From an oval window in the starboard lounge of the Viteazul, Kao Chih sat watching dull red starlight spill over the edge of a flat continent-sized habitat. Its orbit had carried it out of the gas giant’s shadow and now a dirty crimson radiance was streaming over its surface, brightening the sides of hills and cliffs, buildings and motionless vehicles on transport lanes. The habitat’s surface was desolate, airless and grey, most of its structures had eroded and collapsed into crumbling ruins, vehicles pitted by centuries of meteorites, the frozen ground covered with dust. There were another twenty-four of these colossal habitats, every one a lifeless sepulchre locked into an ancient orbit.
Any other time Kao Chih would have regarded these examples of macro-engineering with fascination. But they were the last remnants of a dead civilisation, desiccated remains buried deep in the decayed depths of hyperspace. All he could do for the time being was try to stave off a crushing anxiety about their current predicament.
Pursued by three Suneye warships, the Roug-Vox Humana flotilla with its Pyre passengers had fled down through the levels of hyperspace. Guided and protected by Roug technology, the flotilla managed to make a series of boundary jumps, varying their length with lateral, cross-tier directions, even making the occasional double-back up a level or two. But still the Suneye vessels managed to find them, relentlessly and without fail…
Then the Nestinar suffered a major malfunction in its navigationals and the entire flotilla was forced to make an emergency boundary exit which landed them here in this tier of guttering stars, littered with the ruins of artificial worldlets. That had been less than an hour ago. Right now the five Marauder craft were engaged in a desperate rearguard fight against the three Suneye ships while the flotilla sought refuge among the gas giant’s orbiting flock of entombed landscapes. Time was needed to repair the Nestinar’s systems, which on closer inspection turned out to have been sabotaged. And time was running out.
Kao Chih was dividing his attention between the view outside and a flatscreen hanging on a nearby partition. There were another half-dozen or so scattered around the big lounge, all showing the same feed to clustered groups of worried-looking Pyre colonists. It was the ongoing battle taking place halfway across the star system, realtime video streaming directly from the long-range sensors. There was no sound. The main picture followed the Vox Humana Marauders, switching between them as they swooped, looped and sideslipped, dodging enemy fire as they lined up for attack run after attack run.
Even before the sabotage on board the Nestinar, Kao Chih had twice gone to the Viteazul’s bridge to ask if there were any duties he could carry out and both times he was asked to return to the civilian zones. Soon after, access to the bridge and operations decks was restricted to crew only. It left him feeling helpless and disregarded, emotions he saw reflected in the faces around him. Decades of oppression would tend to ingrain a certain hopelessness, a fatalistic acceptance of bad fortune and undeserved punishment. Yet he recalled reports of how unarmed colonists had fought off the Va-Zla thugs during the evac. Hope and a route to freedom had helped them forget the habits of servitude in a moment.
But now everyone felt hunted, trapped. It came out in expressions and postures, eyes widening suddenly in shock or squeezed tight shut in fear, fingers pointing, quietly muttered curses. Kao Chih returned his gaze to the flatscreen and saw one of the Marauders caught in a tumbling trajectory, trailing swirls of gas while pulse cannon fire stitched bright, criss-cross lines against the blackness. Then the Marauder pilot regained control, throwing his craft into a series of evasive manoeuvres as a flock of enemy missiles converged.
The frame zoomed out to reveal the spread of the battle. The Marauders were small compared to the Suneye ships. It was like an aquavarium he once saw being unloaded at the underdocks of Agmedra’a, the Roug orbital–inside, two big almost-fish lurked torpidly at the bottom of the tank while smaller creatures darted around them, nibbling flecks snatched from the greater ones’ tails and fins. In the half-minute between the offload and the exit to Cargo Staging he saw the big fish snare three of their parasites with bizarre tentacle-tongues.
