Seeds of Earth (56 page)

Well, he's in for a wee surprise^.

Donny punched up a sequence of special commands, which he had been preparing while Theo was gathering together those supplies a short while ago. Working on his own improvisations, backed up by brief text notes from Kowalski, he had figured out a handful of manoeuvres and shield configurations which had prompted the flight-marshal to call him 'a crazy man'. Donny didn't mind if his unorthodox scheme offered only a slim chance of survival. That was better than none.

The enemy was almost in position, and the
Hermes's
sensors told him that its weapons were targeting. Donny hit the execute in the holodisplay, the attitude jets buzzed, and the shuttle made a perfect 180-degree lateral turn. Then the shields reconfigured into airbrakes, and since they were already entering Nivyesta's upper atmosphere the shuttle's velocity quickly began to fall. At the same time the main thrusters fired, ramping up the deceleration, and the Brolturan interceptor, a vaguely oval craft with weapon indents along its leading edge, seemed to rush straight towards the shuttle.

Donny flinched in reflex, but there was nothing for him to do but watch and hope and pray.

The Brolturan was already banking as the two vessels converged, but Donny's second shield configuration was ready, huge, curved blades of forcefield projected out from the prow. Where they collided with the Brolturans own shields, harmonic interference dissipated in dazzling flashes of light and energy and when gaps opened up in the underside barrier the
Hermes's
targeting system was quick to act. The laser cannon sent a stream of composite pulse bolts through the gaps, hammering into the hull, smashing open compartments, sending shattered fragments flying. ..

The interceptor veered away sharply but it was too late. Lines of vapour and hot gas were trailing from the stern, then a fuel feed must have been exposed because an immense explosion abruptly tore the craft open from the engines forward. Donny let out a roar of delight as several pieces of burning debris arced and spun away down towards the forest moon's surface.

But his triumph was cut short when alerts beeped and the display showed the second interceptor burning I tight turn towards him, and launching a couple of missiles into the bargain.

Time to make tracks, he thought, bringing the shuttle round to point forward, angling to gain altitude as he engaged the thrusters. Another tactical sequence was selected, a simple but cunning one. Then, seeing that he had a minute or two before the missiles arrived, he opened a general widecast channel.

'This is, er, Darien Combat Shuttle
Hermes,
Captain Barbour commanding, calling anyone within range of this signal.'

A moment later, a sceptical male voice.

'This is Pilipoint Station control - what did you say you were? Is this some kind of joke?'

'Did ye see anything happening in the sky just recently, Pilipoint?'

'By damn, yes! We've had explosions and burning things falling . . .'

'Aye, well, that's because I just shot down a Brolturan fighter that was giving me grief, and I've got another one chasing after me with a brace,of missiles . . . just a second . . .'

The missiles were coming in fast and lethal, twin undeviating trajectories, pale trails of oncoming destruction. Donny knew that it was wing-and-a-prayer time as he triggered the countermeasures sequence and sat back, waiting to see if he lived through the next thirty seconds.

'Hermes to Pilipoint Station - still awake down there? What's yer name, by the way?'

'Still here,
Hermes.
My name is Axel, and we've got you on satellite tracking . . . my God, and we see those missiles! Bail out, Captain . ..'

'Wish I could, Axel, but I'm stuck here for the duration - right, here we go ...'

On the external monitor Donny saw a huge spreading cloud of silvery chaff while a decoy dropped away on a dying curve towards the moon's green face. And he grinned as both missiles took the bait and plunged after it.

'Very smart,
Hermes,
very cunning . . .' said the Pilipoint comsman. 'You're like the magician, yes? The hand is quicker than the eye . . .'

'Maybe so, laddie, but I don't reckon that wee shell game'll work a second time . . . and he's just launched another pair . . .'

'I see them, Captain - tell me, are you the man who stole the Earther's shuttle?'

'Heard about that up here, Axel? Aye, that was me a'right, a bad yin through and through!'

'We've heard what's been going on downstairs, all those Brolturan troops working hard to keep Darien free from unrest and protest and such nuisances as free speech,' said the comsman. 'I have no doubt that in time we too will be similarly blessed. But tell me, why are you doing this?'

