The Ascendant Stars

by Cobley, Michael

  ‘Uncle Theo sent a … but how can anyone be sending messages from Darien?’ he said. ‘The Sentinel’s dead, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh aye, it got scrambled and wiped when the Legion Knight took control of the warpwell,’ Catriona said. ‘But when the Zyradin entered Segrana’s great web of being through me, they began cooperating on a few things and were able to reactivate a few of the Tusk Mountain platform functions. When they work together, their abilities are astonishing. They’re greater than the sum of their parts, far greater.’

  Greg eyed the approaching craft. It was only minutes away. ‘You don’t want me here when the big event kicks off,’ he said, looking back at her. ‘So what is my part in all this?’

  ‘My love, you could be … well, pretty important. To a lot of folk down on Darien. Maybe no one knows what really happened on Giant’s Shoulder, or what Vashutkin really is.’

  ‘Uncle Theo might,’ he said. ‘Wouldna put it past the wily old fox to have sniffed out flaws in whatever Vashutkin’s been saying about the fight on Giant’s Shoulder.’

  In his mind’s eye he saw again the combat droids that had cornered him, converging on his lone position, recalled perfectly how his passenger the Zyradin had, in the blink of an eye, turned them into cascades of disassembled parts. A precursor to the cleansing of the moon Nivyesta.

  ‘But if Theo’s gone to the trouble of trying to find me,’ he went on, ‘then he might have put himself in danger. Aye, you’re right – I’ve got tae get back to Darien.’

  Catriona regarded him somewhat sadly, her form shimmering and spectral, and nodded.

  ‘Trust your reason, Greg, and your compassion – keep a tight grip on them both in the days ahead.’ She retreated into the shadows of enclosing foliage. ‘You should wave to them … ’

  Greg was torn. ‘Are you really … ’

  ‘It’s me, Greg, only me. Now stand in the open, will ye? Right where they can see ye … ’

  ‘Will I see you again?’

  Her face was composed but there was anguish in her eyes.

  ‘I don’t know, Greg, I just don’t … look, they’re nearly here! Wave, go on … ’

  Turning, he leaned out, waving both arms. A small vessel resembling a stubby flattened delta was gliding past a hundred metres away, the air beneath it rippling and twisting. As he yelled and gesticulated wildly it banked in his direction. Slowing, it turned and sideslipped towards him, its blue and silver hull gleaming the light of dawn. A side hatch slid aside while a thin-looking gangway extruded tonguelike beneath. Inside, a fair-haired man in familiar dark blue body armour raised a hand in greeting.

  ‘Mr Cameron?’

  ‘That’s me, all right!’

  ‘I am Lieutenant Berg – we’re here on Major Karlsson’s recommendation to offer you passage to Darien. If you step on the footway I’ll guide you across … ’

  He glanced round at Catriona, half-hidden in the shadows, from which she blew him a kiss, before he lifted one foot onto the gangway. Moments later Greg was inside the shuttlecraft, forced to crouch by the cramped interior. He paused to gaze back out at the leaf-shrouded branch platform but Cat was gone.

  ‘Did you forget something, sir?’

  ‘No, just wanted one last look.’

  The hatch slid shut, enclosing him in a small passenger compartment, its interior smoothly panelled in grey and pale mauve. Berg helped him into one of the couches and showed him how the webby strapping worked. This was Greg’s first sight of a Tygran Human and he was both fascinated and reassured to see a certain normality in the man’s demeanour. Once he was secure the Tygran clambered into the right-side command pilot couch – another man occupied the left-side one, prodding or rapid-fingering a holoconsole while muttering into a lip-bead mike. The craft was already under way, going by the just-discernible effects of inertia on his stomach.

  ‘Sit tight, Mr Cameron,’ Berg said. ‘We’ll be back at our ship in no time.’

  ‘Sounds good, aye. So you’re all Tygran soldiers, eh? And you’ve rebelled against your government, I hear.’

  ‘A fair summary, sir,’ Berg said over his shoulder. ‘Although the situation is a bit more complex in the detail. Commander Ash said that he’ll brief you on the background soon as we’re aboard the Starfire.’

