The Ascendant Stars

by Cobley, Michael

  Shattered rock and clouds of grit and dust erupted here and there, and a couple of times an assembly housing or external pipe junction was hit, resulting in a flare of vaporised metal burning up. Greg started to realise how much punishment a big asteroid could absorb.

  But now it was the defenders’ turn to become an easy target. Crowded together in a comparatively slow-moving teardrop formation, this allowed the enemy vessels to concentrate their fire – but even Greg knew this couldn’t go on. Minutes later Ngassa was back on the big screen with a new plan – divide the combined fleet in three, a command group based on the vice-admiral’s flagship and the Retributor, and two support groups based on the Imisil and Vox Humana vessels respectively, strengthened with Earthsphere units.

  The Imisil commander, First Proposer Conlyph, nodded emphatically, his facial markings shimmering an impatient silver.

  ‘Dividing our numbers adds to our manoeuvrability while dividing the enemy’s firepower.’

  The Vox Humana admiral, Olarevic, was unconvinced but Ngassa’s promise of five Earthsphere heavy cruisers brought her round. Ash had Berg in the Starfire and Braddock in the Vanquisher go with them too, while deciding to commit the Silverlance to the Imisil group.

  ‘Our strategic goal,’ Vice-Admiral Ngassa said over the group-channel visual, ‘is to locate and destroy the Hegemony flagship, thus removing the Supreme Overcommander.’ The image of a bulky, carrier-sized ship bristling with weapons appeared below his face. ‘Clear skies and good hunting!’

  Greg raised an eyebrow at Ash. ‘So, my idea wasnae so dumb, after all, eh?’

  ‘It depends on how you define the word.’

  ‘What – define “dumb”?’

  ‘No – “idea”.’

  But the task ahead, spiritedly depicted as formidable or even challenging, soon showed its true face. The enemy ships were too numerous and the collective potency of their weapons was too strong for overloaded, overstretched shields and weakened hulls. Formationless, the Hegemony vessels converged on the three groups of defending ships, imposing carriers unleashing hundreds of interceptors that fell upon them in wave after wave. On the control screens in the Silverlance’s engineering deck, Greg watched the attack runs against a Vox Humana light assault cruiser which had become separated, explosive rounds stitching lines of fire along its hull, the bursts of argent violence as generators or fuel stores ignited, the pale outgassing from a hundred breaches, the ragged gaping crater where an out-of-control enemy craft had rammed the ship and exploded. And dozens of escape pods jetting away, location signals pinging on the emergency channels.

  Greg saw similar ship deaths played out on the screens, a repetition of desperate tragedy. Half an hour after Ngassa’s stirring send-off, their combined numbers were down to eighteen at the last count. Braddock’s Vanquisher was a drifting hulk, its captain missing. The Vox Humana’s Admiral Olarevic lost her flagship but transferred to one of the Earthsphere cruisers. Including Berg’s Starfire, their own group was down to four.

  The Imisil group were numerically better off – two Imisil cruisers, three Earthsphere attack cruisers and Ash’s Silverlance – but the damage sustained was widespread and serious. The Imisil commander had decided on a tactical withdrawal out past the orbit of Nivyesta.

  The Retributor had been put out of action. K’ang Lo’s brutal Roug weapon managed to account for perhaps two hundred Hegemony ships before enough missiles and interceptors finally broke through the shield and fire cordon provided by Ngassa’s heavy cruisers. Greg had only caught glimpses of the rockhab as it was enveloped in a wreath of detonating payloads and flaming energies just before the dome of the dragon’s breath exploded, a burst of light accompanied by sprays of sparks while pulverised fragments expanded outwards. Watching it was almost too much to bear.

  Now the asteroid vessel looked powered-out, a darkened mass drifting with a slight axial spin, all external floods and signal lights dead. Just a few jets of escaping gas creating clouds of ice crystals in its slow wake.

  Meanwhile, Vice-Admiral Ngassa’s flagship and a handful of battered vessels were being steadily corralled by the remaining hundreds of Hegemony ships. Complete defeat seemed to be staring them in the face.

  Whatever happened to that Imisil fleet? Greg wondered. Did that black Vor ship we saw stop them in their tracks?

