Ammonite Planets (Omnibus): Ammonite Galaxy #1-3 (45 page)

“You might remember me,” he told the old man.

“You are the instigator of this madness,” warbled the ancient.

“No.
You
are the instigator of all this.” Six spread his hands open, indicating the entire battlefield. “You rate the untouchables as less than Kwaidians, and that is what will be your downfall.”

“I should have had you killed when I had the chance.”

“Yes. You should. Your time is over now, old man. I hope you spend the rest of your days as a captive.”

“I suppose you plan to make yourself the Elder of Kwaide?” inquired the ancient with a disparaging tone.

At that moment Six felt a rush of certainty free him from any doubts, any designs which might have crossed his mind.

“No, old man. I shall never be an Elder. I was born a no-name and I shall die one. But the next leader of Kwaide
will
be a refugee. One elected democratically to lead the nation. One who is accountable for his actions.” Six gave a sudden smile. “But it won’t be me. I am not interested in the job.” A weight lifted off his shoulders and he knew that a decision had been made. He could be Six. He could even be First Six for a short time. But he was not made to be Elder Six. He was not that person. He smiled at the thought of his friends greeting him as Elder Six.

His friends! He looked around, trying to find Diva’s figure amongst all the turmoil around him. A ghostlike premonition suddenly chilled him to the core. He signaled the remaining men in his group to carry on as planned and flung himself into the heaving masses in the direction of Diva’s group.

GRACE HAD HIDDEN herself on the orbital platform and ordered two of the Kwaidian pilots to take the Variance and the other space trader and retire to a safe distance on the opposite side of Lumina, where they would be invisible to any Sellite ships. She knew that this had not been Six’s intention, but she was convinced that the Sellites would somehow win if she abandoned the orbital station to its fate. She asked trainees to take four of the five personal shuttle pods down to the planet for safe-keeping, then the three refugees who had stayed with her joined her in a silent watch at the consoles. They waited patiently. Grace felt sure that the Sellites would put in an appearance. The only thing she was unsure of was the tactics they would use. She hoped that the evasive measures they had planned would be enough to save the spaceships.

The proximity alert went off, bringing all aboard to instant attention.

“We are detecting a Sellite ship approaching at top speed.” Ledin told her.

Grace hurried over to the console. “They will be on us in another three hours.”

The countdown began. They ate, since they didn’t know how long it might be before their next meal, and then collected all the equipment that had been previously decided upon. As a last fallback device, the station’s control deck had been fitted with gas cylinders. If activated, anything alive on that deck would be knocked out cold. Grace slipped the button controlling the gas into her pocket! Let them come!

GRACE HEARD THE hiss of the airlock, and instinctively cowered further back into the store cupboard, moderating her breathing to as low a rate as she could stand.

“Check all areas!” she heard.

Grace closed her eyes. She knew that voice only too well. Her worst fears had been realized. She heard the boots striding past her cubby-hole, and struggled to breathe evenly. They had planned everything; all she had to do was follow the plan. Her heart raced as she waited for the inevitable discovery.

“Here!” The door of the cupboard was wrenched open and hands reached in to pull her out. She stood, blinking a little uncertainly as her eyes got used to the light.

“Grace!” The voice she had recognized was rigid with shock.

“Xenon. How are you, brother?”

“Scratching out a living on Cesis, thanks to you. And you?”

“Fine. I see you are working as one of Atheron’s spies?”

“Well, what was I supposed to do? We lost all rights to our artifacts. You took care of that, didn’t you?”

Despite her best intentions, Grace found herself shaking. “And why have you come here, Xenon?”

Her brother laughed. “Don’t you know? You have become as stupid as your Kwaidian friends, Sister! Did you think Atheron would let you keep two spaceships and allow you to take a perfectly good orbital platform? You should have known better!”

“What are you planning to do?”

“What do you think? Blow the place to smithereens, of course.”

“With me in it?”

