Ammonite Stars (Omnibus): Ammonite Galaxy #4-5 (23 page)

ARCAN MATERIALIZED WITHOUT warning in front of Mandalon 50, and the bodyguards who always protected the young head of Valhai leapt into action.

“STOP!” instructed Mandalon, holding up his hand. “Can’t you see that it is Arcan? Let him pass! At once!”

The orthogel entity shimmered. There was nothing that these guards could do to stop him, had he intended any harm to their ruler. Still, he now knew firsthand what it was like to be overfaced and unable to retaliate. Arcan stopped considerately where he was, and waited for the guards to escort him over to the young Mandalon.

Mandalon stood up ceremoniously, and bowed. “How may I help you?”

“My space trader has been blown up.”

Mandalon blinked. “And …?” he said cautiously.

“I need another one. Immediately.”

“Another space trader. Right. Err …”

“Will you give me one, or do I have to pay for it?”

Mandalon sat down again. “What blew it up?” he asked.

“Nothing near here. You do not have to worry.”

“It wasn’t a fault in the design?”

“No. Diva tells me it was surprisingly hard to get rid of.”

Mandalon’s eyebrows now went even higher. “Diva blew it up?”

“Well, yes. She had to.”

Mandalon thought rapidly. “You see, although I would personally like to give you another one, I am not sure that the Valhai voters would take it as a good thing to do. And you might feel like blowing that one up too. Then where should we be? Even on Sell there is not an unlimited number of space traders available. One could be an accident. Two might be considered careless.”

“Then I shall buy it.” A thought occurred to Arcan. “Just a minute.” He withdrew his attention for a moment from the young boy in front of him, and sent his thoughts further out, rippling through Valhai, until they found who he was looking for. He reached out and brought that figure into the presence of Mandalon. Aracely stood there, blinking rather at the change in her position, but obviously aware of who had been responsible.

“Please excuse my appearance,” she said, inclining her head slightly in Mandalon’s direction. “I was in the middle of eating.”

“Have I got enough money for a space trader?” demanded Arcan.

Aracely’s mouth opened and then closed. “I suppose so,” she told him. “But—”

“Good. Then will you please organize the payment. Now, I am very sorry, but I have to go. It is pleasant to see both of you again.” With that, the orthogel entity vanished, leaving both Aracely and Mandalon staring after him.

Mandalon moved a few controls on the tridiscreen to his right. He looked carefully at the results and then nodded. “I can give him the one which is just off post-production trials. It was destined for the ore program, but I think the orthogel entity takes priority.”

“Thank you, Mandalon. What figure were you thinking?” Aracely was wishing that Grace were there. She had no idea what a fair price would be for a spaceship. It could set back the foundation years! But her job was to do as Arcan told her, so she swallowed and tried to look as if she knew what she were doing.

Luckily, it seemed that Mandalon had almost as little idea as she did. “We have only previously sold spaceships to Coriolis,” he told her with an uncertain tone. “ And those were second-hand. So … I am not quite sure of the correct procedure. We have no pricing structure for the orthogel entity.”

Aracely nodded. “What is the normal profit margin on Sell? For the ore, for example?”

That was easy. “Sixty percent.”

“Then I suggest a figure of forty percent for the orthogel entity. —As a gesture of goodwill, of course.”

“Fifty.”

“Very well, fifty. Over cost.”

Mandalon consulted his tridiscreen again, and then gave her the figure stated as the cost. With fifty percent added, it seemed astronomical to Aracely, but she knew that the foundation could just about cover it, so she nodded her head. She had to assume that Arcan would not have pulled her unceremoniously out of dinner unless it was pretty important. She sat down to draw up a binding contract.

BACK ON THE ORBITAL station on Kwaide, Diva was greeting Cimma. But the Sellite woman had not come alone. She was accompanied by the two young thieves that Six had saved on Coriolis, and also by Bennel, who hurried over to Diva’s side immediately.

