The Touchstone Trilogy (99 page)

There was a kind of frozen patch during the middle of the day where we were waiting to hear more orders, and no-one had any real suggestion about what we could do other than fret and watch ships take off, hastily ferrying more officials back to Tare and Kolar.  Except for a handful of people who refused to return on the grounds that Muina was safer because of the Ddura.  Orders finally came through after lunch, recalling most of the Setari squads to their home planets, with just First and Fourth remaining here with me.  All Setari were given an overriding mission of finding the Cruzatch's home space – the best defence being a good offence approach.

But the captain of the
Diodel
– the ship which brought the orders – completely threw everything askew again by announcing that on the trip back they'd seen people, hundreds of people, in deep-space.  It had only been a glimpse, and deep-space is incredibly weird, but the ship's scanners had recorded it.  They think it might be survivors from Nuri, and all the Setari on Muina, and me, have been sent to investigate.  Not long to the rift now.  The big party seems like forever ago.

Thursday, August 21

Fallen

We went in three ships – the
Litara
and
Diodel
and one called the
Chune
.  The idea was that if there were survivors in deep-space, we might just be able to cram them aboard.  If there were too many, one ship would be sent to bring more ships while the Setari helped protect them.

Deep-space is hellish to navigate.  Visually it's white with rainbow washes, and it's full of gates which are only visible from certain angles.  It does have a kind of 'ground' but the level of it – and angle of it – is unpredictable.  It's an Escher drawing where all the lines have been erased, and going off course could result in a collision or unexpected emergence in a dangerous part of real-space.  And, of course, it's where deep-space Ionoth come from, although it's so vast and weird that ships rarely encounter them.  The
Diodel
went in lead to the point where the people had been sighted, scanning madly, while the other two ships lagged well behind.  Third Squad was on the
Diodel
, with Eeli trying to path find.

The rest of the squads were on the
Litara
, and Kaoren went off to have a captain's discussion about how to deal with going outside ships in deep-space.  It's not totally full of aether, fortunately, but aether tends to collect around the rifts and even though it doesn't hurt 'Muinans', it's still not something they want to fight in.  I sat with Zee and petted Ghost (who I couldn't risk leaving behind and who was really twitchy and unhappy).  Nobody was talking.  Ever since the report of the Nuri investigation had come back, everyone had barely seemed able to put two words together.  The discovery that the problem had reached the stage of Cruzatch invasions and moons exploding – despite the Nurans being the most talent-rich settlement – made it all seem beyond discussing.  Everyone was drained and grim.

The fact that I'd been brought along at all was a sign of how desperately KOTIS wanted more detailed information.  Only by properly understanding what had happened to Nuri could KOTIS make a real evaluation of the current threat level, and what steps it would need to take to prevent the same thing happening to the worlds it protected.

We were all in mission channel, though the only people talking were Taarel and Eeli giving feedback on path finding on the lead ship.  I'd only been half-watching the output from the
Diodel
's scanners, and started when Taarel said crisply: "Massive sighted."

I checked the multiple 'screens' of feed to see not only an enormous, spindly, vaguely humanoid, um, scratch figure, but also accompanying swoops – and a huge fireball taking them out.  It wasn't a very good view – the massive kept vanishing as bits of folded deep-space got in the way – but it was a pretty sure bet that where there were fireballs there were survivors.  The
Diodel
changed direction and began working out how to reach them, and we trailed along behind, achingly slow.

When we finally got a proper glimpse of the survivors, I wasn't the only one who caught her breath and stared to confirm what Taarel (rather less crisply) said: "Survivors sighted.  Thousands.  Children.  It's almost all children."

I'm willing to bet Taarel practically never lets her voice shake like that.  The Captain of the
Litara
immediately ordered the
Chune
to go on to Tare and report, and then Maze began talking everyone through how we were going to go about fighting, once we were able to get within range.  The navigation tools were going to be overlaid directly into the Setari's channel, making a visual representation of the landscape we couldn't properly see.  The roof of the
Diodel
would be the staging point.  Wind talents would focus primarily on any encroaching aether.  Par was going to be my toter.  Squads were to stick tightly together and, if possible, draw the massive's attention away from the survivors.

