by Jo Zebedee
“What is that?” he said in awe.
Plessant glanced back at him and scowled. “Rocks,” she said.
“But look at it!” insisted Ormuz. “Can’t you see the light?”
“Very pretty,” remarked Lotsman tonelessly. He shrugged his survival pack higher onto his shoulder and grimaced.
“But what causes it?” asked Ormuz.
Tovar stepped forward from the rear. “It’s a natural phenomenon, Cas,” he explained. “The sinkholes are all interconnected and lined with refractive crystals. Sunlight striking one pool is emitted by others, and coloured by the salts dissolved in the water. The effect is more obvious when the ambient light is low, as it is now.”
Ormuz turned to him. “You’ve been here before?”
“None of us have been here before,” snapped Plessant. “And we’ll never be coming to this bloody place again.”
Dai interrupted: “Come on. We’ve only walked fifteen miles today. We need to make a few more before it gets dark.”
Lotsman groaned theatrically.
Plessant started forwards.
Ormuz remained on the ridge for a moment or two. He had seen much in the last two years he had found impressive… But they had been constructed by humans, recently or in the distant past. Like Ophavon. But this… Every now and again, it seemed, Nature could still take your breath away.
And on such a dour and depressing world as this…
The others were already at the first of the sink-holes some twenty yards away. Ormuz hooked his thumbs under the straps of his two bags and set off. He jogged until he had caught up with Tovar. It was not easy on the rocky ground. Twice, his foot landed badly and his ankle threatened to twist. He slowed to a walking pace once he had drawn abreast of the cargo-master.
Up close, the effect of the light issuing from the sink-holes was less obvious. The pool of water shone like a candy-coloured blot on the landscape but the column rising above it was too faint to be seen. He reached out an arm as they skirted the sink-hole and held it over the pool. The light tinted his hand an unearthly pale blue. He withdrew his hand with a start and saw Lotsman watching him with amusement.
“This place’ll play havoc with optical sensors,” the pilot said.
“It’s playing havoc with my bloody eyesight,” complained Plessant.
Tovar took Ormuz’s elbow and steered away from the sink-hole’s edge. “Better not fall in, Cas. With all those dissolved salts, the water might be poisonous.”
They crossed a stretch of ground between sink-holes. The pools varied in diameter. Some were tens of yards across; others no more than ten or twelve feet from side to side. There was no straight route across the plain. The sink-holes were sited at random and they had to work their way around and between them.
Plessant stumbled to a halt and swore. She gazed down at her feet. The others gathered alongside her. Stretching across their path was a narrow crevasse. It was too wide to jump. Dim in the ravine’s dark depths could be seen a narrow ribbon of aquamarine. Lotsman leaned forward carefully, and peered into the crevasse. His chin and lower face turned faint blue. Ormuz laughed at the effect. Plessant glared at him.
“We’ll have to find a way round it,” she said. She turned right and began striding alongside the ravine.
After some three hundred yards, the crevasse narrowed enough to be crossed with a jump. Each member of the crew backed away from the ravine, then ran forwards and leapt. And landed a good four feet in from the other edge. Tovar hit the ground badly and pitched sideways. He yelped as his shoulder hit the rock and rolled onto his back. Lotsman pulled him to his feet. The cargo-master had torn his sleeve and a raw graze was visible through the rent. They stopped for ten minutes while Plessant dressed the graze and chewed gratefully on bars of emergency rations.
“I want to be off this plain before night falls,” Plessant said, turning from the cargo-master. “We’ll never sleep with this place lit up like it is.”
“I could sleep anywhere,” Lotsman declared, affecting a bone-weary expression.
Dai lifted an arm and pointed ahead. “I can see a ridge. A mile, maybe.”
Plessant nodded brusquely. “We’ll head for the ridge. Once we’re over it, we’ll think about stopping.”
It was nearer two miles to the ridge but no one begrudged Dai her mistake. It was difficult to judge distances on that plain of spectral pillars. Ormuz glanced back over his shoulder as he climbed. The shafts of light were still there, supporting the sky. Night was still a couple of hours away but the light level was noticeably darker. The pillars of blues and greens shone all the more brightly. It could almost be a columned hall in a palace. But the pools were dotted about the plain without plan and their randomness spoiled the illusion.
