prove to be a serious obstacle.’

  Dusorn’s faint smile came and went once more. ‘No need for concern. There is a plan, a long-overdue solution which will remove that flaw from the patterns of our design. In the meantime, the first stages of the conflict are proceeding on schedule. History drives the Imisil into our deadly arms, although it appears that their fleet will now arrive after the Hegemony carrier group, not before. The clash will still result in a Hegemony defeat: reports will prompt the Brolturans to enter the fray alongside advance elements of the Hegemony fleet, which will soon be joined by an Earthsphere adjunct. The remaining Imisil vessels will be thoroughly defeated, possibly obliterated. With no other alliances in this region, the Imisil Mergence will petition the other members of the Erenate to send a combined armada and will succeed.’ Dusorn nodded. ‘By which time the conclave of Tri-Advocates will realise that open war is certain to force major powers like the Milybi and the Indroma to actively oppose us. Withdrawal will be inevitable.’

  ‘Defeat and dishonour, with a minimum damage to our military,’ said Teshak. ‘The multiclans, the families, the great throng of all Sendrukans will demand a change of administration and a new direction.’

  ‘The pact with the traditionalists is expected to be signed in the next few hours,’ said Dusorn. ‘By the time our vessel arrives with the carrier group the news will have broken. Now I must end this discussion – new complexities in our pursuit demand my attention.’

  ‘Thank you for the updates and elucidation,’ Teshak said.

  Dusorn gave a wordless nod and abruptly the holoplane was empty. Teshak tapped a console control and the screen vanished as the encased communicator began to pack itself away.

  The AI-controlled Sendrukans turned to face each other and for several unsettling moments Kuros shared Gratach’s unflinching eye contact with the Clarified Teshak. At last Teshak relaxed slightly, nodded, and leaned forward.

  ‘Utavess Kuros,’ he said. ‘I know that you can hear me. The valiant General Gratach assures me that your personality core is stable and aware of sight and sound. As you will have observed, the meticulous project of the Clarified takes another step towards its culmination. Soon the Hegemon’s favourites will be deposed and out of the ruined dusk of their rule a new dawn shall rise; we will be in control and when a stronger Hegemony stands forth an age of glory shall begin. You will not survive to see it, of course, but your part will not go unremarked.’

  As they laughed on their way out of the building, Kuros seethed with helpless fury. Yet a calmer part of him considered what he had learned and reasoned that war was the cradle of accidents and coincidences. Even the most meticulous of projects were bound to encounter factors of unpredictability.

  8

  KAO CHIH

  From an oval window in the starboard lounge of the Viteazul, Kao Chih sat watching dull red starlight spill over the edge of a flat continent-sized habitat. Its orbit had carried it out of the gas giant’s shadow and now a dirty crimson radiance was streaming over its surface, brightening the sides of hills and cliffs, buildings and motionless vehicles on transport lanes. The habitat’s surface was desolate, airless and grey, most of its structures had eroded and collapsed into crumbling ruins, vehicles pitted by centuries of meteorites, the frozen ground covered with dust. There were another twenty-four of these colossal habitats, every one a lifeless sepulchre locked into an ancient orbit.

  Any other time Kao Chih would have regarded these examples of macro-engineering with fascination. But they were the last remnants of a dead civilisation, desiccated remains buried deep in the decayed depths of hyperspace. All he could do for the time being was try to stave off a crushing anxiety about their current predicament.

  Pursued by three Suneye warships, the Roug–Vox Humana flotilla with its Pyre passengers had fled down through the levels of hyperspace. Guided and protected by Roug technology, the flotilla managed to make a series of boundary jumps, varying their length with lateral, cross-tier directions, even making the occasional double-back up a level or two. But still the Suneye vessels managed to find them, relentlessly and without fail …

  Then the Nestinar suffered a major malfunction in its navigationals and the entire flotilla was forced to make an emergency boundary exit which landed them here in this tier of guttering stars, littered with the ruins of artificial worldlets. That had been less than an hour ago. Right now the five Marauder craft were engaged in a desperate rearguard fight against the three Suneye ships while the flotilla sought refuge among the gas giant’s orbiting flock of entombed landscapes. Time was needed to repair the Nestinar’s systems, which on closer inspection turned out to have been sabotaged. And time was running out.

  Kao Chih was dividing his attention between the view outside and a flatscreen hanging on a nearby partition. There were another half-dozen or so scattered around the big lounge, all showing the same feed to clustered groups of worried-looking Pyre colonists. It was the ongoing battle taking place halfway across the star system, realtime video streaming directly from the long-range sensors. There was no sound. The main picture followed the Vox Humana Marauders, switching between them as they swooped, looped and sideslipped, dodging enemy fire as they lined up for attack run after attack run.

