The Ascendant Stars (64 page)

The eighth wave finally did it, like a hammerblow landing on cracked ice. Gouts of destroying energy sliced into fissures and crevasses, racing through the interstices, burning and vaporising the ancient matrices of the Godhead’s brain. Its agony sent gigantic convulsions tearing through its vast corpus.

All around the Aggression destructor the morphscape had slowed, apparently solidifying, before a massive internal deformation shattered it all. The AI Extra-Brutal had shut down most of its external sensors, safely shielding those that could be protected. But it had enough still active to witness the arrival of the last missile wave, their sun-bright explosions lighting up the expanding clouds of debris and dust with haloes of incinerating hellfire.

The Extra-Brutal was picking up nothing but interference on the command channel. It knew that it was now partly encased in a solidified chunk of the Godhead’s integument, and floating clear of huge splintered pieces even as the dissipating wavefronts of energy and debris pushed them further apart. The Construct AI gingerly tested its manoeuvring jets and found that it could move. Steering a course towards the edge of the gigantic rubble cloud, it was careful to keep to wider spaces, trying to reduce the chances of a collision with something large and fast-moving. With its sensors it saw that the energy discharge from the missile strikes continued to blaze amid the veils of pulverised rock, unseen flames flickering in a haze of stone.

The AI Extra-Brutal noticed the wreckage of many ships amongst the drifting debris of the Godhead. But the strangest object was a lifeless male humanoid strapped to a blue couch which had small suspensor assemblies fixed to either end. A detailed scan revealed that the humanoid had broken legs, a broken spine and a fractured shoulder, and that it had died from explosive decompression. The Extra-Brutal committed the data to its report file and continued on its slow winding journey out of the corpse-cloud of the Godhead.

He swung his legs out of the Roug foray-pod and stepped down onto a hazy ashen wasteland. He had a Roug weapon in his hand, a smartgun Kao Chih had called it, a large-gripped, fat-muzzled piece in a strange grey material. Warily he scanned his surroundings. Heavy rains had fallen a short while ago and the uneven burnt ground steamed while smoke drifted from the charred, massive husks of trees that lay all around. The warm air stank of incinerated wood and vegetation, and he spat to try and clear the taint from his mouth. To no avail.

‘I’m outside,’ he said.

‘Is it as bad as the probe data suggested?’ came Kao Chih’s voice from the comm piece in his right ear.

‘Worse,’ Greg said. ‘Far worse.’

‘The shuttle is lying in a shallow gully over the rise north of your location. The aerial probe isn’t picking up lifesigns in its vicinity, but if Kuros survived the landing he will certainly have headed towards the enclave.’

The uneven slope was cluttered with blackened, shattered tree trunks and ragged stumps that stuck up like obsidian spikes. As he climbed he felt as if he could see two views, the lush verdancy of Segrana as he remembered it, and this stripped, seared devastation.

Catriona
, he thought.
Did you die along with Segrana? If the forest is dead, how could you be alive?

He steeled himself to the task, telling himself that retribution
was possible and soon. The weight of the Roug handgun was comforting.

Fine ash puffed up with every step. As he ascended he made a discovery – amongst the endless black debris were heaps of twisted, half-melted metal whose aspects and identifying traits he recognised as those of Legion cyborgs. Wrecked, semi-crushed and torn to pieces, they lay everywhere he looked. Was this the explanation for the mass disappearances which allowed the remnants of the Hegemony and Earthsphere fleets to regain the initiative in the battle around Darien? It would explain those images of Nivyesta he had seen during the hours spent chasing Kuros across the surface of Darien, the grey blotches that had grown to obscure the great forest.

It wasn’t due to an orbital bombardment after all
, he thought.
Instead Segrana was turning into a gigantic funeral pyre for the Legion of Avatars. Was that the Zyradin’s plan all along?

By the time he reached the crest he was streaked with ash from head to foot and sweat had marked trails down his face. Before him a jagged ridge curved away to east and west, and beyond it lay a forest-crammed cove, an enclave of vegetation untouched by the disaster.