  Ash was standing before the screens, arms crossed, face unreadable. The central panel had been tiled into a score or more of feed frames, each showing a separate scene from some part of the sprawling, world-encircling battlezone. Several audio channels were muttering in the background, the only sound in the sombre hush.

  ‘I found out why they opened fire while you were in mid-rebuttal,’ Ash unexpectedly said to Greg. ‘It appears that the Vashutkin message was made on a Sorik dataslate, which is a command-level piece of equipment aboard Tygran ships, and it was recorded nearly an hour before it was widecast. Best of all, there was a short message in Sendrukan encrypted into one of its layers, which said: “Operation Reclaim now commencing.” In other words, it was a signal.’

  ‘So Becker was involved,’ Greg said. ‘But if that was over an hour ago they could be getting up to any kind of deviltry – and we’ve no way of knowing what it is … unless … ’

  Ash shook his head. ‘That damned interference is still blanketing the colony. Nothing but garbled static … ’

  The face of the Imisil commander, First Proposer Canlyph, appeared at one side of the screen.

  ‘Lieutenant Ash, I have some unfortunate news – it appears that the remainder of the Imisil fleet has encountered a second wave of attackers in hyperspace. I’m afraid that the fleet’s High Initiator has decided to turn back and to see if an alternative route can be found. On a less regretful note, I can report that our probes have sent back an interesting morsel of information – relaying it to you now.’

  Greg’s heart sank, appalled that his own inner speculations could turn out to be true.

  Another frame popped up on the screen, showing the lush green curve of the forest moon, Nivyesta. The visual zoomed forward in stages, finally revealing the ship that was hanging there in stationary orbit on the other side of the moon, a massive and distinctive-looking ship, weapons jutting from stepped layers of decks.

  ‘It is the Hegemony flagship, the Dominion Of Light,’ said the First Proposer. ‘I believe that we should gather our strength and attack it. The Earthsphere captains have already agreed.’

  Ash hesitated and Greg thought, even half-hoped that he’d decline what would almost certainly be a suicide mission. Then he gravely nodded.

  ‘Two-part assault?’ he said. ‘The Earthers and ourselves go in hot to draw off the escort while your ships stealth up close to the flagship’s stern, targeting the drives?’

  ‘Well deduced, Lieutenant. We shall move out in three and one-half minutes by your reckoning.’

  The Imisil vanished and Ash rapped out a series of orders and course changes. Suddenly the air was electric.

  ‘Mr Cameron, as a civilian you have no formal rank or combat function aboard the Silverlance – I can put you off in an escape pod slotted for a touchdown on Nivyesta. If that is what you wish.’

  Greg laughed. ‘Ye probably know that this assault is stupid, right? So basically the plan is that we’re not gonnae make it out alive. But since no plan survives contact with the enemy we could well get through it by the skin of our teeth! So aye, count me in.’

  The Tygran smiled openly and shook his head.

  ‘You make madness sound almost sane.’

  The comms officer suddenly interrupted him. ‘Sir, I’m getting a squirt transmission from … from the asteroid vessel, the Retributor!’

  ‘Someone’s still alive on that rock?’ Greg said.

  ‘How wide a cast is it?’ Ash said. ‘What channel, and who else might hear it?’

  ‘That’s just it, sir – it reached us by tight-beam relay, not as a widecast signal.’

  Ash’s eyes widened, hal
f-smiling. ‘So they aimed a comm laser at us!’

  ‘Yes, sir, exactly … nnnnyyyarrgh! … ’

  With a violent motion the comms officer ripped away his headset and reared back a step before diving forward to punch controls on his console.

  ‘What was that?’ said Ash.

  ‘A … howl of something horrible … right across all bands, all channels. I’ve never heard anything like it … ’

  ‘Anything to do with the Retributor’s message?’

  ‘No, sir, it’s … coming from the planet’s surface … ’

  Ash was already at work at the main sensor controls and a view of Darien appeared on the main screen. A swathe of the planet’s face was obscured by great banks of cloud gyrating around a cyclonic weather system off to the north. But what held everyone’s attention was the pale glow lighting up the clouds from below. Whatever was producing it had to be huge and bright enough to turn night into day for it to be so starkly visible. There were few hints of the landmasses and coastline below but Greg knew with an awful certainty exactly what the source of the light was.

