“Ancil,” he said. “That sensor o’ yours working? Do you have a fix on Khorr’s ship?”
“Within a hundred metres,” said Ancil. “When we get to the other side I’ll be able to narrow it down.”
“Good–encounter team goes with me now. We’re gonna double-time it through the gulley, creep up on that scumpot and his goons and hit them hard. Mojag, you and Punzho’ll have to follow as best you can.”
The Egetsi struggled to his feet, aided by Mojag who was now wearing Win’s harness.
“I will not hold you back, Captain,” Punzho said. “Nor will I be left behind.”
“Couldn’t ask for more,” Pyke said. “Right, let’s move.”
Dervla frowned as he called out a marching order, then led the way at a jog, closely followed by Ancil who was consulting his sensor-factab as he ran. Then came Kref and Win with Dervla bringing up the rear. Minutes later they had left Mojag and the limping Punzho behind, and were trudging up a slope of brittle, shin-high bushes to the gulley that cut through the hilly ridge. Amid the dark their wavering lamp beams revealed trees and outcrops but also attracted odd insects that made a stuttering whine as they circled and darted about.
As they all hurried through the shadows Dervla pondered Pyke’s behaviour. She was aware, far more than the others, that the gabby, confident exterior masked a few deep insecurities. There was always that aura of unshakeable conviction in the rightness of his course, while the rest of the crew tried not to disappoint him. Which didn’t help when his flawed reasoning amplified the flaws of his plans.
But now he’s lost his ship and here we are stuck on a planet that’s about to be snatched away, she thought. I’ve just about had it–when we get out of this and back to something like civilisation I’m chucking it…
Everyone was breathing heavily by the time the team reached the other end of the gulley. Carrying weapons and ammo-heavy harnesses they had splashed through a couple of winding, rocky streamlets which left most of them with sodden feet. Harness lamps went off and night goggles were donned as the team skirted across the hillside behind masses of abundant foliage. The slope was heavily wooded and it didn’t take long to find a gap in the greenery which provided a view of the planet-jacker camp. After adjusting her goggle filters the first thing Dervla saw was a tall spire-like structure; it was invisible in the darkness but the goggles revealed the faintly amber energy ripples that were rising from the base to the tapered tip, which had to be about a hundred metres high. As the ripples ascended, pale blue points pulsed in spiral patterns.
And there were the two ships, located as Ancil said they would be. The large hulking one sat on formidable landing gear with four huge thrusters angled groundwards while a dozen or so biped crew members rushed in and out of a gaping stern bay. A smaller, sleeker vessel sat across the rough clearing with a couple of humanoid figures moving or sitting close by.
“Small ship is Khorr’s,” muttered Ancil. “Not getting any signs of active sensor sweeps.”
“Perimeter trips?” said Pyke, still peering through his goggles.
“No energy signatures that I can pick up.”
Pyke gave a low laugh. “Bastard’s wide open. We’ll skirt round to attack from the cover furthest from the big ship. We rush them, close quarters, try to take them down quick and quiet. Let’s go.”
With Pyke in the lead they headed off under cover of dense bushes but had taken barely a dozen paces when Ancil spoke up urgently.
“Wait… stop! Chief, they’re pulling out!”
Ancil was gripping his factab in both hands, staring at the detailed glows on its oval display. Dervla cursed under her breath, rushed back to where they’d paused before and was in time to see Khorr’s ship, its ports sealed and the heat signatures of countergrav fields building beneath its hull.
“No, they’re not,” Pyke muttered, his voice climbing. “No, no, NO!… Thieving scum!…”
Before anyone could react he leaped into the chest-high weave of bush and winding grasses, tore his way through and charged off down the slope. Everyone seemed frozen with astonishment until Dervla shouted at them.
“We have to stop him–he’ll get himself killed! Kref, Ancil, go after him, bottle him up and bring him back here. Oh and switch on your wrist-comms.”