Xenon was still for a long moment, considering his options. Then he pursed his lips and said, “Yes, I am afraid you will have to go too. I won’t take you back to Valhai in my ship. He suddenly looked suspicious. “Unless your great friend Arcan is hidden somewhere?” His eyes began to examine the metallic hold they were in.

Grace shook her head. “Arcan doesn’t know where I am,” she said quietly. “So … you are going to kill me?”

Xenon looked down for a moment. “It is not
my
fault if you are here,” he said. “Why do you always have to get in the way? Why couldn’t you just be a normal Sellite woman, taking care of the house, and looking for a decent husband?” He became aware of the other Sellites, who were standing flanking him, avidly taking in every sentence. “You leave me no choice.”

“Of course you have a choice!” she told him.

“You didn’t give us a choice. You lost us our skyrise. Amanita has lost her status, and it was all your fault!”

“You shouldn’t have tried to kill Diva!”

“So what? What on Almagest does it matter to you if there is one Sacran more or less? It’s not as if they were Sellites!”

“It DID matter to me. It should have mattered to you!”

“It was for the good of Sell!”

“It was for the good of Xenon!” she flashed back.

“You put aliens before family. You deserve everything you get. Your stupid ideals are in the process of ruining all Sell. You don’t deserve to live, sister or not. I will be doing the system a favour when I kill you!”

Grace caught her breath. To expect it and to hear it were two different matters. She was aware of a dull throbbing pain in her heart. Where was the little boy Xenon had been? Where was her playmate of old? How had they somehow got to this?

“And what do you get out of all this?” she demanded.

“Atheron is going to reinstate me,” he said. “I am going to be head of the donor house again.”

“The donor house! You mean they are planning to reinstate the program?” Now he had really surprised her.

“Of course they are. It is one of the most lucrative on all Valhai.”

“But … but Arcan won’t let you!”

“We don’t need the ortholake any more. We will be setting up facilities … err … elsewhere.”

Grace swayed on her feet. No! She had to stop that! If the Sellites simply went straight back to their old ways it would be a disaster. It would all have been for nothing! She closed her eyes, bringing her attention back to the present. Concentrate, she told herself. This is what you have to think about now. You can worry about the rest in the future.

Xenon looked at the other Sellites. “Is there anybody else on board?” he demanded.

They shook their heads.

“Then start planting the explosives.” His eyes rested on Grace. “And lock my sister up … very securely. We don’t want her spoiling everything!”

“What are you going to tell your children, Xenon? Are you going to tell them you killed their aunt?”

“I will tell them I did what I had to do to ensure Xenon 50 could vote at the Second Valhai Votation!”

“The means justifies the end, then.”

He looked at her as if she were utterly stupid. “Of course they do!”

“Goodbye, Xenon.” Grace was passive as she was dragged away from Xenon and towards one the holding cells built for donor apprentices. She was thrown inside, and heard the finality of the three deadbolts being locked into place. She sat down, and gave a deep, ragged sigh.

GRACE HAD COUNTED on explosives being used, and on their being set on a long enough fuse for the Sellite craft to get out to safety. She sat back to wait. Even though she was almost sure that things were turning out as planned, it didn’t stop her from feeling very apprehensive. It was no fun at all to be sitting on top of a large quantity of armed explosives. Still, she felt lucky not to have been shot by her brother. She was rather glad he had chosen the slower alternative death for her. It meant that she hadn’t been forced to use the button. The gas had not been necessary.

The dull throb of a spacecraft’s engines told her that Xenon was on his way away from the orbital station. How long would he have given himself, she wondered. How long a fuse would he have set? She hoped it was enough.

There was a pause long enough to set her nerves really on edge, and then she heard scratching and scrapings on the metallic hull of the orbital station, and breathed a sigh of relief. The three refugees had survived their stay outside the station. Despite an earlier practice run Grace had been worried about the effect of being outside the station when a spacecraft was taking off.