Out there in the cold dark, the Marauders nimbly dodged volleys of enemy fire and missiles with such skill and bravado that Kao Chih felt like joining in the cheers that went up from time to time. Those Vox Humana boys could really fly. At the same time he wished he knew what was going on aboard the Nestinar and how close the repairs were to completion.
Then the inevitable happened. One of the Marauders evaded a trio of missiles only to be hit by a projector beam from one of the Suneye ships. It sheared off one of the port manoeuvring thrusters, sending it slewing round straight into the path of an oncoming missile. The craft vanished in a violent burst of white fire that dazzled the sensors for a moment. When the picture stabilised there was a glimpse of a glowing wreck amid an expanding cloud of debris. A despairing groan went around the lounge.
In the next instant the frame pulled back and panned across to one of the Suneye ships, which, oddly, was moving sideways. While the other two now redoubled their efforts against the remain ing Marauders, this one seemed to be trying to distance itself…
Abruptly, the ship disappeared. There was a collective gasp of amazement. Some colonists pointed, others leaned forward to study the screens, then a woman looking out of one of the oval ports cried out, ‘It’s here!’
With others pressing behind him, Kao Chih stared out–and up. The Suneye ship was there all right, perhaps a couple of hundred metres away but still moving sideways and rapidly closing on the Viteazul. Alarms began to sound and a sudden panic took hold.
‘Enemy vessel on collision course!’ said a voice over the PA. ‘All passengers assume safety positions! Admiral Zhylinsky, please come to the bridge.’
Most of the colonists were crowded around the hatches leading to the ship’s main spinal corridor, but Kao Chih was still at the oval window, fairly certain that he was in no immediate danger. Even though the Suneye ship was rushing side-on towards him. As he watched, shimmering, tapering beams sprang out from glints spaced along its smooth hull, maybe grappler fields of some kind, he guessed.
‘This is First Officer Rosario–all crew and passengers brace for impact.’
The shock threw him off his chair to land on his shoulder, the impetus carrying him further, flipping him over. Dazed, he struggled to his feet. The lounge was a chaos of overturned furniture, fallen people and the cries of the wounded. As he watched, some chairs floated free of the floor and glided along for a few feet before banging back down again.
Deck gravity is losing coherence, he thought. Is the enemy already aboard?
Someone grabbed his arm. He was startled to see that it was Admiral Zhylinsky.
‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘There’s a security station above on Deck 7 midsection–we can pick up weapons and supplies there.’
‘But sir, why not head for the bridge?’
‘That’s now the riskiest place to be–they’ll shut it down before they subdue the colonists.’ The admiral straightened suddenly, head cocked as if listening. ‘It’s gone quiet along the dorsal corridor. Quick, this way.’
The older man seemed possessed of an intense energy as he practically dragged Kao Chih to the other end of the lounge. Almost concealed by the low lighting and the textured, dark brown decor was a recess with a partially camouflaged door that opened to the admiral’s thumbprint. Bead lamps winked on as they sidled along a narrow access passage. The air was warm and dry and smelled of oil and plastics and the admiral seemed to be quite familiar with the place. When Kao Chih asked about this, the admiral shrugged.
‘I was captain of the Viteazul before my promotion to admiral. Relations with Earthsphere were still tense back then and we had to be ready if their agents attempted a hijacking or some kind of sabotage. So I got to know the less obvious ways around the ship, especially ones like this which allow access between the decks.’
Kao Chih smiled, jabbing his thumb upwards. ‘To Deck 7.’
Zhylinsky nodded, clearly pleased at being able to show off his clandestine knowledge. ‘I even had this maintenance passage extended and modified. It now has a ladder that comes up in the storage closet of Deck 7 security station!’
Several minutes later they were climbing out of a square hatch in the floor of a small room with box-stacked shelves. Kao Chih was helped up by a middle-aged female security officer, then a skinny youth in a grubby yellow onepiece handed him a paper cup of water.
‘Good to see you, Sergeant,’ said the admiral. ‘Where’s the rest of your team?’
