Gari and Navar bounded into the lounge, laughing happily together. Some kind of truce had been declared since they came on board. A minor omen, Jed thought; things were steadily getting better.
“What are you doing?” Gari asked.
He grinned up at her and gestured to the window with its thick rim of brass. “Just looking. So what are you two doing?”
“We came to tell you. We just talked to Choi-Ho. She says this is the last swallow before we get to Valisk. Another hour, Jed!” Her face rose with elation.
“Yeah, another hour.” He snatched another glance at the alien greyness outside. Any minute now they’d be back in real space. Then he realized Beth wasn’t here to witness their triumph. “Back in a minute,” he told the two girls.
The Mindor was quite crowded now. The rendezvous in the Kabwe system had brought another twenty-five Deadnights on board. Everyone was doubling up in the cabins. He walked right to the end of the main corridor, where the light was slightly darker. “Beth?” He gave her cabin door a fast knock and turned the handle. “Come on, girl, we’re almost there. You’ll miss the—”
Both of Beth’s jackets and her lace-up boots were lying on the floor, looking like they’d just been flung there. Beth herself was stirring on the bed, a skinny hand clawing lank strands of hair away from her face as she peered around blearily. Gerald Skibbow was next to her, sound asleep.
Indignation and pure anger made it impossible for Jed to move.
“What is it?” Beth grunted.
Jed couldn’t believe it; she didn’t display the slightest hint of shame. Skibbow was old enough to be her bloody great-grandfather! He glared at her, then stomped out, slamming the door loudly behind him.
Beth stared after him, her puzzled thoughts slowly slotting together. “Oh, Jeeze, you’ve got to be bloody joking,” she groaned. Not even Jed was that stupid. Surely? She swung her legs out from under the duvet, taking care not to pull it off Gerald. It had taken her hours to get him to sleep. Holding him, reassuring him.
Despite her best efforts, she did dislodge the cover. The fabric seemed to stick to her jeans, and her sweatshirt was all twisted around, making every movement difficult.
Gerald Skibbow woke with a cry, looking around fearfully. “Where are we?”
“I don’t know, Gerald,” she said as calmly as she could. “I’ll go find out, then I’ll bring you back some breakfast. Okay, mate?”
“Yes. Um, I think so.”
“You go slip into the shower. Leave everything else to me.” Beth laced her boots up, then retrieved one of her jackets from the floor. She gave the inside pocket a determined pat to make sure the nervejam was there before she left the cabin.
* * *
Rocio Condra sensed the voidhawks waiting before he even started to emerge from the wormhole terminus. Seven of them, spiralling slowly around the point where he expected Valisk to be.
The terminus closed behind him, and he spread his wings wide, letting the thin streamers of solar ions gust against the feathers. All he did was glide along his orbital path while he tried to understand. Confusion was almost total. At first he thought he might even have emerged above the wrong gas giant, however unlikely that was. But no, this was Opuntia, its system of moons easily distinguishable. He could even feel the mass of Valisk’s wrecked industrial stations in their proper coordinate. The only thing missing was the habitat itself.
What has happened to Valisk? he asked his erstwhile enemies. Did you destroy it?
Obviously not, one of the voidhawks replied. There is no debris. Surely you can sense that?
I can sense that. But I don’t understand.
Rubra and Dariat finally settled their differences, and merged. The entire neural strata became possessed, creating an enormously powerful reality dysfunction. Valisk left the universe, taking everyone inside with it.
No!
I am not lying to you.
My body is inside. Even as he protested, he knew he wasn’t really bothered. The decision he had been nerving himself up to make had been taken for him. He allowed energy to flow through his patterning cells, exerting pressure on a particular point in space.
Wait, the voidhawk called. You have nowhere to go. We can help, we want to help.
Me, join your culture? I don’t think so.
You have to ingest nutrients to sustain yourself. You know that, even the possessed have to eat. Only habitats can provide you with the correct fluids.
So can most asteroid settlements.
