“Joshua, what—” Ashly’s startled voice faded away as the bridge trembled softly.
The last combat wasp left its launch-tube.
“Watch it coming, shitheads,” Joshua purred. Jesus, but it felt good to see the vector lines emerge as the submunitions separated.
Purple threads linking
Lady Mac
with the tumbling wreckage.
It took eight seconds for the submunitions to reach the
Gramine
’s life-support capsules. A stipple of kinetic explosions boiled above the ring for a few scant seconds before the vacuum
absorbed them as effortlessly as it did all human-born pollution.
The inside of the homestead cabin was even worse than Jay Hilton imagined hell must be like. She wouldn’t let any of the other
children go outside, so they had to use buckets in the small second bedroom when they wanted to go to the toilet. The smell
was atrocious, and it got viler every time they opened the door. To add to their woes, the heat had reached a zenith which
even Lalonde had never matched before. They had opened all the shutters as well as the door, but the air was solid, motionless.
The cabin’s timber creaked and popped as the frame expanded.
The physical ordeal was bad enough, but Jay felt so agonizingly lonely too. It was stupid, there were twenty-seven children
crammed in around her so tight you couldn’t move without nudging someone. But she didn’t want other kids, she wanted Father
Horst. He had never done this before, not leave them alone for a whole day, and certainly not at night. Jay suspected Father
Horst was as scared by the night as she was.
All this wretchedness had started when the starships had appeared, and with them the red cloud. Yesterday, just yesterday.
It should have been a wonderful time. Rescue was here, the navy marines would come and take them all away and make everything
right again. The long dragging miserable days out here on the unchanging savannah were over.
The idea was a little bit scary, because there was always some comfort in routine, even one as difficult as the homestead.
But that didn’t matter, she was leaving Lalonde. And nobody was ever going to make her come back. Not even Mummy!
They had spent a happy morning outside, keeping watch over the savannah for the first sign of their rescuers. Though the growing
red cloud had been a bit frightening.
Then Russ had seen what he claimed was an explosion, and Father Horst had ridden off to investigate.
“I’ll be back in a couple of hours,” were his last words to her as he’d left.
They had waited and waited. And the red cloud had slid over the sky above, bringing its horrible noise with it, as though
it was hiding an avalanche of boulders.
She had done what she could, organizing meals and rotas. Things to do, things to keep them busy. And still he hadn’t come
back.
Her watch had told her when it was night. She would never have known otherwise. They had closed the shutters and the door,
but red light from the cloud seemed to slide in through every crack and cranny. There was no escape. Sleep was difficult,
the boomy thunder-noise kept going the whole time, mingling with the higher pitched sounds of crying.
Even now the youngest children remained tearful, the older ones subdued. Jay leant on the window-sill, gazing off in the direction
Father Horst had gone. If he didn’t come back very soon, she knew she wouldn’t be able to hold her own tears back. Then everything
would be lost.
I must try not to.
But she had been badly shaken by the way the red light had vanished ninety minutes ago. Now ghastly black clouds swept low
and silent over the savannah, turning everything to funereal greys. At first she had tried to play the shapes game, to make
them less sinister, but her mind’s eye could only conjure up witches and monsters.
Jay turned round from the window, registering the frightened faces. “Danny, the fridge should have done some more ice by now.
Make everyone some orange juice.”
He nodded, happy to be given some task. Usually he was a real moaner. “Jay!” Eustice squealed. “Jay, there’s something out
there.” She backed away from her window, hands pressed to her cheeks.
There was an outbreak of crying and wails behind Jay. Furniture was kicked and scraped as the children instinctively made
for the rear wall.
“What was it?” Jay asked.
Eustice shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said wretchedly. “Something!”
Jay could hear the cows mooing plaintively, sometimes the bleating of a goat. It might just be a sayce, she thought. Several
had gone by yesterday, driven from the jungle by the red cloud. She gave the open door a nervous glance, she’d have to shut
it. With shivers in each limb she shuffled back to the window and peeked round the frame.
