This wasn’t getting me anywhere. I fingered my ear to turn the speaker back on. “Derby, can you hear me? Make any kind of noise if you can.”
“Rrrngle!” said Derby loudly. That was good, because it meant he was alive, and he wasn’t somewhere where he felt the need to be quiet.
“One rrrngle for yes, two for no. Are you on the residential level?”
“Brfk!”
“You are?”
“Grwnph!”
“You’re saying yes, right, you’re not just complaining at me?”
“Bwgl. Brmp,” said Derby sarcastically.
Tragically, this was about the closest Derby and I had ever come to making an emotional connection. I cast another look around. “I’m in the lobby with my back to the stairs, and I see three corridors. From left to right, one, two, three. Are you down corridor number one?”
“Nhngn. Nhngn.”
“Are you saying no, or do you mean you’re down corridor number two?”
I heard a hissing sound that I assumed must have been Derby sighing lengthily through his nose. “Nhngn. Nhngn. Nhngn.”
There was only one possible meaning for that. I headed for the third hallway.
As I moved along the hall, waving what I was beginning to think of as my magic amulet left and right to sweep the green glow around, it all looked how I would have expected. Plain corridors broken up by the occasional seam where the modules had been slotted together, with a placid color scheme and calming design for when drunk star pilots are having trouble finding their rooms at three in the morning.
“Okay,” I said quietly. “Do you know what door number you’re in?”
Derby heaved another long sigh and I had to pause to concentrate on counting the long series of moans he patiently emitted.
“Room twelve?” I concluded.
“Ygfn.”
Right at the end of the hall, then. A growing sense of foreboding crept over me as I made my way, step after cautious step. It wasn’t like the sensation of being watched; more like that of being a mouse passing through a roomful of sleeping cats. The silence wasn’t the oppressive silence of being totally alone in an empty place, it was the prickly silence made by multitudes of sleeping things. I wasn’t about to start randomly trying doors.
It seemed like it took an age to quietly creep all the way down the corridor. When I was faced with the bedroom door with the number 12 painted on it in Speedstar’s trademark font, I tried the handle and found it locked, to my complete lack of surprise.
Suddenly the glow stick was yanked back inside my magic amulet, and I was plunged into darkness. “Have you found Uncle Dav?!” asked Nelly, quite loudly.
I snapped the wristlet’s lid closed and cringed as her words echoed through the silent corridor behind me. After it faded, and no doors were flung open to disgorge platoons of crazed survivalist pirates bent on stripping me for parts, I let my shoulders sag and opened the amulet again by the tiniest crack. “Shhh.”
“Sorry,” whispered Nelly. “Have you found Uncle Dav?”
“I think he’s behind this door,” I said, my lips practically touching the amulet’s rim. “Do you have anything that can pick a lock?”
“Yeah. Dude, yeah.” I couldn’t see her, but I could tell from the vibrato in her voice that she was nodding rapidly. “Like, ninety percent of the stuff here.”
“Do you have anything that can pick a lock, and that can be used by someone who doesn’t know anything about lock picking?”
“Ah. That narrows it down. Yeah, hang on.” I slapped the lid closed again as the amulet started making loud rattling noises from Nelly hurriedly sorting through her inventory. It sounded like a ferret loose in a cutlery drawer. “Try this. It’s a sort of experimental intelligent-plastic thing. Just stick it in the lock and it’ll do the rest—”
Her voice was cut off as a tool was shoved into place. It resembled a flexible white cylinder mounted on the end of a sophisticated-looking piece of electronics. Dutifully, I placed the end of the cylinder at the mouth of the lock and smartly rammed it home, feeling slightly indecent as I did so.
There were a few moments of churning sounds, and then the device made a short confirmatory beep, loud enough to make me cringe again before falling silent. I rotated it, and the lock turned. When I withdrew the device, the white plastic part maintained the shape of a key for a second before it popped back into its default shape.
The room beyond was a residence module originally designed to be nothing more than a place where one person could sleep between legs of a journey, typically containing one bed about the size of a low-rent coffin and a combination shower-toilet sectioned off by a curtain about half as thick as the toilet paper.
After Nelly restored the glow stick, I discovered that some remodeling had taken place. The bed was missing, and the indentation in the floor where it had belonged was now filled with garbage. There was a plate of stale food similar to the ones I had seen on the concourse, some wrapped chocolate bars, a couple of pamphlets advertising other services offered by nearby outposts, and a collection of brightly colored toys that looked like the kind of thing Speedstar used to put in the claw machines in the amusement arcades.
Looming over the items was a full-sized cardboard cutout of a star pilot, propped up against the far wall. Judging by his improbably muscular physique and dramatic pose, it had likely been cut out from an advertising display for a Jacques McKeown book. The colors were faded with age, making the character’s square-jawed face look like it had come down with a bad case of space scurvy.
I was then treated to the sensation of hearing Derby moaning in stereo, the sound coming simultaneously from my earpiece and from the shower area to my left. I shone my light toward it, and discovered what had happened to the bed. The mattress was nowhere to be seen, but the metal lattice on which it would have sat was propped up in front of the shower cubicle as a makeshift gate, held in place with a couple of iron bars.
