by Chris Ward
It took them half an hour to get through the forest to where Caladan and Paul had brought the shuttle down. A Gondor 3, capable, on a good day, of hopping between local planets, but lacking the stasis-ultraspace drive required to take it to neighboring systems.
They had brought it down on a cleared patch of ground next to a gushing river. As the lower hatch opened and first Paul appeared, thickly bearded and wearing the brown forest cloak that made him look like an ancient druid, followed by Caladan, limping a little as though the pilot’s chair had been too narrow for his frame, Beth picked up a stick and sent it twirling in their direction. It landed at Paul’s feet. He looked down at it, then stared at Beth as though she had pierced his very heart.
‘Aren’t you pleased that we’re back?’
‘This is the Bilbings’ parade ground, you pair of imbeciles,’ she snapped. ‘Move this ship at once.’
Paul threw back his hood with an extravagance that was as unnecessary as it was strangely endearing, from a human perspective. Harlan5, allowing his programming to keep him up to speed on how a human grandfather might feel, would miss these unpredictable creatures if something happened to them. Watching their interplay was a highlight of his time in hiding, without a doubt.
‘Don’t you like your present? It’s Cable’s Lover’s Day next week. I thought you might like it.’
Beth scowled. ‘You’re too kind.’
‘My programming would like to ask where my present is,’ Harlan5 said.
‘Your present is that we’re using this heap of junk for parts instead of you,’ Caladan said. ‘Reckon there’ll be enough here to work with? It’s time you started earning your keep, robot.’
‘As opposed to maintaining the heating and air filtration systems to allow you and Little Buck to indulge in your hobby?’
Beth grinned. ‘It’s certainly been quiet around here. For what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re both still alive. Move this ship to the other side of the river and then you can tell us how you survived.’
‘He rigged the deck,’ Paul said, wincing at the taste of one of the fritters Beth had cooked from local plants. ‘He sleeved a couple of cards from a pack he bought in the market.’
‘That’s a complete lie,’ Caladan said, swigging back a large gulp of weak homemade liquor from a carved wooden tankard.
‘That’s exactly what you told me on the flight over.’
Caladan shrugged. ‘I only told you that to get you to shut up.’ He grinned at Beth. ‘I don’t mind admitting in front of a lady that I won by blind luck. Truth was, I had no clue what to do once I’d lost track of the cards. I got lucky, that’s all.’
‘Well, let’s hope you’ve got enough luck left to get this ship into the air.’
‘I have completed my analysis of the Gondor 3 and believe that it contains enough parts to get the Matilda airborne once more,’ Harlan5 said from his position near to the pilot’s terminal, from where he spent his time constantly monitoring the surrounding forest for signs of danger.
‘That’s something,’ Beth said. ‘Then we have the next question, don’t we?’
‘Does the beard stay or go?’ Paul said, giving a loud guffaw and then slamming his tankard down on the table.
‘A more pressing question,’ Beth said. ‘What do we do once we’re up there? We’ve been hiding out here for three years.’
Caladan took a long drink, staring out through the monitor screens which currently showed the forest at twilight, Trill Star dipping below the horizon, the glow in the sky from the light and heat amplifiers creating a fanlike pattern around it.
‘If she’s still alive, we find her,’ he said.
Beth gave a wistful smile. For once, Paul had no quips or comebacks, and Harlan5’s lights twinkled.
The captain. Oh, how his programming said he would like to see her again.
3
Caladan
‘From Vantar’s Seven Hells, do we have time for this rubbish?’ Paul muttered, standing beside Caladan as they waited in the clearing beside the river for Beth to conclude a farewell ceremony with the tribe of native Bilbing, the oddly shaped forest dwellers whom the girl had befriended. She was walking down a line of creatures straight out of Caladan’s nightmares, even after everything he had seen, pausing at each one to place a braid made of flowers around their elongated necks. Caladan, who had rarely seen them clearly until now, shivered every time one of them creaked like a piece of old rope blowing in the wind.
