Fire Storm

by Chris Ward

  Harlan5 was still linked up to the lighthouse, but was shaking his head.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I don’t know, Captain. That’s the problem. I can’t figure it all out. There’s something interfering with the lighthouse’s computer systems, but I don’t know what it is.’ He gave the cable a frustrated shake. ‘My programming would like to mention that my previous body had the capability to create a direct remote link and such a minor problem such as this would have been solved within a few Earth-minutes.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re over-thinking it.’

  Harlan5 gave a mechanical sigh. ‘Perhaps.’

  Lacking the mechanical abilities of Stomlard and his droids, or the communications abilities of Harlan5, Lia began to feel restless. With little to do but stand guard against the hollow threat of an empty space station, the temptation of the stash of whisky in the now-accessible hold was growing stronger. Reluctant to get drunk in front of her crew, she headed off across the hangar again, determined to find something useful to do with her time.

  Perhaps it would help to talk to Olin again, and get some more information. It would give her another chance to assess his character. He would be busy on the bridge, but he might like some company too.

  She had nearly reached an elevator when she passed a maintenance room filled with spare parts. Near one wall, several tin cans sat at intervals across the floor. Lia couldn’t resist the opportunity for a little target practice, so she pulled her blaster, pressed her back against the wall, then in one movement spun and opened fire.

  The silence was deafening.

  Lia stared at her blaster. She pressed the trigger again, but nothing happened. The tiny battery gauge on one side said it was fully charged, but nothing made a difference. It wouldn’t fire.

  She headed back to the Matilda again.

  Stomlard looked up from where he was kneeling in front of an open cabinet, surrounded by hanging strands of wire. ‘Good news,’ he said. ‘I’ve managed to fix the stasis-ultraspace drive enough to make short hops. It needs an overhaul, but it should hold for a while.’

  Lia clenched a fist. ‘Nice one. I’ve got something else.’ She held up her blaster. ‘It’s not firing since I charged it off the lighthouse’s power.’

  Stomlard stood up and took it from her, turning it over in his hands. Then, with a deftness she wouldn’t have thought possible for such big fingers, he opened up the casing and spread the pieces out on one palm.

  ‘Looks in perfect working order. Compared to the rest of this ship, it’s practically brand new.’

  ‘It wasn’t working at all.’

  ‘Try it again.’ Stomlard put it back together and handed it back. Lia pointed it at the floor and pressed the trigger, but nothing happened.

  ‘I just charged it over there,’ she said, pointing across the hangar. ‘It should be working fine.’

  ‘You plugged it into the lighthouse’s power source?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But didn’t the droid say the systems are scrambled?’

  ‘Yes? But the power should still work, shouldn’t it?’

  Stomlard frowned. ‘What if it isn’t scrambled, but something else?’

  ‘Like—’

  ‘A virus.’

  Lia spun. ‘Harlan!’

  The droid stood near the wall, the cable connecting him to the lighthouse hanging like an animal’s leash from a port in his neck.

  ‘Pull that thing out! Quick!’

  ‘Captain, what do you mean? I’m still trying to communicate—’

  Lia pulled her blaster and aimed at the wire. Then, remembering it wasn’t working, she tossed it away and kicked the wire out instead.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘This lighthouse. It’s being assimilated.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Stomlard said. ‘It’s Barelaon?’

  ‘Yes. Maybe Olin doesn’t even know it, but the scrambling of the systems … that’s the Barelaon virus going to work. We have to get out of here.’

  ‘What about the droid?’

  ‘Harlan? How do you feel?’

  ‘Normal. Well, as normal as I could possibly feel being stuck inside this old junk bucket.’

  ‘What does your programming tell you? Have you been infected by a virus from the lighthouse?’

  Harlan shook his head. ‘My programming doesn’t know. My systems are pretty basic.’

  ‘Leave him,’ Stomlard said. ‘He’s just a droid.’

  ‘I can’t leave him.’

  ‘Yes, we can.’

  ‘No!’

  Stomlard put a hand on Lia’s arm. ‘We can’t take him if he could be infected. What if he infects the ship?’

