Seeds of Earth (34 page)

'You
are
Human, aren't you?' she said, almost pleading.

The linguistic enabler Tumakri had given him a few days ago was clearly working perfectly - he hadn't even noticed that she was speaking Anglic.

'Yes,' he said carefully. 'I am. Who is it that wishes you harm?'

'They're . . . they're . . . horrible monsters! - they took my friend Telzy and cut her up . . .' She began weeping again and darted along to the cockpit. 'Don't let them take me, please!'

Kao Chih got to his feet and went after her, hearing Drazuma-Ha* say:

'Young woman, you may not stay here. We have come to Bryag on serious business and cannot leave you in our craft alone ...'

'Why not?' Kao Chih said. 'I'm sure we could lock out the controls and avoid any accidental tampering and leave our guest with some food and water while we go and find this Milmil S'Dohk.'

'Of course, Gow-Chee, this is your vessel and your mission - I merely anticipated that you might wish to keep the ship as secure as possible. My apologies for . . .'

'Please don't leave me alone,' wailed the girl from beneath the console where she had wedged herself.

'What's your name?' Kao Chih said, starting to feel harried.

'Co ... Cora,' she said between sobs. 'They were following me! - they might come here! Please help me, please please please ...'

'Okay, okay .. .'

'Are they coming? Are they here? Please, you've got to close the hatch ...'

'Wait, just wait,' Kao Chih said, heading for the airlock. 'I'll take a look . ..'

Quickly he ducked out of the hatch, scanned the walkways in either direction for any commotion and saw nothing out of the ordinary. There was a heavy thud from inside followed by a fearful cry, and when he re-entered the cockpit he saw Drazuma-Ha * lying on the floor, his field nimbus rippling with silver and red distortion patterns. Cora was tearfully watching it from the other side of the cockpit.

'There's . . . something wrong with your droid,' she said.

'Don't worry,' he said, crouching down beside thi dumb-bell-shaped mech. 'He should recover his systems soon . . .'

Just then he felt her fingers press something against the side of his neck. He whirled round, even as a cold numbness flooded through his limbs, and he slumped over to sprawl on the floor. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Cora, now composed and grinning, lean over to say, 'And now there's something wrong with you,' just before he passed out.

When he came round he found he was strapped into the copilot couch with hands and ankles bound, an ache in his head and an awful taste in his mouth. The background chorus of shipboard hums and the hexagonal patterns of the viewport shield told him that they were under way, back in hyperspace. Next to him, in the pilot's couch, was his captor, watching him with unrul fle< 1 amusement, her hair now silver-blonde and braided tightly against her scalp. Her clothes, the jacket, onepiece and her boots were all the same and she was still as beautiful as before but Kao Chih knew from something in her eyes that he was in terrible danger.

'Awake, KC? Good. Mouth taste like month-old spew?'

Kao Chih grimaced. 'Somewhat, yes.'

'I'll give you a drink soon - I may even untie your hands. But see these?' She took out a paper strip of white circular patches. 'I took you down with one of these - give me any trouble and I'll slap another one on you. Clear?'

'Who are you? How did we get away from Bryag Station? Where . ..'

'Whoa, too many questions for cargo - okay, I was recording everything you said from the moment I got here, fed it into a digimask then used it to tell Docking Control that news of a death in the family meant I would have to depart immediately.' She made a mock sad face. 'They went for it and here we are, KC, on our way to meet my business associates.'

'What kind of business?'

'Well-paid business,' she said. 'Oh, and I'm Corazon Talavera, and you are my cargo.'

When Kao Chih heard that he suddenly recalled that moment back in Avriqui's hold when he was on his knees before Manuuk and the hooded buyer on the screen behind him.
Is that what this is about}
he wondered.
Is this Manuuk's doing?

'What did you do to my mech?'

'Used a stasis limpet,' she said. 'Strigida drones have a reputation for being tricksy so I had the limpet configured and it worked perfectly. Two valuable pieces of cargo, all neatly packaged, ready for delivery.'

'Delivery to whom?' he said, desiring yet fearing the answer.

'Hmm, I shouldn't really tell you ... but what's the harm. To certain revolutionaries of my acquaintance who are always in the market for new recruits.' She laughed. 'Which I suppose makes me their recruiting sergeant!'

