Текст книги "The Sundered"

Автор книги: Andy Mangels

Соавторы: Michael Martin
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PART 6

RAGE

Chapter 18

2169. Auld Greg Aerth Calendar

Watching from the concealment of a space-black shadow on Vangar’s rough-hewn exterior, Hanif Wafiyy took the point position at the head of the grapnel team. Securely tethered to the Rock by an impossibly slender cable—one of the more useful artifacts the People had taken from the pointy-eared raiders who had landed a generation or so back—he watched as the blocky, oblong ship approached, gradually matching its velocity to that of Vangar.

Hanif’s nose itched, but the faceplate of his p-suit precluded his doing anything about it. He tried to focus instead on whatever new horrors the alien vessel promised to bring among the People of ’Neal. Would the newcomers turn out to be more of those green-Wooded elves who’d once tried to chop the Rock into fragments for their ore ships?

Or maybe it’s another gang of Tuskers.He shuddered, though the suit’s e-controls maintained a constant comfortable temperature of eleven degrees see-grade.

Glancing over his shoulder, Hanif saw the great bejeweled dervish of the Milky Way Galaxy. The powerful centrifugal spin of the Vangar Rock spoke eloquently to his inner ear. He knew well that a snapped tether would send [226] him falling forever toward that brilliant assemblage of distant stars. He fought down a momentary surge of vertigo, reminding himself that he—and the rest of the ’Neal People he was sworn to defend—were over 64,000 pars’x from the blazing Milky Way’s closest spiral arm.

As were, more than likely, the nearest elves or Tuskers.

A quick, sharp jolt, transmitted along Vangar’s rock-andiron surface through his thick-soled boots, interrupted his musings. The alien ship had made contact with the Rock. The waiting had ended.

Good. Maybe we won’t have to stay out here in the hard-rod rain until all of our internal organs shut down.One of the serious drawbacks of life in the Lesser M’jallanish Cloud was the intense and constant wind of X rays, gamma rays, and high-energy neutrons that streamed outward from the densely packed stars at the cloud’s relatively nearby galactic core. Retrovirally delivered DNA recombinants had greatly ameliorated the problem since the ’Neal People’s arrival out in this cosmic hinterland, but enough high-rad exposure could still cook an unshielded Person from the inside out, and with dismaying swiftness. With luck, after the mission nobody on the team would need more than a liver transplant, or perhaps a few minor endocrine replacements. No sweat,Hanif thought. Now all we have to do is neutralize the invaders.

Using his p-suit-enshrouded tail, he tugged on his secondary tether, giving the “move” signal to the rest of the boarding team. He wasn’t going to risk breaking radio silence while the alien crew was in a position to intercept the team’s communications.

Leading the group out of the shadows, Hanif looked behind him. Gavin, Moira, and Safa had all emerged from the darkness, crawling like spiders along the permanent exterior safety rails. Without those rugged hand-, foot-, and tail-holds, they would all be catapulted away from the spinning [227] asteroid’s surface, a human meteor shower running in reverse.

The team got into position, not more than half a klomter away from where the vessel had moored itself. Thanks to the ship’s running lights, the p-suit’s night-vision enhancements, and his own genengineered visual acuity, Hanif could see the marauder ship in considerable detail. So far, he’d seen no sign that the invaders had observed the team’s approach. Using a theo’lite built into his helmet display, Hanif carefully gauged how much safety tether they would have to pay out as he computed the distance that the boarders would have to leap, using the asteroid’s spin to accelerate them toward the marauder vessel.

Recalling his training exercises, Hanif made the first jump, which was over almost before he realized it. His pneumatic crampons deployed flawlessly, retethering him to the rock before Vangar’s spin had an opportunity to fling him into space. Now he was only scant meters from the marauder ship.

Before continuing toward the alien vessel, Hanif took a few seconds to evaluate his condition, and that of his p-suit. He thought he might have sprained his right ankle during his landing, or perhaps even fractured it. The Genescience Heads need to build us better limbs,he thought wryly. Fortunately, his tail had taken the brunt of the impact, without compromising the integrity of his p-suit.