  Lia stared at the off-worlder engineer and shook her head. ‘I’m not leaving him,’ she said. ‘He’s … mine.’

  ‘Then he has to go into quarantine.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘You have cargo holds, don’t you?’

  Harlan5 lifted a hand. ‘My programming would like to point out that—’

  ‘Shut up and get on the ship, but don’t touch anything. We’re leaving. You’re flying cattle class in the hold or you stay behind. Your choice.’

  Grumbling, Harlan5 headed onto the Matilda, with Stomlard close behind. Lia took one last look around the hangar, then followed them up.

  ‘Get us in the air,’ she said. ‘Harlan, make sure you don’t sit on my whisky.’

  ‘My programming would like to point out that this treatment is unfair, considering there is no obvious sign of a viral infection.’

  ‘And mine would like to remind you who the captain is. Just get in the hold and relax. We’ll get you screened and cleaned as soon as we get to somewhere safe.’

  ‘Ready in five,’ Stomlard said, powering up the systems.

  The rumble of the Matilda filled Lia with relief. Caladan had always said he preferred to be in space than on any planet. When you were moving you were far more difficult to catch.

  ‘Lia, the hangar doors won’t open. I’m sending the request, but nothing’s happening.’

  ‘Shoot them.’

  ‘But that’s breaking the ICC.’

  ‘Just do it. Full power.’

  ‘You’re the captain.’

  ‘A curse and a promise,’ Lia said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  She watched through the visuals as they hung in front of the wide doors. All around, the ship began to creak and groan as the Matilda shifted into attack mode. Caladan had always hummed a little tune while this happened, telling her it was a beautiful thing, that the Matilda was the last of a dying breed of warcraft, that everything was about size and power these days, nothing about finesse—

  A wall of fire engulfed the hangar doors. As it cleared, sucked into a sudden vacuum, she saw the hole the Matilda’s cannons had made. Engaging the thrusters and slipping easily into flight mode, the ship shot forward, racing out into space.

  Lia let out a breath as a field of stars filled the visual screens. Caladan was right.

  ‘Get our transmissions working,’ she told Stomlard. ‘We need to find a signal quick. We need an inter-system wormhole back into the centre of Trill, but in the meantime we need to warn the system government of what’s coming.’

  As Stomlard worked the controls, she brought up a rear visual of the lighthouse, pulled by its two huge automated tugs.

  She frowned. It wasn’t becoming smaller as it should have been. It was getting larger.

  ‘We’re picking up a transmission,’ Stomlard said. ‘I don’t know what it is, but it appears to be going into the wormhole through which the lighthouse came. Someone from this system is sending information into Yool-4.’

  ‘Wait a minute, we have another problem. That lighthouse is catching us up. What’s going on?’

  Stomlard worked the controls. ‘Magnetic beam from the lighthouse. Olin’s trying to pull us back in.’

  ‘Can we break their hold?’


  ‘Engaging thrusters.’

  The ship’s engines roared, throwing Lia forward. She reached out for the nearest chair to support herself, but the motion abruptly stilled.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘They increased the power. We don’t have enough thrust to escape them.’

  ‘Turn around and activate attack mode. Set all guns for the lighthouse.’

  ‘Are you crazy? This ship doesn’t have the firepower to take down a lighthouse. You’ll rough it up a bit at best, but then it’ll pull us in anyway.’

  ‘Who’s the captain here?’

  Stomlard turned on her. ‘Are we going on attained rank or current? Because all I see is a headstrong smuggler looking to kill us all.’

  Lia reached for her blaster, but found the holster on her belt empty. Instead she shoved Stomlard in the chest, but the big off-worlder barely moved.

  ‘It’s my ship.’

  ‘And it won’t be for much longer. What do you hope to achieve?’

  Lia felt tears of frustration spring to her eyes. ‘I’d rather die than end up assimilated into the Barelaon.’

