The Ascendant Stars_Book Three of Humanity's Fire Read online

  BY MICHAEL COBLEY

  Humanity’s Fire

  Seeds of Earth

  The Orphaned Worlds

  The Ascendant Stars

  COPYRIGHT

  Published by Hachette Digital

  ISBN: 978-0-748-12565-4

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2011 by Michael Cobley

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  Hachette Digital

  Little, Brown Book Group

  100 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DY

  www.hachette.co.uk.

  Contents

  Also By Michael Cobley

  Copyright

  What has Gone Before

  Main Characters

  Main Sentient Species in Humanity’s Fire

  Civilisations

  Prologue

  1: Greg

  2: Catriona

  3: Kao Chih

  4: The Construct

  5: Greg

  6: Julia

  7: Kuros

  8: Kao Chih

  9: Legion

  10: Theo

  11: Chel

  12: Robert

  13: Julia

  14: Kao Chih

  15: Chel

  16: Theo

  17: Greg

  18: Robert

  19: Kao Chih

  20: Julia

  21: Catriona

  22: Greg

  23: Julia

  24: Greg

  25: Chel

  26: Kuros

  27: Kao Chih

  28: Greg

  29: Theo

  30: Kuros

  31: Legion

  32: Robert

  33: The Construct

  34: Julia

  35: Chel

  36: Greg

  37: Theo

  38: Catriona

  39: Julia

  40: Robert

  41: Julia

  42: Greg

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  For my dad, Michael John Cobley,

  still in the game, kickin’ and scratchin’!

  WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE

  BOOK ONE: SEEDS OF EARTH

  In book one, the discovery of the lost Human colonyworld of Darien set off a chain of events, unveiled mysteries, political sparring and assassination. The Earthsphere ambassador, Robert Horst, arrives on board the cruiser, Heracles, as does High Monitor Kuros, a senior official from the Sendruka Hegemony. The Hegemony is a vast, stellar empire allied with the human-dominated Earthsphere; both have their agendas yet it is the Hegemony’s plans which prove the more ruthless.

  On Darien, archaeologist Greg Cameron’s work at the ancient Uvovo temple site on Giant’s Shoulder is disrupted, first by an assassination attempt and later when his uncle, Major Theo Karlsson, appears with Robert Horst, the Earthsphere ambassador. Horst is framed for the murder of the Brolturan ambassador and Karlsson and Horst subsequently take refuge in a newly discovered chamber beneath the Uvovo temple. This wakes an ancient guardian who seizes Robert and transports him away.

  On the forest-moon Nivyesta, Catriona Macreadie finds herself forming a telepathic link with Segrana, a vast and millennia-old entity which inhabits the interwoven ecosystem of the continent-wide forest. She comes to identify with the forest, strengthening the bond with Segrana, and helping the humanoid Uvovo natives when several Hegemony mercenaries try to infiltrate the depths of the forest.

  Chel, or Cheluvahar, is a scholar of the Uvovo and a good friend to both Greg and Catriona. He undergoes a ritual whereby Segrana gives him strange new abilities and tells him to prepare the Uvovo for war. From ancient myths he learns that the Giant’s Shoulder temple houses a ‘warpwell’, an ancient Forerunner weapon which defeated a savage enemy many millenia ago. The warpwell would provide access to the lower levels of hyperspace and much faster travel between the stars, an advantage that would make the Hegemony’s already formidable warfleets invincible.

  While events unfold on Darien, Kao Chih begins his journey to Darien. Kao Chih’s people are the descendants of another of the three original ships launched from Earth 150 years before. Their world, Pyre, was seized by a Sendrukan Hegemony corporate monoclan which ruthlessly mined and stripped it of its resources. A few hundred colonists fled in a handful of ramshackle ships, eventually finding refuge in a star system home to a race called the Roug. When news of the discovery of Darien reached the Roug’s orbital city, Agmedra’a, the Roug hosting these Human descendants also decide to send emissaries. And soon Kao Chih and a Roug called Tumakri are on their way.