Kref gave a sharp nod and moved off in pursuit. Ancil was still studying the factab sensor readout. “Other ship is buttoned up too, ready to leave.” He glanced up. “That’s Khorr away.”
Above them a cluster of hull glows driven by a pair of stern thrusters–bright orange dots and smears in the night goggles–rose on a tight curve that turned into a steep climb skywards. When she looked back Ancil was gone, and Win was frowning at Dervla.
“Why’d you keep me back?”
“Someone has to hurry back to meet Mojag and Punzho,” she said. “When you find them, let me know then steer them back to the gulley and wait for us.”
Win took several steps, paused and glanced back.
“Are we going to get off this planet, Dervie?” she said.
“I wish I could say yes or no for definite,” Dervla said. “But right now it’s all looking a bit shaky.”
Win let out a low, dry laugh. “Shaky… that’s good.”
And she was gone.
Dervla turned to gaze downslope once more, crossed her arms and leaned against one of the native trees, feeling the pebbly surface of its bark through the hardweave of her body armour. Had Pyke truly lost it, and were the rest now looking to her to be captain? The thought made her shake her head. Captain of what, exactly?
Win had been gone just a couple of minutes when a shot rang out in the darkness, from the direction of Pyke’s mad flight. Immediately she spoke into her wrist-comm.
“Kref! Ancil! Are you okay?”
Nothing, only the rustling quiet of the night-sunken trees all around her. She repeated the message, in a low, hoarse voice. Again there was no reply. She was about to try a third call-out when red light flared up into the sky. A bright scarlet spear that rushed straight up from the planet-jackers’ spire, impaling the overhead layer of broken cloud. Then the wrist-comm clicked.
“… got him, Dervla.” It was Ancil. “On our way.”
“Copy that,” she replied in relief. Still staring at the glowing red beam, she frowned when strange roseate ripples began rippling across the sky above, behind and within the clouds. The ripples pulsed faster till they became a mesh of criss-crossed rosy lines stretching in all directions. Right then, G’Brozen Mav’s words came back to her: If the great net is cast and you are trapped on this world your chances of survival are low.
Footfalls drew near, heavy thuds and the rustle of foliage. Moments later Ancil came into view, followed by Kref carrying a limp form over one broad shoulder.
“That shot was the chief,” Ancil said. “Must have taken it into his head that shooting at that generator spire thing would maybe make a ship come back and land. Then Kref threw a stone and brained him, helluva lucky shot.”
“Lucky?” said Kref, frowning.
“Well, it is dark.”
“Listen, I sent Win back to find Punzho and Mojag,” Dervla said. “We’ll be meeting them back at the gulley.”
But Win had not yet reported back, so as she led the way back uphill Dervla spoke casually into her wrist-comm. “Win, we’ve got Pyke and we’re heading back. What’s your situation?”
It was a long moment before a breathless Win responded.
“Sorry… sorry, Dervla… still looking for them.”
Teeth gritted, Dervla kept her voice calm.
“Could be that they were spooked when the sky went mad,” she said. “Keep searching–let me know soon as you see them.”
“Shall do–say, any ideas about these ripples and lines in the sky? Shook me when that started… ah, hell, what’s happening now?”
Dervla had become aware of the change, too, a faint glow that spread from the roseate lines, forming a shimmering, unbroken veil that
stretched all across the sky. Ancil and Kref with his burden had slowed, their attention likewise caught. Dervla was about to urge them to resume when a pulse of brightness flared like a swift wave from horizon to horizon. The shimmering veil quivered like a membrane struck. There was an awful sense of premonition, while at the other end of the comm-link Win was asking, demanding, what was happening.
“Win, stay where you are,” Dervla said. “Wait till this calms down.”
But no amount of reassurance could have prepared any of them for what happened next. The sky had steadily cleared of clouds and the glittering patterns and clusters of the stars were visible through the artificial mysterious veil. Low in the sky to the east, a piercing blue point grew and began to put out bizarre tendrils which themselves bifurcated until there was an ominous blue web hanging out there in space an unguessable distance away.
