Fire Flare

by Chris Ward

  Paul stepped over the body and climbed into the downed fighter, wondering what he could salvage. The entrance was high over his head but so narrow he could barely squeeze through into the flight cabin. Once inside, he blasted open storage compartments, looking for anything useful. A lot of the things he found had no discernible use, but among them he found a couple of grapple ropes, some flares, and even something that looked like synthetic food. He stuffed everything he thought he could use into a backpack and slung it over his shoulder, frustrated that the elongated straps left it hanging almost to his knees.

  In one compartment he found a couple of blasters which he also stuffed into the bag, even though their narrow design meant he would need one hand to aim and another to fire. More useful were a handful of grenades, which he stuffed into a pocket of his spacesuit.

  Back outside, the roar of approaching spacecraft was even louder than the ongoing howl of the wind. Paul scrambled to find cover, throwing himself face down in a shallow depression moments before another fighter came into view, doing one quick pass, then arcing around and returning, this time hovering overhead before its thrusters first reduced power and then turned ninety degrees to lower the ship gently to the ground.

  A hatch opened in the side. Paul, scrambling to his feet, raced across the clearing, pulling a grenade from his pocket as he moved. He dived forward, tossing it at the same time, watching as it bounced inside the hatch and then exploded with a metallic roar. The shockwave threw him sideways, and he hit the ground hard, landing face down in the dirt as debris sprayed across him.

  The explosion had caused the fighter’s landing gear to collapse on one side, leaving it angled up to the sky, its guns now pointing at the clouds. Paul scrambled to his feet and limped across to the stricken ship, heedless of blood pooling inside his spacesuit from an impact wound on his leg.

  Inside was carnage. The grenade had gone off just as the Shadowmen had opened the exit door from the cockpit. Two had been standing in the way and been blown to pieces, but their unwitting blockade had managed to protect much of the cockpit’s interior, as well as a third, who had been beheaded in the blast but was otherwise fine, Paul thought with a wry smile as he climbed over the remains of the two just inside the door, stamping on the few cockroach things still milling about on the ground.

  Having trained—and been thrown out, but who was checking?—at the space academy on Cable, Paul quickly recognised the way the controls would work. The ship wasn’t quite like any others he had flown before, but it had many similarities. And in any case, all he needed were the guns.

  The view-screens were still operational. Paul switched them to a standard real-time view, and the world outside became a hell of lashing sleet and smoke from the grenade blast. The ship’s hull, still warm from the friction of its flight, was melting the slushy snow as it built up, but soon it would begin to cool and his view would be lost.

  ‘Where are you?’ he whispered, one hand hovering over the gun control. ‘Time to shoot you down like a lame bird.’

  A shadow was approaching through the air, something far larger than the fighters. As lower thrusters held it in position, the backdraft forcing a break in the sleet around it, Paul smiled at the sight of the seek-and-destroy unit’s gunship. Powerful enough with a direct hit to take out a freighter ten times its size, it was all guns and little else. It would make a decent notch on the kill belt.

  ‘Sayonara, wormfood,’ he whispered, reaching for the button—

  —just as something cold and metallic closed around his arm, hauling him backwards out of the seat. He felt a metal arm go around him, pulling him tight against a hard body.

  ‘I can’t let you do that,’ a voice whispered. ‘The guns were damaged by the explosion. If you fire you’ll send us both to hell.’

  ‘Who are you?’ Paul whispered, vaguely recognizing the gravelly voice.

  The arm let go, and Paul spun around, pulling a blaster from his belt in the same instant. As his finger closed over the trigger, his eyes went wide at the sight of the monstrosity standing before him. It had once been a robot, that was for certain, but much of its body was melted and scorched so that it now leaned to one side, one foot melted into an amorphous lump. Its body sparked with electricity, and it stared at him out of a single eye light, the other gone, replaced by a vicious scrape in the metal as though some giant bird had tried to rip its face away.

  Paul lowered the blaster. ‘Harlan?’

