The Night's Dawn Trilogy (120 page)

By 2611 there were twelve settled asteroids in orbit and two more on their way. Planetary population was a fraction under
two hundred million, and the twelve settled asteroids in the system’s dense inner belt were home to another two million people.
Subsidies and loans from Kulu had long since ended, self-sufficiency both industrially and economically had been reached in
2545, exports were accelerating. Ombey was a thriving decent place to live, bristling with justified optimism.

Captain Farrah Montgomery had expected the flight from Lalonde to take four days. By the time the
Ekwan
finally jumped into the Ombey system, emerging two hundred thousand kilometres above the planet’s surface, they had been
in transit for eight. The big colonist-carrier had endured a multitude of irritating systems failures right from the very
first minute of getting underway. Mechanical components had broken down, electrical circuits suffered a rash of surges and
drop-outs. Her crew had been harried into short-tempered despair as they attempted patchwork repairs. Most worrying, the main
fusion tubes produced erratic thrust levels, adding to the difficulty of reaching plotted jump coordinates, and increasing
the flight duration drastically.

Fuel levels, while not yet critical, were uncomfortably low.

Sensors slid out of their jump recesses, and Captain Montgomery performed a preliminary visual orientation sweep. Ombey’s
solitary moon, Jethro, was rising above the horizon, a large grey-yellow globe peppered with small deep craters, and streaked
with long white rays. They were above the planet’s night side; the Blackdust desert continent straddling the equator was a
huge ebony patch amid oceans that reflected jaundiced moonlight. On the eastern side of the planet the coastline of the Espartan
continent was picked out by the purple-white lights of towns and cities; there were fewer urban sprawls in the interior, declining
to zero at the central mountain range.

After Captain Montgomery had cleared their arrival with civil flight control, Ralph Hiltch contacted the navy base on Guyana,
and requested docking permission along with a code four status alert.
Ekwan
closed on the asteroid at one and a quarter gravities, holding reasonably steady. The base admiral, Pascoe Farquar, after
receiving Ralph’s request, backed by Sir Asquith, authorized the alert. Non-essential personnel were cleared from the habitation
cavern the navy used. Commercial traffic was turned away. Xenobiology, nanonic, and weapons specialists began to assemble
an isolation confinement area for Gerald Skibbow.

The
Ekwan
docked at Guyana’s non-rotating spaceport amid a tight security cordon. Royal Marines and port personnel worked a straight
five-hour shift to bring the
Ekwan
’s three thousand grumbling, bewildered colonists out of zero-tau and assign them quarters in the navy barracks. Ralph Hiltch
and Sir Asquith spent most of that time in conference with Pascoe Farquar and his staff. After he accessed sensorium recordings
Dean Folan made during the jungle mission, as well as the garbled reports of Darcy and Lori claiming Laton was on Lalonde,
the admiral decided to raise the alert status to code three.

Ralph Hiltch watched the last of the fifty armour-suited marines floating into the
Ekwan
’s large zero-tau compartment. They were all muscle boosted and qualified in free fall combat routines; eight of them carried
medium-calibre automatic recoilless projectile carbines. The sergeants followed Cathal Fitzgerald’s directions and started
positioning them in three concentric circles surrounding Gerald Skibbow’s zero-tau pod, with five on the decks either side
in case he broke through the metal grids. Extra lights had been attached to the nearby support girders, beams focused on the
one pod in the compartment which was still encased by an absorptive blackness, casting a weird jumble of multiple shadows
outside the encircling ring of marines.

Ralph’s neural nanonics were relaying the scene to the admiral and the waiting specialists. It made him slightly self-conscious
as he anchored himself to a girder to address the marine squad.

“This might look excessive for one man,” he said to the marines, “but don’t drop your guard for an instant. We’re not entirely
sure he is human, certainly he has some lethal energy-projecting abilities that come outside anything we’ve encountered before.
If it’s any comfort, free fall does seem to unnerve him slightly. Your job is just to escort him down to the isolation area
that’s been prepared. Once he’s there, the technical people will take over. They think the cell they’ve prepared will be able
to confine him. But getting him there could get very messy.”

He backed away from the pod, noting the half-apprehensive faces of the first rank of marines.

God, they look young. I hope to hell they took my warning seriously.

