‘I know that’s you, Selwood. You should have cooperated. Now you will die. Along with your Mirka lover. I had hoped to take my time with you, Ravindra. I’ll have to settle for second best.’ Asbarthi’s voice, savage and bitter.
She chuckled. She did love flying and the thrill of the chase just added to the rush. “They have to catch me, first.”
Ravindra tensed. “Look. Yogina.”
Small arrowhead ships filled the upper half of the screen. Behind them came the assault ships and there within the nearest moon’s orbit a massive grey shape occulted the stars. In infrared light the object glowed, much hotter than its surrounds, the trailing gases already expanding and cooling in its wake. She forgot to breathe. The mother ship itself. Oh fuck. With that thing there she had no chance of making shift-space.
An icy trickle of fear slid down her backbone. What a choice. Get shot up by the manesan fighters or… or what? Curlew hadn’t been shot up. But why? Why?
Ravindra slammed the ship’s comms into send. “Asbarthi, get that base on full alert. The planet is under attack. I repeat the planet is under attack. Have the population evacuate the cities and seek refuge underground. Do it immediately.”
‘So you are there, Ravindra. You expect me to believe you?’ The man’s voice was gleeful, oily. Morgan could almost see him gloating.
Ravindra snarled his frustration. “This is not a hoax, Asbarthi. This is a Yogina attack. Hasn’t your control tower alerted you? Advise all cities. This enemy is implacable.”
Asbarthi laughed. ‘Nice try, Admiral.’ The sound of the klaxons in the background almost drowned out the last word. Then silence.
Chapter Forty-Three
Asbarthi grabbed the microphone from the controller’s hand. “Ten thousand credits to the pilot who brings down that Starliner.” The lad looked up at him and back at Iniman, who said nothing.
If Ravindra thought he’d escape, he was deluded. He certainly wasn’t going to let that bitch use her mind against Bunyada. Lakshmi would be disappointed but there it was.
“I’d best get back to Hai Suri Devagnam,” he said to Iniman. “She’ll be waiting for me in your office.”
Leaving the makeshift admiral in the control room, he strode outside onto the pathway beside the landing pads. The wild blare of sirens stopped him in his tracks. The shield generators were cranking up, the sky around the towers crackling with the glitter of ionized particles. Why? Would Ravindra’s fleet have returned? Surely not. A drill, then. Yes. It must be a drill. He walked on, unconcerned, while the sirens assailed his ears.
He walked through the empty reception area, into the base commander’s office. No Lakshmi. She wasn’t answering her sanvad, either. Those blasted sirens were still blaring. You’d think they’d turn them off. Irritated, he glanced up at the screen on the commander’s wall. His mouth went dry.
Ships coming down in waves; small, arrow-shaped ships with narrow profiles. They were labeled as unidentified. And above them, strange girder-like vessels.
He turned up the audio. Panicked voices shouted at each other. What are they? Are they ours? Fleet? No answer when hailed. It says they’re not manesan. So what are they? Look. They’ve just taken out a couple of our fighters. He checked, just in time to see one of the CL30s take a hit. As the pilot’s life capsule speared out into space the attacking fighter fired again and the ship disappeared in an expanding ball of debris. He kept his eye on the capsule as its engines fired and it headed toward the ground. The strange ship turned. A burst of fire shattered the capsule. His heart thudded. Whoever they were, they didn’t take prisoners. What had Ravindra said? Aliens.
The alien attackers were in the atmosphere now. Surely the fighters would return, beat them off. The shield around the generator tower was visible, a shimmering veil of blue reaching out, stretching to touch the expanding swirling ripples from the tower further down. It was almost like being underwater, lying on your back on the seabed and looking up. Just as the two joined and locked a spatter of energy flared red along the blue. A moment later the underside of the alien ship that had fired the blast hurtled past.
His bowels emptied. He had to get out of here, escape to Krystor Central or anywhere. He’d find a skimmer, drive out. The sudden chatter on the audio ran hot. What is that? It can’t be a ship… can it? It must be twenty klicks long.
