The Dying Light (30 page)

___
Then we decide to help Morgan Roche.

The brief clarity of the Plenary instantly shattered.

/\
¹
No! We can’t!

/\
^2-66
We are decided.
^66-2
\/

But it’s the wrong decision!

/\
^2-66
We are decided.
^66-2
\/

No!
Kill her!
⁰
\/

Something screamed in Roche’s ears. At the same instant, the babble of the Plenary abruptly ceased. She opened her eyes to a scene of tangled metal and flashing energy. An outrigger—no,
two
outriggers—were rushing toward her, waldoes extended and lasers bright.

Her suit’s systems were already on alert, howling the deafeningly loud impact alarm that had snapped her out of the Plenary. She had just enough time to raise her arms by reflex and target both of the all-suits when one of them—a lozenge with purple squares at either end—fired a projectile at her abdomen.

The projectile exploded on contact, sending her spinning backwards through the alien space of the moon’s central chamber

“Roche!” Disisto’s voice rang in her helmet, but she didn’t have time to reply. The suit fired attitude thrusters to reorient itself, knocking her about while she fought to ready herself for another assault.

Her attackers had moved. She armed weapons and readied herself to fire. Only then did she notice that the other outrigger, battered black with no obvious markings, was grappling with the first. Its numerous waldoes pinned its opponent’s wherever it could find a grip; cutting lasers burned close to delicate sensors; attitude thrusters sent both spinning to prevent its getting a bead on Roche a second time.

The black one was clearly trying to save her. Roche immediately removed its image from the targeting systems in her suit. But the two were too closely tangled for her to fire with any hope of hitting just the one of them. She nudged herself closer, hoping for a clear shot.

It never came. Her attacker fired its thrusters at full- strength and tore itself away from the black all-suit. But before the latter could do anything, the purple suit seemed to crack open, releasing an explosive cloud of air into the vacuum. The all-suit spun with its thrusters still firing across the chamber and into a wall, then scraped along the wall for a dozen meters before the thrusters shut down.

It hit a projection and ricocheted, inactive, across the chamber. The black all-suit jetted to intercept it before it could fall into the anchor point.

“Roche! Are you all right?” Disisto’s voice fought for attention among those of Idil and the other outriggers. His immobilized suit hung nearby, anchored to the trumpetlike artifact at one end of the chamber.

“I’m fine,” she said, although she was short of breath and still high on adrenaline. She allowed his suit to move with barely a thought. “What the hell happened?”

“The purple all-suit just came out of nowhere and attacked you, then the other one tried to stop it.” He indicated the black all-suit, which had returned with the wreckage of the other.

“Thanks,” said Roche, turning to face it. “Whoever you are.”

The outrigger didn’t respond.

Before she could speak again, Mil’s all-suit slid into view. “This is Yarrow,” she said. “Your attacker was Alik. We are deeply puzzled—and hurt—by her betrayal.”

Roche didn’t have any problem understanding it. “She disagreed with the decision. That seems clear enough.”

“But to act against it!” The horror in the outrigger’s voice was clear. “No one in their right mind would ever do that!”

“Well, maybe there’s your answer,” she said. “Or not.”

She forced herself to approach the broken all-suit still gripped in Yarrow’s waldoes. Its interior lay exposed to the vacuum, dusted with frozen air and debris. Roche shone a spotlight inside and examined what she saw very closely.

She saw a wizened body curled in the claustrophobic embrace of wires, tubes, and padding. Its age, sex, and Caste were difficult to confirm at a casual glance, but Roche could tell that it was tiny, much smaller than Cane. Blood vessels had burst across its skin and its eyes and mouth were open. The expression on the dead outrigger’s face was one she wouldn’t forget in a hurry.

Definitely dead, and not a clone warrior.

She turned to face the outrigger who had saved her. This close, she could see the old damage to the young survivor’s all-suit. The outriggers of Long Span had done their best to mend it, but fresh paint couldn’t hide the signs of heat damage. The egg shape of the capsule itself looked slightly off-true, as though warped by a powerful impact.

This was her chance to make contact with the boy. “Thank you,” she said again.

But again he said nothing.

“He won’t talk,” said Idil. “As we told you, he hasn’t spoken aloud since his clan was destroyed.”