‘Sdanek and Iklos got shot by enemy drones deploying narcoleptics, sir,’ said the woman. ‘Combination of needle-darts and dispersal pellets. I was lucky to escape.’
‘I see–and are we secure?’
‘Sealed tight, sir, now that hatch is locked. Monitor network is still up and as far as I can tell the enemy is in control of both engineering and the bridge.’
‘Good. Sergeant Miczek, this is Kao Chih, our liaison with the Pyre colonists and now a comrade in this time of need.’ Zhylinsky gazed at the yellow-garbed youth. ‘And who is this young man?’
‘Erm… Marko Degellis, sir, uh, Captain, um, assistant stores monitor.’
The admiral sternly shook his head. ‘Marko, have you ever used a gun?’
‘Only on a glowset, sir…’
Zhylinsky smiled. ‘Good reactions, then? I used to be pretty sharp in Biokrysis, you know, but that was a few years ago, of course. So, yes, we’ll find you something useful in the arms locker, along with the body armour. Not going anywhere without that!’
The security station comprised two small rooms, one with heavy cabinets lining two of its facing walls, the other equipped with consoles and screens. The admiral led them in, seated himself in one of the two swivel chairs and brought the screens to life.
‘I had subfeeds from all main monitor nodes routed here. We should be able to get both internal and external views.’
Two screens began to show a succession of images from around the ship, views of people lying sprawled and unconscious in corridors down which glittering disc-shaped drones floated on patrol. Cabins and common areas were the same, as were the crew decks and the operations rooms. Smaller, arrowhead-like drones were also everywhere, mainly hovering. The subjugation of the Viteazul had been swift and efficient. Almost.
Yet Kao Chih could not see how they could do anything against such a numerous adversary. But he knew that inaction could only lead to the certainty of capture and imprisonment back on Pyre.
‘I wonder what’s been happening on the other ships,’ he said quietly.
‘The very question that has been vexing me,’ the admiral said.
Just then their surroundings quivered and Kao Chih felt the telltale momentary dizziness of a hyperdrive jump. Marko staggered a little, Sergeant Miczek leaned against the bulkhead and the admiral sat straighter, eyes glaring.
‘They’ve shifted us somewhere else,’ he said, fingers suddenly flying over controls both solid and holo. ‘Now we really do need access to the externals.’
One of the monitors switched to a view of the Suneye ship seen from a hull cam at the stern of the Viteazul. The grappler force-beams that Kao Chih saw earlier shone brightly now, a bizarre scaffolding of energies locking the two ships firmly in place, roughly twenty metres apart. In addition four opaque, fluted tubes stretched across to connect with the Viteazul’s flank. As they watched, several Suneye drones, the smaller fist-sized arrowheads, began gliding back to their mothership in pairs and threes. In moments this had become a constant stream, scores of arrowheads and the larger discs returning to the Suneye vessel. Studying this, the admiral nodded.
‘To be expected,’ he said. ‘Now that we’re effectively crewless and the colonists have been sedated, it’s safe for them to cast us adrift and return to the battle. Once that’s satisfactorily concluded they can come back to collect us. There, see?’
With the last of the drones back aboard, the Suneye vessel began to retract the boarding tubes. Kao Chih gazed at the sight, impatient to do something, purposefully ignoring futility.
‘Admiral, sir,’ he said. ‘Please excuse my lack of technical knowledge, but is it possible for even we four to reactivate your ship’s engines so that we may not be here when they return?’
‘I admire your spirit, Pilot Kao, but it is very likely that the control systems have been disabled.’ Then he gave a toothy grin. ‘But that won’t stop us trying! We’ll wait until…’
‘Sir,’ said Sergeant Miczek. ‘The tubes are extending again.’
The access tubes had been detaching and retracting one by one, but now they were extending out again.
‘Something’s happened to change their mind,’ the admiral said. ‘Ah, look–there!’
