Kysandra led Jymoar over and introduced him to Ry, then Florian. Florian couldn’t meet the man’s eye as they shook hands, instead standing with his head bowed like a surly teenager.
‘So you came through the storm all right,’ Kysandra was saying when Florian began to pay attention again.
‘The old Gothora has been through a lot worse. I was more worried about Port Chana. What happened back there?’
‘A nest hijacked the Sziu,’ Kysandra told him. ‘They’re coming after us.’
‘Not through that they’re not,’ Jymoar said, indicating the storm vanishing aft. ‘We blocked the radar signals from the Air Force planes while they were still flying. If the government doesn’t know where we are, the Fallers certainly don’t. Not after sailing inside that beauty’s chaos.’
‘Then we’re probably safe, but I don’t want to take any chances. We need to sail straight for Lukarticar. Build some distance.’
‘Aye aye, ma’am.’ He saluted. ‘How come they didn’t nuke us back in Port Chana? We were still in range when they hit the docks.’
‘Because they didn’t know if Kysandra and I were on board,’ Paula said. ‘They appeared to have several atomic bombs with them. To detonate one would be to eliminate the others. They have to confirm our presence before using them.’
‘You were there?’ Jymoar asked.
‘Yes. Observing. I like to know exactly what I’m facing.’
‘But with your weapons . . .’
‘I could have taken out the nest on the docks, yes,’ Paula said. ‘Which would have confirmed to the Fallers that someone with advanced Commonwealth technology was present. My field function scan detected seven atomic bombs brought to the Sziu. If there was another outside my detection range, they could have detonated it. At that distance I would probably have survived, but Port Chana certainly wouldn’t. Non-intervention was the safest option.’
‘Too bad you didn’t wholly follow that option,’ Kysandra said with a playful grin.
Paula shrugged. ‘The Lanara was a sitting duck as it came in. And Chaing was already shooting the breeder creatures – albeit not very successfully. There was considerable confusion. It would be reasonable for the nest to believe the ones I eliminated were killed either by Chaing or another unknown PSR sniper. I was strategic in my target selection.’
‘Chaing!’ Kysandra shook her head in bewildered admiration. ‘That man has more lives than a cat.’
‘We’ll show you to your cabins,’ Jymoar said. His arm closed possessively round Kysandra’s waist. ‘Sadly, there’s a lack of space, so you’re going to have to bunk up in my cabin.’
She kissed him spryly. ‘Oh dear. The hardship.’
‘I’ll be happy for you to inspect the mattress to see if it’s good enough.’
‘Inspect or test?’
‘Both, I think.’
Arm in arm, they went through a hatch and into the superstructure.
‘Jymoar has been working with us for two and a half centuries,’ Valeri said quietly, so only Florian could hear. ‘He is one of our most valuable allies. This is just the latest Gothora he has captained; all of them have been most useful transporting us and our equipment around Bienvenido.’
Florian stared at the hatchway. ‘Two and a—? How old is he?’
‘He and Kysandra were friends before the Great Transition. He has been receiving regular rejuvenation treatments in our medical capsule.’
‘Right. Great. Good to know.’
‘You are welcome to share my cabin for the voyage. It won’t be too cramped for you; we don’t sleep.’
‘Yeah. That’s good. I’ll just wait out here for now.’
‘As you wish.’
Florian felt the engines starting up, the deck vibrating beneath his feet. He leaned on the gunwale, staring out to the horizon. It was over a thousand kilometres to Cape Wekell, the closest part of Lukarticar. Kysandra wanted to go further, down towards Macbride Sound, before releasing the new ge-eagles on their reconnaissance flight.
He peered over the side as a crewman pulled the rope ladder in. The submarine had already dived, its smartcore taking it back to the cave below the farmhouse, so he was committed now. Weeks, possibly the rest of his life, on this ship – with the two of them. Kysandra hadn’t even mentioned Jymoar before. Surely that would have been a simple courtesy?
Gothora III picked up speed, the fresh sea air blowing against his face as if seeking to cleanse him.
‘Sorry.’
