Kelly’s neural nanonics faithfully recorded the silver chill tickling her nerves at the naked conviction in his voice. “You’re really planning to generate a wormhole large enough to enclose the whole of Lalonde? And keep it there?”
Shaun Wallace wagged his finger at her. “Ah, now there you go again, Miss Kelly, putting your fine, elegant words in my mouth. Plans, such a grand term. Generals and admirals and kings, now they have plans. But we don’t, we have instinct. Hiding our new world from this universe God created, that comes as naturally as breathing.” He chuckled. “It means we can go on breathing, too. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to stop me from doing that, would you now? Not a sweet lass like yourself.”
“No. But what about Rai Molvi? Tell me what happens to him afterwards?”
Shaun Wallace scratched his chin, looked round at the savannah, shifted the jump-suit fabric round his shoulders, pulled a sardonic face.
“He stays, doesn’t he?” Kelly said stiffly. “You won’t let him go.”
“I need the body, miss. Real bad. Perhaps there’ll be a priest amongst us I can visit for absolution.”
“If what you’re saying is true,” Reza said charily, focusing an optical sensor on the cloudband behind, “then we really don’t want to be staying here any longer than we have to. Wallace, when is this planetary vanishing act supposed to happen?”
“You have a few days’ grace. But there are none of your starships left to sail away on. Sorry.”
“Is that why you didn’t resist, because we can’t escape?”
“Oh, no, Mr. Malin, you’ve got me all wrong. You see, I don’t want much to do with my fellows. That’s why I live out in the woods, there. I prefer being on my own, I’ve had a bucketful of their company. Seven centuries of it, to be precise.”
“So you’ll help us?”
He gathered himself up and threw a glance over his shoulder at the second hovercraft. “I won’t hinder you,” he announced magnanimously.
“Thank you very much.”
“Not that it will do you much good, mind.”
“How’s that?”
“There’s not going to be many places you can run to, I’m afraid. Quite a few of us have sailed away already.”
“Fucking hell,” Kelly gasped.
Shaun Wallace frowned in disapproval. “To be sure, that’s no word for a lady to be going and using.”
Kelly made sure he was in perfect focus. “Are you telling me that what’s happening on Lalonde is going to happen on other planets as well?”
“Indeed I am. There’s a lot of very anguished souls back there in the beyond. They’re all in dire need of a clean handsome body, every one of them. Something very much like the one you’ve got there.”
“This is occupied, to the hilt.”
His eyes flashed with black amusement. “So was this one, Miss Kelly.”
“And all these worlds the possessed have gone to, are you going to try and imprison them in wormholes?”
“That’s a funny old word you’re using there: wormholes. Little muddy tunnels in the ground, with casts on top to show the fishermen where they are.”
“It means chinks in space, gaps you can fall through.”
“Does it now? Well, then, I suppose that’s what I mean, yes. I like that, a gap in the air which leads you through to the other side of the rainbow.”
Surreal. The word seemed to be caught on some repeater program in Kelly’s neural nanonics, flipping up in hologram violet over the image of a mad, dead Irishman sitting in front of her, grinning in delight at her discomfort. Worlds snatched out of their orbits by armies of the dead.
Surreal. Surreal. Surreal.
Fenton rose growling to his feet, fangs barred, hackles sticking up like spikes. Shaun Wallace gave the hound an alarmed look, and Kelly’s retinas caught the minutest white static flames twinkle over his fingertips. But Fenton swung his head round to the prow and barked.
Jalal’s gaussrifle was already coming round. He saw the huge creature crouched down in the long grass at the side of the water thirty-five metres ahead of the hovercraft. The Lalonde generalist didactic memory called it a kroclion, a plains-dwelling carnivore which even the sayce ran from. He wasn’t surprised, the beast must have been nearly four metres long, weighing an easy half-tonne. Its hide was a sandy yellow, well suited to the grass, making visual identification hard (infrared was, thankfully, a furnace flame). The head—like a terrestrial shark—had been grafted on, all teeth and tiny killer-bright eyes.
Blue target graphics locked on. He fired an EE round.
