Gaura looked at him, a surprised light showing in his worn eyes. “Yes?”
“Yeah. I’ve lived there all my life, I was born there, so I know how beautiful habitats are, and I don’t just mean their physical
structure either. So I suppose I can empathize with what you’re feeling more than most Adamists. Don’t worry. We’ll get out
of this and bring help back for Aethra, and Lalonde too. All we need now is time, and we’re home free. Fortunately time is
one thing we have plenty of.”
“So you’re not Confederation Navy marines then?” Horst asked, trying to hide his disappointment.
“No, I’m sorry, Father,” Reza said. “The LDC hired us to scout round the Quallheim Counties and find out what was going on
down here. I believe you can say we’ve certainly done that.”
“I see.” Horst looked round the simplicity of the Tyrath can tower house’s hall, its smooth curves illuminated by the light
stick, solid shadows blending seamlessly with dark-grey arches. The red light outside was kept at bay, silhouetting the hole
sliced into the doorway. In spite of the warmth he felt chilled.
“How did you know we were here?” Pat asked.
“I didn’t, not that you were in this particular tower. We saw the starships arrive yesterday morning, of course. Then in the
afternoon there was an explosion on the river.”
“The kroclion,” Ariadne said.
“Could be,” Reza said. “Go on.”
“Young Russ saw it,” Horst said. “I thought it best that we keep a watch on the savannah; that morning was the first time
the red cloud appeared, and with the starships as well—it seemed sensible. By the time I got my optical intensifier band on
there was only the smoke left. But it didn’t look like anything the possessed do, so I rode out to see. I thought—I prayed—that
it might have been the marines. Then that bedamned kroclion was skulking about in the grass. I just kept going up the river
to keep ahead of it. And here we are. Delivered up to you by God’s hand.” He lifted his lips in a tired victorious smile.
“Mysterious ways His wonders to perform.”
“Certainly does,” Reza said. “That kroclion was probably the mate of the one we killed.”
“Yes. But tell me of the starships. Can they take us off this terrible planet? We saw an almighty battle in orbit before the
red cloud swelled over the sky.”
“We don’t know much about the events in orbit. But that was a fight between some of our starships and a Confederation Navy
squadron.”
“Your starships? Why did they fight the navy?”
“Some of them. The possessed got into orbit on the spaceplanes which brought us down, they hijacked the starships and took
over the crew.”
“Merciful Lord.” Horst crossed himself. “Are there any starships left now?”
“No. Not in orbit.”
Horst’s shoulders sagged. He sipped listlessly at the carton of hot coffee they had given him. This was the cruellest blow
of all, he thought wretchedly, to be shown salvation shining so close and then to have it snatched away as my fingers close
around it. The children cannot be made to suffer any more, merciful Lord hear me this once, they cannot.
Russ was sitting in Kelly’s lap. He seemed shy of the combat-boosted mercenaries, but was content to let her spray a salve
on his saddle sores. She smoothed down the damp hair on his forehead, and grinned as she offered him one of her chocolate
bars. “You must have been through a lot,” she said to Horst.
“We have.” He eyed Shaun Wallace, who had kept to the back of the hall since he had arrived. “The Devil has cursed this planet
to its very core. I have seen such evil, foul, foul deeds. Such courage too. I’m humbled, the human spirit is capable of quite
astonishing acts of munificence when confronted by fundamental tests of virtue. I have come to believe in people again.”
“I’d like to hear about it some time,” she said.
“Kell’s a reporter,” Sewell said mockingly. “Someone else who makes you sign contracts in blood.”
She glared at the big mercenary. “Being a reporter isn’t a crime. Unlike some people’s occupation.”
“I shall be happy to tell you,” Horst said. “But later.”
“Thank you.”
“You’ll be safe enough now you’re hooked up with us, Father,” Reza said. “We’re planning to head south, away from the cloud.
And the good news is that we’re expecting a starship to come back for us in a couple of days. There’s plenty of room for you
and Russ on our hovercraft. Your ordeal’s over.”
Horst let out an incredulous snort, then put the coffee carton down ruing his slowness. “Oh, my Lord, I haven’t told you yet,
have I? I’m sorry, that ride must have addled my brain. And I’ve had so little sleep these last days.”
“Told us what?” Reza asked edgily.
