The Ascendant Stars - Michael Cobley [115]
Perhaps it’s just as well that I’ve been relegated to being little more than a wandering spirit, to the status of an observer, she thought. It’s no’ safe to give me those powers, I’ve proved that. No, Segrana needs another Keeper.
But no matter now often or how intensely, or even angrily, she had declared this in the openness of her mind, never had she received a reply. She just wanted rid of what increasingly seemed to be a pointless role, and she wanted to go back to her life, that real flesh-and-blood life. They owed it to her and she deserved it, she deserved to find happiness and even love. If Greg survived the horrifying conflict that lay ahead.
Although her corporeal integrity had been interwoven with Segrana’s vast and complex essence for a while, she had not realised until recently that she could gain access to a range of heightened sense abilities with which she could peer at the spaces beyond the sky. Quite quickly she learned how to make the sensing capacity show her visual information and to make it keep track of objects in motion, like starships. In this way she had been able to follow Greg’s progress since the Tygrans whisked him away in their ship. The lethal dangers he got himself into and out of almost made her reluctant to continue these observations, fearing that at some unexpected point she might be witness to his death, something violent and final.
Yet she could not hide from events, and doggedly maintained a regular vigil. She saw the savage battles taking place in the space around Darien, spasms of unleashed violence that left behind expanding clouds of wrack and ruin, a spreading sea of glittering debris throughout which corpses were plentifully scattered.
She saw the encounter between the surviving Imisil vessel and the Hegemony warship captured by the Tygrans, in whose company was Greg. With Greg as sole Darien representative, a meeting was held on the Retributor to discuss cooperation on repairs and supplies, and the fight that lay ahead. The Imisil commander was also there and lost no time in laying out the starkness of the situation.
By now, Catriona was able to use Segrana’s sensing abilities to discern some speech, and even some thoughts, although this only worked with Greg and the Tygrans. The Imisil commander told the gathering that a fleet of Imisil warships would be arriving in less than four hours, and about six hours after that would come the Hegemony fleet, estimated to consist of approximately six hundred vessels all told. Outnumbering the Imisil and the others by roughly twenty-four to one, this was in keeping with the Hegemony policy of deploying crushing force against any who infringed upon their interests.
Everyone there fell silent and the mood was sombre. Cat found Greg’s own cast of mind to be surprisingly positive, resigned to facing impossible odds yet determined in a roll-the-dice kind of way. While fearing for his safety, she felt strangely proud of him.
Aye, Mr Cameron, she thought. You’ll do, so long as you come home safe – and I get my body back!
But as she continued to observe she felt a faint, trembling unease, as if she herself were being watched. Then without warning, the gathering and all that she was aware of just slipped away from her, as if those great sensing abilities had been choked off. Her perceptions swam in a blur that started to resolve into the blue pillars of her dream-palace. But it too slipped aside, a slow smear of shadows and grainy images through which she glided, bodiless,