  During their twisting quest Tumakri tragically dies in an ambush and Kao Chih joins forces with a sentient droid called Drazuma-Ha*. Evading a group of combat drones seemingly trying to kill them, they are instead captured by a Human smuggler-terrorist called Corazon Talavera. With Drazuma-Ha*’s aid they manage to escape in a terrorist shuttle, leaving Corazon marooned on a semi-hospitable planet. But she has a vital and terrifying role yet to play.

  Back on Darien the colony is in uproar over the actions of the authoritarian Brolturans, usually at the behest of Kuros, now Hegemony ambassador. After the bizarre disappearance of Robert Horst at Giant’s Shoulder, Theo Karlsson returns to Hammergard and encounters Donny Barbour. Both are then witness to the missile attack on the Assembly halls which kills the colony’s president and nearly all of his cabinet. A deep crisis ensues, with Brolturan troops on the streets and flying security patrols, an unsubtle show of strength.

  The last remaining government official asks Major Karlsson and Donny to get a group of Enhancee scientists offworld. (The Enhancees are genetically engineered sci-tech specialists; Catriona Macreadie was part of that programme but failed the stringent tests in her teens.) At the Port Gagarin launch field they hijack an Earthsphere shuttle and manage to get into orbit. But interceptors from the Brolturan battleship Purifier are heading their way so the Enhancees are transferred to the Earthsphere ship Heracles. Donny Barbour tricks Theo Karlsson into leaving the escape pod to save his life, then leads the Brolturan interceptors on a bravura chase through the skies of the forest moon. After an agile and defiant evasion, a hostile missile sends the shuttle down in flames over one of the big seas.

  After vanishing from the warpwell chamber on Giant’s Shoulder, Robert Horst appears in a bizarre complex of tunnels, escorted by a trio of small intelligent mechs. They tell him that he is down in hyperspace, which consists of many levels. After a series of perilous encounters he arrives at another deeper level, at a place called the Garden of the Machines, an AI metropolis watched over by a mysterious being called the Construct. After rejuvenating Robert’s physical age (and turning a holosim of his daughter into an android simulacrum), the Construct persuades Robert to return the favour by venturing into the depths of hyperspace in search of an ancient entity called the Godhead. Hostile forces arising from another region of the depths have been attacking allies of the Construct, who thinks that the Godhead might possess vital information on the attacks.

  Meanwhile, Kao Chih and Drazuma-Ha*, still pursued by the mysterious combat droids, seek sanctuary aboard a cloud-harvester. Drazuma-Ha* tricks Kao Chih into remaining on the bridge, seizes the cloud-harvester’s shuttle and leaves for Darien. The pursuing robots reveal to Kao Chih that Drazuma-Ha* is in f
act an agent of the Legion of Avatars, a cyborg that was horde the Forerunners’ last and deadliest enemy. If it gains control of the warpwell gate down on Darien, it could open it to release the Legion of Avatars’ surviving from their prison deep in the abyss of hyperspace. The chase after Drazuma-Ha* is on. When they reach Darien they use the cloud-harvester’s escape pod and Kao Chih’s shuttle to continue the hunt down within Giant’s Shoulder on Darien. Then in the warpwell chamber, Kao Chih and the surviving droid manage to kill the Legion mech Drazuma-Ha*. As Kao Chih falls unconsciousness, the well guardian transports him away to safety.

  Seeds of Earth ends with the Hegemony’s Ambassador Kuros and the Brolturans in control of the colony and the temple site on Giant’s Shoulder. Theo Karlsson and Catriona Macreadie are in hiding up on the forest-moon Nivyesta, guarding a captured Hegemony mercenary who turns out to be human. On Darien, Greg is escorting Kao Chih and others to a temporary camp deep in the mountains. Plans for the insurgency are being hastily formed, and the Enhancees are safely on their way to Earth.

  And on a planet far from Darien, a cyborg knight of the Legion of Avatars rests on a cold sea bed, considering the failure of its droid agent. It decides that it will have to take action itself and, after repairing its damaged biomechanisms, the Knight engages its engines and blasts up out of the depths of the sea – heading for the stars.

