Fire Storm

by Chris Ward

  On a computer screen, he pulled up details of all possible planets Lia could reach before needing to refuel. His men had installed a tracker, but the Matilda was fast, and Lia was used to running. They had to head her off before she found someone to listen to what she knew. If GMP headquarters discovered his ruse, it would be he sent to a prison planet, not Lia.

  He switched on a monitor and connected with a long-range transmission frequency. A pinched, sour face appeared on the screen.

  ‘Kyle Jansen, my favorite traitor. What do you want?’

  ‘A prisoner has escaped my outpost,’ he said. ‘She was captured by your men on the X3, but she got away.’

  ‘She?’

  ‘It was Lianetta Jansen.’

  The face on the screen showed no emotion. ‘She is known to me. Who doesn’t know the price on her head? I’m surprised you were fool enough to let her get away.’

  ‘It was a security … error.’

  ‘A major one.’

  Kyle took a slow breath, refusing to be riled. ‘I am sending a list of her possible destinations. We have a tracking device on her ship, but she has proved … elusive. You have personnel in position on the ground. I need her intercepted. She knows too much.’

  ‘What would you have my men do with her upon capture?’

  Kyle paused. He had been so close … since the day his younger brother had met her, he had wanted her for himself. Now, it would never happen, but there was a second, equally satisfactory result.

  ‘Kill her,’ he said. ‘Kill her immediately.’

  12

  Lia

  ‘We’re an Earth-hour out of Cable’s orbit,’ Harlan5 said, giving the adaptor wire Lia had found in a store cupboard an appreciative shake. ‘We have a problem, though. I no longer have security access to our counterfeit landing codes.’

  Lia scowled. If they used the Matilda’s own serial code, every GMP agent in the city would be waiting on the landing pad for their arrival.

  ‘We could land outside the city,’ Harlan5 said. ‘But we’d have to find an engineer to work on the ship. We’d also be at risk of bandits.’

  Lia pointed to the wreckage of Teagan3, which she had jammed behind a line of passenger seats to stop it sliding around.

  ‘What about that thing? It worked for the GMP. It should have a database of codes. All we need is one for a ship not wanted on Cable. A port like Tantol won’t bother to do background checks.’

  ‘My programming tells me I’m a little worried about switching it on,’ Harlan said. ‘It might be a little angry.’

  ‘It’s got to be worth a try,’ Lia said.

  Leaving Harlan5 to watch their approach into Cable’s orbit, she hunted out an auxiliary battery and connected it to Teagan3’s damaged body cavity. The droid’s systems had been badly damaged, and its weaponry disabled, but its sensory ability and memory could still be restored. Lia found a backup port and plugged the battery in.

  Teagan3’s eyes flickered with light and revolved in their sockets. ‘The traitor and his human counterpart. You are worms beneath my foot and will be crushed without mercy.’

  Lia glared at Harlan. ‘How do I turn its voice off?’

  ‘I’m not sure. You’d need to download a manual.’

  ‘We don’t have time for that. How about getting its memory data?’

  ‘You either need to plug it in to a safe drive on the Matilda’s mainframe or remote upload it.’

  Lia rolled her eyes. ‘Harlan, I’m good at drinking, sex, and killing things. Work with me here. Where do I put the other end of this cable?’

  ‘You will be taken to the machine planet of Galanth, on which you were assembled and given what you pathetically call life. Your sensors will be turned up to maximum, and you will be slowly stripped down into component parts over a thousand Earth-years, ensuring a purgatory of prolonged agony.’

  ‘Harlan! Where do we plug it?’

  The Boswell GT lumbered over. A thick finger pointed at a line of ports beneath the computer display.

  ‘In here, I think. Make sure you’ve activated the “alienation” control so its data doesn’t infiltrate the rest of the computer system.’

  ‘In where? There are nine ports.’

  ‘The third one.’

  Lia plugged in the cable. For a moment, the screen went blank, making her heart stop in her chest. Then a prompt box appeared.

  ‘Got it,’ Harlan5 said.