Kao Chih swallowed. 'But I'm not trained for fighting - I've never even fired a weapon.'

She smiled and gave him a little pat on the cheek. 'KC, for what they've got in mind for you, that hardly matters.'

Kao Chih looked away, stomach knotted with fear, mouth dry, throat feeling irritated.

'Can I have that drink now? I assure you that I will be no trouble.'

She nodded and a moment later he was sipping from a hot cup of the ship's Roug-style infusion.

'Your name is Chinese,' said Corazon. 'What were you doing out here - scouting for some big Earthsphere
gongsiV

Kao Chih thought quickly. 'I'm freelance now -1 was on my way to collect articles for a client. . .'

There was a thudding jolt that Kao Chih felt through the solid frame of the couch as well as underfoot. Cora suddenly directed all her attention to the instruments.

'What was that?' he said. 'It sounded like something hitting the ship, but debris drops back into normal space, doesn't it?'

'Shut up,' Cora said, emptying out the contents of her transparent shoulder bag and fitting together some oddlooking objects.

Tense silence followed for some moments before there was a second thud, making Kao Chih jump. Then a hum that he took a few seconds to realise was the sound of the airlock's outer hatch opening. His heart began to race.

'Are we . . . being boarded?' he said, feeling panicky. 'How can we be boarded in hyperspace? That is not possible . . .'

'Shut up,' she said again, pointing a peculiar, skeletal handweapon at him. 'Keep silent or it's narcopatch time! Yes, it's supposed to be impossible but I've heard rumours . . . never thought I'd get to see one though . . .'

By now she was along the side passage, poised near the airlock's inner hatch, weapon at the ready. Seconds ticked away and Kao Chih found that sweat was prickling his neck and trickling down his back . . .

The airlock popped and slammed aside and a grey, bulky figure flew out, arms spread. Cora got off one shot which knocked the attacker sideways, just before a foot came swinging out of the airlock and kicked the odd gun out of her grasp. As it bounced and clattered back into the cockpit, Cora lunged after it.

Kao Chih was trying to make sense of what he was seeing - the first boarder lying still and sprawled at the end of the passage as a second one, garbed in dark blue body-armour and a face-concealing helmet, dived on Cora. Then they were half inside the cockpit, fighting on the floor, Cora with the gun in one hand, her attacker grabbing at it with one pair of hands while a second pair fought to choke her throat. . .

He stared, realising with horror that they had been boarded by an Ezgara commando. He had never encountered one but everyone on the Retributor had heard the rumours about these fearsome, quad-armed mercenaries. It was said that a company of them carried out security tasks aboard the Suneye trading station that orbited Pyre.

So who is this four-armed monster after? - me or her}
Then Kao Chih saw that the Ezgara was gaining the advantage. With his partly untied hands he loosened some of the couch straps, allowing him to move round and start lashing out at the helmeted commando with his bound feet. Yet he was still too far away, only managing to clip its arm. It wasn't even distracted.

But he kept thrashing away in hope that seemed to collapse when the Ezgara managed to wrench the weapon out of Cora's hand. In response she arched he back, heaving her attacker off with unexpected ferocit). pushing his upper body sideways in Kao Chih's direc tion . . . just as his tied-up feet swung round and connected full-force with the Ezgara's chin. The helmeted head twisted savagely, there was an audible crack and the four-armed commando sprawled motionless on the floor, helmet knocked off by the tremendous impact.

Kao Chih was only wearing deck shoes and his toes were throbbing with pain, yet he let out a whoop that was equal parts relief and exultation. Then his gaze fell upon the Ezgara's head and he saw an exposed ear, nose, side of a mouth, eye and hair that looked very Human.

'Is he dead?' Cora said, scrambling over to the still body. 'Is he ... yes, he is, you idiot!'

'He looks Human . . .'

'Noticed that,' she said, manically dragging the corpse along towards the still-open airlock hatch. 'And you had to kill him.'

Kao Chih stared in confusion. 'But I thought yo i wanted him dead.'

'I wanted him unconscious,' she gasped, hauling the commando over the raised edge of the hatch. 'But now that he's dead, a binary liquid explosive is mixing up and down his intestines and will blow this ship apart if I don't get him out in time . . .'

