Fire Flare

by Chris Ward

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Stop asking questions and just do it.’

  Paul was tempted to cut off a couple of Teer Flint’s legs just for the insolence, but resisted the urge. They’d have to discuss this later. He scowled as he cut through the fibre.

  ‘Good.’

  Teer Flint tied it around one of his legs, pulling it tight. ‘Now cut off the end of my suit. Careful now.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Hurry up, you stupid human. Beth might die if I don’t seal off that cut in her suit.’

  Paul gritted his teeth, then swung the laser saw and hacked off the end of Teer Flint’s leg. He howled with pain, the sound creating feedback in Paul’s suit transmitter, but even as he did so he was pushing the stump of his leg downwards, moving his hand and pressing it where Paul’s laser saw had cut through Beth’s suit. A thick greenish substance oozed out, then began to set over the nick.

  ‘It will … seal it,’ Teer Flint gasped. ‘By all Quaxar’s heavens, did you have to cut off so much?’

  Paul grinned. ‘Won’t it grow back?’

  Teer Flint rolled his eyes, seemingly close to passing out. ‘Eventually.’

  In front of them, a fold in the hull lifted, and Harlan5’s head appeared. ‘Pass Beth to me,’ he said through the transmitter.

  Paul pulled off his laser saws and threw them away. Reaching down with his gloves, he hauled Beth towards the hatch.

  ‘Unclip the tether,’ Harlan5 said.

  ‘Gotcha. Take the lady home. Teer, come on.’

  Teer Flint was staring at him, shaking his head. ‘Why did you throw away the saws, you human fool?’

  It took Paul a moment to understand. A fibre still expanding had tied itself around one of Teer Flint’s legs.

  ‘We need to seal the hull,’ Harlan5 said.

  Teer Flint grimaced. ‘Leave me,’ he said, but Paul shook his head. He crawled across to Teer Flint, using folds in the fibres for handholds.

  ‘This puts me in the lead, buddy,’ he said, then leaned down and wrapped his hand around Teer Flint’s trapped leg. ‘And I do apologize, but I imagine your leg is a little weaker than that fibre.’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘They grow back, right?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  Teer Flint’s howl was so loud Paul punched the side of his helmet, hoping to break the transmitter. He gritted his teeth as he twisted the spider-lizard’s leg, first breaking whatever passed for bone and then ripping it free. The fibres held on to a few inches, but Paul won the rest.

  ‘Now get inside!’ he shouted over Teer Flint’s screams, pushing the spider-lizard ahead of him. Up ahead, Harlan5 pulled Teer Flint through the cut in the hull, then reached up with his one remaining hand to grab Paul.

  ‘Nice to see you again, Robot,’ Paul said, grinning, as Harlan5 pulled him inside.

  32

  Harlan5

  He had been around humans long enough to have experienced most of their emotions, but he still found it quite a thrill to watch a full fireworks display when several were in evidence at once.

  As he finished sealing the ruptured hull as best he could with a temporary solder that would need to be replaced as soon as they arrived somewhere less hostile than their most recent ports of call, he headed into the medical bay just in time to see Paul go from horror to anger to euphoria and back again in the matter of a few seconds.

  ‘You’re a clumsy panhead,’ shouted General Grogood’s head from his shoulder. ‘But you’re a chip off the old block, after all. That was some show of bravery, and what you’ve done … well, you’ve saved us all, and a few hundred settlers into the bargain.’

  Paul’s cheeks glowed red, his jaw set so hard Harlan5 wondered which of his teeth would be the first to break.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ Paul said, snapping a salute, lifting his eyes only to look at Teer Flint, who was sitting on a bench across the room, holding a cauterizing device to the stump of one of his legs. ‘It was a pleasure to serve.’

  ‘Now go tend to your friend. That’s an order.’

  With another snapped salute, Paul dashed, almost-childlike, over to the recuperation tank in the corner, where Beth’s face was visible through the glass window in the lid. Her eyes were closed, but she would be up and about in a couple of hours. She was suffering from carbon-dioxide sickness due to her oxygen pack running low while she was trapped outside, but once her blood was properly aerated, she would be fine. Paul’s saw had compromised her suit, but Teer Flint’s quick work to seal the tear had saved her from complete decompression.

