There was a small but certain change in the texture of the grass whipping against Fenton’s blunt muzzle. The dead mat of decaying blades covering the flinty soil becoming thicker, springier. Water, and close by. Fenton slowed to smell the air.
“Kelly,” Reza datavised. “There’s a small stream two hundred metres ahead, steep gully sides. Head for it. Part of the bank has collapsed, you can take the hovercraft down.”
A guidance plot filled her mind, all close-packed brown and blue contour lines, a computer image of how the earth would look stripped of vegetation. Neural nanonics integrated it with the piloting program, and she tweaked the joystick.
“Where does it lead?” she asked. So far all they had done was build distance between them and the homestead cabin, heading due south without any attempt to get back on the river which led to the mountains.
“Nowhere. It’s cover for us, that’s all. The knights are trying to wear us down; and the bastards are succeeding. We can’t keep this pace going for ever, and the hovercraft electron matrices are being drained. Once we’re immobile the pikemen will catch up, and it’ll all be over. They know we can’t fight off that many of them. We have to regain the initiative.”
Kelly didn’t like the implications leaping round inside her skull at that statement. But she did her best to ignore them. Hunted beasts couldn’t afford scruples, especially ones that knew exactly what lay in store if they were caught.
She datavised a query at her communication block. Since they left the homestead cabin it had been broadcasting a continuous signal up to the geosynchronous platform and the secure satellites Terrance Smith had brought with him. There was no need for secrecy now. But the darkened cloud was still blocking the directional beam very effectively.
Theo’s hovercraft slowed as it neared the stream, then the nose fell and it went into a controlled slither down the scree of crumbling earth. The gully was three metres deep, with tall reed-grass growing along the top. Smooth grey stones filled the flat bottom, with a trickle of water running down the middle. A muddy pool had built up behind the scree.
Kelly followed the first hovercraft down, juggling the fan deflectors frantically to stop them from sliding into the opposite bank. She turned upstream keeping ten metres behind Theo. He reached the deepest part of the gully and killed the lift.
The mercenaries were jumping down from the top of the bank.
“Everybody out of the hovercraft,” Reza said. “And sit with your backs to the gully here.” He pointed.
Northern side, Kelly thought. She stood up—don’t think about it —and helped to hand the children over the gunwale. They looked round in bewilderment, young faces lost and doleful. “It’s all right,” she kept saying. “Everything’s all right.” Don’t think about it. She kept smiling too, so they wouldn’t catch her anxiety.
Octan glided down into the gully, and perched himself on Pat Halahan’s broad shoulder, wings folding tightly. Fenton was already nosing round Reza’s legs.
Don’t think about it. Kelly sat beside Jay. The little girl obviously knew something terrible was about to happen. “It’s all right,” Kelly whispered. “Really.” She winked, though it was more like a nervous tic. Flints in the gully wall were sharp on her back. Water gurgled round her boots.
“Joshua,” Kelly datavised into her communication block. “Joshua, answer me, for Christ’s sake. Joshua!” All she was given in reply was the oscillating ghost-wind of static.
There was a scuttling sound as the mercenaries sat down on the stones. Several children were sniffling.
“Shut your eyes, and keep them shut,” Reza said loudly. “I shall smack anyone who I see with open eyes.”
The children hurriedly did as they were told.
Kelly closed her eyes, took a breath, and slowly folded her shaking arms over her head.
As soon as the event horizon collapsed, Joshua accessed the image supplied by the short-range combat sensors. Lady Mac had emerged from her jump six thousand kilometres above Lalonde. There was nothing within two thousand kilometres. He datavised the full sensor-suite deployment, and triggered the fusion drives. They moved in at a cautious two gees, aiming for a thousand-kilometre orbit.
No starships were left in orbit, the sensors reported, even the inter-orbit craft from Kenyon had vanished. Victim of a combat wasp, Joshua assumed. There was a lot of metallic wreckage, most of it in highly eccentric elliptical orbits, and all of it radioactive.
