by Chris Ward
The drunken revelry that spilled out on to Docrem2’s streets beneath the atmosphere dome would have made even Caladan weep, Harlan5’s programming thought. While many holdings were emptied or destroyed, their owners having the means to leave, others had embraced the inevitability of a fiery death and were drinking and enhancing their way to it faster than the asteroid was rushing through space. Harlan5 stepped over humans, aliens and subspecies alike as they lay slumped in the streets, many of whom had actually died while the party continued around them. He saw two Rue-Tik-Tan barbequing parts of one dead colleague and selling the pieces to passersby, while maintaining a shrill wail which Harlan5’s programming told him was something of a musical anthem back on their homeworld. Turning down their offer for a piece of thigh steak, he stepped through a large door into a parts trader’s building, waving to the creature working on a damaged shuttle held up in the air by a series of robotic pulleys.
‘Hail,’ Harlan5 said to the creature as it climbed down from a scaffolding rig and scuttled across. A lizard-like face peered up at him, narrow eyes blinking, three layers of eyelids unfolding one after the other. One of the creature’s eight legs lifted to scratch an old scar across its check, several hairs coming loose and fluttering away in the breeze created by a ceiling fan far above.
‘What can I do you for?’ the creature said in the common tongue. ‘You need to change that head of yours?’
Harlan5 shook the head he was quite proud of. ‘My starship needs a service,’ he said. ‘I heard Jacob Flint was the best in the business.’
‘My father.’ The creature’s brow rippled. ‘He left. This is my shipyard now. I’m Teer Flint.’
‘Is your work as good?’
‘How badly damaged is your ship?’
Harlan5 resisted the urge to list the specifics from the ship’s computer, instead maintaining the gunslinger attitude Caladan had told him was important.
‘It made it here,’ he said. ‘Blasted a few scum on the way.’
‘Then it can’t be much. Can you pay?’
‘I have information that you will find vital.’
Teer Flint rolled his eyes in a clockwise direction. Two bony spider’s legs lifted, the ends tapping together in a gesture Harlan5 took to mean frustration.
‘You think information is of any value to me?’
‘We have wormhole codes. You can get away.’
‘I’m not interested in getting away.’
‘Your father left, didn’t he?’
‘With a bomb in the back of his freighter that I wired myself,’ Teer said. ‘His parts are floating out there in orbit somewhere.’
‘So what would interest you in terms of payment?’
The lizard-like mouth twisted into a contorted grin. The eyes blinked, and the eight spider’s legs tapped out a rhythm on the ground.
‘I want the beating heart of a Shadowman general.’
Harlan5 nodded. ‘I’ll speak to my people and see what kind of arrangement we can come up with.’
Leaving Teer Flint’s shipyard behind, Harlan5 wandered through the maze of haphazardly constructed streets, new buildings built of stone and steel where old ones had collapsed, the ruined structures literally pushed aside to make room. Docrem2’s main settlement was enclosed by a series of atmosphere domes, each connected and filtered with commonly breathable air that suited most known races and subspecies. A couple of the domes had failed, their gravity systems broken, and through the glass of one Harlan saw the mess that had become of the adjacent dome, the top of its translucent sphere now piled with the remains of what buildings had been inside. The entrance had been blocked and sealed, but several bodies floated among the junk, perhaps those who couldn’t leave quickly enough. Harlan5 observed long enough to make a clear video recording he would show the others upon his return, then moved on.
The largest dome housed the main spaceport, its internal atmosphere maintained by a magnetic field through which ships entered and departed. The Matilda had docked in a free berth on an extended landing pad, but before heading back to the ship, Harlan5 made a circuit of the spaceport, observing everything he could, collecting information for his companions. After the long hours in space, Caladan and Paul were especially keen to disembark, but the Shadowman cruiser presented a grave threat that had to be assessed. So far, Harlan5 had seen no sign of Raylan Climlee’s terrifying allies, but they would be here somewhere.
He tweaked his sensors, listening to vibrations in the air, translating them into sound.