When he took stock of the rest of the team, however, he immediately saw that Gavin had not been so fortunate. His explosively decompressed corpse drifted from its tether like an obscene parody of one of the balloons the ’Neal technicians lofted through the high-grav exterior levels when tracking down slow atmospheric leaks.

Poor bastard,Hanif thought. Maybe someday the genengineers will make us Rock rats tough enough to survive even an accident like that. At least long enough to slap on a p-suit patch, or crawl into a Safety Hutch.

[228] With no small amount of difficulty, Hanif put all such thoughts out of his mind. There would be time to grieve later, once the threat posed by the aliens had been neutralized. Without ceremony, Hanif, Moira, and Safa each cut their tethers to their dead comrade, and Moira kicked the body loose. It quickly pinwheeled out of sight, slung away by Vangar’s relentless spin. Perhaps someday, Gavin would fall all the way back to the Milky Way and Auld Aerth.

The remainder of the team swarmed quickly across the marauder’s hull, holding themselves in place with magnetic grapnels. Hanif was sweating freely by the time they’d finished planting the shaped explosive charges into what appeared to be the vessel’s most prominent hatches and key structural points.

When Safa started to sabotage what appeared to be an external engine strut, Hanif pulled on the tether that connected them.

He shook his head when she looked toward him. He was well aware that Director al-Adnan had ordered the alien vessel “completely crippled and neutralized.” However, as leader of the boarding team, he also knew that it was up to him to interpret the director’s orders. Out on the Rock, where death could and often did strike without warning, Hanif was the one in charge. And demolishing what might turn out to be a completely functional Efti’el spacedrive—especially after the ’Neal People had failed to develop one of their own after more than a century of albeit intermittent attempts—struck Hanif as an utterly unconscionable waste.

Al-Adnan wouldn’t have put me in charge of this op if he didn’t trust my judgment. He can always order me and the marauder’s engines spaced if he’s really unhappy about this acquisition. But if he tries that, the Science Heads just might slice his throat from ear to ear and hand the little mullah’s job over to me.

Two tether-tugs from Moira told Hanif that all was in [229] readiness. Using his tail, he pulled on the line three times in response. Go!

The trio leapt clear of the hull again. After landing, Hanif was sure that his sprained ankle must now surely be broken. But there wasn’t any time to think of that. The pain was intense, but manageable. He relied on the suit’s servomotors to keep him walking as the final explosives were put into place and the remote-control keypad booted and ran through its initialization procedures.

The explosions were silent, though the ship’s hull transmitted their vibrations through the asteroid’s skin. Hanif felt the percussive rumbles in his hands and feet, as though Van-gar had suddenly begun shivering in the icy, neverending M’jallanish night.

Hanif looked at the ship, whose hull now showed deep rents and gashes. Clouds of atmosphere were venting, swiftly transforming into tumbling ice crystals that moved away, projectilelike, following the same course that Gavin’s corpse had taken.

He touched the sealed holster strapped to his thigh. The elfish energy weapon was still where he’d left it. With his other hand, he found his chest controls and keyed open the boarding team’s preselected radio channel.

“Let’s move, people,” he said, finally breaking radio silence. “I’m taking point. We kill whatever still moves in there.”

After entering the ship, Hanif was almost disappointed. They had found a total of thirteen of the squat, three-limbed creatures aboard the alien vessel, eleven of whom had already been finished off by the explosives-generated hull breaches before the team had even come aboard.

Stepping over the messily decompressed corpses, Hanif led Safa and Moira into a large aft chamber. Hanif surmised that this was the alien vessel’s engine room, judging by the glowing central structure, a four-mitr-tall semitransparent [230] cylinder which pulsated with mysterious, blue-tinted energies.

Here they also found the vessel’s two survivors. They were small, cowering things dressed in yellow pressure suits, creatures whose faces sported a pair of fist-sized, golden eyes, bordered by tufts of luxuriant white fur.

Hanif saw their complicated mouthparts moving repeatedly, but evidently wasn’t tuned to whatever comm frequency they were using. In the airless room, the creatures made no sound. They might have been trying to sue for peace, or beg for their lives, or even threaten the team.