She slammed the airlock shut and hit the cyclethrough button. The servos hummed, there was a brief sucking sound of the airlock contents evacuating to hyperspace vacuum. For a second Kao Chih imagined that the body had snagged on the hatch exit and was about to explode and tear open the
Castellan's
hull. Then he heard Cora sigh and knew that the danger was past, and when he glanced down he saw that her gun was lying a few inches from his left foot.

Without hesitation he picked it up and straightened to see her watching him coolly from the passage. They looked at each other for a moment.

'I don't want to hurt you but I will,' he said.

She shrugged, put her hands in her canvas jacket pockets and leaned against the bulkhead.

'You're in charge,' she said.

'He was Human, the Ezgara,' Kao Chih said. 'Did you know that they were Human?'

'There's always been lots of rumours surrounding those goons,' Cora said. 'But the Hegemony's been known to use genetic material of other races to breed useful servants of one kind or another. The fact that they seem to have done that with Humans, their biggest ally, just stinks of very nasty politics, which I don't want to know anything about.'

'How did they find us in hyperspace? And why?'

Cora smiled. 'Has to be you, not me. You've got the ship, which is easier to track. They probably used a hyperspace leech-probe adapted to carry an operator rather than a shipkiller payload. They went to a lot of trouble just to get at you -1 wonder why.'

Kao Chih frowned, worried that his family and the rest of the Human Sept back at the Roug homeworld were at risk. Then he tried to reassure himself by imagining that the Roug would not allow them to be endangered.

'Okay,' he said. 'First, I want you to undo my ankles, then get my mech companion out of the rest bunk and deactivate that stasis device.'

'Hmm, I don't think so,' she said as she moved casually towards him.

Kao Chih pressed the fire stud several times but nothing happened. Cora firmly took the slender weapon from him with one hand while the other came up and thumbed a white patch against his wrist.

'Party's over - time to go bye-byes.'

He tried to speak but it came out as slurred nonsense as Cora and the entire cockpit turned grey and tilted away from him.

33

GREG

'It is terrible, Gregory, absolutely terrible. I have never known such a feeling of... of dread,''
his mother said on the comm.
'And that horrible murder at Port Gagarin last night - God knows I remember how bad it was before the Winter Coup but it was nothing like this, not at all. At least that was just us fighting among ourselves, but this? - did you see that battleship on the news? . .. The size of it...'

'Aye, Mum, I did,' he said. 'So much for all the Hegemony talk of peace and cooperation.'

He was standing in the large stone window in the north face of Giant's Shoulder. Behind him the passage ran straight through the rock to the icy room of pillars, beyond which was the warpwell, as Chel had called it. Chel and Listener Weynl were there now, according to a message he'd got earlier that morning while reassigning the sector surveys. Most of his Uvovo field researchers were involved with this Artificer business, but luckily the Rus and Norj teams had agreed to take up the slack. Vaguely irritated by Chel's message, Greg had been on his way to the winch-lowering spot at the wall now covered by a gazebo - when he got a call from his brother Ian asking him to call their mother and say something to ease her worries. Once he was down in the passageway he had done so, only to find himself agreeing with her bleak outlook. He had seen a news summary that morning and all of it, from the slaughter at Port Gagarin to the Brolturan troops fortifying the Hegemony embassy, was grim.

'Surely the Sendrukans and the Brolturans and the Earthsphere people won't let this get worse,' Greg said. 'Sanity has to prevail.'

To his surprise, she laughed.
'Only if sanity is backed by heavy weapons, my dear. Do you remember your father's elder brother, Piers}'

'Uncle Piers? Vaguely - bit of a black sheep, wasn't he?'

'Yes,
you could say that - he was on Ingram's side during the Winter Coup, helping organise support in the trapper towns and further out, but his heavy-handed methods backfired on him and he supposedly met a grisly end away in the north. Anyway, he had a favourite saying - "Screw negotiations, break out the ammo" which I suspect these Brolturans would identify heavily with.'
She was silent a moment.
'I worry about the three of you so much, because I fear that it will all get much worse before it gets better. Ian is a soldier and Ned is a doctor, so danger will come searching for one of them ...'