‘First transports to leave in three Earth-hours. These scum have no choice if they want to live.’
The sound of conversation came from a loading dock nearby, in an alien language Harlan5’s programming could only roughly translate based on other stored languages. He headed towards the sound, slipping off the cloak Beth had given him and storing it in a rear compartment, reverting to his appearance as a basic maintenance droid. Spotting an empty loading cart, he took control of it and pushed it in the direction of the voices.
The loading bay doors stood open. Harlan5 pushed the cart through, receiving barely a glance from the two towering creatures standing nearby, each of them nine Earth-feet tall, their bodies elongated, their limbs fog-grey but shifting, impossible even for Harlan5’s hyper-sensitive visuals to focus on. He looked quickly away, aware his visualization technology might malfunction.
Like ghosts forced into clothing, even in the outer reaches of the Estron Quadrant, where all manner of diverse alien races and subspecies converged, the Shadowmen were something else. From a home planet far outside the Fire Quarter, they were one of a small number of races universally disliked and shunned.
‘Droid! State your purpose.’
Harlan5 paused. He had no choice but to turn, lowering his visual receptors so that the world turned grey and pixilated, the only way he could view the Shadowmen safely.
‘Delivery for loading bay nine.’
‘Your cart is empty.’
‘Delivery complete.’
The creatures approached. Harlan5 stood still, his programming running through a series of possible actions.
‘State your manufacturing specifics.’
‘Gorgo Droid Company Ltd. of Galanth in Phevius System. Online since Earth year—’
‘Enough. Your current office?’
‘Maintenance and general service.’
‘Are you sure about that? You’re a little cleaner than most of the droids around here. Did you come in on a recently docked starship?’
Lying made Harlan5’s receptors hurt. It was so much easier for a droid to tell the truth, but he had been hanging around with Caladan and the humans for too long. The Shadowmen were too close, everything about them setting off warning signals. His visuals weren’t clear but one of them was moving, arm perhaps reaching for a gun—
Despite what Caladan believed, Harlan5 had looked after himself during their time in the forests of Cable. While he was low on ammunition, his parts were well-oiled, and everything was moving smoothly. In an instant his shoulder cannon was engaged, twin flashes of blaster fire blowing the two Shadowmen to pieces.
‘Yee-hah, gunslinger,’ Harlan5 said, his programming wondering what Caladan might make of the visuals later.
The pieces of the blasted Shadowmen were fizzing on the ground. Harlan5 scooped up something fleshly that he hoped was a heart and put it into a small body compartment which he then sealed and refrigerated. With a shake of his metal head, he turned, pushing the cart back out of the hangar, before using his remaining ammunition to destroy the door control outside the loading bay, leaving the remains of the Shadowmen locked inside.
Someone would find out eventually, and then he would be hunted across Docrem2 like a rat cornered in a bucket. He had to move fast.
‘What are you doing back here?’ Teer Flint said, scowling as he scuttled down from his current maintenance job. ‘I didn’t expect to see you again.’
‘I’m afraid that my database doesn’t st
ore information about your species,’ Harlan5 said. ‘Would you care to enlighten me?’
Teer frowned. ‘What business is it of yours?’
‘I’d like to know the general percentage of honesty held by your species’ culture.’
‘What? Make sense, you dumb machine.’
‘Can I trust you to keep to your word?’
Teer Flint rolled his eyes in that peculiar way again. ‘I swear on my murdered father. A Flint always keeps his word.’
‘Good.’ Harlan5 ejected the refrigeration compartment from his torso. It bounced across the floor and something black flopped out. It steamed on the floor and began to dissolve, giving a few involuntary flexes from an electrical charge Harlan5 had placed inside.
‘What in Vantar’s Seven Hells is that?’
Harlan5 sometimes wished he had the ability to smile like a human, but instead he just twinkled his eye lights.
‘It’s the beating heart of a Shadowman general.’
7
Caladan
‘I’m still struggling to believe this,’ Paul said. ‘You killed two Shadowmen generals, then presented the beating heart of one to a mechanic as payment for servicing the ship?’
