The Sentients of Orion Read online

  Before he could decide, the intensity drained from her eyes and she fell back, unconscious.

  Dead? He could not tell. She didn’t appear to be breathing. He considered leaving and pretending he had not seen her, but her vulnerability prickled his conscience.

  Trin lifted her awkwardly, holding her against him.

  To his shame, the pressure of her naked body stirred excitement in his groin. He leaned his torso away from the contact and stepped out of the thorn bushes, shouting for help.

  The humanesque servant peered from the coldlock along the portico. When she saw Trin’s burden she cried out and beckoned. ‘Come. Carry her to the infirmary.’

  He followed the woman inside and up the villa’s central stairs. By the time he laid the ragazza on a bed his arms were shaking with the effort.

  ‘Her name is Djeserit. Her familia left her behind on Araldis. She had become too difficult to manage is my guess. Miolaquas mature early,’ said the woman. ‘Please, signor—while I examine her wound you must restrain her. If she awakens she will become violent. May I suggest you remove your gloves or they might become stained with blood.’

  Trin stared at her. But what of my hands? What of her alien blood on my skin? Yet he could not say the words. The woman’s solicitous care shamed him. ‘Is she alive? I see no breath,’ he said.

  ‘Si, alive, but not breathing.’ She pointed to the ragazza’s neck gills, which lay firmly shut. ‘She is in shock and her body is using stored oxygen. I must persuade her to land-breathe again.’

  ‘You know healing... er...’

  ‘Istelle. And si, I know a little healing.’ She gave him a gentle smile, which transformed her severe features into something more comely.

  The ragazza stirred, her legs suddenly flailing.

  Trin stripped off his gloves and held her. Djeserit felt lean and papery under his hands—there was nothing soft about her, unlike the familia women. His body betrayed him again, responding to the touch of her. He pressed himself flat against the bedside to disguise his growing erection but Istelle was in any case distracted by her ministrations—murmuring quiet reassurances while she treated the wound.

  Djeserit began to breathe with her lungs again in noisy, carking gulps.

  Trin released her in surprise, stepping back.

  ‘She is crying. Beautiful, isn’t it?’ said Istelle. She stroked the ragazza’s thin hair tenderly. ‘Djeserit, it’s Istelle. Don Pellegrini found you and carried you inside,’ she whispered into the ragazza’s smooth earbud. ‘Tell me what happened.’

  Djeserit opened her flat-lidded eyes and blinked several times, swivelling her head like a confused checclia. Suddenly she seized Trin’s hand and kissed it.

  The sensation of her lips on his palm set his blood throbbing.

  ‘Djeserit, what happened? Why were you outside?’ Istelle urged.

  But Trin didn’t wait to hear the answer. He fled the room and the sensation of Djeserit’s mouth, like a fresh burn, on his hand.

  * * *

  A squealing sound woke Trin before dawn. At first he thought it was the uuli as he tried to free it from the containment field in Riso’s. Then, heart pounding, he realised it was the emergency shortcast.

  ‘Fire... grain stores... shootin’ up like a twister.’ A man’s voice: guttural—’esqe but not Latino.

  The station relay told Trin that the message was originating from the northern edge of Loisa. He located the grain silos on the town map and verified the correlation. Following the procedure that Christian Montforte had left for him, he coded the alert through to the duty crew in the compound. Then he called the Capitano.

  Christian appeared on his viewer, scowling. ‘Si?’

  ‘An emergency call has come in. The caller says the grain silos are on fire. It has come in from the right vicinity.’

  ‘Can you smell anything?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Get outside and sniff the air. Can you smell anything?’

  Trin left Christian’s impatient glare and walked the few steps to the rear coldlock. He cracked it open and waited for his senses to stretch past the nullifying blast of the heat. Yes. It was there. The acrid taste of smoke settling on the back of his tongue like burned food.

  He returned to the shortcast. ‘Si. I can taste something.’

  Christian swore in another language. He lifted his arms above his head and stretched himself awake. The movement of his body revealed a figure in bed behind him. Her armour-like skin and neck frills were unmistakably Balol. Trin had seen such females at Dockside, in the transit lounges, and once, as he procured bravura in the oily shadows of a freight bay, he had observed one overseeing the docking of a luxury ship.

