Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks
‘What the hell are you looking at me for?’ Lamm’s voice said, in amongst the storm of static, as Horza sat in the shuttle, shaking and rattling inside his too-big suit. Horza realised he had been looking across at the other man, who was directly opposite. He touched the mike button on his neck and said:
‘Thinking about something else.’
‘I don’t want you looking at me.’
‘Us all got to look somewhere,’ Horza said jokingly to the man in the matt-black suit and grey-visored helmet. The black suit made a gesture with the hand not holding a laser rifle.
‘Well, don’t fucking look at me.’
Horza let his hand drop from his neck. He shook his head inside the suit helmet. It fitted so badly it didn’t move on the outside. He stared at the section of fuselage above Lamm’s head.
They were going to attack the Temple of Light. Kraiklyn was at the controls of the shuttle, bringing it in low over the forests of Marjoin, still covered in night, heading for the line of dawn breaking over the packed and steaming greenery. The plan was that the CAT would come back in towards the planet with the sun very low behind it, using its effectors on any electronics the temple did have, and making as much noise and as many flashes as it could with its secondary lasers and a few blast bombs. While this diversion was absorbing any defensive capacity the priests might have, the shuttle would either head straight for the temple and let everybody off, or, if there was any hostile reaction, land in the forest on the night side of the temple and disgorge its small force of suited troops there. The Company would then disperse and, if they had the facility, use their AG to fly to the temple, or – as in Horza’s case – just crawl, creep, walk or run as best they could for the collection of low, slope-sided buildings and short towers which made up the Temple of Light.
Horza couldn’t believe they were going in without some sort of reconnaissance; but Kraiklyn, when tackled on this point during the pre-op briefing in the hangar, had insisted that that might mean giving up the element of surprise. He had accurate maps of the place and a good battle plan. As long as everybody stuck to the plan, nothing would go wrong. The monks weren’t total idiots, and the planet had been Contacted and doubtless knew about the war going on around it. So, just in case the sect had hired any overhead observation, it was wiser not to attempt a look-see which might give the game away. Anyway, temples didn’t change much.
Horza and several of the others hadn’t been very impressed with this reading of the situation, but there was nothing they could do. So here they all sat, sweating and nervous and being shaken up like the ingredients of a cocktail in this clapped-out shuttle, slamming into a potentially hostile atmosphere at hypersonic speeds. Horza sighed and checked his rifle again.
Like his antique armour, the rifle was old and unreliable; it had jammed twice when he tested it on the ship using dummy shells. Its magnetic propulsor seemed to work reasonably, but, judging by the erratic spread of the bullets, its rifling field was next to useless. The shells were big – at least seven-millimetre calibre and three times that long – and the gun could hold only forty-eight at a time and fire them no faster than eight a second. Incredibly, the huge bullets weren’t even explosive; they were solid lumps of metal, nothing else. To top it all, the weapon’s sight was out; a red haze filled the small screen when it was turned on. Horza sighed.
‘We’re about three hundred metres above the trees now,’ Kraiklyn’s voice said from the shuttle flight deck, ‘doing about one and a half sounds. The CAT’s just started its run-in. About another two minutes. I can see the dawn. Good luck, all.’ The voice crackled and died in Horza’s helmet speaker. A few of the suited figures exchanged glances. Horza looked over at Yalson, sitting on the other side of the shuttle about three metres away, but her visor was mirrored. He couldn’t tell if she was looking at him or not. He wanted to say something to her, but didn’t want to bother her over the open circuit in case she was concentrating, preparing herself. Beside Yalson, Dorolow sat, her gloved hand making the Circle of Flame sign over the top of her helmet visor.
Horza tapped his hands on the old rifle and blew through his mouth at the mist of condensation forming on the top edge of his visor. It made it worse, just as he thought it might. Perhaps he should open his visor, now that they were inside the planet’s atmosphere.
The shuttle shook suddenly as though it had clipped the top of a mountain. Everybody was thrown forward, straining their seat harnesses, and a couple of guns went sailing forward and up, to clatter off the shuttle ceiling before slamming back to the deck. People grabbed for the guns and Horza closed his eyes; he wouldn’t have been at all surprised if one of these enthusiasts had left their safety catch off. However, the guns were retrieved without mishap, and people sat cradling them and looking about.