Everyone ducked, Kelly jamming her hands over her ears. A dazzling explosion sent a pillar of purple plasma and mashed soil spouting twenty metres into the air. Its vertex flattened out, a ring of soot-choked orange flame rolling across the river. The ululate crack was loud enough to drown out the tattoo of thunder chasing them from the red cloud.
Kelly lifted her head carefully.
“I think you got him,” Theo said drily, as he steered the hovercraft away from the quaking water sloshing round the new crater. A semicircle of grass on the bank was burning.
“They’re vicious bastards,” Jalal protested.
“Not that one, not any more, as anyone within five kilometres will tell you,” Ariadne said.
“And you could have dealt with it better?”
“Forget it,” Reza said. “We’ve got more important things to worry about.”
“You believe what this dickhead has been telling us?” Ariadne asked, jerking a thumb at Shaun Wallace.
“Some of it,” Reza said noncommittally.
“Why thank you, Mr. Malin,” Shaun Wallace said. He watched the burning crater closely as the hovercraft sped past. “Fine shooting there, Mr. Jalal. Those old kroclions, they put the wind up me and no mistake. Old Lucifer was on form the day he made them.”
“Shut up,” Reza said. The one optical sensor he had left focused on the edge of the red cloud showed him a lone tendril starting to swell out, extending along the line of the narrow river behind them. Too slow to catch them, he estimated, but it was a graphically disturbing demonstration that the cloud and the possessed inhabitants were aware of the team’s presence.
He opened a channel to his communication block and datavised a sequence of orders in. It began scanning the sky for communication-satellite beacons. Two of the five satellites the blackhawks had delivered into geosynchronous orbit were above the horizon and still broadcasting. The block aimed a tight beam at one, requesting contact with any of Terrance Smith’s fleet. No ship was left in the command net, the satellite’s computer reported, but there was a message stored in its memory. Reza datavised his personal code.
“This is a restricted access message for Reza’s team,” Joshua Calvert’s voice said from the communication block. “But I have to be sure it is you and only you receiving it. The satellite is programmed to transmit it on a secure directional beam. If there is any hostile within five hundred metres of you who can intercept then do not request access. In order to access the recording, enter the name of the person who came between me and Kelly last year.”
The tip of the cloud tendril was a couple of kilometres away. Reza turned to face Shaun Wallace. “Can any of your friends intercept a radio transmission?”
“Well, now, there’s some of them living in one of the old savannah homesteads. But they’re a few miles from here, yet. Is that more than five hundred metres?”
“Yes. Kelly, the name please.”
She gave him a stonefaced smile. “Aren’t you glad you didn’t leave me behind at Pamiers?”
Jalal laughed. “She got you there, Reza.”
“Yes,” Reza said heavily. “I’m glad we didn’t leave you behind. The name?”
Kelly opened a channel to his communication block and datavised: “Ione Saldana.”
There was a moment’s silence while the satellite’s carrier wave emitted a few electronic bleeps.
“Well remembered, Kelly. OK, t
his is the bad news: the hijacked starships have started fighting us and the navy. There’s a real vicious battle going on in orbit right now. Lady Mac got clear, but we’ve taken a bit of punishment in the process. Another story for you sometime. I’m about to jump us out to Murora. There’s an Edenist station in orbit there, and we’re hoping to dock with it to make our repairs. We estimate the damage can be patched up in a couple of days, after which we’ll come back for you. Kelly, Reza, the rest of you; we’re only going to make one fly-by.
Hopefully you took my earlier advice and are now heading hell for leather away from that bloody cloud. Keep going, and leave your communication block scanning for my transmission. If you want to be picked up then you’ll have to stay away from any hostiles. That’s about it, we’re battening down to jump now. Good luck, I’ll see you in two, maybe three days.”
Kelly rested her head in her hands. Just hearing his voice again was a fantastic tonic. And he was alive, smart enough to elude a battle. And he was going to come back for them. Joshua, you bloody splendid marvel. She wiped tears from her cheeks.
Shaun Wallace patted her shoulder tenderly. “Your young man, is it?”
“Yes. Sort of.” She sniffed, and brushed away the last of the tears in a businesslike manner.
“He sounds like a fine boy to me.”
“He is.”
