Faith (12 page)

The sky was still full of freighters going to and from Blentport. As two passed overhead, much too low and much too fast—they were huge ships, and their passing seemed to go on and on, like that of the lowloaders—they encountered their escort. Swann had wasted no time.

Two sleek, low-slung military groundcars, with sirens blaring and lights flashing, came up behind them from the direction of the highlands, overtook them and waved them down. The landchariot juddered to a halt, the chimaeras’ hooves scuttering and kicking up stones and mud. Three soldiers got out of each car. They were from heavy-gravity planets, each one of them bigger than Foord, and they wore dark blue Special Forces uniforms.

“Commander Foord and Officer Thahl?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Kudrow. Major Miles Kudrow.” He was not unlike Foord, even down to the thick dark hair and beard; but younger and larger. The five standing behind him were equally large, and looked impressive even to Foord. “I’ve been ordered by Director Swann to escort you back to your ship.”

“Thank you, Major. We didn’t expect you quite so soon.”

Kudrow nodded, politely. “Commander, my orders were to escort you in this landchariot.”

“That’s correct.”

“Can I suggest you transfer to the cars? We’d make better time.”

“Thank you, Major, but I particularly want to complete the journey by landchariot.”

“Of course, Commander. We’ll get you there as quickly as we can. One car in front, one behind, sirens and lights. We’ve already called ahead so a lane will be cleared when we hit the main highway.”

“Thank you, Major.”

Kudrow opened his wristcom and spoke into it. His wristcom, and Foord’s, buzzed in unison. “Our numbers are stored, Commander. Please call me if we’re going too fast, or too slow. See you in Blentport.”

They moved out into the road, one car in front and one behind, the sirens and flashing lights clearing the way. Generally the traffic moved aside in good time, leaving them free to rush past in the left-hand lane; vehicles which didn’t move quickly enough were made to, diplomatically but efficiently. Kudrow seemed to have got the landchariot’s speed exactly right, and kept it thoughtfully constant. They were making good time, having neither to slow down or to rush beyond the chimaeras’ capacity.

The road was wide, still partly stones and mud, but starting to show patches of proper surfacing. The area was still predominantly agricultural, although crops and livestock had given way to commercial-scale market gardening: huge fields growing the prized Sakhran black tulips and blue roses. It was a more prosperous area: they passed through a couple of market towns and saw several farmhouses, all notably larger and better-kept than Pindar. The towns had fatter names, too: Framsden, Cromer, Meddon.

After twenty minutes, Foord’s wristcom buzzed.

“Kudrow, Commander. We’ll be taking a left turn in half a mile.”

“Trouble?”

“No, Commander. I’ve called ahead and there’s a detour we can take to reach the main highway: a farm road which cuts off a few miles. My people are keeping it open for us.”

It came up in a couple of minutes, a small turnoff guarded by a sixwheel. Kudrow’s car, in front of them, signalled and turned smoothly, flashing its lights at the sixwheel as it did so. The landchariot, and the second car behind, followed.

But it wasn’t a road, or even a track. It was just a clearing. Kudrow’s car skidded round, throwing up stones and mud and turning in almost its own length to face them; and with impressive speed and precision, and before the car stopped moving, Kudrow and his two passengers jumped out and were at Foord’s side of the landchariot, guns levelled. Foord could even read the name-tags of the other two: Lyle and Astin. The guns were pointed unwaveringly in his face—directly at him, with such geometric precision that their muzzles appeared to him as perfect black circles. Not even ovals, but circles.

“Get out, please. Both of you.”

For most of the morning Foord had seen Thahl gazing impassively from the seat opposite, but now the seat was empty, the landchariot’s other door hanging open—
when did that happen?
Foord had neither seen nor heard him move—and as Foord stepped out he saw the second car, which had stopped behind them, and waved desperately to the three inside it, who wouldn’t meet his gaze.

Time fractured. Foord glimpsed the results of what Thahl did before he saw him do it. Events should have been sequential, but Thahl’s speed broke them into pieces and when Foord tried to put them back together, they no longer followed each other properly. He seemed to remember them before they happened.

