Kelly didn’t like the implications leaping round inside her skull at that statement. But she did her best to ignore them. Hunted beasts couldn’t afford scruples, especially ones that knew exactly what lay in store if they were caught.
She datavised a query at her communication block. Since they left the homestead cabin it had been broadcasting a continuous signal up to the geosynchronous platform and the secure satellites Terrance Smith had brought with him. There was no need for secrecy now. But the darkened cloud was still blocking the directional beam very effectively.
Theo’s hovercraft slowed as it neared the stream, then the nose fell and it went into a controlled slither down the scree of crumbling earth. The gully was three metres deep, with tall reed-grass growing along the top. Smooth grey stones filled the flat bottom, with a trickle of water running down the middle. A muddy pool had built up behind the scree.
Kelly followed the first hovercraft down, juggling the fan deflectors frantically to stop them from sliding into the opposite bank. She turned upstream keeping ten metres behind Theo. He reached the deepest part of the gully and killed the lift.
The mercenaries were jumping down from the top of the bank.
“Everybody out of the hovercraft,” Reza said. “And sit with your backs to the gully here.” He pointed.
Northern side, Kelly thought. She stood up—don’t think about it —and helped to hand the children over the gunwale. They looked round in bewilderment, young faces lost and doleful. “It’s all right,” she kept saying. “Everything’s all right.” Don’t think about it. She kept smiling too, so they wouldn’t catch her anxiety.
Octan glided down into the gully, and perched himself on Pat Halahan’s broad shoulder, wings folding tightly. Fenton was already nosing round Reza’s legs.
Don’t think about it. Kelly sat beside Jay. The little girl obviously knew something terrible was about to happen. “It’s all right,” Kelly whispered. “Really.” She winked, though it was more like a nervous tic. Flints in the gully wall were sharp on her back. Water gurgled round her boots.
“Joshua,” Kelly datavised into her communication block. “Joshua, answer me, for Christ’s sake. Joshua!” All she was given in reply was the oscillating ghost-wind of static.
There was a scuttling sound as the mercenaries sat down on the stones. Several children were sniffling.
“Shut your eyes, and keep them shut,” Reza said loudly. “I shall smack anyone who I see with open eyes.”
The children hurriedly did as they were told.
Kelly closed her eyes, took a breath, and slowly folded her shaking arms over her head.
As soon as the event horizon collapsed, Joshua accessed the image supplied by the short-range combat sensors. Lady Mac had emerged from her jump six thousand kilometres above Lalonde. There was nothing within two thousand kilometres. He datavised the full sensor-suite deployment, and triggered the fusion drives. They moved in at a cautious two gees, aiming for a thousand-kilometre orbit.
No starships were left in orbit, the sensors reported, even the inter-orbit craft from Kenyon had vanished. Victim of a combat wasp, Joshua assumed. There was a lot of metallic wreckage, most of it in highly eccentric elliptical orbits, and all of it radioactive.
“Melvyn, access the communication satellites, see if there’s any data traffic for us. And Sarha, see if there are any low-orbit observation satellites left, their memories might hold something useful.”
They both acknowledged their orders and datavised instructions to the flight computer. The starship’s main dish found one of the secure communication satellites, and beams of microwave radiation sprang up to enmesh the planet in a loose web. Lady Macbeth started to receive data from the various observation systems left functional.
Everybody seemed to be working smoothly. Their flight to Achillea and the slingshot round its moon had passed off flawlessly. Jubilation at the successful jump from Murora had temporarily balanced out the loss of Warlow. Certainly Joshua experienced none of the sense of accomplishment which should have accompanied the Lagrange-point stunt. The most fantastic piece of flying in his life.
Gaura said he wasn’t sure, but he thought the transference had worked, certainly a large quantity of the old cosmonik’s memories had been datavised successfully into Aethra. The habitat had been integrating them when Lady Mac jumped.
The prospect of him living on as part of the multiplicity helped ease the grief—to a degree. Joshua felt a lot of regrets bubbling below his surface thoughts; things he’d said, things he should have said. Jesus, did Warlow have a family? I’ll have to tell them.
“Nothing from the communication satellites, Joshua,” Melvyn said heavily. “Thanks.” The idea that Kelly and the mercenaries had been caught was unbearable. That would mean their own flight had been for nothing, and Warlow—“Stand by to broadcast a message from Lady Mac ’s main dish, we’ll see if we can break through the cloud with sheer power. Sarha, what have you got?”
“Not much. There are only seven low-orbit observation satellites left. They took a real pounding in the battle yesterday. But, Joshua, someone detonated a nuke down there earlier this morning.”
“Jesus. Where?”
“I think it was at Durringham. The satellite only saw the blast as it fell below the horizon.”
Joshua accessed the main sensor image. The red cloudbands over the tributaries had expanded dramatically. Individual strands had blended together producing a homogenized oval smear that covered the entire Juliffe basin. He realized the bright flame-glimmer Durringham had produced before was missing.
Then he noticed a large circular section of cloud in the south-east had lost its red nimbus altogether, becoming a malaised grey. Interest stirred at the back of his mind; it almost looked as if the red cloud was being ruined by some cancerous growth. He datavised the flight computer for a guidance grid.
“It’s south of the Quallheim villages,” he said with a sense of growing confidence.
“That grey patch?” Sarha asked.
“Yeah. Exactly where Kelly said they were going.”
“Could be,” Dahybi said. “Maybe the mercenaries have found a way of damaging the cloud.”
“Perhaps. Melvyn, focus our dish on it, and start transmitting. See if you can punch through and raise Kelly directly.” Joshua centred an optical sensor on the area and upped the magnification. The hoary amorphous cloudscape rushed out to fill his mind. It wasn’t giving any clues away, there were no breaks, no glimpses of the ground below. “Ashly, have you been following this?”
“Yes, Joshua,” the pilot answered from the spaceplane cabin.
“We’ll be in orbit in another three minutes. I want you to launch as soon as we finish decelerating. Loiter above those mountains in the south, and we’ll see if the mercenary team can get out from under the cloud. Under no circumstances are you to go under it.”
“No fear.”
“Good.” He datavised the flight computer to open the spaceplane hangar doors. “Anything from Kelly, yet?”
“Sorry, Joshua, only static.”
“She said they wouldn’t be out from under the cloud until the afternoon,” Sarha pointed out. “It isn’t quite noon there yet.”
“I know. But that cloud is still growing, even the grey section. If it reaches the mountains they’ll be in serious trouble. The hovercraft won’t be able to handle that sort of country. They’ll be trapped between the two.”
“We can wait,” Dahybi said. “For a week if we have to.”
Joshua nodded vaguely, eyes tight shut as he flipped through sensor inputs, desperate for any sort of hint. “Come on, Kelly,” he murmured. “Show us you’re there.”