The Ascendant Stars - Michael Cobley [117]
‘An answer would be a big help, actually.’
** In time ** Look to your right and down ** Do you see the very large ragged piece of wreckage? **
She could. It was the size of a football field and was surrounded by a halo of smaller glinting fragments.
‘I see it.’
** Stretch out your hand towards it ** Imagine that you are reaching out to touch it and you will move towards it **
Catriona followed the instructions and she did indeed begin to move. As she drifted out from behind the shadowing debris she noticed a sudden dimming in her vision. The sun’s direct glare was muted and dazzling reflections were softened.
** Filtering the light protects your visual receptors ** Do not be concerned about the lesser pieces ** Push them out of your path or go around **
The debris was of all sizes and almost all of it had edges or surfaces that were jagged, sharp and lethal, yet her opaque form seemed unaffected by grazing collisions or scrapes. There were other objects that evoked a mixture of horror and pity, the frozen bodies of the carrier’s Sendrukan crew. Most wore heavy vac-suits or flimsy emergency environment suits and most seemed dead from high-power energy bolts. Those large humanoid bodies were twisted into anguished contortions and everyone bore a layer of sparkling frost. It was like slowly wending her way through a silent zero-gee morgue.
Then her goal was before her. It looked like it had been ripped out of the Hegemony carrier’s structure by sheer force. Apart from the stretch of hull plating down one side, every other surface was a picture of destruction, torn bulkheads, snapped-off lengths of cabling, gaping and twisted air ducts, bent and severed pipes around which beards of ice had grown. She could see where the cleft crossed several decks and saw more bodies, motionless figures floating in corridors or frozen in death agonies while wrapped up in a sleeping recess, gaping mouths, grasping hands …
Catriona had seen many terrible things under the canopy of Segrana these last few days, but this sight stirred in her a crawling horror unlike anything she had felt before.
And the Zyradin wants to study this? she thought.
** Move round to the area of hull plating **
As quickly as she could she aimed herself at that part of the wreckage and was soon floating directly over it.
** Approach the hull surface and place your hand against it **
‘How will this help you analyse the thing?’ she said. ‘Why not just take a few pictures, or whatever your equivalent is?’
** It will serve my purposes and my curiosity **
She drifted towards the flat surface, which was mostly a dark grey with metallic blue bands crossing part of it. She was facing an area with a block of what she assumed to be instructions in Sendrukan. She reached out her strange, milkily opaque hand and touched the flat greyness with her fingertips then her whole palm.
Well, I hope this is helping somehow …
Suddenly she was enveloped by meshes of light, misty braids coiling around her and up and around the wreckage, swathing it in shining bands. Catriona was frozen in place, unable to move but sensing a buildup of something powerful. The shining braids began to brighten, everything seemed to tremble, and there was a dazzling burst of light and an abrupt moment of tranquillity, an instant of perfect silence …
… before a plunge into darkness, impressions of shadows, great trunks, masses of greenery, vine-woven mossy curtains – she was back in Segrana! – and before her, hanging in midair, that immense slab of wreckage with her hand still pressed against it …
** Release ** Release it **
A second of incredulity, of mystification, of realisation, then she snatched her hand away.
The wreckage fell from her, smashing several trees into splinters before it struck the ground with a deafening crash.
GREG
It was only a fifteen-minute hop from the Retributor to the Starfire but Greg’s head was full of details from the meeting and he just couldn’t relax. The summary of the Starfire’s weaponry seemed meagre in the light of the Imisil commander