He reached up and pulled off the net. His grip felt clumsy.
Skarbo?
He sighed. Then he said, ‘Hello. I’m back.’ And I wish I wasn’t, he thought.
Good. Welcome. Are you well?
‘Yes, I am. Thanks.’
And Chvids?
‘Still there.’
Good. Now, there is a problem.
He swung himself off the couch and put his legs on the floor. They took his weight, shakily. ‘I preferred the body I had in the vreality,’ he said.
There is a problem.
‘I heard you. What?’
The Warfront has arrived early.
The old ship sounded … tense, if that was possible. Skarbo stood, thinking. Then he said, ‘What does that mean?’
It means it is difficult to extract you.
‘Ah. Difficult? Or impossible?’
Difficult. And provocative. I am under—
Then it cut out. Skarbo felt his heart speeding up. ‘Ship?’
Silence. Skarbo’s mind filled in a word – attack.
He was on his own, then.
He took a careful step. His legs held – just; there was a brittle fragility about them which made him suspect he would lose them very easily. He had once surmised, in a moment of morbid curiosity, that he could probably still walk, just, with only two limbs. Level with a human, in that respect.
He was getting steadier. He walked over to the sled that had held Chvids. It still held her body, but he didn’t need to go too close to know that that was all it was now. The sled had settled to the floor, its energy cells drained. It seemed fitting.
The room lit up – a quick, harsh flash that left images on his optic nerves. And another.
Then sound reached him: a stuttering hiss.
Energy weapons. Someone was firing outside, although on what he couldn’t tell. Under attack, he thought, and cursed himself.
Time to get out. He left the room and stopped on the ledge outside, his eyes wide.
The sled was drained – no way of floating back over the chasm.
Skarbo began to run, at first loping and then skittering along the ledge, glancing at the bridges as he passed them. Cracked, cracked, broken, missing altogether, cracked …
Then he felt fresh air under one claw. The walkway had curved, and his path had not.
He scrabbled wildly, his eyes shut in panic and his claws screeching and scoring over the stone. There was a searing crack from one of his hind-limbs, and then somehow he was lying on the walkway, his limbs still paddling as if he was trying to swim away from the drop.
Like a pinned beetle, he thought.
He forced himself to be still. He wasn’t going to fall. He wasn’t sure if he was going to walk, either; the crack had felt serious. He got up, very carefully. One hind-limb dragged, but it was still there. It would bear – he experimented – a little weight. Just enough.
Not down to two yet.
The curve of the walkway was deep enough that he couldn’t see around it. He moved close to the wall and took a few steps forward, and then a few more.
It was dark. He ramped up his vision, and found it still worked.
Then light lanced through him. There had been another flash, from overhead this time. He spun round to get his sensitized eyes out of the glare – but taking the image with him.
So that was what had happened to the others. Fifty metres on, the walkway ended in wreckage.
The roof was smashed, a ragged tear a hundred metres long. The thing that had smashed it was jammed into fractured rock.
It still had the remains of a streamlined shape – an atmosphere-capable craft, then – but it was blunted and gouged by the impact. A slender scar that might have been the root of a wing before it had been torn off faced Skarbo. The section half-buried in the rock looked to be the engines, suggesting that the ship had tumbled before it crashed. Around them, the rock had melted into obscene bubbles.
Maybe not tumbled, then. Maybe someone had been trying not to crash.
The impact must have been like an earthquake. No wonder it had demolished the bridges.
The flashes were coming more often – too often for Skarbo’s eyes to adjust. His head hurt, even if his leg didn’t. And there was no time, and he couldn’t get across.
Then he paused. Could he?
He had to try.
The lava flow at the base of the crashed ship wasn’t too bad to climb over, though the surface was rough with micro-bubbles, some with skins so thin that his claws broke them. His damaged leg dragged and caught, and he was afraid it would be torn off, but then what did that matter?
It would if it kept him here, of course. But that wasn’t something he could control.
Five minutes of scrambling, and he was over the lava and standing on the metal hull. It was faintly warm. There must still be a live power source in there. He wondered how much the crash had damaged the radiation containment.
But that probably didn’t matter either. His muscles howling at him, Skarbo pulled himself slowly up the hull, the continual flashes overhead burning his vision, and his claws skittering between smooth metal and roughened, burnt patches, until he was over the chasm and then let himself slide awkwardly down the other end.
He kept his grip almost long enough. Then the rough patches were gone and he was slipping down the hull, legs flailing.
He fell.
He hit the rock floor back first, with his legs curled reflexively inwards and his eyes closed.
There was a crack, and his vision blacked out for a moment. Then it crept back, starting at the edges and gradually moving towards the centre.
He uncurled his legs, trying not to think of how he would have looked lying on his back with them clenched across his thorax, and rocked himself the right way up.
Everything still worked, but his carapace was creaking. Some damage there, then.
And that didn’t matter either.
Back towards the exit. He hurt, comprehensively, but he could walk, he could see and, crucially, he could remember. That did matter.