The guns were pointed unwaveringly in his face. Kudrow was explaining that they could
not
allow an Outsider to compromise Sakhra’s defences, and would
not
rely on an Outsider to defend them against Her, that was unthinkable, and the only way to stop it was
this
.

Foord looked at the three in the second car, and concluded they’d washed their hands of it. He couldn’t remember if he concluded that before or after Kudrow spoke.

The guns pointed unwaveringly in his face were now on the ground, because Thahl had broken the forearms of Lyle and Astin. Thahl had not used his poison, because they were still alive where they fell, and were screaming. Their screams drowned the sound of Kudrow’s voice, explaining why they had to kill Foord. No, that came earlier. The voice drowned by the screams was Thahl’s. He was saying to Kudrow,
Please don’t, You know you don’t have a chance, Don’t make me do this, Just walk away. Just leave the gun.

Kudrow reached for his sidearm.
No
, Thahl said,
Please don’t
, his pleading tone ridiculously at odds with what he had done. Thahl snatched Kudrow’s pistol, infinitely quicker than its owner, and tossed it away. Foord noticed that Kudrow’s severed hand was still clutching the grip, and Kudrow was screaming, so maybe it was his screaming
now
which was drowning out his voice
then.

It should all have been sequential—blurringly fast, but still sequential —except that Thahl’s speed splintered it. Foord had seen Thahl in combat before, but not like this. This was a single glimpse,
on-off
,
of things that were impossible; as if Thahl had opened his private jewel-box of impossibilities, flourished it in front of Foord’s face, and snapped it shut.

Time slowed, and the pieces rearranged themselves. Thahl had kicked the guns away from the three on the ground. Kudrow was still screaming. The others were unconscious. Then Kudrow fell silent. Foord tasted brine along the sides of his tongue, the taste that comes before vomiting: a reaction not to the violence, but to its strangeness.

And one last detail: their driver had said and done nothing while it happened. He was sitting where he had been all along, flicking the chimaera with his reins and waiting for the journey to resume.

Finally, when he had recovered, Foord strode over to the second car. Thahl followed him at a distance. The three inside hadn’t had time, from when it started to when it finished, even to open the door.

Somehow, Foord correctly picked out the senior one.

“Did Director Swann know anything of this?”

“No, Commander.”

“And you, you all washed your hands of it.”

“Yes. We told Major Kudrow we wanted no part of it. He said, Look the other way.”

“Your name?”

“Lieutenant Traore, Commander.”

Foord turned to Thahl, and their eyes met. Foord shook his head slightly, then turned back to face those in the car. He could see them all let out a breath; they saw what passed between him and Thahl, and were praying they’d read it correctly.

“Alright. Lieutenant, please call Director Swann, now, and tell him what happened here. And tell him we’re going into Blentport in this landchariot, and he’s to give authority for the roads to be cleared for us. We want to see his fliers and VSTOLs and groundcars ahead of us all the way to Blentport, clearing a path. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Commander.”

“As soon as you’ve arranged that, we’ll leave here. You and your colleagues are to stay put. And please arrange medical help
.
”

He stood for a while listening to them make the call, then turned to Thahl.

“How did you know they…”

“More Worrier than Warrior.”

Foord nodded, wryly. Thahl’s quiet friendship and gentle mockery had been like a soothing antiseptic balm after the orphanage; yet still he could do things like this.

4

The journey was turning feverish. The road was now a six-lane carriageway, the middle and outer lanes jammed with a thrombosis of traffic and the inner lane cleared for them, cars and trucks shunted to one side by the military. The oncoming three lanes were an unbroken procession of military vehicles: more lowloaders and groundcars, tankers and multiwheels and personnel carriers, each one with its own battery of sirens and lights. Ahead there were VSTOLs hovering low over the road, low enough to force traffic into the outer lanes. Their road was being made for them as they travelled it.

They were in the flat country leading to the rim of the Bowl: immense and drab, partly fields and partly industrial wasteland, littered with low-grade and failing development: warehouses, factories, workshops, silos, apartment blocks. Some of them were soiled with brown stains from their partly-exposed steel skeletons.

Foord’s wristcom buzzed.

