Transformation Space (Sentients of Orion Book 4)

by Marianne de Pierres

  ‘No!’ Djes turned her face to his. ‘Please, let it be Mira. Can’t it be her?’ Tears squeezed out onto the taut skin of her cheeks.

  He trailed a fingertip in their wake. Djes was not given to quick emotion. He did not recall her crying before, other than when the Saqr had attacked her and torn her leg. ‘Don’t raise your hopes.’

  She sniffed and nodded. ‘You’re right. We are not that lucky, I think.’

  He grimaced at that and at the way she straightened her shoulders, and it made him think about her parents. What had driven them to abandon such a pragmatic and resourceful child? Or had that strength grown from her abandonment? When he’d found her outside Villa Fedor, she had seemed needy and weak. Back then his thoughts for her had been purely carnal. Now, though, he found himself relying on her calm, her belief in him.

  And perhaps it was not only Djes that had changed.

  Though Trin had hated his papa, Franco, for sending him to the carabinere station at Loisa, it had forced him to assume a leadership mantle, or be demeaned. ‘We must go back now. I doubt the others could see the craft from below the mountain’s lip. Perhaps we should not mention it yet. We can come back here again, the two of us, and watch.’

  She nodded. ‘I would like that. Lead the way, my Principe.’

  * * *

  They returned to find the group sitting close together under the bushes, listening to Juno Genarro.

  ‘Principe!’ Juno sounded excited. ‘The caves are deep and cool. I think we’ve found a safe place.’

  A small cheer went up from the group.

  ‘How many?’ asked Trin.

  ‘Two larger caves, and several shallow ones. Some rockfall needs to be cleared in one of the bigger ones, but there is room enough beside it for the moment.’

  ‘They are empty?’

  Juno nodded. ‘Some small droppings, little else. And the floor is clean gravel.’

  Trin glanced at the bright sky. Leah was rising. The cave mouths were only a short distance away, but that distance was unshaded. They must move now or spend another day under the bushes.

  The thought of lying in a cool darkened place was irresistible. ‘We move now. Split numbers equally between the two large caves for today. When we’ve searched them more closely, we’ll decide who shall sleep where.’ It was a popular decision, he could see from their expressions. ‘Cass Mulravey?’

  Mira Fedor’s gaunt friend lifted her head and stared at him. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Tivi and Joe will go with you. They’ll carry Thomaas.’

  She didn’t argue. Her man lay with his head on her lap.

  Trin stepped out from the bushes and ascended the rocky path to the caves, ignoring Joe Scali’s look of reluctance at being separated from him.

  From me? he wondered. Or Djes?

  Trin knew that he was deliberately keeping Joe Scali apart from Djeserit. The moment of physical closeness he’d seen between the two on the beach was chewing at the edges of his mind. They’d been bringing fish back for the others and had guiltily moved apart at the sound of his voice.

  He reached for Djeserit’s hand. She gripped him back, but the webbing between her fingers prevented him from interlacing Trin’s through hers. Not her. Not Djes. She would never betray me.

  It was a short climb, and only Thomaas had to be carried. Even his madre, Jilda—the oldest and most feeble—managed it, assisted only by her servant Tina Galiotto.

  The group divided naturally. Mulravey was followed by her women, her brother and his friends, and Joe, Thomaas and Tivi. The surviving carabinere and the miners who’d joined them in the Pablo mines followed Trin. The korm tagged behind him also.

  That surprised Trin, as the outsized alien child had spent most of the journey with the women. Though he knew its devotion to Djeserit, it had stayed shy of him since Loisa, and to be honest the creature made him uncomfortable. He sensed judgement in the strange beaked blue-skinned face. When not shadowing Djes, the korm often paired with Cass Mulravey’s ragazzo. Though the ragazzo was much younger—maybe only six or seven Araldis years of age—the two were often together at meals, or as they’d trudged the desert. Right now Trin resisted ordering the korm back to the others. Djes would protest.

  He looked ahead. The entrances to both of the larger caves were smooth and oval, one larger than the other. Trin took his party into the large one.

  ‘Why so perfectly formed?’ he asked Juno Genarro.

  ‘Lava tubes, Principe. Made by hot gases, I would guess, not erosion.’