Then the radiating tendril tips began to splay and merge. Strange distortions wavered outwards from the bright, azure hub and for a moment it seemed that space itself was distending… then came the fastest, flickering flash… and in the next instant an entire planet appeared in the sky, its curved vastness looming overhead, so close that Dervla could look straight up and see the details of coastlines and mountain ranges and the snaking meanders of rivers.
Win Foskel was practically babbling away at the other end of the comm-link while Kref and Ancil, after the expected outbursts of cursing, had regained their composure. Kref had placed Pyke down against a smooth boulder and the erstwhile captain of the Scarabus was gazing skywards, open-mouthed.
Ancil took out his factab, pointed its onboard sensor nubs upwards to study the unknown world for a moment or two before lowering it.
“It’s the same as that planet back in the Nadisha system,” he said. “Wastelands of destruction, bombed-out population centres, forests reduced to pockets of vegetation.” He pointed. “See that black smear? That’s a city burning.”
“What do they do that causes all that?” Win said, privately hoping that she never found out.
Ancil was studying the factab’s display again. “That world is enclosed in the same gridded field as this one–can’t be long till the switch.”
“How will that affect us?”
He gave a slow uncertain shrug. “I’m pretty sure they don’t want their purloined planets half wrecked by earthquakes and tidal waves so I’m guessing that these gridded fields dampen their inertia.” His eyes widened and he laughed briefly. “Man, the technology required to do all that is astonishing… well, that’s my theory anyway.”
Dervla had been opening the comm-link to Win, and when Ancil finished she spoke. “Did ya get that, Win? I’m not panicking and neither should—”
“Got it, Dervla! But I found Mojag and Punzho! That’s what I was yelling about.”
“Right, I see, fine. Are you anywhere near the gulley?”
“We’re minutes away from it.”
Dervla glanced over at Pyke. He was now sitting there with his head resting on arms that were crossed over raised knees.
“It might take us a little longer,” she said. “When you get there—”
“This is it!” Ancil said excitedly. “The night’s about to go into reverse…”
He was right. Staring up at the roseate-tinted sky she could see the stars starting to slide eastwards with calm purpose. There was a brightening to the west, casting the middle-distant mountain range into black silhouettes and steadily darkening the successive shadowy outlines of the nearer foothills, until the sun rose with a sudden, unfiltered blaze of light that made her flinch and slightly avert her gaze. She looked on in appalled fascination as the retrograde sun climbed with unseeming haste into the sky, an hours-long transit compressed into a few tens of seconds. At the same time, the newly appeared planet was moving in the opposite direction, its ruined immensity held in its own mesh of roseate fields and forces. Off to the side, Win Foskel staggered backwards and fell on her backside and then sat there, staring up. And in her mind Dervla thought she could almost picture what was happening, two worlds pivoting around some unshifting point, one swinging out of its aeons-old orbit, the other swinging in to take its place. The gargantuan audacity of it was breath-taking to her, even as she recognised the grim peril that they were all in.
From this height on the hillside she could see a landscape revealed, hills and unmarred forests rolling away into the hazy distance. Ancil, one hand shielding his eyes, pointed eastwards.
“That’s the terminus,” he said.
Dervla nodded, seeing the wall of inky shadow now racing westwards. The other planet was moving between them and the sun and the nightfall of an eclipse was sweeping relentlessly in their direction. Then suddenly it was upon them, the sun sliding behind the ruined planet’s obscuring edge, the curtain of darkness, the plunge into gloom. Someone moaned, Pyke perhaps, and harness lamps were switched on again. Dervla realised that she had been holding her breath and let it out in a shaky sigh.
“How long?” she said.
“A minute at the most,” said Ancil.
“They’ve moved this planet out of its orbit, haven’t they?”
“Without a doubt.”
“When the other’s taken its place,” she said, “what happens next?”