  Greg nodded and sat back, trying to suppress his growing flight anxiety. He breathed in deep. It was an odd feeling, stepping from Segrana’s bio-organic surroundings into this high-tech vessel – the air was different, as were the textures, the sounds and the smells. And suddenly he was aware that he was in considerable need of a bath. Well, not much in the way of showers and soap down on Nivyesta.

  The journey to orbit took less than half an hour. Both Berg and the pilot wore shaded data goggles of some kind but otherwise there were no displays showing exterior views. The first indication that they were docking with the Tygran ship was a few seconds of deceleration followed by thuds against the hull and a sideways lurch.

  ‘Retrieval achieved,’ Berg said. ‘Bay sealed.’

  As the Tygrans put away the pilot goggles, Greg’s couch released him from the strap-web, which retracted into the right-hand raised edge. The hatch was open, Berg waved him through and moments later he was climbing a narrow companionway out of the shuttlecraft bay. He was met at the top by a burly, dark-haired man in a charcoal-grey uniform.

  ‘Mr Cameron, my name is Malachi Ash and I am the commander of this vessel,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘Your uncle, Major Karlsson, is quite a character, very persuasive.’

  ‘You’re not the first to notice,’ Greg said as they shook hands.

  ‘If you come with me, I’ll show you your quarters.’

  Greg was led down a narrow corridor, past crew bunkers, with Ash talking as they went.

  ‘The major and my superior, Captain Franklyn, want you back on Darien without delay so we’ve already broken orbit and locked into a return trajectory. We should be entering Darien’s orbital shell in less than an hour.’

  Not knowing how much the Tygran knew about the warpwell and the Legion of Avatars, he decided to avoid the topic.

  ‘Commander, your man Berg said you’d be filling me in on some of the background, especially regarding your own part in all of this. Also I was wondering how soon I’ll be able to speak with my uncle.’

  ‘If you like, we can go straight to the bridge now and I can have the tac officer try to raise our planetside operator. And he’ll see if the major is available.’

  Greg nodded. ‘That sounds great. Let’s do it.’

  ‘Very well. Your sleeping rack is just along there, second on the right, if you want to rest before Darien.’ Ash indicated a narrow side passage, then led Greg back to a junction and down a steep set of steps. ‘As to how we came to be here, well, it’s a tale and a half and your uncle played a big role in it.’

  ‘Why am I not surprised?’

  As they headed forward and then up more stairs, Greg heard how several days ago Ash was carrying out a stealth mission on Nivyesta when he was captured by the Uvovo. Greg remembered hearing about this from the Sentinel, details which Ash confirmed, how the Uvovo scholars had neutralised the binary bomb in his chest. Ash gave a brief account of how he and Uncle Theo were rescued from pro-Hegemony Tygrans by Franklyn Gideon, captain of the renegade Stormlion troopers. It ended with the encounter with the Tygran Marshal Becker aboard his flagship, and the intervention by a bizarre vessel sent by the Roug, an ancient and mysterious species.

  Ash finished up as they entered the bridge, a split-level space narrowing towards the forward viewport. Its curved transparency glimmered at the edges with data feeds and system graphics of one kind or another, but it was the view of Darien that held Greg’s attention, a bright blue and white orb set against the hazy swirls of interstellar dust which blurred the stars into glimmering haloed jewels.

  Home. The pang of yearning he felt was unexpected, and conflicted with his thoughts of Catriona and an instinctive reluctance to leave he
r behind. But leave he must.

  Commander Ash settled into the captain’s chair and attached comm devices to ear and mouth. A moment later he was in conversation with one of the other two bridge officers whose stations sat on the lower level. He nodded and turned back to Greg.

  ‘We’re still out of the effective range of the portable communicator back on Darien. Another twenty minutes and we’ll be able to establish a secure link.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Greg said. ‘I appreciate your efforts. In the meantime, there’s a wee gap or two in my understanding … ’

  ‘You mean how we came to be here?’

  Greg nodded. ‘Was it the result of a clash of politics?’