He checked his own skull-helmet, and took a deep breath. “OK, Cathal, switch it off.”

The blackness vanished from the pod revealing the smooth cylindrical composite sarcophagus. Ralph strained to hear the manic
battering which Skibbow had been giving the pod before the zero-tau silenced him. The compartment was quiet apart from the
occasional scuffling of the marines as they craned for a glimpse.

“Open the lid.”

It began to slide back. Ralph braced himself for Skibbow to burst out of the opening like a runaway combat wasp with a forty-gee
drive. He heard a wretched whimpering sound. Cathal gave him a puzzled glance.

God, did we get the right pod?

“All right, stay back,” Ralph said. “You two,” he indicated the marines with the carbines, “cover me.” He pulled himself cautiously
across the grid towards the pod, still expecting Skibbow to spring up. The whimpering grew louder, interspersed with low groans.

Very,
very
carefully, Ralph eased himself up the side of the pod, and peeked in. Ready to duck down fast.

Gerald Skibbow was floating listlessly inside the curving cream-white composite coffin. His whole body was trembling. He clutched
his shattered hand to his chest. Both eyes were red rimmed, blood was still oozing from his mashed nose. The smell of jungle
mud and urine clogged in Ralph’s nose. Gerald continued his weak gurglings, bubbles of saliva forming at the corner of his
mouth. When Ralph manoeuvred himself right over the pod there was no reaction from the unfocused eyes.

“Shit.”

“What’s happened?” Admiral Farquar datavised.

“I don’t know, sir. It’s Skibbow all right. But it looks like he’s gone into some kind of shock.” He waved a hand in front
of the colonist’s filthy, bloody face. “He’s virtually catatonic.”

“Is he still dangerous, do you think?”

“I don’t see how he could be, unless he recovers.”

“All right, Hiltch. Have the marines take him down to the isolation area as quickly as possible. I’ll have an emergency medical
team there by the time you arrive.”

“Yes, sir.” Ralph pushed himself away, allowing three marines to pull the still unresisting Skibbow from the zerotau pod.
His neural nanonics informed him the asteroid was being stood down to code six status.

I don’t understand, he thought bleakly, we brought a walking nuke on board, and wind up with a pants-wetting vegetable. Something
wiped that sequestration from him. What?

The marine squad departed the compartment noisily, joking and catcalling. Relieved they hadn’t been needed after all. With
one hand holding idly on a girder, Ralph hung between the two decking grids long after the last of them left, staring at the
zero-tau pod.

Three hours after Guyana’s alert status was reduced to code six, life inside had almost returned to normal. Civilians with
jobs in the military-run cavern were allowed to resume their duties. Restrictions on communication and travel were lifted
from the other two caverns. Spaceships were permitted to dock and depart, although the spaceport where the
Ekwan
was berthed was still off-limits to anything but navy ships. Three and a half hours after the marines delivered a virtually
comatose Gerald Skibbow to the isolation cell, Captain Farrah Montgomery walked into the small office Time Universe maintained
on Guyana and handed over Graeme Nicholson’s flek.

It was an hour after the maids had served Cricklade’s breakfast, and Duke was already rising across a sky that was ribbed
with slender bands of flimsy cloud. Duchess-night had seen the first sprinkling of rain since the midsummer conjunction. The
fields and forests glimmered and shone under their glace coating of water. Aboriginal flowers, reduced to wizened brown coronets
after discharging their seeds, turned to a pulpy mess and started to rot away. Best of all, the dust had gone from the air.
Cricklade’s estate labourers had started their morning in a cheerful mood at the omen. Rain this early meant the second crop
of cereals should produce a good heavy harvest.

Louise Kavanagh didn’t care about the rain, nor the prospect of an impending agricultural bounty. Not even Genevieve’s playful
enthusiasm could summon her for their usual stroll in the paddock. Instead, she sat on the toilet in her private bathroom
with her panties round her ankles and her head in her hands. Her long hair hung lankly, tasselled ends brushing her shiny
blue shoes. It was stupid to have hair so long, she thought, stupid, snobbish, impractical, a waste of time, and insulting.

