by Joe Horan
“I have no idea, but then I have never been a confident of the monks. They deliberately kept their distance from the three kingdoms so they could act as mediators. They are the main reason we had three hundred years of peace before King Shalmazar decided to go on the attack. It also ensured they were left in peace.”
He paused again before continuing, “So I want you to continue your work, but remember there is hope. I do not know what the monks have in mind, but there may be a way to save us. And, of course, keep it secret for now. It’s up to me to decide what people need to know and when they need to know it.”
“Of course, my lord. Does Nyassa know about the Ractaz?”
“Yes, and so do a few others whom I consider need to know.”
As Steph travelled further north the days got shorter and the weather got colder, though they had nothing that could really be called bad weather. Here there had been heavy cloud on the day of the Sun Scorch, though the storm had been just as severe and most of the harvest had been lost.
Eleven days after leaving Ochira they arrived at Chale. The town had a wall and a garrison of several hundred men, necessary for protection from the brigands inhabiting the mountains. It was also a provincial capital, and Governor Pander apparently intended to make as much political capital as he could from the visit by the princess. He had arranged a banquet for the first night after their arrival. Desiree went ballistic.
“There’s a famine!” she yelled. “How will it look if we sit down and stuff ourselves while outside people are starving? Cancel the banquet. Give all the food away.”
“Young lady, I don’t think you understand…”
Desiree drew her sword and pointed it at the governor’s ample stomach.
“Do you want to see your own intestines? Do as I say. Now.”
Sometimes the crazy bitch with a sword had its advantages.
Chale was as far as the wagons could go. From now on they would be heading into the mountains, inhabited only by brigands and outlaws. Four packhorses would carry as much of the supplies as possible; half of the rest would be distributed to supplement the local ration; what was left would be stored in Chale. Desiree warned the governor that she would check when she returned, and if as much as one crust of bread was unaccounted for it would cost him his head.
Steph had to ride a horse and she was not looking forward to it. They had found her the most docile old nag they could, and she got on it and clung on for dear life. The armed guard had been reduced to ten men and Desiree. They started out of the town and towards the towering, snow-covered peaks of the Mountains of Amorn. They were on a track now rather than a road. The fields had given way to scrubby vegetation among which some nondescript animals grazed. They were small and stood low to the ground.
“What are those?” asked Steph.
“Shirrits,” replied the man riding behind her.
On any League of Planets world it would be Thispholotian drongoes grazing on land like this. Colonists nearly always brought drongoes with them as they were the most effective way of converting vegetation to meat yet discovered. It was another tiny scrap of information to file away.
Desiree was exceptionally alert now, sitting up on her horse and constantly scanning the rocks on either side. The soldiers were more watchful as well. Expecting trouble, thought Steph, or at least ready if trouble comes.
They camped for the night beside the path. There was a small tent for Steph to sleep in. The men kept watch in shifts, and Desiree kept watch with them.
Steph had a sleepless night. She had got too used to comfortable beds, and it got very cold during the night as well. When she crawled out at first light there was frost on the ground. A small cauldron of soup was heating over a fire, and she gratefully accepted a bowl.
They climbed steadily throughout the day. They were passing patches of snow now. By early afternoon Steph was ready to stop for the night. Desiree was still leading. Suddenly she froze.
“Down!” she shouted suddenly.
Steph gave a start and fell off her horse. It was this that saved her life; an arrow whizzed just above her head as she fell. Two more found their marks in a couple of men.
“Right one hundred!” yelled Desiree as she rolled off her horse. Her bow was in her hands and she managed to get an arrow off before she hit the ground. She scrambled behind a rock and vanished from sight.
Steph was lying winded in the middle of the path, but a strong hand grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and hauled her under cover. An arrow shot out from behind Desiree’s rock. It arced upwards and disappeared between two rocks on the hillside above.
“Got one!” she shouted.
Steph looked up at the hillside above and could see nothing unusual. Then two arrows appeared from between the rocks, flew down and clattered off Desiree’s rock. Immediately four arrows shot up from besides the path. Two bounced off the rocks, two vanished between them.
“Save your arrows,” said Desiree. “Don’t shoot unless you can see something to shoot at.”
The horses had wandered off and found a patch of green grass to nibble. For ten minutes or so nothing much happened apart from an occasional arrow flying back and forth.
“I count ten at least,” said Desiree.
Two of their men were lying on the path. One wasn’t moving, the other was trying to crawl slowly towards cover. Two arrows came flying down and hit him.
“The bastards!” said someone.
An arrow flew up from behind Desiree’s rock and disappeared through a narrow gap between two boulders.
“Got the son of a bitch,” she said. “Concentrate lads. If they keep showing themselves in the cracks we can pick them off.”
Nothing happened for a while, then suddenly Desiree appeared, rolled across the path and vanishing into the rocks on the other side. Three or four arrows flew down. It happened so fast that everything was a blur to Steph, but she got the impression that one of them might have hit her.
“Ah! Bastards!” came Desiree’s voice. “I’m flanking left. Someone flank right.”
