The Ascendant Stars (59 page)

It was a siege waged with images of the war that raged and roared around Nivyesta and the planet Darien. She was shown the sporadic gathering of those who came to defend Darien and its moon. She saw Greg Cameron meeting the rebel Tygrans aboard their ship, then the unexpected appearance of the Earthsphere fleet and the divisions that emerged in their ranks. And saw Greg’s encounter with the Earthsphere vice-admiral, the tussle with an assassin, and the arrival of the dauntingly huge Hegemony armada.

The Zyradin revealed in detail the sheer armed might that was ranged against the defenders. Segrana sent her image streams of Rory and Chel’s sufferings, the awful task they were set and how Chel got them both out of the terrible trap. The Zyradin fed to her sequence after sequence from the battle as it unfolded and as the Earthsphere, Imisil and Vox Humana suffered destruction upon destruction. Then Segrana made her see the attack on Tusk Mountain by the Tygran Marshal Becker, the desperate fight involving Uncle Theo and Captain Gideon against Nathaniel Horne, a Tygran who appeared to be the host for some kind of parasite.

Then came the explosions that demolished Giant’s Shoulder, exposing the warpwell, from which the Legion of Avatars began to emerge, escaping their ancient and dreadful prison. The Zyradin allowed her to feel the qualities of those ancient organic minds still confined within their elaborately mechanised, militarised caskets. The first thing she felt was a thrilling joy, the ecstasy of freedom from cramped black confinement, then came a gleeful, almost euphoric rage, an unshackled lust to lash out, a voracious need for reprisal against anyone or anything …

**
It was the Forerunners who put them in that prison
**
When they sense the presence of Segrana and myself they will come seeking retribution
**
Only the Keeper of Segrana can be the bridge
**

She shied away.

‘I cannot be trusted!’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t be the Keeper … ’

The Zyradin faded into the pulse and flow of the living web, the cross-tracery of root and branch, the interlocking circuit of leaf and sun and stream. Then the other presence drew near.

You are here
, Segrana said,
because I chose you, you and no other – You understand the levers of knowledge – You know how to learn – You are the linchpin – Without you it will all have been for nothing
.

‘Ye can’t put all that on my shoulders, ye can’t! … ’

Look! – and see
…

All the powers and senses of Segrana suddenly opened up for
her. Seeing was like flying through tenuous veils, an exhilarating swoop in amongst buildings, rooms, people, the streets and gardens, then out past fields, hills, forests, rivers, to …

An underground chamber where Chel the Uvovo Seer sat upon a stone plinth, his six eyes gazing in pairs at different things. Above, a few Legion cyborgs were being fended off by energies that flashed up out of the ground. Then beneath again with Chel, who was now staring straight at her, a sixfold regard that pierced her essence.

(
All events are balanced at this point
, he said to her.
There are terrible futures to be avoided. Trust Segrana – she was right to choose you. Beware of losing the balance but prepare yourself to lose … other things
…)

Her vision was wrenched away, translucent images flicking past, a flickering sequence of half-glimpsed places, half-recognised faces … Greg’s mother, her features looking tired and careworn, her frown-lines more pronounced, her grey hair tied back … a tall Sendrukan hurrying across burnt ground … five still figures lying on couches, wires and tubes issuing from their bodies while enclosing visors hid their eyes … a man she felt sure was the ambassador Robert Horst, even though he looked much younger, talking with a hovering silvery saucer … Julia Bryce, ice-cold Julia, calmly standing beneath a whirling corona of stabbing needles as they steadily dismantled her …

(
This is the point
, came Chel’s voice,
upon which all events are balanced
.)

**
A linchpin holds the wheel upon the axle
** said the Zyradin.

A lens gathers the light of the sun into a bright needle
, said Segrana.

**
Without a fulcrum, a lever is just a piece of metal
**

But all she could see was her memory of Segrana burning, trees on fire, veins of heat breaking through the ground, driven by the primal powers that she had unleashed while seeking to act against those invaders many days ago.

‘No!’ she cried, beating herself against the inner bounds of the
dream-palace. Only to find herself flying beyond it, soaring at first then, assailed by guilt and a gnawing self-doubt, plummeting into gloom.

Greg
, she thought.
I need to know, need to find out the truth, need you
…

Sideways whirling and hurtling through clouds of blurs and scraps of faces and pages printed with words … and there he is, stumbling along a smoky corridor aboard a failing ship. While merciless Legion cyborgs tear their way through the outer hull, ripping out the plating …

And in another place, Theo and Rory are struggling across rain-lashed shards and boulders, harsh-lit by the actinic radiance of the warpwell revealed … Legion cyborgs rush up out of the hyperspace portal … one shows interest in the group of Humans clambering towards the opening … obedient, servile mechs glide towards them and horrible, uncertain fighting begins … Rory is snatched into the air … Theo takes the bomb from the fallen Rory … and Catriona can see his death …

And Greg continues through the doomed vessel … finds an airlock just as a Legion cyborg finds him … but he’s inside the lock, safe before the monster reaches the hatch … and Catriona sees his death … she reaches for him, for the ship, for that place, trying to make herself manifest … and Chel is there, before her.

‘
You cannot
,’ he says. ‘
You must not use it this way or all the futures fail
… ’

The truth of his words strikes her … she ducks it, sidesteps away from that ship with a sob and wail … and returns to the huge, shattered burial mound that Giant’s Shoulder has become … perhaps she can save Uncle Theo … or alter Rory’s path, helping him avoid being swept up by the cyborg … but Chel is there, hands raised, entreating …

‘
You must not do this
,’ he says again.