Why should I have to be preened and groomed like I’m a pedigree show horse? It’s a wicked, filthy tradition treating women
like that. Just so that I look the classic-beauty part for some ghastly clot-head young “gentleman’. What do looks matter,
and especially looks that come from a pseudo-mythical past on another planet? I already have my man.

She clenched her stomach muscles again, squeezing her guts hard as she held her breath. Her nails dug into her palms painfully
with the effort. Her head started to shake, skin reddening.

It didn’t make the slightest difference. She let the air out of her straining lungs in a fraught sob. Angry now, she squeezed
again. Let out her breath.

Squeezed.

Nothing.

She wanted to cry. Her shoulders were shivering, she even had the hot blotches round her eyes, but there were no tears left.
She was all cried out.

Her period was at least five days overdue. And she was so regular.

She was pregnant with Joshua’s baby. It was wonderful. It was horrible. It was…a wretched great mess.

“Please, Jesus,” she whispered. “What we did wasn’t really a sin. It wasn’t. I love him so. I really do. Don’t let this happen
to me. Please.”

There was nothing in the world she wanted more than to have Joshua’s baby. But not
now
. Joshua himself still seemed like a gorgeous fantasy she had made up to amuse herself during the long hot months of Norfolk’s
quiescent summer. Too perfect to be real, the kind of man who melted her inside even as he set her on fire with passion. A
passion she didn’t quite know she had before. Previous daydreams of romance had all sort of blurred into vague unknowns after
her tall, handsome champion kissed her. But lying in bed at night the memory of Joshua’s cunning hands exploring her naked
body brought some most unladylike flushes below the sheets. There hadn’t been a day gone by when she didn’t visit their little
glade in Wardley Wood, and the smell of dry hay always kindled a secret glow of arousal as she thought of their last time
together in the stable.

“Please, my Lord Jesus.”

Last year one of the girls at the convent school, a year older than Louise, had moved away from the district rather abruptly.
She was from one of Stoke County’s more important families, her father was a landowner who had sat on the local council for
over a decade. Gone to stay with a wealthy sheep-farming relative on the isle of Cumbria, the Mother Superior had told the
other pupils, where she will learn the practical aspects of house management which will adequately prepare her for the role
of marriage. But everyone knew the real reason. One of the Romany lads, in Stoke for the rose crop, had tumbled her in his
caravan. The girl’s family had been more or less shunned by decent folk after that, and her father had to resign his council
seat, saying it was due to ill health.

Not that anyone would dare do that to any branch of the Kavanagh family. But the whispers would start if she took a sudden
holiday; the tarnish of shame would never be lifted from Cricklade. And Mummy would cry because her daughter had let her down
frightfully badly. And Daddy would…Louise didn’t like to think what her father would do.

No! she told herself firmly. Stop thinking like that. Nothing terrible is going to happen.

“You know I’m coming back,” Joshua had told her as they lay entwined by the side of the sun-blessed stream. And he said he
loved her.

He would return. He
promised
.

Everything would be all right after that. Joshua was the one person in the galaxy who could face up to her father unafraid.
Yes, everything would be fine just as soon as he arrived.

Louise brushed her—fearsomely annoying—hair from her face, and slowly stood up. When she looked in the mirror she was an utter
ruin. She started to tidy herself up, pulling up her panties, splashing cold water on her face. Her light flower-pattern dress
with its long skirt was badly creased. Why couldn’t she wear trousers, or even shorts? She could just imagine Nanny’s reaction
to that innocent suggestion. Legs on public display? Good grief! But it would be so much more practical in this weather. Lots
of the women working in the groves did; girls her age, too. She started to plait her hair. That would be something else which
changed after she was married.

Married. She grinned falteringly at her reflection. Joshua was going to be in for a monumental shock when he returned and
she told him the stupendous news. But, ultimately, he would be happy and rejoice with her. How could he not? And they would
be married at the end of summer (which was as quick as decency versus a swelling belly could allow), when the Earth flowers
were at their peak and the granaries were full from the second harvest. Her bulge probably wouldn’t show, not with an adequately
designed dress. Genevieve would adore being chief bridesmaid. There would be huge marquees on the lawns for the reception.
Family members she hadn’t seen for years. It would be the biggest celebration in Stoke County for decades, everyone would
be happy and they would dance under the neon-red night sky.