The Chara Talisman

by Alastair Mayer

  Carson hadn’t heard anything, but timoan hearing was more acute. “Better go check,” he said, gesturing toward the top of the ridge.

  “Okay.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Marten crept up to the top of the slope, crawling along the rocks, blending with the bushes. He reached the edge and peered down. Crap! The door to the bad guy’s ship was open, he must have heard its mechanism. Hopkins and two men came out, carrying the Maguffin between them. Marten turned and scrambled back to his companions.

  “They’re outside, Hopkins and two others . . . no, three with the guard. They’ve got the Maguffin!”

  “What in bloody hell?” Carson said. “If they mean to test it . . . Come on, let’s get up there.” They all three scrambled back to the top of the ridge.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Carson and the others peered over the edge. He saw that they’d set the Maguffin up on a tripod made of branches, about thirty meters from their ship. There was—it was hard to make out at this distance—a box with a lever or mechanical arm, fastened to the Maguffin’s handles. Wires trailed back to where Hopkins and his men were, near their ship. Two recorders on tripods were aimed at the Maguffin.

  “It looks like they’ve rigged up a remote activator or something,” said Jackie. “Smart.”

  “Still rather stupid to activate it at all without knowing what it is, if you ask me,” said Marten.

  Carson thought for a moment. “Perhaps not. The thing has handles and hand controls. It’s not likely to be extremely dangerous to the operator if it’s meant to be held while in use.”

  “A backpack nuke has handles too,” remarked Jackie.

  They all slid a little further back from the edge of the ridge, and hunkered down flatter, but kept watching. Carson whispered a question.

  “Jackie, if that thing is a disintegrator ray, how would it work?”

  “How would I know? Only disintegration I’ve ever seen is dust particles kamikaze-ing the front of the warp bubble,” said Jackie, then realization hit her. “Oh!”

  “Oh?”

  “Warp bubble. If the makers figured out a way to generate a small, stationary warp bubble, that might do it.”

  Down the slope, Hopkins gesticulated at one of his men. Rico? He pointed at something Rico was holding—it had wires dangling from it, it was the controller for the remote activator—then at the Maguffin. Rico shrugged, and went back to check the gizmo.

  Carson still wondered about the disintegrator. “How would that work, and wouldn’t it just zoom off somewhere?”

  “Making a tiny warp bubble? I have no idea. But matter at the event horizon of the bubble just tears itself apart from tidal force. Dumps a burst of radiation, too.”

  Below, Rico finished making an adjustment to the alien device and rejoined his group.

  “How much radiation, if you did it in standard atmosphere? What would happen?” asked Carson. “Assuming it even worked that way.”

  Hopkins raised his hand, and he and his men hunkered down a little further. So did Carson and the others on the ridge. Hopkins started rhythmically waving his hand, it looked like he was counting his fingers.

  “Looks like he’s doing a count down,” said Jackie, then she thought a moment about Carson’s question. “A lot of radiation, think how much matter’s involved. A big pulse of x-rays, probably, just like—” Roberts’s eyes grew wide, realizing the implication.

  Carson, seeing her expression, made the same connection. “A nuke,” he said.

  Simultaneously, Roberts and Carson flattened themselves to the dirt, trying to merge with it, at the same time yelling “duck and cover!” Marten flattened too, and they buried their faces in crossed arms, hands over their heads, just as Hopkins finished his countdown.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  They felt the light more than they saw it, although there was a red glare even through closed and covered eyes. Just a little at first, accompanied by an ear-piercing shrieking whistle, then a sudden bloom of light and a wave of heat swept over their heads and shoulders, followed in a split-second by a huge BANG! that shook the ridge and squeezed their lungs. Then it was calm and silent, save for the echoes booming back from the mountains.

  Jackie was already on her feet and running. “To the Sophie! Now’s our chance!” Carson paused long enough to check that Marten was up and moving, then followed close behind her.

