There was a trail leading through the grasses, as if worn down by years of treading feet. It began only a few metres away from her, stretching from them towards the library-city in the distance.
So she started to walk. Twenty-two The shuttle carrying Corso, along with Honeydew and several other Bandati warriors, had now moved towards one end of the station's hub. Huge angled mirrors reflected sunlight in towards the rings surrounding the spindle, and Corso caught a glimpse of verdant jungle within one of them through a long, translucent window. The station was decorated in a manner markedly like that adorning the towers back on Night's End. Wide horizontal stripes, alternating between pale shell-pink and cream, covered the hub itself, while intricate glyphs were emblazoned across the encircling rings.
The hub turned out to be hollow, for a huge door opened at the very end, allowing the shuttle to enter, before dropping into a wide shaft that seemed to run the entire length of the station.
Before long the shuttle slowed to a crawl and eased in towards one internal wall of the shaft. Corso caught a glimpse in the view screen of a mechanism reaching out to grab the small craft, then pulling it inwards.
Before long the shuttle was deposited on an enormous elevator platform, which almost immediately started to drop down a second shaft.
As Corso watched the encompassing walls rise up past the shuttle with considerable speed, he tried asking Honeydew where they were taking him, but got no reply. His guardian was deep in chittering conversation with the rest of the Bandati team, and was obviously not interested in telling Corso anything he didn't strictly need to know.
But if he had to guess, Corso imagined they were now moving through one of the radiating spokes that attached the series of rings to the hub. They came to a halt about twenty minutes later, and the Bandati quickly released themselves from their restraints. Honeydew pulled Corso out of his gel-chair and led him outside the shuttle.
Corso stared around him in a daze, his muscles aching from the long hours in a confined space.
The platform on which the shuttle now rested was surrounded by a series of wide archways that revealed dense, alien-looking jungle beyond, and through which could be heard the distant calls and cries of wildlife. The archways were cut into the base of the spoke-shaft where it joined to the inner surface of the ring; Corso looked up to see the shaft rising above him, merging into a vanishing point beyond which lay the station's hub. Looking back down and through the archways, he could see hundreds of thick cables reaching up from the curving inner surface of the gigantic pressurized tube in which they were now standing before, presumably, connecting with the shaft's exterior. They reminded him of high-tension cables on a suspension bridge, and he realized that they served the same purpose.
He could not fail to notice how run-down and patched-up everything looked, as if this particular ring had been abandoned for a long time. There was vegetation sprouting everywhere and, although far from unusual in the enclosed environment of a space station, it was clearly out of control. Vines clogged vents and crawled up the inner walls of the shaft.
Something roared into life behind him and he turned, alarmed, to see that a flat-bed truck with enormous wheels had emerged from the shuttle's cargo hold. Honeydew's warriors spread out in a wide circle to surround the truck, their weapons at the ready and scanning the walls of the shaft. A small pulse-cannon array was mounted on the rear of the truck, which had no enclosed cabin, merely a steering column and controls at the front.
Corso was guided onto the back of the truck, along with the rest of the Bandati. The vehicle lurched to life and shot across the open platform and through one of the adjoining archways.
The truck soon slid to a halt, and Corso saw how half-ruined buildings surrounded the base of the shaft, all of them infested with plant-life gone wild. The Bandati conferred amongst themselves, presumably trying to figure out which way to go next.
Corso stared up and up towards the roof of the ring, far above their heads. It wasn't on the scale of a coreship environment, but it was pretty damned impressive nonetheless. Bright sunlight, reflected from external mirrors, shone through enormous windows cut into the roof before falling across the buildings surrounding them. He peered along the length of the ring, to where the jungle terrain rose out of sight. He could just make out the lower section of the next spoke-shaft along where it dropped down to connect to the ring's inner surface.
Something came arcing down from out of a weed-infested window and landed on the truck next to Corso. He looked down and saw a thick green leaf wrapped around what might be a large black rock or an enormous seed of some kind. It immediately began to steam and bubble, giving off clouds of noxious fumes.
Corso was still staring down at it in stupefied amazement when one of the Bandati warriors reached over, scooped the strange package up and lobbed it far away from the truck.
The truck again lurched forward, nearly hurling Corso off his feet. At the same time, the Bandati warriors all around him opened fire, their weapons burping and booming as they fired bullets and incendiaries high into the surrounding buildings. They appeared to have little trouble coping with their driver's manoeuvring, but Corso had to hold on to a support rail with both hands and crouch low.
The leaf-wrapped package detonated behind them, sending rock-hard black chunks arcing into the air. Corso felt a chill run down his spine as he realized how close he'd come to having his legs blown off.
More of the same objects – leaf-grenades as Corso now thought of them – came raining down on them from on high, dropped from rooftops or thrown from windows and balconies. Winged figures were occasionally visible darting from rooftop to rooftop, wings spread wide and leaf-grenades gripped in hands or feet.
Corso crouched lower, hands clamped over his ears, as the air was filled with noise and fury. A few more of the leaf-grenades landed on the truck itself, but were immediately scooped up and tossed some distance away. They drove down a narrow alley between two tall buildings, the truck bouncing and crashing under them, and then suddenly they were in the open and out of danger.
For the first time, Corso got a sense of the true scale of the ring. It was like being at the bottom of a jungle-filled valley with impossibly steep sides. An enormous tree-like organism – its trunk bulging with air sacs – drifted overhead like a grotesquely oversized dandelion seed. The moist air was filled with unidentifiable smells, and the surrounding landscape was decorated with steep-sided artificial hills, some of whose slopes were stepped as if for cultivation. Everything else was covered by dense foliage or tall, swaying, tree-like growths.
More leaf-grenades came dropping down towards them, hurled by more winged figures flying far overhead. Honeydew, along with the rest of the Bandati warriors, retaliated by firing straight up into the air. Corso ducked again, covering his ears, and just waited. Similar missiles now came arcing out from the densely wooded slopes of a nearby hill, till one of Honeydew's warriors took control of the pulse-array, and the entire hillside burst into flames a moment later.
The truck moved forward again, following a narrow trail leading around the outer curve of the giant ring, metal gleaming dully here and there through the all-enveloping mud and soil. Leaf-grenades still came sailing out of the greenery all around them, and Corso spotted a couple of Bandati gliding between the massive tree trunks, apparently trailing them. As the truck's pulse-cannon ripped a swathe through the surrounding jungle, billows of smoke began rising up alongside the ring's algae-smeared walls.