The Ascendant Stars

by Cobley, Michael

  The Sendrukan grinned widely. ‘I fear that you are mistaken.’ As he tipped his head back, dark lines appeared on his neck, extending up the sides of his head to his hairless scalp. Kao Chih’s curious stare turned to one of horror as the dark lines began to smoke and a dull redness glowed through the charring flesh. Small tremors in the Sendrukan’s limbs quickly became convulsive spasms, and a nauseating smell filled the air.

  The grotesque display ended with a prolonged moment of locked muscles before something gave and the Sendrukan slumped slightly in the chair, muscles now relaxed, wisps of smoke or steam rising from blackened eyes and mouth. A bulky humanoid form swathed in dark robes trudged into view, went up to the body and with odd thick fingers examined and prodded it. A flexible probelike device was produced to test the mouth and ears.

  ‘Death, High One,’ the examiner pronounced. ‘As predicted.’

  ‘Wheel it over to the Bonecarrier. Have the Caulmaster scrape its mindflesh for any vestiges.’

  The robed figure tipped the dead Sendrukan’s chair back on wheels Kao Chih hadn’t noticed before, and pushed it away. Heavy footsteps began on the platform behind him, moved round and approached from the left. An imposing figure came into view, a tall man clad head to foot in a strange grey armour, the one whom the Sendrukan had called Lord-General. At first glance the whole assemblage appeared thoroughly archaic, like something from Earth history, from medieval Europa. But a closer look revealed telling details: the bulky, segmented breastplate was attached to the backplate with what seemed to be leather straps, as were the arm and leg armour sections. And in the shadowy gaps between Kao Chih could see gleaming machine parts and flexing spirals of shielded cabling.

  From atop a thick neck, a long, thin, almost cadaverous face regarded him. There was a slight ridge of a nose ending in a pair of slits over the lipless, expressionless mouth. The skin was ash-pale and had an odd sheen to it, just like the large, bare hands. A straight-sided helmet enclosed the head, with two spiky adornments jutting up from either temple. The eyes stared out from sunken sockets and Kao Chih thought he saw a mournful sadness in them. For a moment.

  ‘Another Human,’ said the Lord-General. ‘My hearkeners tell me that there are thousands of your kind aboard those other ships, the ones that fled. Is this true?’

  Kao Chih offered up a silent prayer to his honourable ancestors before answering.

  ‘Regrettably, I can neither confirm or deny such matters,’ he said. ‘I spent most of my time in my stateroom playing trichess … ’

  ‘Your defiance earns you no honour.’ Those big, ash-grey hands clenched. ‘Hear me – I am Lord-General Zhyrac of the Shyntanil Twice-Born, commander of the Stone Breath regiment, over-captain of the warcraft Bonecarrier. You are ours now. Soon you will be placed in the caul, where your heart will be stopped, your blood cooled, and your mindflesh silenced. Upon your re-emergence you will know the way of dust and understand the beauty of obedience.’

  He raised a hand and two shorter figures in similar dark grey armour appeared.

  ‘Take this over to the Bonecarrier, and to the caul – my command is this.’

  As the Shyntanil converged on his chair, Kao Chih smelled their mustiness again, only now the corrupt taint seemed stronger and redolent of putrefaction. Dread settled over him like a deadening chill as they wheeled him away.

  LEGION

  From a low grey sky a steady drizzle was falling on Giant’s Shoulder, the jutting promontory whose sheer-sided presence dominated the coastal country west of Port Gagarin. Up on its flat summit, the rain spatter-darkened the remaining masonry of the ancient Uvovo temple, pooled on the flagstones and soaked still further the compacted wreckage of the prefab huts that used to stand nearby. Now a large Brolturan facility, its walls a dark, shiny green, stood near the narrow end of the promontory. Beneath it was an immense trench that sloped down to the entrance to the anteroom leading to the warpwell chamber, where analytic mechs monitored the well’s energy profile. It was five days since the Legion Knight’s scion pair had plunged into the reactivated warpwell’s bright maw: the first set off a device which reversed the well’s gravitic flow, allowing the second to plunge in and attempt to survive the terrifying descent down through hundreds of layers of hyperspace to that tormenting prison at its very nadir. Initial estimates gave a journey time of between two and three days, and thus a period of four to six days before the first cyborg warriors of the Legion actually emerged on the surface of Darien, the harbingers of a new age.

  Five days of waiting. To the Legion Knight they had seemed interminable.

 

  Yet patience eluded him. He examined the feeds from the inflight surveillance drones currently scanning areas of the coastal region from high-altitude trajectories. These flyers were a recent development born out of a need to regain a strategic edge due to the increased effectiveness of the Human irregulars. Less than a day after he had taken control of Giant’s Shoulder his sensors picked up a ship entering orbit, then a smaller craft descending to land somewhere in the mountains to the west. Since then, the Human rebels had carried out several attacks against his lookout positions and patrols, resulting in the destruction or disabling of nearly a dozen combat mechs. The new flyers were designed to scan the vicinity of Giant’s Shoulder, watch for anomalies and to track any visible creatures. Abrupt changes in their location could indicate the presence of Humans.

