Ammonite Planets (Omnibus): Ammonite Galaxy #1-3 (66 page)

IT TOOK DAYS, but the battle of Kwaide was effectively over as soon as the shuttles were lost. The sycophant army was caught defending a zone of little strategic use to them. Not only that, but the rebel army had concentrated on extending its circle around the sycophant army, and had succeeded in cutting it off from any supplies from the south. The rebel army refrained from attack. They simply sat back and waited.

Finally one of the Elders walked forward, waving a white flag. A huge cheer went up around the rebel forces, and representatives stepped forward eagerly to iron out the details of surrender.

A WEEK LATER Grace touched down on the planet again. She stepped onto Kwaide, and looked over to the mess of twisted metal lying some metres to the south. There were some tired flowers in drooping bunches to mark the spots where Gerrant and Solian had fallen. She walked over to the flowers, and bent her head in tribute. Tears came to her eyes. She would never forget them, she promised herself. She almost felt she hated the planet.

She wondered if she could have predicted that the Y support would fail with two men in the fuel pipes. Probably. She felt a terrible sense of guilt. They were dead and she was alive. How did that work? Why?

“Grace.” Ledin touched her arm, and brought her back to her senses. “They are waiting for you.” He gestured to a hastily-erected stand to the north. It was already full of people, waiting for the three shuttles to come back to their planet.

“Sorry. Of course.” Grace allowed herself to be led away, towards the tiered rows of seats. She saw her mother sitting in the front row, and suppressed the urge to run up to her and feel the warmth of a physical hug. She became aware suddenly that there was much applause, and that it appeared to be directed at her.

“Are they applauding us?” she whispered to Ledin.

He shook his head. “They are applauding
you
,” he said. “You are one of the heroes of New Kwaide.”

Grace stared at him. “I am not!” she protested.

Ledin lifted his eyes towards Lumina. “You cannot believe that!” he said. “You saved one of the shuttles, and blew up the other. That is exactly half of what caused the end of the war. Grace, surely you can see that?”

“I caused the death of Gerrant and Solian,” she said. “What on Sacras is heroic about
that
?”

“You couldn’t have known what would happen – people are actually less dense than fuel, so there was no way to predict it. They found a fault in that particular Y frame. How could you have foreseen that? Their sacrifice will always be remembered—” he gave a slight shrug of his shoulders and a sad smile, “—and so will yours, like it or not.”

She sighed. “I don’t see it like that.”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t really matter, it is how all the rest of New Kwaide sees it. You will always be a heroine to them. Why are you looking so sad?”

‘
Hey hero! Hey heroine
!’ she quoted slowly.

“What is that?”

“Nothing. Just remembering something that happened on Valhai. A long time ago, and a long way away.”

Ledin looked concerned. “Are you all right, Grace?”

She brought her gaze back to the present with an effort and gave him one of her sweet smiles. “I am fine. Where are we supposed to sit?”

A young refugee, acutely aware of his own temporary consequence, escorted them to seats on the front row bench, some distance from Cimma. Grace made a little sign to her mother, and Cimma looked more than happy to see her again, holding both hands up slightly to welcome her. Grace raised her own hands, although the two women were not close enough for contact. It was enough. She felt comforted.

DIVA WALKED OUT of her shuttle onto the spaceport, and accepted the applause as her due, sporting her streaky blue-green hair with sublime unconcern. She smiled at the small boy who had been sent to show her to her seat on the semicircular stand, and stalked regally behind him to her place. It was a momentous day for Kwaide. She was taken to a privileged front-row seat, and sat down gracefully, turning to smile at those around her. She gave a small wave to Cimma, and another, rather flippant one to Grace. Grace was staring into the distance and missed the wave. Diva caught Ledin’s eye. They exchanged a couple of very expressive shrugs.

The sound of the last shuttle coming in to land made all of those present turn their attention back to the sky. Six was coming in on a vertical descent with the remaining shuttle. There was a rustle of anticipation. The spectators caught their breath as the spacecraft was brought carefully down. There was expectant silence again once the engine was switched off, and then – as the figure of Six emerged – the crowd erupted in cheers and applause.

Two other figures climbed down the steps after Six, to hisses from the crowd. Jalana and Samaliya held their heads high, and ignored the reception they were getting. They stood apart from their brother, and waited for an escort to take them to their place – firmly on the Elder side of the event, a smaller circle of tiered seats on the southern side of the spaceport. As they were led away from Six he turned to watch them go. But neither of the two girls looked back at him. They had eyes only for their Elder husbands, who were watching them approach.

The young girl detailed to accompany Six to his seat was bursting with pride. She marched her thin little arms backwards and forwards, causing a ripple of laughter amongst those present. There was another warm round of applause for Six and his escort as he was taken to another front row seat. He looked self-conscious – rather embarrassed at all the applause – but gave a wave to a couple of people he spotted in the stand, and then sat down.

THE INDEPENDENCE CEREMONY went on for two hours. Two hours too long, in Six’s opinion, who would have done the whole thing with a speech of ten words, and the quick hoisting of a flag. The tiered benches were made of unpolished wood, which made them not only uncomfortable, but liable to pierce you with splinters if you shifted in your seat. His face grew longer and longer, to match the speeches which were being made. He caught Diva’s eye and she nearly choked trying to repress a laugh. He was the picture of utter misery.