A small craft darted into view, weaving in and out of the access tubes and grappler beams. As it raked the hulls of both ships with volleys of greenish energy bolts, the admiral’s sensor systems grabbed images from hull feeds and presented a tactical composite. The attacking craft had a bullet-shaped aft section ending in a pyramidal thrust assembly; the forward section had the look of a tapering cockpit in an oddly textured grey material, flanked left and right, above and below, by four curved weapon sponsons. And the newcomer had not come alone.
‘The drones are coming back,’ said Marko, voice wavering.
‘Not so many this time,’ Kao Chih observed.
‘Either they expect these unknown attackers to try and board us as well,’ the admiral said, ‘or…’
The security station shivered and the screens flickered as one into a spiral standby symbol. A second or two later the external feed came back on–the Suneye ship, its boarding tubes and grapples, was still there but beyond they could see a wide segment of landscape with ragged edges, its surface made grey by millennia of exposure to hard vacuum. They had jumped back to the gas giant in the red dwarf system, only now they were on the other side, away from the fighting.
‘They brought us back,’ said the admiral, smiling.
‘So we’ve a chance of being rescued,’ said Marko.
‘Only if we can stop these Suneye bandits from towing us off to their prison.’ The admiral got up, went to one of the cabinets and opened it. Tough but flexible body armour was handed round, jackets and leggings, and goggled face protectors. All of it had a silky black sheen.
‘Sabotage,’ the admiral said. ‘We fight our way onto their ship, find some important-looking systems and set a few shaped T9 charges. Oh, and slap a few on those boarding tubes as well. Sergeant, how would you rate our chances?’
Miczek squinted back at the screens. ‘Far fewer drones patrolling our corridors than before, sir. I’d give good odds on reaching their ship.’
The admiral grinned and broke out the weaponry.
Kao Chih, though, felt that the admiral was being less than candid about encountering the Suneye drones. Might they not have something more powerful than darts to fire? And could there be other lethal countermeasures hidden in ceilings and bulkheads?
Kao Chih was passed a beam pistol: cased in some lightweight alloy and coloured white and blue, it looked and felt like a toy.
‘Don’t be deceived by the lightness,’ said Sergeant Miczek as she gave an identical one to Marko. ‘These are droptroop issue, a redesigned model with a twenty per cent range improvement over the previous mark.’
‘We’ll divide into two teams,’ said the admiral. ‘Young Marko will stay with the sergeant, keep his wits about him and follow orders, understood?’
Marko grinned nervously and bobbed his head.
‘Kao Chih,’ Zhylinsky went on. ‘You’re with me. Let’s teach those Suneye machines a thing or two, eh?’ He pointed at one of the screens, which showed that the Viteazul was being hauled on a course leading around the gas giant towards the vicinity of the Roug-Vox Humana flotilla. ‘Time is limited. Let us be on our way.’
Via more maintenance passages, communal rooms and under-floor crawlways they reached a medstation near the sternmost of the boarding tubes in ten minutes or so. Once the sole patrolling disc-drone had passed by on its way along the dorsal corridor, the admiral led them out along the passageway. He used a local hatch override to lock all the nearby hatches, sealing off that particular corridor junction. Then they approached the oval opening in the ship’s hull. Silver-green hooks curved round the edges of it, their tips sunk into the bulkhead metal. Beyond, the opaque conduit waited, undulating slightly.
‘Should be zero-gee along this stretch,’ the admiral warned, readying his short-bodied beam rifle before ducking through.
Kao Chih watched in admiration as the older man kicked off from the rim of the sealing ring and gracefully glided up the tube. He recalled his own experiences with weightlessness on board Blacknest Station and mentally prepared himself for a display of oafish clumsiness. But his performance turned out to be adequate, with one or two bumps along the way. Sergeant Miczek arrived a moment later with Marko tethered to her waist.
‘And here we are,’ said the admiral. ‘Not exactly constructed on a Human scale but I’m sure we’ll manage.’