Lightning was playing along the horizon. The savannah’s darkling grass was perfectly still, which made the movement easy to
spot. Two ebony blobs jutting up above the blade tips. They were growing steadily larger. She heard a humming noise. Mechanical.
It had been so long since she’d heard any kind of motor that it took a moment to place the sound; and even longer for her
to bring herself to believe. Nobody on this planet had ground transport.
“Father!” she shrieked. “He’s back!” Then she was out of the open door and running towards the hovercraft, heedless of the
stiff, dry grass slapping and scratching her bare legs.
Horst saw her coming and jumped off the hovercraft as Ariadne slowed to a halt fifteen metres from the homestead. He had told
himself all through the trip that nothing had happened to them, that they would be all right. Praying and praying that it
would be so. But actually seeing Jay alive and in one piece was too much, and the repressed guilt and instituted fear burst
out, overwhelming him. He fell to his knees and opened his arms.
Jay hit him as if she was giving a rugby tackle. “I thought you were dead,” she blubbed. “I thought you’d left us.”
“Oh, Jay, darling Jay. You know I never would.” He cradled her head and rocked her gently. Then the other children came streaming
down the homestead’s ramshackle steps, squealing and shouting. He smiled at them all and held out his arms once more.
“We were scared,” Eustice said.
“The sky’s gone real funny.”
“It’s so hot.”
“Nobody collected the eggs.”
“Or milked the cows.”
Bo narrowed her eyes as the mercenaries climbed out of the hovercraft. “Are these the marines you promised?” she asked sceptically.
“Not quite,” Horst said. “But they’re just as good.”
Danny goggled up at Sewell. The big combat-adept had gaussrifles plugged into both elbow sockets. “What is he?” the boy asked.
Horst grinned. “He’s a special sort of soldier. Very strong, very clever. Everything is going to be all right now. He’ll look
after you.”
Kelly had kept her retinas on wide-field focus, scanning the whole reunion scene. There was a big dry lump forming in her
throat.
“Holy Jesus, will you look at it all,” Shaun Wallace said in a small demoralized voice. “What kind of a God could do this
to us? Not the one I was taught about, that’s for sure. Look at them all, little children. Crying their bloody damn eyes out.
And all for what?”
Kelly turned round at the unaccustomed savagery and bitterness in his tone. But he was already striding towards Reza, who
was watching Horst and the children impassively.
“Mr Malin?”
“Yes, Mr. Wallace?”
“You have to move these children away now.”
“I intend to.”
“No, I mean right now. My kind, they’re over there in the edge of the jungle. There’s a couple of hundred of them, if not
more. They’re meaning to get you, Mr. Malin, to end the threat once and for all.”
Reza focused his sensors on the first rank of stunted, scrappy trees four or five kilometres away. The cloud over the jungle
was still glowing a sombre red, giving the leaves a coral tinge. Heat shimmer and fluttering leaves defeated him, he couldn’t
tell. “Pat, what can Octan see?”
“Nothing much. But there’s definitely a few people roving round in there, and… Oh my God.”
The pages emerged first, young boys, ten or twelve years old, holding their heraldic banners high. Then the drums started
up, and the pikemen marched out of the cover of trees. It was a long solid black line, almost as if the trees themselves were
advancing. Following, and holding a tight formation at the centre, came the mounted knights. Silver armour shone by its own
accord under the unbroken veil of leaden clouds.
The army assembled itself in front of the trees to the order of the drummer. Knight commanders rode up and down, organizing
stragglers. Then when the ranks were neatly laid out, a single bugle note rang across the savannah. They started to tramp
over the uneven grassland towards the homestead.
“OK,” Reza said equably. “Time to go.”
Along with all the other children Jay found herself being hurriedly lifted into one of the hovercraft by a mercenary and told
to hang on. Boxes and equipment were being tossed out to accommodate them. Father Horst was in the other hovercraft; Jay wanted
to be with him, but she didn’t think the mercenaries would listen if she asked. Shona was plonked down beside her, and Jay
smiled timidly, reaching for the disfigured girl’s hand. Their fingers pressed together urgently.
There was a lot of shouting going on all around. Everyone was moving at such a rush. One of the big (really big) mercenaries
dashed into the homestead and came out half a minute later carrying Freya.
