“What the fuck—” Oscar grunted. His field scan couldn’t detect any kind of integral force field. “Get down!” he screamed at her. The crazy woman must be doped up on something; she seemed totally unaware of what was going on.
Myraian sang as she danced, the kind of warbling verse Oscar would’ve expected to hear from a Silfen, not a human. The ground around her feet rippled as tatters of loam and gravel were churned up by the storm of kinetic projectiles missing her. And they kept on missing her. The Chikoya simply couldn’t get anything to hit. The armored aliens began to fall back as she approached. Their weapons fire stopped. Myraian finished her madcap dance directly in front of one of the massive aliens. She giggled and swept her arms out wide to bow gracefully, bodylight glowing an exotic orange through her flimsy clothes. The Chikoya didn’t move; its extended suit sensors tracked her carefully. Then she raised herself on her tiptoes, looking pitifully small and weak compared with the armored monster towering above her. She kissed the alien on the tip of its helmet.
The Chikoya collapsed on the ground. Dead.
Myraian pirouetted away as the rest of the Chikoya squad opened fire. Again they couldn’t get a fix. She was almost invisible behind a blaze cloud of grenade detonations and stark purple ionization contrails.
Oscar realized he needed to breathe again.
“Let’s give her some support,” Tomansio ordered.
A cascade of smart weapons fell on the Chikoya squad. They broke and ran, leaving the shore strewn with fatalities. Myraian skipped gaily through the shallows, following them like some demented pixie storm trooper, kicking at the spume as she went. Her fluffy plimsolls were stained gray-blue with alien blood.
Oscar jumped up out of the long drainage gully and stared in disbelief. Two of the Chikoya being chased by Myraian teleported out. “Holy crap,” he murmured. What is she? Exact definitions didn’t really concern him at that moment; he was just relieved she was on their side.
Five kilometers overhead, the Elvin’s Payback arrived in a burst of sharp violet light as it decelerated hard. Above it, Oscar could just make out a ragged black hole punched through the compartment’s dome; crumpled metallic shards tumbled silently through the tortured air on their long fall to the ground. Thin strands of mist grew in density around the rent, stretching and curving up to pour out into the vacuum beyond. The glowing cometary sphere suddenly flared, shoving out eight vivid pseudopods of dazzling flame. They separated from the starship and accelerated downward toward the beleaguered house. His biononics felt the combatbots’ first sensor sweep.
The Chikoya must have known what was coming. Another three teleported out.
“Ozziedamned monsters,” Cheriton exclaimed. Seven of them on higher ground were targeting him with a barrage of energy beams and a ferocious kinetic broadside, pushing his integral force field dangerously close to its limit.
“Priority target,” Tomansio ordered Liatris. “Take out the hostiles surrounding Cheriton.”
A massive spear of incandescence lanced down out of the turbulent sky to strike the incline behind the house. Parts of Chikoya spewed upward. Aggressive flames swirled over the trees and bushes populating the slope. Cheriton was still being targeted by four Chikoya.
Oscar’s scan showed him a T-sphere locus establishing itself around his teammate. “Counterprogram,” he yelled.
“Can’t,” Cheriton replied.
Oscar, Tomansio, and Beckia immediately launched a volley of smartmissiles over the roof of the house. While he was fending off such an intense attack, Cheriton’s biononics wouldn’t be able to counterprogram the T-sphere as well as maintain his integral force field. The combatbots fired again, eliminating more Chikoya. This time the energy impact kicked up a long wildfire line across the forest, the formidable heat igniting whole trees. Thick smoke billowed up, cutting off all visual observation. But Oscar’s field function scan could still slice clean through. He watched his exovision display showing Cheriton being teleported away.
“Fuck it! Liatris, where did they take him?” Oscar demanded. “Where’s the T-sphere center?”
The combatbots were barely five hundred meters overhead. They fired down continuously, adding to the conflagration now burning around half the house. The surviving Chikoya were teleporting out as fast as they could.
“It’s centered in the Farloy compartment, about twelve hundred kilometers along the Spike. That’s one of the major Chikoya settlements.”
“Are you getting any kind of signal from him?” Tomansio asked.
