The Ascendant Stars (32 page)

‘In just one. They can each carry thirty fully armed Shyntanil boarding troops, whereas we have twenty-three Humans to accommodate, including you and me.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Twenty-one survivors from the
Heracles
, although there could be more in the other body bays, maybe even Velazquez … but it would be far too risky to stray into the upper decks. No, we must play to the few advantages that we have.’

‘Master Robert, we must warn the Roug!’ Kao Chih said. ‘We need to reach them first.’

‘Indeed, and to do so we’ll have to hamper our host’s progress somehow … but leave that to me.’

Kao Chih nodded. ‘So is there a way down to this launch area, and how can we carry so many unconscious people?’

‘My dear Kao Chih, who said anything about carrying? All our fellow Humans are already equipped with wheels, at least the frameworks that hold them are. As for access, there is a
secondary cargo elevator … ’ He pointed to the end of the bay bulkhead. ‘ … over there. I’ve started disconnecting the drug tubes so can you finish that while I investigate the elevator and check the launch bay in case there are any Shyntanil about. There shouldn’t be – most of the crew will be in their restoration cabinets, but I’d like to be sure.’

Kao Chih went about his new task with alacrity, going from recess to recess, carefully removing the needles which he then pushed into the bungs in the vials to prevent any spillage. Once that was completed, he began moving the Human crew over to the elevator corner of the bay, starting with those furthest away. Every now and then he would pause, his jittery senses alert for anything that sounded like the Shyntanil guards returning. He was lining up the fourth crewman against the bulkhead when the elevator arrived with a deep engine noise and stained corrugated doors slid open. Robert limped out, smiling.

‘Good work, Kao Chih,’ he said. ‘We may well be ready to leave within an hour.’

‘Did you injure yourself, Master Robert?’ he said, suddenly concerned. ‘Was anyone there?’

‘There was one tech working on some kind of assembly,’ Robert said, as if it was a small matter. ‘He threw a canister at me but I knocked him out with a heavy tool from his bench. So now that it’s all clear down there we can get busy without interference.’

Kao Chih nodded eagerly, and only allowed himself to frown when he was walking back along the aisle to collect another sleeping Human.

The transfer of their charges from the body bay to the launch bay went smoothly. Kao Chih’s first sight of the latter did not impress him especially – it was a high, rectangular chamber about sixty yards long and twenty across with three berths along one side, each containing an assault craft. In design it was a dark-hulled, heavily armoured personnel carrier whose broad prow resembled the hooked beaks of a pair of predators. Along the other side were a dozen large doors half the height of the launch
bay. The launch access, Robert said, was beneath the deck and led to pressure doors in the underhull.

They managed to pack sixteen insensible Humans into the elevator on the first run. Down in the launch bay they were wheeled over to the middle berth, where Kao Chih got busy releasing them from their upright cages. In the meantime the grey-haired Robert went back up to fetch the rest, and soon after his return all the crew were released and sitting or lying along the side of the berth. Robert set to work on the assault craft’s main hatch codepad, leaving Kao Chih to check on the well-being of the survivors. A few were starting to come round and were just about able to stand unaided but the others remained drugged and oblivious. And as he checked pulses and breathing, Kao Chih noticed amongst the clutter of a rear-wall workbench the distinctive shape of the grip of a handweapon. Glancing round, he reached over to pick it out of the mess and found it to be a heavy grey gun with a triangular muzzle. Quickly he slipped it inside his shirt, wedging its cold metal form into his waistband.

From behind came a multiple clunk followed by a hydraulic hiss. Robert laughed as he watched the stern hatch open downwards.

‘Ah, that anti-security briefing came in handy after all! Right, Kao Chih, let us get our passengers aboard.’

Together, they carried the unconscious ones up the ramp and sat them in square-cornered, unpadded couches clearly meant for the impervious Shyntanil physique. The craft’s interior was stark and basic – there were thirty-two of those hard seats in two rows of eight-facing-eight, equipment racks between the bare hull struts, and a pilot console that seemed rudimentary. Once everyone was seated, with some help from the recovered crew members, Robert went forward to sit at the pilot instruments.

