Her main battery had been ripped out to make room for life support equipment, her magazines emptied to hold seeds and seedlings they might never find soil to support. She retained her anti-missile defenses, though their effectiveness had become suspect over the years, but not a single offensive weapon. Captain Jarmahn had made that decision at the very beginning, electing to gut Starquest’s weapons while his own Sunheart retained hers. It would be Sunheart’s task to protect the refugee ships, including Starquest, and she’d done just that until the flotilla approached too near to a dead Human world. Tharsk didn’t know what the Humans had called it—it had only a catalog number in Starquest’s astrogation database—but the task force which had attacked it had done its job well. The sensors had told the tale from a light-hour out, but there’d been too much wreckage in orbit. Captain Jarmahn had gone in close with Sunheart, seeking any salvage which might be gleaned from it, and the last automated weapons platform of the dead planet had blown his ship out of space.
And so Tharsk had found himself in command of all the People who still existed. Oh, there might be other isolated pockets somewhere, for the Empire had been vast, but any such pockets could be neither many nor large, for the Human killer teams had done their task well, too. Tharsk could no longer count the dead planets he’d seen, Human and Melconian alike, and every morning he called the Nameless Four to curse the fools on both sides who had brought them all to this.
“You’ve confirmed your estimates?” he asked Durak Na-Khorul, and Starquest’s engineer flicked his ears in bitter affirmation.
“I know we had no choice, Commander, but that last jump was simply too much for the systems. We’re good for one more—max. We may lose one or two of the transports even trying that, but most of us should make it. After that, though?” He flattened his ears and bared his canines in a mirthless challenge grin.
“I see.” Tharsk sat back in his chair and ran a finger down the worn upholstery of one arm. Durak was young—one of the pups born since the war—but he’d been well trained by his predecessor. Not that it takes a genius to know our ships are falling apart about us, Tharsk told himself grimly, then inhaled deeply and looked to Rangar Na-Sorth, Starquest’s astrogator and his own second in command.
“Is there a possible world within our operational radius?”
“There were three, before the War,” Rangar replied. “Now?” He shrugged.
“Tell me of them,” Tharsk commanded. “What sorts of worlds were they?”
“One was a major industrial center,” Rangar said, scanning the data on the flatscreen before him. “Population something over two billion.”
“That one will be gone,” one of Tharsk’s other officers muttered, and the commander flicked his own ears in grim assent as Rangar went on.
“The other two were farm worlds of no particular strategic value. As you know, Commander,” the astrogator smiled thinly, “this entire region was only sparsely settled.”
Tharsk flicked his ears once more. Rangar had argued against bringing the flotilla here, given the dangerously long jump it had demanded of their worn drives, but Tharsk had made the decision. The fragments of information Sunheart and Starquest had pulled from the dying com nets suggested that the Humans had reached this portion of what had been the Empire only in the war’s final months, and the flotilla had spent decades picking through the wreckage nearer the heart of the realm. Every planet it had approached, Human or of the People, had been dead or, far worse, still dying, and Tharsk had become convinced there was no hope among them. If any imperial worlds had survived, this was the most likely—or, he corrected, the least unlikely—place to find them.
He punched the button to transfer the contents of Rangar’s screen to his own. The image flickered, for this equipment, too, was failing at last, but he studied the data for several minutes, then tapped a clawed forefinger against the flatscreen.
“This one,” he said. “It lies closest to us and furthest from the Humans’ probable line of advance into this sector. We’ll go there—to Ishark.”
3
Jackson leaned back in the saddle, and Samson obediently slowed, then stopped as they topped the ridge. The stallion was of Old Earth Morgan ancestry, with more than a little genetic engineering to increase his life span and intelligence, and he was as happy as Jackson to be away from the fields. Samson didn’t exactly object to pulling a plow, since he grasped the link between cultivated fields and winter fodder, but he wasn’t as well suited to the task as, say, Florence, the big, placid Percheron mare. Besides, he and Jackson had been a team for over five local years. They both enjoyed the rare days when they were turned loose to explore, and exploration was more important for Deveraux Steading than most of the others.
Deveraux was the newest and furthest west of all Ararat’s settlements. It was also small, with a current population of only eighty—one Humans and their animals, but it had excellent water (more than enough for irrigation if it turned out Doc Yan’s prediction was inaccurate after all, Jackson thought smugly) and rich soil. Nor did it hurt, he thought even more smugly, that the Deveraux Clan tended to produce remarkably good-looking offspring. The steading attracted a steady enough trickle of newcomers that Rorie could afford to be picky about both professional credentials and genetic diversity, despite the fact that it was less than twenty kilometers from one of the old battle sites.
That was what brought Jackson and Samson out this direction. Before her shuttles gave up the ghost, Commodore Perez had ordered an aerial survey of every battlefield within two thousand kilometers of Landing to map radiation threats, check for bio hazards, and—perhaps most importantly of all—look very, very carefully for any sign of still active combat equipment. They’d found some of it, too. Three of Shem’s shuttles had been blown apart by an automated Melconian air-defense battery, and they’d also turned up eight operable Human armored troop carriers and over two dozen unarmored Melconian transport skimmers. Those had been—and still were—invaluable as cargo vehicles, but the very fact that they’d remained operational after forty-odd standard years underscored the reason the old battle sites made people nervous: if they were still functional, the surveys might have missed something else that was.
No one wanted to disturb anything which could wreak the havoc that had destroyed both Ararat’s original inhabitants and their attackers, yet Commodore Perez had known it would be impossible for Ararat’s growing human population to stay clear of all the battlefields. There were too many of them, spread too widely over Ararat’s surface, for that, so she’d located her first settlement with what appeared to have been the primary Human LZ on this continent between it and the areas where the Melconians had dug in. Hopefully, anything that might still be active here would be of Human manufacture and so less likely to kill other Humans on sight.
Unfortunately, no one could be sure things would work out that way, which was why Jackson was here. He pulled off his hat to mop his forehead while he tried to convince himself—and Samson—the sight below didn’t really make him nervous, but the way the horse snorted and stamped suggested he wasn’t fooling Samson any more than himself. Still, this was what they’d come to explore, and he wiped the sweatband of his hat dry, replaced it on his head almost defiantly, and sent Samson trotting down the long, shallow slope.
At least sixty standard years had passed since the war ended on Ararat, and wind and weather had worked hard to erase its scars, yet they couldn’t hide what had happened here. The hulk of a Human Xenophon- class transport still loomed on its landing legs, towering hull riddled by wounds big enough for Jackson to have ridden Samson through, and seven more ships—six Xenophons and a seventh whose wreckage Jackson couldn’t identify—lay scattered about the site. They were even more terribly damaged than their single sister who’d managed to stay upright, and the ground itself was one endless pattern of overlapping craters and wreckage.
Jackson and Samson picked their way cautiously into the area. This was his fifth visit, but his inner shiver was still cold as he studied the broken weapons pits and personnel trenches and the wreckage of combat and transport vehicles. The only way to positively certify the safety of this site was to physically explore it, and getting clearance from Rorie and Colony Admin had been hard. His earlier explorations had skirted the actual combat zone without ever entering it, but this time he and Samson would make their way clear across it, straight down its long axis… and if nothing jumped out and ate them, the site would be pronounced safe.
He grinned nervously at the thought which had seemed much more amusing before he set out this morning and eased himself in the saddle. Some of his tension had relaxed, and he leaned forward to pat Samson’s shoulder as he felt fresh confidence flow into him.