And, hopefully, he could improvise, because that was going to matter almost as much, and much sooner.
He had been thinking, while his body was carrying him over the wrecked ship. He had just enough faith in his ability to reach the shuttle intact, but none at all that he could get it off the planet through whatever conflict was flashing and hissing above him.
So someone else had to do it for him. If he had had fingers he would have crossed them.
The great shaft was full of dust. He was a connoisseur of dust by now, and he could tell this was fresh. Not surprising; the rock was shaking under him now. Things were hotting up overhead.
That suited him.
The lifter didn’t work any more, but the stairs were undamaged. He climbed slowly, using his damaged limb for stability and brief, so very brief, rest between treads while his sound limbs sought the next one up. Lift, pause, gather, lift.
And then he was at the top, and the next bit needed to be thought out. He slid along the wall to the exit and looked round the corner, and then up, and then froze.
The flashes were nothing. Nothing at all – a dogfight in the shadow of a storm; a childish battle on the margin of a war. A few ships playing in the firelight of something much, much bigger.
It was as if the stars had been multiplied by a million. The sky was black, and full of ships. Ships beyond counting, ships beyond comprehension, ships beyond reason. He had seen something like this before.
The Orbiter had been right. The Warfront had definitely arrived, and it had grown.
He tore his eyes away from the mesmerizing sight and looked across the surface. He could see the shuttle, and by a miracle it looked intact. It was time to make the first gamble.
He eased himself round the corner and moved out towards his ship, his legs almost flattened beneath him. Weapons flared, and sometimes they struck so that the ground twitched beneath his feet, but the focus seeme
d diffuse and they appeared to be concentrating on the plains.
He made it to the shuttle, and then he made it into the shuttle, and he climbed painfully into a couch, and at last he allowed himself a moment to recover.
Although, to be honest, there wasn’t much to recover. Four working limbs and one passenger; half-burnt-out eyes, and a carapace certainly at least cracked.
But a working memory.
He laughed out loud, and then started as the sound bounced off the walls of the little ship. It sounded alien, and more than a bit mad.
Then he reviewed his plan. And hated it – but couldn’t think of anything better, so it would have to do.
It had been lifetimes since he had last sat here, and he had been an indifferent pilot then. What did you do? Yes. He remembered.
Wincing with pain, he reached out a claw, snagged the main console control and powered up the board. Lights winked on. Not much air, not much fuel, but plenty of power and, best of all, plenty of comms.
That would do. He thought for a moment, then found the control that opened a general channel, and another that worked the record/repeat function. Then he spoke.
‘All shipping. My name is Skarbo. I am injured. I request safe passage off planet, and medical treatment. Please respond.’
And then he waited for an answer, or several competing answers, or death, whichever came first.
The message had just repeated a hundred times when he got his answer in the form of a galaxy of warning lights on the board in front of him. Then a field snapped into hazy being round the shuttle, and the surface of the planet flicked away.
He cut the recorded message and opened the live channel. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Who are you?’
There was no answer.
He tried again. ‘This is Skarbo calling whoever. Thanks for pulling me out. Can you tell me who you are?’
This time there was an answer. It was very short.
‘No.’
The voice seemed familiar. At any other time, Skarbo would have grinned. ‘May I ask why not?’
‘Disclosure would be unhelpful. Please be quiet.’
He shrugged and kept quiet. But left the channel open, just in case.
The dogfight was not far above him. He could see it now – a grey-black sphere that looked very close to being a hulk was floating just above one of the orbital solar arrays while half a dozen angular little vessels swooped around it. Energy beams flickered between them, and now and then one missed and lanced down to the surface of the planet.
The course the field was pulling him on led straight through the swerving vessels. He wanted to duck.
Then a stray beam caught him, brightening a spot of the field for a second.
The firing stopped.
Then all the angular ships brightened to incandescence and became vapour.
Skarbo was impressed. That had been no energy beam, but a major field-weapon. He was glad he was on the friendly side of it.
So far, of course.
The hulk-thing seemed to have been impressed too. For whole seconds it did nothing. Then it turned a little from side to side, looking exactly as if it were making sure it believed its eyes, before dropping towards the solar array. A hatch opened and a swarm of little machines poured out of it and over the panels. As Skarbo watched they began to take the array apart.
Recycling never stopped. He wondered how long it would be before someone else muscled in.
Then the shuttle tipped back so that the view tilted upward, and he forgot all about recycling.
In the centre of his vision was the Orbiter. His mind flinched. He would come to the Orbiter in a while, when he was ready.
In the vreality, when the parade of numbers and models had become impossible, he had sometimes put on a cloak and wandered along the coast to the town, to observe people doing real things. He remembered watching a group using draw-beasts to tow sleds loaded with fish up stone ramps, and the way the tow ropes sparkled with salt water.
This was a bit like that. He was caught in a field, which shrank to a thick filament on its way to the ship that was towing him.
It looked like one of the old warships he had first seen in the Sphere. So did the ships that surrounded the Orbiter, in a ring of six with a latticework of fields strung between them, the Orbiter suspended in the lattice. The old guard had shown up again.