‘I’m not sure it was a heart,’ Harlan5 said. ‘My programming suggests it might have been a lung due to the evident physiology. But it was close enough to convince the mechanic Teer Flint. And technically, also according to my programming, I acted with self-preservation in mind.’
Caladan stared at him. ‘You’ve risen a level in my estimation,’ he said. ‘If you think you’re getting my seat, though, you have another think coming.’
‘My programming suggests that the Captain’s seat is actually the preferable of the two,’ Harlan5 said. ‘Reproduced Earth-elephant leather is supposed to provide a relaxing experience for one’s rear end.’
‘Is that what this is?’ Paul said, patting the edge of the gunner’s chair. ‘Gives my ass a solid thump. The pilot’s chair is plain plastic, I presume? Cheap, maybe even recycled?’
‘If you’re not happy with the seating arrangements I’m quite happy to leave you here,’ Caladan said. ‘I imagine there’s plenty of entertainment while you wait to be burned up by Trill Star.’
‘I’ve always preferred plastic,’ Paul said, winking at Harlan5. ‘I’m a simple man.’
Ignoring him, Caladan turned to the view-screens. Docrem2’s spaceport spread out below them, the interconnected atmosphere bubbles like the spawn of some Earthen water beast. Flying carefully among other ships docked in close space, Caladan followed the coordinates to Teer Flint’s shipyard dock on the far side of the spaceport, nestled into a crack below a jagged outcrop of rock. Activating an access code Flint had given to Harlan5, he lowered the ship in through a magnetic sealing field and descended to the mechanic’s landing pad. Finding a spot among the cluttered remains of salvaged shuttles and stripped-down fighters, he settled the Matilda into position.
Turning to Harlan5, he said as he cut power to the landing thrusters, ‘I think it’s best if you stay here. We’ll shut you down a while and hide you in the store room. You can’t kill two Shadowmen and get away with it. There would have been cameras somewhere. And if they start searching ships we can at least blame it on another model.’ With a wink, he added, ‘We’ll sprinkle you with a bit of dust to enhance the effect.’
‘As you wish.’
‘Why don’t we blast off his legs?’ Paul said, holding his arms up into a photon rifle position and making a couple of bleating noises as he pretended to fire. ‘We can fix them later.’
‘Let’s just leave him as he is,’ Beth said, coming onto the flight deck and patting Harlan5 on the back. Caladan stared, noticing that Paul was staring too. For the first time since leaving Cable, Beth was dressed for space in a tight cat-suit, her hair tied back into a bun. She looked like the young revolutionary Caladan had first encountered, like a more youthful Lia but with darker hair. He smiled, relieved. For a while he had thought the girl was lost forever. There was only so long he could have put up with Paul and Harlan5 on his own.
‘Welcome back,’ he said.
‘I wasn’t aware we had a princess on board,’ Paul said.
Caladan rolled his eyes as Beth laughed. ‘Save your little flirtation games for later. We need to get off the ship.’
After storing Harlan5 away a little more gently than Caladan felt necessary, the three of them headed down to the main hatch. Something that was half-spider, half-lizard met them on the landing pad and introduced himself as Teer Flint. Caladan suppressed a sigh as Flint spouted garbage about their droid’s fighting skills, then gave them a timeframe for the Matilda’s servicing.
‘What race was that?’ Paul asked as they left Flint with the ship, heading down through a sealed gate into the city. ‘Some kind of outer-worlder?’
‘Why don’t you ask him when we return,’ Caladan said, privately also mystified by Teer Flint’s origins, yet at the same time mystified by the term “outer-worlder.” He wondered what they must be teaching in the space academies these days.
An internal fumigation of the Matilda, required to clear out any rogue gasses or off-world contamination, would take a couple of Earth days. During that time they would be unable to stay on the ship. Flint had recommended a shady local hotel to tide them over for a couple of days. Caladan was happy to get off the ship in any case. He had spent so long in the forest on Cable that the confines of the Matilda had begun to feel claustrophobic. With a smile, he wondered if he was going land-bound in his old age.