The last straw for Six was when the same Elder who had originally sent him to Valhai rose to give a speech. Six got up, walked over to Diva, and sat down next to her with complete unconcern.

“Six! You shouldn’t have got up!” she hissed.

“I thought we won the war,” he said plaintively.

“We did.”

“Then why are they letting that old dodderer prose on for hours? All right if he had won the war – no choice but to listen to him in that case. Stands to reason – we won the war for something, hang it!”

“Shh! He’s giving a speech.”

“Well I can see that, can’t I? Naturally he’s giving a speech – that is the only thing he knows how to do. I can’t believe he hasn’t crumbled into dust already.”

Diva laughed. “If he is the one who put you into the donor program I bet he is ruing the day!”

“He is. Didn’t I tell you that I came face to face with him in the battle for the base camp? He told me he had never regretted anything so much in his whole life.”

“What did you do with him?”

“I shut him up with the other prisoners of war, of course. When it came to it I found I couldn’t chop him into microcubits, however much I wanted to. He was so old I thought he might disintegrate as soon as I touched him. I realized that I sort of lost the hankering to slice him up. It seemed a bit redundant, somehow.”

“Did he thank you for being so forgiving?”

“Did he by Lumina! He kept prosing on at me, like he did before. I could only stand for half the sermon, and then I bundled him up with the rest of the old fogies and shipped them off to the prisoner of war camp. I tell you, Diva, that if it had been a war of words those old ditherers would have won hands down.”

Diva laughed out loud, and then found Grace sitting down next to them.

“What am I missing?” she asked.

Six repeated his story and Grace joined the laughter. “At the rate he is going he might win the peace!” she said.

Six shook his head. “I have seen the treaty,” he said, “and the Elders waive all right to the planet except for the flatlands around Benefice. They will have complete autonomy over that area, but if they want to survive they will have to learn to trade with us, because if they don’t they will have no way to get their rexelene off the planet. The orbital station is synchronous with the north now – they have no rights over it. And New Kwaide has offered an armistice for all combatants. The sycophants are coming over to New Kwaide in droves. Soon the Elders will be left with no-one to do their own dirty work, and that is going to hurt them badly.”

“What about the effluent conduits of Benefice?” Grace asked.

Six grinned. “That is the best thing of all,” he said. “They are drying up! So many untouchables have come over to the New Kwaide that Benefice is almost a ghost city. The wastelands have emptied. Even the most valued sycophants are abandoning their work places. Who is going to work for the Elders for nothing, when they can work for New Kwaide, be respected, and be paid a salary?”

“You did it then!” Grace pointed out.

“Did what?”

“Saved your world. Saved Kwaide.”

“I suppose I did!” He looked satisfied. “—Although you wouldn’t think so to hear the prattle of that thin pin! Surely he will run out of breath soon?”

They paused for a moment, but the geriatric was still in full swing. Six gave a sigh. “If he goes on for much longer I am out of here!” he told them both.

“Six!” Grace was dismayed. “You can’t do that!”

“Watch me! I will give him five more minutes, and then I am gone.”

“But you and Diva started the revolution!”

“Doesn’t mean we have to finish it, does it? Cian! Look at the hundreds of refugees on these benches! These are the people who are going to finish it. We’ll be long gone.”

He saw her stunned expression and elaborated. “In the wind. Somewhere else.” He pulled a face. “I’ll be glad. All this politics and stuff is really boring. Who is going to do this … who is going to do that … Nah! All the fun is over. It’s time we were on our way.”

“You don’t want to stay here, then?”

Six shook his head. “It is not my home any longer.”

“And where is?”

He shrugged. “Valhai, maybe? I don’t know.”

“You know who should have been here today?” asked Grace. Then her eyes saddened again. “Apart from Gerrant and Solian, that is.”

He opened his eyes wide as he realized who she was meaning. “Arcan? You have got to be joking. I can’t see Arcan sitting around for hours on end listening to an Elder, can you?”

The picture made Grace giggle. “Not really,” she admitted.

“The visitor would have been a better choice – he could have recorded this riveting event for posterity.”

Diva shook her head. “Type 3 species don’t seem to hold their interest for very long,” she pointed out. “I don’t think either of them would have enjoyed this very much.”

“Which reminds me,” said Grace. She told them about Arcan’s offer to take all three of them off-system to Pictoris.

Six’s mouth dropped open. “Now
that
,” he said, “is more like!”

“I said we would all go. Was that all right?”

“Wouldn’t dream of missing it,” said Diva, “but I have to pay a visit to Xiantha first.”

Grace remembered that Xenon 49 and her sister-in-law Amanita were probably trying to set up another donor program at that very minute. “Me too,” she said. “I have to find some other way to help the Sacran planets without involving donor apprentices.”

“And I promised Diva I would go. In any case, I have no intention of letting the two of you loose on Xiantha without some back-up, so that’s settled,” said Six. “We will go back to Valhai for a few days as soon as Arcan can pick us up from the space station, and then we head for Xiantha and the Pictoris System.”

“Sounds good to me,” said Diva.