The Sentients of Orion

by Marianne de Pierres

  They set down on the landing pad by the Pablo site office and spilled from the AiVs, gathering in the shade of two haulers. Joe Scali stood next to Trin like an anxious fratella. ‘Bring the ginko, Nobile. You will have to carry her,’ Trin whispered to him.

  His friend nodded and returned to the AiV.

  Better that he himself kept his distance from her,

  Trin thought. ‘Where is the entrance to the main shaft?’ he asked.

  ‘Behind the water tanks,’ called an Ascanio. ‘But there are only these two TerVs left. We will have to walk or do repeat trips.’

  Trin glanced around. Apart from the gusting swirls of dust and the men’s voices, the mine was unnaturally quiet and without movement. ‘Together,’ he said firmly. ‘Use the TerVs to follow with the injured.’

  Again there was no argument from the men.

  They walked into the main tunnel minutes later. As the light faded behind them, Trin found himself breathing too frequently. Even though the tunnel was wide and the descent gentle, it was as if a weight of rock pressed down on him and the oxygen in the air had diminished.

  They zigzagged downward along the road for an hour or so before they reached the bottom of the main shaft. The road opened out into a large cavern into which entry was blocked by a line of electric crawlers, diggers and spiders. The line was too perfect, too tight, as if the vehicles had been set there as a deliberate boundary.

  ‘Wait,’ Trin told the Carabinere.

  He motioned Seb Malocchi to follow him as he climbed onto a giant track of one of the machines. Behind it, the cavern was pitch black.

  Malocchi pressed a torch into his hand.

  Trin shone it up to the rocky ceiling and then along and down one side.

  ‘In front of us,’ whispered Malocchi. ‘Some movement, I think.’

  Trin swung the light directly in front of him. Anxious faces peered back at him from the gloom. Hundreds of them.

  ‘Don Pellegrini,’ shouted a voice in relief. ‘Thank Crux—it is the young Principe.’

  MIRA

  The Saqr broke through the fence before dawn.

  There were just shouts at first: unintelligible noise that could have meant nothing more than another fight at one of the clubs.

  Then, as Mira started awake, the shouts became hoarse but distinct words that filled her with a sick kind of fear.

  ‘Fence’s down!’

  ‘Wake up. Wake up. They’re through!’

  ‘The Saqr are coming!’

  Mira rolled from her bed and began pulling on her fellala. The korm woke a moment later and gave a loud screech. Across on the other side of the room Mesquite was shaking women awake, directing them to stay calm and collect their things. They were assembled in a handful of minutes, clutching their bambini and their meagre possessions.

  Mira slipped Vito into a harness that Cass had fashioned from kranse stalks. She put her hand on the korm’s forearm to quieten it down.

  It blinked its large eyes.

  ‘Stay near me,’ Mira said, ‘whatever happens.’

  The alien stopped screeching and chittered.

  Suddenly Mesquite was next to her. ‘Cass will be waiting with her land barge. You take these women there. Go to the Pablo mine, south of Pellegrini B.’

  ‘Perche?’

  ‘Because it has many subsidiary tunnels that lead far south underground. With enough water you should make it nearly to the islands. If any of the Carabinere are alive they will go there as well—the smart ones. If Franco is dead, as they say he is, someone will have assumed leadership. Perhaps Jus Malocchi. Perhaps Trinder, my young nipote.’

  ‘Nipote?’ Mira wanted to shake her head to clear it for with every word she spoke Mesquite’s voice had lost its standard ‘esque accent and acquired something more cultured—more familia. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I am Marchella Pellegrini,’ she said simply.

  Mira stared at Mesquite—Marchella—in astonishment. Of course—how could she not have seen it? ‘B-but... aren’t you coming?’

  ‘There are five other dormitories in Ipo like this one, plus the women who have taken others into their homes and those who chose to stay with their men. I will get as many out as I can. These are your responsibility, Mira. Keep them together. The Saqr are less likely to attack a large group.’ The woman gave her a rough push. ‘Don’t let me down, Faja Fedor’s little sorella.’ With a quick squeeze of her shoulder, Marchella disappeared.