“Negative. Shall I fly over there and run a detailed sensor sweep?”
“No,” Tomansio said.
Oscar eyed the wall of fire that was creeping down the slope to consume the trees closest to the house. Thermal imaging was showing him some alarming temperatures blossoming across the walls. The T-sphere shrank to zero. He admitted Tomansio was right. Not that it was easy.
“Land by the house,” he told Liatris. “I need the Dreamers safe on board before we get an entire Chikoya army teleporting in. Aaron, bring them out, please.”
“Confirm,” Aaron said.
Oscar turned around and ran a sweep along the shoreline. There were nine dead Chikoya scattered across the blackened lawn and two of them lying in the water. His biononics couldn’t find any trace of Myraian. He shook his head in bemusement at the fantastical woman. In a strange way he was rather glad she’d disappeared; it meant he didn’t have to think about her.
Elvin’s Payback thumped down out of the sky, sending out a shock wave that shattered the house’s remaining windows and brought roof slates skittering down. It hovered five meters above the ruined garden. Oscar and the remaining Knights Guardian closed in, ready to provide cover as Aaron led the two Dreamers, Corrie-Lyn, and Troblum out across the veranda and underneath the starship. Its airlock bulged upward, and Inigo rose into it. Corrie-Lyn was next.
A couple of large trolleybots floated out of the house, each one carrying a medical chamber. Flames were flickering along the roof, gaining hold on the rafters. Smoke curled out of the gaping first-floor windows.
“What do we do?” Oscar asked Tomansio as they backed toward the starship. “Do we go after him?”
“No. He’s true Knights Guardian; he’s not expecting us to. That would jeopardize the mission.”
“Jesus. What will they do to him?”
“If I was a Chikoya, I’d worry about what he’ll do to them. Human biononics are a damn site meaner than anything they’ve ever built.”
The medical chambers were lifted smoothly up into the starship. It was just Oscar, Tomansio, and Beckia left. The starship’s force fields came on around them.
“But they targeted him,” Oscar said; even inside the protective shields he couldn’t relax. “It was deliberate. They must have known he wasn’t a Dreamer.”
“Maybe they thought he was me,” Aaron told them. “I had quite a run-in with the Chikoya before you arrived.”
“Irrelevant,” Tomansio said. He gestured at Oscar to step under the open airlock. “We have a job to do.”
“Not irrelevant,” Oscar insisted as he began to float up into the fuselage. He knew he was missing something, and it was making him very cross. “Surely he can get some kind of signal out. Liatris, are you seeing any sign of a firefight in the Farloy compartment?”
“No. Nothing registering.”
Oscar slid up into the cabin to find the Dreamers and a miserable, shaking Corrie-Lyn giving him an anxious look. Troblum’s helmet almost touched the ceiling. His armor had reverted to shabby gray again. He still hadn’t opened it up.
Beckia arrived, swiftly followed by Tomansio. The cabin was feeling quite cramped even with the furniture withdrawn.
“Up and out,” Tomansio said. “Come on, Oscar, let’s go.”
Oscar bit back any immediate comment and told the smartcore to take them back through the hole Liatris had created in the dome above. “We could make one flyover,” he said.
“They
could have teleported him to any compartment on the Spike by now,” Beckia said sadly. “Or even into a starship. He could already be FTL.”
“No, he’s not,” Oscar said, reviewing the sensor records as they passed through the minihurricane surrounding the hole and emerged back into space. “Nothing’s gone FTL in the last ten minutes.”
“Oscar, drop it,” Tomansio said. “He’s gone, and hopefully he took a whole bunch of the Chikoya bastards with him. When we get back to Far Away, you’re welcome to attend the ceremony of renewal. We’ll grow him a new body and download his secure memory store into it. He’ll spend the whole evening teasing you about worrying.”
Oscar wanted to hit something. “All right.” But I know something is wrong. He concentrated on the starship’s sensors. The Mellanie’s Redemption had left its landing pad at the same time as the Elvin’s Payback. Now it was holding station five thousand kilometers on the Spike’s dark side. He told the smartcore to rendezvous with it.
“Troblum, we’re safe now.”
