The Sentients of Orion Read online

  Trin saw the face. It was Rantha’s.

  His horror threatened to swallow him. He tore off his hood, peeling back the web to be sick. Rantha. No. She would never again hate the man who made her pregnant, never date Joe Scali, never hold her ‘bino. Rantha.

  A hand grasped Trin’s shoulder and pulled him roughly to his feet. He stared into Juno Genarro’s mesh-distorted face. ‘Both teams upstairs to assist the Capitano. NOW. Except you.’ He shook Trin. ‘Can you fly?’

  Trin barely made sense of the words. ‘Si.’

  ‘Go to the landing pad and tell the Pescares to have the AiVs ready to leave. You prepare the third one. You saw that woman’s head. These people haven’t been dead very long...’

  You saw that woman’s head. Rantha’s head. Instinctively Trin knew that Juno was right. The Saqr were still near. Maybe this had happened just as they landed, or as he’d put his webbing on, or as they crept through the quiet, empty corridors.

  ‘Nathaniel,’ said Seb again. ‘We must leave now.’ He approached the young Carabinere.

  ‘No,’ said Nathaniel. He lifted his rifle and waved it at Seb. ‘My familia are here... my friends. I wish to see them.’

  Seb Malocchi nodded his understanding and edged slowly back to the door. The background noise on their shortcast was beginning to lessen.

  ‘Rapido!’ shouted Juno Genarro.

  The Carabinere disappeared, pleased to move, for the same terror was upon all of them.

  Trin was left alone with Nathaniel and the dead.

  ‘The Saqr did this.’ Nathaniel released his grip on Rantha’s body.

  Trin wanted to run from what he could see. But what about Joe Scali? an inner voice nagged. Where is your friend? Is he in that obscene pile of flesh? ‘How do you know Saqr?’

  ‘I worked in Alien Ethnicity. Signor Malocchi thought the department was a waste of time but Principe Franco insisted that we keep it. Those holes in their eyes are caused by stylets. They bore for their food.’

  ‘I know,’ said Trin shortly. ‘I’ve seen them. Nathaniel, we must go to the AiVs now.’

  Nathaniel smiled absently at him and nodded. But he didn’t move.

  Shock. Trin recognised it. Mira Fedor had been the same. He retreated to the door and glanced out. There was a noise on the stairs. On the shortcast Juno murmured instructions to his team as he tried to raise the Capitano. But this noise was not made by the Carabinere. Something else.

  ‘Nathaniel,’ Trin urged. ‘Now. Prego.’

  But Nathaniel was back on his knees among the bodies, laying them out in neat rows.

  The sound got louder and Trin panicked. He ran through the cucina to the directors’ refectory. The security director was at a table nearby, his torso resting on a tabletop, dried trails of black blood in stripes across his clean scalp where tiny holes had been bored.

  Trin ran past him without stopping. Malocchi is dead. Malocchi is dead. The realisation pursued him down a forgotten, malformed corridor. He bit down to extract the last squirt of glucose as he ran. When he reached the door of his office he hammered at the lock. As the door slid open, a deep-rooted survival instinct sent him dropping to his knees.

  A pistol discharged into the empty air where he’d been standing.

  He scrambled against the wall, feeling warm wetness flood his groin. Trin Pellegrini had never in his adult life pissed himself before. He fumbled with his rifle, jamming the charge in his haste. Visions of himself on the pile with the others, his discarded flesh being laid out by Nathaniel, took control of his mind. No.

  His rifle flickered in readiness. He lifted it and fired at the doorway. The pulse hammered into the ceiling, blasting out chunks of catoplasma. Fear racked him and he couldn’t bring himself to move any closer to the door.

  ‘Familia?’ a hoarse voice called into the silence.

  Trin’s heart lurched and he began to breathe again. He knew that voice. He knew it. ‘Scali,’ he rasped. Then again. ‘Scali, is that you?’

  ‘Don Pellegrini?’

  ‘Si. Si, Nobile.’ Tears of relief spurted from his eyes.

  Scali stepped into the doorway, sobbing too. His fellalo was torn and soaked with blood.

  He saw Trin on the floor and fell down beside him.

  They stared at each other in silence.