  And since the Brolturan defence batteries were operational and linked to a cluster of sensor nodes, those flyers were in no danger. After the shuttle’s descent four days ago, the main vessel had shifted its orbit well south of the Human colony. The skies were clear of threats, yet near space was not. Sensor data from last night revealed that a battle involving four vessels had taken place beyond high orbit and ranged over a considerable area. One was the ship that had dropped off the shuttle, while the other three were unknown. The sensors did record a sharp burst of energies after the conflict strayed away to an occluded quarter of the night sky, and from fragmentary comm signals the Legion Knight deduced that the energies came from the destruction of an Ezgara mercenary ship. And that two of the other vessels were from the Imisil Mergence.

 

  Resting within the armoured autofactory, the Legion Knight felt reassured by his thoughts, even though he knew that the future was always in flux. Even though the loss of his two scions to the warpwell had diminished and eroded his cognitive/conjectural capacity, now placed under increased strain by demanding thought processes. The autofactory had repaired and enhanced the physical shell of his existence, as well as its innumerable systems, but his neural pathways bore the scars of passing time, the entropy of millennia wearing away the underpinnings of his mind, atom by atom.

 

  A priority alert interrupted the current of his thoughts, an urgent update from the surveillance flyer feeds. Unit 8 had been scanning the forest and wooded hills north-west of Giant’s Shoulder – overlapping passes revealed the presence of an indetermi
nate number of Humans moving in single file northwards, tending east. Projections indicated that possible destinations included any of the Spiral zealot garrisons which were holding down the northern coastal area.

  Now data was arriving from ground remotes in the vicinity, confirming that the insurgents numbered over sixty and that several were carrying sophisticated energy weapons. Their heading would take them through or past one of the Uvovo transplanted species reserves, or so-called daughter-forests. That was a good place for an ambush, the Legion Knight decided. He would immediately dispatch a force of twenty-five combat droids, and also sent the two wire-null augments, the Human and the Uvovo he had captured before the seizure of Giant’s Shoulder. For a few days their response indoctrination had failed to embed properly, although the Human had almost persuaded the pilot of one of those primitive airbag craft to descend into a trap.

  Since then, however, they had shown marked improvement to the point where field trials were necessary. An ambush would be prepared and when the Humans entered its ambit the two wire-nulls would approach them, pretending to be escapees. Soon after they would use their weapons to start killing the Humans – that would be the signal for the combat mechs to close in.

  The plan was satisfactory. He gave the orders and as a sudden ferment of activity stirred the shining ranks of machines he turned his attention back to the sensor clusters and their continual scanning of local airspace, as well as near-orbit and beyond. The Imisil ships seemed to have left, while the destroyed Ezgara vessel added its own portion to the clouds of debris already swinging around Darien, causing significant showers of shooting stars.

  And since the Hegemony took great exception to the destruction of its and its allies’ ships, its response would be swift, decisive and very violent. Would any Imisil vessel return before then and provide him with an entertaining prelude to the arrival of the Legion of Avatars?

  THEO

  It was the shaking and the jolting that brought him round, along with a dull throbbing headache which, perversely, sharpened as he emerged into full wakefulness. Other sensations began making themselves known, his legs and arms which he couldn’t move, the complete inky blackness that greeted his open eyes, and the voice mumbling nearby.

  Drowsy thoughts suddenly clicked together. His ankles and wrists were bound and there was a bag over his head. And the owner of the mumbling mouth also appeared to be the driver of the wheelbarrow in which he was a passenger.

  How in all the hells did I end up in this …

  Then in a rush it came back to him.

  Once the coordinates for Greg’s location on Nivyesta had been sent to Gideon’s ship, Theo was on his way to his quarters to pack his gear when he was stopped by Strogalev, a trapper from Tangenberg. Strogalev said that he’d found an unusual Brolt device on the way to Tusk Mountain but couldn’t figure out if it was a weapon or what, and asked Theo if he would take a look. Theo was determined to be ready when the raiding party left – he wasn’t going to let Vashutkin out of his sight – but Strogalev’s tale snagged his curiosity so along he went to the man’s cubby room where someone clubbed him over the head, knocking him out.

  Like some green cadet with his mother’s ribbon in his inside pocket, he thought. How could I just walk into that and not realise …

  The barrow juddered as it passed over stones then tilted back to negotiate an incline of some kind. Theo heard the rustle of undergrowth brushing against the sides, and the soft sound of plant stalks breaking. The air was cold and damp, and he could smell a mingling of foliage and bark. They had brought him to one of the wooded gorges or narrow vales that led through the foothills to the Forest of Arawn. It could only be for one reason.

  They. He was sure that there were more than one, sure that he’d heard another rhythm of footfalls.

  ‘Stop,’ said a man’s voice from in front. ‘Stop – there!’

  The man pushing the barrow stopped. Theo heard a steady mutter from him, low and semi-audible.

  ‘Turn left, no, to the left – is correct. Now continue further along.’

  The shaking, lurching progress resumed. The other voice belonged to Strogalev, Theo was certain of it. Strogalev was a recent arrival yet Theo had seen him in Vashutkin’s company several times, usually when Vashutkin’s supporters were not around.

