Seeds of Earth (57 page)

Hearing this, his manner turned sombre. He nodded and smiled sadly. 'It was supposed to be both of us in this pod, but he tricked me and sent me off on my own. Stayed behind to fight two Brolturan interceptors, from that giant warwagon of theirs. And he beat them! - he must have . ..'

'What are you talking about? Who beat them . . .'

'A brave man called Donny Barbour.' He looked at her. 'Can you help me get to Pilipoint Station? Perhaps someone there knows exactly how it all turned out.'

Cat nodded. 'I can do that, Theo, though you might like to stop off at one of the Uvovo towns for a rest and a bite to eat.'

'That sounds good.' Feeling weariness in his limbs, he wiped some water droplets from his beard and brushed away a few more fragments of foam. 'I've heard that folk on Nivyesta get around on the backs of giant
trictra
- is that true?'

'It is, aye - you've not got a fear of spiders, have you?'

'No, not as such.' He gave a rueful smile. 'I'll be okay. So - which way?'

The Uvovo moved with them in unison as Catriona led the way back to where the
trictra
had been tethered, her own flashlight picking out a path through the wet undergrowth.

'You must feel hardly involved in what's been going on down on Darien,' Theo said.

'I wouldn't say that,' Cat said, smiling in the darkness. 'We caught two Ezgara commandos yesterday.'

He stared at her, his pace slowing. 'You captured them . . .'

'The first one exploded, killing several Uvovo . . . did ye know that they have a binary explosive in their bloodstream? Aye, very cunning, very vicious. Oh, and they're Human too.'

Theo nodded gravely. 'Yes, that I knew. It raises a lot of questions.'

'Doesn't it? We got to the second one and sedated him before he could trigger himself, then we used some extraction roots and what the Uvovo call a cleansing sac to filter the impurities from his blood. Now he's awake and alert - he understands Anglic but doesn't speak it that well. Still, we managed to get a few interesting facts out of him.'

She recalled how they'd had to restrain his arms and legs with padded leather straps. He seemed so completely at the mercy of his fear and anger, as if he had no understanding of self-control, and she and the rootmasters suspected that the cleansing sac had removed something else from his system besides the explosive component.

'His name is Malachi,' she said. 'He's from a colony of Humans called Tygra, a highly militarised society, going by a few things he let slip.'

'My God,' Theo said. 'Were they abducted by the Hegemony?'

'Not abducted, Major. It seems that his colony was established roughly 150 years ago.'

'A hundred and fifty years? But Humanity had not. . .' He broke off, frowning for a moment before his eyes widened. 'Doctor Macreadie, you're not suggesting . . .'

Smiling she nodded. 'The Tygra colony was founded by a ship from Earth called the
Forrestal.'

Theo was silent, the astonishment in his face replaced by a growing horror as he absorbed what she had said. 'The
Forrestal's
crew and colonists were a mixture of northern and southern Americans, and Australians,' he said. 'How could they be turned into the Hegemony's shock troops?'

She shook her head. 'We're not getting much out of Malachi at the moment, so these questions remain open to speculation. But for now I think we should keep this to ourselves. If it got out, how would the people of Earth react? And what would the Hegemony do to the Tygrans if they decided that the alliance with Earthsphere was more valuable than a cadre of Human janissaries, no matter how loyal?'

'You have a point,' he said. 'My God, I cannot imagine what they went through.'

'Makes you wonder what happened to the third ship, the
Tenebrosa,'
Cat said, and even as she spoke the words she felt a quiver in the perceptive bond she shared with Segrana. Was it anticipation? A hint of the truth, or the echo of some lost possibility, fading amongst the water-veiled trees? She smiled inwardly, knowing that Segrana had a liking for convoluted mystery.

'Well, if any of their descendants show up here,' Theo was saying, 'we can start a club!'

She laughed out loud at that, thinking,
Aye, wouldn't that be just amazing?