“Melvyn, access the communication satellites, see if there’s any data traffic for us. And Sarha, see if there are any low-orbit observation satellites left, their memories might hold something useful.”
They both acknowledged their orders and datavised instructions to the flight computer. The starship’s main dish found one of the secure communication satellites, and beams of microwave radiation sprang up to enmesh the planet in a loose web. Lady Macbeth started to receive data from the various observation systems left functional.
Everybody seemed to be working smoothly. Their flight to Achillea and the slingshot round its moon had passed off flawlessly. Jubilation at the successful jump from Murora had temporarily balanced out the loss of Warlow. Certainly Joshua experienced none of the sense of accomplishment which should have accompanied the Lagrange-point stunt. The most fantastic piece of flying in his life.
Gaura said he wasn’t sure, but he thought the transference had worked, certainly a large quantity of the old cosmonik’s memories had been datavised successfully into Aethra. The habitat had been integrating them when Lady Mac jumped.
The prospect of him living on as part of the multiplicity helped ease the grief—to a degree. Joshua felt a lot of regrets bubbling below his surface thoughts; things he’d said, things he should have said. Jesus, did Warlow have a family? I’ll have to tell them.
“Nothing from the communication satellites, Joshua,” Melvyn said heavily. “Thanks.” The idea that Kelly and the mercenaries had been caught was unbearable. That would mean their own flight had been for nothing, and Warlow—“Stand by to broadcast a message from Lady Mac ’s main dish, we’ll see if we can break through the cloud with sheer power. Sarha, what have you got?”
“Not much. There are only seven low-orbit observation satellites left. They took a real pounding in the battle yesterday. But, Joshua, someone detonated a nuke down there earlier this morning.”
“Jesus. Where?”
“I think it was at Durringham. The satellite only saw the blast as it fell below the horizon.”
Joshua accessed the main sensor image. The red cloudbands over the tributaries had expanded dramatically. Individual strands had blended together producing a homogenized oval smear that covered the entire Juliffe basin. He realized the bright flame-glimmer Durringham had produced before was missing.
Then he noticed a large circular section of cloud in the south-east had lost its red nimbus altogether, becoming a malaised grey. Interest stirred at the back of his mind; it almost looked as if the red cloud was being ruined by some cancerous growth. He datavised the flight computer for a guidance grid.
“It’s south of the Quallheim villages,” he said with a sense of growing confidence.
“That grey patch?” Sarha asked.
“Yeah. Exactly where Kelly said they were going.”
“Could be,” Dahybi said. “Maybe the mercenaries have found a way of damaging the cloud.”
“Perhaps. Melvyn, focus our dish on it, and start transmitting. See if you can punch through and raise Kelly directly.” Joshua centred an optical sensor on the area and upped the magnification. The hoary amorphous cloudscape rushed out to fill his mind. It wasn’t giving any clues away, there were no breaks, no glimpses of the ground below. “Ashly, have you been following this?”
“Yes, Joshua,” the pilot answered from the spaceplane cabin.
“We’ll be in orbit in another three minutes. I want you to launch as soon as we finish decelerating. Loiter above those mountains in the south, and we’ll see if
the mercenary team can get out from under the cloud. Under no circumstances are you to go under it.”
“No fear.”
“Good.” He datavised the flight computer to open the spaceplane hangar doors. “Anything from Kelly, yet?”
“Sorry, Joshua, only static.”
“She said they wouldn’t be out from under the cloud until the afternoon,” Sarha pointed out. “It isn’t quite noon there yet.”
“I know. But that cloud is still growing, even the grey section. If it reaches the mountains they’ll be in serious trouble. The hovercraft won’t be able to handle that sort of country. They’ll be trapped between the two.”
“We can wait,” Dahybi said. “For a week if we have to.”
Joshua nodded vaguely, eyes tight shut as he flipped through sensor inputs, desperate for any sort of hint. “Come on, Kelly,” he murmured. “Show us you’re there.”