“Good,” the armored figure said.
“You can take your helmet off.”
There was a long pause while the big figure did nothing. Then horizontal lines of malmetal on the helmet flowed apart, leaving three segments on each side. They swung open.
Oscar tried to be neutral. Troblum’s face was fat and heavy, his skin an unhealthy pallor and dribbling with sweat. Patchy stubble coated his cheeks and chins. “Hello,” he said sheepishly to his audience. He couldn’t meet anyone’s gaze.
“Thank you for offering your help,” Inigo said. “We appreciate it.”
Troblum gave a rough nod but didn’t say anything.
Oscar didn’t like the idea of relying on him one bit; there didn’t seem to be any empathy. Troblum was not a likable person, and he’d decided that from just the half dozen sentences the man had spoken. Not that there was anything they could do about it. I’m committed. Again. Let’s hope I don’t have to die this time.
“So how did the Chikoya find you?” Liatris asked Inigo.
“Plenty of people in Octoron would know where Ozzie lives,” Aaron said. “I’m surprised it took them this long, actually.”
“I’m just glad you arrived before they did,” Corrie-Lyn said. She was still trembling, even though she’d gotten a chair to extend and was sitting all hunched up. “We wouldn’t have stood a chance otherwise.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Beckia said. “Whatever that Myraian had was more than they could deal with.”
“Is she a Silfen?” Tomansio asked.
“No,” Araminta-two said. “I would have known that. She was human.”
“I think ‘was’ is right,” Oscar said. “She’s not postphysical, but she’s certainly more than Higher.”
“Speaking of not being physical,” Aaron said. “Ozzie?”
“Lady alone knows,” Inigo said. “My physics is centuries out of date, but whatever he did was seriously advanced.”
“He transmuted his quantum state,” Troblum said. “Somehow he went outside spacetime.”
“Personal FTL?” Corrie-Lyn asked incredulously.
“Probably not. You have to time-phase to do that.”
“So is he postphysical?” Oscar asked.
“I’d say not in the classical sense, but I don’t have any empirical evidence,” Inigo said. “Normally, postphysicals don’t hang around afterward. And he was dedicated to helping the human race in many ways. I know; we discussed it at length.”
“Certainly did,” Aaron murmured.
The Elvin’s Payback drew alongside Mellanie’s Redemption. The two starships maneuvered for a few seconds before their airlocks touched and sealed. Troblum was the first through, moving surprisingly quickly. The others let him go without comment, though Oscar knew they were all a little perplexed by the enigmatic Higher.
He followed Troblum through the airlocks, emerging into a cabin that was almost the same size as the one he’d just left. A very attractive girl was waiting there, dressed in old-fashioned clothes; her hands pressed anxiously against the chest of Troblum’s armor as she asked if he was all right. Oscar frowned at the sight; there’d been no mention of a companion. And with the best will in the universe, he couldn’t imagine a girl like that partnered with Troblum. Perhaps she was his daughter. But there’d been no reference to a family in his file.
The others were crowding into the cabin; they all shared an identical mildly surprised expression as they saw the girl. Gaiamote emissions were hurriedly reduced.
“This is Catriona,” Troblum mumbled.
“Hello.” She smiled shyly.
Oscar saw Tomansio staring at an electronic device on the cabin’s lone extended table. It looked vaguely familiar. Secondary routines ran a comparison search through his storage lacunae. “Oh,” he said softly. His retinas switched to infrared, which confirmed it. Catriona was a solido projection.
Then a trolleybot glided in carrying a medical chamber, and everyone was suddenly busy making room. The next trolleybot appeared, and Oscar started to think some of them were going to have to go into suspension before they reached the Void. And given that I’m just about redundant now …
Troblum opened a low hatch into a companionway. “We can stack some of the medical chambers here.”
“Is this all the space there is?” Inigo asked dubiously.
“Once the planetary FTL has launched, we can use the forward cargo hold. Until then, we’ll just have to squeeze in.”
The medical chambers kept coming. Two were fitted into the narrow companionway. Troblum got the cabin bulkhead to extrude thin shelves. There was just enough height for the big dark sarcophagi to be stacked three high. That left everyone else with standing room only and pressed uncomfortably close.