  ‘There are far quicker ways to die, if that’s what you really want. As a hired hand with no attachment to you, that droid, or this old rust bucket of a ship, may I make a suggestion?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We make a sweeping pass for the wormhole. If we engage full power, we might be able to sling-shot past the lighthouse and into the wormhole before Olin can draw us in. It’s a risk, but it might just work.’

  Lia stared at him. ‘Who are you?’

  Stomlard snapped a salute with the highest of his three remaining hands. A grin spread across his face. ‘Since we’re going to die anyway, most likely … Vice Admiral Stomlard Ur-Larn’d of the Trill Spacefleet High Command, at your service. Only two officers ranked above me. Admiral Dern and High Admiral Col De’Ect. I led at the battle of Burken Moon when we defeated an off-worlder fleet from the Teccan-9 System.’

  ‘And from there you ended up drinking on the street outside Tantol’s spaceport.’

  ‘It’s a long story. I imagine you have a long one of your own.’

  ‘It would fill a couple of pages, or take a couple of drinks, whichever you’d prefer. So you want me to trust you?’

  ‘I think I can pull this off. The Matilda has a single main thruster, but also four maneuvering thrusters. If we engage them all simultaneously, we can break through the magnetic beam and be into the wormhole before the lighthouse can realign itself.’

  ‘Into the wormhole. Into the way of the Barelaon Helix.’

  ‘What choice do we have?’

  Lia punched Stomlard in the chest. ‘By the gods of Old-Earth, do it. But if you wreck my ship, you’re drifting home.’

  Stomlard slipped into the pilot’s seat and turned the Matilda around. The lighthouse appeared on the monitor screen like a giant squid with two square heads attached by massive cables.

  ‘Activate cruise mode.’

  The ship whirred. On an external view simulation screen, Lia watched the spiderlike Matilda remodel into its needle shape for maximum cruising speed, its extensions neatly aligned around the main rear thruster. It had a certain elegance that the battle mode spider-shape lacked.

  ‘Fire thrusters.’

  Stomlard shoved her down into the gunner’s chair moments before the thrusters roared, flinging debris across the bridge.

  ‘I’ve only met one person crazier than you,’ Lia shouted as the lighthouse grew on the screen in front of them, filling the sky. ‘I wish he was here to see this.’

  ‘Wait for it,’ Stomlard said, grimacing, eyes fixed on the controls. ‘We’re not done yet. You’re supposed to secure all mobile objects during flight mode—you know that, don’t you?’

  Lia shrugged as she pulled straps over her shoulders. ‘I forget from time to time.’

  ‘I noticed. Okay, on five, here we go—’

  The lighthouse filled the sky. Lia was certain they were on a collision course, but at the last moment she felt two of the maneuvering thrusters fire, and the Matilda jerked sideways, roaring up over the lighthouse’s upper dome, coming so close she could have reached out and touched it.

  Then they were behind it, and space again filled the forward view.

  ‘Switch the screens. I want to see this.’

  Lia activated the visual screens to display a full rear view. The looming grey mass of the lighthouse filled half the screens, a growing triangle of space the rest. A thick silver line came into view: the cable linking the lighthouse to its tug on this side.

  It was bending around, back toward the lighthouse.

  ‘Got it,’ Stomlard said, slapping the armrest with all three hands.

  As the lighthouse receded, Lia saw what had happened. The huge tug was turning inward, its thrusters moving to push it forward into the lighthouse’s midriff.

  ‘Stomlard? What on Old-Earth did you do?’

  ‘Olin followed us with the magnetic beam,’ he said, a wild grin on his narrow face. ‘I kept our speed just low enough to entice him. The fool fell for my trap, and the lighthouse has caught its own tug in the beam.’

  Lia stared as the blocky tug—a lump of metal that was more engines than ship, designed solely for pulling larger spacecraft—rammed into the lighthouse’s centre. An eerily silent explosion was followed by a wave of debris sucked out into the nothingness of space, spreading out around the lighthouse like a giant fan.

  As the lighthouse dwindled behind them, Lia turned to Stomlard. ‘Will the impact destroy it?’