  Ash frowned. ‘On Tygra we don’t have your kind of political debate. We have been a military society for so long that many aspects of public provision – health, education, or power supplies, for example – have remained universal due to a consensus of necessity. Resources are not plentiful, which has led to restrictions on market influences. Our energies are instead directed towards improvements in our combat abilities and readiness. There is honour in battle and the love and litany of battle forces certain responsibilities on every Tygran soldier.

  ‘But our principles are only as strong as the men and women who live by them. Marshal Becker was corrupted by the Hegemony and in turn he has corrupted the commanderies, the Bund and Tygran society … ’

  The Bund was the semi-elected council governing Tygran society, and the commanderies were like regiments, each with its own history, tales, axioms and heroes.

  ‘Becker is unhesitating in his compliance with the Hegemony’s needs,’ Ash went on, ‘no matter how cruel and ignoble, even if it means Tygran troopers using the all-enclosing Ezgara armour when deployed in Human-centric environments. Captain Gideon and the Stormlions are implacably opposed to Becker’s poison, thus we have become outlaws, criminals to be hunted down. It was in the captain’s mind to head for the Earthsphere to find commercial security work, but then he met your uncle. He convinced Captain Gideon and the rest of us that Darien was worth fighting for, especially after … ’

  Ash fell silent, sentence incomplete, his face clouded by some underlying anger which Greg decided to avoid for the time being.

  ‘Darien is certainly worth fighting for,’ he said. ‘But it’s my people that are worth dying for.’

  Ash gave him a look of faintly surprised approval, then pointed at an auxiliary console to the right of his own. ‘Mr Cameron, there’s a seat there which swings down … that’s it. Now, are you hungry? I can have some food and drink brought for you. It is only rations and recyc, however.’

  ‘That would be great,’ Greg said. ‘All I’ve had for the last four days has been berries and nuts … ’

  ‘Contact! – a vessel has just exited hyperspace 1850 kiloms off our stern,’ said one of the bridge officers. ‘It emerged on a highvee course and tracked us almost immediately. And now they’re ramping up their acceleration.’

  ‘Go to combat-ready,’ Ash said. ‘And ID it! – get me a config, anything.’

  ‘No ident signals,’ rapped out the other bridge officer. ‘Profile is of an Imisil heavy trader.’

  Ash, staring at his holoplane, gave a derisive snort.

  ‘Not with that emission curve. Ready battle systems, generate target points, all crew on standby … ’

  ‘Wait, it’s gone,’ broke in the first officer. ‘Off the sensors, just vanished—’ Suddenly there was an insistent beeping and readouts bordering the main viewport flickered. The officer sat back, stunned. ‘And it’s back … ’

  Less than a kilometre ahead a ship swung into view, course converging on the Tygran ship. Insets on the viewport showed magnified, enhanced images of a blunt-prowed vessel with no apparent insignia.

  ‘Bring up partial shields,’ said Ash. ‘What’s their weapon status?’

  ‘Two heavy beam projectors, three pulse cannons, a multi-missile battery, and a well-shielded launcher of some kind,’ the helm officer said.

  ‘Has to be an Imisil expedition of some sort,’ Ash muttered. ‘But with that firepower they must have been expecting a rougher reception … ’

  Greg had observed the unfolding crisis with an odd steadiness of nerve. Part of him was wishing he was back on Nivyesta, safe in the shadows of Segrana, while another part was, perversely, enjoying the edgy adrenalin thrill of it. And a further thread of thought was privately glad that he wasn’t the one giving the orders. He also recalled a little about the Imisil, one of several civilisations at the far side of the Huvuun Deepzone, who had been on the receiving end of a Hegemony punitive campaign several decades ago, a remorseless attack which had left several worlds near-uninhabitable. Was it too much to imagine that they might come to see themselves on the same side as Darien?

  ‘Incoming communication, Commander,’ said the tactical officer. ‘Full vid.’

  ‘Screen it,’ Ash said. ‘One-way.’

  A frame appeared on the viewport, as well as the holopanel Greg was sitting at. A strange, hairless humanoid in white and grey garments gazed out. Its face was adorned with clusters of spots that changed colour as it spoke.