  Until three days ago his uncertainty about the Rus politician had rested only on intuitive suspicion, nothing more. He had heard Vashutkin’s account of the perilous mission to Giant’s Shoulder, the battle against the rogue combat mechs, how the Zyradin helped Greg survive the onslaught, then how Greg made it to the Brolturans’ fortification and took a lift down to the warp-well. Or so Vashutkin reckoned. The Rus escaped the main force of mechs by descending the southern face of Giant’s Shoulder to a natural recess in the rock from which he was rescued by the zeplin Har not long after.

  Everyone who heard it marvelled at the bravery and good fortune of those involved and was impressed by Vashutkin’s modesty and charisma. But Theo remained … uncertain. He had listened with the rest, took in the same dramatic tale and found himself unconvinced. He had wondered if it stemmed from the fact that he simply didn’t like the man (or did his dislike stem from his distrust?). In any case, this nebulous suspicion had hung over Theo’s thoughts, neither intensifying nor dispersing until three days ago when he was approached by a Uvovo scholar, one of Chel’s secretive Artificers.

  The Uvovo, whose name was Jofik, had asked Theo if Vashutkin suffered from any kind of mental illness, or perhaps some physical condition that would affect his personality. Mystified but intrigued, he had said he knew nothing about the man’s health or state of mind. Jofik had accepted this with a nod and seemed to consider it for a moment before explaining.

  Some other Uvovo, he told Theo, had noticed oddities in Mr Vashutkin’s behaviour since his arrival at Tusk Mountain. Most Uvovo were curious to some degree about what Humans did and why, and a couple of chance observations of Mr Vashutkin had revealed an unusual trait. Nearly all Human faces, Jofik went on, were expressive of their thoughts, even when asleep. Mr Vashutkin’s face was strangely blank, though only when alone or asleep – when someone came to see him his features changed completely and were full of expression, only to lapse into slack blankness once he was alone again. And this was accompanied by long periods of inactivity, of him just sitting doing nothing.

  Theo had been troubled by this. After returning from space, he had heard from one of the surviving Diehards about what the Hegemony ambassador had done to Greg during that brief incarceration, how he had been dosed with some offworld drug which loosened his tongue and turned him into a docile servant. Luckily, after Greg’s rescue, the Uvovo Chel had used strange forest roots to clean the drug out of his system. And after hearing Jofik’s account Theo started to wonder if the same thing had been done to Vashutkin. While speculating, he also found himself imagining the very worst possibility, that Greg’s body was lying among the jagged rocks at the base of Giant’s Shoulder.

  Then yesterday came the news that the Forerunner platform down in the Hall of Discourse had apparently reactivated itself, and a grim anxiety had sent him straight there. Jofik had gone with him, insisting that if communication with Nivyesta was possible then perhaps they could find out if Greg had actually made it safely to the moon. Once he was there, he found himself in a dialogue with a voice claiming to be that of the Zyradin entity (Theo had heard the tale of Robert Horst’s appearance, mortally wounded, carrying the Zyradin container). Although it was less a dialogue than the bodiless being delivering a set of coordinates and the command that the Tygran ship be sent to pick up Greg at a specific time the next day.

  And that was today, which was also the day of the assault on the northern Spiral garrisons. Theo had persuaded Lieutenant Gideon to let him tag along and had looked forward to hearing the news of Greg’s safe retrieval via the Tygran’s field commset.

  Instead here he was, bound and hooded, being wheeled into the wild to be shot i
n some secluded spot. He doubted very much that they were going to keep him prisoner.

  Sorry, Greg, sorry, Rory, I should have been more careful. Sorry, Solvjeg, looks like I’ll not be coming home with my shield after all …

  Roughly ten minutes later Strogalev ordered a halt then told the other man to get Theo out of the wheelbarrow. After some clumsy manhandling he ended up sitting on damp, lumpy ground with his back against what felt like a tree trunk. The hood came off and he saw that they were slightly upslope from a shallow stream, and deep within dense forest. The humid dimness was relieved by the profuse clumps of glowing roots or insects clinging to trees and webs of vines, while the coin-shaped leaves of a nearby nighteye plant gave off a pale, milky radiance. Some creature high up in the canopy uttered a soft whooping call and insects swooped and spun, creaked and hummed.

  Strogalev was standing beside the nameless mumbling man, showing him how to use a long-barrelled handgun. Seeing how difficult this was proving, Theo decided to do some stress-testing.

  ‘So what am I having for my last meal?’ he said. ‘Baro steak would be nice, maybe washed down with some Black Mountainside ale, eh?’

  Strogalev gave him a dark look but continued trying to get the other man to understand his instructions.

  Theo shrugged. ‘Hey, well. Condemned man, he is supposed to be allowed a final request, you know … ’

  No response.

  ‘How about a pipe? Do you have a pipe and some tobacco? Or even a cigarette would do.’

  Nothing.

  ‘Well, do you have some pen and paper? – I said, do you have any

  Strogalev’s head snapped round, fury in his face.

  ‘I heard you! And no, there is no pipes or cigarettes or pen or paper so shut your mouth!’