Reza datavised a summary of events to the second hovercraft. “I’m in complete agreement with Joshua about keeping clear of the cloud and the possessed. As of now our original mission is over. Our priority now is just to stay alive and make sure what information we have gets back to the Confederation authorities. We’ll keep going up this river to the Tyrathca farmers and hope that we can hold out there until the Lady Macbeth comes back for us.”
It was the rygar bush which had brought the Tyrathca farmers to Lalonde.
When they were searching for their initial backing, the LDC sent samples of Lalonde’s aboriginal flora to both of the xenoc members of the Confederation; it was standard practice to try and attract as wide a spectrum of support as possible for such ventures. The Kiint, as always, declined to participate. But the Tyrathca considered the small berries of the rygar bush a superlative delicacy. Ripe berries could be ground up to produce a cold beverage, or mixed with sugar to form a sticky fudge; LDC negotiators claimed it was the Tyrathcan equivalent of chocolate. The normally cloistered xenocs were so enamoured at the prospect of wholesale rygar cultivation they agreed to a joint colony enterprise with their merchant organization taking a four per cent stake in the LDC. It was only the third time since joining the Confederation that they had ever participated in a colony, a fact which lent the hard-pressed LDC considerable badly needed respectability. Even better for the LDC board: to a human palate the rygar berries tasted like oily grapes, so there would never be any conflict of interest arising.
Five years after the dumpers had dropped out of the sky to form the nucleus of Durringham the first batch of Tyrathcan breeder pairs arrived and settled in the foothills of the mountain range which made up the southern border of the Juliffe basin where the rygar bushes flourished.
The LDC’s long-range economic plans foresaw both the human and Tyrathcan settlements expanding from their respective centres until they met at the roots of the tributaries. By the time that happened both groups would have risen above their initial subsidence level and be prosperous enough to trade to their mutual enrichment. But that date was still many years in the future. The human villages furthest from Durringham were all as poor as Aberdale and Schuster, while the Tyrathcan plantations had barely cultivated enough rygar to fill the holds of the starships their merchants sent twice a year. Contact had so far been minimal.
It was late afternoon, and the savannah was already giving way to low humpbacked foothills when the mercenary team saw their first Tyrathcan house. There was no mistaking it, a dark cinnamon-coloured tower twenty-five metres high with slightly tapering walls, and circular windows sealed over with ebony blisters. The design had evolved on the abandoned Tyrathcan homeworld, Mastrit-PJ, over seventeen thousand years ago, and was employed on every planet their arkships had colonized right across the galaxy. They never used anything else.
This one stood like a border sentry castle overlooking the river. Octan glided round it a couple of times, seeing the vague outlines of fields and gardens reclaimed by grass and small scrub bushes. Moss and weeds were growing around the inside of the roof’s turret wall where soil and dust had drifted.
“Nothing moving,” Pat reported to Reza. “I’d say it was deserted three or four years ago.”
They had gathered together on the riverbank just downstream from the tower house, hovercraft drawn up on the grass. The river was getting narrower, little more than a stream, down to about eight metres wide, and littered with boulders which made it virtually unnavigable. For the first time since they had landed that morning there were no snowlilies in sight, only the broken tips of their stems trailing limply.
“The Tyrathca do that,” Sal Yong said. “A house is only ever used once. When the breeders die it’s sealed up as their tomb.”
Reza consulted his guidance block. “There’s a plantation village called Coastuc-RT six kilometres south-east of here. The other side of that ridge,” he pointed, datavising the map image to them. “Ariadne, can the hovercraft take it?”
She focused her optical sensors on the rolling land which skirted the mountains. “Shouldn’t be a problem, the grass is a lot shorter here than the savannah and there isn’t much stone about.” When she looked west she could see another three of the dark towers sticking out of the bleak countryside. They were all in shadow; thick black rain-clouds were surging towards them along the side of the mountains. The wind had freshened appreciably since they had left the jungle. Looking back to the north she could see the red cloud over the Quallheim forging the entire northern horizon; it was almost edge on, they had climbed steadily since leaving it behind. The sky above it was a perfect unblemished blue.