'What, bearding the lion in his den, y'mean? I guess ye could say I was overcome with a sense of public duty and a calm appraisal of the crisis ... but that wouldna be true.'

'It would not?'

'Nah, it was pure, unadulterated loathing. Ye know what I really hate? - being lied to. Soon after the
Heracles
arrived, that Hegemony envoy Kuros toured the colony, giving speeches about the Sendrukan Hegemony's deep sense of liberty and freedom and their boundless desire to spread freedom throughout known space and beyond .. . aye, right! All the time he was coming out with that self-important, sanctimonious cack, him and his minions were planning how to get us down on our knees, how to make things so bad that we'd be happy to have their boots on our necks, just so long as the bombings stopped . . .'

'I saw one of Kuros's speeches,' said the Pilipoint comsman. 'It was a real performance but it did not seem right for us, as if he was performing for another audience ...'

'Excuse me, Axel, got some missiles to take care of here ...'

Donny could feel the sweat trickling down the side of his face as he watched a dark blue display where two bright specks moved nearer to his position while associated readouts gave figures for velocity, distance and altitude. In the cockpit's enclosed darkness, the pilot console was a strange, muffled cubbyhole crammed with glowing, touch-sensitive controls and displays, with small vidscreens showing external views while the overhead holo gave the wider tactical sweep. The next countermeasures sequence was running, suspensors and thrusters were online and ready, and the navigationals were tracking the enemy interceptor. From the previous encounter the shuttle's expert system overlay had quantified the missiles' minimum turn radius so now it was down to timing.

And a mountain of luck.

Then the missiles, gaining with every microsecond, crossed a certain trigger boundary and the countermeasures activated, another chaff burst, silver clouds of glittering, reflective strips spreading behind the hurtling
Hermes
like a silver comet's tail. As before a decoy was dropped, but this time the missiles ignored it and stayed on target while the interceptor began moving closer, as if the end was near. Then it too crossed an invisible line and the shuttle's forward suspensors came to life, kick ing the shuttle's nose up and over as the thrusters roared. The combination of momentum and extreme force vectors threw the
Hermes
into a brutally tight vertical turn.

G-force shoved Donny down into his couch. Over the wheeze of his breathing he heard the infrastructure complain before the autoalerts began - 'Warning, exceeding performance tolerances ... minor structural failures in subassemblies 19a, 21d, 37k . . . major structural failure will occur in thirty seconds or less . . .'

Then the
Hermes
was out of the turn and heading back, upside down. The Brolturan pilot had seen Donny's crazed attempt at an acrobatic manoeuvre and had merely banked slightly to avoid a repetition of the earlier force-field collision. But Donny was still ahead of him and about to cross over his oncoming flight path. And that was when the countermeasures released the last of the chaff on maximum dispersal. And when the interceptor plunged into the spreading, silvery, instrument-fogging cloud he met his own missile coming the other way.

On his rear external monitor, Donny saw the dual explosion flashes, an eruption of light and ignited gases, and an expanding shell of vapour and wreckage mixed with glittering fragments of chaff. He was about to breath a sigh of relief when he noticed that one of the flying pieces of debris was leaving a hot gas trail and curving round in his direction.

Cunning dog,
he thought.
Must've fired that at the last moment, knowing that I'd got him ... well, ye've not got me yetl

He nearly made it, at the tail end of a long, twisting, dodging pursuit down through Nivyesta's atmosphere, seeking every advantage, trying to lose the missile in clouds, even trying to shoot it down with the laser cannon. But on it came, doggedly undeterred and unwavering. And as the chase descended, he kept up a running commentary to Axel the comsman at Pilipoint Station, never letting on how desperate his situation was, livening up the discourse with merciless caricatures of certain public figures, like Kuros who was 'the Hegemony's interstellar bile duct', and President Kirkland, 'the bowel movement that walked like a man'.

When the end came it was quick. He was flying north at about 900 feet over Nivyesta's southern ocean, less than 100 kilometres from Segrana's coast. Fuel was low, most of the suspensors were burnt out, and he was getting continual structural alerts as a result of the contorted manoeuvres he had attempted. His last throw of the dice was to try and ditch in the waters, but the missile found him 50 feet up, rushing across the waves. There was a terrible brightness... then a terrible darkness ...

