Six Against the Stars Omnibus 1 & 2 Read online

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  BOOK 1

  CHAPTER 1: The thrill of the chase.

  CHAPTER 2: Slow-time dreams.

  CHAPTER 3: To the stars, taken.

  CHAPTER 4: A Meeting of minds.

  CHAPTER 5: A bigger stick.

  CHAPTER 6. To seek an android.

  CHAPTER 7. A hyperspace tail.

  CHAPTER 8. The slavery of the machine.

  BOOK 2

  CHAPTER 9. No man is free.

  CHAPTER 10. Blood and dust.

  CHAPTER 11. What every generation needs.

  CHAPTER 12. Sinking in sand.

  CHAPTER 13. What was stored.

  CHAPTER 14. To save a mind is a fine thing, indeed.

  CHAPTER 15. An android person (ap) of interest.

  CHAPTER 16. The mothership.

  CHAPTER 17. For if it prospers.

  CHAPTER 18. Selection of the natural.

  First published in 1999 by Green Nebula Publishing

  Copyright © 1999 by Stephen Hunt

  Typeset and designed by Green Nebula Publishing

  The right of Stephen Hunt to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on a subsequent purchaser.

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  CHAPTER 1: The thrill of the chase.

  Glass shattered as Horatio put his boot through the window. Behind him, Chanisse was screaming at Baron Magellan, begging her husband to call off his hunting cats. She was pushing the second-rate nobleman back, but the feline growls echoing up the staircase into her bedroom spoke volumes.

  Awkward, Horatio thought. More than that, damned inconvenient. And tonight of all nights.

  ‘Bard!’ Magellan yelled. ‘Horatio Bard, you little bastard. I told you before about coming around here, I told you and I warned you, and now I’m going to run you through a harvester; I’m going to scatter your ashes across my fields, you lanky scrap of piss.’

  Horatio believed him. ‘Baron, do you eat with that mouth?’

  Still, you can’t blame him. What else are you going to do when you catch a man diddling your fair wife? This wasn’t Horatio’s fault, though, it was mostly the baron’s. If Magellan had a care to ensure these unfortunate accidents didn’t happen, then he would have married someone far plumper and closer to his own looks – which is to say, boar-ugly. Then Horatio’s trousers could have stayed firmly zipped, instead of scrambling away from an irate husband in this undignified manner, putting his health at risk by launching himself off the window towards the second storey terrace below. He hit the planking hard and rolled. This was definitely getting easier with practice. Just a short drop to get to the mansion’s grounds.

  ‘You fucker!’ yelled the baron, peering out of the window. His furious features were glowing the colour of one of his farmer’s beetroots.

  Yes, there is certainly a little truth in that. Horatio was clambering rapidly down the ivy-covered trellis outside the mansion. He dropped the last few feet and landed in a bed of yellow ornamental flowers. Horatio didn’t stop to smell them. His legs began pumping as he scrambled to clear the range of the retainers’ rifles. ‘Genius creates its own rules, baron.’

  There was a hiss as the cats cleared the window – two of them – more lizard than acinonyx jubatus, the cheetah that had provided the base genome for their genetic engineering. Hitting the path outside the baron’s mansion, the hunting pair flicked armour shields up over their skulls and jumped the ornamental flint wall. Then they halted, their eyes searching for a filter that would enable them to see in the dying half-light. Horatio wondered why they bothered. He was five times the size of the wild deer that raided their farmland for tasty morsels, and if the cats couldn’t follow his trail, then they deserved to be put out to grass by the baron. Sighing, Horatio buried himself in the baron’s swaying plain of crops, rice nodules bursting as he forced a way through the neat pattern of vegetation. There were still a couple of boxy harvesters operating in the distance, and seeing the damage he was inflicting on their crops, they turned their periscope-like eye stalks towards him and crooned out an alarm. Behind Horatio a flood of slaves scrambled from the mansion, clutching pitchforks and the occasional rifle and chattering as they ran after him. Not one of the green-skinned creatures reached higher than the knees of the baron’s human staff. If the harvesters had summoned the slaves, then they were reacting uncommonly fast, if they had heard the baron’s curses then they were due a beating for their sloth.

  Just like the baron, reliably cheap… human servants too expensive for the old skinflint. Now, let’s see. First the cats. Horatio might have been responding to the irresistible song of his hormones, but his mind had stayed in control of the navigation for tonight’s little voyage of passion long enough to realise he might be meeting the baron’s nasty pets this night. Pulling out a vial tucked behind his trouser sash, Horatio seeded a line of white powder behind him. It was a one-generation cyanobacteria that acted on the lining of the cats’ lung-sacs, limiting the oxygenation process and causing a reaction resembling a severe asthmatic attack. He had obtained if from a feral tree that hadn’t much cared for cats sharpening their wicked claws on its bark – a sentiment Horatio currently felt a degree of sympathy for. Pouncing through Horatio’s trail, the hunters jerked to stop in a fit of sneezing coughs, rolling across plants and thrashing about in a haze of vegetation while their claws triggered and retracted. Out on the plain, the harvesters howled even louder when they saw the destruction the cats were causing to crops they were meant to be protecting; the living machines becoming so worked up their bony tractor-treads chewed the ground in outrage, spinning soil and stubble into the cool evening air. One vented a burst of hot gas through its spine horns, and Horatio prayed that whoever had originally genetically engineered their class had included a basic behavioural inhibitor in their minds. Something about not spinning their harvesting blades across innocent ramblers, for instance. That would have been very thoughtful.