‘What the hell was that?’ the old man, Aviger, said, and laughed nervously. The shuttle began some hard manoeuvring, throwing first one half of the group on their backs while the people on the other side were suspended by their seat webbing, then flipping in the other direction and reversing the postures. Grunts and curses came over the open channel into Horza’s helmet. The shuttle dipped, making Horza’s stomach feel empty, floating, then the craft steadied again.
‘Bit of hostile fire,’ Kraiklyn’s clipped tones announced, and all the suited heads started to look from side to side.
‘What?’
‘Hostile fire?’
‘I knew it.’
‘Oh-oh.’
‘Fuck.’
‘Why did I think as soon as I heard those fateful words, “easy in, easy out”, that this was going—’ began Jandraligeli in a bored, knowing drawl, only to be cut off by Lamm.
‘Hostile fucking fire. That’s all we need. Hostile fucking fire.’
‘They are gunned up,’ Lenipobra said.
‘Shit, who isn’t these days?’ Yalson said.
‘Chicel-Horhava, sweet lady; save us all,’ muttered Dorolow, speeding up the tracings of the Circle over her visor.
‘Shut the fuck up,’ Lamm told her.
‘Let’s hope Mipp can distract them without getting his ass blown off,’ Yalson said.
‘Maybe we should call it off,’ Rava Gamdol said. ‘Think we ought to call it off? Do you think we should call it off? Does anybody—’
‘NO!’ ‘YES!’ ‘NO!’ shouted three voices, almost in unison. Everybody looked at the three Bratsilakins. The two outer Bratsilakins turned their helmets to look at the one in the middle, as the shuttle swooped again. The middle Bratsilakin’s helmet turned briefly to each side. ‘Oh, shit,’ a voice said over the open channel, ‘all right: NO!’
‘I think maybe we should—’ Rava Gamdol’s voice started again.
Then Kraiklyn shouted, ‘Here we go! Everybody ready!’
The shuttle braked hard, banking steeply one way, then the other, shuddering once and dipping. It bounced and shook, and for a second Horza thought they were crashing, but then the craft slid to a stop and the rear doors jawed open. Horza was on his feet with the rest of them, piling out of the shuttle and into the jungle.
They were in a clearing. At its far end a few branches and twigs were still tumbling from huge, heavy-looking trees where the shuttle had just seconds before torn through the edge of the forest canopy as it dipped in for the small area of level, grassy ground. Horza had time to see a couple of bright birds flying fast out of the trees near by and caught a glimpse of a blue-pink sky. Then he was running with the others, round the front of the shuttle where it still glowed dark red and vegetation beneath it smouldered, and on into the jungle. A few of the Company were using their AG, floating over the undergrowth between the moss-covered tree trunks, but hampered by creepers which hung like thick, flower-strewn ropes between the trees.
So far they still couldn’t see the Temple of Light, but according to Kraiklyn it was just ahead of them. Horza looked round at the others on foot as they clambered over fallen trees covered in moss and swept past creepers and suspend
‘Fuck dispersing; this is too hard going.’ It was Lamm’s voice. Horza looked round and up, and saw the black suit heading vertically for the green mass of foliage above them.
‘Bastard,’ said a breathless voice.
‘Yeah. B-b-bastard,’ Lenipobra agreed.
‘Lamm,’ Kraiklyn said, ‘you son of a bitch, don’t break through up there. Spread out. Disperse, damn it!’
Then a shock wave Horza could feel through his suit blasted over them all. Horza hit the ground immediately and lay there. Another boom came through the hissing helmet speaker as it fed in the noise from outside.
‘That was the CAT going over!’ He didn’t recognise the voice.
‘You sure?’ Somebody else.
‘I saw it through the trees! It was the CAT!’
Horza got up and started running again.
‘Black bastard nearly took my fucking head off . . .’ Lamm said.
