Fire Flare

by Chris Ward

  ‘Sir.’

  It was the officer again, standing to attention, sweat soaking the rim of his cap.

  ‘What is it, officer?’

  ‘Respectfully, sir, we have received another message from High Command. They say to withdraw immediately.’

  General Grogood narrowed his eyes. ‘Son, is your father a military man?’

  The officer nodded. ‘He served under General Crait on the TSF Excelsior, sir. He died in the battle of Polpan Moon in the Uprising.’

  General Grogood scowled. ‘Then he died a brave man. And he would be rolling in his grave at the sight of you. Wipe that sweat off your face, you pathetic coward. There is no High Command. There ceased to be when they failed to defend Feint. Run back to your mousehole and bother me only when you have something worthwhile to say.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The officer ducked his head and hurried away.

  ‘Fool.’ General Grogood shook his head, then felt a momentary pang of regret that his own boy had fared little better. Huh. He could barely even claim to have a son; it was better to convince himself he was childless. Perhaps, when this war was done, he would find himself a new woman out in some rural village on Cable and start all over again.

  The firefight outside was intensifying. He saw one of his battleships explode under heavy fire, another engulfed in a swarm of enemy fighters, thousands upon thousands buzzing like flies. Hundreds of men on both sides were dying as each second passed, but wasn’t that the way it always went with war? The true battle was to see who flinched first.

  They came around, flanking the battle, and for a moment Dynis Moon appeared in the view-screens, a glowing ball in the sky. They were a long way out, but even from here, the massive Trillian orbiter was visible. One of two in the moon’s orbit, built by the true Trill, the ancient race that had once existed in the Estron Quadrant before vanishing, leaving behind only super-advanced technology no living scientist could understand. Its ancient yet advanced technology absorbed and reflected the light of the distant Trill Star and made Dynis Moon habitable.

  It was a true marvel. Irreplaceable, deserving of ultimate respect, unlike the vile Bareleon Helix which had existed only to destroy, and the warring Shadowmen, hideous elongated creatures out of a human’s evolutionary nightmare.

  The nearest Shadowman ship was so close General Grogood could practically wave at the scum in its windows. It had begun to fire on them, but the shields had so far kept them safe.

  ‘Destroy it,’ he shouted to his men. ‘Blow it to pieces. In the name of all that is free and safe in the Estron Quadrant, turn it into space dust.’

  ‘Sir!’

  He turned. ‘Not you again, officer, you wet-pantied fool. I told you not to bother me unless it was something important.’

  ‘Sir, respectfully, it is.’

  General Grogood could contain himself no longer. He lashed out, feeling the well-oiled muscles in his arms working as well as ever, clenching his fist, the Phevian water pig leather glove he wore tight over his knuckles, and he struck the officer just below the eye.

  ‘Oh!’

  The officer landed hard on his soft ass. He looked up at General Grogood with blood dripping down his face.

  ‘Sir….’

  ‘Go on, you pathetic sand worm. Spit it out. They’re shooting at us, they’re destroying our ships … who cares? We are soldiers, boy. We can take it, and we can give it, like your mother probably gave it around her village while your father was out drinking or wasting his money in some flea pit casino. Do you hear me, boy? You useless, whore-spawned—’

  ‘Sir, it’s not the fleet, sir. The Shadowman ships, they’ve begun to fire on the orbiter….’

  5

  Caladan

  ‘Look, it took three years to get this old thing back in the air, so let’s try not to crash or get captured within the first five minutes.’

  ‘I’m telling you,’ Paul said, fingers drumming on the co-pilot’s dashboard with such irritating regularity that Caladan wished he had to hand a machete, or at the very least a brick. ‘This ship packs a real punch. If we strike now at Raylan’s standing fleet, we can do irreparable damage.’

  ‘Yes, to ourselves. The guns haven’t been checked or serviced. All it would take is for one to jam, and we’d be space dust. And that’s even if I let you carry out your ridiculous plan.’

  ‘Well, what do you suggest?’

  ‘We need a spaceport. A free one, preferably. One where we can get this ship serviced and pick up some news about what’s going on. Robot, what’s nearby?’