But how long will the production machinery function when the settlement becomes possessed? You know they have no interest in such matters.
One of them does.
Capone? He will send you to fight to earn your food. How long will you last? Two battles? Three? With us you will be safe.
There are other tasks I can perform.
For what purpose? Now Valisk has gone, you have no human body into which you can return. They cannot reward you, only threaten.
How do you know that was promised to us?
From Dariat; he told us everything. Join us. Your assistance would be invaluable.
Assistance for what?
Finding a solution to this whole crisis.
I have solved it for myself. Energy flashed through the cells, forcing an interstice open. The wormhole’s non-length deepened to accept his bulk.
The offer remains, the voidhawk proclaimed. Consider it. Come back to us at any time.
Rocio Condra closed the interstice behind his tail. His mind instinctively retrieved the coordinate for New California from the Mindor’s infallible memory. He would see what Capone had to offer before making any hasty decisions. And the other hellhawks would be there; whatever final choice they made, they would make it together.
After he explained what had happened to Choi-Ho and Maxim Payne, they agreed not to burden the Deadnights with the knowledge that their false dream had ceased to be.
* * *
Jay peeled the gold insulating wrapper off her chocolate and almond ice cream; it was her fifth that morning. She lay back happily on her towel and started licking the nuts off the ice cream’s surface. The beach was such a lovely place, and her new friend made it just about perfect.
“Sure you don’t want one?” she asked. There were several more sweets scattered over the warm sand; she had stuffed her bag full of them when she left the pediatric ward that morning.
No, with many thanks, Haile said. Coldness makes me sneeze. The chocolate tastes like raw sugar with much additional acid.
Jay giggled. “That’s mad. Everyone likes chocolate.”
Not I.
She bit off a huge chunk and let it slither around her tongue. “What do you like?”
Lemon is acceptable. But I am still milking from my parent.
“Oh, right. I keep forgetting how young you are. Do you eat solid stuff when you’re older?”
Yes. In many months away.
Jay smiled at the wistfulness carried by the mental voice. She had often felt the same at her mother’s rules, restrictions designed purely to stop her enjoying herself. “Do your parents all go out for fancy meals and things in the evening like we do? Are there Kiint restaurants?”
Not here in the all around. I know not exactly about our home.
“I’d love to see your home planet. It must be super, like the arcologies but clean and silver, with huge towers built right up into the sky. You’re so advanced.”
Some of our worlds have that form, Haile said with cautious uncertainty. I believe. Racial history cosmology educationals have not fully begun yet.
“That’s okay.” Jay finished the treat. “Gosh, that’s lovely,” she mumbled around the freezing mouthful. “I didn’t have any ice cream the whole time I was on Lalonde. Can you imagine that!”
You should ingest properly balanced dietary substances. Ione Saldana says too much niceness is bad for you. Query correctness?
“Completely wrong.” Jay sat up and tossed the
ice cream stick into her bag. “Oh, Haile, that’s wonderful!” She scrambled to her feet and ran over to the baby Kiint. Haile’s tractamorphic arms were withdrawing from the sand castle like a nest of snakes that had been routed. She’d built a central tapering tower two and a half metres tall, surrounded by five smaller matching pinnacles; elaborate arching fairy bridges linked them all together. There were turrets leaning out of the sides at cockeyed angles, rings of pink shell windows, and a solid fortress wall with a deep moat around the outside.
“Best yet.” Jay stroked the Kiint’s facial ridge just above the breathing vents. Haile shivered in gratitude, big violet eyes looked directly into Jay.
I like, muchness.
“We should build something from your history,” Jay said generously.
I have no intricacy to contribute, only home domes, the Kiint said sadly. Our full past has not been made available. I must do much growth before I am ready for acceptance.
Jay put her arms around the Kiint’s neck, pressing up against her supple white hide. “That’s all right. There are lots of things Mummy and Father Horst wouldn’t tell me, either.”
Much regret. Little patience.