Florian turned as Paula gripped the gunwale beside him. She’d put on a thick dark-ginger sweater against the cooler temperature; her ebony hair flailed about as she gazed across the waves.
‘For what?’ he asked.
‘Some women don’t quite realize the effect they have on men.’
‘Oh.’
‘She doesn’t dislike you, Florian; you haven’t been cast aside. It’s just that she and Jymoar are very old friends.’
‘I get that.’
‘In any case, she’s in love with someone else. She has been for a very long time. Most of her life, in fact. I’m not sure that’s entirely healthy, but it’s helped her get through these dark times, so I’m certainly not going to condemn her for that.’
‘It’s not Jymoar, then? He’s not the one?’
‘Oh, no. Somebody else, somebody completely unobtainable. So if she’d bothered to give you some serious thought, she’d probably understand how you felt right now, because that’s how she feels all the time. And she’d be mortified at what she’s done to you. She’s not a cruel person, Florian.’
‘I know.’
‘You were having fun, weren’t you?’
He nodded bleakly. ‘She said that. Just fun. I suppose I didn’t really listen.’
‘Self-denial makes life easier for all of us at some time or another. Just try not to make a habit of it.’
He kept his gaze on the undulating water. ‘Do you think we’ll find the Viscount?’
‘If it’s on Lukarticar, we’ll find it. I reviewed the sensors installed in this batch of ge-eagles. They’re good. That’s not our real problem.’
‘Time is.’
‘Yes. If we guessed wrong, if the Viscount came down at the north pole, I’m not sure we’ll have long enough to reach Valatare. The Fallers are prepared to use nukes against us – against me. Hiding in the shadows is over.’
‘After the Vermillion came down, their flying machines still worked for a while. Surely they would have found the Viscount?’
Paula pursed her lips. ‘History is always written by the victors. Reading between the lines of the Landing Chronicles, I suspect Captain Cornelius might not have had too much interest in finding a second source of Commonwealth technology. After all, his family quickly established control over the only supply of advanced medicine and machinery on the planet.’
Florian gave her a surprised glance. ‘That’s . . . awful!’
‘My job means I’ve been exposed to a lot of the underside of human society. I’m afraid that kind of behaviour isn’t as rare as we’d like to think it is, especially in more primitive cultures. And this colony sank into semi-benign feudalism surprisingly quickly once its shiny gadgets were taken away.’
‘You really think the Captain would do that?’ My ancestor!
‘I’m offering possibilities, that’s all.’
*
Stonal stood on the side of the docks as the rain splattered on his heavy coat, and looked down at the body. It needed two of the coroner’s usual sheets to cover it completely, which was a big clue. Tipping his trilby back with a forefinger, he said: ‘Show me.’
Chaing used the end of his crutch to push the black fabric aside.
The breeder Faller really was a monster – although death had given its armoured body a strangely withered appearance, with the hard plates collapsing on each other as if the guts of the thing weren’t big enough to fill it out completely. Half of its head was missing, exposing tatters of grey-white
brain meat. Rain had washed the blue blood from the stone.
‘One of your shots?’ Stonal asked.
Chaing shrugged. ‘Could have been. I got one of these, and one of the giants.’ He looked round, as if getting his bearings. The cluster of burnt-out lorries were black metal hulks, slick with water, burning only as long as their fuel had lasted. ‘The Marines got the rest.’
Stonal looked over at the slipway where the Lanara had shoved itself aground. Its front ramp was down, biting into the concrete. There were several ragged blast holes torn into the hull, and bullet craters smothered the armoured superstructure. It was a miracle the Marine landing craft had ever made it to the slipway.
Only he didn’t believe in miracles.
Over a dozen patrol cars were parked in an effective barricade across the end of the docks, their red and blue lights flashing, sheriffs standing guard in their rain-slicked ponchos, holding shotguns and rifles at the ready. And that was just the inner cordon. No civilians were allowed within half a kilometre of the harbour.
Such security was pointless now. All Port Chana knew what had happened here. Marines fought breeder Fallers, and won. At least we didn’t get nuked. The news had already reached all the way back to Varlan. If the government denied it, they’d face a serious credibility problem.
