The Ascendant Stars - Michael Cobley [50]
He raised a hand and two shorter figures in similar dark grey armour appeared.
‘Take this over to the Bonecarrier, and to the caul – my command is this.’
As the Shyntanil converged on his chair, Kao Chih smelled their mustiness again, only now the corrupt taint seemed stronger and redolent of putrefaction. Dread settled over him like a deadening chill as they wheeled him away.
LEGION
From a low grey sky a steady drizzle was falling on Giant’s Shoulder, the jutting promontory whose sheer-sided presence dominated the coastal country west of Port Gagarin. Up on its flat summit, the rain spatter-darkened the remaining masonry of the ancient Uvovo temple, pooled on the flagstones and soaked still further the compacted wreckage of the prefab huts that used to stand nearby. Now a large Brolturan facility, its walls a dark, shiny green, stood near the narrow end of the promontory. Beneath it was an immense trench that sloped down to the entrance to the anteroom leading to the warpwell chamber, where analytic mechs monitored the well’s energy profile. It was five days since the Legion Knight’s scion pair had plunged into the reactivated warpwell’s bright maw: the first set off a device which reversed the well’s gravitic flow, allowing the second to plunge in and attempt to survive the terrifying descent down through hundreds of layers of hyperspace to that tormenting prison at its very nadir. Initial estimates gave a journey time of between two and three days, and thus a period of four to six days before the first cyborg warriors of the Legion actually emerged on the surface of Darien, the harbingers of a new age.
Five days of waiting. To the Legion Knight they had seemed interminable.
Yet patience eluded him. He examined the feeds from the inflight surveillance drones currently scanning areas of the coastal region from high-altitude trajectories. These flyers were a recent development born out of a need to regain a strategic edge due to the increased effectiveness of the Human irregulars. Less than a day after he had taken control of Giant’s Shoulder his sensors picked up a ship entering orbit, then a smaller craft descending to land somewhere in the mountains to the west. Since then, the Human rebels had carried out several attacks against his lookout positions and patrols, resulting in the destruction or disabling of nearly a dozen combat mechs. The new flyers were designed to scan the vicinity of Giant’s Shoulder, watch for anomalies and to track any visible creatures. Abrupt changes in their location could indicate the presence of Humans. And since the Brolturan defence batteries were operational and linked to a cluster of sensor nodes, those flyers were in no danger. After the shuttle’s descent four days ago, the main vessel had shifted its orbit well south of the Human colony. The skies were clear of threats, yet near space was not. Sensor data from last night revealed that a battle involving four vessels had taken place beyond high orbit and ranged over a considerable area. One was the ship that had dropped off the shuttle, while the other three were unknown. The sensors did record a sharp burst of energies after the conflict strayed away to an occluded quarter of the night sky, and from fragmentary comm signals the Legion Knight deduced that the energies came from the destruction of an Ezgara mercenary ship. And that two of the other vessels were from the Imisil Mergence.