The Line of Polity (67 page)

"Oh fuck," Thorn managed as his weapon died on him and its displays went out. Still heaving himself along, he jammed the weapon's barrel into the mouth of his nearest attacker, then drove his fist into the throat of another as it dropped towards him. It felt like thumping a tree.

"Here!"

Gant threw his own APW across to Thorn, and unshouldered his pulse-rifle. Thorn caught it and fired upwards, clearing the air above them. They now moved back-to-back, only Thorn's shooting being really effective. Gant emptied his rifle and had to resort to his Golem strength — tearing the assailants apart as they came in. Soon they ended up with their backs to the wall.

"Double fuck," muttered Thorn, as the second APW also spat its last and faded out.

Then they heard something like an inhalation, as the calloraptors drew back from them and ceased their onslaught.

"You do know that fucker Skellor is watching us through them," said Gant.

After the chaos that had preceded, the sudden silence almost made Thorn's ears ring. Then he noticed a strange whuckering sound as of an unbalanced aerofan. As the calloraptors suddenly stormed forwards as one, Thorn knew he was about to die. But something flashed across in front, and with a triple thud and sprays of pink liquid, the three leading calloraptors fell out of the air in pieces. Further flashes were followed by more creatures disintegrating. Their attack stuttered to a halt and they drew back. Shuriken dropped into view in front of Gant and Thorn, flexing its chainglass blades to slice away pieces of raptor flesh.

The two of them just stared at each other, then along the tunnel to where the raptors had now broken into the main cavern. That was why they were no longer under direct attack, but these few seconds Shuriken had given them might prove the difference between life and death. They watched in silence as the creatures just flew on past them now, simply ignoring them. They watched as partially burnt raptors approached from further back in the tunnel, following their flying brethren — the whole crowd cramming towards the chaos of gunfire by the cavern door. Still without saying anything, they simultaneously moved over to crouch behind the wrecked aerofan lying nearby, though the creatures continued to ignore them. Shuriken hovered over them for a second or two longer, until Thorn held out his hand. The killing device hesitated for a moment, flexing its blades in and out in agitation, then abruptly closed them up and dropped into his palm.

"I'll return it to Cormac when I see him next," he explained.

"Yeah, you do that," muttered Gant.

Jarvellis felt a sudden surge of gladness immediately tempered by fear when she saw who accompanied John Stanton on the aerofan. She watched carefully as the machine came in to land on the patch of wilted rhubarbs beside the river. As the two stepped out from it, neither had their weapons drawn, but that meant little since perhaps John was wearing an explosive collar and the agent's finger was on some remote trigger. No matter how much John had come to terms with the Polity, after the previous crimes he had committed, it would never accept him.

"Lyric, use the laser to target that man with John," she instructed.

On one of the subscreens she watched as a close-up picture of Cormac was overlaid by a grid; the square covering the man's head blanked out as the picture froze for a moment, then the picture started to shift again, as the grid faded to leave a single targeting frame centred on the agent's forehead. Of course, if John was wearing an explosive collar, it was likely Cormac carried a dead man's switch for it, so Jarvellis restrained herself from killing the agent right then. Also John was unlikely to have led his captor here ... Dammit! Jarvellis thumbed the control for the external speakers.

"John ... is everything all right?" she asked.

The two men paused. John seemed to gaze straight at her, though there was no way he could yet see
Lyric II
. He grinned and reached up to pull down the uniform shirt collar he wore, to expose his neck. Sometimes she just hated the way he seemed to get inside her head.

"What's happened, John? Why is he here?"

Moving again, Stanton replied, "He wants to save the world, and to do that he needs our ship."

As the two of them entered the 'ware field Jarvellis hesitated to operate the airlock control. What the hell could this ship achieve against a Polity dreadnought, and was she really prepared to risk so much?

"Jarv, the door," said Stanton.

Swearing again, she thumbed the control, then stood up and headed back into the cargo area. Clumping aboard, the two men seemed to fill the small space.

Jarvellis glanced down. "Careful!"