Which is hardly a priority right now.
‘How many of them reached the Sziu?’ he asked.
‘Maybe a dozen,’ Jenifa said. ‘Captain Fajie maintained a good watch, but it was an Uracus of a firefight.’
‘Enough to operate the Sziu, then?’
‘Yes, sir.’
He looked her up and down – a diminutive figure in a drab brown raincoat, her felt PSR cap soaked. A nasty gash down her cheek from falling masonry in the lighthouse. Immune to the weather, immune to the gore and chaos of the battle, determined to do her duty. ‘So, to summarize: you think the Gothora III had taken on cargo belonging to the Warrior Angel, but neither she nor Paula were on board. Then the Fallers, armed with our atomic bombs, grabbed the Sziu and took off in pursuit?’
Jenifa hesitated for an instant. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘So where are they all going?’
‘We have no indication of that,’ Chaing said. ‘I got the Air Force to send out two GV15s within forty minutes of the Gothora putting to sea, but there was no sign of it.’
‘What’s the Gothora’s maximum range?’
‘Running until the tanks are empty, probably about three thousand kilometres. Possibly a little further.’
Stonal stared out across the grey choppy water. ‘The Warrior Angel can obviously move her equipment around on land without drawing attention; so having a cargo on a ship indicates to me they are heading somewhere away from Lamaran. So what’s out there?’
‘Klev is probably outside the Gothora’s range,’ Chaing said, ‘but there are two small islands to the south-west of it they might be able to reach.’
‘Their version of Byarn, captain?’
‘No, sir. That’s not where she plans to retreat to if the Faller Apocalypse succeeds.’
‘And how do you know that, captain?’
‘She contacted me in person just before the red one code was issued. She wanted to talk to you.’
‘Indeed?’ Stonal tried not to show surprise, but he was impressed with the captain. His gaze slipped over to the lighthouse. The top quarter was missing, leaving the base surrounded by scorched rubble. I might have made the right choice after all. ‘Did she tell you what she wanted to discuss with me?’
‘Yes, sir. If it was looking like the Fallers were winning, she wanted access to the wormhole under the palace. She said Paula could open it and evacuate some people to Aqueous.’
‘Who?’ he asked sharply. ‘Who would they take?’
‘That’s what she wanted to negotiate. But she wasn’t going to leave without a fight.’
‘Whatever is on the Gothora III must be part of that fight, then. And the Fallers know that.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Can you contact her, captain?’
‘Corilla might be able to,’ Chaing said. Right now he wasn’t about to disclose he had Commonwealth technology embedded in his hand. Giu alone knows how Jenifa will react to that. ‘The Eliters are . . . more organized that I realized. The bastards tapped right into our secure phone lines.’
‘Talk to Corilla. Tell her I’ll meet the Warrior Angel.’
‘She’ll be on the Gothora by now,’ Jenifa said.
‘You’re probably right, but contact the Eliters anyway. And get the Air Force to put their GV15s back into the air. Send them out to their limit. I want to know where those ships are heading.’
‘If it’s not the islands, it has to be Lukarticar,’ Jenifa said. ‘That’s the only other thing out there in range.’
2
Nothing in the crypt had changed. In ordinary circumstances, Stonal might have welcomed that. Faustina looked up from her desk as he strode in to face the space machine containing Joey Stein’s memories. There were no other technicians present; they hadn’t been allowed back in after Joey started to communicate. The detailed plans for the sensor system he’d handed over were being worked on in a dedicated laboratory.
‘Is everything all right?’ Faustina asked.
‘For Giu’s sake, woman, wake up to the world for once! The Fallers have acquired atomic bombs. The apocalypse is about to begin. So, no, everything is not crudding all right.’
She paled, taking an involuntary pace back from him.
‘Switch it on,’ he said, gesturing at the radio.
‘I have it on permanently now,’ she replied flatly.
‘That bad, huh?’ Joey’s voice asked.
Stonal stood perfectly still for a moment. It was so unlike him to be caught out. Stress, he decided, far too much stress. But knowing about the atomic bombs doesn’t strengthen Joey’s hand. He raised his gaze to the dark circular mechanism of the wormhole at the back of the crypt, then brought the radio microphone up to his lips. ‘Joey, can you control the wormhole?’
