The Orphaned Worlds

by Michael Cobley

  ‘A few hours after you departed for Pyre,’ Mandator Reen said, ‘the Hegemony warship left with the Potentiary on board. One point five hours later, a smaller ship entered our system claiming to require the use of a repair dock at Agmedra’a. On the way to the orbital it vanished from our sensor displays, clearly by virtue of stealth technology. Our next indication of their whereabouts was when they approached this asteroid vessel and boarded it by force, with such results as you can see.

  ‘An insult of such gravity cannot be disregarded. These Ezgara invaded the ambit of our system-zone, concealed themselves from legitimate detection and appraisal, ignored the protocols of civilised communication, then carried out a violent incursion and abduction of protected sentients. Such an affront requires that pursuit is swiftly undertaken with the aim of procuring an appropriate apology. The appropriateness, of course, will not be inconsequential.’

  ‘My vessel is T2-capable,’ said Silveira. ‘It may not have the weaponry to engage, but it can certainly track the Ezgara to their destination. I would be happy to put both it and myself at your disposal.’

  Mandator Reen turned its unfathomable regard on the Earthsphere agent, eyes hidden by those fine mesh cusps, mouth covered by a dull, coppery grille. Yet Kao Chih had seen Qabakri transform his appearance and that had included the garments, which prompted him to wonder how much of this was for show.

  ‘Human Silveira, your offer has great merit but first we would hear of the Human colony on Pyre – I understand that you have gathered evidence data and wish to share it with us.’

  Silveira produced a small transparent pocket containing a blue crystal cube and handed it to the Roug.

  ‘That holds an edited record of our brief visit to the colony,’ Silveira said. ‘You will see what suffering has been inflicted on our fellow Humans by criminals whose operations are actively encouraged by the Suneye monoclan.’

  ‘Thank you, Human Silveira. We will examine it promptly and closely.’ Mandator Reen turned to Kao Chih. ‘I would hear from you, Human Kao Chih, an account of the venture including Mandator Qabakri’s reasons for remaining behind, if those were made clear to you.’

  Kao Chih related the main points of the journey to the Roug and the now subdued crew officers. When he reached his final exchange with Qabakri, before departing Pyre, he was careful to make no mention of the Roug shapeshifting ability or Qabakri’s human form.

  ‘Mandator Qabakri takes action,’ said Reen. ‘He seeks to remind us of the duty of guardianship, laid upon our ancestors by the ancient Forerunners. Thus the Assessors have extensively monitored the pertinent sources, the Mandators have extended the scope of inquiry, and the Contiguals have decided that an act of protection is warranted for both the Humans of Pyre and those abducted.

  ‘Which brings me back to you, Human Silveira, and your offer to pursue the miscreant Ezgara and ascertain their destination. A kind offer which must be put aside since you will need your vessel to return to your origin, and to carry a message from us to your masters and the leaders of your government, the Vox Humana.’

  There was a shocked silence as everyone stared at Silveira. Kao Chih had a sick feeling in his chest as he faced the man.

  ‘Is this true?’ he said. ‘Tell me that it’s not.’

  Silveira glanced over at his ship, as if gauging the likelihood of a successful escape, then at the Retributor’s frowning crew. Then he sighed and shook his head sadly but before he could speak, Mandator Reen spoke.

  ‘Your real name is Ricardo Silveira. You were born on the independent colony of Mournival, you are forty-one years of age, Earth standard, you have neither spouse nor offspring, and you work as an independent contractor to Vox Humana intelligence. Our Assessors are both efficient and diligent. Now, say only the truth.’

  Sharp and furious resentment burned in Silveira’s eyes, then he shrugged.

  ‘It is as you say.’

  ‘So no connection with Earthsphere,’ Kao Chih said slowly. ‘And no chance of intervention for Darien or Pyre?’

  ‘The president of Earthsphere and her government couldn’t care less about Darien,’ Silveira said. ‘And nothing, but nothing could push them into serious opposition to Hegemony interests.’