  The men had called Faja Fedor a ‘ginko lover’—what, then, did they make of their Capitano?

  ‘... I’ll meet the duty crew there. Come with them,’ Christian was saying.

  Trin forced himself to listen to the Capitano’s instructions. ‘But—’

  ‘That is not an invitation, Pellegrini!’

  Christian ended the shortcast, leaving Trin to stare at the blank film.

  Trin’s insides trembled with a mixture of fear and excitement: he had not been close to a fire before. Because of the high oxygen quotient in Araldis’s air, and as a future Principe, it had always been forbidden for him to take such a risk. A sudden frisson of liberation took him; perhaps there was some small compensation to be found in the indignity of his denouncement.

  Following the Emergency Directive, he switched the shortcast to the Emergency Vehicle Frequency and let himself out through the coldlock into the compound.

  The duty crew were already dressed and loading their vehicles.

  ‘Capitano says I should come,’ he said to a man he thought to be Seb Malocchi.

  Malocchi inclined his flash hood towards the workshop office. ‘Find a firesuit in there. We’ll be gone in a few minutes. We won’t wait,’ he shouted.

  Trin struggled into the suit with no assistance—and no hindrance. Where were the Cavaliere? Why were they not here?

  ‘Last chance to catch a ride, Pellegrini,’ a voice crackled through the flash hood’s transceiver.

  Trin squashed all the seals tight and went back out into the workshop.

  ‘The Cavaliere have been recalled to Pell,’ added Seb Malocchi, as if reading his mind. ‘They have a situation up there as well.’ He was piling kitbags on top of each other.

  Trin climbed into the back of the remaining TerV as Malocchi secured them under webbing. ‘What situation?’ he asked.

  Malocchi didn’t answer. The vehicle swung out onto the bare redcrete viuzza and took several fast sharp turns to orient itself north. Trin banged his head against the window slits as he tried to peer out.

  The TerV sped past the dust-white villettes of the Nobiles and into the non-familia section of Loisa where row upon row of cramped mud-and-cellulose cabins huddled together creating shade for each other.

  ‘You know how to use these?’ Malocchi again.

  Trin turned awkwardly, half swinging from the holding straps.

  Malocchi slid a crate across the floor, then himself after it, wedging in alongside Trin. He popped the crate’s lid and pulled out several items. ‘First Responder Kit—you take one of these when we stop and help anyone you come across that’s hurt. See: burn-gel, cold compress, trauma pads, valve shield, infection swipes, skin-restore, blood-stopper roll.’ He tucked each item back inside as he listed it.

  Trin heard the words without comprehension. He did not deal with people like this: not with their blood and their wounds and their panic.

  ‘You got it, Pellegrini?’

  Trin nodded automatically.

  ‘The grain silos are flaming,’ another voice joined Seb Malocchi’s in his hood. ‘The truck is already there. So are we—almost. Can barely see the sky for merda...’

  The TerV jerked to a stop. Trin waited inside, handing the kits out to the line of fire-suited men emerging from the other
vehicles. When he had passed out the last one he hesitated, suddenly not wanting to leave the safety of the truck.

  Outside, the sky had blackened as if overtaken by an eclipse, and despite the flash-hood’s extractor poisonous fumes crawled into Trin’s airways. A babble of voices competed over the transceiver but Christian cut across them all. ‘Anyone not on a pump, there’s someone injured over by the processor. Take your FR kit and get to it.’

  ‘No one is free, Capitano,’ replied another.

  ‘Pellegrini!’ Seb Malocchi motioned to him.

  The rush of excitement Trin had felt back at the compound evaporated as he forced himself out of the TerV.

  Fierce gouts of waxen smoke unfurled into the air from three silos. Groups of Carabinere battled with their tiny, ineffectual cold-foam tanks and nozzles to keep three more from doing the same. Flakes of hot polymer rained on the mask of Trin’s flash hood, melting dints in the heat-resistant goggles. The ambient heat sent his suit temperature soaring dangerously.

  ‘Follow me,’ shouted Malocchi.