Six arrows went up together, and under the cover of the volley one of the soldiers rolled across the path. Only one arrow came down and it missed him by a long way. Steph stuck her head out from behind the rock to see what was happening, and immediately a hand grabbed her by the hair and pulled her back.
“Keep down!” hissed the soldier.
For ten minutes or so there was a desultory exchange of arrows, then suddenly a volley of six or seven flew down to a spot halfway up the hillside to the right.
“Jan’s down,” said someone.
Another ten minutes passed. A few arrows flew back and forth, but Steph, who was starting to get a feel for what was happening, was sure that they were just firing blind.
Suddenly she saw Desiree leaping down over a rock, sword in hand, coming from above where the enemy were hiding.
“Volley!” shouted the captain.
Six arrows flew up.
“Charge!”
Six men leapt to their feet, gave a roar, and rushed across the path and up the hillside with their swords in their hands.
Desiree had got above the enemy and now she drew her sword and hurled herself down. One of them got an arrow off. It hit her in the left shoulder, but the breastplate absorbed most of the blow and it only penetrated half an inch. Going for his bow instead of his sword meant that he was the first to die. Two of them came at her together, slashing desperately with their swords. Desiree easily evaded the blows, dodged left, thrust her sword into the nearest man’s belly, pulled it out and drove it into the other’s back as he stumbled past. Ten feet away someone was struggling to get an arrow into his bow. With her left hand she pulled the dagger out of her belt and threw it. It struck him in the throat and he went down. Two more went down easily and then there was just one.
“You have two choices,” she said. “You can drop that sword or you can die.”
He dropped the sword. By the time the soldiers arri
ved it was all over.
They had lost three men killed. Two had minor wounds. Desiree had been hit by two arrows; the one in the shoulder came out easily enough, but she had taken one in the right calf when she had rolled across the road and it had gone right through. The captain pulled it out for her and immediately wrapped the wound in bloodweed and put a bandage on it. Steph knew the process must be extremely painful, but Desiree didn’t flinch. There was very little bleeding as well. Steph knew something about injuries – you couldn’t serve in the spacefleet for long without seeing someone get hurt – and the lack of blood surprised her.
They had killed eleven men and had one prisoner. They clearly weren’t brigands. They had good quality weapons and armour. It had all the hallmarks of a well planned ambush and attempted assassination. They had a prisoner, however, and all they had to do was get him to talk.
“Do you know who I am?” said Desiree.
He looked at her but said nothing.
“I can do whatever I like. These men will do whatever I tell them to do. There’s only one way you’re going to get out of these mountains alive. You’re going to tell me who hired you and why.”
Steph was feeling a bit uneasy about this. The Atumcarian Spacefleet had rules about how prisoners were treated.
“Actually, what I meant to say is that there’s only one way you’re going to get out of these mountains as a man.”
He swallowed.
“Right, pull his trousers down.”
That did it.
“It’s Governor Pander. He hired us to kill you. I don’t know why. That’s the truth, I swear it.”
“Thank you. Attempted assassination of a member of the royal family is treason. I sentence you to death.”
With that she drew her sword and ran him through.
Don’t judge her, Steph reminded herself. It’s a different civilisation, a different culture. Remember the kindness she showed to the woman who had lost her husband.
Crazy bitch with a sword!
Desiree said they had one more night in the mountains before they reached the Ractaz. For Steph it couldn’t come soon enough. She was expecting an arrow to come whizzing down from behind every rock. She was angry at herself for feeling scared. She had fought in a great space battle, faced death when the tube broke off and come through it all, but this was not her battlefield.
They had to slog through two feet of snow as they came through the final pass, then they emerged at the head of a narrow valley.
“There’s the Ractaz, at the far end of the valley,” said Desiree, who had come back to ride beside her.
She followed the outstretched arm. She saw a grey curved shape, a huge cylinder partly buried in the earth, grooves in the ground behind as if it had slid along the valley floor. She couldn’t believe her eyes. She must be hallucinating again.
The Ractaz was a ship. A starship.
Chapter 7
The Book of Ultimate Truth
They descended to the valley floor. Steph kept her eyes on the ship, trying to work out what type it was. She could see no plasma exhaust in the stern, so it must be V drive. It was large, too large to be a Tharrian raider. A large cylindrical V-drive ship with a landing capability. Almost certainly military; a civilian ship would have external thruster pods because that was cheaper than fitting the complex field control systems you needed to land. Could be a first-generation vinu, otherwise it was a specialised one-off design.
Looking at it with the eye of a drive specialist, Steph tried to work out how such a big ship had managed to land in such a confined space. She would have to come down at a very steep angle to avoid the mountains. The drive field must be skewed twenty degrees up, about the most you could get with a single-core ship. They would have to redline it all the way and with the field skewed like that she wouldn’t be able to stop; that was why she had slid almost the full length of the valley on her belly. It was a good bit of flying to get her down in one piece at all.