  BOOK TWO: THE ORPHANED WORLDS

  The Orphaned Worlds begins a few weeks after the end of Seeds of Earth.

  Brolturan forces, directed by the Hegemony ambassador, Kuros, are now in de facto control of the Darien colony. Colonial politicians form an interim government that is clearly subservient to the Brolturans, who increasingly come to resemble occupiers.

  Greg Cameron has been organising the resistance, which has set up a more permanent camp in an ancient Uvovo stronghold inside Tusk Mountain, in the mountains to the north.

  Robert Horst, at the behest of the Construct, is on a mission into the depths of hyperspace in search of the Godhead, hoping it will help them negotiate an alliance against the Legion of Avatars and its agents. Accompanied by a simulacrum of his daughter, Rosa, their AI ship takes them down through the strange, bizarre, dangerous or scarcely comprehensible levels of hyperspace. The Rosa-sim dies tragically in a fight with a lone Legion cyborg, after which Robert meets the Intercessor, an emissary from the Godhead. It sends him onwards to a pocket universe, supposedly the final stage before meeting the Godhead, but it turns out to be a deadly one-way trap.

  Kao Chih has left Darien with Silveira, an Earthsphere agent who wants to find out more about the lost human colony on Pyre and how the Suneye corporate monoclan took it over. They travel first to the Roug system, then on to Pyre, during which Silveira learns how Kao Chih’s forebears were a splinter group that escaped Pyre decades before. On Pyre they find out how the colonists struggle to exist under conditions of resource rationing, and the brutal oppression of offworld criminal gangs sanctioned by the Suneye Monoclan.

  Ambassador Kuros now holds sway over most of the Darien colony, and the interim colonial administration follows his instructions to the letter. However, a senior adviser arrives from the Sendrukan Hegemony homeworld, the Clarified Teshak who is a Sendrukan wholly controlled by an AI. He exerts a harsh authority over Kuros while putting his own implacable plan into action.

  Theo Karlsson was with Catriona on Nivyesta, looking after Malachi Ash, the captured ‘Ezgara’ mercenary who was found to be human, from a world called Tygra. And Tygra turns out to be the third lost Human colonyworld. Both Theo and Ash are snatched by a stealth team from Tygra, but are then freed by renegade Tygrans led by a Captain Gideon. Theo accompanies them to a rendezvous with a retired veteran Tygran officer who lives long enough to pass on information about a long-past conspiracy before tragically expiring. This knowledge further alienates the renegades from the leadership on Tygra, whose pro-Hegemony policies had already angered them.

  When Kao Chih and the agent Silveira arrive back in the Roug system they find that several senior commanders and leaders of Kao Chih’s own people have been abducted by a mercenary assault ship. This is commanded by Marshall Becker, the Tygran’s overall military leader. The abduction was intended as a warning to Kao Chih’s human enclave to avoid involvement in wider affairs. The Roug, affronted by such a gross violation against their people, send one of their own vessels off in pursuit with Kao Chih aboard to assist. After a cunning and stealthy rescue carried out in hyperspace, the Roug ship continues to follow the Ezgara vessel to its destination, an Tygran base, to see who is behind it all.

  Meanwhile, Theo accompanies Captain Gideon on an operation to liberate the rest of the captain’s men from a Tygran base. The raid is a success but, as they’re leaving, a hostile Tygran warship arrives, closely followed by the Roug craft bearing Kao Chih. After an exchange of weapons fire (and attempted data subversion of Gideon’s vessel) the Roug ship neutralises the aggressive Tygran craft, destroying its weapons and engines. Theo, Gideon and Kao Chih, representatives from the three lost Human colonies, briefly meet aboard the Roug vessel before they go their separate ways.

