The Ascendant Stars - Michael Cobley [210]
Greg nodded as he emerged from the ravine into a rough clearing hemmed in by dense walls of foliage that rose up to intertwine overhead. Some light filtered through, casting everything in shades of green. And the air was clean, moist and free from the taint of ash. Greg had a moment or two of pure enjoyment before a tingle of alarm came over him.
In reflex he dived to the right and had the Roug gun out even as something weighty sighed through the space he had so recently occupied. There was a heavy impact followed by secondary thuds and the crackling rustle of crushed foliage. He remembered Kao Chih’s instructions on the smartgun’s use and fired a sequence of short bursts into the shadowy ravine, back along what he reckoned to be the boulder’s trajectory.
The second rock was smaller and faster. He dodged sideways, still firing blurry steel-grey bolts up into the dark fissure, reached cover behind a thick bush and saw that a pale circular display had appeared on the back of the gun, above the grip. Within it a red dot was moving from left to right and Greg smiled. His attacker was tagged and the gun’s sensors were now tracking it. He crouched, raised the Roug weapon and swung it after the invisible assailant, who had to be moving along the branches high above. When the red dot was centred he pressed the fire stud and held it down.
A chain of bright blue spikes lanced up into the dense mesh of foliage. There was a choking cry, a splintering crack, and a form fell out of the canopy amid a cascade of leaves and twigs. For a second the gun’s continuous fire followed the body’s descent, pouring energy bolts into it, before Greg released the stud. Trailing smoke and flames, it hit the ground and was still. Even before he reached it he was fairly sure who it was. With the smart-gun at the ready he flipped the lifeless form over … and he was right, it was Vashutkin. The former politician had taken energy-bolt hits all up the left side of his body, leaving it a seared gory ruin with the arm almost severed and blood oozing from a ragged hole in the neck. The eyes were vacant.
‘Mr Cameron? Are you there?’ Kao Chih sounded worried. ‘We are picking up weapon-energy discharges.’
‘I’m okay, I’m brand new,’ he said. ‘That gun is pretty impressive, by the way!’
‘Have you encountered the Hegemony ambassador?’
‘Nah. Dealt with the monkey – now it’s time to find the organ-grinder.’
He stepped over the corpse and pushed through a curtain of leafy vines. The undergrowth was dense and alive with buzzing insects and varieties of beetles and reptiles that seemed familiar if somewhat larger. He had gone less than a dozen paces when a tall woman leaned out from behind a tree and beckoned him over.
‘You are chasing the big Sendrukan fellow, yes?’ she said with a faint Norj accent.
‘I do have business to discuss with him, aye.’
‘Well, this one climbed our Watchtree, threatened to fire on anyone who comes near. My Uvovo scholars are all for charging across the branchways but I am managing to cool down their hot heads, so far. I hope that you are armed.’
When he showed her the Roug gun she nodded approvingly. ‘That’s the Watchtree, right through there.’ She pointed to a huge trunk around which a lamplit stairway spiralled upwards. ‘Listen, there is a friend of mine still up there – keep your eye out for her, ja? And the sooner this is resolved the better. My Uvovo won’t stay cool for very much longer.’
He smiled. ‘Well, I’d better get on wi’ it, then!’
He nodded to her then headed off through the bushy undergrowth at a crouch. He had just reached the foot of the spiral steps when Kao Chih suddenly spoke.
‘We may have a small problem, Mr Cameron.’
Greg sighed. ‘If you really need to tell me about it now, I bet it’s no’ that small.’
‘A previously undetected vessel has left Darien and is