Infinity's Shore (80 page)

T
HE THREAT WORKED, MY RINGS! Now our expertise is proven. Our/My worth is vindicated before the Captain-Leader and our fellow crew stacks. As I/we predicted, just as our bomber began slicing at their holy psychic rock, a signal came!

It was the same digital radiance they used last time, to reveal the g'Kek city. Thus, the savages attempt once more to placate us. They will do anything to protect their stone deity.

OBSERVE THE HUMAN CAPTIVES, MY RINGS! ONE OF them—the local male whom we/Asx once knew as Lark Koolhan—quailed and moaned to see the “Egg” under attack, while the other two seemed unaffected. Thus, a controlled experiment showed that I/we were right about the primitives and their religion.

Now the female comforts Lark as our cruiser speeds away from the damaged Egg, toward the signal-emanation point.

What will they offer us, this time? Something as satisfying as the g'Kek town, now frozen with immured samples of hated vermin?

The chief-tactician stack calculates that the sooners will not sacrifice the thing we desire most—the dolphin ship. Not yet. First they will try buying us off with lesser things. Perhaps their fabled archive—a pathetic trove of primitive lore, crudely scribed on plant leaves or some barklike substance. A paltry cache of lies and superstitions that simpletons dare call a
library.

You tremor in surprise, O second ring-of-cognition? You did not expect Me to learn of this other thing treasured by the Six Races?

Well be assured, Asx did a thorough job of melting that particular memory. The information did not come from this reforged stack.

Did you honestly believe that our
Ewasx
stack was the only effort at intelligence gathering ordained by the Captain-Leader? There have been other captives, other interrogations.

It took too long to learn about this pustule of contraband Earthling knowledge—this
Biblos
—and the exact location remained uncertain. But now we/I speculate. Perhaps Biblos is the thing they hope to bribe us with, exchanging their archive for the “life” of their Holy Egg.

If that is their intent, they will learn.

We will burn the books, but that won't suffice.

NOTHING WILL SUFFICE.

In the long run, not even the dolphin ship will do. Though it will make a good start.

Blade

N
ORTHWEST, WHAT TARGET MIGHT ATTRACT THE aliens' attention that way?

Nearly everything I know or care about
, Blade concluded. Dolo Village, Tarek Town, and Biblos.

As pale Torgen rose behind the Rimmer peaks, he watched the slim ship glide on, knowing he would lose sight of it long before the raider arrived at any of those destinations. Blade no longer cared where the contrary winds blew him, so long as he did not have to watch destruction rain down on the places he loved.

A chain of tiny, flickering lights followed the cruiser as scouts stationed on mountain peaks passed reports of its progress. He deciphered a few snatches of GalTwo, and saw they weren't words, but numbers.

Wonderful. We are good at describing and measuring our downfall.

With combat hormones ebbing, Blade grew more aware of physical discomfort. Nerves throbbed where one of the urrish hooks had ripped away skin plates, exposing fleshy integuments to cold air. Thirst gnawed at him, making Blade wish he were a hardy gray.

The balloon passed beyond the warm updraft and stopped climbing. Soon the descent would resume, sending him spinning toward a landscape of jagged shadows.

Wait a dura.

Blade tried to focus his vision strip, peering at the distant Jophur vessel.

Has it stopped?

Soon he knew it had. The ship was hovering again, casting its search beam to scan the ground below.

Was I wrong? The next target may not be Biblos or Tarek, after all.

But … there's nothing here! These hills are wilderness. Just a useless tract of boo—

He was staring in perplexity when something happened to the mountain below the floating ship. Reddish flickers erupted, like marsh gas lit by static charges, at the swampy border of a lake. Sparklike ripples seemed to spread amid the dense stands of towering boo.

What are the Jophur doing now?
he wondered.
What weapon are they using?

The flickers brightened, flaring beneath scores of giant greatboo stems. The ship's searchlight still roamed, as if bemused to find slender tubes of native vegetation emitting fire from their bottoms … then starting to rise.

The first thunder reached Blade as he realized.

It's not the Jophur at all! It's—

The corvette finally showed alarm, starting to back away. Its beam narrowed to a slicing needle, sweeping through one rising column.

An instant later, the entire northwest was alight. Volley after volley of blazing tubes jetted skyward in a roar that shook the night.

Rockets
, Blade thought.
Those are rockets!

The vast majority missed their apparent target. But accuracy seemed of no concern, so dense was the missile swarm. The retreating corvette could not blast them fast enough before three in a row made glancing blows.

Then a fourth projectile struck head-on. The warhead failed, but sheer momentum crumpled one section of starship hull, tossing it spinning.

Other warheads kept going off ahead of schedule, or tumbling to explode on the ground, filling the night with brilliant, fruitless incandescence. So great was the wastage that it looked as if the Jophur ship might actually limp away.

Then a late-rising rocket took off. It turned, and with apparent deliberation, drove itself straight through the groaning corvette.

A dazzling explosion ripped its belly open, cleaving the skyship apart. Blade had to spin a different part of his half-blinded
visor around to witness the two halves plummet, like twin cups filled with fire, to the forest floor.

More dross to clean up
, Blade observed, as fires spread across several mountainsides. But his body was content to live in the moment, shrieking celebration whistles from all his breathing vents, competing with the gaudy fireworks to shout at the stars.

With qheuen vision, he could witness the corvette's destruction while also following as most of the missiles continued their flight—those that did not veer off course, or explode on their own. Dozens still thrust noisily into the upper sky, spouting red, flickering tails.

Blade screamed even louder when they finished their brief arc and turned back toward Jijo, plummeting like hail toward Festival Glade.

Lester Cambel

T
HE FOREST ERUPTED IN FLAME AROUND LESTER. Failed missiles crashed back amid the secret launching sites, setting off explosions of withering heat and igniting tall columns of boo. South, a searing glow told where the shattered spaceship fell. Still, Lester held fast to the clearing where he and a g'Kek assistant had come to watch the flickering sky.

An urrish corporal galloped to report. “Fires surround us. Sage, you must flee!”

But Lester stayed rooted, peering at the fuming heavens. His voice was choked and dry.

“I can't see! Did any make it to burnout? Are they on their way?”

The young g'Kek answered, all four eyes waving upward.

“Many flew true, O sage,” she answered. “Several score are airborne. Your design was valid. Now there's nothing more to do. It's time to go.”

Reluctantly, Lester let himself be pulled away from the clearing, into the planned escape route through the boo.

Only they soon found the way blocked by fierce tongues of fire. Lester and his companions had to retreat, back past sheltered work camps whose blur-cloth canopies were ablaze, where vats of traeki paste exploded one after another … along with some of the traeki themselves. Other figures could be seen fleeing through the clots of smoke as all the labor of months, spent creating a hidden center of industry, was consumed in a roiling maelstrom.

“There is no way out,” the urs sighed.

“Then save yourself. I command it!”

Lester pushed her resisting flank, repeating the order until the corporal let out a moan and plunged toward a place where the flames seemed least intense. An urs just might survive the passage. Lester knew better than to try.

Alone with his young assistant, he huddled in the center of the clearing, holding one of her trembling wheels.

“It's all right,” he told her, between hacking coughs. “We did what we set out to do.

“All things come to an end.

“Now it all lies with Ifni.”

Lark