Or they might have been trying to buy time, waiting for an opportunity to turn the tables on their victims-turned-captors. Hanif unholstered his weapon and shot one of the beings through the chest. Its thick orange blood flowed, sublimating immediately into vapor in the vacuum.

Safer to assume they’re all Tuskers,Hanif thought. Given half a chance, they’d do the same to us, and take everything we have. Including our lives.

The second creature looked terrified, and tried to flee. Safa knocked it down with her tail before it had moved a handful of mitrs away. But she hesitated after that, as though wavering in her purpose.

Then Moira stepped forward and shot the thing dead with three bursts from a lead-projectile pistol.

Hanif found that he couldn’t take his eyes off the blue-glowing cylinder at the room’s center. He wondered if it was the power plant or engine core that enabled these aliens to reach Vangar. They would have needed a truly potent energy source to cross the great gulf of interstellar space that separated the Rock from even the nearest star.

Then he noticed Safa, staring down at the motionless bodies of thé two aliens. Her tail lay limply across the floor, like a coil of discarded EV tether.

Hanif touched his radio controls. “What’s wrong, Safa?”

[231] “Did we ...” she hesitated. “Did we do the right thing here, Han?”

He sighed. “What on the Rock are you talking about?”

“These ... creatures,” she said, pointing down at the body nearest to her. “They’re not exactly Tuskers, are they?”

“No, Safa. But they could have turned out to be something far worse. Fortunately, that’s no longer a problem.”

“Unless their people start sending out rescue teams. Or war parties.”

Tucking her weapon back into its holster, Moira approached Safa. “If that happens, we’ll be ready for them.”

Hanif resumed watching the roiling energies contained within the tall blue cylinder. “Our dead visitors may have already given us the solution to that problem. But if that thing really is an Efti’el spacedrive, I wonder how they survived the acceleration.”

Moira shrugged. “Maybe they have some way to manipulate gravity and inertia locally.”

Hanif nodded, and an idea came to him. Pointing to his booted feet, he said, “We’re upside-down.”

“Sorry?” Safa said.

“This ship’s belly is moored to the Rock. And we’re walking around insidethe ship’s belly. Because of Vangar’s spin, that way,” he pointed at the deck plating, “should be up.”

Moira grinned, understanding. “And I thought I was just having an attack of vertigo when I came through the hatch.” She knelt on one knee and carefully pried up a mitr-square deck plate with her gauntleted hands.

She placed the deck plate against a nearby bulkhead, holding it steady with one hand and her tail. With her free hand, she removed a small spanner from her suit’s utility kit and held it parallel to the deck plate. Then she released the spanner.

The tool “fell” sideways, coming to rest against the deck plate.

[232] Hanif felt his eyebrows launch themselves toward higher orbits. Spinless artificial gravity!

He touched his suit’s radio controls again. “Wafiyy to Director al-Adnan.”

After a beat, the director’s voice crackled into Hanif’s helmet. “What’s happening over there, Hanif? Are the hostiles neutralized?”

“All dead, Director. We lost only Gavin.”

The director hesitated another moment before responding. “Gavin. That’s ... unfortunate.”

Hanif smiled, but without any humor. Unfortunate, you mean, that the sole casualty on this mission wasn’t me. Do you really fear that I’ll take your job?He could remember a time when al-Adnan had been more concerned with protecting the ’Neal People than with maintaining the trappings of authority.

Hanif decided then that what the director feared most was change in general. And that made al-Adnan a most dangerous man to follow, especially in an environment where survival depended upon the ability to adapt quickly to the universe’s random exigencies.

“Is there anything, else?”al-Adnan added, sounding impatient.

Get ready to adapt to the future, Director,Hanif thought. Lead, follow, or get the hell out of its way.

Aloud, Hanif said, “Tell the Science Heads we’re bringing back some things that will keep everyone in Vangar busy for decades.” Then he cut off the transmission without waiting for the director’s reply.

Hanif stared once again into pulsating depths of the enigmatic blue cylinder. Standing quietly beside him, Safa and Moira were doing likewise.