  ‘I am Presignifier Remosca. You have intruded upon the exclusion zone of a world currently under interdict by the Imisil Mergence. Your vessel bears close resemblance to ones used by a certain mercenary cohort known to be contracted to the Sendrukan Hegemony. Identify yourselves.’

  The picture vanished, revealing Darien, the hazy stars and the approaching ship. Ash snorted in irritation.

  ‘Hardly mercenaries.’ He frowned at the now vacant monitor. ‘If we try to convince them that we are actually the Ezgara and Human as well, they’ll assume that it’s part of some devious Hegemony plot – and if we then tell them that we’re from a planet called Tygra, that’ll make things worse … ’

  The Tygran paused, eyes widening as he looked round at Greg. An odd smile came over him.

  ‘Mr Cameron, I have an idea.’

  ‘You do?’ Greg said with a sense of premonition.

  ‘Yes, although I’m not sure how you’ll feel about it.’ Ash grinned. ‘But I am sure that your uncle would approve!’

  ‘Hmm – does it involve life-endangering peril and heroic levels of deceit?’

  ‘I regret to say that it does.’

  ‘Then what are we waiting for?’

  CATRIONA

  The place they provided for her was a strange complex of interconnected, shadowy halls where blue glowing pillars rose up into darkness, where flowers sprouted from the walls while pale gossamer mist hung in the air like great veils. It was meant to be a sanctuary for her essence, this disembodied spectre that she had become, and she came to think of it as the Dream Palace. In some ways it was an attenuated version of the forest Segrana but it left her feeling ignored and redundant. Sometimes she felt like a child at the beck and call of titanic beings with scarcely comprehensible motives and purposes. Other times she would be raised up to carry out a straightforward task, like leading Greg to the pickup point. Yet her understanding and private speculations had made it a bitter experience, knowing that any attempt to warn him would result in her summary return to these empty halls.

  Ever since the Zyradin had used her to spread itself throughout Segrana’s great weave of being, Catriona had been constantly aware that she was on the fringes of a vast, multilayered dialogue, picking up a few things from the outermost ripples. Not so much actual words, more like conceptual fragments, echoes of ideas, fractured images, snatches of conversation, and the occasional swirl of heat, a sign of disagreement.

  All of which her Enhanced mind could not help but gather and sort and juxtapose, while her speculative instincts tested and discarded conjecture after conjecture. To her dismay the first which made real consistent sense was about Greg. The closer she looked, the more she realised that between them the Zyradin and Segrana were trying to foresee events and planning how to influence them. For Greg this would mean plunging along a sequenc
e of encounters and clashes that promised horrific obliteration if he failed at any point. When she was brought forth to lead Greg up through the forest she already knew that his journey back to Darien would be interrupted, that the next stage of his odyssey would lead to an epic conflict whose outcome was far from certain.

  Nor was he the only actor on the stage. Segrana and the Zyradin were obsessing over several others, who at times seemed less like actors and more like threads in an immense shifting pattern. She had seen glimpses of the Chinese emissary, Kao Chih, who had helped rescue the Pyre colonists, and now they were all fleeing from warships of the Suneye Monoclan, that peculiarly successful interstellar commercial entity run by a Hegemony faction called the Clarified. They were Sendrukans whose minds had been erased, for medical or punitive reasons, leaving behind a host dominated by the implanted AI. Unsurprisingly, they provoked a certain unease in the Zyradin and Segrana.

  Another strand included Theo Karlsson, Rory McGrain, the Uvovo Seer Chel, and the cyborg Legion Knight who had seized and unlocked the warpwell. But there too was the enigmatic Chaurixa terrorist Corazon Talavera who, like the Clarified, provoked dread and anxiety, except that she also seemed to imply something more pivotal and terrible.

  Then there was Julia.

  Back in the dark, distant and disturbing past, Julia Bryce and Catriona had been students at Zhilinsky House, a residential facility run by the New Children Programme. All the students were either orphans or signed over to the NCP’s guardianship, and all had undergone genetic engineering in the embryonic stage with the aim of creating people with superior minds and the ability to consciously direct the fullness of the intellect. By puberty, Catriona’s mind had failed to progress correctly while for Julia Bryce success followed success.