  The cloud of dust raised by the blast was still settling, and a circle within about five meters of where the Maguffin had been the vegetation was aflame. The Maguffin itself lay on the ground about twenty meters from its original location. Carson couldn’t tell if the wisps of smoke came from it or the scorched vegetation it lay on, but its coils seemed intact and its housing was undented. One of the guards lay on the ground broken and bleeding. Hopkins and the others staggered to get up; some were holding hands to their eyes. Carson heard shouts of “My eyes!” and “I’m blind!” mixed in with screams of pain.

  The trio was two thirds of the way down the slope of the hogback now, running pell mell, barely keeping their balance as they charged down the steep hill. Hopkins and his men were down but not out, and others in their ship would be coming out to investigate. They ran for their lives.

  “What . . .” Marten was panting too hard to talk easily. “. . . happened?” He took a more breaths, still running. He slipped, stumbled, recovered. Kept running. “Felt like . . .” he took a few more panting breaths, “a bomb.”

  Slightly ahead of him, Jackie scrambled and recovered, running for the Sophie. “Close . . .” she gasped as she ran, “I’ll,” a quick dance to recover as she stumbled over a rock, “. . . explain later.” She reached the bottom of the slope just ahead of him, and ran flat out now, the Sophie just yards away.

  Marten darted a glance towards Hopkins’s crew. They still staggered, dazed and flash-blind. They haven’t noticed us yet. But where was Carson?

  There he was, turning from the straight path to the Sophie. What? Carson ran towards the slightly smoking Maguffin, lying not far from Hopkins.

  It looked like Hopkins himself had recovered. He staggered to his feet, turned to survey the area. He reacted when he saw Carson.

  “Stop—” Hopkins winced as if in pain and clutched a hand to his side. Rib injury? Marten wondered. “Stop him!” Hopkins managed to shout. He still blinked fiercely, his face tear streaked, but he seemed to be recovering. Not so his goons, who were still stumbling about, but the door to their ship was sliding open.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Carson heard Marten calling. “Carson! Never mind the device, just get to the ship!” Carson checked the Sophie. Jackie was already ducking aboard through the opening hatch. He ignored Marten’s shout. He had to get the Maguffin. He dodged around one of Hopkins’s staggering minions, giving him a kick for good measure as he passed. The man went down. He heard Marten again “Carson, gun! Behind you!” He looked back. At the hatch to Hopkins’ ship, a man was leveling a rifle at him. He dived for the ground and rolled. The man fired a burst.

  As Carson rolled, shots hit the ground where he had been a moment before. He scrambled to his feet, and now the Maguffin was only a few meters away. He dove for it, grabbed it, and almost dropped it in surprise. It was hot. Ignoring the pain in his hands he held onto it, rolled into a runner’s crouch and was off again.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  The gunman fired another burst, shifted aim, fired again. Damn it, it was like trying to shoot a jackrabbit. Every time he brought the gun to bear, the guy bounced away in a different direction. Time to rock and roll, he thought, and turned the selector from burst to full auto.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Marten saw that Carson was vulnerable. Carrying the Maguffin slowed him, and at the rate the gunman was firing, he would get a lucky hit soon. Marten glanced around. Jackie was already aboard the Sophie. Most of Hopkins’s men were still incapacitated. Where had that guard been? There!

  In two bounds, Marten covered the dozen feet to where the guard’s rifl
e lay and snatched it up. Without pausing to aim, he fired several shots at the gunman, coming close enough to startle and distract him.

  “Carson! Run!” Marten called out.

  The gunman turned toward Marten, gun raised. Marten squeezed off another burst and ran for all he was worth, ignoring the renewed pain from his earlier chest wounds.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Jackie had the Sophie on line and fired up the hover thrusters. As Carson and Marten ran toward her, she began drifting the Sophie toward them, kicking up clouds of dust. She turned to present the portside hatch toward them. There was enough space between the jets that they could scramble aboard while avoiding the hot jet wash. Jackie looked out to see Marten turn and fire again towards Hopkins’s ship, keeping the gunman’s head down as Carson raced up the boarding ramp. Marten fired once more then dropped the rifle and leaped for the ramp. Jackie started to lift as soon as he hit the ramp. He dove through the hatchway hollering. “Go! We’re aboard, let’s go!”

