The Karasor Page 13

  None of them were wearing uniforms and their hair was long and tied back. They bobbed their heads in welcome. They smiled at him and then turned back to their work.

  Durgah stood up, “So, this is the Shōgun’s son,” he said.

  “And my cousin,” said Kruvak. “But more importantly: our photographer.”

  “What does Subarsi say about him?”

  “He stood by him at the initiation.”

  The navigator tried not to look too surprised, “He did?”

  “He did,” Kruvak smiled at his lieutenant’s confusion.

  “A rare honour,” Durgah said, looking at Narikin again. He had long sideburns, shaved to a point and his hair was tied-up on top of his head. As he stared, Narikin felt his courage withering away.

  Then he gave him a nod and turned back to his captain, “We’re ready to leave.”

  “Good; send the team down to the curtain and let’s get started.”

  Kruvak sat down in his chair and Narikin, forgotten for the moment, stayed by the stairs and looked around. He was surprised at how small and cluttered the space was. Apart from the piles of maps by Durgah’s chair and the almanacs and reference books stacked between the thick mullions of the window at the front, there were also lots of personal items, on the desks beside the switches, buttons and dials; keepsakes from home and their travels. He spotted a glass orb from Xramaria, a flowering shrub from Kleinia. There was a threadbare rug on the iron deck and cushions on the seats. There was an empty cup beside the captain’s chair and a dozen other bits and pieces he hadn’t expected to see on a warship’s bridge.

  They closed the pressure doors and the crew sat at their stations making final checks before they departed Awa.

  “Narikin,” said Jamadar. “Climb into the observer’s chair and keep watch.”

  Pleased to serve, Narikin stepped up onto the higher platform and hauled himself into the chair hanging under the dome. Jamadar handed him the leather helmet with earphones and a microphone.

  “If you see anything we should know about, press the button before you speak. And don’t spin about in the chair or the wire will tangle you up.” He plugged the helmet into a socket and Narikin heard the voices of the bridge crew speaking below.

  Since he’d been talking to Kruvak and looking around his workroom, the arc-lights had been brought in and the cave was dark. He saw a slit of white appear in the distance as a curtain was drawn back to reveal the exit. He heard Jamadar order the bridge lights to be switched to red and Kruvak told Querl to take the ship forwards slowly.

  With mounting excitement, Narikin watched the exit grow bigger. A few seconds later, they flew out of the cave and paused to wait for the team to close the curtain behind them. Narikin turned the chair around and saw great sheets of cloth, painted to match the side of the mountain, close together and the launch carrying the team hurry to catch up. It disappeared under the tail of the ship and then they were moving again, away from the grey surface of the sea and up into the low clouds. A minute later, they broke through the atmosphere and entered the vacuum of space.

  13 - Tenrec

  It took the Kyzyl Kum two days to reach Tenrec. Narikin prepared his darkroom for the work to come; he laid out his tools so he could find them easily when the light was off and moved the table closer to the sink. He made sure the chemicals and the developing trays were in the right order. He put more film in his camera and made sure the lens was clean.

  He tried his best not to get lost when he ventured into the rest of the ship but failed more often than he succeeded. The first time he tried to find the mess-hall on ‘D’ Deck, he found himself in the hangar bay instead. On his return journey, he took another wrong turn and ended up in a storeroom full of camouflage netting and hawsers.

  Fortunately, Pall appeared to show him the way back to his cabin. It occurred to Narikin later that Kruvak had probably asked the steward to keep an eye on their new recruit.

  Not only was Kyzyl Kum’s mess-hall tiny (it was not even as big as the servants’ refectory back home), it had a very different atmosphere too. There was no formality; officers and crew sat together. The ceiling was low and the tables and benches, arranged in two rows, were close together. Like the wardroom, the walls were covered in trophies and memorabilia; parts from ships, flags and pictures painted in a dozen different styles. Sayings and poetry had been written on the beams in human languages as well as Pentī.

  The humans were a cheerful bunch, he discovered; they sang songs at dinner and told jokes that he didn’t really understand. They were very different from his people, less bothered by traditions and appearances.

  They were curious too and wouldn’t let him eat alone but made him sit with them. They asked questions about his father and life on Kimidori that none of his people would have dared.

  “What’s the Shogun like?”

  “Is he short or tall?”

  “Has the palace got a swimming pool?”

  Narikin answered as best he could.

  “What made you decide to run away?” one of them asked.

  “I’ve lived on an island all of my life; I wanted to see more of Evigone.”

  “But you had everything you could have wanted...?”

  “Except freedom...”

  They nodded and agreed it was a price worth paying.

  “You must have been very bored,” said a Pentī gunner.

  “I had my hobbies and my dog, Tosa.”

  “I had a dog once,” said a human. “What kind was he?”

  “A big one – I don’t know what you would call the breed but he was meant to guard me. He’s too fat to do much guarding now – he sleeps most of the day and chews my shoes at night.”

  Unexpectedly, his audience laughed and thought it was a great joke.