  The robot spread its one remaining arm wide: the other had been bent around its neck like a collar.

  ‘Did you miss me?’ Harlan5 said.

  18

  Caladan

  One of the few advantages of only having one arm was that it made Caladan very difficult to cuff. Having been a captive more times than he could count, he had plenty of evidence that such a situation was not one for which many captors had prepared. General Grogood’s henchmen had struggled to find an effective way, eventually making him hold his right hand against his chest while wrapping tape around his back to hold it still.

  Of course, he had groaned, sworn, and complained in all the right places, but what they now thought was a secure bond was nothing of the sort. As a Farsi, a subspecies created by humans out of a union with some ancient discovered tribe long since abused and exploited into extinction, he had stronger and sharper nails than any human, even if they appeared little different. He had intentionally broken one on a rock shortly before his capture, so that now his forefinger would make a perfectly effective knife against the tape they had used. All he had to do was use his powerful thumb to dislocate it—something which he baulked at the thought of, but having done it several times before, at least he knew what level of pain to expect—twist it a little, and he had a way out.

  General Grogood was a head in a box. He was also vaguely familiar, even if Caladan couldn’t quite place where he had seen those features before. Most likely it was the laughing visage of any of a number of powerful individuals who had either mocked him, captured him, or attempted to kill him. The list was as long as his single arm.

  More dangerous was Captain Adams, who clearly bore a grudge over a lost game of cards. Had it been over a Trillian cruiser or a Quaxar space battleship, Caladan could have understood, but a junk shuttle? The Jeeeb had a dangerous level of pride, something which could kill a man quicker than the giant loam snakes hiding on Vantar’s lower levels.

  ‘Wake up.’

  The Lork was slapping his face. Caladan made a show of being groggy, moaning as he lolled his head, even though he had rarely felt so awake.

  ‘Get up.’

  ‘Tired….’

  The Lork drove a knee into Caladan’s thigh, igniting a string of nerves which made him jump up. He scowled at his jailor but let the man push him out through the cell door and down a corridor to General Grogood’s command room.

  The mood, which had been so positive on the last occasion they had roused him for one of their command parties, had soured somewhat. Captain Adams was pacing back and forth, the heavy fists of his front arms thumping out a rhythm on the floor. General Grogood’s eyes were flicking about in the solution, his mouth moving up and down as commands came from a speaker on the top of the box. Several Lork stood to attention, some saluting and then rushing off as others arrived, General Grogood talking to them in their own language. Caladan had never bothered to learn it properly, but recognized a few expressions: “store the guns,” “make haste,” “pack your bags and be ready to move out,” and, most worryingly, “we’re screwed if this goes wrong.”

  During the march to the command room through the listing corridors of the downed Shadowman battleship, Caladan had noticed several groups of Lork technicians in grey jumpsuits working at specific terminals at the ends of long corridors. The guards leading him had mused to each other about what was going on, and by the time they reached the command room, he had gathered a pretty good understanding of General Grogood’s pathetic excuse of a plan.

  As thoug
h expecting Raylan’s forces to be completely incompetent, they had realigned the downed battleship’s main cannons to face heavenward, in some cases actually breaking the fittings and propping up what was left with rocks and fallen trees. Then, using a series of rewired back-up generator systems they had coaxed back into life, they had diverted all but a minimum of the ship’s remaining power to the guns. A transmission had been sent to say they were willing to offer General Grogood in exchange for their safe passage off Dynis Moon—on what ship Caladan hadn’t been able to figure out—but only if a landing party was sent to personally accept him.

  They hoped that at least one decent-sized battleship would get in range, in order that they could do their part for the uprising and shoot it out of the sky, before they were inevitably blasted into dust when their ruse was discovered.

  Caladan had devised several ludicrous plans of his own over the decades of running from practically everyone and everywhere, but none quite as doomed to failure as this. A simple scan of the downed ship would display the general’s limp plan, and it was likely no Shadowman craft would come anywhere near. In reality, they didn’t even need to waste their own guns. The downed ship was lying on top of a mega-volcano that could blow at any point, if the worried murmurs of the guards were to be believed.