‘I’m going to move us out into the bay,’ he said, punching controls. ‘Then I’ll leave this idling while I go back out to open the launch shaft and the outer hull doors. And attend to a little surprise for our hosts.’

‘Okay,’ Kao Chih said uncertainly.

Robert flicked several switches and with a sharpening hum the assault craft rose off the deck, wobbling slightly. Kao Chih, standing near the open hatch, held on to a strut as the craft glided out of the berth then settled onto its landing legs. Robert stood and hurried back to join Kao Chih.

‘Did you know that a cryptship’s interceptors are piloted by the truncated head, spine and nervous system of Shyntanil warriors, piped and merged into the craft’s systems? The command overseers can set the interceptors’ initial combat posture centrally or via small panels next to the craft conduits. Virtues of a top-down hierarchy, the need to ensure that units will act in perfect unison. Well, I intend to turn that to our advantage and concoct a little diversion by making them attack the Suneye ship.’ Then he was striding down the ramp and round out of sight.

Kao Chih agonised for a moment then went forward to look out of the cockpit viewport. He could see Robert walk over to one of the panels he mentioned and tap in several key combinations, one after another, until a blue light came on. More key taps, and blue pinpoints winked on next to the other eleven doors. After another sequence of key presses Robert straightened, stepped back a little and stabbed a single button.

At once a raucous alarm began to sound. At the same time there were waves of a thunderous rushing sound as one by one the blue pinpoints turned red. Meanwhile Robert had dashed across to another control panel on a pillar between two of the open berths. Watching once more from the rear hatch, Kao Chih saw the older man punch in more sequences until he found the right one. The entire midsection of the bay hinged down, revealing an inclined launch shaft. Kao Chih saw this, his mouth set with grim resolution. When Robert reached the foot of the assault craft’s ramp, he raised the Shyntanil handweapon and aimed it at the older man’s head. Robert stopped dead, a look of amused surprise on his face.

‘I don’t know what you are,’ Kao Chih said, ‘but I know that you’re not Human. You look to be about seventy years old, but you seem fitter and stronger than I am.’

‘Kao Chih, about a dozen heavily armed Shyntanil troopers will be coming through the upper balcony doors in a few seconds.’

‘What are you? Who are you working for?’

Robert rolled his eyes. ‘Yes, you are correct – I am in fact a semiorganic simulacrum, an android, and I take my orders from the Construct.’

Kao Chih laughed out loud. ‘Excuse me, but I believe I’ve heard this one before … ’

There were thuds and shouts from a walkway that Kao Chih hadn’t noticed before, running right across the upper sections of the craft berths. Badly aimed energy bolts sparked off the deck and flared against the ramp. Robert glanced over one shoulder then leaped up at Kao Chih, wrenched the weapon from his hand, thumbed something on its side and fired off a volley of bolts just as two Shyntanil came charging into view.

Almost in the same motion he slapped the hatch controls with his other hand. As the ramp rose up to seal the craft, Robert headed for the pilot console, scarcely pausing to toss the gun into Kao Chih’s hands.

‘Even Shyntanil weapons have safety catches,’ he said, sitting at the controls. ‘You can now shoot me if you like but it might distract me from flying us out of here!’

Kao Chih, racked with shame, said nothing as he slumped into one of the hard seats.

The deck tilted as the assault craft rose, swung round amid a storm of weaponsfire, and moved down the angled launch shaft. Thrusters ignited as the open hull doors loomed and the craft shot out from beneath the Shyntanil cryptship. Robert gave a satisfied nod as he scanned the instruments.

‘Just as I hoped, those dozen interceptors are still trying to engage the Suneye vessel. Both ships have lost control of the asteroid as well so it should take them a while to clear up the mess. Enough for us to fire up the hyperdrive and transtier our way to the Roug system … ’ He paused. ‘And warn them what’s on the way – which just happened to be my orders.’

‘I see … I see that I have been unduly suspicious. My apologies

Just then, one of the rescued crewmen waved a hand in the air, face looking as if he had just woken up. ‘Can somebody please tell me what the hell’s going on?’

