Fire Flare

by Chris Ward

  ‘Help an old man out,’ he said to the droid, gasping for breath. ‘We need to get off this ship. Which way do we go?’

  ‘Level Zero-minus-three,’ Dundtak replied.

  ‘That sounds perfect. Where is it?’

  Dundtak rolled off, Caladan hurrying after. Farther down the corridor he caught sight of a troop of guards, so ducked out of sight until they had gone through a side door. Emergency lights were flashing now, alarms still blaring.

  While the transportation tubes the Shadowmen used were everywhere, they were no good for Caladan and a droid. Avoiding another group of guards, they hurried on as the ship shook and trembled around them.

  Just as Caladan was beginning to despair, they found a service elevator for transporting goods. As the doors opened to reveal a group of Shadowmen maintenance workers, Caladan gunned them down, kicking away the bugs as they leapt from the fallen bodies.

  The elevator rocked and bumped as they descended, emergency lights flashing. When a voiceover warning blared from a speaker in the Shadowmen’s native language, Caladan blasted it out, then looked at Dundtak and shrugged.

  ‘It gets on my nerves,’ he said.

  The elevator stopped and the doors opened. Dundtak led them into a wide corridor which opened into a massive hangar. Hundreds of fighters and troop transports were held in massive harnesses lifted into the air. Dozens of droids and Shadowmen were milling about, some climbing into ships, others trying to put out a fire around one harness which had collapsed.

  Caladan ducked out of sight behind a support pillar, with Dundtak following behind. A short distance in front of them, a conveyor walkway was carrying cargo crates towards the far end of the hangar, towards the largest concentration of ships. Caladan took a look at it, gauging the speed and the distance. Then he squatted down in front of Dundtak and patted the droid’s casing with his only hand.

  ‘It’s been fun, my friend,’ he said. ‘However, we’re about to be captured or destroyed, and we can’t have you falling into enemy hands again, can we?’

  ‘I am in agreement.’

  ‘Initiating order one-zero-two. Self-destruct sequence. Countdown from thirty. Wait, make it forty-five.’

  ‘Thirty has already been assigned. Beginning start sequence. Thirty, twenty-nine—’

  Caladan grimaced. ‘We’ll have to make the best of what we have,’ he muttered, leaning against Dundtak’s casing and pushing the droid’s now-deactivated caterpillar treads in the direction of the conveyor.

  ‘Twenty-two, twenty-one….’

  ‘Come on…!’

  Caladan gave one last heave as Dundtak’s treads bumped onto the conveyor and it took the droid away.

  ‘Sixteen, fifteen, fourteen….’

  Caladan raced for cover as the droid’s countdown was lost in the growing chaos of the flight hangar. He made it back behind the support pillar just as a vicious explosion rocked the hangar. He covered one ear against the shockwave, wishing he had another hand as his other ear took the full blast, leaving him stunned.

  He opened eyes he hadn’t realised he had closed to find the blast had blown him out into the open. Dundtak’s self-destruction had destroyed one entire harness, bringing five ships crashing down. Fires raged as smaller explosions ripped through them. Shadowmen body parts lay strewn everywhere, tar-like blood splattered across the floor. The bugs, to Caladan’s horror, appeared to have survived, and were now feasting on the remains of their hosts. As he struggled to his feet, he kicked away one that had strayed too close.

  Trying to find his senses, he turned in a circle, surveying the destruction. Most of the surviving technicians and droids were running towards a gunship at the hangar’s far end. Fallen on its side, one fusion thruster was burning, the fire getting close to the fuel tank even as overhead sprayers engulfed it in foam. In minutes it would explode, making Dundtak’s self-destruction a mere firecracker in comparison.

  Caladan turned. The harness to his right, farthest from the damage, had lowered, its ships released. While most of the ships were Shadowmen, Caladan had noticed these were captured Trillian Space Fleet craft. One was a shuttle he knew how to fly.

  Stumbling across to it, the ringing in his damaged ear making it hard to run in a straight line, he reached the lower hatch and began to input old fighter pilot override commands which he had learned during his brief stint in regular employment.