  Inside, even the walls were smooth. Trin ran his hands along them, feeling the thick grain of the long-ago-cooled rock. As his eyes adjusted, he saw the wider, deeper cave beyond, and the thick back wall of a rock-fall. He glanced at the roof. It seemed safe enough, but it was hard to tell.

  ‘Spread out and find spaces close to the sides. Leave a path free through the middle of the cave. Juno, set watch at the mouth. Then we shall eat and sleep.’

  He heard more murmurs of approval as the carabinere surged past him to find resting places in the cooler dark. Juno and Josefia stayed closer to the light, sorting the remaining food from Djeserit’s last fishing trip.

  A short time later they called everyone to them and handed out the last portions of the xoc. Several days old now, the sea creature tasted bitter. Yet its dry flesh filled the gnawing emptiness in his belly. Trin had ceased to think of food as a pleasure; it was merely a necessity, of which there was never enough.

  ‘I’ll fish again tonight,’ said Djes to the group.

  ‘And we will begin our search for other foods, and bring more water back,’ Trin added.

  Despite the bitterness of the xoc and the discomfort of the gravelled cave floor on which they sat, people began to contribute ideas. Optimism sparked into a flame.

  A few nights without constant wearing travel, dehydration and exposure would return even more of their confidence. And Trin would be there to steer them. He had been right not to mention the craft he and Djeserit saw from the mountaintop. His people were too fragile for false hope.

  JO-JO RASTEROVICH

  There had been very few instances in his life when Jo-Jo Rasterovich hadn’t been able think of a reply to a question. But this was one of them.

  As he knelt beside the mercenaries Randall and Catchut, clawing at the inside wall of the Post-Species ship that held them captive, he had nothing to offer.

  ‘Rasterovich!’ Randall’s imperative was sharp and unhappy. ‘At the risk of repeating myself, how are we going to get us out of this fucking thing?’

  Jo stared at the ridging on the ship’s smooth inner skin where Mira Fedor’s biozoon had torn itself away from the Medium. He shook his head. ‘I’m the one who had the idea that we should get out. Your turn to come up with how.’

  Rast shot him a frantic intense stare. The mercenary looked worse than shit, Jo-Jo thought. Her hair was messed stiff with dry Extro goo, her skin was whiter than anything that had blood running beneath it should be, and her eyes... They reminded Jo-Jo of a trapped and vicious animal, one that would gnaw its arm off to get free. He had to think of a way to get out of the Extro ship, or Randall would likely kill herself, and possibly him, trying.

  He sympathised with that feeling. His iniquitous confinement on Dowl station and then a recent stint paralysed beneath Extro goo with only his own thoughts for company were enough to convince Jo-Jo that death was preferable to further entrapment.

  No doubt the stare he bestowed back on Randall matched hers for lunacy. But thanks to the interference of the newly discovered, and infinitely obtuse, Sole Entity he found he could still think, as well as panic. Randall’s unfocused terror suggested that she couldn’t.

  Whatever Sole had done to Jo-Jo’s mind had given him the ability to think in two entirely different ways. It wasn’t like that all the time, but under pressure he felt the division like two slices of fruit sliding apart. Emotion and logic—clearly separated, not messily and inextricably interwoven as it was for most
sentients.

  He glanced at Catchut. The ‘esque nursed a broken wrist and a groggy expression that ruled him out as a source of ideas.

  ‘If it’s anything like human tissue, the scar is always the strongest part. Like a broken bone. Let’s concentrate on an area close to the edge of the scar.’

  Randall nodded. ‘Sounds right.’

  No, it didn’t. Jo-Jo knew it as he said it. The Medium had travelled though space and res-shift; there would be no weakness. But he needed to keep Randall distracted and working on something while he thought of a solution.

  He picked a spot near the corner of the scar and began pinching at it. It was surprisingly malleable. ‘Help me.’

  Randall immediately began gouging with her fingers. Catchut leaned a hand on the wall but didn’t have enough strength to do anything more.