  Even before the sabotage on board the Nestinar, Kao Chih had twice gone to the Viteazul’s bridge to ask if there were any duties he could carry out and both times he was asked to return to the civilian zones. Soon after, access to the bridge and operations decks was restricted to crew only. It left him feeling helpless and disregarded, emotions he saw reflected in the faces around him. Decades of oppression would tend to ingrain a certain hopelessness, a fatalistic acceptance of bad fortune and un
deserved punishment. Yet he recalled reports of how unarmed colonists had fought off the Va-Zla thugs during the evac. Hope and a route to freedom had helped them forget the habits of servitude in a moment.

  But now everyone felt hunted, trapped. It came out in expressions and postures, eyes widening suddenly in shock or squeezed tight shut in fear, fingers pointing, quietly muttered curses. Kao Chih returned his gaze to the flatscreen and saw one of the Marauders caught in a tumbling trajectory, trailing swirls of gas while pulse cannon fire stitched bright, criss-cross lines against the blackness. Then the Marauder pilot regained control, throwing his craft into a series of evasive manoeuvres as a flock of enemy missiles converged.

  The frame zoomed out to reveal the spread of the battle. The Marauders were small compared to the Suneye ships. It was like an aquavarium he once saw being unloaded at the underdocks of Agmedra’a, the Roug orbital – inside, two big almost-fish lurked torpidly at the bottom of the tank while smaller creatures darted around them, nibbling flecks snatched from the greater ones’ tails and fins. In the half-minute between the offload and the exit to Cargo Staging he saw the big fish snare three of their parasites with bizarre tentacle-tongues.

  Out there in the cold dark, the Marauders nimbly dodged volleys of enemy fire and missiles with such skill and bravado that Kao Chih felt like joining in the cheers that went up from time to time. Those Vox Humana boys could really fly. At the same time he wished he knew what was going on aboard the Nestinar and how close the repairs were to completion.

  Then the inevitable happened. One of the Marauders evaded a trio of missiles only to be hit by a projector beam from one of the Suneye ships. It sheared off one of the port manoeuvring thrusters, sending it slewing round straight into the path of an oncoming missile. The craft vanished in a violent burst of white fire that dazzled the sensors for a moment. When the picture stabilised there was a glimpse of a glowing wreck amid an expanding cloud of debris. A despairing groan went around the lounge.

  In the next instant the frame pulled back and panned across to one of the Suneye ships, which, oddly, was moving sideways. While the other two now redoubled their efforts against the remaining Marauders, this one seemed to be trying to distance itself …

  Abruptly, the ship disappeared. There was a collective gasp of amazement. Some colonists pointed, others leaned forward to study the screens, then a woman looking out of one of the oval ports cried out, ‘It’s here!’

  With others pressing behind him, Kao Chih stared out – and up. The Suneye ship was there all right, perhaps a couple of hundred metres away but still moving sideways and rapidly closing on the Viteazul. Alarms began to sound and a sudden panic took hold.

  ‘Enemy vessel on collision course!’ said a voice over the PA. ‘All passengers assume safety positions! Admiral Zhylinsky, please come to the bridge.’

  Most of the colonists were crowded around the hatches leading to the ship’s main spinal corridor, but Kao Chih was still at the oval window, fairly certain that he was in no immediate danger. Even though the Suneye ship was rushing side-on towards him. As he watched, shimmering, tapering beams sprang out from glints spaced along its smooth hull, maybe grappler fields of some kind, he guessed.

  ‘This is First Officer Rosario – all crew and passengers brace for impact.’

  The shock threw him off his chair to land on his shoulder, the impetus carrying him further, flipping him over. Dazed, he struggled to his feet. The lounge was a chaos of overturned furniture, fallen people and the cries of the wounded. As he watched, some chairs floated free of the floor and glided along for a few feet before banging back down again.

  Deck gravity is losing coherence, he thought. Is the enemy already aboard?

  Someone grabbed his arm. He was startled to see that it was Admiral Zhylinsky.

  ‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘There’s a security station above on Deck 7 midsection – we can pick up weapons and supplies there.’

  ‘But sir, why not head for the bridge?’

  ‘That’s now the riskiest place to be – they’ll shut it down before they subdue the colonists.’ The admiral straightened suddenly, head cocked as if listening. ‘It’s gone quiet along the dorsal corridor. Quick, this way.’

  The older man seemed possessed of an intense energy as he practically dragged Kao Chih to the other end of the lounge. Almost concealed by the low lighting and the textured, dark brown decor was a recess with a partially camouflaged door that opened to the admiral’s thumbprint. Bead lamps winked on as they sidled along a narrow access passage. The air was warm and dry and smelled of oil and plastics and the admiral seemed to be quite familiar with the place. When Kao Chih asked about this, the admiral shrugged.