  The third one worked, the hatch lowering with a hiss. Caladan scrambled inside, closed the hatch and made his way to the small cockpit.

  The shuttle, perhaps in readiness for some battle, was fully fueled and armed. Caladan slid into the pilot’s seat and checked over the specifics.

  The blast had damaged one wing, which would make it impossible to enter stasis-ultraspace, but it would still fly. His fingers racing over the controls, he initialed a takeoff sequence, even as through the view-screens he watched the continuing chaos.

  ‘It was a nice visit,’ he muttered, as the shuttle rose into the air. ‘But I need to be going now.’

  He engaged the forward thrust and the shuttle raced across the hangar and through a magnetic field into the vacuum of space. As the command ship fell away on the rear view-screens, he let out a sigh of relief, even as defensive guns began to flicker. He increased the shuttle’s speed and strengthened the rear shields as they took a couple of glancing blows, but in moments he was out of range.

  On the screen, he watched the destruction behind him. The central core of the orbiter had dimmed, the plume of light cutting through the Shadowman fleet. The command ship was far enough away that it might escape, although with heavy damage, but several of the closer battleships had already been reduced to space debris.

  Caladan shook his head. Not an explosion, then. Some kind of defense mechanism. The blockade had triggered something in the orbiter’s ancient technology, causing it to fight back. He could only wonder at the fate of his friends trapped inside. They had escaped worse in the past, but every cat ran out of lives in the end.

  ‘It was fun,’ he said, his relief at his own escape feeling strange next to a knot in his stomach that might have been the beginnings of grief.

  The shuttle’s damage meant he had little choice of destination. He did a scan, but the only habitable place within range was Dynis Moon. Remaining in orbit on the moon’s far side in the hope that some salvation might show up had been his first option, but the scan revealed a couple of Shadowman scout ships close to the second orbiter. While the shuttle’s guns might handle a fighter or two, he would quickly be captured or destroyed by anything much bigger.

  With all other possibilities extinguished, he set a course for Dynis Moon’s surface.

  As an afterthought, he activated a mayday transmitter and leaned close.

  ‘Just in case you somehow made it out of there … Matilda, Matilda, Matilda.’

  In the empty cabin he felt like an idiot. There was no way they could have survived when a dozen Shadowman battleships had been reduced to space debris, but he was a dreamer by nature, and it was always better to focus on what might be, rather than on what was certainly lost.

  As the shuttle arced down through Dynis Moon’s atmosphere, he hoped that this time the weather would be a little better.

  30

  Beth

  ‘You’re back again, are you?’ Captain Adams said, voice dripping with disdain. ‘We told you to jump out of the nearest airlock last time you showed your hideous human face. We have nothing more to say.’

  Beth scowled, still annoyed at the previous attempt to get them to help, when her “charm” had fallen flat on its face. ‘I’ve brought someone this time who might be able to convince you,’ she said, glancing at the doorway. ‘If you won’t listen to me—’

  ‘You throw us in the prison cell, and then you ask us for help. Forget it.’ Captain Adams flapped a clawed hand at Beth and rolled his eyes. Revel Sind bared his teeth and growled.

  ‘We had good reason,’ Beth said. ‘You tried to steal our ship
.’

  ‘It was abandoned.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t!’

  Captain Adams stood up, Revel Sind at his shoulder. Beth, her anger boiling over, reached for her blaster.

  ‘Beth! At ease.’

  The voice still sounded strange, and Beth doubted she would ever get used to hearing what sounded like an older Paul. She dropped her hand. In front of her, Captain Adams and Revel Sind stepped back, both faces registering shock.

  Harlan5 ducked his head to step into the room. In the bright lights of the prisoner chamber he looked like a walking junkyard in progress, parts missing or crushed, in other places scalded or melted. And now, with the human head protruding from his shoulder, supported by a wire brace, a life support unit plugged into Harlan5’s arm socket connected to its neck, he looked more freakish than ever, like an escapee from some intergalactic circus.