“Commander, it’s Cyr. We’ve got a situation.”

“Situation?”

“It’s the crews of the Horus Fleet ships. They’re stuck here until our refit’s completed and they’re gathering round our Grid—not doing anything yet, just watching. And when I refused to hand over our people to Swann, civilians and military started gathering too. They don’t seem to know what they want yet, but Swann won’t order them away because he says their mood is unreadable and he can’t predict the consequences. And now the news of what Thahl did …How long until you arrive, Commander?”

“About ninety minutes.”

“It may get worse. And when you do arrive, it’ll take something exceptional to get you through this crowd and on board. You won’t reconsider the landchariot?”

“Not now.”

“A moment please, Commander…Smithson says he has an idea about what to do when you arrive. I’ll call back.”

“Thank you, Cyr.”

The landchariot sped on. The landscape stretched either side of the highway, reflecting the sky’s greyness as if it was a stretch of ocean.

Now that they were approaching the edge of the Great Lowland Bowl, there was a strangeness about what they saw. The country was too unrelievedly flat to see the actual rim yet—it wouldn’t be visible until they were almost on top of it—but the strangeness had to do with how its presence was felt and almost seen. Freighters and warships, going to or from Blentport, appeared to fly into and out of the ground at a distant point on the horizon where the rim was located but not yet visible; at the same location and for miles beyond, the air was coloured with rainbows from the rivers which fell in torrents over the edge; and occasionally, there was the sense that beyond every rise in the horizon there was not simply more land, but emptiness—a difference in the quality of the landscape, like the difference felt near a coast before the sea was visible. And it did things to the air. Above the rim, so high above it they couldn’t be seen properly, were flocks of white things floating on the roiling air-currents. They weren’t birds, but they had wings over thirty feet across. Angels.

Blentport is situated in the Great Lowland Bowl. It is the headquarters of Horus Fleet, and the Commonwealth’s biggest port outside of Earth. It has landing and takeoff capacity for warships, freighters and liners: nine large and ten minor Grids, each able to repair, rebuild or refit a ship.

Commonwealth cities grew rapidly in the Bowl. Blentport grew rapidly too, because Horus Fleet was needed to protect the natural riches of Horus system; but the cities grew faster, making one huge conurbation surrounding the port.

You will have consulted your ship’s Codex about Blentport. Remember, however, the following:

First, how it got its name.

Second, its unique “City Centre” location. Population pressure in the Bowl conurbation is high, and Blentport is inevitably affected by (or even the cause of) the political and social pressures around it.

Third, its capacity. It can only refit, at any one time, less than half of Horus Fleet—adequate for most situations, but not for what you will find when you arrive there. The enforced deployment of the entire Fleet to a defensive cordon around Sakhra will precipitate a serious emergency, with more ships than it can handle putting in for refit.

Your ship has total priority, but the situation is volatile. The effect of anything ill-considered on your part is something you may be able to imagine better than the authors of this briefing.

They hung poised over the rim, and Foord froze. The traffic lurched forward and their road, along with all the others, commenced its long spiral descent round the sides of the Bowl. As it did so the Bowl effectively vanished; its curvature was so vast and shallow that it was no more discernible, from its own surface, than the curvature of a planet.

They were in a huge but ordinary landscape, occasionally hilly and occasionally flat. Their road was cantilevered out from the Bowl’s sides where the gradient was steep, almost flat where it was shallow. There were junctions with other major roads which forked off into the interior of the Bowl, and these roads too followed the ordinary demands of the landscape: sometimes raised on columns and sometimes at ground level, sometimes on embankments and sometimes in cuttings.

Overlaying the landscape was the Bowl’s metropolis. There was no single name for it: people tended to cling to the names of the original cities and districts, perhaps because the Bowl conurbation was too big for any single name. The cities and suburbs did not fill the Bowl levelly or evenly, like water, but crept up its sides, like brandy. As soon as the landchariot entered the multilane road spiralling down, outlying buildings rose and crowded alongside it. Some were quite mundane, like the suburbs of any city: schools, apartment blocks, shopping malls, leisure centres, vehicle workshops (including, as they passed through one of the seedier districts, workshops for landchariots).