  ‘You stink, young Principe,’ Scali finally said, hugging him. ‘But you came for me, Don. I will never forget that. You knew where I’d be hiding. I hoped Rantha would think of it. Have you seen her?’

  Trin swallowed slowly and painfully. ‘No, Nobile, I have not. She must have got away. Now you and I must do the same.’

  MIRA

  The Saqr encircled Ipo like maggots working the edges of a carcass. Rast tried to keep order, organising work parties, but many wanted to fight away their fear.

  Mira volunteered to pick grain from the crops in the hydro-tents. At the end of her first shift, Rast was waiting for her outside, sitting in a TerV. ‘Get in.’

  Mira ignored the mercenary, walking back towards the town centre behind the truck that had brought them to the tents. Now it was loaded down with kranse.

  Rast rolled the TerV alongside her. ‘That’s an order, Fedor.’

  ‘I do not take your orders,’ Mira said softly.

  Rast raised her rifle and pointed it casually out the window. ‘Do as I say, Baronessa.’

  Mira stopped still, biting her lip. The others on the work detail walked on, heads averted, not wanting any part of her problem. She stood, undecided. She found the mercenary abrasive and rude but she sensed it was not wise to test Rast’s anger so she climbed into the TerV.

  ‘Your manners are appalling,’ she said in her stiffest aristo tone.

  ‘Manners?’ Rast laughed so hard that she sent the TerV jerking from side to side of the track as she drove it past the tents toward the east end of the town.

  They pulled up near a section of the fence through which they could see a handful of Saqr tending a row of yellow globes half-buried in the ground. Mira could smell the cloying sweetness.

  ‘Tell me what these things are—everything you know about them, and how you know it,’ Rast demanded.

  Mira paused to collect her thoughts. It seemed hard to remember things and harder to concentrate, as if a heavy impermeable shroud had been cast across her mind. ‘I studied other sentient cultures at the Studium and the Saqr were one of over five hundred life forms I referenced. I did not receive a neural fact- augmentation because it was not deemed necessary. Not for a woman who would never truly hold a position of importance. So I can only use ordinary recall and it is possible that I may be confusing them with other species. My knowledge hardly qualifies as expertise.’

  ‘Try,’ said Rast.

  ‘I believe the globes are cysts.’

  ‘You mean eggs?’ Rast asked.

  ‘No. Each one is a fully formed Saqr in a state of cryptobiosis. Hibernation,’ Mira said, softly.

  ‘Impossible. The globe is too small.’

  Mira shook her head. ‘I saw one hatch in Loisa. They are capable of compacting their bodies.’

  ‘Why do they do that?’

  ‘Cryptobiosis is used to survive extremes of temperature and other conditions.’

  ‘Then what is the sweet stink?’

  ‘I’ve been trying to remember. I think it has something to do with the alteration of their body fluids. In cryptobiosis the water in their bodies is replaced by glycerol and sugars. It protects their membranes. Usually, though, they would enter hibernation if conditions were very dry. Somehow that has been reversed...’

  ‘By someone.’

  ‘Si.’

  ‘What of their social habits?’

  ‘Their culture, as we discussed, is based on reproduction and survival.’

  Rast snorted. ‘Do they take orders?’

  ‘Perhaps. I’m not sure about their organisational hierarchy, though I believe it is possible to communicate with them. OLOSS has attempted to do so. I do rec
all one other thing. After hibernation they are voraciously hungry and hostile—depending on how long their hibernation has been.’

  ‘So someone has bought them here and released them in their most aggressive form. I wonder,’ said Rast, staring through the fence, ‘who that might be.’

  Mira clasped her arms around herself, holding tight to the guilty weight of her conscience.

  * * *

  That evening Rast called a town meeting in the piazza to set up a maintenance turnaround to keep the TerVs ready to move. She also insisted that all available weapons should be stockpiled and distributed according to the duty-watch roster. Though, on the face of it, the miners and farmers agreed, Cass told Mira that many of them had other weapons hidden.

  They stood together at the edge of the crowd, among the women and ‘bini. The segregation had occurred naturally as if the women sought comfort in each other as they listened to some of the men lobby to attack the Saqr.

  Rast’s mercenaries prowled through the crowd, fully armed, while she talked the aggressive faction down. Mira wondered how long she could restrain them.

