Seeds of Earth (45 page)

As the door opened and the guards rushed in, shouting, Kao Chih assumed a listless stance, a drooping head and a vacant expression.

'Compositor Henach!' said the guard sergeant, an angry Gomedran with saliva gleaming on its fangs. 'You have left your . . .'

'Do not delay me, cretin! - this ordag must be wiped, orders of Castigator Vuzayel!'

'But sir, is this the Human recently arrived? Its machine has caused much disruption . . .'

'Are you calling me a fool?
Are you}
This different Human - fugitives use escape pods, cretin!'

'I see, I understand . . .'

'Why are you waiting for them to escape?'

Wilting in the face of such towering rage, the Gomedran sergeant saluted and hurried off while Kao Chih and Drazuma-Ha* proceeded through to the next module. No one stopped them as they continued up the ramp to the gantry which led along the docking ring. There was a Gomedran guard who challenged them but Kao Chih's speechless, shuffling act got him into the right place to pounce with the nerve-blocker.

This is a useful device,
he thought as he pocketed it and stepped over the sleeping guard.
Wish I'd had one before Cora invited herself on board.

Drazuma-Ha* used a field probe to bypass the docking ring security and open the hatch. Moments later they were back in the familiar, cramped, odorous surroundings of the
Castellan's
cockpit.

'Gowchee, I rigged a two-minute delay on the docking clamp release,' said the mech, now returned to his usual, curved, featureless self. 'I would advise strapping into your couch as I am readying the main thrusters for a fast burn . . .'

One of the transparent console screens gave a blink of static before showing the Chaurixa leader, the Kiskashin Vuzayel.

'My friends, why such a hasty departure? - there is so much we have yet to discuss, and I would rather exchange words than weaponsfire

The
Castellan
lurched free of the docking ring. In the next moment acceleration slammed Kao Chih back into his couch and left him struggling to breathe against the sudden pressure. He had wanted to make an obscene gesture at Vuzayel's image but Drazuma-Ha
' cut the link.

'Vile creature,' Kao Chih said. 'And a vile place, Drazuma-Ha*. How soon can we leave . .. oh, but have we any usable course data?'

'I'm checking that now . . . interesting, they had already commenced merging several course data sets into the navigationals, purely as place-holder templates.'

'So those course data are out of date?' Kao Chih said, spirits sinking.

'By about thirty-six to forty-eight hours.'

Kao Chih groaned. 'We went through this trying to escape from Blacknest! Are we going to have to make another blind hyperjump out among the stars?'

'It may come to that, Gowchee, assuming we cat evade the small craft that are now gaining on us.'

The screen in front of Kao Chih flashed to a rearward view, showing two bright objects following - the perspective jumped closer to one of them, revealing I tapered wedge shape with a large impeller drive and
two gimbal-mounted work arms, one tipped with grasping claws, the other with a drill head.

'Engine-modified scavengers,' Kao Chih said. 'But the
Castellan
should be able to leave them behind.'

'That would be true if we were not heading into a debris field.'

Kao Chih looked up at the viewport just as DrazumaHa* banked the ship to dodge a house-sized piece of wreckage sprouting twisted beams and buckled sections of deck and bulkhead. Beyond, the widening, bright crescent of the planet was speckled by an immense cloud of wreckage. He knew they would have to cut their velocity to avoid the possibility of a crippling collision, whereas the scavenger boats could use their superior manoeuvring to get in close. Not for the first time, he wished the
Castellan
had some decent firepower.

'Could we ram them?' he said. 'Or even use our main thrusters as a weapon? ... of some sort. ..'

'Creative suggestions, Gowchee,' said the mech. 'If a little fanciful. On the other hand, we could accelerate along a path I have mapped through the sparsest areas and thereby evade our pursuers.'

Suddenly optimistic, Kao Chih gestured at the viewport.

'Forward then, honourable Drazuma-Ha*!' The mech blipped the thrusters, an intermittent, muffled drone.

'We need to bypass this approaching dense cluster of debris, then alter our attitude . ..'