Kelly felt the first smattering of the drizzle on her bare arms as she clambered back into the hovercraft. She dug into her cylindrical kitbag for a cagoule, her burnt armour-suit jacket had been left behind in the jungle—in that state it wouldn’t have been any use anyway. “I’m sorry,” she told Shaun Wallace as he sat beside her. “I’ve only got the one, and the others don’t need them.”
“Ah now, don’t you go worrying yourself over me, Miss Kelly,” he said.
The jump suit he wore turned a rich indigo, then the fabric became stiffer. He was wearing a cagoule which was identical to the one in her hands, right down to the unobtrusive Collins logo on the left shoulder.
“There, see? Old Shaun can look after himself.”
Kelly gave him a flustered nod (thankful her memory cell was still recording), and hurriedly struggled into her own cagoule as the warm drizzle thickened. “What about food?” she asked the Irishman as Theo goaded the hovercraft over the summit of the riverbank and started off towards the Tyrathca village.
“Don’t mind if I do, thanks. Nothing too rich mind, not for me. I likes me pleasures simple.”
She dug round in the bag and found a bar of tarrit-flavoured chocolate.
None of the mercenaries had brought any food, with their metabolisms they could graze off the vegetation indefinitely, potent intestinal enzymes breaking up anything with proteins and hydrocarbons.
Shaun Wallace chewed in silence for a minute. “That’s nice,” he said, “reminds me a little of bilberries on a cold morning,” and he grinned.
Kelly found she was smiling back at him.
The hovercraft moved a lot slower over the land than on water. Cairnlike clusters of weather-smoothed stone and sudden pinched gullies made the pilots’ task a demanding one. The rain, which was now a solid downpour of heavy grey water, added to the difficulty.
Pat had sent Octan northward to avoid the worst of the deluge. Back out on the savannah it was still dry and sunny, a buffer zone betw
een nature and supernature. Reza dispatched Fenton and Ryall to survey the ground ahead. Lightning began to spear down.
“I think I preferred the river,” Jalal said glumly.
“Ah, Mr. Jalal, buck up now, this is nothing for Lalonde,” Shaun Wallace said. “A little shower, that’s all. It was much worse than this before we returned from beyond.”
Jalal ignored the casual reference to the power of the possessed; Shaun Wallace, he thought, was playing a subtle war of nerves against them.
Sowing the seeds of doubt and despondency.
“Hold it,” Reza datavised to Theo, and Sal Yong, who was piloting the second hovercraft. “Deflate the skirts.”
The hovercraft sank onto their hulls with flagging whines, crushing the sturdy grass tufts, settling at awkward angles. Rain had reduced visibility to less than twenty-five metres even with enhanced sight.
Kelly could just make out Ryall up ahead. The hound was shifting about uneasily in front of a big sandy-brown boulder.
Reza took off his magazine belt, and left the TIP carbine he’d been carrying with it. He hopped over the gunwale and started to trudge towards the restive animal. Kelly had to wipe a slick film of water from her face. The rain was worming its way round her cagoule hood to run down her neck. She toyed with the idea of putting on her shell-helmet again—anything to stop this insidious clammy invasion.
Reza stopped five metres short of the brown lump, and slowly opened his arms, rain dripping from his grey-skinned fingers. He shouted something even Kelly’s studio-grade audio-discrimination program couldn’t catch above the wind and rain. She squinted, the rain suddenly chilling inside her T-shirt. The boulder rose up smoothly on four powerful legs. Kelly gasped. Her Confederation generalist didactic memory identified it immediately: a soldier-caste Tyrathca.
“Oh bugger,” Jalal muttered. “They’re clan creatures, it won’t be alone.” He started to scan around. It was hopeless in the rain, even infrared was washed out.
The soldier-caste Tyrathca was about as big as a horse, although the legs weren’t as long. Its head, too, was faintly equine, tilted back at a shallow angle at the end of a thick muscular neck. There were no visible ears, or nostrils; the mouth had a complex double-lip arrangement resembling overlapping clam shells. The sienna hide, which Kelly had thought solid like an exoskeleton, was actually scaled, with a short-cropped chestnut-brown mane running along its entire spine. Two arms extended from behind the base of its neck, ending in nine-fingered circular hands. A pair of slender antennae also protruded from its shoulder joints, swept back along the length of its body.