  ‘You, on the other hand, came to Darien with a view to discovering how amenable to joining Vox Humana the colonists might be. But then you heard about the surviving Pyre colonists,’ the Roug said. ‘The Pyre colonists are of your species’ Asiatic subdivision and you realised that liberating them from the grip of a monoclan, a mercantile entity, was rather different from liberating Darien. Importantly, it would foster considerable goodwill among the Chinese Confederacy members of the Earthsphere Overcouncil. It could even lead to the lifting of the punitive sanctions imposed on Vox Humana decades ago.’

  Kao Chih nodded. ‘That is very similar to what he told us before we left Darien.’

  ‘Your corroboration strengthens our argument. So, Human Silveira, this is what we require of you – return to your superiors on the Vox Humana hubworld, along with all the data you have collected; inform them of the situation on Pyre and likewise tell them that the High Index of the Roug has been appraised of your moves and motivations. Yet we are prepared to aid Vox Humana in the liberation of the Human colonists of Pyre, which must take place in a matter of days.’

  ‘What if I refuse?’

  ‘We will not be restrained,’ the Roug said. ‘We shall widely publicise your deeds in this and previous undertakings, and include in the documentation details of your likeness, dental and retinal patterns, and your DNA markers. There is no corner of the tiernet that we cannot reach.’

  ‘You may find it hard to find similar work in the future,’ Kao Chih said.

  ‘Of course,’ Mandator Reen said, ‘for your part in this arrangement you would be eligible for an intermediary’s fee, to be lodged in an account of your choice.’

  Silveira looked thoughtful for a moment, then nodded.

  ‘Very well, Mandator Reen, I will be happy to act as your intermediary with the Vox Humana authorities. I shall communicate to them all you have specified.’

  ‘Excellent. Then you must depart without delay.’

  Silveira nodded to the Roug, looked at Kao Chih and said, ‘My apologies for the ruse.’

  Kao Chih made no reply, just folded his arms and looked back stonily. Silveira shrugged and hurried off to the Oculus Noctis. As the small ship floated through to the outer lock, Kao Chih’s mood seemed to swing between extremes, anger at Silveira’s lies, anger at himself for being duped again, grief over the situation on Darien, and a certain weary relief, and a kind of hope. Then the upper and lower bulkhead shells met and sealed, and he turned to the Roug.

  ‘Honoured patron, now that Silveira and his ship are gone, may I suggest using the Retributor to chase after the Ezgara kidnappers?’

  ‘Apart from the time required to untether and reactivate the rock habitat’s drives, it is doubtful that it possesses sufficient offensive capacity to force the Ezgara craft’s surrender. But do not be concerned, Human Chih – we shall provide a vessel appropriate to that task.’

  LEGION

  Night came to the towns and cities all around the Korzybski Sea, spreading west across hills, mountains and forests. Beneath its shroud, fighting continued, invaders crushed resistance or were ambushed, the defenceless were slaughtered and the desperate fought back, the cruel refused to extend protection to refugees, and the remorseless plotted their next move.

  Through the deep shining darkness of the Forest of Arawn, the Knight of the Legion of Avatars glided on its suspensors, escorted by a group of type-R combat mechs, twenty-two gleaming machines moving among the trees. In nearly five hours they would reach a steep-sided gully down on the southern ramparts of the Kentigern range, and the high, almost inaccessible entrance to the huge cavern where the droid autofactory was waiting. Once there, the Knight would undergo badly needed repairs, even though the materials were inferior, while mustering an army
of droids and planning possible tactics for an assault on Giant’s Shoulder.

  A glow of fires was visible through the vegetation as the Knight moved along the path cleared for it. It was skirting the site of a violent clash between, in this case, Humans and the invading Spiral fanatics. A transport pod carrying a dozen or more Gomedrans had landed badly, fetching up against a couple of big mossy boulders. This had attracted the attention of a much larger band of Humans who seemed to have attacked them in unison. This was a rash decision – the heavily armed Gomedrans were carrying suicide bombs which, faced with being overrun, they detonated. The Legion Knight noted the proliferation of body parts as it passed. This was not the first such scene it had encountered, nor was it likely to be the last.