  ‘And you, human, there is a torture waiting for you too. On the prison moon of Vantar scientists have created giant Earth-bees. Instead of a sting, they inject you with a numbing agent which holds you still during the process of consumption, which can take an Earth-week or more. Lacking teeth, they suck you apart, molecule by molecule from the skin outward, exposing every single nerve ending until you go mad from the pain—’

  ‘Sounds nice,’ Lia said, kicking the auxiliary battery cable free. Teagan3 shuddered and fell quiet.

  ‘Any chance we can break that thing up and sell its component parts?’ Lia said.

  ‘I’ll make it a job to be done during our next extended stasis-ultraspace hop.’

  ‘That’s a good boy. Now, get us landed.’

  A couple of Earth-hours later, they touched down on a landing pad looming out over the Bay of Tantol on Cable, the second largest planet in Trill System. Lia marveled at the spaceport’s development as they disembarked. With rugged mountains pushing the city into an elongated line along fifty Earth-miles of coast, the spaceport had been built as a series of flat landing pads at the end of great angled metal stems extending out over the sea. From above, it looked like hundreds of spinning plates on sticks, all set to collapse. Many were empty, but on others sat huge cruisers, like fat bugs perching on delicate clover leaves.

  With a fake code clearing them as simple financial traders, Lia left a cumbersome Harlan5 with the Matilda and headed off into the city. A descending stair whisked her a mile down into the spaceport terminal, the city of high-rises and slums coming up to meet her. After a few minutes among shiny chrome where she showed forged documents which received barely a cursory glance, she stepped out into Tantol’s ragtag streets.

  As though every off-worlder in the known galaxy had decided the front exit to Tantol’s spaceport was the best place to beg, Lia stepped around sniveling humans, stinking caterpillar-like Oufolani, dirty Kalistini—their spindly bodies hung with rags like paper caught on a wire fence—jellified Gorm in broken-down motor carts, and dozens of others, some who pawed at her shoes or called for her attention, others who sat quietly, heads bowed, as though already resigned to their inevitable fate.

  A couple of streets from the spaceport, she stopped in front of a slumped Karpali missing three of his six arms. In front of him, a cardboard sign read, ‘PILOT AND MECHANIC FOR HIRE’ in six languages. Lia nudged his leg with her foot.

  ‘I need a mechanic. One who works under the law. I need a tracking device removed from my ship and a hole to be patched. While you’re at it, you can help me fly my ship. Can you help me? I’ll make it worth your while.’

  The Karpali looked up. One green eye was blinded, but the other blinked. ‘I had a job, and later a shipyard. Lost both gambling.’

  Lia smiled. ‘Been there, done that. You need coin for the tables? Those arms of yours still good for anything other than tossing dice?’

  ‘Holes to be patched? Five-Earth-minute job. Trackers to be removed? Rooted out and smuggled on to another ship without breaking a sweat.’

  ‘Then get up. You’re hired. Do you have a name?’

  ‘Stomlard,’ the Karpali said, taking her hand in a grip strong enough to crush bones. ‘I used to pilot in the Trill System Starfleet.’

  ‘But then life happened?’

  The Karpali shrugged. ‘Wasn’t a war for a while. When you’re stationed somewhere like Dove, with nothing to do but find trouble….’ He sighed. ‘You tend to find it.’

  ‘And it won’t let go?’

  ‘I tried to let
go. It took three of my arms with it.’

  ‘I know a man who would understand that. Get up.’

  Lia needed supplies for the ship, so she arranged to meet Stomlard outside the spaceport entrance in three Earth-hours’ time. She headed on into the city, hunting for both replacement weapons and information. She found her way into a warren of dive bars and smuggler hangouts known as the Tuft. In a bar known as Random’s Den, she took a seat in a corner and waited.

  Barely an Earth-minute had passed when a man slid into the seat opposite. Rugged and crater-faced with a scar running across his forehead as though he’d struck a crossbeam at high speed, he glared at her like a chicken on a spit.

