The Sentients of Orion Read online

  Silence again.

  The men waited, as he did, for Christian’s answer. He sensed their attention, even approval.

  ‘Capitano?’ the pilot prompted.

  ‘We go to Pell headquarters first,’ said Christian. ‘There will be no more discussion.’

  Frustrated by Montforte’s stubbornness, Trin strained harder. The cords around his neck and body abruptly loosened. ‘If you are right, then what would you propose?’ asked the voice behind him.

  Trin took a moment to think as he slapped the circulation back into his arms. He must be right in what he said or they would follow Montforte. He twisted, trying not to stare anxiously at Djeserit. She huddled in her seat, eyes closed, shrinking as far away as she could from the men alongside her. Her neck gills barely moved at all. ‘If Dockside and Pell are overrun with these creatures then our best option is to retreat to the underground mines,’ Trin said.

  The man who’d asked the question held out his hand. He bore the blunt features of the lower familia and had a wide, generous mouth. ‘I am Juno Genarro. What are these creatures you speak of?’

  Trin clasped Genarro’s hand. ‘They are hatching out of large globes buried in the ground. I saw them in the viuzzas. Mir—I believe, from my learning, that they are a creature called the Saqr.’

  ‘What harm can they do us?’

  ‘I have seen them suck the fluid from a live body. They are primitive—with no ability to reason.’

  ‘So we shoot them all.’ Genarro laughed. ‘Easy enough, I say.’

  ‘Their chitin is impervious to most forms of attack.’

  ‘There are others ways.’

  ‘You miss the point, Genarro—they are a tool. Unknown to us, someone has brought them here and buried them in our soil. Someone has bombed our cities and set fire to our grain silos. This is planned. Carefully planned.’

  Genarro’s eyes lost their cavalier humour. ‘What do you suggest, Don?’

  ‘Survival. And information. We regroup in safety and find our stragglers—work out a way to gather food. Some of the underground mines run for mesurs. We can cover much ground and send out night-time searches.’

  ‘The Capitano said you weren’t worth the spit necessary to say your name. Maybe he just had a dry mouth at the time.’

  Trin managed a tight smile. Some renewed energy suppressed the shivering fatigue in his muscles. He looked to the others who had stayed silent. ‘Where are your familia?’

  They all named areas of lower Pell. Only Juno Genarro had left someone behind in Loisa.

  ‘I’m not Carabinere—you have your tradition and your training. But I know where I would lead you.’

  Genarro nodded slowly. ‘Let us see how things are first.’

  TEKTON

  Miranda turned out to be the most irritating of travelling companions. Not only was the cabin not lavish enough, according to her, but she bitched long and loud about the appalling state of the ship’s cuisine while stuffing copious amounts of it into her mouth. It seemed almost as if her chins acted as repositories for the food, freeing her tongue to do what it did best—complain. Tekton spent the journey to Scolar in a state of deep regret, at the same time experiencing mounting trepidation about his impending tryst with Doris. What would she make of Miranda?

  But in the tradition of the countless generations of males who had gone before him, Tekton had got it wrong. From the moment Miranda and Doris laid eyes On each other under the Kant chandelier in the lobby of The Sternberg, it was lust at first sight.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me saying, but what fabulous chins!’ gurgled Doris. ‘You must sing divine opera?’

  ‘Oh... well, not really... but, well, it has been said...’ Miranda dissembled. ‘And your bosoms are outstanding. Le Feuvre corsetry?’

  ‘What an exceptional eye you have!’ Doris cooed. ‘Tekton would never have noticed it. You must see where I bought it. Divine little boutique on the corner of Chomsky and Heidegger.’

  The pair departed The Sternberg without further ado, leaving Tekton to find his way to the suite alone. His ménage fantasies dissolved along with the epithelium he desquamated in his lotion bath and he consoled himself with the knowledge that he would have plenty of time to find the planet he sought.

  After a fine meal of bison pate and plum quosh he strolled the cherry-blossomed Boulevard Voltaire to the Orion Institute. Ensconcing himself in a vreal booth, he lost a good part of the day and night on a faux tour of the sector on Jo-Jo Rasterovich’s recording—all to no avail. There was no sentient settlement of any note on record.