  Rast sought Mira out again after the meeting ‘I want you on a maintenance shift. You’ve got engineering knowledge.’

  ‘Theoretical,’ Mira countered.

  The mercenary gave her a withering stare. ‘Your theoretical aristo manner will likely get you strangled in this climate, Baronessa.’

  Mira’s heart quickened and she instinctively stepped backwards.

  Her reaction set Rast guffawing. ‘That stiff little act of yours is getting brittle, Fedor.’ She made a snapping noise with her tongue as she strode off.

  ‘Rast is attracted to you,’ said Cass. ‘Maybe we can use that.’

  * * *

  We? Mira pondered what that meant as she walked back alone to the dormitory. Cass had met a man and moved in with him. Her Thomaas was a scrawny, unsmiling person who owned a gume close to the dorm. Was that the ‘we’ she spoke of?

  ‘Someone digging your grave?’ Mesquite was outside in the dark with her hood off, smoking. The nightwinds whipped the smoke straight up into the sky where Tiesha was already waning. Semantic would rise later.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Mira found the woman’s forthright manner disconcerting.

  Mesquite moved casually closer to her. ‘Cass Mulravey’s fratella has been outside, watching for you. I saw him, though he has been hiding across the way,’ she whispered.

  Mira couldn’t stop herself peering into the dark.

  ‘You need to learn how to protect yourself, Baronessa.’

  ‘Aristo women do not use violence,’ Mira said automatically. ‘We made that choice when we left Latino Crux.’

  Mesquite ground the butt of her smoke underfoot. ‘So the women made that choice? Or the men made it for them? You have the Inborn Talent? What can you fly?’

  ‘Anything. Though I am most skilled with the Intuits.’

  ‘What about assailants?’

  ‘Si,’ said Mira, puzzled.

  ‘What are they built for, then? Leisure trips?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Oh, so you’re trained to fly a warship but you do not take up arms?’

  ‘That is different. I would never see my enemies...’ Mira trailed off limply.

  Without warning Mesquite hooked Mira’s ankle and knocked her flat on her back. She shoved the point of her boot into Mira’s throat.

  Mira struggled, trying to wrench Mesquite’s foot away, but the woman pressed harder, cutting off her airflow. In a bid to breathe, Mira twisted sideways, overbalancing Mesquite.

  The woman fell heavily onto the ground.

  Mira sat up, holding her throat. ‘Are you l-loco?’ she gasped.

  Mesquite rolled over slowly to face her. ‘Aristo women do not fight, eh? Well, aristo thinking will not keep you alive through this, Mira Fedor,’ said Mesquite. Her expression became suddenly apprehensive. ‘It did not save the Principe, or his familia.’

  But Mira cared not for her philosophies. ‘How dare you touch me?’ She climbed to her feet, furious enough to strike the woman.

  Mesquite brushed the dust from her protecsuit, unfazed by Mira’s reaction. ‘Adapt if you want to survive.’

  Mira left her and went inside. She took Vito from one of the cluster of makeshift cradles that was serving as a nursery and thanked the young familia woman who’d been minding him. He snuggled into her arms.

  ‘He doesn’t eat much. Dribbled out most of his latte,’ said the minder.

  Mira sighed. ‘He is Pagoin. They cannot metabolise it so well.’

  The woman nodded doubtfully, as if she didn’t understand. Then she frowned. ‘Did you have a fall, Baronessa? Your fellala...’ She gestured at the fresh red smears on the back and side of Mira’s robe.

  ‘Si. An accident. Please, my name is Mira.’

  The young woman smiled this time. ‘And I am Josefia.’

  Mira took Vito to her corner where the korm was roosting, one eye closed. She retrieved the knife that Cass had given her from the small bundle of clothes that she had been allotted and secured it inside her underliner. Then she lay down on the bedfilm, cradling Vito close to her. He squirmed a little. He was stronger now that he’d had some food, but his expression stayed solemn.

  Mira lay there, trying to picture him in a few years. Wiry and serious, she thought, no easy laughter for Vito. Her heart ached for that young man. Would she be there to see him like that, to tell him about this terrible time and where he had come from?

  She knew she wanted to be, and in that instant Mira felt Faja close to her.