Fascinated in spite of himself, he looked at the screen. A vast rectangle, long and narrow, blocked the stars, showed no running lights.
The picture flickered, wavered, went black. A blast shook the building. The floor trembled. A chair clattered to the floor. He grabbed a desk. Surely not another tremor? The shield. Had they destroyed the shield?
He staggered to the doorway, sucking dust-filled air into his lungs. The generator tower was a smoldering stump surrounded by fragments. Narrow arrow heads cut through the air. And here came the larger ships, the girders, dropping through the atmosphere. He started to back away, toward the door to the lobby. An explosion ripped through the air and the ceiling behind him collapsed. No escape that way.
Shouts and running feet. From the shelter of the hangar across the way a squad of soldiers shouldered their weapons and fired at the assault ships. Somewhere else the boom-hiss of missile launches split the air. A projectile struck one of the attackers. It buckled and twisted, the nose pitched up and it fell, stern first, into the ground.
“Yay, take that you bastards.” The shout rang out from the soldiers, gleeful at the small victory. Even as the roar of its ruin dissipated, half a dozen fighters ensured the missile launcher would not have another opportunity. A deadly hail of debris rained from the sky, pieces of the building the falling ship had crushed and fragments of the missile launcher. Clouds of dust and stinking smoke drifted in the air. Asbarthi slipped out of the door to the landing pads and scuttled along, looking for a vehicle or an escape route. Anything. Fear clutched at his throat, turned his legs to jelly.
Still more ships drifted down. Thirty meters up, spindly legs extended, jointed like an insect’s. As the landing ships slowed, two fighters strafed the ground, taking a low-level run along the ground in front of the office. Three soldiers vanished, disintegrating in a red splatter of body parts. The rest bolted.
One of those ships was going to land here; right here in front of him. The air swirled as the thing descended. Asbarthi crouched behind a bush and prayed no one would notice him. He peered through branches in time to see six legs grind into the paving. They creaked as the girder-like body swung down between them, almost to the ground and rebounded with a sigh, so that the base stood maybe a meter and a half above ground. A hatch opened underneath. A creature emerged, its weapon raised; another followed, then another. Tiny beings, the height and shape of children.
Five, six, seven until ten of them surrounded their ship. At some invisible order they formed two lines and headed for one of the streets into the base, while more child-sized figures tumbled out of the hatches. Asbarthi shrank into the shadows.
The aliens advanced, grey-suited, black weapons in gloved hands. Their heads swung from side to side. A volley of fire tore at them and a few fell. Defenders, fighting back. From where he crouched all he could see was aliens advancing in the face of the fire. They didn’t stop to help the fallen; they made no sound when they were hit.
“Bastards! I’ll get you, you bastards.”
The massive figure of a fleet trooper leaned against a hangar, an energy rifle in his hands spitting red bolts. The trooper had attracted attention. A squad of aliens advanced on him. Now was his chance, while they were otherwise engaged.
He ran, sprinting down the alleys between the troop barracks. The whole base plunged into darkness, black as the pits of Hell. Maybe the generators were destroyed. He slowed a little. He’d need to be more careful. The lights might be out but he could see the flash and flare of beam weapons and… fire. Yes, something was burning. He had to get out of here. Footsteps, running. He flattened himself against a building. Oh dear make
r. Aliens. They came toward him, two files, one on each side of the alley. He eased away, fear a claw clutching at his heart. One of them raised its weapon.
A powerful surge of energy howled past him, fired from behind. And again. The aliens blasted backwards. Relief flooded his limbs, leaving them trembling.
A massive hand fell on his shoulder. “You okay?”
“Fine. Fine. Thank you.” He looked up at the trooper. “You saved my life.”
The trooper made to walk away with his squad.
“No, don’t go. I’ll pay you to keep me safe. Ten thousand credits. Fifty thousand. I’m Sitivan Asbarthi. I’m a part of the new government. I’ll pay you.”
The trooper stopped, eyes narrowed. A few of the soldiers exchanged glances.
“Yeah, we’ll keep you safe. Brad, Jag, you keep Sur Asbarthi safe. Let’s get out of here.”