  Faja! There was no time to reflect on what she had learned as fifty or more expectant frightened faces turned to her.

  She forced herself to speak. ‘W-we will meet up with Cass Mulravey at. the parking bay. She will have her barge waiting. But we must stay together. No matter whom you see that you know, we must stay together. Do you understand?’

  The women nodded fearfully.

  ‘We will walk four abreast. Stay close to the ones in front and behind: ‘bini in the centre. I will lead. I want all those who have trained with me to take a position on the outside of the group.’ Mira picked out one of the young familia women. ‘Josefia, you come in the last line.’

  Josefia Genarro nodded.

  Mira addressed them all again. ‘If you break away from the group you will become lost. Now ... Crux help us.’ The familia women crossed themselves.

  Chaos met them outside. Men running in all directions, some armed with shovels and picks, others with rifles. The Saqr were heading towards the town centre, they said, and they shouted for the women to ‘git back inside’.

  But Mira ignored them, leading the group by the most direct route to the parking bay. She’d instructed the korm to take Vito and find Cass or Mesquite—Marchella—if she, Mira, was injured or killed.

  ‘Stay close!’ She shouted the words over and over as they moved forward but still some of the women panicked and broke away to join with others. A woman to her right fell as another group of women charged into them at an intersection.

  The two groups dissolved into a milling crowd. ‘Bini wailed as they became separated from their mamas.

  ‘Stay close!’ Mira screamed again. She ran along one side of the group, pushing them together.

  Josefia Genarro added her voice to Mira’s from the other side. ‘We will make it,’ Josefia cried. ‘We will. Stay together.’

  The women began to grab each other, interlinking arms, thrusting the ‘bini back into the middle.

  Mira ran to the front and urged them to follow her. The group lumbered forward again.

  Rast drove past her, heading out of town, with Catchut at her back nursing the GRG. ‘FortunaP Rast shouted.

  Or was it Mira’s own cry? She no longer knew if she was speaking aloud. Her throat was dry with ragged breathing and her body was prickling hot and cold. On all sides now they were jostled—everyone seemed to be moving in the same direction towards the bay. Everybody wanted an escape vehicle. Some grabbed at the women, begging for help. Others attached themselves to the group, pulling Mira’s people back as they attempted to keep up.

  Mira stumbled over broken packing crates of food that had fallen from the back of” a TerV. She snatched up a jagged shard of crate and waved it aloft so that the women could see. Some of them stooped to arm themselves, causing the group to spread dangerously.

  ‘No. No. Stay together,’ Mira cried.

  But they did not listen.

  Panic began to overtake Mira’s purpose. Will Cass wait for us? What if Innis has taken the barge? What if the Saqr are already at the parking bay? Her fear mounted. Marchella Pellegrini had asked her to do the impossible—save these women from the Saqr. I cannot save anyone.

  A TerV passed them, blaring its horn, and she felt an impulse to throw herself under it. She stepped towards it.

  Josefia called after her. The korm screeched. Sheets of dust sprayed from the TerV as it braked to avoid her. None of it meant anything until Mesquite’s voice pierced the confusion. ‘Vito!’ she roared as she led another group of women in from a side ro
ad, carrying a rifle.

  Vito! Vito! The ‘bino was on her back. Panic had made her forget him. Instantly Mira threw herself sideways to avoid the grinding metal tracks. Vito bawled as she landed heavily on her side, trapping one of his legs.

  Marchella ran to her and dragged her to her feet, gripping her arm with strong, unforgiving fingers. ‘Think of the women,’ she whispered fiercely. ‘Think of Vito.’

  Mira reached behind, cupping Vito’s leg, feeling for breaks. He gave little grunts of discomfort but no hurt- animal cry. ‘I-I...’

  ‘But Marchella pushed her back towards the women.

  They huddled around her and Marchella, drawn back together.

  They would think she had not seen the TerV. They would not know what she had intended. Only Marchella knew...

  Marchella raised her voice and her fist. ‘The barge is close. We will survive! We will survive!’

  In a moment they joined with her, chanting the words as she led all of them around the final corner.