Mountains like this would not be Steph’s first choice for a landing area. Why hadn’t they landed on the plains to the south where they could come in at a shallow angle with the drive field skewed no more than a couple of degrees and pretty much come to a dead stop before they touched down? The only explanation could be that they were coming in on a polar trajectory and overshot, but you wouldn’t normally choose a polar trajectory for atmospheric entry. To turn onto an equatorial trajectory would take about fifteen minutes, so either they couldn’t manoeuvre or they were out of time. The alignment of the valley was near enough north-south, so once they were over the mountains all they had to do was time the final descent right. That was easier said than done. It wasn’t just good flying; they were lucky that day as well.
As they got nearer Steph could make out details. At the far end the valley narrowed and took a sharp turn to the left and the ship had slid to a stop just short of a sheer rock wall. A stone staircase had been built against its side, leading up to a door about twenty feet above ground level on the port side just aft of amidships. A waterwheel had been constructed to take advantage of a stream tumbling down the cliff behind. What looked like power cables ran from a stone hut next to it and disappeared behind the ship. Some low stone walls had been constructed, apparently enclosing pieces of cultivated land. She saw a figure walking from one of these towards the steps, carrying a basket.
All the time she was speculating frantically. What was that ship? She could see no weapons ports in the side. That large door in the flat end surface might be a shuttle bay, but it looked too low in relation to its width. No markings were visible on the hull… no, what was that amidships? A star, perhaps? And another one next to it? It was very faded, but she was almost sure there was a circle of stars on the side. It was an Atumcarian warship then. No weapons ports meant it was some sort of auxiliary. A tanker? It could be, but why would the Atumcarian spacefleet need to haul bulk liquids in deep space?
“You’ve seen something like this before,” said Desiree, riding alongside her.
“Yes,” she replied.
“What is it?”
She didn’t answer.
“Now even I can see it’s not an ordinary building. Is it one of your ships of fire?”
“It was once,” she admitted. “I don’t think it can fly any more.”
People were coming out of the door. They wore long dark robes, the classic garb of a monk even on modern Atumcar. There were five of them, three men and two women. They waited patiently while the travellers rode up and dismounted. A woman of about sixty with long grey hair stepped forwards.
“Welcome to the Ractaz,” she said. “I am Prior Helena.”
“I am Princess Desiree of Ochira.”
“Yes, the sword and bow are characteristic. And you, I presume, are the girl who has got the entire planet talking.”
“Enlistee Steph Campbell, drive specialist first class,” she said.
“I’ve no idea what that means, but please come inside and have some refreshment,” said Prior Helena with a smile. “You’ve come a long way, and I understand you had some trouble in the mountains.”
“How do you know…?” began Desiree.
“We have our ways,” said Prior Helena with another smile. “Our information is that Governor Pander intended to send word to Ochira City that you had been killed by brigands and sell the supplies you left in Chale on the black market. The one flaw in his plan was that he did not really believe a teenage girl could be such a formidable warrior. We have sent a messenger to Ochira City to inform Prince Joaquin of his treason. I hope this meets with your approval. Please, come inside.”
The inside of the Ractaz was illuminated by oil lamps; of course this had not been a working ship for a very long time. She had a list to starboard of four or five degrees. Steph looked around curiously, trying to pick up any clues she could. It was a single-skin door, but it had locking points where something could latch on and a channel in the metal that may once have contained an atmosphere sea
l. They had entered at a junction between a cross passage and a longitudinal passage, just aft of a subdivision bulkhead. The passage aft had doorways at intervals on the inboard side, all with sliding doors standing open. Through the bulkhead door she could see the passage continuing forward, but with a plain metal wall on the inboard side. From where they were in the ship it was probably the engine room on the other side of that wall. The passage occupied part of a void space between the engine room and the shell plating. She would almost certainly have a bi-axial drive, which meant the engine room would be wide rather than long.
“I can see this is familiar to you,” said Prior Helena. “That has told me much. There will be another test later, but for now we will eat.”
She led the way aft. The passage curved slightly as it followed the line of the hull. Steph peered through the first doorway as they passed; a large rectangular room, with a few pieces of wooden furniture that were clearly not spacefleet issue. A store room or cargo space… except that there were a lot of environmental vents on the deckhead. High density passenger accommodation? If you put in full height racks you could sleep sixty or seventy people in there. The next room was the same, and the next. Steph was adding up totals in her head. If the decks above and below were the same you could sleep a hell of a lot of people in this section alone. Old economy-class liners sometimes used a layout like this, but high density accommodation on a military ship meant some sort of troop transport.
They went through another subdivision bulkhead and entered a much larger space. Steph recognised it instantly. The cafeteria; every Atumcarian warship had one and the layout hadn’t changed since who-knows-when. The long metal tables and metal benches were probably the originals. At the far end nearest the serving hatch some plates had been set out on the bench, and a vase of flowers looking incongruous in this bare and functional space.
The food was served by two teenage girls wearing grey robes which Steph presumed indicated that they hadn’t qualified as full monks yet. There was bread, soup, a selection of vegetables and the detestable little bitter fruits. It was rather better than the people of Ochira were getting at the moment, what with the food shortage and rationing.