  Jo-Jo pinched and pulled the area in front of him while he sought an idea. He couldn’t go back inside the Medium data flow now that the substance beneath them had solidified. Not that he wanted to. Being suspended within the Post-Species auditory space, deprived of most of his senses, had been the second worst experience of his life. The first was being shot out into space in an EVA suit with little air and no certainty of being rescued.

  Perhaps he should just confess to Randall that he was out of ideas and—

  ‘Rasterovich!’ Randall shouted.

  Jo-Jo couldn’t wrap his tongue around a reply because the floor buckled up underneath his feet and propelled him towards the wall. He tried to brace himself, but the momentum drove him head first into the area he’d been prodding.

  Instead of the impact he expected to feel, though, his head was suddenly encased by the wall substance, and a smothering sensation overpowered him. He fought to pull back, to breathe, paddling his hands, pushing frantically. But the wall tightened around his head and began to suck him forward, encasing his shoulders and then his waist.

  Again. The Medium was devouring him again.

  But this time, as he let go of his spent breath, his head crowned into clear air and space. He blinked and gasped in sweet painfully pure oxygen. Dizziness came and went. His eyes cleared, then blurred, then cleared again. He felt wind on his skin, heat, and then he was falling.

  This time the expected impact occurred, jarring every last piece of him, robbing him of breath again. And yet, miraculously, he was still alive. His brain began to organise images and sounds—moans of pain and garbled words.

  He rolled over and spat out a mouthful of sand. Suddenly he was hot. Hotter than he’d ever been. His fingers moved convulsively, scraping at whatever coated his body. More sand. Warm grains stuck to his skin.

  ‘Jo-Jo!’

  ‘Yeah.’ It took a while, but he got the word out, spitting more sand with it.

  Someone he knew had said his name. Mira? He’d been thinking about her, seemed to always be thinking of her. He wanted to look at her face, but sand stung his eyes, so he forced himself up onto his elbows. A haze hovered over his thoughts, his senses only working roughly, but the leverage gave him something to work with.

  Darkness. Grades of it. Above him was an expansive gloom littered with sparkling beads. In front of him there was something denser and more... sinister. It struck him as funny that he could come up with that word just now. He wanted to laugh, but a stinging slap snatched that thought away.

  ‘RASTEROVICH!’

  Abruptly his vision cleared. He was outside, under stars, with the Post-Species ship encroaching on the greater part of his vision. Rast Randall was talking to him, not Mira Fedor, and the mercenary was as belligerent as he’d ever heard her.

  ‘For fuck sakes, get with it! We’re out! We’re fucking out!’

  ‘How?’

  ‘We got spat out, maybe? You stink like shit. I dunno.

  Let’s get Catchut moving before they change their minds and suck us back in. Or the Saqr find us.’

  Saqr. He crawled over to Catchut, positioning himself alongside so that he could hook Catchut’s arm over his shoulder.

  ‘So far—I’ve had—all—the ideas. Now you—tell me—which—damn direction,’ he told Randall, thick-tongued.

  The mere pointed without hesitation to rows of scant dotted lights, high above and beyond the dark shape of the spacecraft. ‘That’s gotta be Mount Pell over there. Which means we’re close to the landing port. Can’t see it till we get round the other side of this thing.’

  Jo-Jo shouldered Catchut’s weight, his feet sinking into the sand and his legs trembling. He wouldn’t be able to walk far. ‘You’re sure we’re on Araldis?’

  ‘Smells and feels like the same dry piece of crap to me. Sure hot enough to be. Now shut up until we’re further away,’ said Rast.

  Jo-Jo saved his breath for the effort needed to get past the Medium’s never-ending girth and over the dunes to the mountain.

  He felt better as they walked, buoyed by the blood flow returning to his body. The euphoria of movement wouldn’t last long, though. He’d been inactive for too long, nourished only on Sole-knows-what. This burst of energy would fade.

  Activity seemed to help Catchut as well, and he began to take more and more of his own weight until he eventually shrugged them off.

  Jo-Jo relinquished his hold on the wiry mere with relief.

  ‘I’m figuring the port’ll be crawling with Saqr still,’ said Rast, when she deemed it a safe enough distance from the Extro craft to speak. ‘Maybe that’s why they spat us out. They think we won’t stand a chance out here.’

  ‘Coulda spat us into the vac, Capo.’

