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
“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?”
“We won’t know till we look, will we?” she said coyly.
“Why, Miss Kelly, I do believe you’re running me a ragged circle.”
The house was intriguing: strange furniture, and startlingly human utensils. But there was little technology, the builders had obviously been given instructions on how to utilize wood. They were excellent carpenters.
Rain drummed on the walls, adding to the sense of isolation and displacement as they mounted the ramp. Vassal castes had their own rooms; Kelly wasn’t sure if they could be called stables. Some rooms, for the soldiers, she guessed, had furniture. There was only a thin layer of dust. It was as though the tower had been set aside rather than abandoned. Given her current circumstances, it wasn’t the most reassuring of thoughts. The neural nanonics drank it all in.
They found the first bodies on the second floor. Three housekeeper castes (the same size as a farmer), five hunters, and four soldiers. Desiccation had turned them into creased leather mummies. She wanted to touch one, but was afraid it would crumble to dust.
“They’re just sitting there, look,” Shaun Wallace said in a tamed voice. “There’s no food anywhere near them. They must have been waiting to die.”
“Without the breeders, they are nothing,” Pat said.
“Even so, ’tis a terrible thing. Like those old Pharaohs who had all their servants in their tombs with them.”
“Were there any Tyrathcan souls in the beyond?” Kelly asked.
Shaun Wallace paused at the bottom of the ramp to the third floor, his brow crinkling. “Now there’s a thing. I don’t think there were. Or at least, I never came across one.”
“Different afterworld, perhaps,” Kelly said.
“If they have one. They seem heathen creatures to me. Perhaps the Good Lord didn’t see fit to give them souls.”
“But they have a god. Their own god.”
“Do they now?”
“Well, they’re hardly likely to have Jesus or Allah, are they? Not human messiahs.”
“Ah, you’re a smart one, Miss Kelly. I take my hat off to you. I’d never have thought of that in a million years.”
“It’s a question of environment and upbringing. I’m used to thinking in these terms. I’d be lost in your century.”
“Oh, I can’t see that. Not at all.”
There were more vassal-caste bodies on the third floor. The two breeders were together on the fourth.
“Do they have love, these beasties?” Shaun Wallace asked, looking down at them. “They look like they do, to me. Dying together is romantic, I think. Like Romeo and Juliet.”
Kelly ran her tongue round her cheeks. “You didn’t strike me as the Shakespeare type.”
“Now don’t you go writing me off so quickly, you with your classy education. I’m a man of hidden depths, I am, Miss Kelly.”
“Did you ever meet anyone famous in the beyond?” Pat asked.
“Meeting!” He wrung his hands together with fulsome drama. “You’re talking about the beyond as if it’s some kind of social gathering. Lords and ladies spending the evening together over fine wine and a game of bridge. It’s not like that, Mr. Halahan, not at all.”
“But did you?” the mercenary scout persisted. “You were there for centuries. There must have been someone important.”
