by Joe Horan
Two hours ago there had been an earthquake and then the sun suddenly blazed in the sky. Before she could get to the shelter of the stairway Delia had been badly burnt. Earthquakes were not uncommon and the watchtowers had been constructed with a frame of iron within the stonework to withstand them, but it was the first time the sun had flared like that, scorching people and starting fires in the town. Most were out now; the few that still burned were under control. Delia’s replacement had not come at the appointed time, so she controlled the pain and watched the sea. You watched the sea until relieved.
She saw a line of exposed seaweed round the base of the headland. Two minutes later she was sure. The sea was receding. She threw her weight on the rope, rang the bell as hard as she could and kept on ringing it. This was her one job. To give warning of an approaching tsunami.
She watched as people poured out of the town and up the side of Mount Amezuna, following the approved evacuation route that was drilled into every inhabitant of Mahoun. A black tide of people, running for their lives as Delia continued to ring the bell. She couldn’t control the pain now but still she pulled the rope, still the bell swung on its axel, still the warning rang out. Tsunami coming. Run for high ground.
The water was draining out of the bay. She could see the ships in the harbour leaning over on their sides. Still the water drained away. She could see a white line on the horizon now, growing closer. The flanks of Mount Amezuna were black with people. She could see a towering mass of water, rising up as it came. The bell rang out. Keep running. Go higher.
The wave came on, growing higher as it came. She was looking up at the crest now. The base of the tower was two hundred feet above the sea, the observation platform was fifty feet above that and she was looking up at the crest. Sick with horror she realised that Mount Amezuna was not high enough. The wave was going to sweep right over the top.
It towered above her now. At last she released the rope and turned to face it.
“I have served my people,” she said. “I have done no evil. Let the life force return to the power that gave it.”
Shania didn’t join the cheering crowds; she was too frail and might easily get knocked over and trampled to death. Instead she returned home and went to bed. She had hardly slept during the siege and it had caught up with her. She closed the shutters to keep out the light and was woken up by them banging. A tremendous storm was raging, with howling wind, torrential rain, thunder and lightning. She heated up a bowl of soup and went back to bed, assuming it would be better in the morning. It wasn’t.
The Great Storm, as it became known, lasted for a se’ennight. Shania tried to go to work as usual and was knocked flat by a gust of wind as soon as she got out the door. The baker and his wife carried her back inside and after than she didn’t attempt to leave the building until the storm abated. Many buildings in the city were damaged; she was fortunate that hers was not.
The storm was so unusual everyone assumed it was connected with the way the sun flared, but Shania couldn’t see how. Though the heat was intense it had only lasted for a few minutes and couldn’t possibly convey enough energy to the atmosphere to cause such a storm. She even did some calculations to prove it. Nyassa had the other mathematicians look at them and they agreed with her. Something else must have happened.
Chapter 4
“A ship of fire has fallen from the sky!”
The escape pod came skimming into the atmosphere, projecting an angled forcescreen ahead of it to act as a heat shield. This was the dynamic braking phase; most of the deceleration was being accomplished by atmospheric friction on the heat shield, with the drive running at idling level for attitude control. Steph held on; there was a lot of vibration. She had never done an atmospheric entry in an escape pod, not even in a simulator, but her intuition told her it should not be this bad. The pod was damaged and loss of the comlink array had unbalanced the weight distribution, but she monitored the drive field distribution anyway. It wasn’t right and it wasn’t wrong. It was at the edge of parameters, and though most people would accept the green light at face value a drive specialist knew enough to be concerned.
The surface was completely hidden by angry storm clouds and she had no tachyons left for the scanners. She was coming in completely blind; she knew she was coming down somewhere on the western half of the continental landmass, but beyond that she was trusting to luck to hit a suitable landing site.
As speed slowed the dynamic phase came to an end and the drive began to throttle up. Ripples developed in the drive field…
Don’t stall. Don’t stall. Don’t stall…
The field buckled and collapsed completely. She gave a scream of frustration and pure terror. The pod was a projectile, hurtling out of control towards the ground and oblivion. Anyone else would have no alternative but to crash and die, but she was a drive specialist. The pod’s drive system and the Balastar’s were vastly different, but the underlying principles were the same. She switched to manual and started trying to do a blind restart.
It was day one and Shania was going to work. The Great Storm had at last abated. The wind was still blowing and it was still raining, but it was nothing exceptional and people were clearing up the debris and trying to repair the damage. Bodies were being collected and loaded onto carts; about two thousand died in what was now being called the Sun Scorch and a further three hundred perished in the Great Storm. The healers knew that after a disaster it was important to dispose of the dead as quickly as possible, otherwise the loss of life could be compounded by an epidemic.