Three tiny elephantine legs protruded from stumpy bodies which rose only to knee-height on a human. They had no arms but instead had snakelike, scaly necks more than a metre long with thin, oval heads. They looked utterly defenseless, but he had seen them shimmying up trees using their necks like hooks to propel their bodies upwards. And once, Paul and he had encountered a dead one, and, in trying to move it, discovered that they weighed several times that of an average human, meaning that their necks were extremely powerful indeed. Their bodies, he had later discovered, acted as solid bases while the Bilbing used their necks to encircle and then snap through tree branches, often as thick as a man’s waist. They used the branches to make their treetop nests.
Beth might have befriended them, but neither Paul nor Caladan would be sad to wave goodbye. He had been unable to sleep for a week after their first encounter. It had been one of the reasons why he had set about distilling his own liquor.
‘At least they’re harmless,’ Paul said.
‘What planet are you from? Do you want to wake up with one in your bed?’
‘I meant that they have no tech. No blasters or cannons.’ Paul patted the weapon in a holster on his hip, hidden beneath his cloak. ‘I could take out twenty at a time.’
‘Good luck,’ Caladan said. ‘I hope you’ve been keeping that gun charged.’
Across the clearing, Beth had squatted down and began to talk in a series of hums and clicks with what appeared to be the leader, a larger Bilbing with silvery feathers covering his back.
‘What’s she doing now?’ Paul said.
‘I have no idea.’
Standing beside Caladan, Harlan5 said, ‘My programming suggests she’s negotiating a release deal.’
Caladan scoffed. ‘A what?’
With a frown, Beth stood up and came across to where the three of them were standing. ‘I’m afraid there’s a bit of an issue,’ she said.
‘What’s going on now?’ Caladan said. ‘We’re ready to leave. Just pat them on the scaly backs and wish them well.’
‘I’m afraid they require a gift in order to allow us to depart,’ Beth said. ‘Their elder says that we have lived on their land all this time, and that we need to provide them with some kind of recompense for the trouble we’ve caused.’
‘You’ve got to be joking.’
Paul put a hand on his hip. ‘How about we pay them with a few photon blasts?’ he said.
Beth slapped him on the arm. ‘Don’t be such a brute,’ she said. ‘Don’t you know anything? They could have ripped the Matilda apart at any time. Some of their nests are made of shredded metal taken from fallen starships. Elder Tik-Tik said they would be most displeased if we left without offering some kind of gift.’
‘Elder Tik-Tik?’ Caladan rolled his eyes. ‘And what if we say no? What if we turn the Matilda’s guns on them?’
Beth patted his arm. ‘You could never do that to a peaceful people like them.’
Caladan knew she was right. Too much of Lia had rubbed off on him.
Where are you? I miss you.
‘I suppose we’ll have to come up with something.’
‘These ugly mothers have a bit of gumption,’ Paul said with a smirk. ‘Perhaps we could recruit them into the Defenders of the Free.’
Caladan rolled his eyes at the mention of the supposed rebellion that had led to Beth and Paul hijacking the Matilda. The last rumor he had heard in one of Upton’s gambling dens was that Paul’s revered rebel fleet had been crushed in a single desperate battle so
mewhere deep in Quaxar System. Paul, however, remained convinced a huge victory over Raylan Climlee’s forces was just over Cable’s war-soaked horizon.
‘So what do we give them?’ he said.
‘How about the droid?’ Paul suggested, waving a thumb at Harlan5.
‘I understand the reasoning, but we need his help with the ship,’ Caladan said. ‘Not so much with the flying, but with keeping the thing in the air.’
‘According to my programming, when it comes down to probability, the most expendable member of the current crew would be you, Little Buck.’
‘Count me out,’ Paul said. ‘Where would you be in a firefight?’
‘Not in it, most likely,’ Caladan said, as Paul began air maneuvers with his fingers held in a gun shape, little bleats of pseudo-blaster fire coming from his lips. At the sight of him, Beth gave a little chuckle.
‘Can’t we give them one of the escape pods?’ Caladan said. ‘They don’t work properly anyway.’