Ahead, he could see a portion of the starry darkness where unstarlike points and splinters of reflected sunlight hung like a huge shoal of menace off their starboard. As the
Castellan's
attitude changed, the glit tering, dark shoal shifted to fill the viewport but then slid away to starboard again as the ship, drifting sideways, came into alignment with Drazuma-Ha*'s intended trajectory. Another long moment during which a glance at the stern monitor showed the pursuers dodging around ragged pieces of wreckage, swooping ever nearer. Then the thrusters cut in again and Kao Chih was shoved back into his couch as the
Castellan
surged forward. He was about to let out a whoop of delight when the ship jolted, as if struck from beneath. 'What. . .'

'Compensating for course deviation,' said the mech. Then a familiar voice came over the comm system.

'Well, hi there, KC. Thought I'd come along for the ride ...'

Drazuma-Ha * switched the external monitor to the ship's underside, and there was another of the boosted scavenger boats, induction grapples anchoring it to the hull while one of the gimballed arms reached out with heavy claws to a nearby housing.

'You've really disappointed me, KC, as well as putting me in bad odour with my masters - bring you back, I was told, or don't come back . . . oh, sorry, was that something important?'

A high-pitched beeping sounded and red symbols flickered on the console. On the external monitor those extended claws were holding a torn-off piece of housing.

'Secondary fuel port,' said Drazuma-Ha*. 'I've isolated it. She is coming through on the proximal helmet channel, Gowchee - shall I shut it off?'

Kao Chih shook his head, reached out and fingered the channel reply.

'Cora, instead of attacking us, why not come with us?'

'Appreciate the offer, KC, but I have to keep up a certain repute for the benefit of those who make use of my services - no repute, no job offers, y'see . . .'

Kao Chih was looking out the viewport as he released the reply button.

'Drazuma-Ha *, are there any wreckage pieces of substantial size along our flight path and can you adjust our course to pass close by?'

'How close, Gowchee?'

'Very close. And can you position us for a 180-degree roll on approach?'

'Yes. Tracking one now - ninety seconds till flyby from . . . now.'

'You understand my intention, Drazuma-Ha*?'

'Indeed I do, Gowchee.'

It was the only course of action left to them, and they had to take it because Cora was determined to take them back or kill them trying. Because Kao Chih was done with being a captive or a commodity or some instrument to be used and discarded. Because he had a mission, because his family and friends and everyone back at Human Sept were relying on him.

The dull brown face of the nameless world was looming ahead, through all the strewn clouds of orbiting debris. Shafis System was a graveyard and was about to add to its burden.

A muffled whine started coming up from below like those pursuit droids back at Blacknest, Cora was trying to drill through the hull.

'Thirty seconds till flyby,' said the mech. 'Fifteen till bank manoeuvre.'

Grim-faced, Kao Chih thumbed the comm reply. 'Cora,' he said. Tm sorry . . .'

In the viewport the brown planet began to turn. A dark, gleaming mass swung round as it swept nearer and impact alerts began to sound.

'Well, KC, you'll be the one who's gonna
be ... you shit, KC, you sh—!'

Her voice went out in a burst of static at the same time as a metallic crunch reverberated through the ship. When he looked at the external monitor the scavenger was gone, apart from a twisted chunk of the drill mounting. There were also numerous scores and gouges in the hull plating, but nothing serious was triggering warnings on the main console.

'A well thought-out tactic, Gowchee,' said DrazumaHa*.

'Yes,' he said. 'And cold-blooded. Apart from one of the Chaurixa victims, she was the only Human I'd met since leaving the Roug system.'

'She rejected your offer, Gowchee - there was no other option open to us. But I am tracking her craft's progress and from its behaviour I surmise that she may have survived the collision . ..'

He perked up at this. 'What behaviour?'

'The scavenger craft is falling in a steep curve towards the planet and the firing of positional thrusters seems to have stabilised its .. . ah, something has ejected but it too is heading towards the planet's surface, although with a far shallower trajectory.'

Kao Chih sat back, feeling oddly relieved.

'You look pleased, Gowchee, despite her attempts to enslave or kill us. It is possible after all that the Chaurixa may retrieve her and exact punishment on her anyway.'