“Lady Diva, thank Sacras I have found you!”

Diva looked confused. “Why? What has happened?”

“You disappeared. I have been trying to find you since then.
Valhai
Six entrusted your safety to me. I have failed him miserably.” The man hung his head.

Diva looked at the Coriolan with new respect. “You came all the way over to Kwaide to look for me?”

“I gave my word to
Valhai
Six. It was my duty.”

“And did my mother give you permission to abandon Coriolis?”

“N-not exactly.”

“Hmm. I thought not. Well, Bennel, I am sure Six will be pleased by your determination. It was not your fault that I disappeared – it was the orthogel entity, as I suppose you know.”

Bennel bowed. “Yes.”

“And I shall be leaving again shortly, so you must go back to Coriolis now. I release you from your duty.”

Bennel stiffened. “Begging your pardon, lady Diva, but only
Valhai
Six can release me from my duty. I shall accompany you wherever you go.”

Diva’s eyes flashed. “You will not!”

“I cannot go back. I deserted my post. You know the penalty for that.”

Diva pressed her lips together. She did. Public flogging followed by an unpleasant and messy death at the jaws of the Tattula cats. She still hadn’t succeeded in changing that law. She looked at the short and unprepossessing figure standing in front of her. The man looked up, his expression a mixture of pleading and dread, his shoulders frozen.

Diva relented. “Very well. You may come with me.”

The man relaxed his shoulders, and gave a brilliant smile, bowing almost to his knees. “Thank you, lady Diva. Thank you. You shall not regret it; I give you my word.”

Diva found herself grinning back; the great relief this man felt was infectious. She rather thought he might regret his insistence, when he saw where they were going, but she could hardly have left him to fend for himself – either on Kwaide or on Coriolis. The poor man must have used all his family’s savings just to get from one planet to the other.

Now she turned her attention to the two youngsters who were standing on either side of Cimma, looking on.

“But you two can’t come. You are far too young.”

Tallen glared at her, reminding her of a younger Six. “We also received a commission from Six, which we cannot break. Where Cimma goes, we go.”

“You are too young.”

“I will not allow you to go without us.” Tallen put his hand menacingly on the hilt of his sword, and his sister followed suit, nodding her head in agreement.

Diva gazed across at Cimma, totally at a loss what to say. Cimma’s eyes crinkled at the corners, and she walked over to Diva and raised her hands up to her in the traditional salute. They touched fingers lightly, and then the older woman gathered Diva to her, and gave her a warm hug. Diva found tears pricking behind her eyes, and was silent for a moment, willing them away. Cimma moved slightly back, but took her by the shoulders and examined her face intently.

“Something is very wrong. What is it?”

Diva looked towards the two youngsters. She didn’t really want to talk in front of them.

Cimma let her go, and turned to the others. “Would you leave us alone for a moment, please?”

Muttering, Tallen took a few steps back, and Bennel and Petra followed.

Cimma stood looking at Diva, her gaze steady, but a deep wrinkle across her forehead showed that she knew there was bad news to come.

Diva told her everything that had happened, and of the current situation on Pictoria. Cimma went gradually paler and paler, until her eyes were dark pools of anxiety on a white background.

“Then we must go and help them,” she said.

“You will come with me?”

“Of course. Are we leaving now?”

“As soon as Arcan can get us another ship.”

Cimma nodded. “I will talk to Samoso. Arcan may not have thought about provisions.”

“Wait, Cimma!” Diva called out as the Sellite woman made her way towards the bridge. “We should send these two children back down to Kwaide – they will only get in the way up here.”

Tallen grabbed his sister’s wrist, and dragged her forward. “We signed a blood oath to protect Maestra Cimma,” he said. “If we fail we are bound by Namuri clan law to terminate our existence.”

Diva muttered under her breath. This was not going exactly as she had planned. What she needed was a small army, not a nursery school.