“I’ll join you later,” Catriona said, and faded away. Troblum pretended not to notice. His armor suit opened up, and he stowed it in a broad luggage cylinder that telescoped up out of the decking. The toga suit he wore was about the shabbiest Oscar had ever seen.
“Are there any sleep cubicles?” Beckia asked.
“Three,” Troblum told her.
“One for me,” she said quickly. Corrie-Lyn claimed the second. Somehow no one asked to use Troblum’s personal cubicle.
It was still cramped in the cabin as the last medical capsule was secured and the airlock flowed shut.
“So how does this work?” Tomansio asked.
“We need an uninhabited star system,” Troblum explained. “Also, the radiation from a nova can sterilize neighboring star systems. So we really need a star that’s fifteen light-years away from any H-congruous planet to be safe. There are three candidates within fifty light-years, an hour’s flight time.”
“Closest one, then,” Inigo said.
“That’s the one farthest from the Void.”
“Oh. Well, how far to—” He stopped in surprise.
Oscar was suddenly aware of a personal gaiafield emission. The emotional content alone was enough for him to identify Cheriton. A sensation of panicky urgency made his heart flutter in sympathy. The emission strengthened into a gifting.
“Hello,” Cheriton’s thoughts said softly. The need for reassurance was overwhelming.
Inigo and Araminta-two exchanged a meaningful look. “We’re here,” their minds chorused.
“No!” Aaron yelled. He raised his fists in silent exasperation and glared at the two Dreamers.
The gifting had no sight or sound or scent, just Cheriton’s small befuddled thoughts. He was alone, unable to sense anything from his body. Only training and excellent self-control were keeping the fear at bay.
“Ah,” another mind spoke with unnerving serenity. “I hadn’t thought of a gaiafield connection. I see you have an unusual number of gaiamotes, with some interesting little tweaks to their structure.”
Oscar thought the newcomer might not even be human. There wasn’t the slightest timbre of emotion to be found anywhere.
“Go FTL,” Tom
ansio told Troblum. The big man had a scared look on his face; he was trembling. Catriona rematerialized in the cabin and hugged him tightly.
The gifting expanded as Cheriton’s eyes opened. He was staring up at a dark gray ceiling. A head appeared above him, badly blurred. Focus was gradual as his sluggish eyes responded to the pale oval shape. It was a woman’s face, framed by short dark hair, smiling benevolently.
“Oh, bollocks,” Oscar groaned.
“Hello, boys and girls,” said the Cat. “I can feel you out there. How lovely that you care so much about your friend.”
“I can’t move,” Cheriton reported. His self-control was starting to crack. Little bursts of fear were interrupting the gift as if it were conveying electric shocks.
“Sorry about that,” the Cat said. One hand lifted up into view; it was drenched with blood. Drops splashed down off each fingertip. “But I couldn’t have you running away, now, could I?”
“Cheriton,” Tomansio said very calmly. “You have to trigger your biononic overload. I’m so sorry. We’ll hold the ceremony of renewal when we return home. I swear it.”
“I can’t,” Cheriton’s wretched thought came back. “I can’t.”
“We have your secure store. You will lose nothing.”
“I can’t.”
A sleep cubicle door expanded. Corrie-Lyn ran out and clung to Inigo. She was fighting back tears.
“Cheriton,” Tomansio continued, his thoughts becoming stern. “You have to do this. She’ll infiltrate. The mission will be compromised.”
“Help me.”
“Oh, my dears.” The Cat’s smile hung above them, exuding an icy presence into the cabin even though she was nowhere close. Her lips widened into a mournful smile. “The poor boy is telling the truth. He can’t suicide. That’s a weakness, and we all know what I think about being strong, now, don’t we? So I’m helping him. I took a nice big pair of scissors to his biononic connections.” She looked at her glistening scarlet hand, as if puzzled by the color. “I seem to have accidentally cut through a few nerves, too. Well, when I say cut, I mean hacked. But on the positive side, nothing will hurt now, so that was kind of me, wasn’t it?”
The Void Trilogy 3-Book Bundle Page 206