  Ahead, between them and the parking bay, ten or more Saqr clustered around a TerV. Some crawled, others wavered awkwardly in an upright stance as if they had just hatched from their globes.

  like, Jancz’s pilot, stood among them, puncturing their chitin with hypodarts from a large pistol. She wore no protecsuit and her stocky Balol shape and long spines were unmistakable.

  ‘What is it? What is the Balol injecting them with?’ asked a woman behind her.

  Marchella shook her head, then turned to Mira. Pulling her velum aside, she stared into Mira’s velum. Her eyes were bloodshot and ferocious. ‘There is a name you must remember. It is Tekton.’

  Mira nodded, confused.

  ‘Say it. Say the name.’

  ‘Tekton,’ said Mira.

  ‘He owes me a debt. He owes this world a debt. Go to him and free our women. Now lead them around the Saqr and DO NOT STOP.’

  ‘Marchella—’

  But she had already lifted her rifle and turned towards the Saqr.

  Mira felt another intense surge of desperation. A mesur away she saw Cass standing on the back of the barge’s doorbridge. ‘There!’ She pointed to the women.

  Several of the Saqr changed direction away from Marchella towards Mira and the women. Kristo fired on them from the top of the barge as the women raced over the last stretch.

  Cass and Thomaas helped them inside. The barge was already crowded with women and ‘bini from another dorm.

  Mira was the last to get there. She grasped Cass with blood-slick hands. ‘We have to wait for Marchella.’

  ‘Who?’

  Mira struggled to recall her other name. ‘M-Mesquite.’

  Cass pointed across the dust of the parking bay. Several ‘esque bodies lay sprawled in the awkward angles of death. The Saqr were bent over them, mouth- needles prodding their flesh. ‘She fired on them. I didn’t see what happened but we have to go now. Medic is strapped to the inside of the hatch.’ She slapped the doorbridge mechanism and it began to close.

  Mira scrambled to get down. ‘No—’

  But Cass shoved her hard off balance into the mass of bodies. Before Mira could recover the door had clicked into place.

  * * *

  Mira’s flight to Ipo paled beside the flight out. The suffocating dark, the smell of bodies crushed together so tightly that breathing was difficult. And the noise: the agonised cries of the injured women and ‘bini, the faint whine of the barge’s motor, the squealing Saqr rage as their prey escaped.

  Bodies thumped against the barge’s canopy, climbing the outside. The barge began to slew back and forth. Then the external noises stopped abruptly. Mira’s thoughts flashed to the ragazzo in Loisa who had fallen under the tracks. Who had just died?

  The barge rumbled for an interminable time before she could shake the numbing horror from her mind. She tried to think of what Faja would do. Or Marchella. What would be practical? Useful?

  She folded back her velum and touched the woman next to her. ‘There is a medi-pack on the door. Can you help me?’

  The woman took Vito from her and leaned hard

  against the next female, giving Mira space to uncramp her legs. She grasped for finger holds on the wall as she stood up and pulled the pack free. Hands reached out to steady her as she sank back. The barge whined on and weapon fire started up again. She raised her voice above it.

  ‘Pass the word to shuffle the worst-injured to me,’ she said.

  The instruction echoed into the depths of the barge. While some protested that it was too cramped, others began the process of shuffling bodies around.

  ‘Is anyone trained in medico?’ Mira asked.

  No one spoke up but a woman close to her passed an injured body across. ‘It’s my daughter. Please see to her first.’

  ‘What is her name?’ Mira asked.

  ‘Davina. The things... they clawed her head. Save her, Baronessa Fedor.’

  Mira started. ‘You know me?’

  ‘Si. Most do.’

  Davina moaned and twitched.

  Mira stripped off her gloves and felt carefully over the child’s head. Blood trickled from wounds. Nothing serious, she thought. Then, as she moved her unsteady fingers down one side of the ragazza’s skull, her finger dipped into a warm, sticky hollow. Mira’s heart faltered. ‘I need light!’ Hysteria made her voice sound sharp. She did not want to see the injury. She did not want to stare at death.

  The child moaned and her arms spasmed.