  If that drug-fuddled lout has cheated me...

  Weary and more than a little bad-tempered Tekton returned to The Sternberg to find Miranda quaffing champagne and eating oysters out of parts of Doris that not even he had visited.

  ‘Tekton, good fellow,’ trilled Miranda in operatic tones. ‘Come and join us.’

  Tekton’s rush of akula was akin to a lava eruption on Mount Frenzy. He plunged after the oysters with a true connoisseur’s enthusiasm and worked off his frustrations.

  Later, in the serenity of post-coitus, enduring Doris’s snores, a thought occurred to him. Where on Scolar had Miranda got to? The woman had been there for his performance—he was sure.

  Throwing on a cloak, Tekton hastened back to the Institute. ‘A woman with many chins,’ he told the autolibrarian.

  It droned back at him with an infuriating privacy

  disclaimer, which made Tekton feel like sticking his well-moisturised finger up its authentication mortise. Instead, he caught the elevator to Floor 202 and lurked around the vreal cubicles listening for a clue as to tricky Miranda’s whereabouts.

  Vanity was her downfall—Die Walküre, to be precise. He heard her warbling her way through the third act.

  ‘Aha,’ accused Tekton, sweeping back the curtain. ‘I thought so.’

  Caught in the act of reviewing his search route, Miranda didn’t bother to deny it. ‘It’s that cousin of yours,’ she declared. ‘He promised me things to spy on you. Did you know that he can see microwaves? Do you know what surgery I could perform with that ability? Bloodless, that’s what. Magical.’ A single tear collected in a corner of her eye and she lifted her skirt to display the full undulation of her thighs. ‘Don’t be cross, Tekton. I have not the faintest idea what you were searching for in such an uninspiring slice of the galaxy—nothing there but rock and gas. And I should know. My grandmama three times removed—the famous actress Shelba Lanzano—ran away to Latino Crux to marry a prince. Terribly romantic, and so on. Last I heard she and the prince had upped stakes and bought a dirty little mining planet out that way. Hot as Hades and not half as exciting.’ She pointed to Tekton’s holo-tour. ‘Took the whole damn clan with him. Faux royalty you know—all inbred.’

  Dirty little mining world. Tekton became very still. Carefully, Tekton, both minds warned him. ‘Mining world? Out there? No. How fascinating? But I found no such thing on the records,’ he said casually.

  ‘Hah!’ Miranda’s laugh was more of a snort. ‘Of course not. OLOSS are renowned for tampering with their records: a judge on the law circuit spots a little world he fancies as a holiday home, bribes the Registrar of Planets to delete it from the database and buys it for a song. You must know the sort of thing...’

  Tekton felt his skin grow warm with embarrassment. Obviously he did not.

  ‘If you want to know the truth on anything you have to use the Vreal Studium. Those extropists are nothing if not meticulous with detail,’ she added.

  The Vreal Studium.

  ‘And I must congratulate you. Your prolonged erection this evening was quite remarkable. You must tell Jise how you do that.’

  Suddenly Tekton felt a different type of heat. ‘Indeed.’

  ‘And now, my dear Tekton, you won’t squeal to Ra that you caught me, will you?’

  Tekton pulled the curtain closed behind him. ‘No, dear Miranda—not if you lift that skirt of yours a little higher.’


  MIRA

  Mira watched Cass nursing Vito. Despite the heat and the lack of food there was no hint of hopelessness, no surrender in her face. Her resolve reminded Mira of Faja and the similarity was like a wound. She couldn’t think of her sorella without her breath catching in her throat.

  Cass’s older ragazzo played nearby in the dirt with the korm. The korm’s bleeding had stopped, leaving ugly grey lesions on its blue flesh.

  In a few days they’d travelled most of the distance to Ipo: unbearable, hungry days and hot-wind nights. They’d taken the rougher mining tracks towards the place. Cass had pronounced the proper roads too dangerous and crowded.

  In some ways Mira was relieved by her decision, for every person on foot they’d have passed would’ve been another person they should have stopped for, every ragazza another one at risk of being run over.