  Beth couldn’t help but smile at the look on the prisoners’ faces as General Grogood, an officer’s hat perched on top of his pickled scalp, smiled.

  ‘At ease, captains,’ he said. ‘I am in control of the situation.’

  Both stood to attention and lowered their eyes. ‘General,’ Captain Adams said, with Revel Sind growling in affirmation. ‘We are at your command.’

  ‘I’m afraid a few alterations in arrangements were necessary,’ the general said. ‘I have ceded temporary control of this starship to the officer here, and under her orders I command you to assist in whatever way is necessary.’

  ‘As you command,’ Captain Adams said.

  Beth glanced at Harlan5. The robot appeared to be enjoying the situation. She flashed him a smile as General Grogood explained to Captain Adams and Revel Sind what needed to be done.

  Not long after, Beth found herself standing beside a reinforced airlock hatch that led directly out onto the Matilda’s upper hull. Beside her, also wearing skin-fitted ultra-thin spacesuits courtesy of a generating machine which Teer Flint had repaired, were Captain Adams and Revel Sind. Both looked angry but determined. Captain Adams was testing the carbon fibre tether line which held all three together, while Revel Sind was yowling at General Grogood’s head.

  ‘Whether you return to the cell is something that will be discussed on completion of the task,’ General Grogood told him. ‘As it stands, we’re all prisoners here, cells or not.’

  Revel Sind turned and hissed at Beth, but it was with a resigned look on his catlike face, rather than one of rebellion. Beth decided she could trust him, at least until they were back inside the ship.

  If they made it back.

  She decided not to think about the alternatives.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she said.

  Joined by the tether and armed with devices Harlan5 claimed would give off a tiny electrical spark, they crowded into the airlock. A couple of minutes of decompression later and the outer hatch opened. Beth gasped at the vastness they found themselves in. The view-screens often made it feel like she was watching something unreal, but now, with her own eyes, her vision blocked only by a millimetre-thick smart spacesuit, she stared up at the colossal space around them, the orbiter’s innards as intricately created as the innards of a living organism; one that glowed with its own ethereal light. Whatever building skills the ancient Trill had possessed, they had learned to create beyond the confines of the machine. Everything was curves, ripples, waves; there were no angles or corners.

  Beside her, Captain Adams and Revel Sind looked around in similar states of awe. Beth had to tug on the tether to attract Captain Adam’s attention because he was ignoring her transmitter.

  ‘You can stare at it on the way back,’ she said as he turned towards her, scowling.

  In her current elongated form, the Matilda measured three hundred metres end to end. The hatch was at the rear, and the main area of entanglement was near the front. Beth took the lead, reeling out the tether as she moved, using magnetic catches on the hull to secure it every few metres. The electromagnets in her boots helped her stay grounded, but with each step she found herself bouncing up above the hull into the void, the weightlessness making her head spin. After a few minutes it was easy to forget that she even wore a transparent smart suit, and she imagined herself bouncing naked across the ship’s hull like some lighter than air ballet dancer. After so long on the flight deck, the feeling was intoxicating.

  Then something shifted up ahead, bringing her back into focus. She glanced back at the others. They had seen it too, and were hurrying after, picking up and reaffixing the tether line as they moved, sliding a carabineer device along it until they were standing just behind Beth.

  ‘There. See that? That’s the one we have to shift.’

  While above them, great snakelike belts a couple of metres thick drifted through space, up ahead, one had wrapped itself around the Matilda’s bow like a constricting snake. As Beth drew closer, she saw that it was moving, rocking back and forth as though massaging the ship’s hull, or perhaps trying to work something loose. A couple of sensors had broken free, and one gun emplacement had been damaged beyond use.

  Revel Sind hissed something through his mouthpiece.

  ‘It’s not moving,’ Captain Adams said. ‘It’s the ship’s motion adjustment systems causing it to rock back and forth.’ His voice became abruptly terse. ‘If you switched it off, the ship might just slip free.’