The scrabbling went on for some time. This too was expected – there was a failsafe mechanism on the outside of the emergency airlock which allowed re-entry without help from the inside. Unfortunately the mechanism was clumsy and complex, and she knew it would take them some minutes to open the hatch again.

Grace took a slow deep breath, and forced herself to relax. They will get here in time, she told herself. Xenon will have used a long fuse. He would not want to risk his own craft being caught up in the explosion. If only they hadn’t locked her up in here – she could have opened the airlock from the inside in seconds. That was why somebody had been needed on the inside of the orbital station – the failsafe device was only on the outside. So if there had been nobody to close and reset the hatch it would have shown that there were crew outside the station, in space. That would not have suited their plans.

She thought that she had never known time pass so slowly. The seconds elongated as if she were poised over a black hole. She became aware of her own heartbeat, racing to meet her rescuers. She forced herself to be still, to be patient, to wait.

At last there were thuds and bumps which announced that the rescue party had gained access to the station. Now came the difficult part – they had to find and disarm the explosives before they detonated.

The bodywrapped figure of Ledin appeared, and quickly slid back the bolts to her cage. Grace touched appreciative fingers with him, and then they both disappeared in opposite directions. Grace dragged a small apparatus from the bottom of a nearby locker and switched it on. It was set to scan the whole station for any sort of explosive. It was a very sophisticated electronic ‘nose’ which the Sellites had invented and which had proved very useful in detecting gas build up in mining facilities. Luckily, she had remembered that her house had five of the small machines in the artifacts room on the 48
^th
floor.

Ten minutes later they had detected, and relocated, six preset charges of explosive. The refugees busied themselves securing the necessary clamps while Grace herself hurried to the console on the main control deck, and began to input instructions with deft fingers. There was the sound of grating metal as the connection between the far aft section of the space station was severed from the rest. Grace made herself concentrate. Any error now would be absolutely fatal! She wished she could force her fingers to move even more quickly – it seemed to be taking an eternity to disengage all the tubes connecting electrical and air supplies to the module.

Although Ledin was watching with apparent calm, the other two fellow conspirators were clearly more apprehensive. The whites of their eyes were showing now, and they were frozen in panic. They were already two minutes past the maximum time they thought would be set for the explosives. Grace ignored them as best she could, ignored the thudding of her own heart, and ignored the blood which rushed to her head and told her to panic.

“There!” she shouted at last. “Separation!” Like a flash, the fingers went to a small circle of a shiny material which was clasped around her ankle. She made a few quick signs on the bracelet, and then collapsed onto a nearby bench. It was done!

GRACE AND THE refugees hurried to a vantage point in the control room, but there was little to tell them they had moved. The narrow rexelene windows continued to show a black background dotted with occasional stars, and they had felt no movement.

Grace went back to monitor the console, and it was there that she saw that they were now in a totally different orbit, on the other side of Kwaide. Arcan had come through for them. She reset the instruments, just in time to catch a large explosion on the other side of the planet. The rest of the orbital station had just disintegrated. There was a whoop as they realized that their plan had succeeded. Xenon was on his way, would have monitored the explosion with satisfaction, would think the space station destroyed. There was no way, from the distance he had reached, that he could distinguish between one module, and the whole station. Kwaide had just got itself an orbital station!

And I am dead to my family, Grace said to herself. The thought didn’t bother her. She had already been dead to them to all effects and purposes. She gave a giggle. At least she had given her brother the satisfaction of killing her.

“I hope you appreciate the sacrifice, Xenon!” she muttered, and giggled again. The relief was making her silly, she thought. She wondered how Xenon would announce the events of today to Amanita. ‘By the way, I murdered my sister today, so we could get our skyrise back’, perhaps. And would Amanita feel a tinge of guilt, or would she simply smile? Thinking back to previous conversations with her sister-in-law, she rather thought that she would just smile. Grace shivered. What a disappointment to them when they eventually found out that she was still alive. They would assume that Arcan had transported her out of the space station just before the explosion.