Resolution (78 page)

For a moment Tom lay there, cocooned.

Then the morphglass rippled, pulled away from him, dissolved. It left him face-down in long grass, the woody soil-scent filling his nostrils.

First things first.

Slowly, he rolled onto his side - not wanting to present a silhouette by standing upright - and pulled at his jumpsuit’s fastening, and urinated as quietly as he could. Then he adjusted himself, and crawled forward on forearm and knees until he reached dark undergrowth and raised himself to a kneeling position.

Someone tapped Tom’s shoulder.

Enemy?
Adrenaline jolted through his system.

‘
Warlord.’
The whisper was close to his ear.

Tom tapped Ankestion’s shoulder in reply.

It took three hours to make the rendezvous, at a stony outcrop overlooking a deep valley. The bugs’ drop pattern had spaced out their landing positions in a precise arc centred on this point. Following the protocol, the clone-warriors gathered in twos and threes - as Ankestion Raglok had rendezvoused with Tom - then proceeded to the central rdv.

But when Tom counted identical purple faces, only thirteen pairs of green eyes shone back at him. One of the warriors leaned close to Ankestion and whispered. Ankestion nodded, then crawled over to Tom.

‘Zakedion didn’t make it.’ He kept his voice to a low whisper.

‘Did the—?’

‘The bug dissolved. Too soon, but it dissolved.’

Which meant there would be no traces left in the open. That at least was good.

‘And the body?’ Tom had to ask.

‘Disposed of.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Ankestion Raglok did not reply. He looked up at the horizon, now touched with pale turquoise. Fewer stars were visible.

He made a patting gesture with one gloved hand.

Moving as one, in silence, the clone-warriors and Tom dispersed, crawling across the ground. It took only a hillock or even just a thick clump of grass to break up a prone man’s profile. Each man unwrapped chameleoflage from his thigh pouch, spread the gossamer-thin sheet over himself, and settled down.

They would wait unmoving until it was night once more. Both bead cameras and human beings could be equipped to see in darkness, but as a matter of course they were not. Tom and the clone-warriors needed every small advantage.

As the sky lightened to a smoky amber against pale grey, Tom’s breathing became almost imperceptible, and he slid into logosophical trance.

General Ygran had designed the approach phase, using techniques proved during Academy missions when Corduven was in charge. The required personal attributes were based on the ultra-hard endurance training that elite squadrons underwent: emphasizing patient determination and a capacity for sneakiness. A notice in the recruiting colonel’s office declared:
He-men and heroes need not apply.

Ankestion Raglok and his clone-brothers fit the profile exactly. So did Tom Corcorigan.

It’s time.

As darkness descended and the stars became diamond points, fourteen figures rose and slipped across the nightbound land like shadows.

~ * ~

MU-SPACE AD 2166 - 2301

[14]

Ro’s ship hung off Vachss Station, drifting in orbit around Vijaya, the Haxigoji homeworld. There was an awful fuss ongoing in the station, to do with a return visit from Rekka Chandri, the UNSA solo observer who had made first contact. That time, she had involved herself in the indigenous culture in a major way. Her return visit, as far as station staff were concerned, was controversial.

The chattering local newsNet, lively even for a community of two hundred opinionated researchers, was full of analyses and contradictory predictions of the continuing intellectual rise - or possibly the imminent decline - of the intelligent native species, who had leaped from something like a Babylonian culture to medieval Renaissance in two short decades.

‘Interesting.’ Chalou was using an ear-plug, browsing audio.
‘Cannibalism.
That’s a new one.’

‘What?’ Ro was immersed in feedback displays.

‘No matter. Just filling in the gaps that old public news items managed to gloss over.’

The pod which Ro had abandoned and then retrieved from mu-space was now aboard the station, clamped inside a docking bay. Remote view showed station medics wheeling passenger couches from the open pod: taking them to med-wards where autodocs would revive them. Other passengers were staggering out: some by themselves, others leaning on station staff who had come to assist.

‘Breaks up the monotonous routine,’ murmured Ro.

‘Are they safely onboard?’ said Chalou.

‘No disasters yet. Looks like eight of them have gone to the med-wards, which matches the pod’s log. The same eight folk. Deep-drugged to hell.’

‘Hell is what they’ll raise when they wake up,
amiral.’

‘What can I say, Claude?
Merde alors.
I should’ve taken a different geodesic.’

Relativistic effects were even more pronounced in mu-space than in realspace. Ro’s chosen route had maximized time dilation, while minimizing the subjective duration. A gentler trajectory might have been easier on her passengers’ constitutions.

After Ro’s firing on the Zajinet interloper over the Arizona base, UNSA controllers would already be backtracking, trying to calculate her movements since her previous official stop on Ganymede. The fact of her little side-voyages could not remain a secret. But so long as their purpose and destination remained hidden, Ro would weather the political storm.

Zajinets tried to kill my son.

The action had been too fast for Ro to determine whether it was Dirk or Kian aboard the ship that lay vulnerable on the runway. The Zajinet had been already setting up its strafing run when she inserted into real-space -
almost too late:
the thought caused her to tremble yet again - and there had been no time for communication.

Perhaps they had both been aboard.

‘Are you all right, Ro? You fired on a ship.’

‘A Zajinet ship. And they were asking for it.’

‘Obviously. But why? Why would they attack a Pilot?’

‘
I don’t know.
I... No-one does.’

Chalou nodded, and returned to browsing the station’s newsNet.