  Harlan5 shook his head. ‘From the transmissions the ship is picking up, the safest place on Cable is where we just came from. Raylan’s forces are in control of all major cities and are slowly moving out into the frontiers as defending forces fall back.’

  Caladan peered at the monitor screens. Flying low over the surface of Cable’s largest ocean to disguise their passage from any seek-and-destroy craft in the area, the skies were thick with tumbling grey cloud, much of it caused by the fallout from whatever space battles had gone on in the low atmosphere. Caladan had heard only rumors, but by all accounts Cable’s space navy had fallen easily, leaving Raylan’s forces in control of the skies. How many, and where they were, remained to be discovered.

  ‘Harlan, can we handle an interplanetary jump?’

  ‘According to my programming, the Matilda’s engines can manage a short stasis-ultraspace trip on the current fuel reserves.’

  ‘Good. I have a few smugglers’ codes up my sleeve.’

  ‘Which one?’ Paul smirked.

  ‘Can it, Little Buck. You don’t really appreciate freedom until you’ve lost a couple of segments of it.’

  Strapped into a passenger berth behind where Harlan5 stood at his maintenance display, Beth said, ‘Interplanetary wormholes?’

  ‘There are dozens,’ Caladan said. ‘If you know where they are. Most of them are only a few hundred metres across. You can sail right past if you get a single coordinate wrong.’

  ‘And these smugglers’ codes … you’ve written them down?’

  Caladan grinned. ‘On the back of my brain.’

  ‘But if you get one coordinate wrong, we could end up a billion star systems away?’

  Caladan rolled his eyes. ‘Nothing so dramatic. We’d just end up sitting there in the middle of space, like a space turkey waiting to be blasted out of the sky.’

  ‘Is it wise for me to trust you?’

  ‘Absolutely not. However, I’ve kept you alive this long.’

  Beth lifted an eyebrow. ‘Are you sure? You know, the Bilbings wanted to barbeque both of you. Apparently my hair reminded them of autumn rain.’ She grinned then sat back in her chair, chuckling to herself.

  ‘How the damn could you know that?’ Paul said.

  ‘I helped with some early translations,’ Harlan5 said.

  Caladan turned to look at the robot. ‘What’s happened to you? During the three years we were sitting around in that forest did you take any time out of your time making flower braids to fix your shoulder cannons?’

  ‘One of the two remains operational. I am, however, a little low on ammunition.’

  Caladan huffed. ‘Find us a real spaceport and we’ll sort that.’

  ‘We have nothing to trade.’

  Caladan thought of Jake, and his smile faded. ‘No, we don’t. We’ll have to go back to how we were before all this mess came about. There’s always been plenty of work for a fast ship.’

  ‘Smuggling?’ Paul said. ‘I’d rather eat the filth off my shoes—’

  ‘Under-the-radar trading,’ Caladan said. ‘Let’s keep the terminology correct.’

  ‘We’ll need a spaceport first.’

  Beth had switched on a monitor screen in front of her, and now tapped on the casing to get Caladan’s attention.

  ‘What about Docrem2?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘It’s a moon-sized asteroid in orbit around Feint. It used to be a trading post
for precious metals and a shipyard, but according to the data being downloaded it was knocked off its orbit and is now en route for Trill Star, which will vapourise it in roughly three Earth-years’ time. Its last known location was three quadreps out from Feint, in an arc which will take it just past Cable’s outer orbit.’

  Caladan grimaced. ‘So, an asteroid on a collision course, which we have no accurate positional data for?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘It’s a suicide mission,’ Paul said.

  Caladan shook his head. ‘It’s perfect. You think Raylan’s going to bother with somewhere like that?’ He grinned. ‘And think of the sunset party. It’ll be mad.’

  ‘We’re going there to fix the ship,’ Paul said.

  ‘But perhaps our newly perfected distilling skills will be of some use,’ Caladan said.

  ‘Won’t it be abandoned?’

  ‘Those traders affluent enough will have left, but there will be those with nowhere else to go. They’ll hold on as late as possible. It’s the perfect place to hide and get the Matilda back into shape. Beth, get what data you can and transmit it to the Matilda’s main computer. Let’s see if we can get a predicted position for that rock.’

