The Ascendant Stars - Michael Cobley [136]
‘How long will it take to get over to their flagship?’ Greg said as they re-entered the shuttle.
‘We could just use the shuttle, head straight there,’ Berg said. ‘It would be faster than returning to Starfire, flying it to the flagship, then getting back in the shuttle for another short hop.’
Greg strapped into the co-pilot couch next to Berg, then nodded.
‘Makes sense. Let’s do it that way, then.’
Muffled thuds came through the hull as the airlock declamped, releasing the shuttle. Soon they were on their way and Greg settled back, eyes shut, enjoying the comfort of the padded couch. Yet relaxation proved elusive, somehow, and the tension in his neck eased only slightly. Fragments of the Rawlins testament replayed in his thoughts, along with the sense of revulsion he’d felt on witnessing the evidence of genocide. Previously he would have said that such a crime would be impossible to conceal for any length of time, yet clearly it had been.
And it struck at the heart of his sense of Humanity. Cynics would say that any Human being, any community, any society was just as capable of such atrocities – all it would require was the right combination of circumstances, the right pressures, the right fear, and it would happen. Greg had encountered such arguments before, faced them down, defeating them with his belief in the basic compassion of Human individuals, that in the end the compassionate reason of Humanity as a group existed and would triumph over or at least outlive the savagery of rationalised callousness and the cruelty and hate that it fostered.
Yet he still heard his inner cynic laugh and say: Really? You can look upon the situation we’re in, surrounded by rapacious foes whose soldiers would burn you away to ashes as soon as look at you, sitting here and waiting for a truly gigantic hammer to fall, and you’re still mouthing high-flown rhetoric. What kind of a fool are you?
A realistic fool, he thought. We’ve gone from being on our own to gaining the support of our Human brothers and sisters, the Pyreans, the Tygrans and the Vox Humana, and we even have the backing of the Roug and the Imisil …
Aye? And what about the warpwell? What about the Legion of Avatars? See? – there’s always some bigger, nastier brute getting ready to carve a path of blood. Now, for us cynics that’s what’s known as a win-win …
Greg found that he had no answer, except for the embers of hope.
Next to him, Berg was dividing his attention between monitoring the shipboard systems – which were already under the control of an artificial cognition – and a console holopanel showing the ongoing movements of ships into a sparse-looking shell formation around the planet Darien. The Imisil newcomers were slow but powerful cruisers with wide, almost barrel-shaped midsections and armed with heavy-output beam projectors. Two of them were stationed over Nivyesta along with the smaller, faster Vox Humana ships. All the others were moving into position over the planet.
Berg had configured the holoscreen into a number of sub-screens that he could bring forward, expand, minimise and move by touch. One of them showed a cycle of topics from Nivyesta, each one a capsule summary vid. Leaning forward, Greg saw views of the great continental jungle Segrana, the evidence of battle that he had seen first-hand, the charred trees, burning body pyres, the heaps of wrecked machinery. Contact had been established with an enclave of Human researchers and one of the subscreens showed an interview with a bearded man he didn’t recognise. The researcher spoke of the battles within and above Segrana and how the Uvovo had kept the Humans safe, but there was no mention of Catriona.
He closed his eyes and lay back again.
No mention of a ghost, he thought. No mention of what she did, what