Robert grinned and made a gesture inviting Kao Chih to fill the fellow in on current events. Kao Chih sighed, nodded, then moved over and began to explain.

The datasphere of Earth was a multilayered phantasmagoria of wildly exotic, near-endless delights. It was also a pitiless sinkhole of corrosive depravity, ultracommercial illusions and callous delusions, all cunningly crafted. And it was an intertwining system of security webs and counter-intrusion nodes, a maze of peril where the promise of deletion was everywhere.

And running through it was the Glow, a virtual playground for Humanity’s Earthbound 10.9 billion, plus the population of the moon, Mars, the Jovian satellites and the nomadic mining habs, which added another billion. Arenas, theatres, battlefields, art installations, historical subworlds, stocks and speculation crucibles, sensuality extravaganzas, word-by-word political drama, sport of every kind, wildlife of every kind, refinements of every kind, fripperies and trivia of every conceivable shade of irrelevance, and all available in a deluge of unrestrained abundance.

From the moment they arrived at the edge of the datasphere, in the auxiliary buffer of a mothballed weathersat orbiting Mars, Harry warned her to keep her wits about her.

‘I’ve already sent a coded message to Reski Emantes,’ he said. ‘He maintains a private network for Glowless transactions, very secure and very safe, but it cannot be accessed at a distance. Therefore we have to transvector ourselves through the data-sphere to a datanode close enough to gain access. In the meantime you should have this.’

He handed her a small brassy ornament of a boy sitting on a
rock and holding an archaic spyglass to one eye. Frowning, she studied it.

‘A sensory org?’ she said.

‘Something like that,’ Harry said. ‘It’s a mirager – it reads dataflows and watches for the presence of nullors, which are tracker-catchers or karcers, which are hunter-killers. Then it puts up a protective shell of fake info and idents merge-adapted to the immediate vicinity.’

Nodding, she considered their surroundings. They were standing in a long corridor whose ceiling was open to an immense cylindrical space criss-crossed by dataflows, some like chains of pulses, others like tightly woven braids, and a few bright as molten steel. Stretching up, a distance haze made the higher flows pale, almost insubstantial.

‘It sounds as if you’re expecting trouble,’ she said. ‘Should I be worried?’

He smiled. ‘Anxious, perhaps, not worried.’

‘How does that affect the exters? Will our appearances change?’

‘No – we’ll continue to appear as we do between us while the miragers keep us blended with the surroundings.’ Harry made a wiggly gesture with his hand. ‘Ready to leave, Ms Bryce?’

Wordlessly she nodded, inwardly marvelling at her composure as Harry said, ‘Compression one … ’

The long corridor and the cylindrical sky of criss-cross dataflows froze, cracked and swirled down into dark nothingness …

… and swirled up and remade itself in lush forest colours, which was appropriate since they seemed to have been dearchived into a strange zone of glittering, glowing trees. Huge towering trees whose branches sprouted blooms that received curving lines of sparkling data from the massive helix that spiralled past overhead.

‘The public multi-discipline precinct at Copernicus University on Luna,’ said Harry, who then pointed. ‘There, a trio of nullors.’

They looked like ruby caltrops scribing unfathomable trajectories above and among the stylised trees, spinning as they did
so. Suddenly a mesh of faint lines sprang up around Julia and Harry.

‘That’s the miragers at work,’ he said. ‘We’ve just become a mixed-media doctorate dissertation on interspecies cultural influences, complete with pseudo-AI response analyser.’ Harry chuckled. ‘Our next waypoint is a Glowatchers club on Plunder-world, one of Earth’s pleasure orbitals – its owner runs a black server on which I have an account.’

‘Let’s go,’ she said.

From conscious awareness to compressed data then through the transvector to decompress back to conscious awareness. And found herself standing on a wide circular platform surrounded by a pearly grey radiance. She was alone, but she still had the trench-coat image. Feeling the stirrings of anxiety, Julia walked over to the edge and caught sight of a few other similar platforms lower down, all resting on thin stalks. Far below lay multicoloured clusters of light, citylike but not a city.