They crouched together in a spherical space about ten metres across with an artificial gravity noticeably lower than the Viteazul’s. Although there was no main light source, most of the odd-shaped panels gave off some radiance, mainly from the glowing threadlike lines that were laid out in an angular network all across the curved surface. Several octagonal tunnels led off at a variety of angles and as they crouched there Kao Chih began to wonder why their presence had not provoked a response. Then Zhylinsky, who had been hunched over a small device, looked up.
‘In case you’re wondering why there’s been no welcoming committee, it would seem that those unknown interceptors have followed us here, so most of the Suneye drones are out there fending them off.’
He held up a datapad with a foldout screen, and they leaned closer to see. There were perhaps a dozen of the bullet-shaped craft diving past and between the larger ships, pursued by flocks of silvery drones, both arrowheads and discs. As they studied the images, the Suneye vessel shuddered for a second.
The admiral tapped a control and the picture swung up and zoomed in on a mysterious ship keeping pace over 300 kiloms astern. Magnification brought it closer, revealing shining surfaces and a strangeness of design that provoked a certain unease in Kao Chih. The ship was large, easily twice the size of the Viteazul, and had a diamond-shaped profile, its prow one of the acute vertices. The flanks of the deep hull angled inwards and had lines of bulbous grey protrusions spaced all along them–when one of them irised open and an interceptor flew out their function was immediately apparent.
This was a carrier, Kao Chih realised, a capital ship that had seen combat, going by the scorching and impact gouges that marred the glittering ornamentation in many places. The upper hull had tower structures at all four corners and one amidships: the starboard one was a torn and blasted ruin while the one at the prow had a Y-shaped mast jutting up from it.
‘The source of our captors’ woes?’ Kao Chih said, just as the Suneye ship lurched.
‘Soon to be joined by sabotage closer to home,’ the admiral said, patting his bandolier of charges draped across his chest. ‘Now–Sergeant, you and young Marko will hold this junction while Kao Chih and I venture off in search of drives and generators.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Miczek.
‘Excellent,’ Zhylinsky said, glancing at Kao Chih, who nodded and followed him down a narrow passage lit by brightly glowing red, yellow and blue lines. The passage was low, forcing them to move at a crouch with the admiral pausing frequently to consult his datapad’s sensor readings. As they progressed, Kao Chih tried to imagine how he might describe these events in a letter to his parents back on the Retributor–Dear Mother and Father: In the course of the evacuation and escape from Pyre, we engaged our pursuers in battle and I found myself taking part in an assault on one of the enemy ships. I and three others against hundreds of armed machines…
After several minutes the passage curved up and opened out into a small, polyhedral compartment. Every corner was occupied by a strange plinth whose apex was a bulbous, translucent screen that pulsed with symbols and flickered with triangular ripples of data.
‘Control nodes, Pilot Kao,’ said the admiral. ‘Eight of them. Destroy these and the whole ship would be crippled…’
‘Your damage assessment is correct, Admiral,’ said a clear voice from all around them. ‘But since our ships can retask functions easily to other locations, this vessel would be crippled for less than a minute.’
The hairs stood up on Kao Chih’s neck. The admiral bared his teeth in an angry grimace.
‘And you are?’ he said.
‘The Clarified Sevayr, commander of this vessel.’
‘So naturally you are an accurate and trustworthy source of information,’ the admiral said. ‘Forgive me if I am unconvinced by your proclamation.’
‘Forgiveness is not in my nature,’ said the voice of the Clarified Sevayr. ‘However, punishment is.’
A twin-muzzled turret popped out of an opening in the wall and fired four energy bolts in quick succession. The admiral cried out and fell to the floor. Kao Chih snapped off one shot in return but missed as the turret disappeared. Then he knelt to examine the admiral’s wounds, which turned out to be chillingly accurate and cruel–the bolts had struck both hands and both feet, rendering him helpless. As Kao Chih pulled a medkit from one of his waist pouches, the admiral insisted on giving him orders, voice a strangled whisper.