  Jackie banked the Sophie away from the Hawk and put her into a climb as it turned, retracting the ramp and closing the hatch as she went. As the hatch closed, Jackie applied full power and the Sophie blasted towards the clouds.

  They’d made it.

  Not quite. As Carson and Marten scrambled up from the entrance hatch to strap themselves in, an alarm light lit up on the control board. Jackie glanced at it and swore. In bright orange letters it flashed “FUEL CONSUMPTION” and “POSSIBLE LEAK.”

  Chapter 32: Dogfight

  Aboard Sophie

  “What’s the problem?” asked Carson.

  “All that shooting must have punctured a tank. Damn it, this ship is supposed to be bulletproof.” Well, meteoroid proof, anyway.

  Carson raised an eyebrow at this. “Maybe he was using armor piercing rounds. Marten fired enough shots at their ship, I hope he returned the favor. What do we do?”

  “I’m not going into warp until we figure out how bad the problem is and how far we can get. And I don’t want to leave atmosphere until we’re sure the rest of the hull is airtight. We need to set down somewhere so I can inspect.”

  “How critical is it?”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem, we’ve got plenty of fuel if we’re not warping. The board’s green otherwise. I’ll run a pressure check on the hull.” Jackie pressed a couple of keys on the console as she said this.

  “I hate to interrupt,” said Marten, who was watching the view aft on another screen, “but Hopkins’ ship just lifted. He’s after us.”

  Jackie moved the control yoke and cursed at the ship’s sluggish response. She muttered while keying something in to the control pad. “Water’s a nice dense fuel source, but it’s also heavy as hell.” She made another turn with the controls. “Damn thing flies like a pig, and has all the gliding properties of a brick.” She looked around her. “Sorry Sophie, I didn’t mean it.” She took one hand off the yoke and touched a sequence on her console.

  A button illuminated with the words “FUEL JETTISON” and Jackie stabbed it down. The Sophie vibrated and shook, surging forwards as the outboard tanks dumped their water as fast as they could. It flashed to a misty cloud as it hit the slipstream, leaving a thick contrail behind them. Hopkins’s ship swerved to stay clear of it.

  “What are you doing?” asked Carson.

  “Lightening the load. Don’t worry, there’s still plenty left. Three more tanks.”

  Jackie again gave the controls an experimental wiggle. The Sophie was definitely more responsive now. “That’s better,” she said, and closed the dump valves. They still had the inboard tanks, if they could avoid the Hawk that was still enough to reach space and get far enough out to enter warp. She could cut the warp short and double back to refuel after the Hawk had given up on them.

  “All right,” said Marten, “how did you know that would happen, the explosion?”

  Jackie scanned the console as she talked, climbing for altitude and keeping an eye on the cabin pressure. It seemed to be holding. “Carson asked me about that gadget, how it might work if it was a short-range disintegrator.” She quickly recapped her comparison with a warp bubble.

  “But why design a tool like that?”

  “Who knows? There has to be more to it than that. Maybe Hopkins had it set to full power. When they turned it on it just sucked air in, turned it to energy, created a vacuum, sucked more air in, and so on. That would explain the shriek.”

  “And the bang?” Marten asked. “Carson said something about a nuke.”

  “A nuclear bomb creates an x-ray pulse, which heats the air to a plasma, and that is what gives off the light and causes the blast,” Jackie explained.

  “Ah, so a big burst of x-rays from the device—”

  “—would be like a nuclear grenade,” she finished.

  “Oh my.”

  “How did you know it would do that?” Carson asked.

  “I didn’t. I was expecting a flash, like a fusion thruster, but hadn’t thought beyond that. I just figured we’d better be ready for the worst case.”

  “Yes,” said Marten. “That was a good diversion, by the way.”

  “Thanks,” said Carson, who was now looking at the rear screen. “Jackie, I don’t suppose you have a way to toss a nuclear grenade out the back, do you? Hopkins’ ship is coming up fast.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  “Is it armed?”