56

KAO CHIH

They were waiting, languishing, in a lesser sifting compartment, a 50-foot-long vault with battered, pitted, metal walls which were also shiny from the abrasion of rock dust. In here, complex forcefields winnowed the immense tonnage of interstellar debris gathered by the harvester's scoop fields, probably sorting it by mineral type and grade then funnelling it off to various silos. Kao Chih also suspected that these same field projectors were being used to scan and probe both himself and Drazuma-Ha*, but when he mentioned it the mech would only answer in a taciturn, uninformative manner, suggesting some measure of displeasure. Five or six hours they had been kept waiting in this steel box by the harvester's steerer, a paranoid Voth by the name of Yash, and that was in addition to the six or seven spent waiting aboard the
Castellan
after docking.

At least that earlier period had given Drazuma-Ha* plenty of time to explain the ins and outs of the crucial and perilous (yet dramatic and fabulous to Kao Chih) mission he was engaged on. Back on the ship, Kao Chih had sat agog, listening to the mech's tale of the legendary Forerunners, the vast war they had fought against the Legion of Avatars, and the warpwells they had built to defeat that terrible enemy. And now, a hundred millennia later, an undamaged warpwell had been uncovered on the world Darien, colonised by a lost offshoot of the Human race. Remnants of the Legion yet survived, trapped in the lowest, darkest, most inescapable depths of hyperspace, but their servants, those three combat droids, knew that the warpwell could be used to release them. Which was why the Construct, an old ally of the Forerunners, had sent Drazuma-Ha* to find Kao Chih and help him on his quest.

'He sent you to find me?'

'Just so,' Drazuma-Ha
' had said. 'You know, for a millennia-old machine, the Construct has acquired some curiously sentimental traits - he once told me that Humanity was a species a little out of the ordinary, that they possessed an inner fire which set them apart from others. I was sceptical of these comments, yet now that I've accompanied you on this quest and shared its dangers and triumphs, I can see and openly say that he was right. After all, sometimes greatness is buried and must be brought to the surface, so be alert, Gowchee, to the greatness within.'

Now, half a day (and a couple of books) later, Kao Chih found his thoughts winding back to the mech's compliments and his own reaction to them. He had been surprised to the point of amazement, and then sombre and humbled, but now that he'd had time to ponder he realised that he had also felt embarrassed at being the recipient of such praise. Almost unbidden, one of his father's favourite sayings came to him - 'Beware the unearned handful of gold, for somewhere another hand is holding a knife' - which made him smile and shake his head. Sometimes it felt as if he had tiny versions of his mother and father in his mind, popping up now and then with a pithy adage.

His thoughts were interrupted by a heavy clank and the sound of rough servos as the wide door at the end of the vault began to slide open in three layers. At last, he thought.

'Apologies for the delay,' came a voice from the redlit passage beyond. 'My precautions are exhaustive out of necessity - too many wily, tricksy bandits skulking between the stars for anyone to lower their guard . . . follow the corridor round and up the slope, then turn right at the top and stop at the blast door.'

The Voth's voice was coming from grilles spaced along the corridor ceiling. Stubby rounded cones on the walls shed a ruby-red light and Kao Chih's shoes made a strange, reverberating noise as he walked. The otherwise featureless corridor sloped up past a heavy, dark-coloured door flanked by sensor posts and bearing an odd, circular keypad in its centre. The blast door they arrived at a few moments later was identical, though without the keypad.

'Please wait.'

'With respect, honourable Yash,' Kao Chih said, 'we have done little else but wait, and for many hours. We are engaged on a task of the gravest importance . . .'

'Yes, yes, yes, one which may profoundly affect the fate of trillions, tragedy, war, and so forth, but you've thus far neglected to say what you want from me. Once I find out, we can then negotiate a price for this service.'

'A price?' said Kao Chih. 'Disaster beckons and you wish to haggle over a fee?'

'Wait a moment, Gowchee,' said Drazuma-Ha*, breaking his hours-long silence. 'The honourable Yash is merely protecting his interests, and our imposition on his time can only detract from the attention which the refining process requires. We must be patient and allow him to determine the course of our deliberations.'

There was a moment of silence. 'So you know something about cloud-harvesters, then.'

'A little,' said the mech. 'Just that
Viganli
is a
StarEater-series
harvester, I believe, which combines the heavy-duty capacity of the
Fireliner
series with the effective range of the
Voidgrinders,
while including a larger scoop field than either of them.'

'Very true, my machine guest, very perceptive. Please - enter.'