  Mira fumbled blindly in the pack for a skin adhesive and antibiotics. As she sprayed the synthetic

  membrane over the fracture the child convulsed and went still. Too late. And now she had wasted precious medic. Mira found herself clutching the small body, wishing that she could peel the adhesive off. She made herself let go, shocked by the callousness of her own thoughts.

  ‘Davina is dead,’ she said flatly. ‘Who is alive?’

  As the barge lumbered on, she blocked out the moans from Davina’s mother as she clutched her ragazza’s body.

  Other injured people were passed to her and she laboured on, doing what little she could to help them.

  When the barge finally stopped, Mira was drifting, no longer sure if the darkness before her eyes was the crowded barge or a state of waking sleep.

  Cass opened the doorbridge and peered in. ‘The Saqr stayed in Ipo. We’re on our own now and Kristo has found us a water station.’

  Water. Fresh water.

  A small cheer went up and Mira’s spirits lifted. The women surged down the doorbridge. When the last of them was out, Cass peered in again.

  ‘Fedor?’

  Mira crawled out and blinked at the light.

  Cass recoiled. ‘Crux. Look at you.’

  Mira’s fellala was dirty and blood-soaked and flecks of human tissue had dried between her fingers and under her nails. ‘I couldn’t do anything for her.’

  ‘Who?’ Cass herself was covered with the white sap of Saqr blood. It had dried on her arms like peeling scabs.

  Mira looked for the distraught mother carrying her dead ragazza among the crowd of women. ‘They put a

  hole in her head. My fingers ... my fingers touched ... do you know what I thought?’

  Cass waited in silence, letting her speak.

  ‘I thought... I wished I had not wasted the antibiotic on her.’

  Cass gripped Mira’s shoulders and shook her a little. ‘What you thought was practical, Mira. Practical is what we need.’

  ‘Is it?’ Mira said hoarsely. ‘And afterwards ... who will I be?’

  Cass let go of her and looked at her squarely. ‘Just who’s guaranteeing an afterwards?’

  * * *

  The bore had been sunk at the base of a rocky dune, surrounded by a light scattering of rust-brown thorn bushes that survived on the hint of spilled underground water. From the top of the dune it could be seen that the plains stretched all around, bare and red. Heat shimmers distorted the horizon and Ipo might have been on anoth
er world—there was no sign of it, nor of anything else.

  Cass asked Josefia to find women to keep watch from the roof of the barge while she and Marrat unloaded the little stockpile of food that Marchella had insisted they should hoard. They began dividing the kranse into bite-size sections and laying it out on the flat housing of the bore. The able-bodied women queued to wash and drink at the small trough, scaring away the spiny lizard-brown checclias lurking around the pump.

  Mira took her place in the line.

  ‘Shame we can’t eat ‘em,’ muttered the woman ahead

  of her. ‘Only meat in these Crux-forsaken plains and it’s poisonous.’

  ‘I have never seen so many,’ Mira said. ‘They were eradicated on Pell.’

  ‘Yeah, I hear you had purrcocks and laba-deer. Only civilised animals for you aristos,’ she jeered.

  Mira wished she had not spoken. She waited in silence for her turn but sluicing the blood from her hands and fellala made her feel no less filthy. Afterwards, though, a peculiar and inexplicable vigour took hold of her. She sought out Marrat, who was checking the ammunition.

  ‘Which implement will allow me to dig?’ she asked abruptly.

  Marrat gave her a curious look. ‘Tool compartment sits above the tracks. Help yourself but make sure you put it back when you’ve finished.’

  Mira located the box and wrenched it open. She selected a long-handled tool with a sharp metal end and walked a short distance from the barge into the thorn scrub.

  Kristo followed her. ‘What are you doing, Baronessa?’

  ‘We can’t take the dead with us when we move on.’

  He glanced back towards the barge and the small row of lifeless bodies laid out underneath it. One was so much smaller than the rest. With a sigh he disappeared back to the barge and returned with another tool. ‘You loosen the ground with the pick, then I’ll shovel it away,’ he instructed.

  They worked together in silence. After a while Mira insisted that Kristo should take the pick and she shovelled inexpertly until the shallow hole was wide enough to hold the dead, and her underliner was sweat-soaked beyond absorption. Her arms trembled fiercely with the exertion and she had to stop.