And now he allowed himself to come to it.
The Orbiter was appallingly damaged. Skarbo caught his breath. Fully half the old ship wasn’t there.
It wasn’t a clean slice. Somehow that would have been better. Instead it was as if the vessel had simply been torn in two, by something that had pulled and twisted and yanked until the hull had ripped and parted down the middle like a green stick. He remembered what had happened to Hamfrets’ ship, but this was far more brutal.
They were nearly there. Surely now it was okay to communicate? He leaned towards the board. ‘Can you tell me—’
‘Not yet.’
He fell silent and watched the dead Orbiter – surely it was dead – getting closer, with a sort of horrified calm.
If the ship was dead, what did that mean for the idea they had shared? How much had it shared in turn with its escorts, before whatever had happened to it occurred?
There was no way of asking that over an open channel. He would just have to wait.
Then the shuttle was crawling into the circle of ships. It was brought to a halt alongside the Orbiter, and Skarbo could see straight into the guts of the mauled ship. The sight made him shudder.
Skarbo?
The shock of hearing the voice almost knocked him over. ‘Orbiter?’
Just. I am – reduced.
‘I can see that. I’m amazed you’re functioning. What happened?’
Attack. The Warfront was early … and you are late.
‘I’m sorry. Have you still …’ He hesitated.
Yes. Wait. You will be brought aboard.
‘Aboard you?’ He didn’t want to add, you look uninhabitable.
Ships have been built with sealable compartments for millions of years. Part of me is still gas-tight. Skarbo? Did you succeed?
‘Yes.’
So, in my way, did I. Now we must see.
‘Good.’ He wasn’t sure what else to add.
Then the shuttle rocked, and the interior boiled briefly with a harsh blue light. Skarbo grabbed the console.
A field had snapped into being around the group of warships. Outside it, energy beams stabbed, lighting up angry patches on its haziness. The Warfront was closing in.
Skarbo swallowed. ‘Ship? Will we be able to accomplish – what we need to, from inside a field?’
There was a pause. Then, No.
‘I thought not. How long will we have, after we drop the field?’
It will depend. The ships will attempt to defend us.
Skarbo thought about that. He wanted to say, then they’ll die, but there was no point.
‘I see,’ he said, instead. ‘Get me aboard.’
The tow-field parted in the middle. The far end retracted into the old warship and vanished. The end connected to the shuttle wavered for a moment then snaked over to delve into the open gash on the side of the Orbiter. It probed a few times and then stabilized and fattened.
The ship says you can enter the field tunnel through your airlock. It is pressurized.
Skarbo nodded, and lifted himself off the couch.
With no vacuum to fight, the lock cycled quickly. He pushed himself out into the tube and floated along it. Air sucked at him gently; the Orbiter was helping him along.
He kept his eyes closed. Even through this field and the larger one around the group of ships, the violence of the attack was too bright to look at; unbroken waves of energy were bursting and boiling against the outside of the field. He hoped the field was less transparent to radiation than to visible light.
Then he smiled. That probably didn’t matter now – but it was still almost a relief
to drift through the gash and into the eviscerated ship.
The field tunnel ended in an improvised airlock. This, too, cycled quickly, and then he was inside, in a dark space he didn’t recognize.
The floor was trembling.
Something hurled itself towards him.
‘Ha! You back then?’
He felt himself smiling. ‘Yes, I’m back. Hello, bird.’
‘Don’t you ever learn? Still not a bird.’ It hovered in front of him, its head tilting from side to side. ‘What’ve you been up to? Radioactive as fuck! Better stay away from anything that breathes.’
‘I will.’ Then something occurred to him. ‘How can you tell?’
It made a yarking noise. ‘This beak never lies. Better get busy, before you crumble. How long?’
It was a good question. He hadn’t been keeping count of his ebbing life. ‘Ah, all other things being equal, about ten hours.’
It looked at him for a second. ‘Don’t think all other things are equal any more. Still. The ship says to take you this way.’
It flapped off without waiting for an answer. Skarbo followed.
They ended up in a tall, plain dome-shaped space about fifty metres across. It seemed familiar, but Skarbo wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it was because it was roughly the same shape as the Second Machine Room – but that wasn’t it.
Then he realized – it was the room he had entered on his first time here, but with all the projections switched off.
The plain white ovoids were still on their stands in the middle of the floor. But now they were all pointing upwards.
The old machines are waiting, he thought. And he knew what to do.
He realized The Bird was watching him. He smiled. ‘Time to go, I think.’
‘Think what you like. I’m staying.’
‘All right. Ship? We need to be outside.’
Yes.
And the domed walls opened like a flower, stretching a tenuous field-membrane between them that bulged outwards under the pressure of the air.
Skarbo flinched – the vicious light of the battle was even worse. Seconds at best, he thought. Out loud he said, ‘Thanks. Now I need to communicate with these.’
You already are.
And with no warning, a voice like a gong boomed in his head.
‘I listen.’
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