The Ascendant Stars - Michael Cobley [1]
During their twisting quest Tumakri tragically dies in an ambush and Kao Chih joins forces with a sentient droid called Drazuma-Ha*. Evading a group of combat drones seemingly trying to kill them, they are instead captured by a Human smuggler-terrorist called Corazon Talavera. With Drazuma-Ha*’s aid they manage to escape in a terrorist shuttle, leaving Corazon marooned on a semi-hospitable planet. But she has a vital and terrifying role yet to play.
Back on Darien the colony is in uproar over the actions of the authoritarian Brolturans, usually at the behest of Kuros, now Hegemony ambassador. After the bizarre disappearance of Robert Horst at Giant’s Shoulder, Theo Karlsson returns to Hammergard and encounters Donny Barbour. Both are then witness to the missile attack on the Assembly halls which kills the colony’s president and nearly all of his cabinet. A deep crisis ensues, with Brolturan troops on the streets and flying security patrols, an unsubtle show of strength.
The last remaining government official asks Major Karlsson and Donny to get a group of Enhancee scientists offworld. (The Enhancees are genetically engineered sci-tech specialists; Catriona Macreadie was part of that programme but failed the stringent tests in her teens.) At the Port Gagarin launch field they hijack an Earthsphere shuttle and manage to get into orbit. But interceptors from the Brolturan battleship Purifier are heading their way so the Enhancees are transferred to the Earthsphere ship Heracles. Donny Barbour tricks Theo Karlsson into leaving the escape pod to save his life, then leads the Brolturan interceptors on a bravura chase through the skies of the forest moon. After an agile and defiant evasion, a hostile missile sends the shuttle down in flames over one of the big seas.
After vanishing from the warpwell chamber on Giant’s Shoulder, Robert Horst appears in a bizarre complex of tunnels, escorted by a trio of small intelligent mechs. They tell him that he is down in hyperspace, which consists of many levels. After a series of perilous encounters he arrives at another deeper level, at a place called the Garden of the Machines, an AI metropolis watched over by a mysterious being called the Construct. After rejuvenating Robert’s physical age (and turning a holosim of his daughter into an android simulacrum), the Construct persuades Robert to return the favour by venturing into the depths of hyperspace in search of an ancient entity called the Godhead. Hostile forces arising from another region of the depths have been attacking allies of the Construct, who thinks that the Godhead might possess vital information on the attacks.
Meanwhile, Kao Chih and Drazuma-Ha*, still pursued by the mysterious combat droids, seek sanctuary aboard a cloud-harvester. Drazuma-Ha* tricks Kao Chih into remaining on the bridge, seizes the cloud-harvester’s shuttle and leaves for Darien. The pursuing robots reveal to Kao Chih that Drazuma-Ha* is in fact an agent of the Legion of Avatars, a cyborg that was horde the Forerunners’ last and deadliest enemy. If it gains control of the warpwell gate down on Darien, it could open it to release the Legion of Avatars’ surviving from their prison deep in the abyss of hyperspace. The chase after Drazuma-Ha* is on. When they reach Darien they use the cloud-harvester’s escape pod and Kao Chih’s shuttle to continue the hunt down within Giant’s Shoulder on Darien. Then in the warpwell chamber, Kao Chih and the surviving droid manage to kill the Legion mech Drazuma-Ha*. As Kao Chih falls unconsciousness, the well guardian transports him away to safety.
Seeds of Earth ends with the Hegemony’s Ambassador Kuros and the Brolturans in control of the colony and the temple site on Giant’s Shoulder. Theo Karlsson and Catriona Macreadie are in hiding up on the forest-moon Nivyesta, guarding a captured Hegemony mercenary who turns out to be human. On Darien, Greg is escorting Kao Chih and others to a temporary camp deep in the mountains. Plans for the insurgency are being hastily formed, and