The Ascendant Stars - Michael Cobley [142]
‘So you don’t think that the Hegemony are going to play nice and be diplomatic?’
The Tygran raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s not really their strong point.’
‘So how many all told?’
‘Eighty-four, while the Hegemony armada consists of a reported two thousand vessels.’
Greg almost laughed. ‘Is that what’s known as a crushing superiority?’
‘In some circles, yes.’
‘Ye know, when we get back to the Starfire I’ll have to lay hands on a set of that handy subarmour of yours.’
Berg’s smile was bleak. ‘I think we’ll need something a bit stronger than that.’
CHEL
Sitting on a dusty stone plinth in the gloom of the roothouse, he let the wandering sight of his Seer eyes stretch itself out along the rootways, the underground interlinkage laid down by their most ancient forebears. Many of the essence strands had long since rotted away but the Artificer Uvovo teams had worked wonders with a variety of vines and roots brought from the daughter-forests. And their hard work was evident at many other roothouses scattered across the hills, the forests and the coastal plain. Days upon days of effort had borne their fruit, yet with the warpwell subverted and the return of the Legion of Avatars looking more than likely, could it all have been a waste?
Back when the Ancients still had corporeal form, this world, Umara, the dense forests of Segrana-That-Was, generated webs of power capable of defending the entire planet against attacks from near space. Greater nodes oversaw primary nodes, each of which gathered in an array of roothouses, hundreds, thousands. But all that Cheluvahar had to muster against the hostile forces building in the heavens, and against the flesh-and-machine horrors soon to emerge from Giant’s Shoulder, was a single secondary node and nineteen roothouses.
When the Zyradin transported him here from Tusk Mountain, it had been unswerving in its insistence that Chel prepare the nodes, the roothouses and the Artificer Uvovo for battle. And not long afterwards he had a visitation from the Pathmaster, his spectral form appearing even more tenuous and fragile than before and his voice sounding scratchy and broken, like a cluster of insects.
I agreed to come here, he had told the ancient, ancient remnant of the long-past forebear. I agreed to prepare for battle, and the only reason I’m able to do so is the healing that I received from a vudron. Not due to anything you said or did.
The Pathmaster’s thin, vaporous presence, his eyes in shadow, had smiled and nodded. A faint sibilant voice said, Understanding is seldom understood …
Then it had faded away, like threads of smoke dissolving in the air. Immediately Chel had felt ashamed at the blinkered anger of his response and now, sitting here, he felt a sting of regret. Could that have been the Pathmaster’s last fleeting words to the living before finally merging with the Eternal?
Seated on the stone plinth, his eyes were closed yet his Seer sight ranged forth from the roothouse, from this secondary node, drawn along the essence strands, dividing when they divided, spreading to join with the other roothouses from which the entwining web spread further. The Zyradin motes that he brought were doing their work. He could sense the slow gyring pulse of the planet, rising from hard and compacted depths to the thin uncertain crust over which organic life existed like a frail bubble. Yet it was frail organic minds that had learned how to harness the pulsing gyre of those colossal inner energies. And as Chel’s awareness expanded across the web of connections he could feel those energies, feel the ancient webs respond to them, opening to them, drawing on them.
This was the point where control had to be exerted. Were he to allow the new energies to flood the web of roothouses it would be like a beacon in the perceptions of some entities, particularly that resolute survivor, the Legion Knight. So he had to carefully gauge the flow of energies, making sure that their permeation was gradual and even, and to keep the roothouses