‘No. ’Fraid not, pal. Laura codelocked its smartnet. I don’t have the software to hack it.’
‘Hack?’
‘The key. I don’t have the key, or anything that can make a key.’
‘Would Paula be able to unlock it?’
‘Very probably, yes.’
‘I see.’
‘Is that a problem?’
‘No, it is her bargaining point. If the Fallers do overrun us, she was talking about evacuating people to Aqueous.’
‘Yeah, makes sense.’
‘Why would Paula and Kysandra go to Lukarticar? That’s our southern polar continent.’
‘I don’t know. What’s there?’
‘Nothing at all. There hasn’t even been an expedition there for well over a thousand years.’
‘Oh, shame. It would have been cool if it boasted a Fortress of Solitude.’
‘A what?’
‘Skip it; bad joke. Paula doesn’t do things without cause – and certainly not at a time as critical as this. If she’s going to Lukarticar, it’ll be for a very good reason. Are you sure that’s where she’s going?’
‘She sailed from Port Chana three days ago. The Air Force planes got a small radar return at extreme range before they had to turn back. A ship was heading due south.’
‘A ship?’
‘The Fallers were following her. It could have been them.’
‘Let me guess: the ones with the atom bombs?’
He resisted sighing. ‘We believe so.’
‘You have to warn Paula. You cannot let the Fallers eliminate her. She is this planet’s last chance, pal.’
‘She knows. It was the Eliters who told us where the atom bombs were.’
‘Wow. And you’re Bienvenido’s top spy. That has to hurt.’
Stonal gave the space machine a fixed smile. ‘I’ve already told you, if we are overwhelmed, you also lose.’
‘Oh, don
’t worry, pal, I’m very aware of my position.’
*
Stonal was shown into Adolphus’s small office in the emergency bunker below the palace – even deeper than the crypt containing the wormhole. It might have been the lack of daylight for days, or those same long days breathing nothing but the mechanically purified air blowing out of the overhead grilles, but it seemed to Stonal that the prime minister’s illness had advanced. The man’s skin was a shade lighter than it had been when the red one code was given, and despite the stable temperature, sweat was glinting on his forehead. Age, too, had suddenly advanced across his features, wrinkles biting deeper into flesh. Though that’s probably just fear, Stonal conceded.
Despite the utilitarian concrete walls, Adolphus had made sure the furniture was grand enough to reflect his status. The desk alone took up a quarter of the space. Seven telephones were lined up on top of it, all of them red. Three teleprinters clattered away constantly in the corner.
Adolphus waved Stonal into a seat. ‘What happened in Port Chana?’ he asked.
Stonal gave him a careful summary, very aware that the prime minister was looking for the slightest excuse to evacuate to Byarn. ‘My recommendation is to keep the whole fleet of Air Force GV15s flying along the south coast on a continual basis, day and night,’ he finished. ‘We need to know if those ships head back to Lamaran. If we spot them – especially the Sziu – we should probably deploy the nuclear option. It has the advantage of being offshore, so there will be no civilian casualties.’
‘We’ve finally cornered the Warrior Angel, haven’t we?’ Adolphus said. ‘And this wretched Commonwealth diplomat female?’
‘It is logical to assume at least one of them is on board the Gothora, yes.’
‘But why? What are they doing on Lukarticar?’
‘I have to admit, that is one question I cannot answer.’
‘Bring in that traitor, Corilla. Interrogate her properly.’
Stonal tented his fingers and deliberately took a few seconds to reply. ‘Two things. I seriously doubt Corilla will know; she is a simple go-between; it’s an elementary precaution not to inform someone like that of the big picture. Secondly, I don’t believe it’s in our interest to eliminate the Warrior Angel and Paula right now. We will undoubtedly be facing the Faller Apocalypse before long. Byarn and Operation Reclaim were the best solution we could come up with before now, but Paula is offering us the prospect of Aqueous. That should not be treated lightly.’
A Night Without Stars Page 54