The door hummed aside and they advanced into a low-roofed, patchily lit and untidy room. One side was a clutter of odd furniture grouped around a holotank, while the other side was dominated by a long workbench backed by racks of tools, probes, leads and weapons. Their host was sitting cross-legged on a high bucket seat next to the bench, smoking a triple-bowl pipe while resting a large, intimidating weapon on one knee. For a Voth, Yash was lightly dressed, with only two jackets, a toolpouch kirtle over long and dusty oilstreaked pantaloons, and a pair of worn multigoggles pushed back onto his bare forehead, their data cable dangling loose by his side. Dark, deepset eyes regarded them suspiciously through a smoky haze.

'Welcome to my living room,' he said around the pipestem. 'It's a mess and it smells a bit but I wasn't expecting visitors.'

So what have you been doing for the last thirteen hours}
Kao Chih wanted to say, but kept smiling instead.

'Our thanks for inviting us aboard your impressive vessel, friend Yash . . .' Drazuma-Ha* began.

'I'm not your friend,' the Voth said. 'Not yours nor this odd-looking Human's. What is he, anyway - your slave?'

'I am no one's slave,' Kao Chih said, stung by his insulting manner. 'I am on an important mission to the Human colony on Darien - we both are.'

The Voth shrugged and puffed some more smoke. 'So what do you need me for?'

'Our ship, sadly, is only capable of Tier 1 hyperspace travel,' Drazuma-Ha"' said. 'So we originally hoped to persuade you to either lend us your shuttle for the last stage of our journey, or even that you might pilot it yourself...'

The heavy weapon in the Voth's lap whined, previously opaque sections flickered with dull glows, and Yash shifted it to aim at the mech.

'Before you begin your persuading,' Yash said, 'be aware that the walls and ceiling of this room contain enough targeted multiwave projectors to fry every subquantal pathway in your cognitive core.'

'Yes, I know,' said Drazuma-Ha*. 'But be assured that my persuasion does not rely on brute methods. No, honourable Yash, I feel that it is only my duty to let you know that if war comes to this region, then the mining opportunities for independents like yourself will become very risky. It is my task to get to Darien and stop war breaking out, or, failing that, to send a message to allies who will come out to collect us.'

This was a complete surprise to Kao Chih, who glanced at the mech. I
thought he was prepared to seize the harvester's shuttle by force if necessary. What is he planning}

'I cannot leave the
Viganli,'
the Voth said bluntly. 'And I'm not giving you my jelking shuttle. So a message it'll have to be.' Putting down the triple-bowled pine, he slid off the bucket seat and landed on muscular, bowed legs, still carrying the big gun, which Kao Chih thought could be some kind of exotic plasma cannon. 'The bridge is up that way - after you.'

He guided them up another sloping passage to a small lobby with three doors and a mop and bucket in the corner. They pushed through the door directly ahead and found themselves in a long, narrow control room with viewports, consoles, screens, analysis stations and holodisplays on both sides. The bridge overlooked most of the
Viganli's
upper hull, from the midsection's chequerboard of big hold hatches to the oval intake manifold of the flaring bows from which six 100-metrelong booms angled forward and outward, three above, three below. These were the emitter masts which projected the harvester's 2.5-kilometre forcefield before it to scoop in dust and debris.

Yash entered after them, plasma cannon balanced on one shoulder. 'And I'm just as protected here,' he said. 'Plenty of EMP gear, and all keyed to my commands.'

Unpleasant and paranoid,
Kao Chih thought as he watched the Voth brush food fragments and a few empty packets away from one particular console. Away from the lounge and the pipe smoke, he noticed that the Voth had a strong, pungent, almost nutty odour. It was not pleasant.

'So, honourable Yash,' he said. 'How much are you charging for this aid?'

Yash grinned widely. 'How much have you got?'

Kao Chih met his gaze for a moment before reluctantly pulling out the pouch that held their remaining funds and emptying it into the Voth's outstretched hand. Yash looked over the stems and triangles for a moment then stuffed them into a side pocket.

'Help yourself - but touch nothing else, only the comms.'

'As you wish, most generous Yash,' Drazuma-Ha* said, floating over to the communication console, effector field rods stabbing out even before it had come to a halt.