  Even though it was travelling in a crepuscular gloom, where insects and growths shed bioluminescent radiance, its sensors were receiving datastreams from survey-modified mechs positioned on high peaks and other vantage points. Matched and merged, this multiplicity of viewpoints provided a grand perspective – the night sky above, with far-off stars glowing through the dust clouds of the deepzone, and the Human-settled coast below, a long crescent of bays and inlets, its inky darkness broken by the bright pinpoint-clusters of towns and villages, and by the flash of weaponry, the sudden flare of explosions, the yellow glow of burning houses.

  Mid- and long-range scanners were still picking up the heat signatures of ships entering the atmosphere, stragglers from the Spiral Covenant armada. The Knight knew of the church of the Father-Sages and its Spiral Prophecy offshoot, and also knew of the specious claim laid to the old temple on Giant’s Shoulder. And sure enough, by tracking comm transmissions the Knight saw that five sizeable mobs, thousands in each, were fighting their way towards the great promontory. Opposing them were bands of Humans and dislocated units of Brolturan military, who also found time to fight each other with unrestrained ferocity.

  Stirring, morale-boosting communications came from Giant’s Shoulder where the Hegemony ambassador, Kuros, was holed up. From the other side came stirring, morale-boosting exhortations to purge pagans and heathens from the sacred ground, the holy place where the Father-Sage was buried. Allegedly.

  All precipitated by the destruction of that Brolturan warship, the Purifier. With it went the centralised comnet that had proved so useful, but the Knight’s survey mechs had been able to pick individual channels out of the chaos, allowing it to observe the huge vessel’s fiery death. It had seen the thermonuclear device explode in the ship’s flank, the blast of incineration, the instant eradication of thousands of lives, and the expanding cloud of debris, most of which later entered the atmosphere, burning trails across the sky.

  By a stroke of irony, the destruction of the Purifier saved the Human stronghold at Tusk Mountain from complete annihilation. One of the Knight’s observer mechs had seen the battleship’s first particle beam strike, and he’d been impressed by the way it blasted into the massif and vaporised such a large volume of rock. But the second strike never came, leaving most of the ancient Uvovo mountain complex intact. From the results produced by its age-old sensor circuits, the Knight was certain that several energy flows met there, one of which was linked to the warpwell.

  But compared to the Brolturan forces gathered at Giant’s Shoulder, the Humans scarcely presented a genuine threat, while the Uvovo had forgotten the useful parts of their civilisation. In addition, the Forerunners’ vaunted planetary biomass sentience was confined to the forest moon, its consciousness seemingly torpid, possibly degraded. In that context, the Knight’s immediate strategy was to carry out needed repairs while moving about a third of its droids to forward staging posts along the forest’s eastern boundary. Meanwhile, the battle communications of all three sides would be closely monitored, skirmishes and clashes would be analysed, while the planet’s vicinity would be scanned for any signs of ships jumping in from hyperspace.

  And once it and its escort reached the hidden cavern, the Knight planned to set aside some time to deal with the cunning and annoying Uvovo who had been following them for nearly two days. It had a special punishment in store for that one.

  CATRIONA

  The battle for Nivyesta was going badly. In the hours since the Spiral transport crash-landed in Segrana’s northern region, a squadron of Spiral fighter craft had arrived in support of their stranded fellow zealots. Most of them had homed in on the Brolturan base, which was still resisting and still knocking them out of the sky. This part of the conflict was producing a continual string of crashes, explosions and fires which Uvovo on the south-east coast were hard-pressed to deal with. Catriona was caught in the dilemma of how to use the already thinly stretched cadres of Uvovo – the depredations of the crash survivors as they bombed and shot their way across Segrana’s forest floor was causing immense distress as entire communities fled their approach. As the hours ground on Catriona realised that she was no tactician and more than once wished that Theo was still with them.

  Then ominous news reached her. A large craft had just left the Brolturan base and was heading north inland, and from descriptions it sounded like an armoured gunship of some kind. Meanwhile, the Spiral raiders had begun attacking townships of the upper canopy, rocketing and strafing – Highsonglade and Skygarden were now deserted. There was one piece of good news, a small Spiral vessel had been captured, complete and undamaged, along with its furry, doglike pilot. Admittedly, this triumph was due mainly to the same pilot, who flipped his craft while the cockpit was open and, crucially, while not wearing the couch restraints. This resulted in a headlong plummet into a resilient suska bush from which he was retrieved unharmed.