  ‘I was captain of the Viteazul before my promotion to admiral. Relations with Earthsphere were still tense back then and we had to be ready if their agents attempted a hijacking or some kind of sabotage. So I got to know the less obvious ways around the ship, especially ones like this which allow access between the decks.’

  Kao Chih smiled, jabbing his thumb upwards. ‘To Deck 7.’

  Zhylinsky nodded, clearly pleased at being able to show off his clandestine knowledge. ‘I even had this maintenance passage extended and modified. It now has a ladder that comes up in the storage closet of Deck 7 security station!’

  Several minutes later they were climbing out of a square hatch in the floor of a small room with box-stacked shelves. Kao Chih was helped up by a middle-aged female security officer, then a skinny youth in a grubby yellow onepiece handed him a paper cup of water.

  ‘Good to see you, Sergeant,’ said the admiral. ‘Where’s the rest of your team?’

  ‘Sdanek and Iklos got shot by enemy drones deploying narcoleptics, sir,’ said the woman. ‘Combination of needle-darts and dispersal pellets. I was lucky to escape.’

  ‘I see – and are we secure?’

  ‘Sealed tight, sir, now that hatch is locked. Monitor network is still up and as far as I can tell the enemy is in control of both engineering and the bridge.’

  ‘Good. Sergeant Miczek, this is Kao Chih, our liaison with the Pyre colonists and now a comrade in this time of need.’ Zhylinsky gazed at the yellow-garbed youth. ‘And who is this young man?’

  ‘Erm … Marko Degellis, sir, uh, Captain, um, assistant stores monitor.’

  The admiral sternly shook his head. ‘Marko, have you ever used a gun?’

  ‘Only on a glowset, sir … ’

  Zhylinsky smiled. ‘Good reactions, then? I used to be pretty sharp in Biokrysis, you know, but that was a few years ago, of course. So, yes, we’ll find you something useful in the arms locker, along with the body armour. Not going anywhere without that!’

  The security station comprised two small rooms, one with heavy cabinets lining two of its facing walls, the other equipped with consoles and screens. The admiral led them in, seated himself in one of the two swivel chairs and brought the screens to life.

  ‘I had subfeeds from all main monitor nodes routed here. We should be able to get both internal and external views.’

  Two screens began to show a succession of images from around the ship, views of people lying sprawled and unconscious in corridors down which glittering disc-shaped drones floated on patrol. Cabins and common areas were the same, as were the crew decks and the operations rooms. Smaller, arrowhead-like drones were also everywhere, mainly hovering. The subjugation of the Viteazul had been swift and efficient. Almost.

  Yet Kao Chih could not see how they could do anything against such a numerous adversary. But he knew that inaction could only lead to the certainty of capture and imprisonment back on Pyre.

  ‘I wonder what’s been happening on the other ships,’ he said quietly.

  ‘The very question that has been vexing me,’ the admiral said.

  Just then their surroundings quivered and Kao Chih felt the telltale momentary dizziness of a hyperdrive jump. Marko staggered a little, Sergeant Miczek leaned against the bulkhead and the admiral
sat straighter, eyes glaring.

  ‘They’ve shifted us somewhere else,’ he said, fingers suddenly flying over controls both solid and holo. ‘Now we really do need access to the externals.’

  One of the monitors switched to a view of the Suneye ship seen from a hull cam at the stern of the Viteazul. The grappler force-beams that Kao Chih saw earlier shone brightly now, a bizarre scaffolding of energies locking the two ships firmly in place, roughly twenty metres apart. In addition four opaque, fluted tubes stretched across to connect with the Viteazul’s flank. As they watched, several Suneye drones, the smaller fist-sized arrowheads, began gliding back to their mothership in pairs and threes. In moments this had become a constant stream, scores of arrowheads and the larger discs returning to the Suneye vessel. Studying this, the admiral nodded.

  ‘To be expected,’ he said. ‘Now that we’re effectively crewless and the colonists have been sedated, it’s safe for them to cast us adrift and return to the battle. Once that’s satisfactorily concluded they can come back to collect us. There, see?’

  With the last of the drones back aboard, the Suneye vessel began to retract the boarding tubes. Kao Chih gazed at the sight, impatient to do something, purposefully ignoring futility.

  ‘Admiral, sir,’ he said. ‘Please excuse my lack of technical knowledge, but is it possible for even we four to reactivate your ship’s engines so that we may not be here when they return?’

  ‘I admire your spirit, Pilot Kao, but it is very likely that the control systems have been disabled.’ Then he gave a toothy grin. ‘But that won’t stop us trying! We’ll wait until … ’

  ‘Sir,’ said Sergeant Miczek. ‘The tubes are extending again.’

  The access tubes had been detaching and retracting one by one, but now they were extending out again.