At the Institute of Cartography the tower had fallen into the inner courtyard but the building was still open for business. The doorman waved her through and she found a scene of considerable activity. Tiles had been lost from the roof, water had got into the archives and a number of valuable maps had been damaged. They were being carefully spread out for drying and emergency conservation. Shania joined this work; when she arrived at the Institute aged sixteen the first job she had been given was document conservation. For a couple of hours she carefully redrew lines and contours that had been partly erased by water. Just after midday the horns sounded. An apprentice, sent to find out what was happening, reported back that some meteorological phenomenon had spooked the watchmen. Then Alysa Sheedy arrived to the accompaniment of cheers and prolonged applause. It was about time for lunch-break, so everyone stopped and gathered round. Shania was at the back of the crowd, but she found a place where she had a good view through a gap between the bodies.
“What was it like?” asked someone.
“I didn’t get into the fighting until they were running,” she said. “Then we were just cutting them down from behind. I’ve had to kill Jalxy cats and lions and even a mountain ape, but killing another human is completely different. I hope I never have to do it again. Having said that, they’re going to start training warriors and I’ve heard there will be a women’s company. I’m putting my name forward; with your permission of course, Nyassa.”
“You don’t need my permission. The law says you may be whatever you choose to be and if you choose to be a warrior you have an absolute right. If you want my blessing, though, you have it.”
That should be the most exciting thing to happen today, but it wasn’t. Around four o’clock one of the off-duty cartographers rushed in shouting, “The Ancestors have come! The Ancestors have come!”
The storm had raged for a full se’ennight and one, but it was at last starting to ease. The wind was dropping, the rain had eased, the thunder and lightning had stopped completely. It was just past noon as the watchmen on the main gate tower looked out across the rolling plain, the fields of flattened crops. Nothing moved.
There was a slight lightening to the west, a glow behind the clouds like the sun just before it broke through. It moved rapidly across until it was directly above and then continued towards the east, all the time growing steadily brighter. It broke through the clouds and a glowing cylinder descended towards the ground unt
il it was lost behind a slight rise.
The first watchman raised his horn to his lips and blew as hard as he could. The second watchman ran for the stairway, making for the palace to deliver his startling news.
Joaquin and Desiree were in quiet conversation by the fireplace in the great hall. The servants stood some distance away, giving them the illusion of privacy. The riders had gone out at first light, heading in all directions. They would return in the evening to report what they had seen, but if things were as bad as they appeared from the walls there would be famine. The harvest was beaten flat. Only one living thing had been seen, a herdbeast stumbling along head down apparently on the verge of collapse. There were other things to attend to as well. A group of men had been sent to bury the dead outside the wall. Even the Kaun army deserved a burial, and if they were just left to rot on the ground it invited disease.
The sound of the horn interrupted their conversation, a fluctuating blast, the North Gate tower. Seconds later came another blast, a low tone, the Tower of the South. Two more blasts followed, the eastern and western watchmen. Joaquin and Desiree looked at each other for an instant, then both were running for the door. Desiree, of course, was the faster. She had nearly reached it when the main gate tower’s watchman came barrelling through. Her warrior’s reflexes, honed to evade the slashing blade, enabled her to dodge neatly aside and avoid the oncoming man. Joaquin, coming behind, was not so agile. He tried to stop, skidded and hit the doorpost face-first.
“A ship of fire, my lady!” said the watchman. “A ship of fire has fallen from the sky!”
His report was directed towards Desiree, but with an inclination of her head she referred him to her brother.
“What did you see, man?” he asked, dabbing gently at his nose to make sure it wasn’t bleeding.
“I saw it glowing behind the clouds, then it fell through and came to earth due east of here.”
“How far?”
“Twelve miles, sir. Close by the village of Stains.”
“What did it look like?”
“Its shape was like a barrel, but huge. It shone with its own unearthly light.”
“What colour was the light? Was it white like the sun? Yellow like a candle?”
“No sir. It looked bluish to me, sir.”
“Like saltpetre?”
“No sir. Paler. It looked, and pardon me if this makes no sense, it looked cold.”
The other watchmen had arrived now and Joaquin was questioning them, listening to their answers and asking more questions. This was what he was good at. Put a sword in his sister’s hand and no one was her equal, but when it came to asking questions, teasing out the facts and searching for the truth behind them he was the master. He was building up a picture in his mind, trying to see what these men had seen and understand what it was they were seeing.
The ancient Chronicles said that the Ancestors descended from the sky in a ship of fire. He had always assumed this was an allegory; never had it occurred to him that it might be literally true, but so many of his cherished beliefs had been challenged in the past few days that even this did not seem a step too far. Did not the Five Truths say: No belief is so ancient that it cannot be changed? They knew that the World was a sphere, the sun was a huge ball of fire around which it travelled. What the stars were no one knew. Were they lanterns nearby, or might they perhaps be suns like their own at a very great distance? Whatever they were, the cartographers’ attempts to measure the distance had discovered they were too far away for it to be done easily. Was it an actual possibility that the Ancestors came from the stars in a ship of fire? He felt there was a deep truth here, something that would change them all forever.
“Send a company,” he said. “Have them ride east and discover what has fallen. If they find people, treat them as friends unless they prove themselves our enemies.”
Riders had been sent out at dawn to survey the countryside and report back. Oriol Eanus had been assigned to ride east. He passed close by the main Kaun camp on his way out. The ground here was thick with corpses, men scorched by the sun, men slain by the sword. Over there somewhere was the headless body of King Shalmazar. He did not turn aside to look. He had seen it all, and what he had seen was something he had never thought to witness.