‘Then you be the Keeper,’ she replies, distraught. ‘I know what will happen, I’ve seen the destruction that my hands made … ’

‘
Those were the ancient powers of Segrana, powers beneath the powers
,’ Chel says. ‘
You think that when Segrana chose you she
did not know that such a choice would come before you? She knew it would, and she knew you and therefore knew how you would choose!
’

‘I don’t … ’

‘
She knew that you would have the will to grasp the power
,’ says the Uvovo Seer. ‘
That was the prerequisite which she could not be sure
…
I
was capable of
.’ Chel smiles. ‘
You see? All events are balanced at this point, this fulcrum, and the fulcrum is you. Through the Keeper, through you, the Zyradin and Segrana will attain their fusion and through you the ancient powers beneath the powers will be focused
.’ He closes his eyes suddenly, and a grimace of pain passes across his features. ‘
Time is against me. Enemies gather nearby. You know what must be done … the sacrifice will not be for nothing
… ’

‘But … what is it that I must do? … ’

He was gone, and she felt herself draw back, loosely gliding like a leaf in the grip of a determined breeze. Veils of images fluttered by as she passed by, all the pains and angers and sufferings of so many people, on Darien and in the ships fighting above the skies, all that anguish and rage, feeding itself like a circulating fountain of deadly poison. Then she was standing on the leafy floor of the dream-palace with the fragrance of the wallflowers filling her head.

**
The time is now
**
There is no better time
**

‘I think I’m ready,’ she said. ‘Mind you, I’ve said that before and been shown the error of my ways … ’

Even before she finished the sentence the air was full of glowing blue motes that emerged from the walls and the floor and descended from the pillared heights, swirling round her, sinking into her form. Her senses seemed to open like doors and the immensity of Segrana rushed majestically in to enfold her. Her awareness stretched out, branched and subdivided and expanded until she realised that it was time to reach downward and inward for that ancient power of powers.

**
This power exists for a reason
**
As it did in the time of the Forerunners
**
They knew that the war had to be won and they
knew that if all else failed a great sacrifice would be needed
**
It was not needed then, but it is needed now
**

‘This is … a hard thing to face,’ she said. ‘How can you … ’

Past mirrors future mirrors present, but never perfectly
, said Segrana.
The flaws are the seeds around which great beauty can grow
.

Around her the force of Segrana entwined while the gleaming, shining motes of the Zyradin swam through them both. In her awareness she seemed to be standing over a fracture in the forest floor at the deepest, most lightless part of Segrana, her hand reaching down, beckoning, urging the powers of the ancients to arise.

Past mirrors future
.

**
Future mirrors present
**

The power surged, and she felt its near-inchoate nature threaten to burst forth, uncontrolled, unfocused. But she tamed it, channelled it, formed it into something like restraint, something like a purpose, hot and destructive.

**
Well done
**
Are you prepared?
**
To behold the mirror of the self?
**

‘No,’ she said. ‘But I’m still going through with it.’

Above her, in the vast and frigid vacuum of space, the cyborgs of the Legion of Avatars swept in their darkening flocks numbering hundreds of thousands, pursuing the remnants of the Hegemony and Earthsphere fleets and those other survivors. Their lust for slaughter drove them on, engulfing vessels entire, breaking them open, obliterating all signs of life, destroying, tearing and ripping, then onward to the next and the next. Catriona could see how this insensate horde would journey from star to star, wreaking utter havoc wherever they went, even though Theo’s sacrifice had choked off the flow of more of the insane creatures. And she knew that what was going to be done had to be done. But a small corner of her heart wept.

‘So … begin.’

With herself as the fulcrum, Segrana and the Zyradin acted in synchronicity for the first time, entwining their presences through
her to act upon the substructures of linear space-time. Within a domain, carefully limited by a shaping of the ancient energy, the linear mode of her own intrinsic essence was refracted and reflected over and over. In seconds she was surrounded by a growing crowd of versions of herself, each one winking into existence and all looking calm and collected. When she pushed herself up on tiptoe she could see that the crowd was growing into a throng stretching back into the cavernous spaces of the dream-palace.

**
We can delay no longer
**
Remember how I taught you to retrieve that ship debris
**
Bring them to Segrana and we will render them unto peace
**

In an eyeblink she went from that busy assembly to the yawning blackness of space, her form a translucent glow. Not far away one of her selves shot past, flying straight towards a ship that was under attack from a crawling swarm of Legion cyborgs. She stretched out her hand in that direction and immediately moved forward. Other Catrionas were converging and she saw how they lunged at the cyborgs, one- or two-handed, and grabbed some edge or protruding component, then in the next instant they were gone, vanished.

Across the ship’s hull the cyborg creatures clustered around weakened points, tearing into the plating, ripping out cabling, while not yet aware of their diminishing numbers. Until a flight of Catrionas landed in the midst of a tightly packed mob of them, and disappeared along with their captives. A spasm of anger rippled through the gleaming black machine-beasts and some even seemed to detect the avenging Catrionas as they swooped in close. Cat ducked in close enough to one to close her hand around a jutting stalk tipped with a sensor cube. There was a dazzling moment that sent splinters of iciness through her …

Then she was hanging in midair, high up in the leafy density of Segrana but beneath the canopy. Her hand still held on to the cyborg’s sensor stalk yet bizarrely there was no sensation of supporting the thing’s weight, nor did it move. Reflexively she let go and the Legion cyborg came to sudden, thrashing life as it fell away, arms and tentacles flailing, slashing and snapping at
branches as it plummeted. But then it slowed and for a moment Catriona thought it would climb back up after her. Until webs of actinic energy sprang out from the nearby trees and from beneath, enfolding the cyborg in a lethal embrace. It convulsed and shuddered and sparks flowed from within its carapace while a smoky vapour leaked out here and there. Abruptly all its effectors and limbs went limp and it resumed its downward plunge, which ended with a splintering crash and a brief flare.