  It felt good to leave Cable behind. While Caladan had appreciated being holed up somewhere he could breathe the air, he never felt truly at home on land. Once the Matilda was racing through Cable’s atmosphere he felt a weight lift from his chest that he hadn’t realised had settled there, a guilt at inaction, at being stuck in a forest with a broken starship, drinking his way through the days while a systems-wide space war passed him by, and a face he would never forget slid farther and farther away.

  Now, as the gray of Cable’s atmosphere gave way to a glittering field of stars, he felt alive like he hadn’t in the three years since he grounded the battered ship. Even as lights appeared that couldn’t possibly be stars, but were closer, moving quickly, far more dangerous, he found he didn’t care. This was the world he knew, the world he understood.

  ‘We’ve got a blockade,’ Paul said, pressing buttons on the screen to activate the Matilda’s cannons.

  ‘Use those guns and I’ll cut off your arms,’ Caladan said. ‘I’ll keep one for myself and throw the other out into space. We can’t risk the cannons, and even if we could, we don’t have the ammunition for a firefight.’

  ‘What are those ships?’ Beth said.

  ‘Phevian Greed-Class battle cruisers,’ Harlan5 said. ‘Three Earth-miles long, with a complement of roughly eight hundred orbital fighters. According to the data the ship is downloading, Phevius System has signed an alliance with Raylan Climlee, who currently considers himself Overlord of Trill System.’

  ‘Has the prick told the Trill System government about that?’ Paul said.

  ‘They were incinerated, along with the majority of the space navy, during the Bareleon Helix’s destruction of Feint,’ Harlan5 said. ‘According to the data, there is little but a few floating rocks left.’

  ‘I’d guess the answer to your question then is no,’ Beth said.

  ‘There are three of those ships,’ Caladan said. ‘So a couple of thousand fighters. I don’t think the odds are too great.’

  ‘Get the shields up and send one large blast from the frontal cannon right into the butthole of one of those cruisers. Let them know the Defenders of the Free are back.’

  ‘We are not the—’

  ‘We’re getting a warning message,’ Harlan5 said. ‘My programming suggests that you use one of those wormhole codes as soon as possible.’

  Caladan grimaced. ‘Okay, hang on a minute.’

  ‘I thought you knew them,’ Paul said.

  ‘I do; I just have to think of the best one.’

  ‘A squadron of fighters has just launched,’ Harlan5 said. ‘They’re coming to intercept us. That battleship’s transmission says that all craft leaving the planet need to have official permission.’

  ‘Six,’ Caladan shouted. ‘Four-three-nine-two-eight. Tap these in, droid.’

  ‘One more time.’

  ‘Don’t joke with me! Put them into the computer!’

  Harlan5’s eyes twinkled with amusement as Caladan recited another ten digits. ‘Are you sure about that last one?’

  ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like to be melted down? This is not the time for your stupid Earth-humour.’

  ‘Inputting,’ Harlan5 said. ‘And it looks like we have a match. Auto-increasing the ship’s speed to reach the destination before we get blown to pieces.’

  ‘Hurry up!’

  ‘My programming would suggest that you waited three years for this, so a few seconds longer won’t hurt.’

  ‘Robot…!’

  The star field changed. The cruisers which had been slowly growing in size to distant, deadly peas, had vanished. Cable’s cloud-covered surface had also gone, and they found themselves drifting in empty space. As the ship turned, the screens tinted as they revealed the glowing ball of Trill Star.

  ‘It worked,’ Harlan5 said. ‘Although I did adjust the last digit, because my programming suggested it was likely incorrect.’

  ‘So where are we?’

  ‘Oh, where you said. We’re in deep orbit around Feint, so with a few days of travel we should catch up with Docrem2, which is on its way to a grisly end.’

  ‘Aren’t you supposed to be more diplomatic?’

  Harlan5’s eye lights twinkled. ‘Oh, I thought you might appreciate a little Old-Earth color rather than endless computer speak.’

  ‘We’ll have to adjust your settings.’

  Beth leaned forward. ‘So where was that code going to take us? Before you corrected it.’