I tucked Ghost in a pod when it was time to go outside – not that it would hold her, but I was hoping she would get the message.  We paused on the roof of the
Litara
and Kaoren enhanced to start with, and took the opportunity to give me a long survey, very much in captain mode.  I was feeling a bit weird – like I'd been on a boat and had come ashore and was still feeling the waves – but nothing major.  Deep-space, like all of the Ena, is uncomfortably cold but unlike the spaces it feels particularly strange and wrong.

As the
Diodel
and the
Litara
took up a hovering position as close as they were willing to go, another fireball took down another cluster of swoops, but the massive was leaning forward, reaching down a...well, not so much a hand as a hand-shape.  That massive was the weirdest thing I've seen yet – a three-dimensional humanoid shape, but formed out of scratchy nothingness.  It wasn't even solid – it was like cross-hatching around a pearly-white mist.

"Light will be best," Kaoren said.  "All others to lesser effect.  Sound may usefully disorient.  We need to open the chest and use Light within.  Avoid physical contact at all costs."

"First we'll draw it back to the marked position," Maze added, as the massive's hand was knocked aside.  He signalled for enhancements to begin while he outlined a quick plan of attack.

I was staring at the Nurans, ignoring the quick succession of hands touching me.  There were so many kids, all in a single huge mass with just a few figures flying above them.  I couldn't count how many.  The younger ones, huddled in the centre, looked tiny: three or four years old.

More and more information about the area ahead was appearing in the channel's simulation, including a big circle outlining relatively clear ground to the right of the massive.  Maze's plan for getting the massive's attention involved a strafing run up the length of it and over its head, trying to draw it toward that area.  I wasn't involved in that (and couldn't even bear to watch it).  A second group had been assigned to getting rid of the swoops and, after they'd enhanced, my small guard group (Kaoren included) carefully followed the massive as it turned.

The thing looked so fragile and intangible.  But that was half the problem – it mightn't move quickly, but attacks seemed as effective as shooting arrows into a haystack.  Worse, another cluster of swoops lifted into view, right where the main attack force had been headed and the leading edge of Setari suddenly found itself in close combat and in disarray.  I saw people fall, and closed my eyes.

"Throw the swoops at the massive's chest," Kaoren ordered, which has to be one of the odder tactics he's come up with.  But it seemed effective – particularly since two of the swoops were encased in blocks of ice – and the cross-hatching was ripped away to expose pearly interior.  Maze immediately gave the order for the Light talents to blast, and the thing reeled, and covered its chest with an arm.

"Group two, gather up the swoops you're fighting and hit it from behind," Maze said.  "Light talents circle to join them.  Second, Squad Three, continue the frontal assault to keep it oriented."

My group paused, then joined up with the Light talent group so they could re-enhance.  I saw Lohn's face – stiff and white-lipped – and realised Mara was one of those who'd been caught by the swoops and injured.  When the next order came for him to attack, he did so with a furious anger, putting everything he had into it.

The thing fell – the quickest massive fight so far, but the one with the highest number of injuries I'd seen.  Only Grif Regan and Alay from First and Second hadn't been hurt.  Mara was bleeding badly – a swoop had flown right into her, raking and biting and she'd used her arm as a shield against its teeth.  Combat Sight apparently doesn't work very well when you've got a massive on one side of you emanating overwhelming threat.  And when it had crumpled and pitched over, a lot of the forward group had barely avoided being crushed, and been jolted with agonising pain which had left them all weak and sick and meant that a few of them fell hard because the person levitating them abruptly stopped.  Best I can tell it was like instant radiation poisoning – though fortunately something they started recovering from once they'd moved out of range.

Maze was temporarily out of it, but Regan took over command without more than a moment's pause, getting the Levitation and Telekinesis talents to let their squads down at the nearest edge of the vast stretch of Nurans, and then take the worst of the Setari injured straight up to the
Litara
.