He shrugged. 'I am just glad that she survived, Drazuma-Ha *. I want to have no deaths on my conscience.'

'A laudable if somewhat impractical goal, Gowchee.' 'Why impractical?'

'From observation and experience I can state that there were, are and always will be those that are eager and willing to use violence to get what they want opposing them means responding with violence, leading inevitably to deaths.'

'What of the use of cunning and non-violent methods of opposing them?' Kao Chih said.

'Either may well constitute an adequate defence, if the attackers are significantly less advanced than those being attacked. However, technological superiority is no guarantee of success.'

'Which reminds me,' Kao Chih said, gazing at the external monitor. 'Are we still being chased and how long till we can attempt a hyperjump?'

'Our pursuers have given up - it seems one of them sustained a disabling impact from a piece of wreckage and the other is towing it back to the Chaurixan mothership. As for a hyperspace jump - we will be exiting the densest area of debris in approximately two minutes, which will free up that portion of the ship's system stack that has been occupied with tracking and guidance. Then you will have a choice to make.'

Kao Chih sighed. 'Will this be a choice between a risky option and a deeply hazardous one?'

'Well summarised, Gowchee. This star system lies near the edge of the Huvuun Deepzone and your destination, the world called Darien, is somewhere within that hazy region.'

Drazuma-Ha * had called up a representation of the immediate stellar region. The Shafis System was a bright pinpoint where a pale green wedge - the Yamanon Domain - met the amorphous, sepia opacity of the Huvuun. 'The navigational matrix contains six course templates, but the only one that's of any use to us terminates at Yonok, a Brolturan world near the border with the Kahimbryk Avail.' On the screen, a neon-red line joined Shafis to another bright point on the other side of a narrow grey territory which separated Yamanon space from the blue of the Brolturan Compact. The coreward boundaries of all three adjoined the Huvuun Deepzone.

'Give me the deeply hazardous option first,' he said.

'That is where we tell the navigationals to guess where the local hyperspace Tier 1 beacons are, then guess what our iso-orientation should be as we make the jump to Yonok.'

Kao Chih shivered. It sounded a lot like their escape from Blacknest, and they had been very lucky to get to Tagreli Openport rather than wind up in the middle of nowhere, or even an unfriendly somewhere. It was surely too much to rely on that kind of luck again.

'And the merely risky option?'

'The navigationals estimate the location of the nearest Tier 1 beacon which, according to the course template notes, is coterminous with Kahimbryk space, plus or minus 5 per cent. When we reach that beacon we drop out of hyperspace and head for the nearest commercial centre to see if we can obtain course data for this Darien.'

'Course errors?' Kao Chih murmured.

'Exactly so, which is why I favour the second option - a shorter hyperspace jump would mean less time for errors to magnify. Besides, if we were ever to reach Yonok safely, the Brolturans would not be inclined to treat us kindly.'

Kao Chih nodded. 'Very well, the merely risky option it is.'

'The computations should be ready in less than a minute,' said the mech.

And when the moment came, he sat back in his couch, head pressed back against the padded neck support, hands gripping the arm rests, jaw clenched.

At least this time there's no rampaging droids trying to tear the ship apart or beautiful kidnappers speeding us off to some surgical-nightmare-torture-ship,
he thought as the force-waves mounted in the tesserae fields at the heart of the
Castellan's
hyperdrive.
But I'm sure something will be waiting for us round the next corner.

45

THEO

About fifteen hours after the moment when he'd seen the Earthsphere ambassador vanish in a swirl of coruscating energies, Theo Karlsson was on foot and heading along the northerly banks of Loch Morwen. He had been walking for hours since descending the steep hill paths from the mountain ridges west of Giant's Shoulder and his feet were crying out for rest. He knew there was a tannery near here, and roughly a mile further on a small cove where he was due to meet one of Rory's local contacts who was supposed to spirit him up the shore road to a safe house at the edge of the city. A bite to eat, perhaps even a shower, then the chance to sit down and take stock of the situation before moving on, that was all he needed.

He had just caught a whiff of that acrid tannery odour when his comm rang inside his jacket. He dug it out, saw the calling number and in a rush of anger answered abruptly.