  ‘I doubt it’d be able to thin its skin in space to junk us.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jo-Jo. ‘Or maybe it’d learned what it needed?’

  ‘Like what?’ Randall’s voice was sharp and clear, even though she was a few paces ahead of him.

  ‘Dunno,’ said Jo-Jo. ‘Just a thought.’

  ‘Yeah, well here’s—what—I—got,’ Randall puffed as she floundered doggedly up the next dune.

  Jo-Jo had to force his legs along harder to keep up with her. Randall had her weaknesses, but stamina wasn’t one of them.

  Catchut did the same, habit more than anything else.

  Randall stopped at the top and caught her breath before saying more.

  ‘I’m reckonin’ the Extros are here cos they need somethin’. More’n likely a mineral that Araldis has, but not necessarily. Could be somethin’ else as well. Thing is, between that motherfuckin’ big drum of weirdness and the Saqr, they don’t need much to survive here. The Medium appears self-sufficient, and the Saqr are primitive as fuck. Jancz and like might be the only other ‘esques here apart from any survivors.’ She stared towards the darker outline of the mountain. ‘I’m bettin’ that whatever hasn’t burned up there is still how the Latinos left it. There’s got to be an AiV in one of those fancy places that works, or that we can get to work. We do that, then we can go scout for anyone left alive. Mira said she told Pellegrini to head for the islands. If they’ve made it, that’s where they’ll be.’

  It was a long speech for someone not long out of a puddle of Extro goo, and her voice got hoarser with each word. Jo-Jo took some time to digest it all. ‘So we’ve just got to dodge Saqr till we find something that can fly?’

  Randall started down the dune and they automatically followed her. ‘You got it. More important though...’

  ‘Yeah?’ As they reached the bottom, Jo-Jo felt firmer ground under his feet and the sting of pebbles.

  ‘Look,’ she said.

  Jo-Jo could see her pointing to the sky. Sunrise was coming.

  ‘We’ve got to get to shade before Leah’s up, or we’ll be mummified before you can think jack shit.’

  TEKTON

  Tekton’s legs didn’t seem to want to hold him upright. Fortunately, the nanosuit he’d borrowed from Samuelle lent him stability. A glance across Commander Farr’s cabin told him that the old Stain Wars veteran Jelly Hob was feeling much the same.

  The pair had b
een arguing over Tekton’s wild demands—that Hob fly him back to Belle-Monde—when Farr’s com-sole had activated to record the summit meeting on Intel station. At first they’d paid only scant attention to it, too busy with their own exchange, and the fact that Hob had discovered Tekton trying to access the Commander’s Dynamic System Device.

  But since Baronessa Fedor’s sudden and unvarnished announcement to the summit that the Post-Species were mobilising mass weapons, neither had spoken a word.

  Hob broke silence first. ‘Only one place this ship’ll be going now, Tekkie, and that’s to war.’ Alarms started up, as if to lend weight to his words. ‘I be thinking that you’d best get off now ‘less you wanna be flying inta a dogfight with the Extros. Catch a civilian ride; there’s enough of them here. Best to hurry though. Things’ll get messy, I warrant.’

  Tekton nodded, thinking Hob made good sense.

  ‘Yes. Best. What ships are available? And how do I get to them?’

  Hob took a step closer to Lasper Farr’s corn-sole and ran gnarled but surprisingly deft fingers down the pad, calling up reports. Images of the shift sphere formed in the air between them. The rings glittered with activity as ship icons changed positions and jostled for queue ranking.

  ‘Ship’s moud says there’s around three thousand civvies in-system,’ said Hob, reading from the display. Not sure how much longer, though. Dowl res station in the Leah system’s been reported as open agin. Couldna’ be a good sign. Not if them Extros are there like she said.’

  The Baronessa had told the summit that a primitive species, the Saqr, had invaded the planet Araldis and the Dowl station. Now she feared a huge Post-Species force had based itself in the same place—her home world.

  Mira Fedor. Such an unimposing figure to be delivering such profound news, thought Tekton. His abdomen tightened with apprehension. Though his academic life had been coloured with devious and sometimes murky politics and the pursuit of personal aspirations, he had never suffered physical threat.