  Is this it?, he thought. Is this where the Legion of Avatars breaks out and takes over Darien? What will Uncle Theo and the others do? Will anyone survive?

  Then he looked at Ash and the rest and wondered what to say to them.

  THEO

  An hour or so earlier, just before Greg began his angry riposte to Vashutkin’s declaration, Theo Karlsson was smoking a pipe while perched on an upended crate beneath a rickety lean-to poised near the brink of the crater in the flank of Tusk Mountain. Nearby sat Rory, who was whittling away at a wooden peg by the light of a Tygran cell-lamp. The lean-to’s waxed-hide canopy was sheltering them from the insistent downpour currently moving slowly across the mountains. It made a pattering sound overhead and filled the mountain air with an immense sighing hiss.

  This is the real rain, Theo thought, drawing and puffing, savouring the fragrant woodiness of the tobacco. So the sky chooses tonight to release its bounty. Such good timing …

  He glanced over at Rory, still scraping, blowing and carving.

  ‘I thought you gave that up a year ago,’ he said. ‘You said you were not any good at it.’

  Rory paused, flashed Theo a sidelong grin and held up the piece of wood. To Theo’s surprise it looked a bit like a lizard, a snipervile.

  ‘No’ any more, chief!’ said Rory. ‘Guess I’ve got a natural talent for it after all.’

  Theo nodded, deciding not to voice any concern. Ever since his recovery in the Uvovo daughter-forest, Rory had more and more seemed like his old self, complete with the ebullient self-assurance and handy wit. Yet there was something new, a slight hesitancy or at least a blunting of the wild rashness that had got him into so many tight corners over the years. Theo was sure it was due to the horrors Rory and the Uvovo Chel had suffered while prisoners of the Legion Knight. He had asked Rory about it in a mild, no-pressure manner, but Rory had insisted that he remembered nothing at all from when he was captured to when he awoke in the forest.

  The raucous sounds of voices singing in unison came up from the crater. That great bite out of the mountain’s flank had in the space of a day gone from a charred stone bowl to a real-estate rush when some of those confined to corridor recesses within the mountain realised that here was plenty of room to build a shack or a hut. Branches were gathered from the lower-slope woods while salvaged materials were brought in from nearby trapper towns, even the logger camps to the south. A multitude of shaky-looking shanties were erected and expanded as volunteers continued to turn up. Right now, down in one of the larger huts, a group of newly arrived Norj mountain men calling themselves the Hakon-Haer were engaged in a contest with the Stonecutter Clan, a band of brawny Scots builders, the contest being the strident bellowing of songs while pints of small beer were consumed.

  Theo smiled, recalling similar gatherings when he was younger, especially during the Winter Coup, when eve-of-battle congregations were held, songs were sung, ale was drunk, and loved ones were held close.

  They have every right to celebrate their Humanity, he thought. To celebrate the fire that burns in our hearts. Come the dawn in just a few hours we’ll be facing terrible, pitiless enemies. We have to succeed. Many will die but we still have to find a way to destroy the warpwell or face our own destruction …

  The plans had been laid. Alliances had been negotiated and pacts sealed. Gideon had met with the leader of the Spiral renegades and again with Solvjeg and Ian Cameron – coded messages flitted by crude shortwave back and forth between Tusk Mountain and Hammergard or the Spiralist renegade camp near Port Gagarin. The schematics of war were drawn up, timings and logistics agreed upon. While the Tusk Mountain insurgents bided their time, units of Eastern Town militias were moving through the wild woods that ran north along the ridges and cliffs to merge with the jagged spurs west of Giant’s Shoulder. At the same time bands of Spiralists were converging on the steep tracks north of the promontory, many of them armed with portable missile launchers that would be put to good use against the combat mechs.