Cimma turned back and hesitated. “They could stay on the ship. They might be useful. You never know.”

Tallen nodded emphatically. “We can be very useful. You will see.”

Diva’s eyes traveled over the motley crew standing in front of her. She was probably taking them to their deaths, but it seemed that she had little choice. “Very well. But don’t get in the way. You have no idea just how far away you are going.”

“We don’t care. Our destiny is to protect Cimma and Six. We have eyes for nothing else. We must fulfill our oath.”

“Fine.” Diva almost ground her teeth together. “Then let’s prepare for the journey.”

“There is someone else we should take,” Cimma told her after consideration.

“Who?”

But Cimma shook her head mysteriously. “You will see. I will ask Arcan to pick him up on the way.”

SIX AND LEDIN opened their eyes to find themselves in another strange place. They were floating in ortholiquid, but this time there was no shore they could wade to. They were in a deep well, surrounded all around and above by what looked like sheer rock. They moved their arms slowly, swimming to stay in one place in the ortholiquid, and looking up around them to see if there was a way out.

“Well, at least we don’t seem to have been followed,” said Six.

“True. All we have to do now is find a way out of here, and hope that we are not too far away from the shuttles. I have to get to Grace before they do her any harm.”

“Yes. Grace is our first priority. We can’t do much to help Arcan or Diva as things are at the moment. But we might be able to do something to rescue Grace.”

“Can you see a way out?”

Six peered upwards at the low ceiling of the cavern, which consisted of solid and overwhelming rock, hanging over them with only about a couple of hands of headroom with air. “This is an isolated pocket. I don’t see any escape. You?”

Ledin shook his head, and coughed. “Nope. And the quality of air in here is terrible. We have to find a way out, and quickly.”

Six tread ortholiquid. “The only way out of here is down.”

“DOWN?”

Six nodded. “This is impossible. Our only hope is if it is connected to another cavern under the surface. We will have to dive to see if we can find an underwater opening.”

“You know, I can’t help thinking that Grace and I should probably have stayed on Xiantha.”

“I can’t say I blame you. But if Arcan can escape then I think we have a chance.”

“He wasn’t doing too well last time we were connected to the mindmerge.”

“Yes. But that was before Diva got away in a shuttle. She will soon sort that out. There is no-one quite like Diva.” Six’s voice was proud.

“Of course she will.” Ledin tried hard to inject enthusiasm into his voice.

Six looked at him strangely. “She will, you know.”

Ledin gave his lopsided grin. “If anyone can, it will be Diva.”

“So we should concentrate on getting to Grace.”

“And avoid getting caught up in the mindmerge. If we do, they will know just where we are, and come after us again.”

“Agreed. Are you going to dive first, or shall I?”

Ledin looked down at the surrounding liquid. It wasn’t exactly beckoning. He gave a shiver. “I will.”

“I’ve got your back.”

“It’s not just my back I’m worried about.” But he jackknifed his body and kicked into a dive.

The well they were in was small, and it didn’t take very long for Ledin to find the only possible exit. It was about three metres down, and there seemed to be a tunnel. He kicked back up and surfaced.

“There is a tunnel. The problem is it is too narrow to get back through if it doesn’t lead anywhere.”

Six calmly took his mask pack from his belt and began to fasten it. “Not a lot of choice,” he said. “If we stay here swimming around in this we will eventually run out of strength and sink. We might as well take the risk now.”

Ledin couldn’t find much wrong with that logic. He pulled his own mask pack from his belt and began to settle it over his face. “At least we have the air left in this pack,” he said. “Pity we didn’t bring more.”

“We weren’t planning on underwater warfare.”

“Follow me, then, Six.” Ledin tip-tilted his body again, and disappeared under the surface of the ortholiquid. Six snapped the last clasp into place, and followed.