  Trin sucked on the fluid tube and peered through the hot plastic rain for the processor. There. A tall frame at the end of the row of silos housing smaller bins and an elaborate loop system for grain separation.

  Trin shouldered his kit, following Malocchi slowly. The might of the flames mesmerised him, as did the AiV that flew tight circles around them, spurting coldfoam from its belly tank.

  What foolishness...

  Without warning the flames plumed outwards, engulfing the AiV. It disintegrated, sparking a series of miniature explosions. Trin ran for the cover of the processor and flung himself full length under a bin housing.

  Malocchi was already underneath the same bin, bent over a collapsed figure. He beckoned Trin over, pointing at his kit.

  Trin rolled to his knees, suppressing his urge to flee back to the TerV. There was no safe place in the vicinity of the silos, he told himself. Safety was in the Palazzo back on Mount Pell. He thrust the kit at Seb Malocchi.

  The man threw open the lid, rifling through the contents until he found the burn-gel. Trin stared down at the injured ‘esque. Pieces of blackened clothing had been seared into his body tissue where skin should have been. Trin turned away from the charred head.

  Dios! No hair, no lips.

  Sickness rose in his throat and disgorged itself. His flash hood suctioned away the worst of the vomit so he could still breathe, but it could not neutralise the stink of his own weakness and fear.

  The ‘esque spasmed once, twice, and them became still.

  Mercy.

  Malocchi took a valve mask from the kit and laid it across the ‘esque’s blood-black face. He fitted the valve onto his own air supply and began a pointless attempt at resuscitation.

  Then a fourth silo exploded as if birthing a universe.

  Panicked, Trin scrambled from underneath the bin housing. He would not die here.

  Malocchi saw his intention and abandoned his task. He ran after Trin but became tangled in the resuscitation hose still attached to his air supply. It tripped him and he fell heavily, twisting his leg underneath his body.

  Every instinct shrieked at Trin not to wait, not to turn back for him: from the corner of his eye he could see the flames leaping to the fifth silo. If it reached the final one it would engulf them both.

  ‘Wind shift... fall back.’ Christian’s order was a distant crackle. ‘Evacuate...’

  Trin could see the TerVs already pulling out. ‘Montforte!’ he screamed into his pickup.

  ‘Pellegrini... where... you?’

  Another thunderous crack and the bottom fell out of the flaming silo, sending an avalanche of smoke rolling down the tarmac. It swallowed Trin and obscured his line of sight to the remaining vehicles. ‘Near the processor,’ he gasped.

  ‘For Cruxsakes... back here. I... lose... Principe’s son... useless cazzone.’

  Useless cazzone. Christian’s words stopped Trin like a blow to the head, right there, in the billowing thick whirl of the smoke stream.

  How many times had he thought the exact same of others? Countless.

  If he died here, he would be as inconsequential as them: as pathetic and ignoble. The idea was more overpowering than the fire roaring behind him. He wanted to spill his rage into the fire. I am important! I am...

  For no reason of valour—only the knowledge that the balance should be tipped—Trin returned to the fallen Carabinere and took the shears from the FR kit strapped to the man’s back. With precise strokes he cut through the hoses, releasing Melocchi’s twisted foot.

  Malocchi gripped Trin’s shoulders and leaned gratefully against him.

  Trin helped him to his feet. ‘Montforte!’ he shouted again. ‘Montforte!’

  But there was no reply. And he could see nothing through his melted goggles now, or feel much, save a sense of rectitude.

  Their intertwined walk turned quickly to a stagger—Trin had never borne the true weight of another man before—and his muscles betrayed him. Collapse would take them soon, anyway, when their breathers faltered. He began to cough uncontrollably—they both did, bent over with the heaving and gasping of it. So much so that neither of them saw the TerV looming ahead through the smoke.

  * * *

  Trin rode in the Capitano’s vehicle past the line of evacuated mud casas and white villettes, back to the compound. With trembling gloved fingers he detached his hood and gulped in the cooler cabin air.

  ‘The wind will push the fire north onto the sand. It will burn itself out. We have evacuated the edge of town to be sure. But I think we are fortunate it will not spread there,’ said Christian.

  Trin stared at him aghast. ‘I risked... you risked your men for mere grain?’