  Mira found herself moving automatically through the days but at night, when the TerV’s depleted solar cells forced them to stop, her mind swirled in an agony of confusion and denial. This could not be happening. Her world, as much as she had felt a misfit in it, was being torn from her and crushed. She grieved for her displacement and for the ugliness that desperation caused. What would be the end of it? What would be her fate?

  Each of them had been allocated a watch period. Innis declared that he would share his with Mira but, to her relief, Cass overruled him. Instead she took her watch with Kristo.

  On the second night they had stopped in a shallow gully at the side of the track to shelter from the worst of the winds. They’d seen no one all afternoon but, to the east and west of the track, lights dotted the night. Miners guarding their leases, Cass had said, and refugees.

  Like us.

  Kristo tapped his fingers along the barrel of the rifle in a release of tension and Mira worried that in the quickening dark he might shoot her accidentally. ‘Stop that.’ She couldn’t keep the imperious edge from her tone.

  ‘Innis is right,’ Kristo said. ‘You’re a nervous type. Guess that’s ‘cause you’re an aristo.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ She found she had little patience left for their ignorant bigotry.

  ‘Youse aristo wimmen up on Mount Pell are protected from real life.’

  Mira stared out into the dark. His criticism bothered her. Was she like the familia women? She didn’t—had never—felt like them. ‘I am not just aristo -1 am a pilot.’

  ‘All I know is you ain’t like Cass,’ Kristo said simply. ‘Though I guess she’s learnin’ it hard since her man died.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘He was killed just a week back when the Juanita mine caved in. They set a blast at one of the open cuts close by. Shouldna done it. Area was too unstable. Brought the tunnel down,’ Kristo said.

  ‘How long have you been on Araldis?’

  ‘I was born in Loisa. Ma and Pap came from Inkla’s

  World along with Cass’s folk. We grew up here together. First-generation mining stock.’ He thumped his chest proudly. ‘I’ve been here as long as you.’

  Mira stared out at the plains. Semantic and Tiesha would soon be up together, bathing the iron ridges with their scarlet light. ‘I know the area. I have been there once.’

  Kristo looked at her, surprised.

  ‘It was a study trip from the Studium,’ she said, embarrassed.

  ‘Didn’t think you aristos set foot off Pell.’

  ‘I was made t— I lived in Loisa with mia sorella at the Villa Fedor,’

  ‘I heard of that place. The aristo woman there’s been taking in ginkos. You lose her—your sister?’

  Mira nodded.

  Kristo screwed up his face in sympathy. ‘Lost my place too. Lost my ma. Pap’s out on the mines somewhere. He doesn’t even know.’ He stifled a sound of sorrow and turned his head away.

  ‘I will watch the other side.’ Mira left him to struggle with his grief. She had enough of her own.

  * * *

  Mira and Cass shared water at daybreak while Marrat reattached the rifle to the roof. Mira felt a slight searching pressure on her back that was gone a heartbeat later, then Innis leaned in so close that, his breath fanned her velum. She stepped away in alarm.

  ‘I got news.’ He seemed jumpy. ‘Talked to some folk over at the next camp. They’re holed up on their lease. They reckon those ginko things are everywhere. Swarmin’ like ligs on a thorn bush. Rumour says a merc brought ‘em in. The merc set the bombs off in Loisa. They’re using ginkos to do the rest.’

  ‘The aliens are called Saqr. I learned a little about them at the Studium,’ Mira said.

  ‘The Studium, huh? Well, this ain’t the learnin’ room now, Baronessa. They’ve gone and overrun Dockside as well. Ipo’s still holding, though. When we get there we’ll stand against the spit-sucking ginks.’

  Mira turned away from his swaggering to face her own realisation. Jancz. Jancz was the mercenary. Her limbs became heavy and her mind thick with the guilt of her knowledge. Gould she have stopped this? Could she... ‘What would they want with us?’ she whispered.

  Marrat came to stand next to her. ‘Where are all your aristos now? Where are your Carabinere?’ he jeered at Mira. ‘Dead, most like! Useless pricks.’

  ‘The miners reckon the ginks have come to take us because their own world is dead.’ said Innis.

  Kristo joined them as well. ‘They’re getting closer,’ he warned. ‘You can hear the gunfire.’

  Cass hauled herself up and passed Vito to Mira. He squirmed in Mira’s arms, uncertain now where his main source of comfort lay.