The tunnel was pitch black, and curved. There was no sign of any end to it, and Ledin had been right about the size; it was only slightly wider than Ledin himself. Ledin thought that he had never been in a place he liked less, and felt a sudden sense of panic. Then he remembered that Grace had had to crawl along a pipe filled with toxic fuel, back on Kwaide. He had not been a part of that epic moment in history, but he
was
a part of this one. And he was
not
about to let anybody down. He firmly clamped down on the fear, and made his mind turn to Grace, to the future he might now be allowed to have near her. It was a nice vision to hold, enabling him to ignore the ever smaller walls of the tunnel which were closing in around him. It helped him to take slow, even breaths from the mask pack. This was not a nice place to risk a blockage.

The tunnel weaved its way through the rock, sometimes wider and sometimes narrower. At its widest it was about the size of the escape hatches on Dessia. At its narrowest, Ledin had a struggle to force himself along. Jagged spurs stuck out of the rock and caught at his clothes. It took time to disentangle them.

Then he came to a fork in the tunnel, and knew that he had to make a decision that could affect his life. He felt both branches with his hands, trying to decide which was the largest. It seemed to him that the right-hand branch was slightly bigger in diameter, so he fed himself into it.

About fifteen metres into the fork, he knew he had made a mistake. There was a particularly narrow part of the tunnel, together with a bend, and he pulled himself with some difficulty into it. About five more metres in, he came to a dead end.

Absolute, black, dark terror swept over him. His mind didn’t take in what had happened at first, and then it blanked out altogether. He thrust hard against the blockage and pushed away from it, trying to twist backwards along the way he had come, but the bend in the rock made that extremely difficult, and he had become trapped on a spur of rock jutting out. His mask pack blocked, and he knew that he wasn’t going to make it. He stopped struggling, and waited for the end to come.

The sudden calmness which had crept over him at least enabled him to breathe again. The mask pack unblocked, and he was permitted to take in a careful breath of air. It kept him alive, but didn’t change the prognosis. He was about to die down here.

He tried again to edge his way backwards past the spur, but it was impossible. He was wedged into the tunnel and utterly incapable of doing anything about it.

Then he felt two hands grasping his feet, pulling at him. He wished he could tell Six to go; to save himself. It made no sense for both of them to die down here in the dark bleakness of the solid rock. Then he felt the hands push him gently forwards, turn him slightly and then try again to pull him back. He was still trapped.

The hands manipulated his feet again and again, patiently pushing and pulling him as if he were a lock tumbler, trying to find the combination of movements that would free him. Ledin was powerless to do anything. Even thinking was too much of an effort just at that moment. He was in a grim spiral to oblivion.

Then the spur freed him. It was sudden, immediate. The hands on his feet paused, and then started to drag him carefully back, navigating the curves of the tunnel with great care. Cubit by cubit, they began to retreat. Ledin was still unable to take in what was happening. His mind dared not give him any hope. He lay passively as his feet made their way backwards.

Then he realized dimly that they were back at the fork in the tunnel. The hands pulled further, until he was completely clear of the right-hand fork. His mind began to work, still in a dim blackness, but now gradually becoming aware again. He strained to pull himself into the left-hand tunnel, and knew that there was still just the faintest of chances for survival. It didn’t seem possible. But he was still breathing.

Then the hands on his feet released him, and he knew that it was time to act on his own. He forced his muscles to obey him, to make the effort, to pull him along the left-hand tunnel. And slowly, agonizingly slowly, they did.

He had progressed perhaps another ten metres when the mask pack blocked for a final time. There was no more air left. Ledin gave a desperate kick forward. And another. And another. The next would be the last. He had no air left.

He struggled to hold his breath, but now he was seeing stars and his lungs were bursting. He tried one feeble last time, and his hands found an edge to the tunnel. He pulled frantically and his body shot out, and up. He was almost unconscious, but he turned back to the opening, knowing with some small part of his brain that Six would have run out of air at the same time, and that, as he was behind in the tunnel, he might never get to the edge before he passed out.