Almost sobbing with relief, Asbarthi hurried between the two troopers to a combat assault vehicle. He scrambled into a seat. “Where are you going?”
“Off to the jungle. No point dying here.”
“No, no point at all. I can’t thank you enough.” He looked at the insignia on the man’s uniform. He didn’t understand the officer ranks, let alone the also-rans. “You’re a sergeant?”
“Chief,” said his savior. “Name’s Prakesh. Trust me, Sur Asbarthi, we’ll keep you very safe.” He chuckled.
Chapter Forty-Four
The Starliner lurched. Missile strike on the rear shield.
“Pah.” Ravindra slammed his fist on the arm of the chair. “He’s cut off.” He stared at the screen, where the manesan fighters were closing fast.
The chatter from the pilots ran hot. What is that? It can’t be a ship… can it? It must be twenty klicks long.
A ship. But whose? Not ours, not the Fleet’s. An alien.
She switched off the audio. “I’m trying to think. Why didn’t the Yogina shoot up my ship before? They couldn’t see us, they wouldn’t know if Curlew was one of your ships or not. So why?”
Think, Morgan. Use that mighty brain. What did you do? She went back through the events from the time the sensors had first seen the fighters. Nothing. They’d done nothing. Tried to contact them, but that was later. What was the configuration of the ship? What was on, what was off.
An idiotic idea jumped to mind. “The distress signal. It’s all I can think of.” Her heart throbbing, she entered the sequence, an endlessly repeating succession of zeroes and ones. Dit dit dit… dat dat dat… dit dit dit… dat dat dat…
The Yogina fighters closed.
Rigid with fear, Morgan groped for Ravindra’s gloved hand. He interlocked his fingers with hers. “Hope, Admiral. Hope.” Her heart beat so hard she was sure he could hear. His fingers squeezed hers.
The Yogina swept on, larger and larger in the view screen. Dark grey hulls, a cockpit closer to the point than the back, slightly curved wings.
She swallowed, sweat trickling down her hairline. This could be it. Stare death in the face.
Flashes erupted from the muzzles in the wings of the leading ships. Wrong vector. Not us. They swept past, attacking the manesan fighters.
She sagged with relief, muscles turned to water. They were safe; safe. Ravindra squeezed her hand hard enough to hurt. She smiled at him through the helmet of the flight suit. What she would have given to throw her arms around him, kiss him.
“You’re wonderful, you know that?” he said.
That silly warm glow again, even here. “It’s not over yet.”
Two fighters slowed, turned and matched vectors with the Starliner.
It was almost like a re-run of her first encounter with the Yogina. The fighters came in close, while a larger girder of a ship approached. One of those ugly, misshapen child things was piloting each of those fighters, casting their eyes upon the monitor readings, judging the occupants. Ravindra sat rigid beside her. He could have been carved from ice.
The larger Yogin ship maneuvered alongside, its dark grey bulk filling the view screen as it matched course. A hatch opened and a bridge snaked out from the vessel’s side.
Her heart jolted. “Oh, fuck. They’re going to board.”
A dull clang reverberated through the hull as the bridge connected to the Starliner’s side airlock. All those weeks ago on the battle cruiser she’d connected to the Yogina ship, using the mother ship’s commands. Maybe she knew enough to control these beings, or at least stop them. Or she’d die trying.
“If I learnt enough from the ship on Vidhvansaka, I might be able to protect us from the Yogina. You stay here on the bridge where it’s safer for you.”
“No. We’ll see this through together, whatever happens.”
She thought for a moment he was going to say more, but he just moistened his lips.
“Wait.” He strode off. When he came back he had the blastech in one hand, the handgun in the other. He offered the handgun to her.
She shook her head, meeting his eyes. “My power is in my head, not in a weapon. Stay close to me, Ashkar. Don’t leave my side.”
He gave a barely perceptible nod.
She went down to the airlock hatch to wait for them. Might as well meet them on her terms. The equalizer gauge changed color, gradually fading from red to orange. She pushed down the surge of fear that welled up from her gut. Fear caused mistakes. A boarding party would appear. Any second now. Green. A hiss as the seals released and then the hatch swung open.