There was light ahead of Horza, through the trunks and leaves. He heard some firing: the sharp crack of projectiles, the sucking whoop of lasers and the snap-whoosh-crash of plasma cannon. He ran to a small earth and shrub bank and threw himself down so that he could just see over the top. Sure enough, there was the Temple of Light, silhouetted against the dawn, all covered in vines and creepers and moss, with a few spires and towers sticking out above like angular tree trunks.
‘There she is!’ Kraiklyn shouted. Horza looked along the earth bank and saw a few of the Company, in the same prone position as he was. ‘Wubslin! Aviger!’ Kraiklyn shouted. ‘Cover us with the plasmas. Neisin, you keep the micro on each side of the grounds beyond, as well. Everybody else, follow me!’
More or less as one, they were off, over the tangled bank of mossy ground and bushes and down the other side, through light scrub and long, cane-like grass, the stalks covered in clinging, dark green moss. The mixture of ground cover came up to about chest height and made the going difficult, but it would be reasonably easy to duck down out of a line of fire. Horza waded through as best as he could. Plasma bolts sang through the air above them, lighting the dim stretch of ground between them and the sloping temple wall.
Distant fountains of earth and crashes he could feel through his feet told Horza that Neisin, sober the last two days, was laying down a convincing and, more importantly, accurate fire pattern with the Microhowitzer.
‘There’s a little gunfire from the upper left level,’ the cool, unhurried voice of Jandraligeli said. According to the plan, he was supposed to be hiding high in the forest canopy watching the temple. ‘I’m hitting it now.’
‘Shit!’ somebody yelled suddenly. One of the women. Horza could hear firing from ahead, though there were no flashes from the part of the temple he could see.
‘Ha ha.’ Jandraligeli’s smug voice came through the helmet speaker. ‘Got them!’ Horza saw a puff of smoke over to the left of the temple. He was about halfway there by now, maybe closer. He could see some of the others not far away, to his left and right, pushing and striding through the cane grass and bushes with their rifles held high to one shoulder. They were all gradually getting covered in the dark green moss, which Horza supposed might be useful as camouflage (providing, of course, that it didn’t turn out to be some horrible, previously undiscovered sentient killer-moss . . . He told himself to stop being silly).
Loud crashes in the shrubbery around him, and smashed bits of cane and twigs fluttering past like nervous birds, sent him diving for the ground. The earth beneath him shuddered. He rolled over and saw flames lick the mossy stalks above; a flickering patch of fire lay directly behind him.
‘Horza?’ a voice said. Yalson’s.
‘OK,’ he said. He got up to a crouch and started running through the grass, past bushes and young trees.
‘We’re coming in now,’ Yalson said. She was up in the trees, too, along with Lamm, Jandraligeli and Neisin. According to the plan, all except Neisin and Jandraligeli would now start moving through the air on AG towards the temple. Although the anti-gravity units on their suits gave them an extra dimension to work with, they could be something of a mixed blessing; while a figure in the air tended to be harder to hit than one on the ground, it also tended to attract a lot more fire. The only other person in the Company with AG was Kraiklyn, but he said he preferred to use his for surprise or in emergencies, so he was still on the ground with the rest of them.
‘I’m at the walls!’ Horza thought it was Odraye’s voice. ‘This looks all right. The walls are really easy; the moss makes it—’
Horza’s helmet speaker crackled. He wasn’t sure if there was something wrong with his communicator or if something had happened to Odraye.
‘—ver me while I’m—’
‘—on you useless—’ Voices clashed in Horza’s helmet. He kept wading through the cane grass, and thumped the side of his helmet.
‘—asshole!’ The helmet speaker buzzed, then went silent. Horza swore and stopped, crouching down. He fumbled with the communicator controls at the side of the helmet, trying to coax the speaker back into life. His too-big gloves hindered him. The speaker stayed silent. He cursed again and got to his feet, pushing through the scrub and long grass to the temple wall.
‘—rojectiles inside!’ a voice yelled suddenly. ‘This— . . . —cking simple!’ He couldn’t identify the voice, and the speaker went dead again immediately.