‘Use the charges… set timer with the left tab, arm with… the right… ah, that’s better… not so sore…’
Kao Chih had found some painkiller dermals and pressed them onto the admiral’s throat. Then it was a case of dragging him back down the passageway to the junction, all the time waiting for the searing stab of an energy bolt…
Then the junction came into sight and his heart sank–there was no one to be seen. Gasping, arms aching, he struggled with the admiral’s weight and as he drew nearer he could see a dark form lying motionless off to the side.
‘Is the sergeant there, lad?’ said the admiral. ‘She should be helping you–Sergeant!’
As he pulled the admiral into the spherical junction, Kao Chih saw that it was indeed the sergeant lying dead on the floor. Of Marko there seemed to be no sign.
‘The sergeant had to die, of course,’ said the voice of the Clarified, suddenly. ‘She was actually quite competent and thus presented a genuine threat.’
Kao Chih noticed the charred, twisted wreckage of a few drones as he went to check the sergeant’s body. Her face protector was missing and there was a small black cauterised hole in her forehead. Squatting there, he rocked back on his heels, rubbed his face and tried to find a calm path between fear and anger. There didn’t seem to be one.
‘Admiral,’ he said. ‘The sergeant’s dead.’
‘Murdered,’ the older man muttered. ‘By a coward who hides himself.’
‘I’ll have to get you back to the Viteazul,’ Kao Chih said, moving over to lift the admiral under the arms.
‘No, I’m not important,’ Zhylinsky said. ‘Leave me here–go and place those charges–damn you, that’s an order!’
‘With respect, sir,’ Kao Chih said. ‘I am not under your—’
There was a flash and the crack of an energy bolt striking the curved wall. Kao Chih ducked and glanced down the boarding tube to see Marko clutching his beam pistol, eyes wide with fear as he floated in the zero-gee.
‘Please, Marko,’ he said carefully. ‘Will you help me with the admiral?–he’s hurt…’
Trembling with anxiety, Marko swallowed and put away the weapon. ‘There was firing… and she was dead… I didn’t hit anything…’
Kao Chih got the admiral into the boarding tube, not responding to the older man’s pleas. When Marko joined them, Kao Chih reached for the admiral’s bandolier of charges, unclipped it and tugged it out from under his chest armour.
‘Good man,’ the admiral whispered.
Outside the weightless opaque tube, the mysterious attack craft danced and darted past, exchanging volleys of bright spikes with pursuing flocks of silver drones. And it occurred to Kao Chih that if the unknown attackers had wanted to they could have destroyed both ships by now.
Together the two men guided the wounded admiral up the connecting tube. Halfway, Kao Chih paused and pulled one of the shaped charges from the belt, showing it to Marko.
‘I’m going back to finish this job,’ he said, fingering the charge timer. ‘I’ve set this for seven minutes–as soon as I’m out of sight, stick this on the tube wall and arm it with this button. Got it?’
‘But is seven minutes long enough?’
‘I sincerely hope that it will be more than enough. I’m looking forward to retelling this story under the influence of strong alcohol.’
He slung the bandolier across shoulder and chest and pushed away on a return glide to the Suneye vessel. Re-entering the spherical junction, he became heavy again, and the voice spoke.
‘Back so soon, Human? Apparently my punishment examples were not sufficiently persuasive.’
Having noted the position of the sergeant’s body and the similarity of her wounds to those suffered by the admiral, Kao Chih was ready. When an overhead section slid open and the antipersonnel turret popped out he was already moving and firing. His first shot burned a glowing gouge across curved panels. The second struck a spray of sparks from the turret mounting, the third hit home and it burst apart in a flash of wrecked components. Another turret opened up from just inside a passage leading forward, forcing Kao Chih to back away behind the boarding tube’s oval hatch. His hand found the sergeant’s dropped beam pistol and with twice the firepower he was able to quickly neutralise the turret.
