The Ascendant Stars (29 page)

‘Maintain battle readiness,’ he said. ‘Sensors at full range … ’

‘Contact,’ said the ship AI. ‘New vessel has appeared three point eight thousand kiloms off our lower port quarter – profile matches that of the Imisil heavy recon scouts previously encountered – incoming multistream signal.’

‘Screen it,’ said Ash.

The central overhead holoscreen lit up, showing the familiar features of the Imisil commander. Ash stepped to one side and with a look urged Greg to step up.

‘Presignifier Remosca,’ he said amiably. ‘I’m very glad to see that ye made it through that wee skirmish.’

The humanoid’s smart white garments were now smudged and streaked with grime and blood. The skin spot-clusters pulsed between dull amber and pale green.

‘Captain Cameron – it is most acceptable to re-establish our acquaintance. I had not realised that you were so daring as to capture a Hegemony warship – this will not endear you to them.’

‘Well, if they insist on leaving their property lying around unattended … ’

‘I note and share your levity,’ Remosca said. ‘More seriously, did you observe the ship which destroyed the Hegemony carrier group?’

Greg nodded. ‘It was quite a show. No one here has ever seen anything like it.’

‘We knew of such vessels only as dark legends from the distant past,’ Remosca said. ‘That ship belongs to a race called the Vor. It was a force of their ships that attacked the Imisil fleet – our co-signifiers managed to fight off the ambush but at considerable cost.’

‘You must have impressive weapons,’ Greg said. ‘Don’t know what was protecting that ship but nothing the Hegemony had could touch it.’

‘The Vor have only a few of those render-ships – they are shielded by a bubble of subspace which here in normal space makes them almost invulnerable. In hyperspace, less so. That vessel I am sure was hunting for us.’

‘And instead it ran into the Hegemony carrier and gave it a serious amount of grief.’ Greg chuckled. ‘Shame we couldn’t persuade them to stick around and help us out.’

‘The Vor are a vile species, Captain Cameron,’ said Presignifier Remosca. ‘They are biological parasites that ride around in the bodies of captured enemies; all brain tissue involved in higher functions is removed, reducing all cerebral activity to basic, primitive functions, then the Vor climbs in and interfaces its mind with what remains. Our legends tell of the millions who were abducted to serve as hosts for these creatures. They cannot be compromised or negotiated with, much less considered possible allies.’

Well, that’s me told
, Greg thought.

‘And now it’s vanished back into hyperspace,’ he said. ‘It could have gone after us or destroyed the Darien colony, or both, yet here we are.’

‘I have no answer for you,’ said Remosca. ‘Except to say that whatever the strategy the Vor are following, it will not be to our benefit.

‘However, now you must listen carefully. The Imisil fleet, despite its losses, is back on course and will be here in less than two hours, by your reckoning. We have been in touch with the edge commanders and they have informed me that the Hegemony armada will be supported by a combat fleet from their Yamanon partners, the Earthsphere. But be aware – the Hegemony
will not be permitted to establish overwhelming military supremacy here.’

Despite these stirring words, Greg still felt the optimism drain out of him. For a moment he was directionless, then a spark of anger flickered inside him.

‘After all that’s happened here – to us – they still let themselves be used!’ The anger was hot now. ‘The Hegemony snaps its fingers and Earthsphere hurries along to their master’s bidding, grovelling puppets, the lot o’ them! While Darien is a piece to be fought and wrangled over!’ He paused to rein in his rage. ‘Just as a matter of interest, how might the combined Hegemony and Earthsphere forces compare to the Imisil fleet?’

‘Conservative estimates suggest that we could be outnumbered by seven to one,’ said Remosca.

Eyes widening, Greg uttered a low whistle. He glanced over at Ash, who was watching the screen with a thoughtful smile on his face. Then for some reason Greg’s mood changed and he found himself striving not to laugh out loud.

‘We shall send to you the latest reports on the likely composition of the Hegemony and Earthsphere fleets,’ said the Imisil commander. ‘When our fleet arrives, the Predominant Commander will wish to meet with us all, therefore you should be attired accordingly. In the meantime, we must attend to essential repairs.’