  He spent the rest of his time under the observation dome staring at the infinite beauty of the Third Sphere. Kruvak had ordered Querl to fly as close to the Great Barrier as possible, far below the normal plane. It was a magical place; bright greens from scattered ions filled the space around them, curling and rolling like cloth in a breeze, twisting up towards the solar spheres above, boiling on the boundary below. After his first watch, he found he still saw them, both in his eyes and in his dreams while he slept soundly in his bunk.

  But the crew didn’t share his enthusiasm for flying so close to the barrier. It was not a good place to be, they said; it was full of the spirits of the lost and ought to be avoided. To them, the green curtains were not phenomena created by the laws of physics but supernatural and full of dread.

  However, as they crossed the border, nobody questioned the captain’s reasons; to encounter the dead was one thing but to be confronted by the physical reality of a Rickobite cruiser was another. Better to stay underneath them than meet them head-on.

  The spirals of energy caused their instruments to become confused and their sight of the stars above was almost lost. It was down to Durgah’s navigation skills, dead-reckoning with a stop-watch and a close-eye on the ship’s internal compass, that they found Tenrec exactly where he said it would be.

  “Now comes the difficult part,” said Kruvak to the crew. “You must wait here quietly while I take the scout and our photographer to Tenrec. We didn’t come here to fight and the longer the ship remains undiscovered, the more chance we will have of gathering the evidence we need. If the Rickobites are breeding new monsters to let loose on the Third Sphere, our job is to warn our people as quickly as we can. We know some of these creatures have left the planet already. It is important to find out how many may be out there rather than kill the ones that have been left behind.”

  To Jamadar, he added, “If it becomes necessary, take the ship back across the border and we’ll rendezvous on Awa later.”

  “Yes, Captain - Gader has packed provisions in the scout just in case.”

  Narikin went to his cabin to collect his camera. Then he followed Kruvak down to the hangar. Quassin was there to see them off, as was Gader, the
Boat Master in charge of the scouts. The latter was a small man in a crumpled cap and a uniform jacket that had seen better days. He bowed to Narikin and gave him a cheerful smile, “Chef Huldi has made you a pie for the journey - I have put it in a box under your seat along with sandwiches and a flask of tea.”

  “They’re not going on a picnic,” grumbled Quassin.

  “Thank you, Gader,” said Kruvak climbing onto the wing and into the cockpit. “Tell Chef Huldi the pie is welcome and tell him to bake another for our return.”

  “I wish we were coming with you, Captain,” said the Sword Master.

  “We won’t be long.”

  Quassin didn’t look happy but bowed his head. “Good luck,” he added before the canopy closed.

  Narikin sat in the front again. He put the straps over his shoulders, locked them and clutched his camera to his chest. The ramp was lowered and the captain backed them out of the ship, through the Exarch field and into the green glow of the vacuum. Tenrec’s star was above their heads and the planet was to the right. “How long will it take to get there?” he asked.

  “Not long,” Kruvak replied. “I’ll need you to watch the Exarch detector and the radar screen. Do you know how they work?”

  “In theory,” he replied.

  He found the ‘on’ buttons and watched as a green arm swept around the radar, disrupted by the mass of the Kyzyl Kum. The Exarch detector was a yellow circle, thicker at the edges and pale in the centre. He could control the size of the bubble, extending it out a thousand, ten thousand, one hundred thousand miles, until the image was so pale it was almost invisible.

  “Set everything to maximum,” Kruvak told him.

  “What about the weapons?”

  “We won’t need those; if a Rickobite ship comes after us, a few missiles won’t put them off.”

  As they crossed into the solar sphere, the bubble of the Exarch detector flexed and warped briefly, and then they were inside the Tenrec system. Narikin felt his heart quicken. He watched the screens intently until the green light burned into his eye and he could see the sweeping arm of the radar when he looked at the darkness around them.

  It took them ten minutes to cross the space between the edge of the solar sphere and the planet. Kruvak pushed the scout to maximum speed; so fast they were in danger of over-shooting.

  Tenrec appeared before them, expanding rapidly until the disk of the world filled their view. He slowed the scout down. “Can you detect anything?”

  “Nothing,” said Narikin, checking the screens carefully. “Where are their ships?”

  “I don’t know.” He sounded puzzled. “There should be at least one orbiting the planet even if the rest are stationed by the border.”

  “Perhaps it’s hidden behind the moon...?” He looked at the bright white disk to starboard.

  “They’d still have a field up to detect intruders. We ought to be small enough for them to miss but a Rickobite ship should be making our Exarch detector vibrate like a bee.”

  “Perhaps they were called away.”

  “Perhaps – in which case we’d better go down before they come back.”

  “Where are you going to start?”

  “I’m going to look at the southern continents first. Keep your eyes open,” he added.

  “Why would the Rickobites build a base in the south?”

  “Can you think of anywhere better to hide activities you don’t want to be known about?”

  “I suppose not.”

  The southern continents on other worlds in the Third Sphere were usually empty. There was the superstitious fear of the Great Barrier but also tradition and practicality; with so much land, finding your neighbour was almost impossible unless your colony was sited in a familiar location. From one world to the next, villages, towns and cities were on the same rivers, near particular mountains or along certain strips of coastline. To choose somewhere remote, especially in the southern hemisphere, was to be lost to traders and passing ships. But perfect for building an army in secret...

