“Kelly!” Reza said with edgy vexation.
Waboto-YAU hooted again. The soldiers shifted restlessly in response, eyes boring into the obsessed reporter.
“Sleeping God strong. Humans will learn. Humans must not become elemental . Sleeping God will awaken. Sleeping God will avenge all Tyrathca suffering.”
“Kelly, shut up, now. That’s an order,” Reza datavised when he saw her gathering herself for more questions. “Thank you for telling us of the Sleeping God,” he said to Waboto-YAU.
Kelly fumed in moody silence.
“Sleeping God dreams of the universe,” the breeder said. “All that happens is known to it. It will hear our call. It will answer. It will come.”
“The human elementals may attack you again,” Reza warned. “Before the Sleeping God arrives.”
“We know. We pray hard.” Waboto-YAU twittered mournfully, head swinging round to gaze at the disk. “Now you have heard the fate of Coastuc-RT. Are you able to assist soldier caste in defence?”
“No.” Reza heard Kelly’s hissed intake of breath. “Our weapons are not as powerful as those of your soldiers. We cannot assist in your defence.”
“Then go.”
Vast tracts of electric, electromagnetic, and magnetic energy seethed and sparked across a roughly circular section in the outermost band of Murora’s rings, eight thousand kilometres in diameter. Dust, held so long in equilibrium, exploited its liberation to squall in microburst vortices around the solid imperturbable boulders and jagged icebergs which made up the bulk of the ring, their gyrations mirroring the rowdy cloudscape a hundred and seventy thousand kilometres below. The epicentre, where the Lady Macbeth had plunged into the drive-fomented particles, was still glowing a nervous blue as brumal waves of static washed through the thinning molecular zephyr of vaporized rock and ice.
The total energy input from the starship’s fusion drives and the multiple combat-wasp explosions was taking a long time to disperse. Their full effect would take months if not years to sink back to normality. Thermally and electromagnetically, the rippling circle was the equivalent of an Arctic whiteout to any probing sensors.
It meant the Maranta and the Gramine knew little of what was going on below the surface. They kept station ten kilometres above the fuzzy boundary where boulders and ice gave way first to pebbles and then finally dust; all sensor clusters extended, focused on the disquieted strata of particles under their hulls. For the first couple of kilometres the image was sharp and reasonably clear, below that it slowly disintegrated until at seven kilometres there was nothing but a sheet of electronic slush.
The possessed who commanded the starships now had started their search right at the heart, the exact coordinate where Lady Macbeth had entered. Then Maranta had manoeuvred into an orbit five kilometres lower, while the Gramine had raised its altitude by a similar amount. They slowly drifted apart, Maranta edging ahead of the phosphorescent blue splash, Gramine falling behind.
There had been no sign of their prey. Nor any proof to confirm the Lady Macbeth had survived her impact with the rings. No wreckage had been detected. Although it was a slim chance any ever would. If she had detonated when she hit, the blowout of her drive tubes’ escaping plasma would probably have vaporized most of her. And any fragments which did survive would have been flung over a huge area. The ring was eighty kilometres thick, enough volume to lose an entire squadron in.
They were further hindered by the way their energistically charged bodies interfered with on-board systems. Sensors already labouring at the limit of their resolution to try and unscramble the chaos suffered infuriating glitches and power surges, producing gaps in the overall coverage.
But the crews persevered. Debris was virtually impossible to locate, but an operating starship emitted heat, and electromagnetic impulses, and a strong magnetic flux. If she was there, they would find her eventually.
The soldier-caste vassals stayed with them until the hovercraft reached the top of the Coastuc-RT’s valley. More tumid rain-clouds were approaching fast from the east, borne by the obdurate breeze. Reza judged they should just about reach the other hovercraft by the time they arrived. Both land and sky ahead were grey. Northwards, the red cloud cast a dispiriting corona, looking for all the world as though magma was floating, light as thistledown, through the air.
“But why ?” Kelly demanded as soon as the soldiers were left behind. “You saw how well armed they were, we would have been safe there.”
“Firstly, Coastuc-RT is too close to the Juliffe basin. As your friend Shaun Wallace said, the cloud is spreading. It would reach the valley long before Joshua gets back. Secondly, that valley is tactical suicide. Anyone who gets onto the high ground above the village can simply bombard it into submission, or more likely destruction. There aren’t enough soldier and hunter vassals to keep the slopes clear. Right now Coastuc-RT is wide open to anything the possessed care to throw at it. And all the Tyrathca are doing to defend themselves is building giant effigies of spacegods and having a pray-in. We don’t need that kind of shit. By ourselves we stand a much better chance; we’re mobile and well armed. So tomorrow at first light we start doing exactly what Joshua said: we run for it, through the mountains.”
Violent rain made a mockery of the hovercraft’s blazing monochrome headlight beams, chopping them off after five or six metres. It obscured the moons, the red cloud, it damn near hid the drooping, defeated grass below the gunwale. The pilots navigated by guidance blocks alone. It took them forty minutes to retrace their route back to the first tower house above the river.
Sewell plugged a half-metre fission blade into his left elbow socket and confronted the blocked-up doorway. Water steamed and crackled as the blade came on. He placed the tip delicately against the wind-fretted cement, and pushed. The blade sank in, sending out a thick runnel of ginger sand which the rain smeared into the reeds at his feet. Relieved at how easy it was to cut, he started to slice down.
Kelly was fourth in. She stood in musty darkness shaking her arms and easing her cagoule hood back. “God, there’s as much water inside this cagoule as out. I’ve never known rain like this.”
“ ’Tis a bleak night, this one,” Shaun Wallace said behind her.
Reza stepped through the oval Sewell had cut, carrying two bulky equipment packs, TIP carbines slung over his shoulder. “Pat, Sal, check this place out.” Fenton and Ryall hurried in after their master, and immediately shook their coats, sending out a fountain of droplets.
“Great,” Kelly muttered. The blocks clipped to her broad belt were slippery with water. She wiped them ineffectually on her T-shirt. “Can I come with you, please?”
“Sure,” Pat said.
She turned the seal catch on her bag, and searched round until she found a light stick. Shadows fled away. Collins disapproved of infrared visuals unless absolutely unavoidable.
They were in a hall that ran the diameter of the tower. Archways led off into various rooms. A ramp at the far wall started to spiral upwards. Tyrathca didn’t, or couldn’t, use stairs, according to her didactic memory.
Pat and Sal Yong started down the hall, Kelly followed. She realized Shaun Wallace was a pace behind. He was back in his LDC jump suit. Completely dry, she noticed enviously. Her armour-suit trousers squelched as she walked.
“You don’t mind if I tag along, do you, Miss Kelly? I’ve never seen one of these places before.”
“No.”
“That Mr. Malin there, he’s a right one for doing things by the book. This place has been sealed up for years. What does he expect us to find?”