  Paul, however, appeared to think she would die within the next few seconds.

  ‘I was a boneheaded fool,’ he moaned, draped dramatically over the tank’s lid, his face pressed against the window. ‘I rushed ahead with only thoughts of heroism in my mind. I wanted to impress you with my power and poise, but I forgot that sometimes a woman likes a gentle touch….’

  ‘Is there any way to switch him to a lower volume?’ Teer Flint asked, lifting an eyebrow. ‘What happened out there, anyway?’

  ‘It’s a rough guess, based on studies undertaken by our scientists,’ General Grogood said, ‘but it appears that some kind of defensive mechanism was triggered. Those tentacles were fooled into thinking we were part of this machine.’

  ‘And when those fighters attacked, we were defended as part of it,’ Harlan5 added. ‘At least, that is what my stored database suggests.’

  ‘How long are we likely to be trapped here?’

  ‘The cocoon holding us in place has begun to unravel. I’ve used the ship’s magnetic field generator to pull us against the orbiter’s general rotation. Our thrusters might cause some reaction, but without using them, we’re gently drifting out of the orbiter’s center. Once we find a way out, we should be able to get down to the planet’s surface.’

  ‘So we’ll be back where we started?’

  Harlan5 shrugged. ‘If the planet is still there.’

  ‘Can’t you tell?’

  Harlan5 shook his head. ‘The ship’s sensors are completely blacked out by the orbiter, and I’ve switched off all transmissions. It’s likely we could be here for a while, so my programming suggests that if we remain in radio-silence for long enough, the Shadowman fleet might consider us destroyed.’

  ‘How long might they wait?’

  ‘They’re persistent buggers,’ General Grogood said.

  A thumping sound made Harlan5 turn. He expected to see Paul banging dramatically on the recuperation tank’s lid, so was somewhat surprised to see Paul jump away in shock.

  The sound came from Beth, her fist banging the lid from the inside.

  ‘I think she wants to come out,’ Paul said.

  Still gently drifting, they reached the orbiter’s outer reaches seven Earth-days later. With the refugees still taking up the lower decks, they had begun to ration what was left of their food and fresh water supplies, but Harlan5 knew they needed to find a safe place to land soon before the situation became desperate.

  ‘There’s an outpost two Earth-days out,’ General Grogood said. ‘A fueling station. If we can get through the blockade we can just make it.’

  Beth glanced at Paul, who shrugged. The mistrust in her eyes was still apparent, but the loss of Captain Adams and Revel Sind had gone some way to warming her to General Grogood. Even though Paul had begun to repair his relationship with what was left of his erstwhile father, Beth still eyed the disembodied head with suspicion.

  ‘It’s your call, Paul,’ she said, rubbing at her leg, as though to remind him of how close he had come to killing her.

  Paul glanced at Teer Flint, sitting in a technician’s chair. He shrugged. ‘Don’t look at me. Just find me somewhere I can fix this heap up … again.’

  Glancing around at the others, Paul nodded. ‘Power up the thrusters. We’ll hit them on the turn. If we can cause enough confusion, we can get a decent lead.’

  ‘What’s to stop them following us to t
he outpost and laying siege to us there?’ Beth said.

  Paul glanced at Harlan5. ‘Robot? Can you hide us?’

  ‘According to the Matilda’s database, the area around the outpost in question is rampant with asteroids. For a ship like ours, they’re large enough to avoid, but the Shadowmen would have to shoot their way through. It might give us enough time to fix the hull and escape into stasis-ultraspace.’

  ‘Then we have our plan. Let’s roll out.’

  Harlan5 activated the thrusters, letting the power build. They all watched the dashboard, where a horizontal bar was slowly filling with red. A few more seconds—

  ‘Harlan, we’ve got more of those things. The orbiter’s moving.’

  ‘It’s detected us. We’ll get one chance at this, my programming suggests—’

  ‘Launch!’ Paul shouted.

  The ship lurched forward as the main thrusters engaged. They watched through the view-screens as the ship accelerated, the orbiter’s ancient tendrils stretching for them. Then, ahead of them, was open space.