  * * *

  The following night Mira took the korm to the early sitting at the mess. Mesquite surprised her by producing a meat-extract soup that the korm could digest. Mira watched the alien gulp the food, avoiding Innis’s sulky glares. He seemed sober though Kristo told her he’d been drinking behind Cass’s back. Kristo had taken to calling for Mira at the dorm to walk her to meals. She welcomed his company and his unobtrusive manner.

  ‘G’d,’ said the korm. It had collected some rudimentary ‘esque words but its palate wasn’t designed for speech. It replaced some letters with whistle sounds, making its pronunciation difficult to understand.

  ‘Dj^s^r^t?’

  Mira shrugged. ‘I don’t know where she is.’

  The korm’s crest filled and coloured. Mira had come to recognise this as a sign of emotion in the child.

  ‘F^nd?’ it insisted.

  ‘Where would I find her?’

  ‘F^nd h^r!’ The korm lurched to its feet, upset, body quivering. It fell into a fighting crouch—the same one that Mira had seen it adopt in Loisa, against the Saqr. Its action knocked over the table, which tipped onto the next. Marrat’s dinner crashed to the floor, Innis’s spilt across him.

  The korm rushed out, leaving Mira.

  Marrat began to clear up the mess but Innis was at Mira’s side immediately, his face only a breath away from hers. ‘That ginko of yours is no more’n an animal. Should be kept outside with the quarks and the cane,’ he said.

  Mira’s fingers curled into the skin of her felalla. Why did he come so close? ‘The korm is upset. It has lost its friend. We have all lost someone.’

  Innis’s expression became petulant. ‘You been turnin’ my sister against me.’

  Mira stared at him in honest surprise. ‘How could I do that? Why would I care to?’

  Innis’s glower lightened into something slightly more amenable at her answer. His hands fell to his sides and he took a step back.

  ‘I guess I’ve been riding you, Baronessa. Maybe we could work things out better. Don’t need it to be like this. Not with the ginkos out there jus’ waiting to get in at us.’ He gave her a would-be appealing smile that only made her nervous.

  ‘All right,’ Mira agreed cautiously.

  ‘Let’s talk outside.’

  She glanced around. The korm had gone—back to the dormitory, she hoped, but she couldn’
t be sure. She should follow, she thought: collect Vito from the nursery and see what she could do to calm the korm. Or should she let Innis have his say?

  Mira took a deep breath and nodded to him.

  Innis led the way outside, away from the refectory and down a dirt road to the north that was lined with gumes. One fading street solar and the occasional flicker of activity inside the huts lit their way. Marrat tagged along close behind.

  Halfway along, Mira suddenly stopped walking, uncomfortable with the distance they were from the refectory and the dorm. ‘Speak your mind now.’

  ‘You sleeping with my sister?’

  Mira opened her mouth, astonished. ‘That is ridiculous.’

  Innis came closer to her, his face puckered like that of a ragazzo about to cry. ‘She thinks I’m useless. Why else would she think that, ‘cept if you’re poisoning her?’

  Mira found herself wordless in the face of Innis’s accusation. She held out a gloved hand in protest. ‘Your sorella and I have no such relationship—she is with a man. You have seen him.’

  But Innis was sunk low in self-pity. He slapped her hand away with force and grabbed her shoulders. ‘I’ll teach you ‘bout men,’ he said, ripping at her robe.

  Fear made her react without thinking. She reached for the knife inside her fellala, the one that Cass had given her, and slashed at him.

  Innis staggered back a few paces, surprised. Blood flowed from the wound.

  But Marrat seized her, pinning her arms to her sides, forcing the knife from her hand.

  ‘Aristo b-b-itch. Ginko-fucker.’ Innis coughed. He kicked her in the stomach.

  Mira crumpled over in Marrat’s arms. The pain made her vomit up the food in her stomach.

  ‘The bitch is sick, Innis,’ Marrat complained. ‘Let’s dump her.’

  Innis laughed, sounding a little loco. ‘Better. Let’s give the ginko-fucker to the ginkos.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I know how to shut the fence down,’ Innis whispered. He sounded excited.

  Mira’s heart pounded so loudly in her ears that his voice sounded distant. Then she felt his hands on her fellala, ripping at it.