War of the Sky Lords by John Brosnan

Author:John Brosnan [BROSNAN, JOHN]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780575095274
Publisher: Orion Publishing Group
Published: 2015-12-30T16:00:00+00:00

“I still don’t like it.”

“What?” asked Jan distractedly. She was studying figures on a computer screen. They told a grim story. The plague that was cutting through the population of the community below them showed no sign of slowing down despite the drugs that were being engineered in the Sky Angel’s laboratories and being administered by the ship’s spider-mechs.

“That radar blip, this morning,” said Milo. He was standing at the front of the control room and staring at the sky. She looked over at him. He was looking less like Simon now—his hair had fallen out and he was much bigger—but it still gave her a wrench every time she saw him. She tried to avoid him as much as possible but he insisted on following her around. He was constantly trying to ingratiate himself with her. He had certainly ingratiated himself with Ashley. She was considering having Milo transferred to another ship as Kish kept suggesting but she feared that Ashley would simply ignore the order.

“What about the damn blip? It was obviously some sort of freak effect.”

“It was an aircraft … a heavier than air-craft.”

“And how can that be? Unless it was a glider of some kind.”

“A glider? Travelling at that height and speed? Carl, tell her again what you picked up.”

Carl said, “A metallic object. Cylindrical. Thirty feet in length. Dense. Considerable mass. Probably weights several tons. It was turning when I picked it up, at a speed of 1,500 mph, then it accelerated to 2,500 mph before I lost it.”

“Some glider, huh?” asked Milo.

“Milo, you know as well as I do that no one on the planet has the technology to build such an aircraft nowadays. Therefore Carl has made a mistake … unless someone from one of your space habitats has decided to pay us a visit at long last.” She paused thoughtfully for a moment. That hadn’t occurred to her before.

“No way,” said Milo, shaking his head. “They wouldn’t dare, even if they still had the resources to mount such an expedition. They still think the planet is crawling with designer plagues.”

“Which it is,” said Jan, gesturing through the transparent floor at the community below. “Hereabouts, at any rate.”

The name of the community was Phoenix Two and was located in the north-east corner of what had once been the state of Arizona before the break-up of the United States of America. It was one of the largest ground communities Jan had ever seen, with some quite elaborate three-storey buildings around the town centre. The community, despite the forced tributes to its local Sky Lord over the centuries, had been a relatively flourishing one until, in recent years, the blight had begun to spread across its extensive farm lands. Then had followed regular attacks by Hazzini.

The Hazzini were the cause of the plague. Survivors of direct encounters with Hazzini, if they recovered from their wounds—which was rare—then fell ill with a particularly vile malady that killed them within days. Apparently the Hazzini carried the plague in their bodies as yet another part of their armoury of weapons to be used against hated humanity.

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