He looked shocked at first, then bowed. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Oski, prepare copies of every Laymil memory we have. The rest of you put down what observations you can for the navy staff, whatever you think may help. Tranquillity is recalling one of the patrol blackhawks now, it will be ready to leave for Avon in an hour. I will ask the Confederation Navy office to provide an officer to escort you, Parker, so you had better get ready. Time is important here.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Ione Saldana, I also request a blackhawk to convey one of my colleagues home to Jobis,lieria said. I judge these events to be of sufficient portent to warrant informing my race.
Yes, of course.she was aware of tranquillity summoning a second armed blackhawk back to the docking-ledges even as she acknowledged the Kiint’s request. All the remaining resident blackhawks would have to be conscripted for patrol duties now, she thought tersely, probably the independent traders too. Then a stray thought struck. Lieria, did the Kiint ever hear the skyhavens’ starsong?
Yes.
The finality of the tone stopped Ione from enquiring further. But only for now, she promised herself. I’ve had enough of this mystic superiority crap they keep peddling. “Kempster, that red mist over Unimeron’s southern continent, was that a part of the reality dysfunction, do you think? There’s no mention of it being present on Lalonde.”
“Its nature would suggest so,” Kempster said. “I can’t see that it’s a natural phenomenon, not even on that planet. Possibly a secondary effect, a by-product of the interaction with Unimeron’s life essence, but definitely connected. Wouldn’t you agree, lad?”
Renato Vella had been lost in deep contemplation ever since he accessed Dr Gilmore’s report. Now he nodded briefly. “Yes, it is likely.”
“Something on your mind?” the old astronomer asked, his cheerfulness reasserting itself.
“I was just thinking. They could build living space structures that completely encircled their world, yet this reality dysfunction still defeated them. Their spaceholms were so frightened of it they committed suicide rather than submit. What do you think is going to happen to us when we confront it?”
Chapter 08
“Jesus, what’s all that red gunk in the air? I don’t remember that from the last time we were here. It’s almost as if it’s glowing. The bloody stuff’s covering the whole of the Juliffe tributary network, look.” Joshua abandoned the Lady Mac ’s sensor input and turned to Melvyn Ducharme on the acceleration couch next to his.
“Don’t look at me, I’m just a simple fusion engineer. I don’t know anything about meteorology. Try the mercs, they’re all planet-bred.”
“Humm,” Joshua mused. Relations between the Lady Mac ’s crew and the mercenary scout team they were carrying hadn’t been exactly optimal during the voyage. Both sides kept pretty much to themselves, with Kelly Tirrel acting as diplomatic go-between—when she was out of the free-fall sex cage. That girl had certainly lived up to her side of the bargain, he thought contentedly.
“Anybody care to hazard a guess?” he called.
The rest of the crew on the bridge accessed the images, but no one volunteered an opinion.
Amarisk was slowly turning round into their line of sight as they closed on the planet. Nearly half of the continent was already in daylight. From where they were, still a hundred thousand kilometres out, the Juliffe and most of its tributaries were smothered in a nebulous red haze. At first inspection it had looked as though some unique refraction effect was making the water gleam a bright burgundy. But once the Lady Mac ’s long-range optical sensors were focused on Lalonde, that notion had quickly been dispelled. The effect was caused by thousands of long narrow cloud bands in the air above the surface of the water, clinging to the tributary network’s multiple fork pattern with startling accuracy. Although, Joshua realized, the bands were much broader than the actual rivers themselves; where the first band started, just inland from the mouth of the Juliffe, it was almost seventy kilometres across.
“I’ve never seen anything like it on any planet,” Ashly said flatly. “Weird stuff; and it is glowing, Joshua. You can see it stretching beyond the terminator, all the way to the coast.”
“Blood,” Melvyn intoned solemnly. “The river’s awash with blood, and it’s starting to evaporate.”
“Shut it,” Sarha snapped. The idea was too close to the thoughts bubbling round in her own mind. “That’s not funny.”
“Do you think it’s hostile?” Dahybi asked. “Something of Laton’s?”
“I suppose it must be connected with him,” Joshua admitted uneasily. “But even if it is hostile, it can’t harm us at this distance. It’s strictly lower atmosphere stuff. Which means it may be a hazard for the merc scouts, though. Sarha, tell them to access the image, please.” They were less likely to insult a woman.
A grumbling Sarha requested a channel to the lounge in capsule C where the seven mercenary scouts and Kelly Tirrel were lying on acceleration couches as the Lady Mac accelerated in towards Lalonde. There was a gruff acknowledgment from her AV pillar, and Joshua grinned in private.
The flight computer alerted him that a coded signal was being transmitted from the Gemal . “We’ve detected an unknown atmospheric phenomenon above Amarisk,” Terrance Smith said pedantically.
“Yeah, those red clouds sticking to the tributaries,” Joshua answered. “We see it too. What do you want us to do about it?”
“Nothing yet. As far as we can make out it is simply polluted cloud, presumably coming from the river itself. If a sensor sweep shows it to be radioactive then we will reassess the landing situation. But until then, proceed as ordered.”
“Aye, aye, Commodore,” Joshua grunted when the channel was closed.
“Polluted cloud,” Melvyn said in contempt.
“Biological warfare,” Ashly suggested in a grieved tone. “Not nice. Typical of Laton, mark you. But definitely not nice.”
“I wonder if it’s his famed proteanic virus?” Dahybi said.
“Doubt it, that was microscopic. And it didn’t glow in the dark, either. I’d say it has to be radioactive dust.”
“Then why isn’t the wind moving it?” Sarha asked. “And how did it form in the first place?”
“We’ll find out in due course,” Warlow said with his usual pessimism. “Why hurry the process?”
“True enough,” Joshua agreed.
The Lady Mac was heading in towards the planet at a steady one gee. As soon as each ship in the little fleet had emerged from its final jump into the Lalonde system, it had accelerated away from the coordinate, the whole fleet spreading out radially at five gees to avoid presenting an easy target grouping. Now they were holding a roughly circular formation twenty thousand kilometres wide, with Gemal and the cargo ships at the centre.
The six blackhawks were already decelerating into low orbit above Lalonde to perform a preliminary threat assessment. Bloody show-offs, Joshua thought. Lady Mac could easily match their six gee manoeuvres if she wasn’t encumbered with escort duties.
Even with naval tactics programs running in primary mode, Terrance Smith was ever cautious. The lack of any response from Durringham was extremely bad news, although admittedly half anticipated. What had triggered the fleet commander’s paranoia was the total absence of any orbital activity. The colonist-carrier starships had gone, along with the cargo ships. The inter-orbit craft from Kenyon were circling inertly in a five-hundred-kilometre equatorial parking orbit, all systems powered down—even their navigation beacons, which was contrary to every CAB regulation in the flek. Of the sheriff’s office’s ageing observation satellite there was no trace. Only the geosynchronous communication platform and civil spaceflight traffic monitoring satellites remained active, their on-board processors sending out monotonously regular signals. He lacked the transponder interrogation code to see if the navy ELINT satellites were functional.