“But in the Plenary—”

“Yes. It was his ‘voice,’ if you will, that pushed the vote in your favor.”

Roche regarded the black all-suit with gratitude mixed with uneasiness. “It seems I owe you on two fronts, now.”

The boy’s all-suit only turned and moved away, his self-imposed radio silence adding to his all-suit’s strange air.

“Morgan Roche.” Auditor Byrne spoke by relay from elsewhere in the moon. “I am relieved to learn that you are safe.”

“I thought you said you spoke for your people,” said Roche with a trace of bitterness.

“I do—even more so now, after this unfortunate setback. The honor of Long Span spine has been tarnished. Our resolve to help you, and thereby regain our honor, is hardened. Alik’s attack only worsened her cause.”

“Perhaps, but I’ll have to talk to my crew about it.” Roche checked the time. Four hours had passed; no wonder she felt exhausted. “I will be able to contact the
Ana Vereine
in about in about fourteen hours. Let’s meet again in, say, ten.”

“Very well. We will make no further decisions for the moment.” Byrne hesitated before continuing: “I am deeply sorry, Morgan Roche, for what has happened. Believe me when I say that it will not happen again. All of us of Long Span spine know that if we do manage to escape Palasian system it will only be because we have worked together.”

Roche hoped she was telling the truth.

* * *

Six hours later, the outriggers detected a beacon from the
Ana Vereine.
Coded into the
ping
was a time and date stamp, plus vector coordinates relative to Hintubet. There was as yet no sign of the Marauder, but that didn’t surprise Roche. The ship’s camouflage systems were the most advanced in the COE and could easily fool the outriggers’ asteroid detection systems.

She recorded a brief message to be sent at the time indicated, outlining her present situation. Then, with her suit secured to a wall in the central chamber, she allowed herself a couple of hours’ sleep.

She was awakened sometime later when Haid called to confirm that
Daybreak
was ready to descend to the moon’s surface. The courier was far too obvious a newcomer to the double-jovian system, and the energy drain of holding the ship in a stable orbit was something they could do without.

“Are you
sure
it’s safe?” he asked.

Roche had thought a lot about the attack on her during the Plenary, and both she and Haid had discussed it. Alik had spoken and acted alone, but that didn’t mean there weren’t others who felt similarly. She had come to the conclusion, though, that she was probably safe. Not only had Alik killed herself rather than face the wrath of the clan, once she knew her attack had failed, but, as Byrne had said, the spine had to prove itself now. The betrayal of Roche’s peaceful approach, and the shame that brought with it, would do more than any threat of being expelled from the clan.

“Let’s say I’ve given up worrying about it, Ameidio,” she said. “Just find a suitable spot and bring the ship down.”

“Well, that isn’t going to be a problem,” he said. “It’ll be less like landing than docking. Intelligence HQ had more of a tug than this lump of rock.”

“How’s Myer?”

“I knocked him out. Not literally, of course, even though I would have liked to,” he added. “I put him back in the autosurgeon and under sedation for a while. He was getting in the way and I didn’t want him trying something while I was busy.”

“Understood,” she said. “But when you’re down, I want to talk to him. He saw what happened on Aro. I want to know whether or not Rufo forbade him to intervene.”

“Okay. I’ll instruct the autosurgeon to revive him then. He’ll have a headache, but it won’t kill him. More’s the pity.”

When Haid had decided where to land the courier, she relayed the coordinates to the outriggers. Idil guided her to the nearest shaft. There she rejoined Disisto, who had been exploring the moon under the watchful instruments of Yul and Eli.

“Find anything?” she asked.

“The untouched living quarters that Idil told us about earlier.” The security chief seemed excited. “From the pictures and other personal artifacts there, it would seem the builders were more like birds than mammals. Hollow bones, long limbs, and wide-spaced eyes—it’s quite incredible. They must’ve re-evolved back up to Pristine from some avian Low Caste.”

“Then Transcended,” Roche mused.

“Well, they certainly don’t seem to be anywhere around here anymore.”

“They must’ve been a pretty long-lived Caste. Given that Humanity has only been settling the galaxy for half a million years, that doesn’t give them much time to devolve and re-evolve.”