There was an abrupt silence, no measured voice offering sarcastic commentary. Perhaps their host was otherwise occupied, he thought.
The curved deck lurched violently underfoot and a grinding crash reverberated throughout the ship. I’m running out of time, he thought suddenly and scrambled back along the aftward passage, alert for more security turrets. He planted several charges down the stretch leading to the compartment where the admiral was shot then retraced his steps, arming the devices as he went. Kicking aside still smoking pieces of drone, he then ventured up the forward passage, setting and arming another eight charges before returning to the hatch area. Kao Chih still had a handful left so he climbed up into a wide but low passage and crawled along it, pausing after a dozen metres or so. He had just fixed the last charge in place when he heard a loud bang and felt air start rushing past him, back the way he’d come.
The charge I gave to Marko, he thought. He must have set the timer too soon…
In the next instant an armoured divider slammed down, cutting him off from the decompression source but trapping him in with several devices now primed to detonate in minutes. If there was a disabling procedure the admiral hadn’t told him and he never thought to ask–his only option was to follow the low passage to its end and hope that he could get behind a hatch strong enough to withstand the explosion. On hands and knees he scrambled madly along, turned a corner and found himself facing an abrupt end. Then he realised that there was a long gap above his head which was high enough for him to stand up.
The moment he did so, immensely strong hands grabbed him from behind and bodily hauled him up onto some kind of platform. He’d hardly begun to take in his surroundings when a bag was roughly tugged over his head. Kao Chih’s cries of surprise turned into angry shouts as he was spun round and hurried off. Moments later he heard a hatch close and pressurise and seconds later multiple thuds. The deck shook underfoot and his captors staggered as they marched him along. There was another lurch and Kao Chih swung a kick round, knocking the legs out from under one of them. Bellows of fury rang out as he used his free hands to try and wrench free of the other’s grip.
But a clenched fist dealt his head a blow that made his ears ring and his senses spin. Tripping, he fell to his knees. Someone grabbed both his forearms with hands that were bony and rough-skinned–it was like being seized by fingers made of old boot leather–and bound his wrists with plastic stripping. A voice muttered in his ear, hoarse, incomprehensible words, then he was hauled upright. A corrupt mustiness filled his nostrils. Another voice spoke, same hoarse, dry sound but with a different tone, to which the first replied.
And in his head, the linguistic enabler that Tumakri had given him weeks ago began picking apart the syllables, matching grammar patterns, running definitional comparisons, and eventually feeding something intelligible into his auditory centres.
‘… bad fate, hear you me, cracked fortune. For we to attack the hull of devices before the life-ripe one…’
‘Your fate, your fortune–whispers from the ash, all is…’
‘You say? See Old Irontooth when we bring him this one–with the other one, makes only two from whole hull. Very poor, bad fate…’
Listening to this exchange, Kao Chih experienced a shiver of déjà vu that sent him back to memories of his capture at Blacknest Station by the minions of Munaak, the gangster lord who murdered Tumakri. He wondered if there was any point in offering up prayers to his ancestors.
Honourable forebears, if it pleases you to extend deliverance to this humble and unworthy descendant, would it be possible to provide it via someone reliable, be they mechanical or organic?
A hatch slid open to admit them, sighed shut behind them. Kao Chih was steered forward several paces, stopped, turned, then pushed back to drop into a hard chair. The wristcuffs were removed but then his wrists were bound separately to the chair arms while his ankles were restrained. Only then was the hood removed.
The room wasn’t very bright yet it took Kao Chih’s eyes a moment or two to adjust. Illumination came from the same coloured thread clusters that he had seen elsewhere on the Suneye ship. But it was the sight of a Sendrukan, similarly chair-bound and facing him from a couple of metres away, that grabbed his attention.
‘Ah, the admiral’s disciple. You proved more competent than I originally anticipated. Perhaps I should have killed you first.’
