Less than an hour before the mysterious ship came down in Segrana’s northern uplands, Cat had been inspecting the repairs to a filter-root cluster near a high-canopy leaftown called Raintiderill when an eager young Uvovo came swinging and scrambling down from above.
‘Pathmistress! Listener Okass told me to fetch you up to see – there are new stars in the sky!’
By the time she reached the high open platform where Okass awaited her, several other senior Uvovo had arrived to peer up into the night sky’s faint veils and hazy swirls. Some were regarding a particular quarter of the firmament, then they broke off to bow as Catriona joined them.
‘In the region of the Ineka constellation, Path-mistress,’ said Okass, pointing.
Cat took her binoculars from a waist pouch and turned them to that particular direction. Brighter stars shone through the far-away streams and clouds of interstellar dust while others made diffuse glows, like specks of embers. But between those distant lamps and Darien, hanging in space, were formations of silver pinpoints unlike any stellar arrangement she had ever seen.
She lowered the glasses. Those had to be ships, so was this an invasion? Or was it Earthsphere? Or an intervention by the Imisil Mergence? And what was happening down on Darien? Not for the first time she inwardly cursed not having access to long-range communication. She turned to Listener Okass.
‘I will need a trictra and a rider,’ she said. ‘I have to travel down to the Stone Temple to speak with the Sentinel of the Ancients.’
Okass nodded. ‘I shall have one brought for you immediately, Pathmistress.’
Some minutes later she was strapped to the back of one of the furry pseudo-arachnoids and descending into the perpetual twilight of Segrana’s depths, following the mazy paths of branchways and strengthened vine-web ladders. And she was nearly halfway to the forest floor when she felt the ship crashing into Segrana.
Cat could sense the shattering of ancient trees, the tearing of vine curtains, the splintering of branches, then the long furrow gouged into the forest floor as the vessel’s momentum carried it through the undergrowth. The not-quite-pain, courtesy of Segrana’s weave of being, forced her to tell the trictra herder to stop. For a moment she sat there, physically assailed by a pulse of ache that ran straight through her. As it gradually diminished she began to get a more accurate idea of where this was happening, north and slightly east of Raintiderill, almost three thousand miles away. And that gash in the forest floor was more than half a mile long. Segrana’s presence was already moving to that area, trying to assess the damage and begin the healings. Cat realised that she would have to put off talking with the Sentinel and told the trictra herder to take her back up to Raintiderill. By the time she arrived, some of the Listeners had received sketchy accounts that the ship had many passengers on board and that there were many survivors. Other messages reported that two large flyers had taken off from the Brolturan base and were heading north to the crash site.
Without delay she had sought out one of the town’s vudron chambers and seated herself within its woody darkness. With her Enhanced abilities she swiftly calmed her thoughts, then drew about herself the lucid trance state that provided that vital link with Segrana’s weave of being. It was like setting off to swim down a widening river, moving with its great flow of strength as it poured into a great ocean of senses and images and interconnections, echoes and hints of ancient memories, and the voices of being and nonbeing, all tied to the vast presence of Segrana.
Unspoken worry swirled about her, unease and discomfort, and there was an odd rushing, falling feeling. Without warning brightness and interwoven shapes burst upon her. She was disorientated for a moment or two, until she adjusted to a distorted view and odd perspective, of the crash site seen from a high branch.
It was a creature’s eyes through which she observed figures moving in the harsh light of powered lamps. In the half-light the ship was a long, indistinct shape except for the prow which was crushed and split open from its collision with an outcrop of boulders. She couldn’t tell how many were gathered about the wreck, scores certainly, but before she could attempt a quick head count her vision suddenly quivered and wrenched away to another viewpoint, another pair of eyes.
Lower down this time, peering through branches towards the ship, but from the other side of those big boulders. In the glare of the lamps she saw several different forms, some two-legged, some four-legged, a few tall and vaguely birdlike or reptilian. On this side of the wreck there were fewer light sources, just a handful of maintenance spots spaced along the hull. Yet illumination reflected off the ship’s flank revealed a curious area of ripped-up bushes and trees, shattered stumps and charred foliage. And a small blast crater around which a dozen small forms lay still. Dread suspicion grew into horrified certainty the longer she looked. And a sorrowful voice spoke in her thoughts.
They saw the ship come down so they hurried to offer assistance… and they were killed without mercy. My poor children…
Segrana. Catriona could feel an unsettling threnody of grief welling up from deep places, bringing with it anger.