Paul clicked his fingers together, his eyes widening. ‘Of course. What about the other guy?’ he said. ‘We could leave him behind. Tell them he’s a god or something.’
Caladan’s immediate response was a sharp ‘No!’ but even as he said it, the sense in Paul’s suggestion began to grow on him like a series of persuasive vines.
‘Sorry about this, old buddy,’ Caladan said, letting out a sigh as he peered through the stasis tank’s glass window at Jake O’Flagon’s face, murky beneath a couple of centimetres of sustaining liquid. The brave journalist out of Cask System, whom Caladan had promised to help, had lain in stasis these three long years of hiding, waiting for the rare medical treatment that would save him. After they had established themselves in the forest and made their assumed identities known, Caladan had tried to find a smuggling vessel heading for the secretive and restricted Cask System in order to send Jake home, but with war ravaging much of the Fire Quarter, even finding a ship heading off-world had been near impossible. Jake O’Flagon had remained in stasis.
‘Okay, droid, we’re ready,’ Paul said, patting the stasis tank as though it were a trailer of metal ore. ‘Give it a pull. Try not to knock it over.’
Harlan5 moved forward, pulling the stasis tank along on its wheeled gurney, down a route they had prepared to the clearing beside the river. Beth stood next to the assembled Bilbing, a far greater crowd than before. Several looked much older than the others, as though they had dragged out their elders for this leaving ceremony.
As Harlan5 brought the gurney to a stop in front of the leader, Caladan walked over to Beth and leaned close.
‘Translate everything I say as clearly as you can,’ he said. ‘Jake’s an old friend. I’d hate to have them eat him or something.’
‘They’re vegetarian,’ she said.
‘Yes, but these are wartimes. Desperate times call for desperate measures.’
Beth smiled. ‘I’m sure they’ll keep him safe. They really are a peaceful race.’
‘I’ll be holding you to that.’ He stepped away from her and lifted his arm. ‘Friends, I’d like to thank you for your hospitality with this wonderful gift.’ He waited for a few seconds while Beth stumbled through a translation which left the Bilbing nodding and clicking with awe. Then, pausing every few sentences to give Beth time to translate, he recited the speech he had prepared while Paul and Harlan5 were shifting the stasis tank out of the Matilda.
‘Friends, you have been most kind to us, a group of weary travelers from afar. Crash-landed among you, instead of food, we became friends. I thank you for not adding us to your menu or putting us through the kind of torture neither of my naïve young companions have ever experienced. While it might have been assumed we were perhaps criminals or smugglers, I’m happy that you didn’t treat us with the savageness we might have expected from such an outwardly monstrous race. And to show our appreciation as we once again return to the skies, I offer you a gift.’
He waited while Beth, glaring at him, finished her translation. While no doubt she had been selective with her choice of words, there was a collective ‘Ahhh!’ at the end, followed by a mass stomping of feet which Caladan took as a sign of excitement.
‘You may or may not know that a war has come to the skies above you. A war among the gods.’
More ahhs. Beside him, Paul was trying to keep a straight face, while Beth looked anything but amused.
‘And one of those gods fell to earth, and was rescued. By us. Hurt but not dead, we have protected him ever since, until the time comes when he will rise and return to the skies. But for now, we must resume the battle. Our gift to you is the greatest we could give. The opportunity to protect this fallen god. Here, in this tank, lies Jake O’Flagon, Lord of the Stillwater. Protect him with your lives, and one day we will return victorious.’
Beth translated. The Bilbing stomped their feet some more, then the one Caladan assumed was Elder Tik-Tik stepped forward and clicked something at Beth.
‘He says thank you,’ she said. ‘They will do what they can to protect Jake of the Stillwater.’
Caladan gave a solemn bow. ‘They have my eternal thanks.’
Beth grinned. ‘He also said he would like to take possession of your distilling equipment in order to ensure Jake of the Stillwater’s guards are well lubricated.’
‘He’s an asshole. Tell him he can have it but I’ll piss in it first.’
