The Ascendant Stars - Michael Cobley [101]
The elderly man shrugged. ‘In addition to my tasks aboard the Heracles, I was also carrying out observations on behalf of the Construct, who I believe you have heard of.’
Kao Chih smiled hesitantly. ‘I have. Is it possible that the Construct will send someone to rescue us?’
‘If it could do so, I would be the agent assigned to such a delightful job.’ He held out a skinny hand. ‘My name is Robert, by the way.’
Robert’s grasp was cool, dry and surprisingly firm. As they shook hands, Kao Chih mulled over what he had said.
‘Do you have any idea of where this ship is heading?’
‘They definitely seemed to have a destination in mind but they kept it to themselves.’ Robert looked around with an air of amiable interest. ‘Well, this does look like a most specific kind of predicament, I must say. But with your skills I imagine that we’ll be free and away in no time.’
‘I don’t know that I have much in the way of skills that would help us here,’ he said.
‘Ah, but this is a pivotal predicament, Kao Chih. For all these people this situation is literally life and death, wouldn’t you say?’ He gestured at the Humans in the recesses. ‘But there is also the matter of the sizeable asteroid that this cryptship is propelling up the hyperspace tiers, aided by a vessel of the Suneye Monoclan … ’
Kao Chih felt a chill. ‘The Suneye? These Shyntanil are working with them to move an asteroid?’ Then he remembered. ‘I overheard something … those Shyntanil attendants talked of a moonshard that is going to be used against some adversary called the Ghost Gods.’
Robert nodded thoughtfully. ‘Hmm, that is audacious. The Ghost Gods were one of the Forerunners’ staunchest allies, a skilful species which fought relentlessly against anti-sentient influences and other tyrants. They survived the collapse of the Forerunner civilisation and have endured the passage of millennia by concealing or altering themselves. Today they are known as the Roug and reside in the Buzrul system … does this surprise you, Kao Chih?’
‘I knew that the Roug’s ancestors were involved with the Forerunner alliance … So the Shyntanil and Suneye vessels are going to Buzrul to try to destroy their orbital city, Agmedra’a?’
‘That or strike at the cities hidden in the cloudy depths of the nearby gas giant, V’Hrant.’
Kao Chih tried to order his thoughts around this grim news. ‘What can we do to prevent this?’
‘We already tried, my shipmates and I.’ Robert indicated the quiescent Humans in their cages. ‘You see, roughly half a ship-day ago we dispatched a Construct agent on a mission into stranger realms than I would ever wish to tread, and it was soon after that we encountered this vessel and the Suneye one. Hoping to disable or destroy either or both, we mounted an assault … ’
‘I remember the impacts and the alarms,’ he said. ‘So your attack failed.’
‘Even with some radical upgrades, courtesy of myself, the Heracles could not prevail. We slowed them down but couldn’t seriously damage either of them and the Shyntanil were quick to launch boarding parties … ’ The older man shrugged. ‘And here we are. Now, I have to make a reckoning of the survivors so while I’m doing that I should like you to hurry around the main bulkheads and look for anything resembling a deck plan. The layout of a cryptship is always the same and the sooner we narrow down our whereabouts the sooner we can get organised.’
‘How did you come to be so familiar with such vessels?’ Kao Chih said.
Smiling, Robert tapped the side of his head. ‘Some surprising things stored up here. Let’s get busy, shall we?’
Kao Chih hurried off on his task, thoughts full of fearful anticipation yet sharpened by the hope that the elderly Robert knew what he was doing. The storage bay with its rows of narcotised prisoners was a chilling place in both senses of the word. By the time he found the map, on a semi-corroded plaque halfway along the second wall of the bay that he came to, he was trembling from the cold. The lettering and the symbols were meaningless but it was definitely a floorplan, as Robert