Ancil laughed nervously. “Well, G’Brozen Mav told the chief a neat little story about newly stolen worlds being taken to some far-off empire but who knows how much of that is true. If I had to guess I’d say that the next step is where we get whisked off into hyperspace… my god, it’s staggering, this! Flipping whole planets in and out of hyperspace!… Ah, dawn rises once again.”
As the eclipse drew to a close, the gloomy dark was swept away by an onrush of daylight as the vast ravaged planet sailed along its inexorable course.
But we can’t just wait here in the open like dumb prey, she thought. No way of knowing what happens to these hijacked worlds, so we should act as if the worst is heading our way.
It didn’t take much to persuade Kref and Ancil to get moving again–Pyke refused Kref’s offer of being carried, hardly saying a word as he forced himself to his feet and began trudging upslope. Progress was slow and as they climbed Dervla began to realise that the sun, now a thumb’s width above the eastern horizon, had not moved for several minutes. She was about to mention it to Ancil when there was a shout from further uphill–it was Win, waving at her from between large clumps of prickly bushes, and Mojag and Punzho at her back.
“Did I not tell you to wait for us at the gulley?” Dervla said.
Win glanced at Mojag and Punzho then shrugged. “We were getting back from where I found them, spotted you through the bushes–and here we are.” She gave a bleak smile. “Bit of a hellish stew that we’re in, eh?”
“Dervla,” Ancil said sharply.
She had seen the change already in the way shadows were moving too quickly across the ground. Turning she saw the sun climbing into the sky again, getting close to its noon high-point before curving southwards. Its progress seemed to accelerate as it rushed overhead and fell beyond the horizon, plunging all into funereal darkness.
There was a muttered cursing as lamps were fumbled on. Someone coughed, someone muttered angrily in a language Dervla didn’t know and someone hushed them. She wished she knew how to calm fears with easy words and a chuckle, something Pyke was adept at. All she could do was urge them to stay together and carry on up the hill so, stumbling in the dark, they did so. The fear that still made her chest feel hollow spiked a few minutes later when the roseate sky above quivered suddenly. The bright starry points started to blur against the inkiness of space, gleams and clusters smearing into trails that faded as a maelstrom of steel greys and razor-silverness swirled out to span the sky.
“That… that’s hyperspace!” Mojag cried out. “How is that possible?”
And Dervla recalled what Pyke said he was told by the alien Toolbearer Hechec, about the Shuskar and their huge ship, Kezurdra. If it was true that they were bound
for some distant, savage star empire then this planet could be in transit for days. When she relayed this conclusion to the rest of the crew their consternation was undisguised.
“We only have rations for two days,” Win said. “Three at a push… hey, what about checking the landing site near that spire structure? Maybe the jackers left some supplies behind…”
“What about attacking–firing at the spire?” said Mojag, whose drawn features gleamed with sweat while nervous fingers pawed at his scalp. “Knocking out that energy field would bring rescuers running—”
Ancil was looking at him as if he was mad. “Yeah, and then the entire planet drops out of hyperspace and we freeze to death in the black emptiness of interstellar space! Is that what you had in mind?”
Mojag bowed his head and covered his face with his hand. “No, you’re right, you’re right… don’t you see?”
“Look,” Dervla said, “we have to keep our cool. If we are going to be trapped under this sky for a while we either stay put or head for the nearest settlement.”
“That’s a good fifteen klicks east and north of here,” said Ancil.
She shrugged. “Anyone feel like sitting down and just hoping for the best?… Nah, didn’t think so.”
Moments later packs were reclipped to harnesses and the crew resumed hiking up the bushy slope. Pyke was stumbling along, flanked by Win and Ancil and shaking off helping hands whenever they were offered. Kref led the way and Dervla brought up the rear, walking in Mojag and Punzho’s footsteps. It now seemed that the Egetsi had gone from being the recipient of assistance to its donor as he tried to calm or reassure the increasingly fretful Mojag.
Ancestral Machines Page 10