  Then there was the bomb, the warpwell bomb. Soon after Theo returned with Rory, word came from the Hall of Discourse that the Zyradin was asking to speak with the diminutive Scot. Theo had duly accompanied Rory down to the ceremonial hall, where he clambered up onto the glowing platform and stood there with a distrustful look on his face. The Zyradin had then explained that someone had to take a space-fold bomb up to Giant’s Shoulder and use it against the warpwell. Oh aye, Rory had said – is that tae stop all they cyborg mad-bastards from coming through here? Yes, Rory, the Zyradin said. And since you now have a machine-system attunement you would be able to penetrate their defences while the main attack occupies their full attention. Well, I do have this thing wi’ machines, right enough, Rory had admitted. Noticed it a lot since I got back, like, just knowing how they work, how tae change what they’re doing. Exactly, said the Zyradin. You can tell the combat mechs to ignore you. Rory had nodded hesitantly. So I dive past them and plant the bomb but will I have enough time tae get out afore it goes kaboom? The Zyradin said: there should be long enough for you to retreat to a safe distance. Rory had frowned and thought for a brief moment before nodding. All right, yer on!

  Not long after, Gideon and Solvjeg came to thank Rory for his help, and to finalise his part in the assault, the when, the where, and with who. Later a Uvovo scholar sought him out to say that the Zyradin’s device had appeared on the great platform. Rory had said that he’d wait until it was time to go before retrieving it.

  Theo found himself drawing cool air from his pipe, which had gone out. He contemplated refilling and relighting it then decided that he really should try and get some shuteye. Even some of the ribald singers down below had thought the same and were climbing the rope ladder that led from the bottom of the crater to the gaping entrance. The rain was still falling, a steady curtain of drench, but he had made up his mind. He knocked out the charred dottle from his pipe then stood.

  ‘I think I’ll be turning in,’ he said. ‘See if I can trap me a couple of hours’ sleep, eh?’

  ‘Aye, I’ll mebbe try the same in a wee bit, chief,’ Rory said.

  Theo nodded, pulled on a cloth cap and stepped out into the rain then headed along the edge of the crater. Three catwalks suspended on improvised A-frames joined two points along the edge to the base entrance. He was halfway across the one leading from the centre to the base when he heard an odd sound in the air, off in the distance, like the drone of insects. Then a shouting reached him from away down the mountain slope, a man clambering madly up towards the crater, yelling ‘Alarm! Alarm!’

  The droning was engines! My God, he thought. We’re under attack! And he leaned over the gantry rail to shout at Rory but before he could a heavy weight struck his shoulder, knocking him down to sprawl on the gantry’s rough planks. Even as he struggled to regain his footing he could hear the sounds of a firefight nearby, suddenly blotted out by the whinin
g stutter of an automatic weapon. Shouts went up all around. Crouching, he fumbled for his own weapon, a reliable hefty 45-calibre revolver, then realised that he was alone on the catwalk. Dark figures slid down lines that hung wavering from above. Theo looked up and saw seven or eight silently hovering oblong shapes, grey in the rain which splashed in his eyes. Had his assailant been one of these attackers, striking Theo on his way down into the crater?

  Roused from sleep, the shanty inhabitants had emerged and gunfire was breaking out in all directions. Theo made a dash for the main entrance, feet banging on the planks, one hand intermittently seeking balance on the rope rail while the other held on to the revolver. Ahead, men with rifles knelt in the entrance, some firing up at the antigrav flyers, other beckoning Theo to hurry.

  There was a loud bang from behind. In reflex he ducked, going down on one knee and glancing over his shoulder – just as the gantry slewed suddenly to one side with a cracking sound. The support was toppling, making the gantry tilt over. Theo held on as best he could, then there was a lurch and he lost his grip, tipped over the rail and fell …

  Onto a shanty roof, some composite of hide over a lattice of wooden slats. It broke his fall but still gave way with a splintering tear so that he landed awkwardly on the dirt floor of a wide hut hardly lit by the brazier glowing in the corner. There was a long table strewn with empty and half-empty mugs, and a couple of snoring forms curled up beneath, oblivious to the raging conflict. Theo got shakily to his feet. Astonishingly he had held on to the revolver so at least he wasn’t defenceless. Time to get back up there, he thought. Got to find Rory …

  It was the rope ladder up to the entrance that he had in mind as he strode towards the hut’s open door. In the darkness he never saw the foot that tripped him. He fell full-length and landed facedown, the impact driving the air out of his chest. And yet still he held on to the gun and, aware that there was someone else in the hut, he rolled over, bringing the gun round …