“I gathered what children I could after the possession began. We are all living together in one of the savannah homesteads.
They must be terrified. I never intended to be away all night.”
There was complete silence for a second, even the red cloud’s hollow thunder was hushed.
“How many children?” Reza asked.
“Counting young Russ here, twenty-nine.”
“Fucking hell.”
Horst frowned and glanced pointedly at Russ who was staring at the mercenary leader with apprehensive eyes over his half-eaten
chocolate. Kelly held him a fraction tighter.
“Now what?” Sal Yong asked bluntly.
Horst looked at him in some puzzlement. “We must go back to them in your hovercraft,” he said simply. “I fear my poor old
horse can travel no further. Why? Have you some other mission?”
The combat-adept mercenary kept still. “No.”
“Where exactly is this homestead?” Reza asked.
“Five or six kilometres south of the jungle,” Horst replied. “And forty minutes’ walk east from the river.”
Reza datavised his guidance block for a map, and ran a search through LDC habitation records, trying to correlate. “In other
words, under the red cloud.”
“Yes, that abomination spread at a fearsome rate yesterday.”
“Reza,” Jalal said. “The hovercraft can’t possibly carry that many people. Not if we’re going to keep ahead of the cloud.”
Horst looked at the hulking combat adept in growing amazement. “What is this you are saying? Can’t? Can’t? They are children!
The eldest is eleven years old! She is alone under that Devil’s spew in the sky. Alone and frightened, holding the others
to her as the sky turns to brimstone and the howling demon horde closes in. Their parents have been raped by unclean spirits.
They have nothing left but a single thread of hope.” He stood abruptly, clamping down on a groan as his ride-stiffened muscles
rebelled against the sharp movement, face reddening in fury. “And you, with your guns and your mechanoid strength, you sit
here thinking only of saving your own skin. You should run to embrace the possessed, they would welcome you as their own.
Come along, Russ, we’re going home.”
The boy started sobbing. He struggled in Kelly’s grip.
She climbed to her feet, keeping her arms protectively around his thin frame. Quickly, before she lost all courage, she said:
“Russ can have my place on the hovercraft. I’ll come with you, Father.” Retinas switched to high resolution, she looked at
Reza. Recording.
“I knew you’d be trouble,” he datavised.
“Tough,” she said out loud.
“For a reporter you have very little understanding of people if you think I’d desert his children after all we’ve seen.”
Kelly pouted her lips sourly and switched her visual focus to Jalal. That exchange would have to be edited out.
“Nobody is going to leave the children behind, Father,” Reza said. “Believe me, we have seen what happens to children driven
away by the possessed. But we are not going to help them by rushing in blindly.” And he stood, rising a good thirty centimetres
higher than the priest. “Understand me, Father?”
A muscle twitched on Horst’s jaw. “Yes.”
“Good. Now they obviously can’t stay at the savannah homestead. We have to take them south with us. The question is how. Are
there any more horses at the homestead?”
“No. We have a few cows, that’s all.”
“Pity. Ariadne, can the hovercraft carry fifteen children apiece?”
“Possibly, if we ran alongside. But it would put a hell of a strain on the skirt impellers. And it would definitely drain
the electron matrices inside of six or seven hours.”
“Running like that would drain us too,” Pat said.
“I can’t even recharge the matrices, not under this cloud,” Ariadne said. “The solar-cell panels don’t receive anything like
enough photonic input.”
“We might be able to build some kind of cart,” Theo suggested. “Hitch it up to the cows. It would be better than walking.”
“It would take time,” Sal Yong said. “And there’s no guarantee it would work.”
“Tow them,” Sewell said. “Slap together a couple of rafts, and tow them back up the river. All you need is planks, we can
get them from the homestead itself if need be.”
Ariadne nodded her rounded head. “Might just work. The hovercraft could handle that. We could certainly get back here by the
middle of the afternoon.”
“Then what?” Jalal said. “Look, I’m not being a downer. But just getting them back here isn’t the solution. We have to keep
going. Wallace says the cloud is going to cover the whole planet, we have to find a way to outrun it, or this will all be
for nothing.”
Reza turned to look at the possessed man who had kept silent and unobtrusive up until now. “Mr Wallace, will your kind know
if we return to the homestead?”
