‘S-Az is already there,’ Jathra said. ‘Ha, they’re watching us come down.’
‘It all seems so ordinary.’ Larn stared at the viewscreen. ‘Yet the people are different.’ Then he started. ‘No! Those two, that girl, the boy, surely they are Moi?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Kyrus said. ‘They’re not, either. Like Jathra they are locals. Physically, they are the same as your people.’
‘What’s that you traveled in?’ Ginny said as they stepped down on the field. ‘Built it yourself?’
‘It’s the ship’s tender, Lieutenant,’ Kyrus said mock-haughtily. ‘Meet Midshipman Larn, of the old Realmfleet. He was the only one wearing a stasis suit, so he survived. He lost everything, though.’
Ginny held out a large brown hand. ‘Tough luck, mate,’ she said with a Kell’s simplicity. Then she looked puzzled. ‘On watch in the engine room in a brain-steered ship? Why?’
Larn coughed. ‘I showed too much enthusiasm at the sight of Shan 4, my first foreign base, so my officer sent me to cool my heels watching the mana crystals sing,’ he said stiffly.
Ginny grunted. ‘Then you had those types too. Let’s go have a drink of lemonade to honor your return to the universe.’
Together, Ginny and the crew took the boy with them to the mess. Kyrus looked around. There was a new building, and all the Dregh junk had gone. Another barracks was halfway finished.
‘Fast work, Gunild,’ he said. ‘The port is growing while we watch.’
‘I’ve waited long enough for this, sir. Now we’ll become the biggest port in the galaxy.’
‘That’s good,’ Kyrus said. ‘We will show them. You keep an eye on that kid Larn, will you?’
‘I’ll put him down for some nice course. Then I can smooth out some of his pain without being too obvious.’
‘You’re getting devious,’ Kyrus said.
‘Your pardon, sir,’ she said immediately.
‘No, it was meant as a compliment. Don’t stop doing it.’
She chuckled. ‘I said there were no differences between the Moi and your people? I was wrong; there are. But they are cultural. You are far more flexible and easy-going; Moi tend to be very constrained.’
Kyrus thought of some people he knew and laughed. ‘Not all of us.’
‘All the ones I met are. Sir, would the admiral want me to enlarge the dome? I need another mile to receive the flagship.’
‘I’m sure she would,’ Kyrus said. ‘Expand as much as you need; Emma has no other place to go.’
More hands, he thought. Now we need to find a crew for her as well. ‘Emma?’
‘Sir?’
‘How large a crew do you need to have?’
‘Need to operate, or need to be flagship?’
Kyrus grinned. ‘Both.’
‘None to operate, and how much my flag officer thinks they need, sir,’ she said.
‘None?’ Kyrus said. ‘Wouldn’t you need troops to fend off boarders or help ruined bases?’
‘If that’s what you want to go do, yes.’
‘Don’t you?’
‘Sir, you ask me what I want? I’d probably down my shields and sail into the sun.’
‘That’s pointless,’ Gunild said. ‘You have a strong mind and a beautiful body. Now you need a purpose, gal. These people offer honorable service. Take the job and get cracking.’
‘Let me think on it,’ Emma said. ‘A job... The last thousand years I’ve been counting stars. That’s not much of a job, is it? I’m tired, Captain Kyrus.’
‘What you need is a good overhaul,’ Gunild said. ‘I haven’t got the facilities and I doubt old Atharn gets his base together soon. The admiral should look for one of the big space yards; Son 4 or Catelhaze.’
‘I’ll discuss it with her. Back to my last question. How large a crew do you need?’
‘Regulations say thirty-eight hands and fifty Marines,’ Emma said. ‘My last admiral sailed with nine hundred sailors and Marines. The Diner couldn’t break down that many dead bodies, so I sent them into the atmosphere. The planet buried their remains.’
Kyrus had to swallow at that. Nine hundred dead! ‘I see. Yes, you did the wisest thing. What came from nature went back to nature.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ she said, and she sounded very sad.
CHAPTER 9 – NAVBASE
NavBase, galactic headquarters of the Realmfleet, was built into a large asteroid circling NX17-4-8, a planetless red dwarf, giving off little light and less heat.
‘What ship?’ a voice called as they approached. ‘What ship?’