  ‘I don’t know. It might. It will certainly slow its journey to Feint, but I’m guessing it had hoped we would be the virus-loaded vanguard in its stead. Olin must have figured we would need to attach ourselves to refuel, something that could have spread a virus across the whole planet.’

  ‘He must have been assimilated. Did you notice the way everything was “we”, not “I”? Could have been a language mistake, but I don’t know. It felt like he was speaking for some other entity.’

  Stomlard nodded. ‘With Gorms, it is almost impossible to tell. They’re more … alien than most known off-worlders.’

  On the visual monitor, the lighthouse abruptly winked out. The stars shifted, blurring for a moment before reappearing in a new pattern.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘We passed through the wormhole. We’re no longer in Trill System, but in the outer reaches of Yool-4 System. I had no choice but to continue with the stasis-ultraspace jump in case my first plan failed.’

  ‘Put the monitors back on forward visuals,’ Lia said. ‘Let’s find out if Olin was telling the truth.’

  ‘As you command, Captain.’

  Stomlard pressed some buttons and the screens changed. Lia stared, a lump in her throat, a sudden knot in her stomach. ‘Oh my. What on Old-Earth is that?’

  21

  Caladan

  Caladan crept down the hatch of the landed Thatcher and slipped out into the dark, wishing it was possible to keep the harpies quiet. Even with the lights dimmed in the holds to stimulate night, the birds muttered and grumbled as they squeezed into makeshift nests made of twigs and reeds brought from Cloven-2.

  Solwig was already at the ridgeline above the valley where they had brought the Thatcher down, Lorena beside him. Caladan crept up beside them and lay down, peering through binoculars at the scene below.

  A massive spaceship sat in the middle of a flat area cleared to bare rock. Three others in various building stages stood farther south from them, even at this time of night teeming with little glowing lights that signified Luminosi slave workers.

  ‘A Destroyer,’ Caladan said, trying not to lick his lips. What he wouldn’t do to get behind the controls of one. He shivered at the thought.

  ‘You know that ship?’

  ‘The Rue-Tik-Tan are native to Larsisus, in Event System. It’s a horrible place, one big swamp, not a square Earth-inch of dry land anywhere. They’re a feudal race,
always warring among themselves, like how humans used to be before they made Old-Earth uninhabitable and kind of learned from it. The Rue-Tik-Tan like starting wars and getting involved in others. Their own world makes warfare pretty frustrating, and building anything worth building particularly difficult. A lot of clans now colonise abandoned worlds, where they build their armies to take back and fight other clans in their home system.’

  ‘This is a clan?’

  Caladan shook his head. ‘Oh no, this is far worse. No clan has the power to build Destroyers. Larsisus is a feudal world, but others in the Event System keep overall order, allayed with some of the bigger, more stable clans. What you’re seeing is the Event System’s government at work, and is a complete betrayal of intergalactic common law. “No race may enslave or incarcerate another.” Now, I’m not exactly a law-abiding intergalactic citizen, but what we have in front of us is a big fat no.’

  ‘So what do we do?’

  Caladan gritted his teeth. ‘We raise merry hell.’

  Back at the ship, he marshaled his groups, checking they understood their roles. He watched as the first group, carrying large woven bags containing black lumps that looked like coal, melted into near invisibility, then headed south, skirting around the base’s rear to the river cutting through it. A second group was armed with the weapons taken from the Interceptor, and a third would wait along the ridge for a signal.

  The fourth and final group remained with the harpies.

  Everything was in place. All they needed was a little fortune.

  Caladan took his place alongside Solwig and Lorena in the second group. An hour after the first group had departed, they made their way down from the ridge, heading for a cluster of buildings near to a dozen mining pump towers.

  Low to the ground and domed like giant subterranean marbles partially uncovered, Caladan had encountered their like before. They were simulators, replicating the Rue-Tik-Tans’ home-world environment. With Cloven-1’s dry climate bothering their scaly hides, the Rue-Tik-Tan had built the simulators to reside in during their downtime.

  From his estimates, at least half of the guards would be relaxing in the swampy waters at any one time.