  Julia Bryce and her fellow-Enhanced are on their way to Earth aboard a passenger liner when it is boarded by brigands led by the terrorist Corazon Talavera. Talavera takes them to a refugee planet, then coerces them into upgrading two thermonuclear missiles for one of the refugee leaders. Julia then finds out that the Covenant Order of the Spiral Prophecy, a fundamentalist religious faction, claims that the lost tomb of one of their ancient Father-Sages lies on Darien. A Spiralist armada is therefore gathering, and the missiles are part of a planned invasion of Darien to secure the supposedly sacred site. Julia and the Enhanced try to escape before the armada reaches Darien, but fail in the attempt. They are then forced to watch as the weapons they upgraded are used by the fanatics to destroy a Brolturan battleship and severely damage the Earthsphere vessel. Afterwards, Talavera puts the Enhanced into separate virtual reality tanks to coerce them into working on detailed course and hyperspace jump data for a large number of other missiles.

  Down on Darien, Greg and Rory are engaged in delaying the advance of Brolturan forces towards the resistance’s stronghold. Greg is heading back there, when the Brolturan battleship Purifier launches a massive particle beam attack on Tusk Mountain from orbit. Greg and Rory are in the target zone of a second strike – then the Purifier is destroyed in orbit by the Spiral armada’s thermonuclear missile.

  Down in hyperspace, Robert is rescued from the pocket-universe trap by the Construct, who then sends him and another Rosa-sim on their next mission. They must go to an Achorga nestworld to retrieve the Zyradin, an ancient Forerunner entity designed to bond with the Uvovo’s Segrana, thus augmenting its powers at this crucial juncture. They descend into the insectoid Achorga-dominated world, find and recover the Zyradin, and have to flee the pursuing Achorga via ancient Forerunner transfer platforms. The Rosa-sim stays back to fight off a horde of deadly silver creatures while Robert heads over to the Forerunner platform to escape. But they get to him just as the platform activates. When he arrives at the transfer platform in Tusk Mountain on Darien, still carrying the Zyradin canister, he is on the point of death.

  Greg Cameron is at Tusk Mountain when a dying Robert Horst arrives with the Zyradin’s canister. The warpwell Sentinel and the Zyradin tell Greg that the Zyradin must be taken to the forest moon and given to Catriona. She is now Keeper of Segrana and through her the Zyradin can merge with the forest-wide sentience. Only the warpwell chamber inside Giant’s Shoulder can transport them to Nivyesta so, after evading an ambush during their zeplin journey, Greg and his team arrive there only to find that the Brolturans have pulled out. However, the humans now have to fight an advance squad of hostile Legion war droids, during which Greg finds himself betrayed by one of his companions. Without warning, the warpwell Sentinel transports him directly to the inner chamber and from there up to the forest moon. Greg gives the canister containing the Zyradin to Ca
triona and it permeates her, transforming her into a cloud of glowing motes that spread outwards and across the vast forest.

  The book ends with the cyborg Legion Knight taking possession of Giant’s Shoulder and using two of its scion offshoots to unlock the Warpwell.

  Chel and Rory are trapped inside the Legion Knight’s droid manufactory, under its pitiless control while the factory implants enslaving biotech within them both. They will soon be set against their own people.

  Julia is trapped on a virtual beach controlled by Talavera, made to work on course data for lethal missiles, Talavera’s plans as yet unknown.

  Theo Karlsson and the renegade Tygrans finally arrive at Darien and make contact with the anti-Brolturan resistance movement.

  Back at the Garden of the Machines, the Construct is examining the dead body of Robert Horst. But when the real Robert comes to join him, we discover the expired corpse is that of a semiorganic simulacrum. The Construct now knows that the warpwell on Darien has been unlocked, and that the Godhead is behind most of the attacks coming from the depths of hyperspace. Once it has learned what Robert Horst has to say, direct action will have to be taken. For Darien, however, only hope and the uncertain power of fate can help the colonists now. The fleets and the stormclouds are gathering for the final showdown.

  MAIN CHARACTERS

  Greg Cameron – led the resistance against the Brolturan occupiers until the vital Zyradin mission took him to the forest moon, Nivyesta.

  Catriona Macreadie – chosen by the biomass sentience Segrana as its Keeper, she received the Zyradin from Greg and was transformed by it.

  Theo Karlsson – Greg’s uncle, former major in the Darien Volunteer Forces, became involved with renegade soldiers from another lost Human colony world, Tygra.