The image of Remosca vanished, to be replaced by a wide-angle shot of the vicinity, including Darien and the forest moon, Nivyesta. Dynamic tags floated around the image border, updates on debris density per 100 cubic kilometres. Some tags identified the locations of bodies.

‘Seven to one sounds worse than the actuality,’ Ash said. ‘Strange things happen during battle, witness our most recent encounter. And anyway, so far the space around Darien has been a graveyard for starships. I think that the Hegemony is going to learn a painful lesson here.’

‘And Earthsphere? – what will they learn?’

Ash shrugged. ‘To choose better allies, perhaps.’

As the Tygran officer went off to talk to his techs, Greg stared up at the screen, at Darien hanging in space, looking just then more beautiful than he could remember.

If I asked Ash for permission to return to Darien he would probably allow it. Yet here am I, on a captured Hegemony warship, mentally preparing myself for more fighting against insane odds
.

And just then, he found himself picturing Catriona listening in on his thoughts, her face lit up with a sceptical smile.

Oh aye, Mr Cameron? And what makes you so special that these fine, brave Tygran soldiers just canna leap into the lion’s mouth without you, eh? Tell me that if you will
.

And he imagined himself replying:

Well, I don’t think I could sit down there, safe and powerless, while Darien’s fate is being decided up here. I might die, but if Darien lives on then that’ll be okay. But what if I lived through it all and Darien was wiped out? I couldn’t bear that, losing you and … home
.

So ye see, a leap into the lion’s mouth may not be such a bad option, if you give it something that’s really hard to chew
…

At the edge of everything, it began as a hiss, a sough soft as a faint breeze touching long grass. Slight variations crept in, made it sound like a long whispered conversation overheard from the far end of a great hall. When at last it was loud enough to wake him properly, he had already arrived at the realisation that he was lying on something padded at the bottom of a boat. And his ears were full of the sound of rushing waters.

Carefully, Robert Horst sat up. Sheer grey cliffs loomed to either side while some distance back the way he had come was an immense arched portal, perhaps a hundred feet high and set into the rocky sides of the deep gorge. Beyond it was an inky darkness and the hazy outlines of great orbs, those eroded, hollowed-out bodies that the sim-AI was convinced had once been armed planetoids, built for an ages-gone battle against something called the Sun-Hydra …

The last moments of that terrifying chase across the inner surface of the planetoid came back to him, the console alert which showed the huge black bulk of a megavermax hurtling after the lifepod he was in, and the awful crash into oblivion just as he entered the anomaly. And yet apparently he had made it, crossed into some strange territory on the fringe of the Godhead’s mind. The Tanenth machine had impressed upon him the dangers of entering these domains, levels of hyperspace that the meta-quantal properties of the Godhead’s thoughts had refashioned in ways both conscious and subconscious. The machine had warned
that intruders could also influence the characteristics of an environment rendered malleable by the pressure of those thoughts.

Well, so far my presence seems to have had little effect on the surroundings
, he thought.
I would be quite happy to miss out on seeing my unconscious imaginings made solid
…

Mist drifted over the surface of the river and low cloud blurred the heights of the cliffs. The air was still and quiet, no insect sounds, no birds, just the murmur of the river. Behind, the immense portal paled away behind veils of mist while ahead the gorge curved to the left, the cliffs lost height and became rounder. Bushes sprouted here and there, then came reedy shallows with small trees dotted along narrow shores. Round the bend larger trees came into view, a dark coniferous forest, a dense, impenetrable barrier that cloaked steep inclines on either side. Robert could smell wet foliage, and the unmistakable odour of pine needles, and felt … a tantalising familiarity.