  ‘For our main food source. Si,’ he said flatly.

  ‘But there are stockpiles at Dockside.’

  ‘Our grain is allocated on a priority system that must be approved by the Principe—it is the same for all our imported commodities. It is unlikely that he would risk depletion of the familia central stores.’

  ‘Are you saying that my father would let you starve?’

  Christian gave a grim but unreadable smile. ‘You stink, Pellegrini.’

  Trin became aware of the foul stickiness of vomit on his face and neck. Somehow it did not seem as important as it should.

  * * *

  Christian called Trin to his office when the new duty crew signed on. The Capitano reeked of scorched polymer and the blisters on his face seeped little rivulets of fluid onto his silk innersuit. His expression was morose and dull with fatigue as he slumped in his chair.

  Trin knew his own skin had not fared much better and the throbbing of his burns gave him an odd sense of fellowship with the Carabinere.

  ‘Nathaniel Montforte will relieve you on shortcast for this shift. You saved one of us today. Sleep and recover,’ said Christian. ‘And salve those burns.’

  The Capitano’s consideration took him by surprise. ‘Grazi.’

  Yet when Christian left Trin found it impossible to relax. Energy coursed through him still like an unsteady pulse. He washed in the cramped basin and donned fresh clothes.

  Young Nathaniel Montforte hung behind him as he applied burn-gel from the office medikit. It was awkward—doing these things for himself.

  ‘What was the fire like, Don Trinder? Did it scare the seed from your balls? I heard you saved Seb Malocchi,’ prattled Nathaniel.

  But Trin had no interest in feeding the younger man’s imagination. ‘I will take transport to the market for food,’ he said.

  Out in the compound Trin discovered that his AiV had been repaired and shifted to a corner. He made his way over to it, half expecting to be stopped, but unlike the Cavaliere the duty crew paid him no attention—save for the hissing-motor and muffled-laughter noises that they made.

  * * *

  Trin settled his AiV in the vehicle bay adjacent to the Bear and Pearl gate façade of Villa Fedor.

  Istel
le answered the gate-call and let him in. She waited in the coldlock for him. ‘Do you have news of Mira?’ she asked.

  He stiffened. ‘That is Carabinere business.’

  Despite his rebuff Istelle’s smile stayed warm. ‘I am very fond of the younger Baronessa. I don’t want to see her hurt.’

  Trin was taken aback. The ‘esque woman seemed to have no grasp of a servant’s manners.

  When he did not reply her smile faded a little, and she escorted him down the ancestor-crowded corridor to the cucina.

  Faja Fedor was bent over a vat of stew. She glanced up, surprised. ‘An early visit from the Carabinere, Don Trinder? Hoping to find my sorella hiding in the pantry? Behind a jar of pimento, perhaps.’

  ‘I come from the fire,’ Trin said simply.

  She frowned, mollified. ‘What news of it?’

  ‘Loisa has lost its grain stores but only a few lives.’

  Faja sighed as if the news made her tired. ‘That is good news and bad. There will be food shortages now.’

  ‘How is the ginko?’ he asked.

  She stabbed the stew with her ladle. ‘We do not use that word here.’

  ‘What is she, then?’

  ‘Her mama is a miolaqua and her father a Lostol. So in fact she is part ‘esque. Only she has many of her mama’s features.’ Faja eyed Trin closely. ‘Tell me why you would care, Don Trinder, when it was your men who did this to her?’

  He shrugged to hide his embarrassment. Vespa Malocchi had bragged of menacing the ragazza. He had handled her a little, he said, because of his curiosity about her strange skin. But she had run from him. ‘What would you have me do? Shoot a Carabinere? Today they risked their lives to save your grain supplies.’

  ‘Their courage in the face of a fire does not give them rights over a ‘bino.’

  ‘Hardly a ‘bino, Baronessa,’ Trin argued. She could not be and stir such things in me. ‘Your words stray towards sedition. Little wonder that your sorella has acted improperly. What values have you taught her?’

  Faja took a step closer to him, her head tilted to one side, her dark eyes fierce with intent. ‘Would you really take Mira’s Inborn Talent for your own? Would you steal from the genes of our ancestors?’