Ryall padded stealthily through the long grass. The scent of humans was strong in the air. Many had passed by very recently. But none were near him now.
After leaving his master he had run swiftly east, the big weight fastened round his neck jouncing about uncomfortably. After a couple of kilometres the masterlove thoughts in his brain had guided him to one side. He had traced a wide curve over the savannah, now he was heading back to his starting point.
When he reached a wide swath of grass, beaten down by many tramping feet, Ryall waited at the edge for a moment—listening, sniffing. Instinct told him he was alone. Satisfied, the masterlove thoughts urged him out. The swath led all the way back to the jungle, he turned the other way. Five hundred metres ahead of him, the homestead cabin jutted up out of the grassland. He hurried towards it, a hungering sensation racing through his blood.
The grass was beaten down all around the cabin. Fences had been broken. Cows wandered about, grazing placidly, paying no attention to him. Goats saw him coming and ran jerkily until they realized he wasn’t chasing them. Chickens escaped from their smashed pen were scratching in the dirt; they scattered squawking when he trotted up to the cabin.
Height. The masterlove thoughts wanted him to have height. Ryall swung his big head from side to side, viewing the back wall of the cabin; then loped over to a pile of composite pods stacked at one corner. He jumped, bounding up the pods, then sprang for the eaves. Paws skated unsteadily on the solar-cell panels nailed to the roof, but he found his footing on the ginger qualtook-bark tiles and scampered his way up to the apex.
His master used his eyes to peer out across the savannah. The line of men carrying pikes were a kilometre away. And almost lost in the gloaming ahead of them the band of knights on horseback galloped after their prey.
Ryall felt a curious mix of excitement and sorrow. But the masterlove thoughts were full of gentle praise. He thumped his tail on the qualtook tiles in response.
Then the masterlove thoughts were guiding his left forepaw to the heavy weight hanging from his neck. He bent his head round and watched attentively as his extended nails caught the edge of a small hinged panel and eased it open. Glowing squares were revealed.
Masterlove adoration flowed through him. Very carefully his nail touched one of the squares. Once. Twice. Thrice—
The spaceplane stopped shaking as it dropped to subsonic velocity. It had been a fast, steep descent, Ashly had made the little craft stand almost on its tail to aerobrake. Now he levelled out and datavised the wings into their forward-sweep position. Nose-mounted sensors showed him the mountains rolling past below; the fringe of the cloud was fifty kilometres to the north. Short puffy fronds extended out from the main bulk, snaking through the air like blind searching insect antennae towards the foothills.
He datavised the flight computer for a channel up to Lady Macbeth . “Any word yet?”
“Nothing,” Joshua replied. “Sarha says the observation satellites recorded that patch of cloud turning grey immediately after the Durringham nuke. We’re not too sure what that means, but then I don’t think normal logic applies here.”
“Too right. I’ve got enough power in the electron matrices for a five-hour flight before I have to come back up and recharge. If you want that extending I could land on one of these peaks, they’re fairly isolated.”
“No. You keep airborne, Ashly. Frankly, if they’re not out of there in five hours I don’t think we’ll see them again. And I’ve already lost one crewman today.”
“You didn’t lose him, Joshua. Silly old fart. Now I’ve got to come back and wander through Aethra’s parkland talking to the trees. Hell, he’ll love that. Kill himself laughing I expect.”
“Thanks, Ashly.”
The pilot loaded a course into the computer, a patrol circuit along the length of the grey cloud section, staying at eight thousand metres. Thermals shooting up off the rocky slopes rocked the wings in agitated rhythms as the spaceplane flew overhead.
Jay thought it was a lightning bolt. Blackness suddenly and silently turned to bright scarlet. She sucked in a breath—it must have been frightfully close. But there was no thunderclap. Not at first.