  Seeing the lumbering harvesters’ anger, Horatio’s chase of slaves stopped, unsure whether they should continue their pursuit or not. A human retainer in their midst halted too, knowing how much it would cost his master if the old penny-pincher had to fly in a vet to sedate his stable of harvesters. Opting for caution, the pursuit settled for drawing a halt and taking pot shots into the crops, aiming at the rustling stalks as Horatio lurched towards the distant forest. Horatio ducked as they opened up with their weapons. One of the shells slammed into a nearby scarecrow, the bird scarer wobbling as the modified coelenterate load pumped neurotoxin into its stalk. Designed primarily for human
anatomy, the shells were non-lethal, but the days of fever, vomiting and pain caused by jelly-shot were far from pleasant, as Horatio could attest from many a similar night following the compulsions of his trouser snake. More plant than animal, the scarecrow trembled as the poison sought out its rudimentary nervous system, before responding by throwing a terrible fit, firing florescent-blue pellets from its bulbs and splitting the dusk with banshee-loud alarms. One pellet bounced off Horatio’s shoulder, nearly sending him sprawling, but he regained his balance mid-tumble and kept sprinting. Ah, all part of the chase, all part of the game. Not as pleasant as having the baron’s delightful wife in the saddle, but this exercise did offer a certain visceral stimulation.

  The retainers’ volley died away as they dived under the returning salvo of blue streaks, bird pellets spinning slaves off their feet where the little creatures were too slow. Horatio risked a look back at the house. Girdled by the warmth of yellow spotlights stippling the house, Chanisse stood silhouetted against her broken window and waved towards him. He bowed once towards the fat man’s exquisite wife, then continued towards the woods. Emerging in the shadow of his mansion, Baron Magellan fell under a press of fleeing servants, tiny slaves shrieking and tossing down pitchforks – a rout – his cats picking their way back coughing, their heads lowered with all the shame an organic sprinting machine with the enhanced intelligence of a dolphin could muster. A bird pellet ricocheted off the mansion’s walls. You’ve brought this on yourself, baron, really. Marrying a girl too young and beautiful for you. No, tonight is hardly my fault at all.

  The baron was disgracefully sour at the best of times and the servants recognised their master’s black humour and scattered. Magellan pushed his way through the retreating slaves, cuffing them with the butt of his rifle. In the distance Horatio’s far-off figure dipped down into the shadow of the forest. He was gone. In his wake he left the cry of harvesting machines and howl of scarecrows.

  The baron hurled his gun to the ground in disgust and stalked off.

  ***

  An owl hooted deep inside the forest, the brush crisp and brittle under Horatio’s knee-high leather boots. There had been no rain for months, and Horatio knew the talk at court suggested that if the dry season continued any longer, the king would have to intercede with the offworld authorities, requesting an atmospheric modification from HUTA, the Human Trading Alliance’s weather control scientists. But however much their continent needed rain, such an act would still leave a bad taste in the people’s mouths. Old Earth’s offworld descendants had few scruples about using machine technologies. If the Human Trading Alliance deigned to help Earth, the offworlders would almost certainly deploy unsound methods, technologies that were no longer welcome in the heart of the trustlands… a territory which had once been called the United States in distant millennia past. Well, the USA, then Pan-America, then Greater Randia, then Concordia, then Horatio had slipped out of the history lesson to learn something far more hands-on from one of the distractingly beautiful students sitting by his side. Of course, as a famous musician, Horatio had little time for court politics and the frictions between conservative genetic engineers and the liberal party. And living in paradise, why should I? When there are young buds like Chanisse willing for me to climb among their petals and taste their nectar; weekly car races to join and wagers to win from my fellow courtiers; and above all else, adoring hordes of fans eager to venerate my prolific genius with the electric-harp. His friend Danton, the stout blacksmith and genetic engineer, he might understand the business of using machine viruses to mould Saturn’s rings into a billion uniform snowballs, and the magnetic technology which could layer sections of Earth’s atmosphere with ice using isobaric pressure differences and ion-stimulation to generate precipitation; and he might even understand Gaiaist politics and all the forgotten history of every tedious century which had led to Earth’s ban on nanotechnology. But did he have fun?

  Not as much as Horatio. Not on my birthday.

  Climbing over a fallen tree-trunk, Horatio heard a faint call. From behind a snarl of rhododendrons, a herd of deer vaulted the purple blossoms and scattered into the forest darkness. Then he found where the sound was coming from. An information booth, the shelter scarred with age and overgrown with moss. From the top of the booth a pair of weary eyes focused on him.