Cormac lifted his foot off the interactive storybook he had just stepped on. He stared at it in some puzzlement, then at the other toys scattered across the floor. A small blond-haired boy charged out from wherever he had been playing, a toy dark-otter clutched in one hand. He hesitated for a moment, then with a delighted yell rushed over to Stanton, who picked him up.

"Ian Cormac, meet Cormac Stanton," said John Stanton, trying to hide his embarrassment. Jarvellis noted this, just as she noted the agent's expression turn from something cold and hard to something merely tired. She guessed that was to do with the ship, and what he wanted of it, and there being an innocent child aboard.

In Thorn's estimation a couple of thousand of the creatures had now swarmed into the main cavern. Judging by the receding roar of gunfire, the rebel fighters were being driven back. Beside him Gant stood up and offered him a hand, and Thorn rose up onto one foot, supporting himself against the Golem's unyielding strength.

"Well, frankly, I'm surprised to be alive," he said. "I gather, from something Cormac said earlier, that you've met these bastards before."

Gant shrugged. "A couple of kinds, yes. The normal predators on Callorum weren't too much of a problem, but then there was something Skellor created — and neither type had wings."

They moved out from behind the aerofan, Thorn glancing at what remained of the soldier Carl before he turned his attention to the other debris on the tunnel floor. Those creatures, it appeared, had to be scorched almost down to the bone, or completely blown into pieces, before they would actually die. The remains of such carnage lay everywhere in drifts upon the stone. Underfoot something white and glassy crunched and fragmented. He noticed one creature burnt down to bone yet still moving, some pinkish substance oozing out between its bones. It fixed him with gleaming dots of eyes set deep in dark pits, and even tried to open its mouth to hiss. This small action used up the last of its strength for then it shuddered, and the pinkish substance began turning the same white as the frangible layer on the floor.

"What the hell?" muttered Thorn.

"Jain tech," explained Gant.

"Nasty," said Thorn. "Now what do we do?"

Gant studied him. "How much oxygen do you have left?"

Thorn glanced at his bottle's readout. "About two hours — so there's only one direction for me to go." He pointed towards where the calloraptors had gone.

Gant abruptly turned and headed back to the aerofan, stooping over the body of Carl. First discarding a pulse-rifle which was bent and broken, he next came up with the man's breather pack and removed its oxygen bottle from the blood-soaked bag. Returning with this item he said, "Another hour from this, though not enough to get you anywhere far. But I don't think that matters now." He looked back the way they had originally come in.

"More of them?" Thorn was looking around for something to use as a weapon.

"No, dracomen," said Gant.

"How can they be here?" Thorn asked, puzzled.

"Oh, they can. I worked with Scar for quite some time, and he can run faster than the top speed on one of those things." Gant gestured to the aerofan.

"So what do they want here?"

"To kill calloraptors, I expect," said Gant. "It's something Scar took great pleasure in."

Thorn considered that. "I think we should move over to the side of the tunnel," he suggested.

In the seat beside Jarvellis, Cormac clipped his harness into place and watched her expert manipulation of
Lyric II
's controls. The ship responded with a deep thrumming, like a musical instrument being played by an expert hand. He watched her take hold of the joystick as the screen revealed the debris being blown about outside.
Lyric II
lifted and tilted, its legs and feet quickly retracting before the toes could stub themselves on surrounding rock.

Bringing the ship over wilted vegetation towards the river, Jarvellis glanced up as Stanton returned to the cockpit. "All done?" she asked, and Stanton nodded.

At least in cold-sleep the boy would feel no pain should their ship be destroyed, thought Cormac. But then he doubted that any of them would feel very much — it would be so very quick. The unexpected presence of the child left him feeling hollow inside, though no less resolute. In the end duty had to come first.

"How long?" he asked.

"Lyric?" Jarvellis prompted.

The AI replied, "We should achieve escape velocity in one half of an orbit — that's two hours nominally. One hour after that we will be able to submerge in underspace."