  Carson scanned the screen, examining the Hawk, looking for gun ports, a laser turret, or some other sign of weapons on the closing ship. “I don’t think—” he broke off as a pod lowered from the underside of the ship, and with a flash two missiles launched from it, streaking toward them leaving a trail of fire and smoke, as the pod retracted. “Yes! Two missiles at six o’clock! Evade!”

  Jackie snap-rolled the ship inverted, ignoring the rattle and crash of loose items falling about the cabin, and pulled back hard on the control yoke, pulling the upside-down Sophie down through a split-S maneuver, coming out of it right side up below and flying in the opposite direction as Hopkins’ ship. She snapped the controls about quickly in a series of jinking maneuvers. “Missiles?” she asked.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  The first missile had been confused by the Sophie’s sudden maneuvers, and lost her. It continued on its original path, twisting and turning to try to pick up the trail, its exhaust leaving a corkscrew spiral of smoke.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Carson said: “Lost one, the other’s still tracking.”

  Tracking what? Radar? Infrared? Jackie hoped the latter. “Hold on!” She reached out to the control panel with one hand, the other still moving the yoke in a jinking pattern, and in quick succession hit the ENGINES OFF and FUEL JETTISON buttons, then pushed the controls to put the Sophie in a diving glide. Hundreds of gallons of water dumped from valves near the exhaust nozzles, cooling them and creating a great cloud of steam and water droplets where the Sophie had been.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  The second missile, which had been followed the bright infrared spot that was Sophie’s starboard thruster, was confused by the bright hot spot suddenly being replaced by a larger, diffuse glow, but it plunged on.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Jackie banked the Sophie left to change direction again and spared a glance at the screens. “Status?” she asked Carson.

  Carson saw the missile continue on course, waver a bit as though seeking, then disappear into the cloud. “Lost it, I think.”

  “Where’s the Hawk?” Jackie asked. Sophie was still in an engine-out glide, not a good position for a dogfight.

  “I don’t see it. Wait! It’s high, about four o’clock.”

  Jackie took a quick look at the rear view screen. Hopkins’s ship was maneuvering to line up another shot after Jackie’s first evasive turn, and cutting across the curve she had made. It approached at an angle, lining up for an intercept.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  The missile exited the spreading cloud, still seeking a target.

  The Hawk’s w
eapons pod began to lower again.

  The diffuse glow from the cloud cleared from the missile’s sensor. It resumed its hunt for the target.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  The Sophie, still in a gliding descent, was rapidly losing altitude, worse now as Jackie made evasive turns as they went, costing precious lift. She would have to restart the engines soon. She extended her finger toward the START ENGINES button.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  The Hawk, almost directly behind them now, lowered its nose toward them.

  The missile saw the heat plume of a ship’s exhaust. Its guidance system gave the robotic equivalent of “tally ho!” and locked on.

  The Hawk was now lined up, its pilot reached to the fire control.

  The missile flew on into the portside main thruster of the Hawk, and committed spectacular suicide.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  At the first flash of the explosion, Jackie stabbed her finger down on the START ENGINES control and put the Sophie into a hard diving turn away from it, praying that she had enough altitude for the thrusters to kick in before she hit the ground. The altimeter unwound like a crazed backwards clock.

  Debris from the Hawk rained around them, and the ground was getting close.

  Jackie pulled up the nose, and felt the thrusters come up to power. She leveled off just as she was brushing the treetops, and a memory flashed of the time in flight school when she had come back with leaves stuck in her landing gear. “Whee, that was fun,” she said, exhaling the breath she’d been holding.

  Behind them, off to their right, the remains of the Hawk crashed to the ground.

  Chapter 33: Pyramid Redux

  In the Plains

  “We’d better land, I need to check over the ship, patch that bullet hole,” Jackie said, climbing above tree top level and turning towards to a clear area, near the stream but at some distance from their earlier landing site. That was further away than she remembered coming, but there had been distractions.

  “Fair enough, you’re the pilot.”

  “And Captain, Carson. Don’t forget it.” She felt better now that she was back at the controls of her ship; she just hoped the damage wasn’t serious.