The bulbous shuttle lay at the bottom of a gully down which the recent rains had sent a slurry of ash-choked water, leaving pools in its wake. The shuttle had come to rest with its nose up and the side hatch gaping. Greg approached warily, with the Roug gun at the ready, carefully peering in. But the craft was empty and all the controls were dead, while on the wet, seared ground by the hatch he found two sets of footprints, one large, one small.

‘Perhaps Kuros is accompanied by one of those Ezgara commandos,’ Kao Chih said after Greg related his findings. ‘The surveillance data was intermittent – an accomplice could have been missed. Mr Cameron, in what direction do the tracks lead?’

‘Looks like they’re heading east, following the ridge.’

‘Less than half a kilometre that way is the entrance to a ravine that slopes down to the cove. You should hurry – it now appears that Kuros has activated a rescue transponder.’

‘Great,’ Greg said, holstering the Roug weapon. ‘Any sign of rescuers on their way?’

‘Not as yet. I shall keep you informed.’

Wiping a sheen of sweat from his face, Greg followed the footprints away from the shuttle. Ten minutes later they disappeared into a notch in the ridge, the ravine entrance Kao Chih had mentioned. Inside it was more like a fissure than a ravine, a cold, sheer-sided cleft with streamlets trickling down a steep path of black rocks and boulders.

‘Is your probe still monitoring the area?’ he said as he ducked under a massive slab wedged between the fissure sides. ‘Any way to pinpoint our quarry?’

‘It is still scanning from low-cloud altitude,’ said Kao Chih. ‘However, its sensors are not equipped to distinguish different species. All I can tell you is that there are over a thousand sentient lifeforms in the enclave, and that the transponder signal is not emanating from ground level.’

Greg nodded as he emerged from the ravine into a rough clearing hemmed in by dense walls of foliage that rose up to intertwine overhead. Some light filtered through, casting everything in shades of green. And the air was clean, moist and free from the taint of ash. Greg had a moment or two of pure enjoyment before a tingle of alarm came over him.

In reflex he dived to the right and had the Roug gun out even as something weighty sighed through the space he had so recently occupied. There was a heavy impact followed by secondary thuds and the crackling rustle of crushed foliage. He remembered Kao Chih’s instructions on the smartgun’s use and fired a sequence of short bursts into the shadowy ravine, back along what he reckoned to be the boulder’s trajectory.

The second rock was smaller and faster. He dodged sideways, still firing blurry steel-grey bolts up into the dark fissure, reached cover behind a thick bush and saw that a pale circular display had appeared on the back of the gun, above the grip. Within it a red dot was moving from left to right and Greg smiled. His attacker was tagged and the gun’s sensors were now tracking it. He
crouched, raised the Roug weapon and swung it after the invisible assailant, who had to be moving along the branches high above. When the red dot was centred he pressed the fire stud and held it down.

A chain of bright blue spikes lanced up into the dense mesh of foliage. There was a choking cry, a splintering crack, and a form fell out of the canopy amid a cascade of leaves and twigs. For a second the gun’s continuous fire followed the body’s descent, pouring energy bolts into it, before Greg released the stud. Trailing smoke and flames, it hit the ground and was still. Even before he reached it he was fairly sure who it was. With the smart-gun at the ready he flipped the lifeless form over … and he was right, it
was
Vashutkin. The former politician had taken energy-bolt hits all up the left side of his body, leaving it a seared gory ruin with the arm almost severed and blood oozing from a ragged hole in the neck. The eyes were vacant.

‘Mr Cameron? Are you there?’ Kao Chih sounded worried. ‘We are picking up weapon-energy discharges.’

‘I’m okay, I’m brand new,’ he said. ‘That gun is pretty impressive, by the way!’

‘Have you encountered the Hegemony ambassador?’

‘Nah. Dealt with the monkey – now it’s time to find the organ-grinder.’

He stepped over the corpse and pushed through a curtain of leafy vines. The undergrowth was dense and alive with buzzing insects and varieties of beetles and reptiles that seemed familiar if somewhat larger. He had gone less than a dozen paces when a tall woman leaned out from behind a tree and beckoned him over.

‘You are chasing the big Sendrukan fellow, yes?’ she said with a faint Norj accent.

‘I do have business to discuss with him, aye.’