The little alien stood no higher than her chest. Through the transparent helmet she saw a bald head, flat nose and narrow mouth; it carried a weapon in one five-fingered hand. And its eyes; its eyes looked very like Morgan’s own, silver and apparently pupil-less. Like her own. Good grief, these things were just walking information systems. Or maybe less than that; maybe more like a more sophisticated version of the automated maintenance units in the Fleet’s ships. The Yogin scanned her and then Ravindra; it began to raise its weapon.
Morgan leapt between Ravindra and the Yogin. Oh no you don’t. Nobody touches the man I love. Its eyes slid back to her, narrowed in what seemed to be annoyance. She dived into the black ball in its brain. Wonderfully simple, elegant and strangely organic. She joined into the data flow. Commands from elsewhere. Their ship?
A voice intruded into her head, vibrating in her implants. A soft, female voice, using a language she didn’t understand.
“I don’t understand,” she said in manesan, and then again in Standard. “I don’t understand.”
Hesitation. Morgan accessed from her implants what she had recorded of her own language lessons. Maybe this being could work it out. A few frantic moments as the data was copied. Then, in passable manesan;“You are a Maker.”
What? What the fuck was a Maker? “A maker?”
“One of those who made me. Are there other Makers here?”
Might as well go along with since it gave her an advantage. “Yes, there are other Makers. Why don’t you stop the fighting and talk to me?”
“I have not seen a Maker for thousands of years.”
“Talk to me. You’re on the mother ship, aren’t you? Talk to me.”
“What do you mean the ‘mother ship’?”
Morgan dredged up a picture, the vast darkness against the stars.
“Ah yes. That is me.”
The ship is ‘me’? Was this one of the fabled machine intelligences? She’d heard of legendary machines from the… her heart thumped, painfully loud. From the Cyber Wars.
“Talk to me. Please. People are dying for nothing.” Thoughts clamored. What was this thing? Where did it come from?
“Only the primitives are dying. They are a threat. They must be destroyed.”
“Primitives? What do you mean?” The Cyber Wars. Impossible.
“The thing with you is a primitive. It must die.”
Her nostrils flared. Oh, no. No sentient ship was going to touch her man, either. “No. He must NOT die. The manesa are not primitive.”
She reache
d out a hand behind her and touched his leg. He’d have to think this conversation was very odd.
“He is a primitive, like all those on the planets I have touched.”
“These people are not primitive. They have space ships. They are only a little different from me. If I am a Maker, they are nearly Makers.”
“No. They do not have BEMs.”
“BEM?”
“Brain Enhancement Modules. Like the one you carry in your head. All Makers have BEMs.”
Her implants. Her implants made her a Maker? Suddenly it all made sense. Going right back to Curlew. The distress signal might have attracted the Yogina but they had recognized the mark of a computer-enhanced brain. Jones had an implant, too.
“But how do you know people on a planet do not have BEMs?”
The question seemed almost to have been offensive. “I test. Each of my smaller ships can test. My warriors can test. We have found only two Makers on one ship in three thousand of our years and the primitives destroyed them.”
Two Makers? She had to mean Curlew, with her and Jones. “When was this? When you found the Makers?”
“Quite recently. But a primitive warship destroyed them.”
“Were your ships ordered to bring the Makers back to you?”
“Yes. They had sent out a distress signal, just as you did.”
“The ship and the Makers were not destroyed. I was one of them. We were taken on board the warship and cared for.” More or less. Eventually. “These people you are destroying are not primitive. They are genetically engineered Makers. Believe me, you’re making a mistake.”
She waited, sick with tension. Ravindra stood behind her, his heart rate faster than normal.
“It is a primitive. But you interest me. I know the Makers could make changes. You may approach me, both of you. A fighter will lead. But you must leave your ship beyond my walls. Your primitive cannot bring weapons.”
“Agreed.”
The mind withdrew. The Yogin standing before her collapsed, its weapon clattering to the deck. Three of the little aliens already lay like broken dolls, holes in their chests.
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