More renders and despoilers will come and repeat this slaughter. I need your help, Catriona. Help me save my children, my world, my existence…
Abruptly her vision was back at the crash site, seen from above, a perspective that wheeled and soared, then snapped round as two large shapes swooped down towards the grounded ship. It was the military flyers from the Brolturan base, bulky hawklike vehicles with curved wings bearing weapon pods… then she was looking through the eyes of a high-branch insectivore, watching a large pack of crash survivors grouped around a number of cases and packs near the tree line, watching as they unleashed a volley of small-arms fire… while a long-tailed forest creature saw ricochets spark and clank off the Brolturan vehicles’ armour as they decelerated towards the ground, right over the downed transport, their deployment hatches opening…
The explosion was gigantic and shattering, a red and black fireball that burst out of the crashed ship and upwards, engulfing both the flyers. Catriona’s viewpoint jumped quickly from creature to creature, all of which were startled and fearfully diving for cover, until the fifth which held steady, gazing across the treetops at the mass of rising fire. One of the flyers pulled out of it in a steep climb, trailing smoke and flames, arced over in a curve that turned into a nosedive, plunging to its destruction some distance away. The other, likewise ablaze, executed a tight turn into a flat trajectory heading north for a few seconds before blowing apart in midair.
Well, she thought. Invading Crazies 2, Home Teams 0.
Segrana’s presence withdrew but her song of grief went on, a sombre yet resolute undertone. Catriona focused her Enhanced mind and all its abilities on the defence of Segrana and the Uvovo, not allowing herself to be daunted in the least. With the weave of Segrana’s being flowing through her mind, she was able to extend her senses outward and downward, attempting to grasp all that was happening. Ambition almost got the better of her as she tried to cast her sight-smell-sound awareness as far as the four quarters, only to find herself stretched taut over the vast and endless intricacy of Segrana’s corporeal territory.
Once I was able to comprehend my own entirety from sky to soil, from coast to coast, when I was whole, when the Many-Eyes were with me. Now, such understanding is beyond me. Preserve the self that is you, Catriona, or you will be lost…
Segrana’s thoughts loomed large, like a world whispering to her. Intricacy gaped beneath, a temptation to the Enhanced instincts that still lay within her like the fragments of an old skeleton. Webs within webs of potential, a shining darkness that overlaid slumbering primal forces, all calling to her, drawing her towards them. Cat had known of this from Segrana’s hints and passing references but this was her first encounter with the fundamental source of planetary energies, and she could sense how much danger she was in.
With an act of will she turned her mind away, pulled in her thoughts, withdrew her awareness from far-flung outwilds of Segrana. As her self strengthened she began to focus on essential reality, and the crises now ongoing. Like the heavy fighting taking place around the Brolturan base sited near Pilipoint Station in the southeast. A group of small combat craft from the still-unknown invading armada were attacking, scoring several damaging hits before the base’s force shield went up. Now missiles were flying back and forth and a number of attacking flyers were shot down, some veering off to crash into Segrana’s shoreward fringes.
This event impinged strongly on her awareness when one of those burning wrecks crashed through a gatherer village, killing three-quarters of the Uvovo inhabitants. Racked with sorrow and feelings of guilt, Cat spoke to some Listeners in the south-east and persuaded them to begin evacuating those settlements nearest the fighting. Such evacs were already under way in the north, around the area of the crash site and the valleys to the south. Since the explosions and gunfire had terrorised most wildlife in the area, Catriona was finding it hard to track down the gang of invaders. Instead she had to rely on the vaguest of sense impressions and the sporadic reports of hard-pressed Listeners.
Then an urgent contact pierced the shifting tracery of information and sensation, a message from Sorjathir, a Listener whom she had sent to scout around the crash site and check for survivors. She cleared a path for his thought-flow, and words began to filter through – See the things that they all wear, Pathmistress, and their marks of meaning – followed by a sequence of images, contorted alien forms lying on the grass, clothes illustrated or embroidered with a spiral emblem, others with facial tattoos or wearing a pendant, also in the form of a spiral.
She sent heartfelt thanks to Sorjathir, then sat back in the dark of the vudron, recalling what the Sentinel had told her about the Spiral Prophecy and the involvement of Julia Bryce and her team of Enhanced. The Sentinel had asked if they were likely to give in to demands to work on weaponry. Were they part of that invading armada?
Segrana’s weave of being surged around her. More impressions flowed in from the extremities, more chaos and violence. Knowing that Nivyesta and Segrana were under attack from religious zealots was not a great help so she put that aside and bent all her will and thought to managing the inflow of information, to speculate on the invaders’ purpose and direction of attack, and to prepare some kind of countermove. Wherever they were, she would make sure that Uvovo fighters were in place to harry and chase them along avenues of her choosing, leading them to utter and complete defeat.