  Harlan5’s head tilted to one side. ‘Right into the middle of Trill Star. I thought that you were probably warm enough, especially now the heating systems have been fixed.’

  ‘You’re going to stay with the ship,’ Caladan said, looking at Paul and Beth as they relaxed on two of the Matilda’s reclining chairs in the ship’s small recreation room. Through a screen built into the wall, a field of stars glittered. Out there somewhere was the asteroid Docrem2, still too distant to be visible to the naked eye. ‘It needs to be protected, and I think it’s best if I go alone.’

  Paul leaned forward, a grim look on his face. Despite his promise, he had still not shaved his beard. Caladan, whose beard had years ago reached the top of his chest and refused to grow any longer, wondered if they were involved in some kind of competition.

  ‘We need to find out if this outpost is aligned with the Defenders,’ Paul said.

  Caladan grimaced. ‘I hate to break it to you, but I think you and Beth all that’s left of them. Did you ignore what people were saying in Upton about the fleet—’

  Paul shook his head. ‘I refuse to have my opinions shaped by drunks and gamblers.’

  ‘It came from an official mayday transmission—’

  ‘That could be easily faked. And in any case, The Defenders were more than just a fleet. They were a movement.’

  Beth put a hand on Paul’s arm. ‘Caladan knows this place,’ she said. ‘We have to trust him.’

  Caladan shrugged. ‘Technically, I’ve never been there—’

  ‘See?’ Paul said, frowning at Beth.

  ‘—but I know the kind of people we’ll find. It’s best if I go alone.’

  Paul leaned back in the chair, shaking his head, but clearly out of argument. Beth just smiled and stood up. ‘I’d better get some rest before sentry duty.’

  After the door had closed behind her, Paul shook his head. ‘She lost her fight in that forest.’

  ‘I think we all did.’

  Paul pulled a blaster out of its holster and turned it over in his hands. He breathed a little steam onto its metal surface and polished it with a corner of his cloak.

  ‘I kept locked and loaded.’

  ‘Good for you. We’ll need it yet. Try not to start any fights we can’t win.’

  Paul scowled at the gun as tho
ugh it were personally responsible for their situation. ‘Raylan Climlee can only be brought down by a blaster,’ he said. ‘You can’t reason with scum. You can only cut them to pieces.’

  ‘I agree with you there. We’re not likely to find Raylan Climlee on Docrem2, however.’

  An alert began to blare. Caladan pressed an intercom button on the wall.

  ‘Robot, what is it?’

  ‘We’ve arrived,’ came Harlan5’s voice. ‘As per protocol, I sent out a distress signal to avoid a hostile welcome.’

  Paul frowned at Caladan. ‘Announcing us as cowards?’

  Caladan sighed. ‘Didn’t you learn anything in the academy, Little Buck? No ship in distress can be fired on, according to Intergalactic Common Law.’

  ‘This is wartime.’

  ‘But it still reduces our chances. Robot, what response did you get?’

  ‘We’ve been granted permission to dock. However, my programming suggests we should exercise additional caution.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There’s a Lucifer-Class cruiser in orbit around Docrem2,’ Harlan5 said.

  ‘Lucifer-Class?’

  ‘Known as the main battle craft of the Shadowmen, Raylan Climlee’s closest allies. It looks like Docrem2 might not have escaped the Overlord’s notice after all.’

  6

  Harlan5

  It wasn’t the usual thing to send a droid off on a mission of any importance, because many considered them property and therefore a theft risk. With a little knowledge of electronics it was easy to disable one, drag it off into a quiet place, disassemble it either carefully or with savage violence, then package it up and take it off somewhere else to be sold, reprogrammed, reused.

  Therefore, sending Harlan5 into the chaotic pit of Docrem2’s spaceport ahead of the two humans and the Farsi who remained on the Matilda was foolhardy at best, genius at worst. Beth, her creative juices elevated after three years of living in a forest, had dressed him up with a cloak and staff to make him appear hybrid, a creature perhaps outwardly machine but inwardly organic. Usually the result of some rebuilding after a devastating injury, such hybrids kept to the fringes of society due to ridicule and persecution, but, as Caladan had reminded him, there were few places more fringe than an asteroid spaceport on collision course for the nearest star.