  ‘You either have a man’s balls or you ain’t no woman to sit there unguarded,’ he said.

  ‘Who said I’m unguarded?’

  ‘I do. What are you doing here?’

  ‘I want information.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About a Diamond Bulkhead X3 freighter gone missing and throwing out a distress signal. About a GMP outpost stuck out by the wormholes that’s not catching smugglers.’

  ‘What would I know about it?’

  ‘What word from a man to a man?’

  The man scowled. ‘What’s my information worth?’

  Lia smiled. She shifted in her seat, letting one foot rub against his ankle beneath the table. ‘What do you think?’

  The man grinned. ‘Word—from a man to a man—is that the GMP is fishing out there, working with the warlords, picking the strongest fish to help take out the little ones.’

  Lia frowned. ‘Letting one warlord gain power threatens everyone,’ she said.

  ‘What do I care? I’m out of here tomorrow. Not my problem.’

  ‘Which warlord are they working with?’

  The man scowled. ‘Names can get you killed.’

  Lia lifted an eyebrow. ‘They can also get you laid.’

  ‘Raylan Climlee.’

  Lia felt like the sun had darkened. Raylan—a subspecies called Human-Minion—a human containing the genetics of a domestic Earth-cat—was responsible for the death of her husband and son. She had come within a blink of killing him and taking her revenge, failing but managing to destroy one of his major space stations in the process, and had now spent three Earth-years avoiding the mercenaries he had sent on the Matilda’s tail.

  ‘Thanks,’ Lia said, standing up. She reached into her pocket and threw a handful of notes in local currency across the table. ‘I appreciate the information.’

  The man scooped them up, then frowned at her. ‘You said—’

  Lia smiled. ‘Hypothetically. Better luck next time.’

  ‘You damn—’

  Lia pulled her blaster in an instant, pointed it up at a coolant pipe, and fired. Steam filled the bar, and in the confusion, she made her getaway. As she exited the Tuft through a back entrance and found herself on the main concourse to the spaceport, she wondered when she had turned over a new leaf. An Earth-year ago, the man would have got what he wanted. Now, she felt almost virtuous. She smiled up at the shining sun and wondered what was making the difference.

  She was almost back to the spaceport entrance when an alarm began to blare. Instinctively, she ducked into an alleyway, pulling her blaster and crouching down. She wondered if her actions had set it off, but realised the alarm was blaring city-wide, a siren warning of impending attack.

  She ran back out onto the street, climbed a set of stairs to the roof of the tallest building close to her, and looked out across the rooftops of the city. Swooping down over the mountains came a line of sleek, needle-like Devastators, planetary fighters. Lia crouched down, waiting for them to open fire on the city, but when their first shots came, they were directed out over the sea.

  She turned. Another line of fighters—squatter, slower, but more heavily armoured Dust Devils—approached over the sea.

  A dogfight. Two warlords flexing their muscles, and the people of Tantol would suffer for it.

  High above, a landing pad caught in the crossfire exploded, and a small interplanetary shuttle crashed down into the water. She was still staring when another landing pad took a hit, and a second ship began the inevitable slide toward destruction.

  Lia leapt over the edge of the roof, hitting the ground running, hoping she could make it back to the Matilda before it was too late.

  13

  Caladan

  The village was built half in and half out of a swamp. Walkways bound to wiry trees extended out into the gloomy forest, creating paths over bubbling, gurgling water and up over rocky outcrops. Ladders and crude staircases led up into higher branches, to homes built out of wood and leaves disguised as tangles of vegetation, completely hidden from the ground.

  The luminous, transparent people had put him into a cage but left him unbound, and with obvious deference had attempted to apologise in a language alien to him. As they skirted around pools of boiling water, plants that spat dart-like protrusions, and caves within which slithered massive threatening things, it was clear the cage was for his protection. Aware that anything was better than being ripped apart by the giant, two-headed bird and its chicks, he sat quietly, if not quite enjoying the journey, then at least feeling a sense of relief at his continuing survival.