“That’s a shame. But the castle looks great now it’s finished. I wish we had some flags to stick on top. I’ll see what I can find to use for tomorrow.”
Tomorrow the sand will be dry. The top will crumble in air, and we must start again.
Jay looked along the row of shapeless mounds that now ran along the shoreline. Each one carried its own particular memory of joy and satisfaction. “Honestly, Haile, that’s the whole point. It’s even better when there’s a tide, then you can see how strong you’ve built.”
So much human activity is intentionally wasteful. I doubt my ever knowing you.
“We’re simple, really. We always learn more from our mistakes, that’s what Mummy says. It’s because they’re more painful.”
Much oddness.
“I’ve got an idea; we’ll try and build a Tyrathca tower tomorrow. That’s nice and different. I know what they look like, Kelly showed me.” She put her hands on her hips and considered the castle warmly. “Pity we can’t build their Sleeping God altar, or whatever it was, but I don’t think it would balance, not if you make it out of sand.”
Query Sleeping God altar or whatever?
“It was sort of like a temple that you couldn’t get inside. The Tyrathca on Lalonde all sat around it and worshipped with chanting and stuff. It was this shape, really elaborate.” Her hands swept through the air in front of the Kiint, tracing broad curves. “See?”
Lacking perception, I. This is worship like your ritual to support Jesus the Christ?
“Um, sort of, I suppose. Except their God isn’t our God. Theirs is sleeping somewhere far away in space; ours is everywhere. That’s what Father Horst says.”
There are two Gods, query?
“I don’t know,” Jay said, desperately wishing she hadn’t got on to this topic. “Humans have more than two Gods, anyway. Religion is funny, especially if you start thinking about it. You’re just sort of supposed to believe. Until you get old, that is, then it all becomes theology.”
Query theology?
“Grown-up religion. Look here, don’t you have a God?”
I will query my parents.
“Good; they’ll explain everything much better than me. Come on, let’s go and wash this horrid sand off, then we can go riding together.”
Much welcome.
* * *
The Royal Kulu Navy ion field flyer swept in over Mortonridge’s western seaboard, its glowing nose pointed directly at the early morning sun. Ten kilometres to the south, the red cloud formed a solid massif right across the horizon. It was thicker than Ralph Hiltch remembered. None of the peninsula’s central ridge of mountains had managed to rise above it; they’d been swallowed whole.
The upper surface was as calm as a lake during a breathless dawn. Only when it started to dip earthwards along the firebreak border were the first uneasy stirrings visible—while right on the edge there appeared to be a full-scale storm whipping up individual streamers. Ralph had the uncomfortable impression that the cloud was aching to be let free. Perhaps he was picking up the emotional timbre of the possessed who created it? In this situation he could never be quite sure that any feeling was the genuine article.
He thought he could see a loose knot swirling along the side of the cloud, a twist of vermillion shadow amid the scarlet, keeping pace with his flyer. But when he ordered the sensor suite to focus on it, all he could see were random patterns. A trick of the eye, then, but a strong one.
The pilot began to expand the ion field, reducing the flyer’s velocity and altitude. Up ahead, the grey line of the M6 was visible, slicing clean across the virgin countryside. Colonel Palmer’s advance camp was situated a couple of kilometres outside the black firebreak line. Several dozen military vehicles were drawn up along the side of the motorway, while a couple were speeding along the carbon concrete towards the unnervingly precise band of incinerated vegetation.
Any possessed marching up to the end of the red cloud would see a predictably standard garrison operation being mounted with the Kingdom’s usual healthy efficiency. What they couldn’t see was the new camp coming together twenty-five kilometres further to the north; a city of programmable silicon laid out in strict formation which was erupting across the endless green undulations of the peninsula’s landscape. With typical military literalism it had been named Fort Forward. Over five hundred programmable silicon buildings had already been activated, two-storey barracks, warehouses, mess halls, maintenance shops, and various ancillary structures; though as yet its only residents were the three battalions of Royal Kulu Marine Engineers whose job it was to assemble the camp. Their mechanoids had ploughed the ground up around each building, installing water and sewage pipes, power lines, and datalinks. Huge drums of micro-mesh composite were being unrolled over the fresh soil to provide roads which wouldn’t turn to instant quagmires. Five large filter pump houses had been established on the banks of a river eight kilometres away to feed the expanding districts.