  ‘Move, move, move!’ Paul hollered, thumbing the dashboard. Harlan5 caught a roll of the eyes from Teer Flint, but his programming shared something of the human’s enthusiasm. In an estimated nine seconds, they would exit one area of great peril, right into the midst of another. When he stimulated human emotions, he found it all quite enthralling.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Beth shouted, as Paul pushed into the gunner’s chair.

  ‘We’ll take a few of them as they come,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, Harlan’s got us on autopilot.’

  ‘Won’t that just draw attention to us?’

  ‘Ha ha, there’s my boy!’ cackled General Grogood’s head.

  ‘When I think about Shadowmen, I just have to start shooting,’ Paul said.

  ‘You’re a meathead idiot—’

  ‘Come on, you spindle-punks!’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Where are they?’

  Harlan5’s programming was as surprised as the rest of them at the sight of a clear star field. He switched on the scanners as the orbiter fell away behind them, searching for the Shadowman blockade.

  ‘Apart from an unusual amount of debris, there seems to be nothing here,’ he said, as the ship banked sharply to the left to avoid a large section of floating metal, briefly throwing Beth onto Paul’s lap. As she pushed angrily away, she turned to Harlan5.

  ‘Where did they go?’

  ‘Perhaps they thought we were dead,’ Teer Flint said. ‘I thought we were dead multiple times.’

  ‘No,’ General Grogood’s head said. ‘They’re still here. Change the view-screens, robot. Let’s have a look at that orbiter.’

  Harlan5 switched the screens to a rear view.

  ‘Oh, look at that,’ Beth said. ‘It’s beautiful.’

  ‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ Paul said. ‘But it’s an improvement.’

  Behind them, the orbiter had undergone a transformation. The giant wing that was damaged had broken free from the rest of the space station and was drifting away into space. In its place, like the unfolding wing of a butterfly emerging from a cocoon, a new one was slowly taking shape.

  ‘It repaired itself,’ Beth said. ‘That’s incredible.’

  ‘How can that be right, robot?’ Paul said. ‘That’s a machine, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m afraid my programming isn’t quite sure what it is. But if the scanners are to be believed, it is already beginning to settle Dynis Moon’s troubled weather and geological systems. The system estimates that within one to two Earth-weeks, the moon will be safe for continued habitation.’

  ‘So where’s the Shadowman fleet?’

  ‘The transmitters are picking up a mayday from a single ship that crashed through the moon’s atmosphere a few Earth-days ago. If the translations are correct, it was the command ship. Of the rest … I’m unsure.’

  ‘It ate them,’ Teer Fleet said.

  Paul swung around. ‘That’s a machine. Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘It tried to eat our shuttle. The only reason it didn’t eat the Matilda was because it didn’t consider it a threat, and even then perhaps it might have, if it felt like a snack.’

  ‘The absence of any ships in the surrounding area suggests Mr. Flint might be correct,’ Harlan5 said.

  ‘I bet it gets indigestion,’ Paul said. ‘I can’t imagine eating all those scum can be good for one’s guts.’

  ‘If there’s no more blockade, we could head back to the moon,’ Beth said. ‘We return the refugees to their village and assist them with repairs.’

  Paul scowled. ‘We have a war to fight.’

  ‘We’ve been fighting it. I wouldn’t mind a rest for a while, and a bit of fresh air.’

  Harlan5 turned to face them. ‘In addition to the mayday signal from the Shadowman command ship, the Matilda has also received another, one unique to its communications systems.’

  ‘Let’s hear it.’

  Harlan5 switched on the transmission. ‘Matilda, Matilda, Matilda.’

  ‘Sounds like a tape got stuck.’

  ‘That’s Caladan!’ Beth shouted.

  ‘It was received approximately one Earth-day before the command ship’s mayday was sent.’

  ‘He got away!’

  ‘Who’s Caladan?’ General Grogood’s head said.

  Beth scowled at him. ‘He’s the one you tried to sell to the Shadowmen in your place,’ she said. ‘I imagine he’ll be pleased to see you again.’