  Nothing made any sense. The strangest thing, however, was why they had decided to shave his beard.

  He’d had parts of it pulled out, burned, and infected over the years, but he’d never had it completely removed. Now, as the guards pushed him along ahead of them, he extended a surreptitious finger, ducked his head to meet it, and rubbed a chin he hadn’t seen since he was a young man.

  It wasn’t a particularly defining moment. In fact, the skin felt overly soft, and the way the damp chill that permeated the entire ship felt was deeply unpleasant. The sooner he could grow it back, the better.

  ‘Perfect,’ came General Grogood’s voice through the speaker. ‘They will never know the difference until they do a DNA test, and by then it will be too late.’

  ‘What difference?’ Caladan said, glancing across the room at Beth. The girl sat in a chair by the far wall, hands bound. They hadn’t shaved her hair, he noticed. In fact, they had brushed it and plaited it into braids that hung around her neck. While he had eyes for no one except Lia unless he had money burning a hole in his pocket, he could see why Paul was so obsessed.

  ‘It’s a part this fool was born to play,’ Captain Adams said.

  As the doglike creature spoke, Caladan realised the removal of his beard was just part of the transformation. He looked down at himself—something that had never been easy with a chest-hugging beard—and realised he was no longer wearing his old clothes over the top of the spacesuit, but something else entirely—a Trillian Space Fleet officer’s uniform.

  And not just any officer—a general.

  ‘He looks perfect,’ Captain Adams said. ‘In their rush to collect him they will fall right into our trap.’

  The catlike Ween pulled something out of a box at its feet and danced over. Caladan flinched as it jumped up in front of him, but instead of scratching out his eyes as he had expected, it placed something on his head. It felt overly heavy, ill-fitting, and it made his scalp itch.

  ‘Welcome to the flight deck, General,’ Captain Adams said, snapping a salute. ‘It is our pleasure to serve.’

  ‘Shut your mouth, you mangy dog,’ Caladan said, catching a glimpse of himself in a reflective mirror on the far wall. He looked like a man in a novelty costume; the Shadowmen would never be fooled. ‘Won’t they wonder about the general’s missing arm?’

  Captain Adams growled at him. ‘An old war wound,’ he snapped. ‘The general’s synthetic limb was lost during the space battle.’

  ‘He lost a lot more than that,’ Caladan said, nodding at the box containing General Grogood’s head.

  ‘Shut up,’ said the nearest Lork guard, lifting a hand to slap Caladan across the face.

  ‘Stop!’

  The cry came from Beth, straining at her bonds as she leaned forward. The Lork glanced at Captain Adams, who gave a short nod, then lowered his hand.

  ‘You’re savages,’ Beth said. ‘Caladan’s done more for Trill System than any of you.’

  ‘And now he has a chance to do one more thing,’ Captain Adams said.

  General Grogood’s head nodded. ‘There is no greater honor than to make a sacrifice for the freedom of others.’

  ‘I would prefer to make that choice for myself,’ Caladan said.

  ‘There’s no more time,’ Captain Adams said. ‘The transmission has been sent. They are on their way. We must go to the collection point with haste.’

  The assembled group roused themselves into action. Caladan, still held by his guards near the entrance, frowned as he watched everything that wasn’t fixed to something else being stuffed into crates.

  ‘You’re abandoning the ship, aren’t you?’

  No one answered him. At a terminal on the far side of the room, however, a Lork suddenly jumped up out of his seat and turned to face Captain Adams.

  ‘Sir! Something’s happened!’

  ‘What, man? Spit it out.’

  ‘We’re getting a transmission come in from our spies in Vintol City. The report claims that a seek-and-destroy unit has been taken out just three miles to the south near the city ruins. Two fighters downed and a gunship stolen.’