  Apart from that, events turned increasingly grim. Down in the twilight of the forest floor, a large force of Uvovo unexpectedly encountered a smaller group of Spiral offworlders and came off worst – the zealots were armed with a wide range of heavy weapons and were enthusiastic in their use. Laser rifles, grenade launchers, even some kind of lightning-bolt gun, were unleashed against the Uvovo and the surrounding forest. The aftermath, to Catriona’s senses, was a black ruin of smoke and blood.

  Uvovo trackers dogging the brutal intruders’ footsteps eventually deduced that they numbered no more than thirty, which accounted for roughly a third of those who fled the crash site. Therefore there were another sixty or more at large in the depths of Segrana. Suddenly anxious, she cast the net of her senses further, hunting for creatures not yet gone to ground, hoping to peer through their eyes and discover the dangerous zealots.

  But it was the Brolturans who found them first.

  The gunship they had dispatched was much faster than the previous vessels and after reaching the crashed transport, it followed a southward course, flying low over the treetops. According to the sparse reports that reached Catriona, the Brolturans’ route closely matched that of the Spiral fanatics. Despite the dense greenery of the canopy and the mid-branch foliage, the gunship picked up the intruders’ trail, stalked them through the falling night, then, when a sizeable mob was within range, it opened fire.

  A few small spies on the wing had been feeding Catriona occasional glimpses of the large craft’s progress. Then without warning they scattered in alarm and the next thing Cat knew, waves of distress were pulsing through the weave of being. It sharpened and took on overtones of fear and then pain. Then a few jerky images reached her, of flames ripping through dense forest, of figures ducking and running, and others pointing weapons skywards, firing chains of bright spikes.

  The images chopped and shifted, a mosaic of chaos. Sheets of flame wrapped themselves around huge, ancient trees, licking and clawing higher, burning furiously despite the dampness. Then she saw a line of fiery explosions burst one after another through the forest, and realised that her worst fear had come to pass. Incendiaries, the very weapon that Catriona had dreaded from the very start.

  And now the Brolturans reckon that they’ve got nothing to lose, she thought. Now they’re out for revenge and we’re in the way.

&
nbsp; Yet even if the Brolt vessel rained destruction on the fleeing fanatics, this was still only a tiny portion of the vastness of Segrana, its animal population, food plants, biomass and streams self-renewing over time … but against the waves of terrible news flooding through the weave of being, such comparisons seemed callous, however accurate.

  Fleeting glimpses of conflagration continued to filter through. So, in tandem with Segrana’s far-flung influence, she caused high-level rain reservoirs to spill down into the smoke-hazed gloom. Specialised filter roots were used to pump water up from mid-branch troughs or across from unaffected areas. At the same time gangs of Uvovo scampered to and fro across the upper branch-ways, slogging through heat and ashen smoke as they bucket-chained water down onto the fires burning in the wake of the bombing. Several reports came through from a Listener crouched in a vudron dangerously close to the Spiral zealots’ southerly route – his scholars were spying on them as they followed a long U-shaped valley that curved westwards. Squads of Uvovo scouts were also out there, courting peril as they tried to stay on the trail of the offworlders, who, it now seemed, had some kind of proximity detector.

  Then Catriona received unsettling information. The wide valley’s eastern wall comprised a line of cliffs, steep hills and ridges, all interwoven with dark, dense undergrowth, a formidable obstacle to anyone travelling on foot. Yet the zealots had turned east and were heading straight for them; on reaching that barrier they would surely be forced to turn back or continue southwards. Half an hour later came bad news – they had found a narrow, barely accessible pass between two rearing crags and were moving through it. At the other end of the pass a lush fruit vale led to the Gardentrees, five huge, specially cultivated vaskin trees. They were clustered around a scholar town called Seedspringlow; most of the youngest Uvovo children from the south-east towns and villages had been sent there soon after the Brolturans arrived on Nivyesta. Luckily Catriona had ordered them evacuated a few hours ago, dispatching them to a harvest town about a dozen miles north-east.