The crew of Divine Providence reached the crest of the ridge. Before them was revealed a wide depression some twenty miles in diameter. It was a huge crater, the result of some vast cavern whose roof had collapsed in the distant past. The rubble littering the depression’s floor had been eaten away by rain and scoured by wind until it was merely a scattering of rounded lumps of rock. To Ormuz, they resembled a crowd of hunched stone-grey figures worshipping in all directions.
It was only when they had descended amongst the stones that Ormuz realised distance had fooled him as to the boulders’ size. Most towered over him. They were widely spaced, with hundreds of feet between them. Streaks of dirty brown lichen zigzagged down their sides. Some boasted grooves and runnels carved by water run-offs from their flat tops.
They left the thickest concentration of boulders and entered a relatively open patch. Plessant pointed. “We’ll pitch camp when we reach those rocks,” she said.
Ormuz sighed. The boulders were at least five hundred yards away. More walking. He looked up but the cloud-deck lowered as menacingly as it had all day. He could not see the sun. It was hidden somewhere behind those roiling cumuli. It could not be too near sunset since the glow back-lighting the clouds was still white. As the sun dropped towards the horizon, its light would turn pink and red and when the cloud-deck became an undulating pillow of salmon, russet and scarlet, then the sun must be minutes away from setting.
“We still have a couple more hours of daylight left,” pointed out Tovar.
Thinking the cargo-master knew of the same effect, Ormuz turned to him. But no: Tovar was peering at his wristwatch.
“I don’t care,” Plessant replied. “I’m tired.”
No one argued.
They stumbled on, the line of boulders which formed their destination drawing closer with each step. Ormuz, hands gripping the straps of his two bags, pulling them forwards to better distribute their weight, plodded on. The captain led, Dai at her heels. Lotsman was two yards to Ormuz’s left. Tovar had once again fallen back to the rear.
A roar of thunder echoed across the plain. The sound bounced from the boulders, layering over itself again and again. Plessant swore and looked up. Ormuz followed her gaze. To his eye, the sky looked no different. And yet that continual roll of thunder—
No, not thunder. Ormuz saw something carve a path through the cumuli. An aerocraft. “Look!” he cried, and pointed.
The aerocraft swung about in a wide banked turn and lost altitude. It was now below the cloud-deck.
And it was not an aerocraft.
“Run!” yelled Plessant.
It was a boat. From a starship.
Ormuz broke into a lumbering run, following the other four members of the crew. They made for the safety of the nearest boulders.
The boat—probably a gig, given its small size—was noticeably lower, no more than five or six hundred yards above the plain. It circled, the roar of its gas-rockets reverberating amongst the rocks. Machinery unfolded with slow deliberation from panels in the bulbous fuselage beneath its flat triangular wing—more gas-rockets, like the barrels of cannon, directing thrust forwards and downwards.
Ormuz reached a boulder and flung
himself behind it. From the shelter of its rocky shoulder, he peered out at the descending craft. It circled tighter, was coming in to land. He saw its prow-like nose lift as its airspeed dropped. It came to a halt and hovered some hundred yards above the ground, wobbling uncertainly. Ormuz frowned and narrowed his gaze. It was hard to make out details. The gig was painted a dark grey, almost camouflaged against the clouds above it.
“No, wait!” he called to the others.
“Keep your bloody head down!” Plessant shouted back. “They’ll see you!”
Ormuz turned to her. The captain squatted behind a boulder twenty feet away. She had her back to the rock, and was not watching the boat.
“It’s not Riz!” Ormuz said.
Plessant’s head jerked round to stare at him.
“From the starport?” demanded Dai, incredulous. From her hiding-place, the engineer could not see the hovering gig.
“No!”
Ormuz stepped out from behind his boulder. He walked forward, waving his hands above his head.
“Cas!” yelled Plessant.
The boat slowly yawed about until it faced him. It was 150 feet up and 300 feet away, but still descending. Dust and pebbles billowed up beneath it from the gas-rockets’ flames. A fierce wind blew across Ormuz. He turned his head away and screwed his eyes shut.
