The Evolutionary Void (75 page)

Five kilometers overhead, the
Elvin’s Payback
arrived in a burst of sharp violet light as it decelerated hard. Above it,
Oscar could just make out a ragged black hole punched through the compartment’s
dome; crumpled metallic shards tumbled silently through the tortured air on
their long fall to the ground. Thin strands of mist grew in density around the
rent, stretching and curving up to pour out into the vacuum beyond. The glowing
cometary sphere suddenly flared, shoving out eight vivid pseudopods of dazzling
flame. They separated from the starship and accelerated downward toward the
beleaguered house. His biononics felt the combatbots’ first sensor sweep.

The Chikoya must have known what was coming. Another three teleported
out.

“Ozziedamned monsters,” Cheriton exclaimed. Seven of them on higher
ground were targeting him with a barrage of energy beams and a ferocious
kinetic broadside, pushing his integral force field dangerously close to its
limit.

“Priority target,” Tomansio ordered Liatris. “Take out the hostiles
surrounding Cheriton.”

A massive spear of incandescence lanced down out of the turbulent sky to
strike the incline behind the house. Parts of Chikoya spewed upward. Aggressive
flames swirled over the trees and bushes populating the slope. Cheriton was
still being targeted by four Chikoya.

Oscar’s scan showed him a T-sphere locus establishing itself around his
teammate. “Counterprogram,” he yelled.

“Can’t,” Cheriton replied.

Oscar, Tomansio, and Beckia immediately launched a volley of smartmissiles
over the roof of the house. While he was fending off such an intense attack,
Cheriton’s biononics wouldn’t be able to counterprogram the T-sphere as well as
maintain his integral force field. The combatbots fired again, eliminating more
Chikoya. This time the energy impact kicked up a long wildfire line across the
forest, the formidable heat igniting whole trees. Thick smoke billowed up,
cutting off all visual observation. But Oscar’s field function scan could still
slice clean through. He watched his exovision display showing Cheriton being
teleported away.

“Fuck it! Liatris, where did they take him?” Oscar demanded. “Where’s the
T-sphere center?”

The combatbots were barely five hundred meters overhead. They fired down
continuously, adding to the conflagration now burning around half the house.
The surviving Chikoya were teleporting out as fast as they could.

“It’s centered in the Farloy compartment, about twelve hundred kilometers
along the Spike. That’s one of the major Chikoya settlements.”

“Are you getting any kind of signal from him?” Tomansio asked.

“Negative. Shall I fly over there and run a detailed sensor sweep?”

“No,” Tomansio said.

Oscar eyed the wall of fire that was creeping down the slope to consume
the trees closest to the house. Thermal imaging was showing him some alarming
temperatures blossoming across the walls. The T-sphere shrank to zero. He
admitted Tomansio was right. Not that it was easy.

“Land by the house,” he told Liatris. “I need the Dreamers safe on board
before we get an entire Chikoya army teleporting in. Aaron, bring them out,
please.”

“Confirm,” Aaron said.

Oscar turned around and ran a sweep along the shoreline. There were nine
dead Chikoya scattered across the blackened lawn and two of them lying in the
water. His biononics couldn’t find any trace of Myraian. He shook his head in
bemusement at the fantastical woman. In a strange way he was rather glad she’d
disappeared; it meant he didn’t have to think about her.

Elvin’s Payback
thumped down out of the sky,
sending out a shock wave that shattered the house’s remaining windows and
brought roof slates skittering down. It hovered five meters above the ruined
garden. Oscar and the remaining Knights Guardian closed in, ready to provide
cover as Aaron led the two Dreamers, Corrie-Lyn, and Troblum out across the
veranda and underneath the starship. Its airlock bulged upward, and Inigo rose
into it. Corrie-Lyn was next.

A couple of large trolleybots floated out of the house, each one carrying
a medical chamber. Flames were flickering along the roof, gaining hold on the
rafters. Smoke curled out of the gaping first-floor windows.

“What do we do?” Oscar asked Tomansio as they backed toward the starship.
“Do we go after him?”

“No. He’s true Knights Guardian; he’s not expecting us to. That would
jeopardize the mission.”

“Jesus. What will they do to him?”

“If I was a Chikoya, I’d worry about what he’ll do to them. Human
biononics are a damn site meaner than anything they’ve ever built.”