Cormac nodded to himself as the screen now showed them coming up out of the river valley and achieving enough height so that Jarvellis did not have to navigate the ship along the watercourse. Higher still, and the ion engines were now cycling up to a steady roar. Though the screen continued to show the forward view as they accelerated, he guessed that the ship was now beginning to tilt into their vector so that the engines could blast out directly behind. Air turbulence began to give the craft the occasional tentative shake as it accelerated. It maintained that more due to brute force than to aerodynamics — like most ships of the time,
Lyric II
was built to land and take off by using antigravity.

Cormac recalled a conversation he'd had with Jarvellis: "The 'ware effect doesn't hide AG, it merely blurs it over a number of kilometres," she had told him. "That was good enough for Theocracy detectors, but not to get us by a Polity dreadnought."

"What about the fusion engines on this?" he'd then asked her.

"Taking us straight up, the blast would flare visibly outside the range of the 'ware effect. Skellor would detect us that way too."

"I guessed so," said Cormac. "Can we slingshot around the planet on ion boosters? We'd leave a trail, but that's something we'll have to risk."

In response Jarvellis had opined that the trail would be one of wreckage —
Lyric II
not being built to withstand such forces. However, they had little choice.

"Approaching Mach one," she announced now. "Let's hope Skellor's got no one listening down there, because the 'ware only covers us for long-distance checking of air disturbance. They'd still hear the sonic boom."

"Let's hope that, indeed," said Cormac — and didn't really like to think beyond. It seemed to him that the processing power and technology Skellor had under his control meant the man was only limited by his own imagination. Probably Skellor was watching through the eyes of his calloraptors, but would it occur to him to listen also? No doubt, from where he hung geostationary, he could see in great detail much of what occurred on the planet, but what was his focus? He had certainly missed the journey Stanton and Cormac had made on that aerofan, probably because his attention was directed entirely towards his creatures' attack on the cavern. Had it occurred to him to set up listening posts? Did he have anything watching on the other side of the planet? Much depended on the detail: it wasn't good enough to have the power of a god without a god's universal vision.

A subscreen gave them a receding view of the
Occam Razor,
while another screen presented a view across the top of
Lyric II
whereby Cormac could see that they were now flying perpendicular to the ground so that the ion engines could operate most effectively. The ship had started to vibrate, and from somewhere there came a whistling scream, like a bombshell coming down but never hitting. Every now and again the craft gave a shudder as if something structural was about to break.

"Let's drop the Mach readings: we just passed five thousand kph," said Jarvellis.

The ground was now far enough below them for many small details to be lost, not that there was much diverse detail over this wilderness. The open plains receded underneath them, changing from greenish blue pocked by great splashes of red to a sudden band of grey stone, then cerulean ocean. Jarvellis adjusted a sub-screen to show the continent receding behind them like a thick blanket of mould skimmed back off the oceanic surface. The ship was now howling and shuddering constantly, and by the way she was white-knuckling the joystick Cormac suspected that Jarvellis did not consider this at all a good sign.

"Do you have stress readouts for this craft's superstructure?" asked Cormac.

"Yes, I do," admitted Jarvellis. "But I'm not looking at them."

Soon they were puncturing cloud as they flew on into night. Looking at the screen with a view all across
Lyric II
, he observed ice building up and flaking away in glittering contrails.

"Are we leaving a vapour trail?" he asked her.

"No, the exhaust is too hot. Our only problem right now is the ionic trail and, as you said, we just have to hope he doesn't spot that."

"Other problems?" Cormac persisted.

"Proximity lasers online," the AI chose that moment to announce.

"That problem," Jarvellis replied. "Your Dragon creature did a fine job of destroying the laser arrays. Shame it left the debris up here as well. I've set our course to avoid the worst of it, otherwise I'll dodge the larger fragments whilst Lyric here vaporizes the smaller ones."

"But surely you'll be able to do all that inside the 'ware field?" Cormac pointed out.

Stanton interjected, "Sure they'll get vaporized inside the 'ware field, but that vapour won't stay inside the field for long. You were worried about a moisture vapour trail lower down. Now you can worry about a metallic vapour trail up here."