Then forever claimed him.

55

CATRIONA

Through a black night of rain they searched for the downed ship. A casing collector had spotted its descent in late afternoon while he was ransacking the high web festoons near Overglowatch. A wedge-shaped craft trailing ragged flags was the description that was relayed to Catriona, from which she knew that its braking chute had torn after deploying. The chances of someone surviving a crash landing under those conditions were not good. However, there was a lot of dense, deep foliage to absorb such a craft's kinetic energy, so assuming it didn't hit an outcrop or an especially large tree, the odds maybe weren't so bad.

Like most of her twenty-strong search party, Cat was wearing a cowled coat made from a mixture of plain fibre and silk - it was light and kept her cool and dry as she rode on
trictra-back
with the rest. Following the casing collector's directions, they were heading north to the wide valley that lay between Girdle Ridge and the Northern Uplands while water dripped, trickled and spattered all around them. A cold, black night of rain, with lamplight and the piercing beams of battery torches striking clusters of gleams from wet leaves, turning droplet-strewn webs into flashing regalia, rivulets into rippling, silver snakes.

After another hour, one of the search parties reported finding a trail of damaged forest foliage. Everyone converged and hastened along the path of snapped branches and severed trunks until it became a ragged furrow gouged in the ground which finally terminated at the foot of a big
prul
tree. The craft was small, less than fifteen feet long, so it had to be an escape pod from one of the ships seen dogfighting far up in the sky earlier. Small thruster nozzles were spaced along its curved stern, while its hull tapered to a flat, narrow prow that was solidly wedged under a gnarled
prul
root as thick as a Uvovo's waist.

For a moment all the scholars and their Listener paused and stared wide-eyed at the escape pod while sending expectant glances her way.

Hmm, okay, so Mummy Pathmistress has to make sure the alien box is safe,
she thought, dismounting from the
trictra.
By the time she reached the pod, with light from lamps held nearby, she could see from the characters and symbols on the hull that this had to be from the
Heracles.
Without hesitation she rapped her knuckles on it.

'Hello - anyone in there?'

Immediately there were a few thuds in response, and a man's voice:

'Thank God you found me! - please, can you help? Something is jamming the hatch on this thing ...'

Cat laughed, realised that the big
prul
root was holding the pod shut.

'I can see what the problem is,' she said. 'We'll have ye out of there in a wee bit.'

With a dozen Uvovo lending their strength, they managed to drag the escape pod out from under the
prul's
roots. A moment later the upper hull was pushed up from within and locked into an open position. A greyhaired man in a hunting jacket and camouflage trousers climbed wearily out and sat on the edge of the recess, pulling lumps of something white off his clothing and tossing them into the pod. It took Cat a moment but suddenly she recognised him.

'You're Greg's Uncle Theo,' she said.

He straightened in surprise, then peered closer in the meagre light and nodded.

'Ah, Doctor Macreadie - an unexpected pleasure, here in the middle of the forest.'

'What is that stuff?'

'Crash foam,' he said. 'It smells terrible yet I find myself most grateful.' He looked at her and smiled. 'In case you were wondering, Greg is alive and well, mostly. He was slightly wounded yesterday ... or perhaps the day before . . . but some of my people told me he's mending well ...' He looked about him at the Uvovo and the drips and trickles coming from above. 'Did someone see me come down here, Catriona?'

'Aye,' she said, half-wishing he had said more about Greg. 'An Uvovo from a town several miles away saw your pod swooping over Segrana after those explosions in the sky.'

He became more alert at this. 'Do you know what happened up there? Did Pilipoint Station have any contact. . .'

'I'm sorry, Theo, I've not been in touch with Pilipoint but I did see some of the big show and heard about the rest from others. Late in the afternoon there were a few contrails high up, then there was a bright explosion and, a few minutes later, halfway across the sky, there was another. Not long after that your escape pod crash-landed, and a short while later some Uvovo on the south coast saw a huge explosion far out at sea.'