‘I’m going to get some sleep,’ he told them, paying for their rooms and pointing them towards a rattling elevator. ‘I suggest you two do the same. There’s not a lot to be gained from wandering about on a lump of rock like this.’
‘Aye-aye, Skipper,’ Paul said, flashing a salute which made Caladan scowl. ‘We’ll stay out of trouble.’
‘See that you do.’
Caladan headed up to his room and dumped a bag of provisions on the pallet bed. Then, checking the charge on the blaster on his belt, he headed straight back out onto the street, flashing a wry smile at the doors to Paul and Beth’s rooms as he went.
Kids. He hoped they slept well.
It didn’t take long for him to find a rundown bar selling decent whisky. Prices were high, but Caladan still remembered enough stolen trader accounts to set himself up a tab in the name of some long-vanished company.
‘You get this in before the war?’ he asked the bartender as he swilled the amber liquid around in the glass. ‘How long’s it aged?’
‘Naturally ten Earth-years, artificially thirty-five,’ a grizzled Rue-Tik-Tan told him in the common tongue. ‘Last shipment out of Feint before the Helix razed it.’ He said it with a hint of regret, then beamed a wide smile. ‘Get stuck in. We have quite a stock to get through before burn-up.’
‘You won’t evacuate?’
The bartender glowered. ‘I can’t. You think I make enough money from this dump to afford a place on a private ship? Nowhere for refugees in Trill System. We were promised a transport by Cable’s government before transmissions went down.’
‘The planet’s blockaded,’ Caladan said. ‘No one’s coming.’
‘Better to burn up than to drift away,’ came a gruff voice beside Caladan, and a younger Farsi with a more impressive beard clapped him on the shoulder. ‘And no better way to burn up than with a gut full of booze.’
‘I’ll drink to that,’ Caladan said.
‘You gonna sign up?’ the younger Farsi said. ‘Those Shadowmen freaks are offering a free ride off this rock if you sign up for Raylan Climlee’s war.’
‘I imagine an able-bodied man like me would get a seat in the captain’s chamber,’ Caladan said, grinning as he slapped the stump of his left shoulder.
‘I’ll be emptying the slops beside you,’ said the bartender, cackling as he lifted a leg to reveal a rusty metal peg where a clawed foot should have been. ‘The next round’s on the house.�
��
Like much artificially enhanced whisky, the drink was far stronger than its naturally distilled forefather, and Caladan quickly began to lose control of his tongue. Soon he was buying rounds for strangers while running his mouth about Raylan Climlee’s forces, much to the entertainment of those around him.
He was in the middle of an air-space battle, making gun fingers with his only hand at a plastic model spaceship hanging from the ceiling, when a tall human pushed the nearest listener aside and sat down on his stool.
‘You should be out fighting the war rather than spouting gibberish,’ he said. ‘If you can pilot, where’s your ship? I just came from the battlefront out around Dynis Moon. Mercenary division. It was a slaughter.’
The man had a scar running across his face, and his left eye was gone, replaced by a ball of purple glass.
‘Dynis Moon? Around Cable?’ the bartender said, swiping aside a heap of empty glasses to lean across the bar. Farther down, a Jeeeb with one of its front legs severed at the elbow leaned forward and licked the dregs with a thick, grey tongue. Burping, he spat out a shard of glass and sat back, chuckling to himself.
‘We had a battalion of the Trill System Space Fleet stationed there,’ the newcomer said. ‘Together with a mercenary force assembled out of the free systems, we attempted to flank a reserve fleet of Overlord Climlee’s forces and catch them unawares. Led by General Grogood of the Trillian Space Fleet, we launched an offensive and took out more than a hundred ships. Unfortunately, our counterattack failed.’
Caladan listened through a drunken haze. These fools with their valor and their heroic failures. Didn’t they get it? The only way to survive was to hide like a bug under a rock and hope you weren’t found. As soon as he had found Lia he would take them both to a system as far away from the Estron Quadrant as possible, even if it took a thousand Earth-years in a stasis tank to get them there.