Mechanoids were already busy digging out vast new utility grids ready for more buildings, giving an indication of just how big Fort Forward would be when it was completed. Long convoys of lorries were using the M6 to deliver matériel from the nearest city spaceport, fifty kilometres away. Though that arrangement would soon be cancelled as Fort Forward’s own spaceport became operational. Marine engineers were levelling long strips of land in preparation for three prefabricated runways. The spaceport’s hangars and control tower had been activated two days ago so that technical crews could fit and integrate their systems.
When Ralph’s battleship emerged above Ombey he had seen nine Royal Navy Aquilae-class bulk transport starships in parking formation around a low-orbit port station along with their escort of fifteen front-line frigates. There were only twenty-five of the huge transporters left on active service; capable of carrying seventeen thousand tonnes of cargo they were the largest starships ever built, and hugely expensive to fly and maintain. Kulu was gradually phasing them out in favour of smaller models based on commercial designs.
They were being supported by big old delta-wing CK500-090 Thunderbird spaceplanes, the only atmospheric craft capable of handling the four-hundred-tonne cargo pods carried by the Aquilae transporters. Again, a fleet on the verge of retirement; they had been the first consignment ferried to Ombey by the transports. Most of the Thunderbirds had spent the last fifteen years in mothball status at the Royal Navy’s desert storage facility on Kulu. Now they were being reactivated as fast as the maintenance crews could fit new components from badly depleted war stocks.
Even more portentous than the buildup of navy ships were the voidhawks. Nearly eighty had arrived so far, with new ones swallowing in every hour, their lower hull cargo cradles full of pods (which could be handled by conventional civil flyers). Never before had so many of the bitek star
ships been seen orbiting a Kingdom world.
Ralph had experienced the same kind of uncomfortable awe he’d known at Azara as he observed them flitting around the docking stations. He was the one who had started this, creating a momentum which had engulfed entire star systems. It was unstoppable now. All he could do was ride it to a conclusion.
The ion field flyer landed at Colonel Palmer’s camp. The colonel herself was waiting for him at the base of the airstairs, Dean Folan and Will Danza prominent in the small reception committee behind her, both grinning broadly.
Colonel Palmer shook his hand, giving his new uniform a more than casual inspection. “Welcome back, Ralph, or should I say sir?”
He wasn’t completely used to the uniform himself yet, a smart dark blue tunic with three ruby pips glinting on his shoulder. “I don’t know, exactly. I’m a general in the official Liberation campaign army now, its very first officer. Apart from the King, of course. The formation was made official three days ago, announced in the court of the Apollo Palace. I’ve been appointed chief strategic coordination officer.”
“You mean you’re the Liberation’s numero uno?”
“Yeah,” he said with quiet surprise. “I guess I am at this end.”
“Rather you than me.” She gestured northwards. “Talk about coming back with reinforcements.”
“It’s going to get wonderfully worse. One million bitek serjeants are on their way, and God alone knows how many human troops to back them up. We’ve even had mercenaries volunteering.”
“You accepted them?”
“I’ve no idea. But I’ll use whatever I’m given.”
“All right, so what are your orders, sir?”
He laughed. “Just keep up the good work. Have any of them tried to break out?”
She turned her head to face the wall of angry cloud, her expression stern. “No. They stick to their side of the firebreak. There have been plenty of sightings. We think they’re keeping an eye on us. But it’s only my patrols who are visible to them.” A thumb jabbed back over her shoulder. “They don’t know anything about all this.”
The Night's Dawn Trilogy Page 241