He was sixty-two years old. He had joined the army at eighteen, retired with honour at fifty, lived in quiet retirement in Ochira City until called back to arms to defend the city against King Shalmazar’s army. He had marched to battle behind a fourteen-year-old girl with the heart of a lion. He saw her fight like a wildcat, striking down enemy after enemy until even the great King Shalmazar fell to her blade.
Beyond the camp was the lush, rich farmland that was the heart of Ochira. What he saw now was desolation. The harvest was destroyed. He was no farmer, but he thought less than a tenth could be safely gathered in. Almost all the domestic animals had perished, their bloated corpses rotting where they had fallen. There were very few birds; it seemed that even these had fallen to the sun scorch. Most of the houses had been burned, but the Kaun Army had come this way and it was probably their work.
He came upon a survivor from the Kaun Army, staggering through the desolate landscape half-dead from the effect of the sun scorch. He had thrown off his armour but still had his sword. Oriol rode him down and dispatched him. He had no way to take him prisoner; anyway by the rules of war the shocking ultimatum delivered at the start of the siege made it a fight without quarter.
At midday he was three miles beyond Stains. He stopped for half an hour to eat his bread and meat, then started for home. He had been travelling less than ten minutes when he saw the light in the sky and a huge, glowing cylinder fell out of the clouds and hit the ground less than two miles from where he was. He controlled his horse with difficulty – the animal had, quite understandably, taken fright at the extraordinary sight – then set off across the devastated land towards it.
Steph opened the hatch, fell out and might well have ended her adventures by breaking her neck if the ground had been a little less soft.
It had taken thirty-four seconds of frantic, heart-pounding, adrenalin-fuelled terror to stabilise the field and restart the drive. She was coming in way too fast; there was no choice except to redline it. She hit the ground very hard indeed, the landing struts instantly collapsed and the hull embedded itself in what was fortuitously a stretch of very wet and boggy ground. Steph was slammed down into the couch by the impact and all the air was driven out of her body. Red lights appeared on the drive console; the lower drive coils were off line, as was one of the core containment generators; the descent profile was designed so that the core would be fully discharged at touchdown to avoid the risk of an explosion if containment failed. If necessary the containment could be reprofiled to run with one generator down, but the loss of the lower drive coils could not be compensated for. At the least they were out of alignment, which would be a very difficult problem to fix without a proper engineering set-up. At the worst they were distorted, which meant they were scrap metal and the drive was finished.
She opened the hatch without thinking to stop and extend the ladder, burnt her hand on the still-hot metal of the outer hull, did a graceful swallow dive and landed on her face in a deep and muddy puddle. She sat up, spat out a piece of rotting vegetation and looked out across a desolate, rain-soaked landscape. Welcome to your new home passed unsolicited across her mind.
Oriol stopped at the top of the rise. The strange whatever-it-was – he couldn’t think of a name for it – had come down in Tolkien’s Bog. He saw a pale metallic cylinder with a few dents and some dark scorch marks on the side, about ten feet wide and projecting thirty feet into the air, sticking out of the ground. It was leaning at a slight angle. Steam rose gently from the hot metal as the rain fell on it; more rose from around the base where it was embedded in the wet ground. About half-way up what looked like a small circular door hung open. He unsheathed his sword and urged his unwilling mount forward; it was a warhorse,
trained to run unafraid into battle, but it certainly didn’t like the look of this. Tolkien’s Bog wasn’t really a bog at all, just a piece of very wet and marshy ground which could support a man but probably not a horse. He stopped at the edge, dismounted, and stood staring at the extraordinary object and wondering what to do.
Then something he had taken for a clump of vegetation near the base of the cylinder moved. It tried to stand up, fell down, tried again and this time succeeded. He saw, to his utter amazement, that it was a girl. Covered with mud from head to foot, but undoubtedly a girl.
Steph must have hit her head. She was certain she was hallucinating. Advancing slowly across a field towards her was a knight on horseback. It was like something out of a history vid. She closed her eyes, counted slowly to ten and opened them again. The hallucination was still there. He had reached the edge of the swampy ground and was getting down off his horse. She closed her eyes for another count of ten and opened them. He was standing at the edge of the swamp now, looking at her. The horse had dropped its head and was investigating a clump of grass. OK, perhaps not a hallucination; but that meant he was really there.
Something clicked in her brain. Knight on horseback; Grade 1 (pre-industrial) civilization; First Contact Protocols apply. Everything she had ever learnt about First Contact Protocols skittered through her mind like a swarm of spiders. There were pages upon pages, volumes upon volumes, but the one standout regulation, repeated over and over again, enshrined in the League of Planets Charter, the one international law to which everyone, even the mighty Atumcarian Empire, must bow, was all contact with Grade 1 civilisations is absolutely forbidden. Her next action should be to kill herself. Well, that was never going to happen. She had already survived ten impossible situations and she wasn’t going to just put a blaster to her head and pull the trigger.