Beth rolled her eyes. ‘I’ll paraphrase that last bit,’ she said. As she began to speak to Elder Tik-Tik, he did a little shuffle, then his neck extended, his diminutive head rising up towards Caladan. It stopped a couple of inches away. Caladan glanced at Beth, wondering what she had told him, but the girl just grinned and shrugged. Elder Tik-Tik’s mouth opened and he clicked something at Caladan, who gritted his teeth to stop himself flinching away from breath that smelled like rotten vegetation.
‘He said you’re a man of great honor,’ Beth said, as Elder Tik-Tik’s neck retracted. ‘He is honored to have known you.’
‘The pleasure is all mine,’ Caladan muttered. ‘Now, can we please get out of here?’
With the ceremony concluded, Caladan watched the Bilbing drag Jake’s stasis tank away into the forest with a sense of longing and regret. ‘I’ll be back for you, old friend,’ he muttered, as Paul shifted beside him.
‘Come on, Captain,’ the younger man said, clenching a fist and tapping it against Caladan’s shoulder as though he were knocking on a door. ‘We have a ship that needs a pilot, and a war that needs to be won.’
4
General Grogood
‘There are too many, sir. We can’t take them.’
General Grogood of the Trillian Space Navy didn’t respond. He stared out at the star field around the outlying Dynis Moon, trying to put the destruction he had witnessed on Feint, the moon’s planet, out of his mind.
Entire countries wiped off the planet’s surface. Cities reduced to rubble. Millions of citizens turned to dust.
Old texts talked of Bareleon Helixes, planet-eating monsters which laid waste to entire systems, churning up all life and civilization, and spewing it out as hideous, warring pureborn creatures which spread forth like a virus, assimilating with or destroying whatever survivors they could find.
He had never thought he would see one, and he hadn’t. By the time his portion of the Trill System Space Fleet had reached Feint, the monstrosity was gone, reduced to space debris, leaving behind only the destruction it had caused.
‘My fish,’ he growled, staring out of the view-screens at the dots moving against the background of stars. ‘That was my fish to land … and to kill.’
‘Sir, more ships are dropping out of stasis-ultraspace. The closest have launched their fighters. We’re already taking huge damage.’
General Grogood turned to the officer, a mere boy in a uniform likely ironed by his mother in one of the villages on Dynis Moon’s surface.
‘Are you out of diapers yet, boy? Do you understand anything about war?’
/> ‘Sir, respectfully, all our intelligence reports predict that our forces will be overwhelmed within hours. High Command has communicated—’
General Grogood lifted a hand. ‘I don’t care what those fools in their bunkers have said. As soon as they chose to hide, they ceased to have a hand in the war.’
‘But, sir, respectfully—’
‘Dismissed.’
The officer, perhaps having knowledge of General Grogood’s fearsome reputation, wisely withdrew. Others would come for sure, but the response would be the same. These officers were little more than children. They were onlookers. Wars were fought by men.
‘Captain,’ he called to Revel Sind, his chief navigation officer, ‘take us in closer. I will not stand back while my fleet engages the enemy like some coward.’
The catlike creature turned and hissed a response before resuming his work. Captain Grogood smiled. At least some members of his crew had absolute loyalty, even if the number grew less as the war continued.
Far out across the sky, flashes began to appear as his fleet engaged the Shadowman battleships that had appeared out of stasis-ultraspace already in attack formation. They numbered more than a hundred, and most far outsized his own.
‘My fingers will encircle your vile little throat and squeeze out whatever life I find,’ he growled, thinking of Raylan Climlee, the non-entity of a warlord who had dared to bring such invaders into the Estron Quadrant. The Shadowmen, like the Bareleon Helix, were truly alien, and had no place among the Seven Systems. They would be expelled, as their comrades had been, and having missed that chance, General Grogood wasn’t about to miss this one.
‘You’re mine,’ he growled, gritting his teeth, as the star field moved around them, the ship accelerating towards the battle. ‘Arm all cannons,’ he shouted to the crew. ‘Prepare all fighters for launch. Tonight we feast on evil, and victory will be ours.’