The Ascendant Stars - Michael Cobley [183]
Guilt assailed him, guilt for what he would soon do. It was a burning task that seared him down to the essence. He tried to shut it out, rise above it … and for one shimmering instant he was free of it and able to see further, clearer and more truthfully than ever before. One vibrant, vivid instant when the stonework of the roothouse and the ground above moved aside, when the sky parted, when a shining corridor opened for him and let his vision soar at first between the stars then into the underdomains, what Humans call hyperspace. Onward his vision flew, past incredible sights and spectacles before it approached what seemed to be a vast and monstrous island, hanging in midair, ragged at the edges and underneath. And he felt another mind looking straight at him, a mind of two minds, readying itself for battle. It spoke before he could:
‘Guilt cannot be outrun.’
A jolt of surprise and a sudden intake of breath … and he was back in the roothouse.
Sad, sombre and resolved, he bowed his head. He knew what had to be done.
GREG
With a bloody nose and a twisted ankle, he staggered through the dying ship, desperately searching for a still functioning escape pod. The one he had been on the point of departing in had come under bludgeoning attack from a Legion cyborg trying to gain access to the ship. He remembered hearing the shriek of tortured metal as the thing ripped and cut its way through the ejection hatch then started on the hull of the pod itself. Ash and the others were already gone and he was on his own with only his instinct to guide him.
So he had scrambled back out of the pod, closed it up then resealed the heavy access hatch out in the gallery. Then he had hit the manual launch, sending the last pod in the port aft gallery away on its travels. He knew that the starboard aft pods had been wrecked by repeated missile strikes and that the starboard midsection ones had all been taken by the Tygran crew. That left the port midsection pod gallery. There was another cluster of them up in the bows but beam attacks had cut through the hull, turning the connecting corridors into mazes of razor-sharp debris blown open to hard vacuum.
So here he was, limping along with a knackered ankle and a bloody nose, earned when part of the deck grav fluctuated wildly earlier. In one hand he had a small foam extinguisher and in the other was a heavy beam pistol, while praying that he’d never have cause to use either. The corridors were smoky from onboard fires, concealed or otherwise, which the automatics were struggling to get under control. Yet worse than that were the never-ending sounds of activity out on the Silverlance’s hull – thuds, clanks, hammering, the squeal of rotary blades. In some respects the Legion cyborgs were incredibly low-tech but their weapons and implements were very effective at close quarters. Luckily, thus far they had confined their activities to the ship’s hull but he knew that this couldn’t last – he had seen what a dense flock of them could do to a vessel, similar to watching a seethe of midden-beetles strip the meat off a dead baro.
‘Warning, Acting Commander Cameron, low orbit continues to deteriorate.’
Greg grinned and patted the comm in his jacket’s chest pocket.
‘Good tae hear yer voice, Silverlance. Thought maybe you’d packed in.’
‘This intelligence continues to maintain overall integrity despite localised difficulties. Note that atmospheric entry will commence in nineteen point three minutes, and that vessel Silverlance will cease to be habitable in twenty-one point eight minutes. Disembarkation via escape pod is urgently advised.’
‘Right, aye, I’m working on it. What’s the latest on our guests outside?’
‘External sensors continue to degrade. So far, two large cyborg units