“Cas!” howled Plessant.
“Can’t you see the symbol on the side?” he yelled back. “It’s the inspector!”
He had seen the mailed fist on the craft’s fuselage. And there could only be one reason why an OPI gig was on Bato.
Ormuz heard the boat’s wheels hit rock. The gas-rockets cut off, leaving an abrupt silence. The fuselage plinked as it cooled. He opened his eyes. Lotsman had stepped out from behind his boulder, his hand to his brow. Plessant appeared behind him. She pushed roughly past him and strode towards Ormuz.
“It’s Finesz?” she said angrily. “Rot it, Cas.”
He didn’t understand. “We’re saved, captain.”
“By the OPI?” She reached him. She raised a hand as if to slap him, but dropped it with a grimace. “Why couldn’t you stay hidden?”
Ormuz slid his bags from his shoulders. They hit the ground with muffled thumps. “Because we have to get to Kapuluan,” he said.
“And Finesz’ll take us there?” sneered Plessant.
“But of course.” Ormuz blinked. Finesz wanted answers and the answers were on Kapuluan.
“How can you be sure it’s her?” Plessant demanded.
“Who else could it be?”
“Do you want a list?” the captain snapped. She gazed past Ormuz at the boat.
Ormuz turned. He could see the craft’s crew busy at their controls through the control cupola scuttles. Both wore black. “Captain,” he said, “we have no choice. We’re days away from the nearest town. Riz is sure to find us before we reach it. She’s probably already on-planet. We’d never get away.”
A hatch on the side of the gig popped out and slid up. A stair unfolded. Its feet thumped onto the rocky ground.
“We certainly won’t now,” Plessant said bitterly. “You can throw in your lot with the Oppies if you want but you’re making a huge mistake. We can save you. They—” She pointed at the gig. “Well, there’s no guarantee they can keep you from the Serpent.”
“They will,” Ormuz replied with confidence.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Finesz thudded down the steps from the gig’s airlock. She grinned at the group standing some ten yards away. “Need a lift?” she called. She laughed in delight.
Ormuz stepped forward, leaving a scowling Plessant and a puzzled and unsure Lotsman, Tovar and Dai. He approached Finesz confidently. All five appeared the worse for wear, coveralls streaked with dirt, boots painted with powdered rock. Ormuz had a dressing, grey with filth, wrapped around one arm. His hair hung loose and tangled, tresses clumped into ropes which dangled to his shoulders. He reached Finesz, pushed a hank of hair away from his face and gave a tentative smile. Finesz frowned. That smile was a touch calculating. Her euphoria at beating Gotovach to the data-freighter’s crew abruptly evaporated.
“You weren’t at Kapuluan,” she accused.
“You’ve been there already?” asked Ormuz, surprised. He frowned. “Oh, of course: the time-lag.”
Finesz stated the obvious: “You’re injured.” She glanced past Ormuz at the approaching remainder of the crew. Lotsman’s face was black and blue down one side, Dai’s platinum-blonde hair tarred with black on the crown, and Tovar had a snaky line of dried blood across one temple. Only the captain, Plessant, was uninjured.
“We should leave,” Ormuz said. He pushed past Finesz and set foot on the lowest step of the ladder leading up to the hatch.
“The battlecruiser?” she asked.
Ormuz froze. He turned back to her. “She shot us down,” he said, his voice flat. “We nearly didn’t make it.”
“So Riz Gotovach is not on your side, after all.”
“That’s what I don’t understand. She is.”
Someone stopped at Finesz’s side. It was Plessant. “We may be about to find out,” the captain said. She was gazing at a section of the sky beyond the OPI gig, above the plain with the sink-holes. She raised one hand to her brow the better to see against the louring clouds.
Finesz followed her gaze but could see nothing. The pillars of light dotting the plain made vision difficult. “What is it?” she demanded. “What can you see?”
She regretted the question the moment she uttered it. Now she saw what had caught Plessant’s attention. Four hundred yards away and some fifty yards above the ground, a shape flew through a wide column of turquoise, and was briefly illuminated. Sleek, hump-backed, it was too sturdy to be an aerocraft. A boat.