‘No-R 77, Captain Joff; Admiral Kambisha, commanding,’ Joff answered.
‘Admiral, you are to report to Moigar immediately. You are already many years overdue, sir.’ The voice suddenly burst into song. ‘Overdue, full of flue, and I do not have a clue.’
‘That doesn’t sound well,’ Kambisha said. ‘NavBase, report on your state of readiness.’
‘Ready, steady, everybody deady,’ the voice sang. ‘Air? Sure. Heat? Yep. Gravity? Working. Are we happy? Yeah! Liar, liar, ship’s on fire...’ Bleep. ‘Admiral, sir, please go to Moigar.’ static.
‘Moigar speaking.’ A badly cracked recording came from the loudspeaker. ‘Office of the Heritor. Recall orders! All Realm personnel will return to Moigar immediately. All settlements are to be discontinued. All return to Moigar.’
‘Call, call, what a ball, are the Moi about to fall?’ the voice said.
‘I’m going over.’ Kambisha imitated one of Ram’s dark scowls to hide she wasn’t feeling as tough as she looked. ‘Call the Marines.’
The Marines, she thought. Six boys armed with cutlasses and two elementalists. Not a massive force.
‘Present, ma’am.’ Ram said after what could have been only minutes. He and his crew looked dangerous in their new dark blue uniforms and Kambisha breathed a little easier.
‘We’re going into that rock,’ she said. ‘No idea what we’ll find, but I must see the brain.’
‘If you want to go in, we go in.’ Ram sounded as calm as if it was a stroll across the harbor.
Five minutes later they shot out of the airlock toward the asteroid.
Seen from the ship, NavBase was a two miles long fingerbone of gray rock, turning slowly around. Now, riding only feet above the surface, Kambisha saw the many well-concealed guns that could turn her little troop into gaseous clouds before they knew it. Barrels, exhausts, antennae, cameras and measuring instruments, all were camouflaged as outcroppings of stone; any passing ship would have thought the asteroid one of the umpteen million other rocks in this dead system.
‘Tracking,’ a heavy voice said. ‘Strangers in range; prepare your guns. Shoot! Snoot! I’m not in the mood...’
In spite of herself, Kambisha shuddered at the thought of all those cannon and a mad brain in command.
Halfway the length of the asteroid they came to an open bay door. Beyond it was a large hangar, and a sleek spaceship parked with its airlocks open to the universe.
‘Maybe that hangar’s our door inside,’ Kambisha said. ‘Let’s have a look, Lieutenant.’
Two by two, they followed her inside the hangar. Actually it was only a series of ledges and stairs where ships hooked onto, much like an airship’s mooring platform.
At the end of the bay was a ramp connecting the central ledge to the ship’s inner structure. Stacks of bodies dressed in colorful Moi uniforms littered the decks, frozen solid by the cold of space, but held together by the base’s gravity.
‘How did they get there?’ Ram said.
‘No idea. They’re probably dead a long time.’ She thought it looked like a massive failure of their shields, and she wasn’t going to tell those kids. No need to alarm them. ‘There, an airlock.’
They flew inside and landed. Kambisha pulled the door closed after them, while their tech, a Vanhaari called Donoan, checked the dials of the life control systems. ‘All normal.’
After minutes, the inner door opened. Kambisha took
a deep breath and switched off her screen. The air smelled dead and tasted metallic on the tongue, but it was breathable.
‘Nasty,’ Ram said as he followed her example. ‘You think those bodies outside died of shield failure?’
She cast a quick glance at his face. ‘Could be,’ she said curtly.
He smiled slightly. ‘Thought so. I won’t tell the others; the idea their shield could fail is bad for morale.’
‘Don’t worry. If it was, it had been a technical failure. I can always cover you with my own mindmade screen, and so can your battlemages.’
‘So we got backup,’ Ram said. ‘That’s good. Now, which way do we go?’
She sent out a thought through the deserted corridors. This place had been a major center, where thousands of Moi lived and worked. The halls and workspaces must have been filled with voices and the sounds of humanity. Now her mind found only silence and emptiness. There! A hint of consciousness.
‘To the right.’
Thron, the healer of their crew, nodded. ‘There is someone. His mind is very troubled.’