  ‘We’ll have to work something out,’ General Grogood’s head said.

  Harlan5 pulled up a map on the view-screens and indicated a flashing light. ‘The mayday came from here, in Dynis Moon’s lower atmosphere. The sensors have tracked the transmission’s ongoing course down to the moon’s surface.’

  ‘Let’s go get him,’ Beth said.

  ‘It might be dangerous,’ General Grogood’s head said. ‘Perhaps we should hold off in orbit a while—’

  ‘Sorry, Dad, you’re overridden on this one,’ Paul said. ‘Don’t worry, he’s a forgiving sort.’

  Harlan5 decided not to disagree. Taking over the autopilot without bothering to mention it to any of the humans, he set a course for the moon’s surface. While his programming still dreamed of seeing Lianetta again, he was prepared to settle for a distant second best.

  33

  Caladan

  The weather was a little better than he remembered, although the shuttle had come down not quite far enough from Dynis Moon’s unstable side to put his mind at ease. At night he could feel the rumble in the ground and see the glow in the sky from the volcanoes which continued to erupt. Whether he was just getting used to it or not, the conditions seemed to be easing, however, and on the fifth night, he felt no tremors in the ground for the first time.

  When the ship came down, he thought it was a shooting star. It flared brightly as it passed through the atmosphere, but only as it turned parallel to the ground rather than crashing straight down did he realise it was a spacecraft, the flare from some substance burning off its hull.

  And when it flew overhead, he thought he was dreaming.

  He ran back into the crashed shuttle to activate the unique mayday signal one more time.

  An hour later, they were back. He had come down on a lightly forested plain a few miles outside a settlement he had found to be abandoned. When the Matilda touched down beside the crashed Shadowman shuttle, he felt like a child for the first time in a very long time, jumping up and down, and waving his single arm frantically overhead.

  Not so surprising, as the hatch came down, it was a stream of refugees who came rushing out first, none of whom had the slightest interest in him. He waited as they passed, one or two giving him cursory glances or asking if he knew how far to the nearest settlement.

  His friends came down last. Beth, giving Paul a familiar scowl; Teer Flint, with four of his legs now reduced to stumps or bony protrusions, walking awkwardly
; and finally the robot, leaning to one side, a round space helmet hanging from his arm-less shoulder.

  Beth ran forward and hugged him. Paul gave him a light punch on the remaining shoulder, and Teer Flint just a nod. As Harlan5 approached, he asked, ‘What happened to him? What’s the helmet about?’

  But even as he asked, he saw the face inside, and felt a building anger.

  ‘The general’s lungs not up to the atmosphere?’ he said with a smirk.

  ‘And his face not ready for a slap,’ Harlan5 said. ‘We felt it best to give him a little protection until you’d had a chance to calm down.’

  ‘I’m calm,’ Caladan said. ‘Don’t I look calm? I have my ship back. I’m still alive. I might be in danger of death again very soon, but right now I’m doing great. Can’t you tell?’

  Beth grinned. ‘The orbiter repaired itself. The atmosphere should stabilize in the next few weeks, and Dynis Moon will become safe for habitation again.’

  Caladan gave a slow nod. ‘That’s something. What do we do now?’

  ‘A spindle-scum command vessel came down on the moon’s unstable side,’ Paul said, pulling his blaster and aiming it at the grass. ‘I say we go cut some weeds.’ Then, in case Caladan was unsure what he meant, he made a series of bleating sounds as he pretended to fire his gun.

  ‘And what do we do with that?’ Caladan said, nodding at General Grogood’s head.

  ‘My programming suggests correct protocol would be to return it to a remaining section of the Trill Space Navy for trial,’ Harlan5 said. ‘The general readily admits to having been a little … casual with his treatment of prisoners and refugees, although my programming expects that due to his ranking, and had he possessed one, he would get little more than a slap on the wrist.’

  ‘One day you’ll be thanking me,’ came a muffled voice from inside the helmet. ‘There’ll be a statue of me outside every government building in the system.’

  ‘It won’t be very big,’ Caladan said. ‘Better hope no one trips.’

  Paul patted the helmet. ‘Dad … might be best to zip it for a while.’