‘Well, this one climbed our Watchtree, threatened to fire on anyone who comes near. My Uvovo scholars are all for charging across the branchways but I am managing to cool down their hot heads, so far. I hope that you are armed.’

When he showed her the Roug gun she nodded approvingly. ‘That’s the Watchtree, right through there.’ She pointed to a huge trunk around which a lamplit stairway spiralled upwards. ‘Listen, there is a friend of mine still up there – keep your eye out for her,
ja
? And the sooner this is resolved the better. My Uvovo won’t stay cool for very much longer.’

He smiled. ‘Well, I’d better get on wi’ it, then!’

He nodded to her then headed off through the bushy undergrowth at a crouch. He had just reached the foot of the spiral steps when Kao Chih suddenly spoke.

‘We may have a small problem, Mr Cameron.’

Greg sighed. ‘If you really need to tell me about it now, I bet it’s no’ that small.’

‘A previously undetected vessel has left Darien and is heading towards Nivyesta,’ Kao Chih said. ‘Sensor data indicates that it is a Hegemony medium-range shuttle, homing in on Kuros’s transponder signal. Expected arrival is thirty-one minutes and counting.’

‘Fair enough, but this smartgun is a nice bit of kit,’ Greg said. ‘I’m not really anticipating any difficulties.’

‘I would still advise caution.’

‘Aye, and from here on I’ll be in silent mode so don’t expect a running commentary, okay?’

‘And I shall refrain from superfluous queries.’

‘Right, here goes … ’

The first jutting steps creaked slightly underfoot but felt thoroughly solid as he climbed. With the Roug gun held near his shoulder, muzzle up, he stayed close to the mossy trunk, eyes glancing ahead and above. He had completed one full turn about the Watchtree when he heard that voice.

‘So good of you to pay me this visit, Dr Cameron, although something tells me that this is not a social call.’

‘Met Vashutkin on my way here,’ Greg said, scanning the overhead weave of foliage. ‘He’s no longer a problem. Are you going to be a problem, Ambassador?’

‘I certainly hope so, Doctor.’

Suddenly sure that he’d seen a form shift behind the branch-and-vine veil above and to the right, he raised the smartgun two-handed and blazed away. Close on a dozen tag rounds zipped and cracked through the foliage but the acquisition display failed to come up on the grip.

‘Not quite the inward-looking academic any more, I see,’ came the infuriatingly languid voice, its source hard to pin down.

‘Had to adapt, Ambassador,’ Greg said. ‘Times are hard and dangerous, thanks to
you
… ’

With the last word of the sentence he fired the smartgun at a branch jutting almost directly overhead, stitching a zigzag of tag rounds across it. But still no display. He cursed under his breath, flattened his back against the trunk and peered sideways, up the curve of steps. And saw a face staring at him out of a branching mass of foliage, the face of Catriona Macreadie …

‘You’ll have to do better than that, Doctor,’ said the Sendrukan from somewhere above, but Greg’s full attention, his entire being, was focused on that beloved face. He half-opened his mouth to call out to her but she shook her head and pressed a silencing finger against her lips. Then she pointed at the spiral steps and made a gesture like two rising turns … or one and a half, he couldn’t be sure. After that she smiled at him, blew him a kiss, and was gone.

Greg felt shaken by the encounter, delighting in the initial burst of exhilaration, revelling in the notion that she’d somehow escaped destruction and regained her physical form. Then hard, unforgiving memory forced upon him the fact that the last time he saw her she had been an incorporeal shade flitting among the trees, an insubstantial projection sent by a vast, inhuman entity.

But he had not imagined her appearance, and there would be time enough for investigation later.

With unhurried care he ascended the curving steps, pausing a couple of times to study the dense curtains of greenery.

‘Why so silent, Doctor Cameron? Daunted by the enormity of your task, perhaps?’

By now Greg had ascended by more than a turn of the spiral
and a gap appeared in the canopy above, revealing a tall, grey-robed figure. But even as he brought up the smartgun and loosed a string of tag rounds the robed Sendrukan noticed him and ducked away. The branches shook for a moment or two as Kuros no doubt scuttled away to a safer distance, and when Greg regarded the gun there was still no targeting display.