Maybe we won’t have to sit around waiting for the universe to come after us much longer. Perhaps the time has come for us to start pursuing it.

Chapter 19

2204, Auld Greg Aerth Calendar

“In composition, mass, and atmosphere, it looks very much like Aerth, sir,” the control deck’s officer of the watch said. “And that’s a rare thing, with all the hard rads flying about in this corner of the cosmos.”

Drech’tor Hanif Wafiyy nodded. He sat back in his padded chair, feeling every one of his eighty-four Aerth-years, as lifespans were still measured within Vangar. The plates of coarse flesh that interleaved across the small of his back ached. He reminded himself to adjust the gravity in his quarters yet again.

Eighty-four years,he thought, gazing at the great blue world displayed in the wide viewer. We must still reckon time that way because even now our hearts hunger for a home like the one our Oh-Neyel fathers and mothers remembered.

Hanif lost himself in the sunlit swirls of blue and white. Such a world could provide practically endless supplies of whatever Vangar needed, everything from food to the raw materials to build new Elfive worlds—or even entire navies of weapon-bristled star-vessels. During the generations since Hanif had acquired the machinery that had eventually given the People of Neyel mastery of both the stars and gravity, the [234] fact that such a place lay at the bottom of a steep, Aerthlike gravity well now posed no serious difficulties.

Rather, their main problem had been exactly as the officer of the watch had framed it—the finding of such a world. Habitable planets were rare baubles indeed in the cauldron of violence that comprised the local stellar group, so far distant from the Great Pinwheel wherein Ancient Aerth lay forever lost.

“Prepare to dispatch survey expeditions,” the drech’tor said. “I will require a complete inventory of this world’s usable resources as soon as possible.”

The officer of the watch nodded, his tough gray hide rasping against itself as he passed Hanif’s order down to one of the sergeants, a female who had lost her tail to an EV accident a few months earlier. The new limb seemed to be growing back nicely.

The sergeant hesitated.

Hanif lofted his thick brows. “Is there a problem?”

She took another moment to find her voice. “The ... the world beneath us seems already to be inhabited by sentients.”

The drech’tor frowned. He suddenly realized that he hadn’t given that possibility sufficient thought. It had been so long since any alien species had posed any serious challenge to the Neyel People as they used their Efti’el technology to move Vangar wherever they willed in M’jallanish Space ...

“What level of attainment have these sentients reached?” Hanif wanted to know.

“The long-range probes showed evidence of cities, as well as heavy industries and their burnings. Iron foundries and the like. Apparently wet navies sail on their oceans.”

“Have they space vessels? Orbital defenses?”

The sergeant shook her head. “No evidence of such. Nor have we detected any nukes, or even telecom activity.”

Hanif recalled a descriptive term he’d encountered long ago in one of the Elder texts: Iron Age.

The officer of the watch bared his teeth in a war-grin that [235] would have done an older, more properly blooded officer proud. His tail switched back and forth as though in anticipation of the battle to come. “When do we attack?”

The drech’tor adjusted himself in his seat, relieving his aching back. He had been thinking the same thing himself, when a more subtle idea occurred to him.

“Not right away,” Hanif said, returning the younger Neyel’s grin.

“Are we not to send out the survey vessels then?” the injured sergeant said, looking confused.

“Send them,” said Hanif. “Let us learn the hearts of these indigies first. We may be able to help them even as we enjoy their world’s bounty. Such largesse from us could win considerable gratitude from them.”

The officer of the watched looked stunned, as though he’d just borne witness to an unspeakable heresy. “Sir? I must respectfully remind the drech’tor that the makings of an empire are down there, awaiting us. We can put those resources to far better use than can the backward indigies.”

Ah, impertinent, stupid youth.

Drech’tor Hanif Wafiyy leaned forward and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. “Exactly so. And who better to construct such an empire for us than the multitudes who already populate its provinces?”

“How long has it been since the aliens landed on the lawn of the Deliberative Althing, Wataryn? Fifteen years?” g’Isen wanted to know.

Présider Wataryn considered his trusted advisor’s question in silence. Long enough for the Neyel to have raised great numbers of their ilk in their enclaves all around the planet.