  Before Beth could answer, another massive belt suddenly dipped out of the air above them, wrapping around the hull barely a cockpit’s length away. Even though it was soundless in the vacuum, filaments worn free drifted away into space.

  ‘Was that the ship’s motion adjuster?’ Beth said, glaring at Captain Adams. ‘I don’t think so. Come on. Let’s see if we can get this thing off before it wears through the hull.’

  As they approached the ship’s bow, the huge belts above them began to shift as though threatened, twisting and rotating, some extending down around the ship as though they meant to scoop it up and pull it into some immense, unseen maw. Beth increased her pace, afraid of being brushed off like a piece of dust.

  She crept as close as she dared to the huge, massaging tentacle-like belt, then squatted down as though trying not to startle a frightened animal. Captain Adams and Revel Sind came up behind her.

  ‘Keep hold of the tether,’ Beth said. ‘It’s my ship. I’ll take the risk. If it attacks me, save yourselves. Make sure those refugees get somewhere safe.’

  An awkward moment passed between them. Beth wished she had someone with her she could trust. She turned, meeting their eyes, hoping to know from their expressions what they were thinking. All she saw, however, was a mixture of wonderment and fear.

  With nothing else to do, she crept forward, holding out the device Harlan5 had given to her. Up close to the tentacle-like object, she felt a strange tingle in her skin, as though it was giving off some kind of radiation. The readings appearing on a smart-screen embedded into the suit in front of her eye made no change, however, as though this was some kind of undiscovered force. So close she could have touched it, the tentacle didn’t look like any kind of machine, but rather some living force. Perhaps the orbiter itself was one of the Trill; the race thought vanished was actually in front of her eyes, plain for anyone to see.

  Her head felt giddy. Unable to resist, she reached out to touch it—

  ‘Beth! Fighters!’

  She turned, feeling something like water holding onto her, refusing to let her go. Two spots in the sky bore down on them.

  ‘Paul?’

  ‘Shadowmen!’ Captain Adams shouted. ‘Lie flat!’

  The fighters rushed overhead, two tiny, interplanetary fighters, unmanned drones. They cut in and out of the tentacles like minute, weaving fish, then turned to make another pass.

  ‘They won’t dare fire on us,’ Captain Adams said. ‘They don’t know what might happen. They’ll report that we’re here, though, and they’ll send a large force to retrieve us.’

  The fighters made a third pass, this time even closer. As the secon
d passed overhead, something dropped from a port on its lower side and attached itself to the Matilda’s hull.

  ‘A tracker!’ Captain Adams shouted as Revel Sind gave an angry hiss.

  Beth turned, fixing her attention on where the tracker had fallen. She couldn’t see it; perhaps it had fallen into one of the gun emplacements, lodging itself out of sight. She took a couple of steps across the hull, but stopped when she saw Captain Adam’s horrified expression.

  He was looking behind Beth’s shoulder. She turned. The tentacle had loosened, rising up above them. Where it had been black, it now glittered with a growing light. Beth stared until it was too bright to look at then turned away, seeing her shadow fall over the hull behind her, her outline strengthening with the brightness until the hull around it glowed so bright she could no longer look at that either. She had the forethought to request the suit dim her vision control, only to find it had already set itself automatically to maximum. Beside her, Captain Adams and Revel Sind were cowering against the hull, covering their faces.

  A rumbling shockwave passed through the ship. Beth risked a quick glance and saw a stream of crackling energy racing after the fighters. It caught the tail of one, and it spun out of control, sparks flying from its exploding engines. Then, instead of crashing, it arced around, still caught in the tentacle’s energy beam, its speed slowing until it was held in stasis.

  ‘It’s assimilating it,’ came Captain Adams’s voice through the transmitter. ‘This thing has hung in orbit for millennia, but doesn’t have a scratch from a single asteroid hit. I think I know why.’

  Revel Sind hissed something. Before Beth could response, Captain Adams said, ‘That’s right. It uses what it assimilates for fuel, spare parts, whatever it needs. Perhaps it thinks we’re special, hence the massage treatment.’