He arrived at the base of the wall; it slanted out of the scrub at about forty degrees and was covered in moss. Further along, two of the Company were clambering up it, almost at the top, about seven metres above. Horza saw a flying figure weaving through the air and disappearing over the parapet. He started climbing. The clumsily large suit made it more difficult than it should have been, but he got to the top without falling and jumped down from the parapet onto a broad wall-walk. A similar moss-covered wall sloped up to the next storey. To Horza’s right the wall turned a corner beneath a stubby tower; to his left the wall-walk seemingly disappeared into a blank cross-wall. According to Kraiklyn’s plan Horza was supposed to head along that way. There ought to be a door there. Horza jogged along towards the blank wall.
A helmet bobbed up from the side of the sloped wall. Horza started to duck and swerve, just in case, but first an arm waved from the same place, then both helmet and arm appeared, and he recognised the woman Gow.
Horza threw back the visor on his helmet as he ran, getting a faceful of jungle-scented Marjoin air. He could hear some rattling projectile fire from inside the temple, and the distant thud of an exploding Microhowitzer round. He ran up to a narrow entrance cut in the sloped wall, half covered by streamers of mossy growth. Gow was kneeling, gun ready, on the splintered remains of a heavy wooden door which had blocked the passageway beyond. Horza knelt beside her and pointed at his helmet.
‘My communicator’s out. What’s been happening?’
Gow touched a button on her wrist, and her suit PA said, ‘OK so far. No hurts. They on towers.’ She pointed up. ‘Them no fly go in. They enemy got projectile guns only, them fall back.’ She nodded and kept glancing round through the doorway and into the dark passageway beyond. Horza nodded too. Gow tapped his arm. ‘I tell Kraiklyn you go in, yes?’
‘Yeah, tell him my communicator’s out, OK?’
‘Yeah, sure. Zallin same trouble had. You be safe, OK?’
‘Yeah, you be safe, too,’ Horza said. He stood up and entered the temple, scuffing over splinters of wood and fragments of sandstone scattered over the moss by the door’s demolition. The dark corridor branched three ways. He turned back to Gow and pointed. ‘Centre corridor, correct?’
The crouched figure, silhouetted against the light of the dawn, nodded and said, ‘Yeah, sure. Go middle.’
Horza set off. The corridor was covered in moss. Every few metres dim yellow electric lights burned from the walls, casting murky pools of light which the dark moss seemed to absorb. Soft-walled, sponge-floored, the narrow passage made Horza shiver, though it wasn’t cold. He
He came to a T-junction in the corridor and took the right-hand branch. Some steps appeared and he ran up them, stumbling once as his feet tried to run out of his oversized boots; he put his hand out and jarred his arm on the step. Some moss came off the step and he caught a glimpse of something glinting underneath, in the dull yellow light cast by the wall lights. He recovered his balance, shaking his jarred arm as he continued up the steps and wondering why the temple’s builders had made the steps out of what looked like glass. At the top of the steps he went down a short corridor, then up another flight of stairs, curving to the right and unlit. Considering its name, Horza thought, the temple was remarkably dark. He came out onto a small balcony.
The monk’s cloak was dark, the same colour as the moss, and Horza didn’t see him until the pale face turned towards him, along with the gun.
Horza threw himself to one side, against the wall to his left, and fired his gun from the hip at the same time. The monk’s gun jerked upwards and let loose a fusillade of rapid fire at the ceiling as he collapsed. The shots echoed round the dark, empty space beyond the small balcony. Horza squatted by the wall, gun pointed at the dark, crumpled figure only a couple of metres away. He raised his head and in the gloom saw what was left of the monk’s face, then relaxed slightly. The man was dead. Horza levered himself away from the wall and knelt by the balcony balustrade. Now he could see a large hall in the dim light of the few small globes which protruded from its roof. The balcony was about halfway up and along one of the longer walls, and, from what he could see, there was some sort of stage or altar at one end of the hall. The light was so dim he couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw shadowy figures on the floor of the hall, moving. He wondered if it was the Company and tried to recall seeing other doors or corridors on his way to the balcony; he was supposed to be down there, on that level, on the floor of the hall. He cursed his useless communicator and decided he would have to risk shouting down to the people in the hall.