There were eight thousand, seven hundred and sixty-nine Nurans.

Or, at least, eight thousand, seven hundred and sixty-nine Nurans were how many there were when we got them to Pandora and counted them.  There might have been more during the fight, but I don't like to think about that since it really was almost all kids.  Only six hundred or so adults.  We only got that figure this morning.  Coming down from the air, all I could think was what had happened to their parents, and I guess Regan was wondering the same thing since, as soon as three of the Nurans who had been defending the survivors dropped down to join us, he asked: "Are there other groups we need to look for?"

"This is all of Nuri," said the woman who stepped forward to talk.  She was basically a female version of Inisar – same hairstyle, same clothes, same upright calm – except absolutely exhausted, and her eyes were red-rimmed.  It was the woman who'd been watching my testing session back on Tare.  I could tell that because of my weird people sense, and I searched about for Inisar as well, but couldn't make him out among all the other Nurans and felt rotten, though it turned out that he was there, just badly injured and unconscious.

Regan and the woman quickly got down to practicalities, postponing any explanation of what had happened to Nuri in favour of sorting out the injured and getting them and the youngest kids on board the
Diodel
and
Litara
.  And bringing down everything the two ships had in the way of supplies, since the kids had been walking for hours in the cold without food or water.  They were at least reasonably dressed – Nuri mustn't have been a shorts and Singlet kind of place – but most of them were dropping from exhaustion.

I don't know if there was any argument about whether to take the Nurans on to Muina, or to Tare or Kolar instead.  Still, even though Muina isn't exactly set up to look after thousands of orphaned kids, anyone who knew anything of Nuri wouldn't doubt what planet the Nurans wanted to be on.  They'd walked almost the entire way there.

While the
Litara
and
Diodel
were being loaded, the captains gathered together with the three Nurans (with an audience of a few hundred more in earshot) and talked over whether to continue the trek through deep-space or wait in the same spot, weighing up the threat posed by the Ddura once they'd reached Muina compared to the almost certain attack by more deep-space Ionoth.  It was Taarel who suggested that people be sent to all of the platform towns, to call the Ddura to them.  That way they'd be certain no Ddura would be scouting the area around the rift, giving KOTIS a chance to ferry everyone to Pandora by ship.

By the time they'd decided to push on, the
Litara
was crammed full of children.  The Setari who'd been sick after getting too close to the massive had recovered (more or less, they looked pretty grey), and Maze and the lead Nuran, whose name was Korinal, discussed the route, then distributed the Setari squads to each corner of the huge mass of children.

Nuran kids are very quiet and obedient.  Or maybe it's just that they were all dead on their feet, too tired to even cry any more.  They ranged from toddlers to nearly my age, with a smattering of adults, and seemed very wary of the Setari and the ships, but didn't put up any fuss about being taken away.  The only other question Maze asked Korinal before the
Litara
and
Diodel
started off was whether Kolar, Tare and Muina were likely to be under imminent threat.  The short answer was no, which was a huge relief.

The long answer had to wait for another couple of hours, until we had reached and cleared the rift gate, since too much attention and energy had to be given to navigating deep-space's weirdness, with pauses to fight Ionoth (no more massives fortunately), deal with aether clouds, and untangle snarls of children who had reached the point of dropping in their tracks.  Most of the work for the Setari was in preventing drift off the back of the pack,  and more than a few of them had to divide their time between fighting and carrying some of the remaining smaller ones.

I had one of those, and a flower, a tiny deep purple daisy, bruised and wilted but still jauntily floral, presented to me with great solemnity by a girl of four or five about twenty minutes after we'd started out.  I think it had taken her that long to work her way to the front where I was walking behind Korinal and Maze.  She was a very pretty girl, her hair in a long, thick black braid, and her eyes were confident not frightened when she  held the flower up to me.  After I'd accepted it, she lifted her arms up.  A very imperious little creature, the demand to be carried totally clear.