Then a servor came buzzing out of a small space built into the wall and attacked them.
Ram gave a barking laugh and grabbed it. ‘Does it have an off button?’ He held the wildly appendages-waving machine at arm’s length.
‘On the back,’ Donoan said. ‘Just below where the tail would’ve been is a small lever. You must pull it out, not push it.’ Then he blinked. ‘Funny, those tech courses. I’ve never seen such a thingy before, but I could take one apart with my eyes closed.’
‘So could I,’ one of the Marines said.
The techneer grinned. ‘But I bet you won’t get it working again.’
Ram put the now motionless servo down. ‘If that’s the biggest they got...’
‘Could those things resist an ice spell?’ Elementalist Noya said. ‘We better not use fire or lightning around all those instruments and things.’
‘Try it on the next one,’ Kambisha said. ‘We do want to keep those servors alive, though. We will need them later on.’
‘What exactly are we going to do?’ Noya asked.
‘The base brain sounded like it had a mental breakdown,’ Kambisha said. ‘We must heal it.’
‘Delirium,’ Donoan said. ‘It could be there’s something wrong with the brain itself, but more probably it is in its support systems.’
‘A technical failure?’ Kambisha said.
‘Quite possibly.’
In silence they walked on.
‘In the May, in the hay, have a gentle maiden stay,’ the voice sang.
‘His idea of poetry is awful,’ Alim, the second elementalist said.
‘No, no, no,’ the voice protested. ‘I am Uswayn, the Immortal Bard. Let the peaceful death unfold like flowers on a field behold.’ Then he laughed hollowly ‘Blo, blo, jelly bo.’
‘What?’ Ram muttered. ‘What’s a jelly bo?’
By now they should be nearing the center of the asteroid, Kambisha thought. There she sensed the mad consciousness of the base brain.
‘Approaches the Guardian of the Realm,’ the voice suddenly thundered.
‘Listen!’ someone cried. ‘What’s that sound?’
Kambisha heard a clanging much like a knight walking in full armor at one of the tourney games in Seatome.
‘Oh gods,’ one of the Marines muttered, and then winced as he saw Ram’s furious glance.
I don’t blame the kid, Kambisha thought as she watched the looming shape come at them. It filled the corridor with its bigness; a gleaming figure of steel, with a lance in its fist.
Then she recognized it, and she laughed a little shakily. ‘It’s just another servor, with a tool.’
‘That’s a tunneler,’ Donoan said surprised. ‘They probably use it to dig new corridors in this rock.’
‘It looks to walk right over us,’ another Marine said. ‘See that awful head.’
Kambisha silently agreed. The machine was big and ugly, and it did appear vaguely human.
‘That’s not a head; it’s a filter system,’ Donoan said. ‘And the brute is heavy; eighty-five stone. That is...’
‘Three full-grown Kells,’ Ram said with a vague smile. ‘Not insurmountable.’
‘Perhaps my ice spell will stop it.’ Noya eyed the oncoming machine calculating.
Ram looked at her. ‘Go ahead; show us.’
Noya waved a hand, and a beam of cold white flashed away. It splashed all over the machine, and the big servor’s pace slowed down.
‘Again!’ Noya said to her colleague. ‘Both of us, Alim.’
Two freezing beams caught the servor on the chest. Its speed became a crawl, and slowly it lifted the tool in its hand.
‘Watch out!’ Donoan said sharply. ‘That’s a heat cutter!’
Kambisha gathered a mass of air and threw it at the servor. Its arms opened wide, and it froze.
‘That’s it!’ Noya said with satisfaction.
‘For how long?’ Ram said.
‘The ice spell is designed for ten minutes max,’ the elementalist said. ‘But not against something that size.’
‘I remember my dad killed a jinni with such a spell,’ Kambisha said. ‘It froze him solid.’
‘Sure, but I’m not the lord Wyrmcaller,’ Noya said quickly. ‘I haven’t got his oomph.’
Donoan walked to the back of the servor and opened a little hatch. ‘I will use my own magic,’ he said, grinning at them. ‘I’ll disconnect its power crystal.’
‘You brute!’ the voice called out. ‘Hurting my poor servor? You are a knave, sir.’