The boat banked into a turn and headed towards them. It drifted purposefully their way on jets of fire, the landscape beneath it blurred, and the pillars of light behind it and visible below it rendered into wavering curtains of blue, turquoise and aquamarine. Aft of the control cupola, a dorsal turret was aimed squarely in their direction. A section of hull flashed a rich blue as it breached a column of light from a sink-hole. The unearthly hue made the boat seem all the more lethal.
The boat drew closer with predatory menace. At a distance of one hundred yards, it halted. A cloud of dust blew upwards from the ground, rolling away from the boat in all directions like a carpet. A hot breeze, redolent of scorched earth, wafted across Finesz and the data-freighter crew. The small craft’s nose lowered five degrees, giving the dorsal turret an improved field-of-fire. Nose-down, the boat wallowed briefly, before beginning to descend. The roar of its gas-rockets was now loud enough to drown out conversation. Small pebbles flew up from the ground directly beneath the small craft. They bounced and rolled away. Several landed in pools. Their splashes were as brightly-coloured as the surface of the water.
Finesz glanced across at Ormuz and saw that his attention was fixed on the boat. She was surprised by the expression of satisfaction on his face.
The boat’s landing-gear had deployed, heavy-duty tricycle undercarriage. The tyres touched rock. The landing-gear struts bent. Powerful hydraulics accepted the weight of the boat. They flexed momentarily, the small craft bending knee to its watchers. There was nothing subservient in the gesture, however. The boat appeared as menacing on the ground as it had in the air. The dorsal turret was still trained on the gig. Finesz swore. The OPI craft was unarmed and unarmoured.
The boat’s gas-rockets ceased and an unnatural hush fell across the plain. The scuff of a boot against rock sounded loudly behind Finesz. She resisted the urge to turn to see who had caused it. The bow split, port and starboard halves slowly separating to reveal an entrance to the boat’s interior. Figures marched down a ramp and spread out to either side in a line facing the gig. Finesz recognised their uniforms. Green jackets over dun coveralls: Imperial Marines. She counted four; two were huge brutes. A pair of f
igures joined the marines: a Navy officer, and another marine, an officer by the white facings on his jacket. The Navy officer removed her kepi. Finesz was shocked to see white hair. Gotovach? The marine officer was certainly Niwashi. She felt pleased to have guessed his military arm correctly. But was that really Gotovach? What had happened to her hair?
For several minutes, the two groups stared at each other. The marines held their barbed and bladed boarding axes across their chests but made no move. Both Gotovach and Niwashi left their swords sheathed.
“Cas,” said Plessant urgently, “get up into the gig. It’s you they’re after.”
“If they wanted to kill us, they could have done so from the air,” Ormuz replied.
“They could still take us,” Finesz pointed out. “I have one troop-sergeant and two gig crew. And Niwashi is a master swordsman.”
“No.” Ormuz stepped forward, passing Finesz, and halted two yards in front of her.
Gotovach took a pace forwards. She held her kepi down at her side. Her other hand was on the hilt of her sword.
Finesz moved to stand beside Ormuz. She put a hand on the youth’s shoulder. He glanced at her in annoyance but did not shrug off her hand.
“Leave,” called Gotovach. “Get back in your boat and leave.” The white hair had thrown Finesz but she recognised the voice from the overheard conversation in Amwadina all those weeks ago.
“All of us?” demanded Finesz.
Gotovach slapped her kepi against her thigh. “Don’t play games! The Divine Providence crew come with us.”
“They’re mine,” replied Finesz. “They come with me.”
“You’re in no position to argue,” Gotovach pointed out. As she spoke, the five marines shifted menacingly. No more need be said.
Ormuz spoke up: “We’re going with the Oppies.”
Gotovach’s gaze fastened on the young man. She frowned. “Casimir?” She hit her leg with her kepi once again. “I’m not asking you, I’m telling you.”
“Or what?” demanded Ormuz. “You’ll kill us? You must have guessed by now that I’m the one they’re taking to Kapuluan. Don’t you want to know why?”