“That makes them a Primordial Caste, then,” said Disisto. “My God, Roche! This is fantastic! I doubt there’s another site as well preserved as this anywhere in the COE!”

“Well, it won’t be here for much longer,” she said.

Through the faceplate Roche could see Disisto’s face fall.

“Why is it that Humans let their petty differences get in the way of knowledge?” he said. “We could’ve studied this thing for decades.”

Before she could call him a hypocrite, he gestured to a point behind her. “Here’s the ship.”

Roche turned to where he’d indicated. She still found the blackness unnerving, but it did make detecting moving objects easier. The courier was a red dot drifting away from the half-set limb of Kukumat, growing steadily larger. Somewhere up there were the two spines, Long Span and Wide Berth, but neither was visible.

As Haid brought the ship down, Roche wondered if the curved spikes of the moon’s surface were
actually
used as grappling hooks for docking ships. It was possible that ships had been securely stationed to them while their occupants used the anchor point in the moon’s center to jump elsewhere across the galaxy.

But that didn’t explain why the builders had gone to so much trouble to hide the anchor point in the first place. Or why their living quarters had never been used.

Her train of thought was broken as the courier vessel banked around its landing point. She watched it decelerate to a halt a hundred meters away from them, then waited until the afterwash from the thrusters had dissipated before moving in closer.

“Can’t get smoother than that,” boasted Haid, his voice crackling loudly over the open frequencies. Grapnels anchored the ship to two of the bent “trees”; Roche checked briefly to see that the hold was secure.

The airlock hissed open as she approached. “Wait here, Disisto.”

On a closed channel, Haid said: “We have another message from the Box.”

Roche unlocked the suit helmet when the outer hatch had sealed, but didn’t allow herself the luxury of leaving the suit entirely. “What does it say?”

“It’s picked up coded transmissions from the edge of the system. Looks like someone on the outside is trying to talk to someone in here.”

“Is that what the AI thinks?”

“Well, it’s keeping its options open. All it says is that the transmissions are centered on Hintubet. My guess is they’re being relayed elsewhere.”

“Not necessarily.”

“But there’s no one that deep in-system.”

“No, but there is
something,”
she said. The sun of Palasian System was currently home to a number of machines of Kesh manufacture. “What if they’re talking to the Gauntlet?”

The inner lock hissed open and she stepped through. Haid was waiting for her on the other side. He stepped back to accommodate the suit in. the cramped passageway.

“I didn’t think of that.” He smiled. “It’s good to see you again, Morgan. I had my doubts for a while there.”

She touched his artificial arm with one gloved hand and stepped past him. “Thanks, Ameidio. Where’s Myer?”

“In the medic suite. He’ll be groggy.”

“All the better.” She thudded across the deck to the small medical facility. There, Mavalhin looked much like she had left him, tied flat to a narrow cot so he couldn’t move. This time, though, he looked healthier. He had regained much of his color and the only blood on his uniform was brown.

She shook him, not worrying too much if the suit overemphasized the power of her movements. “Myer?”

He stirred, blinking absently up at her. “Morgan?”

“Myer. Can you hear me?”

“I’m not deaf, Morgan.” He tried to sit up; puzzlement creased his features when he realized he couldn’t because of his restraints. “I didn’t think I was dangerous, either.”

“For the moment, that’s exactly what you are,” she said. “Now, tell me about the attack on Aro.”

He looked mystified for a second. “You mean when Emptage City and the spaceport were destroyed?”

“No, I mean the outriggers. You watched it happen. Describe what you saw.”

“Not much, really. I didn’t have the instruments—”

“Don’t lie to me, Myer. I
know
you had the instruments; you were there to observe. Now tell me what happened or so help me I’ll play cat’s cradle with your stitches.”

He paled slightly. “They were all killed,” he said resignedly. “Cut to pieces. They didn’t stand a chance.”

“How long did it take?”

“I don’t know. Ten minutes; maybe less.”

“Why didn’t you help them?”

“I couldn’t.”

“
Why
couldn’t you, Myer?”

“I just
couldn’t.
It was ...” He hesitated. “There weren’t enough of us, Morgan. There was nothing we could do.”