‘Oi,’ Donoan said, looking strangely shocked. ‘That didn’t hurt.’
‘Of course not,’ Kambisha said. She looked around. All corridors where the same; seemingly endless, covered in the same fake-wood paneling with brass fittings and subdued lightning. Then she noticed the signs on the wall pointing the way to Control, Engine room and Brain room.
Ram followed her glance. ‘That’s handy.’
‘That thing is blocking our way,’ a Marine said as he tried to slip past the motionless tunneler. Then he tried to push it around, but the servor didn’t budge an inch.
‘Let me at it,’ Kambisha said. As the boy stepped aside, she shoved the servor hard, and it moved a little. ‘Not enough. We must turn it sideways.’
Ram put his shoulder to it, and together the two of them managed to turn the servor far enough to make some room.
‘We’ll put strength training on the list,’ Ram said. ‘You guys need to bulk up.’
A thin Marine groaned, the one Kambisha remembered as the Seatome boy with the knives.
‘You can do it,’ she said warmly. ‘You’re a Marine now.’
They hurried on until they came to a door marked “BRAIN ROOM–UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY PROHIBITED ON PAIN OF DEATH.”
‘Those fellows don’t beat around the bush,’ Ram said. ‘Are we authorized?’
‘By my authority as an admiral...’ Kambisha said, and she felt a giggle coming up.
‘Good,’ Donoan said, and he walked past them into the room.
‘No entry, knave!’ the brain yelled. Three energy beams fired, missing the techneer by a hand’s breadth.
Donoan dropped to the floor and on his elbows crawled to the dubious shelter of a table.
Kambisha focused on the nearest gun barrel. She wasn’t very familiar with artillery, but she could see the wires that powered it. She sent a trickle of lightning into the gun’s circuit, and with a bright poof it burned out.
‘Treason!’ the voice yelled. ‘I’ll have you shot for this, sir!’
‘Watch out!’ Ram shouted, and she ducked as a turret pointed at her. A sizzling beam passed overhead.
Kambisha repeated the overload trick, and the second gun spluttered into silence.
‘You... you rebel! You disgrace to the Moi! Die, Captain Foulardd!’
The third gun died before it could fire.
‘No!’ the voice screamed
. ‘I will not surrender! I choose death above dis... disssss... I cannot die! Why can’t I die?’
Shakily, Donoan came up from under the table. ‘Knave?’ he said to the room. ‘And I am supposed to help him?’
‘He’s sick,’ Kambisha said.
They walked past enormous pipes disappearing into floor and roof.
Healer Thon whistled. ‘No wonder the poor guy was getting silly.’
Kambisha stared at the brain and saw the fluid was a deep green, full of strings of a slimy substance.
‘That doesn’t look healthy at all.’ Her hands flew over the buttons on the brain’s control panel. Wheels moved as a pump started up. ‘That’s one. Now we wait till all the fluid is clear again.’
It took five minutes of listening to the whimpering of the brain and the hissing of the fluid passing through the container.
‘Looks good,’ she said, inspecting the glass container. ‘Now step out of the way, please.’
The others all hurried to the back of the room as she walked round, pressing buttons, tapping dials, flipping switches, and listening to the growing choir of machinery. Finally she stopped and hesitated. ‘There’s a button missing.’
‘It’s probably that one up there,’ Donoan said. He had been watching her closely and now pointed to a yellow pushbutton over their heads.
‘You could well be right,’ Kambisha said, considering. ‘Bodrus aid me.’ She thumped the button, and both smiled as a buzzer started up. ‘It was the one.’ Quickly she went on with the last panel.
‘There,’ she said finally. ‘Now I’d better add an emergency dose of stimulants to the water, to get the brain thinking properly again.’
She pressed a row of buttons and at the fifth all lights in the room flickered, then went back to normal.
‘Oh Blessed Heritor!’ a heavy, older voice said. ‘What a mess. Admiral, you can’t... Wait. A thousand years passed? What happened? I remember... You there! Who are you people?’
‘I am Admiral Kambisha of Realmfleet,’ Kambisha said in her most official tone. ‘Do you remember a mana quake?’
‘Yes,’ the voice said. ‘It was a nasty one, but we weathered it.’
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