  ‘We’ll find out more in Ipo,’ said Cass. ‘We need to get there quick now. How much in the cells?’

  Innis shrugged. ‘A few hours. They’re old. Not holding too well.’

  ‘What about the spares?’

  ‘Smashed.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say something?’ Cass said in exasperation.

  Innis’s face fell into its usual sullen arrangement.

  Cass sighed heavily. ‘Let’s go.’

  They climbed into the barge, Innis driving with Marrat alongside, Kristo atop with the rifle. This time Mira rode in the back with Cass and the bambini. Through the window she saw their pursuers strung out across the horizon like dark beads.

  Cass watched from the other window. ‘They’re on the road. If they beat us to Ipo we’ll be cut off.’ She took a knife from inside her clothing and passed it to Mira. ‘Keep this and use it.’

  Mira tried to push it away. ‘I could not. We do not arm ourselves.’

  ‘What about your Vito? If these Saqr catch us he will die.’

  Mira was spared the need to reply as the barge began to weave, tossing them across the floor. She heard a loud thump on the roof where Kristo clung to his rifle mount. He will be thrown. Like the ‘bino. She couldn’t bear that. Not ever.

  Crawling over to where the korm lay, she wedged Vito under the alien’s forearm and took a cable from a side-hook. Then she scrambled to the inside ladder and climbed to the roof hatch.

  It snapped open with the force of the wind and bounced up, wrenching her arm with it. Mira moaned from the pain as it dragged loose from her fingers. Kristo slid across the roof, his boots scrabbling for purchase. Not time for pain.

  She threw the rope out to him. It snaked, slapping against his side and away. She reeled it in and tried again and again until, finally, she felt the tug as Kristo caught it and reeled in the slack.

  To one side of the barge the dark beads had grown into TerVs: a line of huge barges. They were coming. Mira half fell back inside, leaving the hatch open, and wedged herself next to the korm and Vito. Cass’s knife pressed against her side. Can I use it if I have to? No.

  JO-JO RASTEROVICH

  To say that Jo-Jo Rasterovich was the kind to bear a grudge was an understatement and, as such, a marked contrast to his own appetite for exaggeration.

  So when the Hera Guild of Lawmon and Bondsmen released him from the contract that he’d signed on Belle-Monde h
e vac’d the shell. He then spent several hours concocting and uttering a wealth of profanities that would best describe his feelings for Tekton.

  As that wore thin, and his throat got dry, he got down to the serious business of planning his revenge.

  He returned to the vicinity of Belle-Monde and hired a surveillance module (disguised as a catering multiworld) in which to lurk about while he stalked Tekton’s movements and traced his research (something he was able to do with relative ease, knowing the infrastructure and inbuilt protocols of the ex-bordello pseudo-world in remarkable detail), building a picture of the smart’s hopes, dreams, and his allies.

  It was during that time when he became aware of another shadow in Tekton’s life. A stalker of detail, rather like himself. He weighed the probability of it being friend or foe and fell heavily on the side of the latter.

  It seemed that Tekton had not just one enemy—he had two.

  But he’s mine!

  When Tekton boarded an OLOSS transport with Dieter Thighs, Jo-Jo hightailed it back to Salacious II (with some excellent new heat, shake and gobble recipes) and tracked him there.

  The OLOSS transport puttered off to the re-shift point near Mintaka and Jo-Jo eased Salacious II out after it with the skill of a plain-clothes detective on his preferred beat. He could have got closer but knowing that Dieter Thighs was Tekton’s travelling companion Jo-Jo decided that surveillance was the smarter part of valour.

  As they approached the J. Rast shift point (yes, named after him!) Jo-Jo snuggled up close to it in the busy queue and deployed a rather snazzy poaching programme, which informed him that Tekton was off to the philosophers’ planet Scolar.

  Jo-Jo res-shifted through a different route and still beat Tekton there. He then hung out in Scolar space until he was forced to enrol in an external philosophy course to keep the Scolar marshals off his back.

  So while Tekton and Dieter Thighs went about their business, Jo-Jo inhaled Aesthetics and learned whole new meanings for the words ‘sublime’ and ‘disgust’.