The medical chambers were lifted smoothly up into the starship. It was
just Oscar, Tomansio, and Beckia left. The starship’s force fields came on
around them.

“But they targeted him,” Oscar said; even inside the protective shields
he couldn’t relax. “It was deliberate. They must have known he wasn’t a Dreamer.”

“Maybe they thought he was me,” Aaron told them. “I had quite a run-in
with the Chikoya before you arrived.”

“Irrelevant,” Tomansio said. He gestured at Oscar to step under the open
airlock. “We have a job to do.”

“Not irrelevant,” Oscar insisted as he began to float up into the
fuselage. He knew he was missing something, and it was making him very cross.
“Surely he can get some kind of signal out. Liatris, are you seeing any sign of
a firefight in the Farloy compartment?”

“No. Nothing registering.”

Oscar slid up into the cabin to find the Dreamers and a miserable,
shaking Corrie-Lyn giving him an anxious look. Troblum’s helmet almost touched
the ceiling. His armor had reverted to shabby gray again. He still hadn’t
opened it up.

Beckia arrived, swiftly followed by Tomansio. The cabin was feeling quite
cramped even with the furniture withdrawn.

“Up and out,” Tomansio said. “Come on, Oscar, let’s go.”

Oscar bit back any immediate comment and told the smartcore to take them
back through the hole Liatris had created in the dome above. “We could make one
flyover,” he said.

“They could have teleported him to any compartment on the Spike by now,”
Beckia said sadly. “Or even into a starship. He could already be FTL.”

“No, he’s not,” Oscar said, reviewing the sensor records as they passed
through the minihurricane surrounding the hole and emerged back into space.
“Nothing’s gone FTL in the last ten minutes.”

“Oscar, drop it,” Tomansio said. “He’s gone, and hopefully he took a
whole bunch of the Chikoya bastards with him. When we get back to Far Away,
you’re welcome to attend the ceremony of renewal. We’ll grow him a new body and
download his secure memory store into it. He’ll spend the whole evening teasing
you about worrying.”

Oscar wanted to hit something. “All right.”
But I
know something is wrong
. He concentrated on the starship’s sensors. The
Mellanie’s Redemption
had left its landing pad at the same
time as the
Elvin’s Payback
. Now it was holding
station five thousand kilometers on the Spike’s dark side. He told the
smartcore to rendezvous with it.

“Troblum, we’re safe now.”

“Good,” the armored figure said.

“You can take your helmet off.”

There was a long pause while the big figure did nothing. Then horizontal
lines of malmetal on the helmet flowed apart, leaving three segments on each
side. They swung open.

Oscar tried to be neutral. Troblum’s face was fat and heavy, his skin an
unhealthy pallor and dribbling with sweat. Patchy stubble coated his cheeks and
chins. “Hello,” he said sheepishly to his audience. He couldn’t meet anyone’s
gaze.

“Thank you for offering your help,” Inigo said. “We appreciate it.”

Troblum gave a rough nod but didn’t say anything.

Oscar didn’t like the idea of relying on him one bit; there didn’t seem
to be any empathy. Troblum was not a likable person, and he’d decided that from
just the half dozen sentences the man had spoken. Not that there was anything
they could do about it.
I’m committed. Again. Let’s hope I
don’t have to die this time
.

“So how did the Chikoya find you?” Liatris asked Inigo.

“Plenty of people in Octoron would know where Ozzie lives,” Aaron said.
“I’m surprised it took them this long, actually.”

“I’m just glad you arrived before they did,” Corrie-Lyn said. She was
still trembling, even though she’d gotten a chair to extend and was sitting all
hunched up. “We wouldn’t have stood a chance otherwise.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Beckia said. “Whatever that Myraian had was more than
they could deal with.”

“Is she a Silfen?” Tomansio asked.

“No,” Araminta-two said. “I would have known that. She was human.”

“I think ‘was’ is right,” Oscar said. “She’s not postphysical, but she’s
certainly more than Higher.”

“Speaking of not being physical,” Aaron said. “Ozzie?”

“Lady alone knows,” Inigo said. “My physics is centuries out of date, but
whatever he did was seriously advanced.”

“He transmuted his quantum state,” Troblum said. “Somehow he went outside
spacetime.”

“Personal FTL?” Corrie-Lyn asked incredulously.