G’Isen, ever the apologist for the newcomers, was apparently just warming up. “Presider, when will you finally accept that the Neyel may be exactly what they seem to be?”

[236] What special covert promises have the Neyel made to you, g’Isen? Wealth? Guarantees of star travel for your younglings?

Wataryn turned his back on g’Isen, moving toward the wide window that encircled his office. Glass, the Oghen people’s Neyel benefactors had called the clear, thin, silicate stuff. The substance had been unknown on Oghen before the coming of the Neyel. Even now, the aliens continued teaching the people how to create still more exotic construction materials.

After the First Landings, the world had begun to change virtually overnight. And Wataryn had been uneasy ever since the day the ancient Neyel chief had come to Oghen bearing his so-called Proclamation of Friendship and Understanding.

Wataryn looked out at MechulakCity’s ever-changing skyline. In the distance, great plumes of thick, black smoke rose in columns like the legs of mythical colossi.

“The Neyel foul our air and water far faster than ever we did before their coming,” Wataryn said, casting several of his eyes skyward. “And they take much back with them into their Skyworld.”

“It could be as they say,” g’Isen said. “Merely the price of progress. But examine what we’ve gotten from them in return for what they ask of us, Presider. Before the Neyel, we could not even adequately feed ourselves. Nor could we do aught to ward off disease. The Neyel have not only put paid to those ills, but they also promise us the stars.”

“But can they deliver on that promise?” Will they deliver on that promise?

“The Neyel canply the space between the stars. Their starcraft demonstrate the truth of it.”

Starcraft our foundries now manufacture for them in great numbers,Wataryn thought, his stomachs rumbling as his distress mounted. His dual-thumbed hooves clattered on the floor as he’ turned to regard his advisor.

“And haven’t they also given you the office of Presider?” g’Isen continued before Wataryn could speak.

[237] Wataryn chuckled at that as he chewed on the tough flap of skin that covered his lips. He had worried it and tugged on it so often during the last two years that it now hung down nearly as far as the dewlap that dangled beneath his neck. What have I done to really question the Neyel and their oh-so-altruistic behavior? When have I ever publicly asked whatthey get out of their great munificence?

“I suppose they did well to back such a compliant leader,” Wataryn finally said aloud, despising himself for his weakness and timidity. “It would do no good to oppose beings so mighty and benevolent that the people treat them almost as gods.”

The chamber’s heavy door opened with a loud crash. In the threshold stood an office clerk, whose forehooves banged together nervously. Beside the clerk stood a tall, aggressive-looking Neyel who wore a simple black coverall which bore scores of military-looking decorations. The hard-skinned being’s slate-gray tail clutched at the door’s ornate bonetree handle, then slammed the door closed.

The clerk’s dewlap quivered when he spoke. “One of our Neyel b-benefactors wishes to see you, Presider.”

Wataryn nearly laughed aloud at the ridiculous obviousness of the clerk’s comment. “Yes. Yes, I can see that,” he said, trying to gather his dignity about him. He was surprised that he, too, wasn’t shaking. Being in close proximity to Neyel had always made him nervous.

“Drech’tor Hanif Wafiyy is dead,” the Neyel announced, his voice like thunder.

Wataryn had dreaded this moment ever since he’d first learned of the drech’tor’s great age and fragility. “That is sad news, indeed,” he said. It was no secret to Wataryn that many of the ancient drech’tor’s underlings had far less beneficent intentions toward Oghen and its people.

“And who succeeds the august Wafiyy in ruling the Great Stone Skyworld?” Wataryn continued, already dreading the answer.

[238] The Neyel drew a lethal-looking blade in one great, clawed hand and unholstered a massive pistol with the other.

“That need not concern either you or the rest of the Oghen cattle,” the creature said, its hard face somehow contorting into a vicious sneer. “Your continued service to the Neyel is all that need occupy your attention from this moment forward.”

At that, Wataryn finally did laugh aloud, while g’Isen and the clerk watched him with puzzlement written large across their faces. A perverse sense of relief flooded him, and the horrific tension in his stomachs abated somewhat.

At last, we are slaves in name as well as in fact.