  ‘What?’ General Grogood’s head shook from side to side, as though in anger. ‘Who’s responsible? Is this one of your teams, Adams? We’re supposed to be staying out of sight. This could ruin everything.’

  ‘I’ve ordered nothing,’ Captain Adams said, looking perturbed. Caladan couldn’t help but smile, earning him an elbow in the ribs from the nearest guard. ‘It’s not my men. They would never be so bold as to act without instruction.’

  Across the room, Caladan caught Beth’s eye. The girl raised an eyebrow, and Caladan could tell what she was thinking. Harlan5? While the robot surprised Caladan enough times not to write off anything, surely taking out a three-ship seek-and-destroy unit was beyond even his far-reaching capabilities.

  And in any case, the last time he’d seen Harlan5, it had been moments before they had all been engulfed by a landslide, and there had been no transmissions since. It was very likely their wise-cracking robot companion had been reduced to spare parts and molten iron.

  ‘We will blame it on independent rebel fighters,’ Captain Adams said. ‘Come, we must hurry. We need the general and the vice-admiral at the drop-off point at the assigned time, or the deal will expire.’

  ‘The vice-admiral?’ Caladan said.

  Captain Adams smiled, then glanced back at Beth. ‘A far fairer specimen than you,’ he said. ‘I hope in her confinement she is better treated.’

  ‘Do what you want to me, but spare her.’

  ‘It’s too late for that. Guards, bring him.’

  Caladan tried to resist, but one of the Lork had a little shocking device, and after a couple of pokes that sent agonizing pain coursing across his back, he did what they ordered. As the procession moved through the ship’s corridors, Caladan tried to catch Beth’s eye again. The girl was ahead, led by her own group of guards. Captain Adams and the Ween were between them, behind a group carrying General Grogood’s boxed head on a dais. As the group clambered over a heap of broken machinery, Caladan saw his chance. There were less than ten guards. If he could grab a blaster from one nearby, he could start a firefight. They wouldn’t be expecting it, and in the confusion he and Beth could get away. He shifted his hand up, wincing as he popped his thumb out of its socket. With sweat breaking out over his forehead, he pressed the dislocated limb against his chest, twisting it around to align the sharpened fingernail to cut through the tape holding his arm.

  ‘Oh no you don’t,’ came a voice at his shoulder, and he turned to see the grinning face of one of his guards, just as a fizz of electricity shuddered through his body. His vision blurred and he was aware th
at he was falling, the guards stepping aside to let him land on the hard floor. He wailed with pain as he landed on his dislocated thumb, the fall inadvertently pushing it back into the socket. Through stars of agony he heard the guards laughing before they hauled him back up.

  ‘I’ve been waiting for that,’ the nearest guard said, grinning. He turned to the others. ‘It looks like we’ll have to carry this idiot. You two take his legs. If he hits his head a few times, don’t worry. There’s not much in there to damage.’

  19

  Harlan5

  It had worked far more easily than either he or Paul had expected. The fake mayday he had sent from the second downed fighter to the seek-and-destroy gunship had tricked the pilots long enough to open the doors. Paul, as recklessly fearless and gung-ho as ever, had stormed the ship, taking out the crew. Once on board, Harlan5 had sent a delaying message to the unit’s commanding battleship in orbit somewhere overhead, citing electrical problems as a reason for the lack of communication, hopeful that their takeover wouldn’t be discovered until they had decided what to do.

  Just like that, Paul and Harlan5 found themselves in command of a fully operational seek-and-destroy gunship.

  ‘So, what exactly could this thing blow up?’ Paul asked, running his hands over the controls with a delicacy that Harlan5 found quaint. ‘I mean, I imagine it would blow one of those Shadowman needle ships in half, but what about one of those Class 3 Trillian cruisers that Raylan’s recommissioned for his navy? Those mothers are five miles long. Imagine taking one of those out with a runty little thing like this.’ Paul slapped his thigh. ‘Boom!’