  ‘I have news,’ it said.

  Looking at the decrepit booth, Horatio doubted it was able to burrow down deep enough to tap into the land’s main information roots.

  As if reading his mind, the booth attempted to reassure the man. ‘I am still healthy. I was grown for the foresters living by the shore of the lake. My news is of the very finest.’

  Horatio doubted that. For as long as he could remember the lake had been considered part of the king’s parkland, and as such husbanded by his majesty’s rangers – no modern foresters would have the cheek to try farming here, let alone advertise their presence by setting up an information booth. This was an antique. Forgotten and abandoned.

  ‘I am due at the king’s court,’ said Horatio. ‘With very little time to get there.’

  ‘But this is important. The settlements at the North Pole are demanding a reduction in exploration tax from the king. Five-fold!’

  ‘The only exploration I intend to be doing in the near future will be among tables of the royal kitchen and the beds of its serving wenches. Besides, I recall that story running four years ago, if not longer.’

  ‘I have more recent news: the Mayor of Enamel City has petitioned the court for an easing of the license fee for milk-plant copyright number K76574563, claiming that this is the only just course given they have the highest birth-rate in the trustlands.’

  ‘Look, I am not interested in the minutiae of commercial interest stories,’ said Horatio, growing bored. ‘Can’t you tell me the latest gossip? Have the authorities in Suni released Amadeus Zu and her band from prison after the riots at her last concert? Has the Countess of Washington decided who is to receive her second clone child? Which driver won the car race at Bok last night?’

  ‘Oh,’ the booth moaned. ‘My feeds are decayed – there’s not enough sunlight here – I am failing, I knew it.’

  A sudden wave of pity overcame Horatio. ‘Look, I’ve got a friend who might be able to re-plant you; somewhere with more foot traffic to use your services. I’ll tell him you’re here, okay?’

  ‘Oh thank you, thank you.’

  In truth, Danton would probably sell the booth onto the Museum of Worshipful Genome Artificers on the coast. But at least children might visit, if only to tease the booth.

  ‘If you’re going to the court, then I do have news. A courier-rat from beyond the Coral Bridge recently saw out the night inside my shelter.’

  Horatio shook his head. ‘But they travel only for the king’s ministers.’

  ‘I used microwave to decrypt its pouch while it was asleep inside me. It didn’t even realise. There is danger at the palace. Strangers with murder in their hearts and terrible schemes in their heads. Great powers gather at our gate, jostling for power and privilege. They scuttle about like spiders in a web, and who knows what they shall feed on? Stay away, stay away!’

  ‘Oh, really?’ Horatio walked off. Stupid thing. The melodramatic booth was senile, it had to have tapped into an entertainment root, mistaking fiction for pure news node. The only danger waiting for Horatio at the palace was the high probability of getting drunk and spilling wine down his tunic, or worse still, down some beautiful courtesan’s dress and ending up with a healthy slap for his trouble.

  Night had lengthened and it was getting harder to navigate his way through the trees, moonlight washing the grass silver and cloaking more than it revealed. Perhaps after this birthday he would get his sight extended into low-wave, infrared; that would make this kind of night chase a little more sporting. But nothing as bizarre as the latest court one-generationals, the fashions of Prince Commodous, fox tails and extra arms. At the back of Horatio’s mind was t
he unspoken fear that too many genetic enhancements might corrupt his precious genius. It was a common superstition. Genius comes first. That’s one thing you can’t splice DNA for. Well, not without niggling little side effects like barking insanity. Occasionally Horatio heard the brush-like legs of lawnmowers settling down for the night. These were feral, grown far and wild from their cousins which kept cottage lawns trim and green – but sufficient of their geonome bred true enough that they were no danger to humans, despite many children’s stories having it otherwise. Damn it, where is he? Horatio was sure he had left Hawkmoor somewhere around here. Horatio called out, but only the sounds of the wood answered him. After ten minutes of searching he found the road, a dark layer of tarmac fringed by the purple light of glow-trees, their bulbs attracting swarms of spinning insects which left mottled shadows dancing in their wake. But no sign of Hawkmoor. Horatio located the stump of an old road sign where he had parked the contrary creature, an ancient spear of flaking iron piercing the grass. On the other side of the trees he could see a light flickering deep inside the forest. A lot of people avoided this particular forest. Cold Light Wood was its name. It was said that back in the conflict age an enemy starship had folded the hyperspace blockade beyond Pluto’s nitrogen corpse and come in close to Earth’s moon, scattering a wave of robot attack ships on a suicide vector. It had been one of those – legend suggested – that had sunk the Lost Kingdom of Japan under the waves. Another had dived for what would become the trustlands, but in a freak accident its payload had failed to explode. It had landed a mile away from where Horatio stood, and the woods were still widely avoided for fear of meeting the ghosts of those who’d died in the crash.