Ledin reached into the tunnel and felt around with his hands. The blackness in his lungs was a dead weight on his chest now. Still he struggled to find Six’s hands.

At last, he felt the unresponsive fingers, and curled his hand around them, pulling with every last shred of strength he had left. The dead weight of Six seemed to drag him back into the tunnel before ceding to his pressure, and gradually inching out of the rocky trap. At last he was free, and Ledin pushed up from the outer edge of the tunnel, pushed up for freedom.

They broke the surface of the ortholiquid and Ledin ripped both his own and Six’s mask pack off. Then he managed to hold Six’s mouth out of the ortholiquid as he himself gulped back the first breath of lifesaving air. He turned to his friend, and pulled his head back, so that the mouth fell open.

For a long moment, it seemed as if Six were not going to respond, but then there was a flutter of the chest, and the mouth opened like a fish out of water. Some small amount of ortholiquid spurted out, and then Six gasped in a very ragged breath, and began to choke. Ledin held his friend’s head above the liquid and closed his own eyes for a moment. It had been a close-run thing.

It was some minutes before either of them could speak. Ledin was the first to recover, and he looked around them to see where they had ended up.

Six saw his glance around the cavern and waved a hand. “It’s all right. This is the cavern I was brought to last time. We can get out the same way I did before. I know the route up the cliff. No problem.”

Ledin nodded. “Thank Sacras!”

They made their way wearily to the shore, and staggered out of the ortholiquid. Both of them folded to the ground. Six grinned over at Ledin.

“Thought I wasn’t going to make it back there.”

“Mmm. So did I.”

“Don’t fancy doing that all over again.”

“Me neither.”

Neither of them liked speeches, so there was no need to say anything more. They both lay on the hard rock floor and concentrated on getting their breath back. It would soon be time to force their groaning muscles to take them up the cliff wall. But it was good to be alive.

GRACE THOUGHT THAT the avifauna would leave her in peace, but she soon learned her mistake. The subjugated birds were unnerved and restless, and they kept looking towards the south and cawing to each other unhappily.

Then she realized that they would have to take cover before the nightly winds came. And they weren’t likely to fit into the shuttle. At least, perhaps one of the small ones might, but the others wouldn’t. She lay as still as she could, unwilling to remind them of her presence, not wanting to create any reason for them to attack her. Those beaks were lethal. With the Dessites in control, even Diva wouldn’t have thought these creatures could be pets. They were scary and impressive, and she rather wished she were somewhere else.

She must have lain on the ground for about an hour before she detected some sign of movement amongst her captors. There was a meaningful shuffling of talons on the sandy ground, and she heard one or two chirks of expectation.

She tried to remain where she was, but a couple of nudges with one of the long beaks brought her quickly to her feet. They were even sharper than they looked – that one touch had drawn blood! She rubbed at her skin, and stared at the welling red traces which showed that the contest between her skin and their beaks was decidedly uneven.

The nudge was repeated, with more determination, and she staggered unsteadily to her feet despite the pain. “All right! I’m coming!” She winced as the muscles in her back moved, and she felt sharp pain where the claws had dug into her flesh earlier.

The biggest avifauna examined her with its head twisted to one side, so that one eye could have maximum viewing advantage. “Gackkk!” it said, encouragingly.

“What do you want me to do?”

But her reply was ignored. Whether the Dessites in charge of the creatures’ minds were unable to understand her spoken and thought sentence, or whether they did, but were unable to reply, was not clear. Still, the best thing she could do, thought Grace, would be to treat them as if they did understand her. It was an opportunity to communicate with the aliens, at least on some level. And it seemed a little strange that beings that had spent thousands of years searching the Ammonite Galaxy for superior life-forms would only be interested in taking those life-forms over. It didn’t make much sense. The only way she could be useful in her present circumstances was by trying to establish some sort of first contact with the species.