Then he heard voices, male and female, and sounds of running feet, laughter. There, among the trees a young couple ran, one chasing to give a tap on the shoulder to the other, who then turned about to give chase, tripping, laughing, stumbling into each other’s arms, kissing …

The memory was suddenly whole and alive, keen with joy and the pain of a lost and innocent perfection. After long languorous moments, the kiss ended, they broke apart and carried on upslope, off into the trees, the youthful Robert Horst and his girlfriend, Giselle, later wife and mother of Rosa …

He sat back in the boat, his mind a whirl of emotions. The Tanenth machine had not hinted at what to expect but now he wondered what lay in store, and with a degree of apprehension.

The change that came over the landscape then was swift, smooth, as if he were passing through some surreal holoartwork. The steep wooded slopes to his right flattened and the shoreline moved off and off, finally receding into the horizon, while to his left … the trees shrank, hills and ridges diminished, and the slopes of looming mountains lost their immensity. The boat was now
moving slowly past a series of small-scale rocky fjords and coves, most with clusters of houses, villages and towns as he went on, all in perfect miniature, their inhabitants tiny yet going about their routines. Threads of smoke rose from minuscule chimneys, trawlers put in to wharfs to offload catches, and little wagons and vehicles wound along cobbled roads or up winding trails into the woods.

And when he shifted his gaze further along the shore and saw a flatter region, a coastal plain bounded by ridges and steep hills inland and mountainous uplands to the north, and dominated by a towering promontory, he suddenly realised that he was floating past the entirety of the Darien colony in miniature. There were the streets and built-up areas of Hammergard, there beyond it lay Lake Morwen, there further north was Port Gagarin with its landing strips, and there was the island of New Kelso, while further west stretched rich farmlands, hamlets, villages and towns. But smoke rose in many places, and he saw great mobs laying siege to barricaded strongholds, or engaging in running battles through the streets of unfortunate towns. A few zeplins passed through the air above Hammergard and off to the south, while fighting seemed to be taking place up on Giant’s Shoulder. There were flashes of energy weapons, the yellow bursts of explosions, and out-of-control fires.

Robert watched the stricken land pass by and wondered how true a representation this was.
This must be how the Godhead sees the activities of us lesser beings, scurrying around, pursuing antlike purposes. Or could this be just one way of looking at us, a kind of conceptual model, perhaps even a discarded one?

Past the northern shore, with the miniature city of Trond and its stone towers sliding out of view behind the upland slopes, cliffs began to rise again on both left and right. In front of him they joined overhead, forming the entrance to a gigantic, gloomy cavern into which the river swept. As the light from the entrance faded the murk deepened until he was engulfed in pitch blackness with only the sides of the boat to cling on to and the
rocking motion to remind him that the river still carried him along.

A foggy glow appeared before him, gradually brightening to a wide stretch of blue-grey openness, dotted here and there with strange floating crags and boulders, some with trees growing on them. Some were like bizarre plateaus wrenched from absent landscapes, their rocky roots tapering beneath while odd creatures grazed amongst angular ruins. Further on a larger structure came into view, something that looked designed or at least assembled, a complex of low buildings in radial sectors rising in a conical arrangement – Robert quickly recognised the Garden of the Machines, the headquarters of the Construct. And it was at the centre of a huge battle.

In thousand-strong formations, combat vessels swept towards each other, energy weapons stabbing out like a forest of bright spears moments before the flying arrays met each other, cut into each other. Warships hurtled past each other, some as close as a dozen metres, others too close, their collisions sending both careening off to spread the destruction wider. Projector beams burned into hulls, forcefield shields strobed, flared and overloaded, missiles were subverted by countermeasure virals and turned on their ships of origin.

And as before, Robert watched it all from a godlike point of view. The Garden of the Machines was a fabulously detailed miniature, while the starship formations were like tightly coordinated shoals of mechanical fish. The defenders were the Aggression, the Construct’s AI machines, and they were facing a combined force of Vor and Shyntanil craft. The former had black or purple hulls that were rounded, faintly organic in shape with bifurcated or trifurcated prows, blunt tines that emitted beams and webs of jagged energy. The latter had larger wedge-shaped hulls, angular profiles and a greater variety of weapons. As the battle unfolded it seemed that the attackers were more likely than not to employ risky gambits in mid-manoeuvre to gain an edge on the next pass.