The facing chairs were placed in some kind of alcove next to a raised platform walkway. The Clarified Sendrukan wore a close-fitting green uniform with blue highlights. Kao Chih saw that additional restraints held chest, waist and head in place. He did not know what the Clarified meant, but he was ready with a rejoinder.
‘In one’s fondest imaginings,’ he said, ‘one may wish for much, only to find that reality is somewhat unaccommodating.’
‘Impertinence,’ murmured the Sendrukan. ‘How tiresome.’ He looked up to a point behind and above Kao Chih. ‘Lord-General, I’m afraid that it is time I was leaving. Would you have my shuttle made ready?’
‘You are ours now,’ came a dry, raspy voice that spoke with calm deliberation. ‘Upon your re-emergence from the caul you will cherish the way of dust and treasure the chains of obedience.’
The Sendrukan grinned widely. ‘I fear that you are mistaken.’ As he tipped his head back, dark lines appeared on his neck, extending up the sides of his head to his hairless scalp. Kao Chih’s curious stare turned to one of horror as the dark lines began to smoke and a dull redness glowed through the charring flesh. Small tremors in the Sendrukan’s limbs quickly became convulsive spasms, and a nauseating smell filled the air.
The grotesque display ended with a prolonged moment of locked muscles before something gave and the Sendrukan slumped slightly in the chair, muscles now relaxed, wisps of smoke or steam rising from blackened eyes and mouth. A bulky humanoid form swathed in dark robes trudged into view, went up to the body and with odd thick fingers examined and prodded it. A flexible probelike device was produced to test the mouth and ears.
‘Death, High One,’ the examiner pronounced. ‘As predicted.’
‘Wheel it over to the Bonecarrier. Have the Caulmaster scrape its mindflesh for any vestiges.’
The robed figure tipped the dead Sendrukan’s chair back on wheels Kao Chih hadn’t noticed before, and pushed it away. Heavy footsteps began on the platform behind him, moved round and approached from the left. An imposing figure came into view, a tall man clad head to foot in a strange grey armour, the one whom the Sendrukan had called Lord-General. At first glance the whole assemblage appeared thoroughly archaic, like something from Earth history, from medieval Europa. But a closer look revealed telling details: the bulky, segmented breastplate was attached to the backplate with what seemed to be leather straps, as were the arm and leg armour sections. And in the shadowy gaps between Kao Chih could see gleaming machine parts and flexing spirals of shielded cabling.
From atop a thick neck, a long, thin, almost cadaverous face regarded him. There was a slight ridge of a nose ending in a pair of slits over the lipless, expressionless mouth. The skin was ash-pale and had an odd sheen to it, just like the large, bare hands. A straight-sided helmet enclosed the head, with two spiky adornments jutting up from either temple. The eyes stared out from sunken sockets and Kao Chih thought he saw a mournful sadness in them. For a moment.
‘Another Human,’ said the Lord-General. ‘My hearkeners tell me that there are thousands of your kind aboard those other ships, the ones that fled. Is this true?’
Kao Chih offered up a silent prayer to his honourable ancestors before answering.
‘Regrettably, I can neither confirm or deny such matters,’ he said. ‘I spent most of my time in my stateroom playing tri-chess…’
‘Your defiance earns you no honour.’ Those big, ash-grey hands clenched. ‘Hear me–I am Lord-General Zhyrac of the Shyntanil Twice-Born, commander of the Stone Breath regiment, over-captain of the warcraft Bonecarrier. You are ours now. Soon you will be placed in the caul, where your heart will be stopped, your blood cooled, and your mindflesh silenced. Upon your re-emergence you will know the way of dust and understand the beauty of obedience.’
He raised a hand and two shorter figures in similar dark grey armour appeared.
‘Take this over to the Bonecarrier, and to the caul–my command is this.’
As the Shyntanil converged on his chair, Kao Chih smelled their mustiness again, only now the corrupt taint seemed stronger and redolent of putrefaction. Dread settled over him like a deadening chill as they wheeled him away.