“Put her in my hovercraft,” Horst said. “I’ll look after her.” The limp girl was laid on the front bench, and he eased a bundle
of cloth under her head.
Through all the confusion and bustle Jay saw one of the mercenaries strap a dark globe to the neck of a huge dog. A man (who
she thought looked a bit like Rai Molvi) and a lady who had come with the mercenaries were arguing hotly in front of the cabin.
It ended when she made a slashing motion with one arm and climbed into the pilot’s seat of the second hovercraft. The other
mercenaries were ransacking the ammunition boxes that lay on the ground, slotting magazines into their backpacks. Then the
impellers on Jay’s hovercraft began to spin and the decking wobbled as it rose up. She wondered where the mercenaries were
going to fit, her hovercraft had seventeen children packed in between the pilot’s seat and the fan at the rear. But when both
vehicles swung round and began to pick up speed she realized they were jogging alongside.
“Where are we going?” Shona shouted above the teethgrating buzz of the fans.
The small hairless pilot didn’t seem to hear.
Aethra watched the
Lady Macbeth
streak across the ring. Triple fusion exhausts twining into a single braid of nearpure radiation that stretched for over
two hundred kilometres behind the fleeing starship.
Murora VII was a thousand kilometres ahead of her. A battered sphere of grey-brown rock not quite a hundred and twenty kilometres
in diameter. Along with the other three shepherd moonlets it brought a certain degree of order to the edge of the ring, creating
a tidy boundary line. Dust, iceflakes, and pebbles extended out across the gas giant’s ecliptic plane far past the immature
habitat’s orbit, although their density slowly dropped away until at a million kilometres it was no different to interplanetary
space. But none of the larger particles, the flying mountains and icebergs, were to be found beyond the hundred and eighty
thousand kilometre limit where the shepherds orbited.
Lady Macbeth
’s exhaust plume yawed a degree, then straightened out again, honing her trajectory. Three thousand kilometres behind her,
five combat wasps, arranged in a precise diamond configuration, were accelerating at twenty gees. It had taken the
Maranta
a long time to respond to the break-out, its possessed crew wasting seven expensive seconds before launching the combat wasps—though
they couldn’t know that. Now the drones could never catch her.
Aethra had never known emotional tension before. Always, it had reflected the feelings of the supervisory station staff. Now
though, as it watched the starship curving over the moonlet, it knew—understood—the meaning of trepidation. It
willed
the starship to succeed.
The station staff were lying on their acceleration couches, that wicked gee force squeezing them relentlessly. Aethra could
see the ceiling of the cabin through a dozen sets of pained eyes, feeling the cushioning give below overstressed back muscles.
Three seconds away from the Lagrange point.
Lady Macbeth
’s fusion drives reduced to four gees as she skimmed eight kilometres above Murora VII, tracing a slight parabola around its
minuscule gravity field. A couple of ion thrusters fired. The pursuing combat wasps cleared the edge of the ring.
Aethra prepared thirty-three storage areas in its neural strata. Ready to receive the memories of the Edenists on board. Although
it would be so quick…
An event horizon eclipsed the
Lady Macbeth
.
Her fusion plume lingered briefly like a broken-hearted wraith before melting away. Then there was no physical evidence left
of her ever having existed.
Five combat wasps converged on the Lagrange point. Their courses intersected, drive exhausts a dazzling asterisk, and they
sped outwards on divergent vectors, electronic brains crashing in program overload confusion.
“I told you Joshua could fly that manoeuvre,” Warlow said.
Aethra tasted smugness in the subsidiary mentality’s thoughts. It wasn’t used to that, but then the last twenty-four hours
had contained a lot of unknowns. “Yes, you did.”
“You should have more faith.”
“And you’re the one to teach me?”
“About faith? Yes, I could try. I think we both have the time now.”
The hovercraft battered its way through the tall, heavy savannah grass. It had never been designed with this particular terrain
in mind. The grass was too high, too resilient for the skirt to surmount; it all had to be ridden down. That took power, and
they were overladen with the children as well.