“Probably not. You have to time-phase to do that.”

“So is he postphysical?” Oscar asked.

“I’d say not in the classical sense, but I don’t have any empirical
evidence,” Inigo said. “Normally, postphysicals don’t hang around afterward.
And he was dedicated to helping the human race in many ways. I know; we
discussed it at length.”

“Certainly did,” Aaron murmured.

The
Elvin’s Payback
drew alongside
Mellanie’s Redemption
. The two starships maneuvered for a
few seconds before their airlocks touched and sealed. Troblum was the first
through, moving surprisingly quickly. The others let him go without comment,
though Oscar knew they were all a little perplexed by the enigmatic Higher.

He followed Troblum through the airlocks, emerging into a cabin that was
almost the same size as the one he’d just left. A very attractive girl was
waiting there, dressed in old-fashioned clothes; her hands pressed anxiously
against the chest of Troblum’s armor as she asked if he was all right. Oscar
frowned at the sight; there’d been no mention of a companion. And with the best
will in the universe, he couldn’t imagine a girl like that partnered with
Troblum. Perhaps she was his daughter. But there’d been no reference to a
family in his file.

The others were crowding into the cabin; they all shared an identical
mildly surprised expression as they saw the girl. Gaiamote emissions were
hurriedly reduced.

“This is Catriona,” Troblum mumbled.

“Hello.” She smiled shyly.

Oscar saw Tomansio staring at an electronic device on the cabin’s lone
extended table. It looked vaguely familiar. Secondary routines ran a comparison
search through his storage lacunae. “Oh,” he said softly. His retinas switched
to infrared, which confirmed it. Catriona was a solido projection.

Then a trolleybot glided in carrying a medical chamber, and everyone was
suddenly busy making room. The next trolleybot appeared, and Oscar started to
think some of them were going to have to go into suspension before they reached
the Void.
And given that I’m just about redundant now …

Troblum opened a low hatch into a companionway. “We can stack some of the
medical chambers here.”

“Is this all the space there is?” Inigo asked dubiously.

“Once the planetary FTL has launched, we can use the forward cargo hold.
Until then, we’ll just have to squeeze in.”

The medical chambers kept coming. Two were fitted into the narrow
companionway. Troblum got the cabin bulkhead to extrude thin shelves. There was
just enough height for the big dark sarcophagi to be stacked three high. That
left everyone else with standing room only and pressed uncomfortably close.

“I’ll join you later,” Catriona said, and faded away. Troblum pretended
not to notice. His armor suit opened up, and he stowed it in a broad luggage
cylinder that telescoped up out of the decking. The toga suit he wore was about
the shabbiest Oscar had ever seen.

“Are there any sleep cubicles?” Beckia asked.

“Three,” Troblum told her.

“One for me,” she said quickly. Corrie-Lyn claimed the second. Somehow no
one asked to use Troblum’s personal cubicle.

It was still cramped in the cabin as the last medical capsule was secured
and the airlock flowed shut.

“So how does this work?” Tomansio asked.

“We need an uninhabited star system,” Troblum explained. “Also, the
radiation from a nova can sterilize neighboring star systems. So we really need
a star that’s fifteen light-years away from any H-congruous planet to be safe.
There are three candidates within fifty light-years, an hour’s flight time.”

“Closest one, then,” Inigo said.

“That’s the one farthest from the Void.”

“Oh. Well, how far to—” He stopped in surprise.

Oscar was suddenly aware of a personal gaiafield emission. The emotional
content alone was enough for him to identify Cheriton. A sensation of panicky
urgency made his heart flutter in sympathy. The emission strengthened into a
gifting.

“Hello,” Cheriton’s thoughts said softly. The need for reassurance was
overwhelming.

Inigo and Araminta-two exchanged a meaningful look. “We’re here,” their
minds chorused.

“No!” Aaron yelled. He raised his fists in silent exasperation and glared
at the two Dreamers.

The gifting had no sight or sound or scent, just Cheriton’s small
befuddled thoughts. He was alone, unable to sense anything from his body. Only
training and excellent self-control were keeping the fear at bay.

“Ah,” another mind spoke with unnerving serenity. “I hadn’t thought of a
gaiafield connection. I see you have an unusual number of gaiamotes, with some
interesting little tweaks to their structure.”