The Ascendant Stars - Michael Cobley [209]
‘I’m outside,’ he said.
‘Is it as bad as the probe data suggested?’ came Kao Chih’s voice from the comm piece in his right ear.
‘Worse,’ Greg said. ‘Far worse.’
‘The shuttle is lying in a shallow gully over the rise north of your location. The aerial probe isn’t picking up lifesigns in its vicinity, but if Kuros survived the landing he will certainly have headed towards the enclave.’
The uneven slope was cluttered with blackened, shattered tree trunks and ragged stumps that stuck up like obsidian spikes. As he climbed he felt as if he could see two views, the lush verdancy of Segrana as he remembered it, and this stripped, seared devastation.
Catriona, he thought. Did you die along with Segrana? If the forest is dead, how could you be alive?
He steeled himself to the task, telling himself that retribution was possible and soon. The weight of the Roug handgun was comforting.
Fine ash puffed up with every step. As he ascended he made a discovery – amongst the endless black debris were heaps of twisted, half-melted metal whose aspects and identifying traits he recognised as those of Legion cyborgs. Wrecked, semi-crushed and torn to pieces, they lay everywhere he looked. Was this the explanation for the mass disappearances which allowed the remnants of the Hegemony and Earthsphere fleets to regain the initiative in the battle around Darien? It would explain those images of Nivyesta he had seen during the hours spent chasing Kuros across the surface of Darien, the grey blotches that had grown to obscure the great forest.
It wasn’t due to an orbital bombardment after all, he thought. Instead Segrana was turning into a gigantic funeral pyre for the Legion of Avatars. Was that the Zyradin’s plan all along?
By the time he reached the crest he was streaked with ash from head to foot and sweat had marked trails down his face. Before him a jagged ridge curved away to east and west, and beyond it lay a forest-crammed cove, an enclave of vegetation untouched by the disaster.
The bulbous shuttle lay at the bottom of a gully down which the recent rains had sent a slurry of ash-choked water, leaving pools in its wake. The shuttle had come to rest with its nose up and the side hatch gaping. Greg approached warily, with the Roug gun at the ready, carefully peering in. But the craft was empty and all the controls were dead, while on the wet, seared ground by the hatch he found two sets of footprints, one large, one small.
‘Perhaps Kuros is accompanied by one of those Ezgara commandos,’ Kao Chih said after Greg related his findings. ‘The surveillance data was intermittent – an accomplice could have been missed. Mr Cameron, in what direction do the tracks lead?’
‘Looks like they’re heading east, following the ridge.’
‘Less than half a kilometre that way is the entrance to a ravine that slopes down to the cove. You should hurry – it now appears that Kuros has activated a rescue transponder.’
‘Great,’ Greg said, holstering the Roug weapon. ‘Any sign of rescuers on their way?’
‘Not as yet. I shall keep you informed.’
Wiping a sheen of sweat from his face, Greg followed the footprints away from the shuttle. Ten minutes later they disappeared into a notch in the ridge, the ravine entrance Kao Chih had mentioned. Inside it was more like a fissure than a ravine, a cold, sheer-sided cleft with streamlets trickling down a steep path of black rocks and boulders.
‘Is your probe still monitoring the area?’ he said as he ducked under a massive slab wedged between the fissure sides. ‘Any way to pinpoint our quarry?’
‘It is still scanning from low-cloud