The redness faded away. She risked opening her eyes. Everything seemed normal, except it was a lot lighter than it had been before. As if the sun was finally rising behind her back. Then the noise started, a dry roar which built and built. She heard some of the children start to whimper. The ground began to tremble, the gully wall vibrating her back. And the brightness behind her kept growing. A sheet of white light sprang across the top of the gully, throwing the floor into deep shadow. It began to tilt downwards, turning the opposite bank unbearably bright. Jay could just hear the lady beside her shouting what sounded like a prayer at the top of her voice. She closed her eyes again, little squeaks of fear escaping from her throat.
Lady Macbeth was passing over Amarisk’s western coast, a hundred kilometres north of Durringham, when Reza detonated the nuke. The sensors caught its initial flash, a concussion of photons turning the grey clouds momentarily translucent.
“Jesus Christ,” Joshua gasped. He datavised the flight computer for a secure communication channel to the spaceplane. “Ashly, did you see that?”
“I saw it, Joshua. The spaceplane sensors registered an emp pulse equivalent to about a kiloton blast.”
“Are your electronics OK?”
“Yes. Couple of processor drop-outs, but the back-ups are on line.”
“It’s them. It has to be.”
“Joshua!” Sarha called. “Look at the cloud.”
He accessed the sensor image again. A four hundred metre circle of the cloud looked as if it was on fire below the surface. As he watched it rose up into a lofty ignescent fleuron. The tip burst open. A ragged beam of rose-gold light shone through.
Lady Mac ’s flight computer datavised a priority signal from one of the communication satellites direct into Joshua’s neural nanonics.
“Joshua?” Kelly called. “This is Reza’s team calling Lady Mac . Joshua, are you up there?”
Tactical graphics immediately overlaid the optical sensor image, pinpointing her communications block to within fifteen centimetres. Close to the blast point, very close. “I’m here, Kelly.”
“Oh, Christ, Joshua! Help us. Now!”
“Spaceplane’s on its way. What’s your situation, have you got the children?”
“Yes, damn it. They’re with us, all of them. But we’re being chased to hell and back by the fucking Knights of the Round Table. You’ve got to get us out of here.”
Vast strips of rank grey cloud were peeling back from the centre of the blast. Joshua could see down onto the savannah. It was a poor angle, but a vivid amber fireball was ascending from the centre of a calcinated wasteland.
“Go,” Joshua datavised to Ashly. “Go go go.”
Reza stood on top of the gully, bracing himself against the baked wind driving out from the blast. A mushroom cloud was roiling upwards from the cemetery of the homestead, alive with gruesome internal energy surges. It had gouged a wide crater, uneven curving
sides spouting runnels of capricious magma.
He brought a series of filter programs on-line, and scanned the savannah. A firestorm was raging for two kilometres around the crater. Pixels from the section of ground where the marching pikemen had been were amplified. He studied the resulting matrix of square lenses. There were no remnants, not even pyres; none of them had survived. He tracked back. Knights and horses had been hurled indiscriminately across the smouldering grass two and a half kilometres away. Encased in that metal armour human bodies should have first been triturated by the blast wave then fried by the infrared radiation.
He watched one silver figure struggle to its knees, then use a broadsword shoved into the ground to clamber to its feet.
Ye Gods, what will kill them?
A horse kicked its legs and rolled over, surging upwards. It trotted obediently over to its fallen rider. Slowly but surely the entire band was remounting.
Reza jumped back into the gully. Children were being packed back into the hovercraft.
“Joshua’s here,” Kelly yelled over the trumpeting wind. Her tear-stained face framed a radiant smile. “Lady Mac ’s in orbit. The spaceplane’s on its way. We’re safe, we’re out of here!”
“How long?”
“Ashly says about ten minutes.”
Not enough, Reza thought. The knights will be here by then, they’ll hit the spaceplane with their white fire, if they don’t just switch off its circuitry with that black magic. “Kelly, you and Theo take off south. The rest of you, with me. We’re going to arrange a small delay.”
“No, Reza!” Kelly implored. “You can’t, not now. It’s over. Ashly will get here.”
“That was an order, Kelly. We’ll catch up with you when we’ve finished off these mounted pricks.”
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