  When they were directly under the planet’s southern pole, and it felt as though the weight of the world was going to crush them, Kruvak turned the scout and headed ‘upwards’. The tiny boat was buffeted by the wind as they dropped into the atmosphere. Under the cloud-layer, the land was white and almost featureless for thousands of miles.

  “The environment looks so hostile,” said Narikin. “There must be easier places to hide.”

  “When the Genetric built towers for their gene-splicing experiments, they chose places like this. They said the cold made it easier to grow the flesh they needed.”

  Narikin gave a shudder, “Could Genetric be here too?”

  “As far as anyone knows, they went back to the Second Sphere during the war and I doubt if they’ve the will or the courage to come back. It’s more likely the Rickobites have acquired the knowledge from what the Genetric left behind. Perhaps they dismantled equipment on Quagga or Viscum and brought it here or maybe they already had the plans and instructions and have re-built the technology for themselves. But I don’t know. We’ll have to find out.”

  Finding anything seemed impossible; the continent was vast and even though the scout could cross it in a matter of minutes, it was going to take them days they didn’t have to be absolutely sure. Then they saw a range of mountains in the distance, jagged and broken from centuries of freezing temperatures. And yet the peaks were free of snow and as they drew closer, they could see great chunks of ice had slid down the sides.

  The scout crossed a ridge and the white landscape turned black. Narikin gasped as he looked down into a crater at least a mile across and hundreds of feet deep. He heard his cousin swear as their Exarch field glowed green as they passed through a cloud of radiation. The nose of the scout rose suddenly and then levelled out as Kruvak flew them to a safer height.

  Narikin looked down into the pit. A wall of ice formed a perfect circle around the perimeter of the vast hole. He could see it was still hot in the centre; steam was rising from the bedrock and he caught glimpses of water lying in pools. Chunks of rock and glass lay scattered across the landscape for miles and miles in every direction.

  Kruvak sighed, “There goes our evidence.”

  Narikin took pictures as they circled the pit. “Could it have been an accident?” he asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Has somebody else attacked them?”

  “I think our last mission warned them, gave them time to evacuate and then they detonated a bomb to erase the rest of the evidence.”

  “At least we know they’re trying to hide something.”

  “But this is just a hole the ground, cousin; it’s not proof of anything, least of all the threat of giant insects.” He was silent for a while.

  Narikin asked, “Shall we go back to the Kyzyl Kum?”

  “No, not yet - perhaps the Tenrec can tell us something; they may not have seen this base but there might be clues to what they were doing here. The scientists and engineers working for the Rickobites will have needed food and supplies and one of them may have talked.”

  It didn’t take long to reach the northern hemisphere. On the way, Kruvak told him the colonists were quasi-human in origin and not to be too shocked when he met them.

  “What do they look like?”

  “Do you know what a hedgehog looks like?”

  “I don’t think so, no...”

  “A porcupine...?”

  “Not really...”

  “An echidna...?”

  “A what...?”

  “Never mind – they have spikes instead of hair and they can seem quite aggressive if you don’t know them.”

  “But you do...?”

  “I’ve been here before, yes, but it was a while ago, before the Rickobites took over the region. Awa and Tenrec used to trade regularly and the Kyzyl Kum kept a look-out for pirates.”

  “What did they trade?”

  “Mostly our grains for their meat, especial
ly sheep, and fruit from orchards planted beside certain rivers. I didn’t come here often but I think I can still find them.”

  It wasn’t easy; the northern continents were covered in trees and Kruvak had difficulty finding the right river among the thousands that veined the land below.

  Eventually, they spotted a clear patch where the trees had been cut back to provide pasture for grazing. There was a ring of houses and a jetty on the river where proper boats were tied up. But no people, no signs of movement...

  As they drew closer, they could see the simple huts were nothing more than shells; just their chimneys and walls remaining. Barns had been destroyed, hayricks reduced to ashes and sheds were no more than marks on the ground.

  Kruvak brought the scout down and landed. He slid back the canopy and was out of the cockpit with a rifle in his hand before Narikin could even get his straps off.

  “Where is everybody?” he said.

  Kruvak didn’t reply but jumped to the ground and began walking towards the nearest hut. Narikin struggled out of the scout and followed him, clutching his camera.

  There were chicken coops, pigsties and pasture beyond but no sign of any animals. Then there was forest made of oak and ash trees. There were shadows under the bows and Narikin wished he had a weapon too. The light was failing – it would be night soon and he wondered if bears or wolves would come sniffing from the wilderness when it was dark.

  The grass was long and weeds were growing on the paths that criss-crossed the site. It was clear the village had been abandoned for a while but nature had not reclaimed it yet.

  “Where have all the people gone?” he repeated.

  Kruvak replied, “Nowhere.”

  He pointed to a patch of grass where the white bones of a villager lay where he or she had fallen. Their clothes had been torn to rags and the head was missing.