“Aye, Mr. Malin,” he said sorrowfully. “That they will. The cloud and the land are becoming one with us. We can feel you moving
inside us. When you pass back under the cloud the sensation will be like treading on a nail.”
“How will they react?”
“They’ll come after you, Mr. Malin. But then they’ll do that anyway if you stay on this world.”
“I think he’s speaking the truth,” Horst said. “One of them came to the homestead two days ago. She wanted me and the children.
Our bodies, anyway.”
“What happened?” Kelly asked.
Horst forced a vapid smile. “I exorcised her.”
“What?” Kelly blurted in greedy delight. “Really?”
The priest held up his bandaged hand. The dark strips of cloth were stained with blood. “It wasn’t easy.”
“Shit Almighty. Shaun, can you be exorcised?” Shaun Wallace had locked his gaze to that of the priest. “If it’s all the same
to you, Miss Kelly, I’d be obliged if you didn’t try.”
“He can,” she subvocalized into her neural nanonics memory cell, “he really can! You can see it in his eyes. He fears the
priest, this ageing worn-out man in shabby clothes. I can barely believe it. A ceremony left over from medieval times that
can thwart these almost-invincible foes. Where all our fantastic technology and knowledge fails, a prayer, a simple anachronistic
prayer could become our salvation. I must tell you of this, I must find a way to get a message out to the Confederation.”
Damn, that sounded too much like Graeme Nicholson’s recording.
For a moment she wondered what had happened to the old hack.
“Interesting,” Reza said. “But it doesn’t help our present dilemma. We have to find a way of keeping ahead of the cloud until
Joshua comes back for us.”
“Christ, we don’t even know when he’s coming back,” Sal Yong said. “And taking a bunch of children through these mountains
isn’t going to be easy, Reza, there are no roads, no detailed map image. We’ve got no camping equipment, no boots for them,
no food supplies. It’s going to be wet, slippery. I mean, God! I don’t mind giving it a go if there’s even a remote chance
of pulling it off, but this…”
“Mr Wallace, would your kind consider letting the children go?” Reza asked.
“Some would, I would, but the rest… No, I don’t think so. There are so few living human bodies left here, and so many souls
trapped in the beyond. We hear them constantly, you know, they plead with us to bring them back. Giving in is so easy. I’m
sorry.”
“Shit.” Reza flexed his fingers. “OK, we’ll take it in stages. First we bring the children back here, get them and us out
from under that bloody cloud today. That’s what is important right now. Once we’ve done that we can start concentrating on
how to get them through the mountains. Maybe the Tyrathca will help.”
“No chance,” Ariadne said flatly.
“Yeah. But all of you keep thinking. Mr. Wallace, can you tell me what sort of opposition we’ll be facing? How many possessed?”
“Well now, there’s a good hundred and fifty living in Aberdale. But if you race in on those fancy hover machines of yours
you ought to be away again before they reach you.”
“Great.”
Shaun Wallace held up his hand. “But there’s a family of ten living in one of the other homesteads not far from the children.
They can certainly cause you problems.”
“And you believe him?” Sewell asked Reza.
Shaun Wallace put on a mournfully injured expression. “Now then, Mr. Sewell, that’s no way to be talking about someone who’s
only doing his best to help you. I didn’t stick out my thumb and hitch here, you know.”
“Actually, he’s right about the homestead family,” Horst said. “I saw them a couple of days ago.”
“Thank you, Father. There now, you have the word of a man of the cloth. What more do you want?”
“Ten of them on open ground,” Reza said. “That’s nothing like as bad as Pamiers. I think we can take care of them. Are you
going to add your fire-power to ours, Mr. Wallace?”
“Ah now, my fire-power is a poor weak thing compared to yours, Mr. Malin. But even if it were capable of shifting mountains,
I would not help you in that way.”
“That makes you a liability, Mr. Wallace.”
“I don’t think much of a man who asks another to kill his cousins in suffering, Mr. Malin. Not much at all.”
Horst took a pace forwards. “Perhaps you could mediate for us, Mr. Wallace? Nobody wants to see any more death on this world,
especially as those bodies still contain their rightful souls. Could you not explain to the homestead family that attacking
the mercenaries would be foolhardy in the extreme?” Shaun Wallace stroked his chin. “Aye, now, I could indeed do that, Father.”