  At last they came to a halt in front of a towering rock buttress. A carved tunnel led inside, lit by flaming torches, but also by the bodies of the luminous people as they walked in and out. His captors set his cage down, then fussed around, arranging themselves into rows, with a leader stepping forward and dropping to his knees in front of the cave.

  Having now spent some time observing his captors, Caladan had come to the conclusion that their bizarre, ghost-like appearance was both for camouflage and protection. The luminosity that they had displayed on the ledge by the great bird’s nest appeared to have spooked the creatures enough to allow them to poach unhatched eggs, a line of which had followed behind him, carried on hammock-like stretchers by four of the men at a time. Taken into one of the caves they had passed, Caladan could only surmise that they would eventually end up as food. And while the luminosity appeared to be controllable, switched on and off like a light, without it, their bodies were all but transparent, making them near-invisible against the background of the forest.

  A sudden silence fell over the people, who had been chattering incessantly throughout the trip back from the ravine. All around Caladan, they knelt, heads bowed, as a taller, more muscular person stepped out of the cave. Unlike all the others, he wore clothes that appeared made of feathers from the giant bird, including a headdress that fluttered in the breeze.

  ‘You have come,’ came the man’s voice in the common language, making Caladan blink in surprise. ‘Our savior. Oh, how we have waited for this day.’ He said something else in their own tongue and all around the people began to hum and moan, patting their hands on the ground as though thanking the moon for its help.

  ‘Who are you?’ Caladan said. ‘I mean, thanks for saving me from that monster, but I’m not sure my situation now is a great deal better.’

  At the sound of his voice came a great collective sigh from the kneeling people, and Caladan realised that until now, his fear had kept him quiet. He opened his mouth to speak again, and found the leader staring at him with a look of adulation on his face.

  ‘You speak. You are truly him—The God who Points the Way.’

  ‘The who?’

  ‘Show him!’

  As one, the kneeling people rose to their feet, bowed their heads and held their arms aloft, indicating the towering cliff. Caladan looked up, frowning. At first, weathering made the shape difficult to see, but then, like a mind-bending image, it began to emerge: the curve of a shoulder, the angle of a hip, the protrusion of an elbow, the jutting outline of a jaw.

  It resembled a man with one arm held aloft, pointing at the sky. Hardy tufts of brush had grown around a lower ledge around the shape’s chin, giving the appearance of beard. Where a second
arm should have been, though, the rock had fallen away, creating a crack in the cliff-face down which ran a trickling waterfall.

  ‘That’s—’

  ‘The God who Points the Way. We have prayed to him for generations that we might be saved, and now you have come.’ The leader’s face beamed. ‘You have come to save us.’

  ‘Now, wait a minute—’

  The man turned to the congregation and said something in their own language. Immediately they began to cheer.

  ‘What did you tell them?’

  ‘That you have promised them salvation.’

  ‘I—’

  ‘This day will be spoken of forevermore—the day our people were given back their freedom.’

  ‘From who?’

  ‘From the slavers. From the evil that comes from the sky, slays the old, enslaves the strong, rapes the women, and subverts the children.’

  ‘Who are these slavers?’

  ‘The spine-backed marauders. Come. You will be shown.’

  The leader led Caladan forward into the cave. A handful of his delegation followed behind, holding up flaming torches for them to see by. The cave, Caladan saw, was carved into various living chambers, and he realised this must be the leader’s palace. Everything was primitive, but he sometimes caught glimpses of metal or blinking lights, as though these people had ancient technology hidden away.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked. ‘And how do you know the common language? I’m guessing you don’t leave the moon too often.’

  ‘I am Solwig, elected leader of our people, the Luminosi,’ he said. ‘Hundreds of generations ago, our ancestors crash-landed here. It was they who proclaimed the coming of the God who Points the Way, so even when the slavers came and began to steal our people, we never gave up hope.’

  ‘Who are these slavers?’

  ‘Spine-backed monsters who come from the twin moon, Cloven-1. Every cycle, when the moons are aligned, they come to steal.’