Michael Cobley - Seeds of Earth (Humanitys Fire, Book 1)

BOOK 1 OF
HUMANITY'S FIRE

MICHAEL COBLEY

KAO CHIH

Drazuma-Ha* had explained about Bryag Station's singular security precautions, the outer perimeter markers, the sensor web enclosing several cubic lightyears of emptiness, and the semi-random route that the station followed through it all. But Kao Chih could not help but feel a gnawing exasperation when they encountered the third marker buoy. According to Tumakri's itinerary notes they had been due to contact a Piraseri at the station almost three days ago.

Seeing the marker-buoy signal on the console display, he shook his head and slumped back in the couch.

'Another one?' he said. 'This is beyond paranoia.'

'If I could shrug,' said Drazuma-Ha*, 'I would. But it's their security and their rules - to my certain knowledge, Bryag has only suffered two attacks since deploying this system a century ago, once by an Earthsphere operative, the other by a Kiskashin blood smuggler with a grudge against the ruling Vusark Enclavol - both times damage was minimal and no one died... well, no one of consequence...'

Just then the intership channel clicked and a synthvoice spoke in 4Peljan, a Vusarkic trade language that

Kao Chih recognised from his dockside work on Agmedra'a. His linguistic enabler translated it perfectly.

'Attention vessel 433 dash 2506 - you are being scanned to ascertain your fitness and trustworthiness with regard to a Bryag Station boarding permit... scanning ... all passengers must remain still for 12 seconds... scanning... speech pattern scan will commence in 15 seconds

Which was a word-for-word repetition of the last two encounters, both of which had resulted in being offered course data for a 'stage continuance' or an 'area exit' microjump. Of course, both were essential, since the vast sensor web - and thus Bryag's wanderings - were confined to the fringes of the Omet Deepzone where dense, swirling clouds of dust and things they hid distorted any attempt at hyperspatial computation. Travellers had to rely on Bryag's course data or not bother travelling there at all.

As they waited, Kao Chih gazed out of the viewport at the foggy darkness of deepzone space. Here and there the concentrated light of stellar clusters and the nearest stars managed to pierce the dust veils that glowed muddy orange and purple, distorted whorls of amber, stretched ripples of violet. The Omet Deepzone, as Drazuma-Ha* reminded him, was the source of the great Achorga Swarms which 150 years ago had torn through hundreds of star systems in the vicinity, ravaging and wrecking entire planets, amongst which was the homeworld of Humanity, Earth. That particular Achorga outbreak was not their first and others had occurred since, many of them sweeping into Indroma territory, causing havoc and destruction on a vast scale.

Somewhere out there, he thought, in the dark heart of all that dust and debris, was the world of the Swarm, the Achorga. Without them there would have.been no Swarm War, and no desperate, blind launch of the three colonyships. The Tenebrosa would never have plunged blindly through hyperspace and arrived at the beautiful world which the first settlers had named Virtue In The Valley, nor would they have suffered those attacks and the sight of their world being mined and scoured around them, the long indenture for those who escaped...

'Scan complete. Permit approved.'

Kao Chih sat up straight, gaping then grinning as the marker buoy went on.

'Please state course required - station access or area exit?'

'Station access,' Drazuma-Ha* said swiftly, a neon yellow microfield extensor flicking out to operate the com panel. 'Polydigital channel open.'

'Fastchaining data ... fastchain complete. You may now depart.'

'And not before time,' said the mech, who was already merging the new course data into the navigationals. Kao Chih just had time to strap in before the hyperdrive forcewaves cohered and twist-hurl-dropped them back into the first tier of hyperspace.

Another half-hour microjump during which he again went over the notes in Tumakri's documenter, making sense of the Bryag Station contact - a Piraseri vacsuit vendor named Milmil S'Dohk - and how to recognise his suspensor-mobile establishment. After that he spent a further twenty minutes playing halfboard chess against the ship's gaming subsystem until hearing the strap-in

alert. Moments later the Castellan emerged-fell-spun from hyperspace just a few klicks away from their destination. Drazuma-Ha * powered up the manoeuvring thrusters and soon they were vectoring in on a guidance beacon.

Set against the dust swirl colour-glow of the Omet, Bryag Station was a sight. Coasting along on its neverending peregrination, it looked to Kao Chih oddly like a colossal bivalve seashell, like a cockle gaping wide open, the central hinge pointing the way ahead. Each half was full of structures, towers, domes, globe clusters, spars, cables, as well as scores if not hundreds of bots, hopcraft and jetsuited creatures darting this way and that. The outer surface of the station's hull halves were dark grey carapaces of heavy plating, shielded ducts, maintenance housings and armoured drive vents, pitted and scored by the Omet's plentiful dust and micrometeorites.

Pairs of docking booms of various sizes fringed the lip of either half, berthing capacities increasing towards the station's stern. The Castellan's pilot system followed the guidance beacon in towards a boom dock on the leading edge with a learned grace. Grapplenets unfurled from the booms, snared then drew the small ship through the glitterglow of an atmosphere shieldfield and into an auto-adjusting cradle. From the viewport Kao Chih could see three levels of walkways running the length of the dock and wide gantries extending tongue -like between the berths.

Excited, Kao Chih made sure he was first at the airlock as it went into equivalence mode and opened fully. Across the gantry was their neighbour, a Makhori organics miner, its hull resembling a glued-together cluster of

large, leathery-brown and misshapen ovoids entwined in numerous cables and ribbed pipes. Engrossed in it, he had just stepped through the lock with his left leg when someone collided with him. Reversing out of reflex he caught his heel on the edge of the hatch and fell back inside, thumping into a protruding lower drawer handle. He uttered a strangled cry, assaulted by pain from both foot and shoulderblade.

'Please, please, please, can you help me?... please help or they'll... they'll take me and... and...'

Grimacing with the pain, Kao Chih sat up and saw a slender young woman, a human female, cowering inside the doorway. She wore a zip-pocketed canvas jacket over a grubby blue teklabourer onepiece, a little shoulder bag of some transparent material, and a pair of heavy, paint-splashed miledriver boots. Her disarranged hair was a rich brunette and her face, smudged with something oily and stained with tears, was arrestingly beautiful.

'You are Human, aren't you?' she said, almost pleading.

The linguistic enabler Tumakri had given him a few days ago was clearly working perfectly - he hadn't even noticed that she was speaking Anglic.

'Yes,' he said carefully. 'I am. Who is it that wishes you harm?'

'They're... they're... horrible monsters! - they took my friend Telzy and cut her up...' She began weeping again and darted along to the cockpit. 'Don't let them take me, please!'

Kao Chih got to his feet and went after her, hearing Drazuma-Ha* say:

'Young woman, you may not stay here. We have come to Bryag on serious business and cannot leave you in our craft alone ...'

'Why not?' Kao Chih said. 'I'm sure we could lock out the controls and avoid any accidental tampering and leave our guest with some food and water while we go and find this Milmil S'Dohk.'