Derby was sitting on the toilet with his one intact arm tied behind his back and his mouth gagged with a Speedstar-branded tie that at one point would have been on sale in the souvenir shop. He didn’t seem to be badly hurt, besides his missing wristlet and a lurid bruise under one madly staring eye.
The bars across the shower gate were each sitting across a pair of what looked like metal coat hooks that I suspected had been glued into place with industrial adhesive. I lifted off the bars, pulled the gate aside, and fingered the gag out of Derby’s mouth.
“Well,” he said pompously, “I was going to warn you about the alien behind you, but one suspects the point has become moot.”
Chapter 19
In the time it took to spin on my heel, I drew my blaster and pointed it ahead at full arm’s length. I let Derby’s wrist amulet fall from my grasp and clatter into the corner, the glow stick throwing crazy shadows around the room as it settled. All in all, probably one of my most impressive quick draws, and once again I’d neglected to set a plying timer.
And in the end, it was wasted. The alien didn’t look hostile, or even remotely dangerous. They were humanoid, but about half the size of a human, with skinny limbs and skin the color of weak custard. They were probably female, although I was going more from the flowers woven into their long brown hair than their body type, which was mostly concealed by a baggy white garment. On a full-sized human it would have been a tank top, but on her it was a nightdress.
She was staring up at me with dark, glimmering eyes and her tiny mouth hanging open. She gave off the general vibe of a sleepy toddler wandering into their parents’ room late at night and witnessing something inappropriate.
One pregnant pause later, she smiled joyously, clasped her hands together beneath her chin, and leapt a foot into the air, as if hoisted by the sudden upward movement of her cheek muscles. “Oh, joyous day!” she exclaimed, in a high, fragile voice like air being
passed through a wooden flute. “The Day of Return has come! Father! Oh, Father, our prayers are answered!” She spun around as she hopped into the air again, tank top twirling, before skipping back into the darkened corridor, kicking her feet high in effervescent joy.
I looked to Derby, who was making a concerted effort to avoid eye contact. “What was that all about?”
“Nothing,” he spat, rising from the toilet and hopping out of the cubicle. I noticed that his knees were tied together with duct tape. “We need to get out of here before they return. These people are lunatics.”
I was more interested in the fact that there were people here at all, but I wasn’t about to argue. I untied his arm and stepped back to let him untape the rest of himself.
Before we could formulate the next part of the escape plan, the female creature returned excitedly, dragging another member of her species by the hand. “Father, Father!” she babbled. “You must see! It’s so wonderful!”
Her father was roughly the same height as his daughter, but about twice the width. He was older and saggier, resembling several handfuls of lemon pudding slapped together into a humanoid figure, and was wearing an extremely old and frayed souvenir T-shirt that reached down to his knees.
“What has made you so excited this early in the morning, little one?” he asked, stumbling sleepily after the girl. His voice was slightly deeper than his daughter’s, in that it sounded like the voice of a human boy about half an hour into puberty.
“It’s as I said, Father! The visitor was not an enemy at all, but a herald of the Ancients!” She practically shoved him toward us, smiling so wide I thought her cheek muscles might burst out through the skin.
The older creature squinted at me, trying to make out my features in the meager light offered by the glow stick in the corner. His gaze traveled from my face to my cap, then to my flight jacket, then to the Jacques McKeown cutout behind me, his eyes and mouth widening further at each stage of the trip.
“B-by all the writings,” he breathed, hands beginning to shake. “It’s true! An Ancient walks among us!”
“I’ll rouse the others!” The daughter barely got the words out before she darted back into the hall to start making a strange hooting sound through her hands.
“F-forgive me, O Ancient,” stammered the father, cringing so low that he was practically bent double. “It has been so long . . . I am neglecting my proper vestments. Spare us your most justified retribution for one moment while I prepare.”
He darted out just as the female one darted back in, as if they had some kind of tag team arrangement. “O Ancient, do not punish the unbelievers too harshly for the treatment of your herald,” she entreated, bowing even lower than her father had. “The ages have been long and the corruption of faithlessness has taken its toll on our people.”
I had been keeping quiet so far because, as a career star pilot with a number of rescued primitive planets under my belt, being deified wasn’t entirely new to me. It was always embarrassing and frequently dangerous, but it was never productive to antagonize your new followers by denying your godhood, as long as they didn’t take it too far. The point to start reining it in was when they began throwing around words like unbeliever, because heresy trials and stoning couldn’t be far behind. It’s hard to add a primitive planet to your scorecard when the people you saved ended up sacrificing the entire year’s harvest to your glory.
“Um, your devotion does you credit.” I held my arms out for the all-purpose vague messianic look. “But I fear I am an unworthy recipient . . .”
“You’re worthy! You’re worthy!” said Derby, hanging back somewhere behind me as he struggled to strap his wristlet back on without help. “Just play along, for Christ’s sake. They’re insane.”
“I don’t tell you how to get captured by natives, don’t tell me how to rescue you from them,” I hissed.
The girl’s father reappeared, striding nobly into the room this time like a Cub Scout carrying the flag at the troop parade. He was wearing a child-sized version of the pink polo shirt Speedstar used to make all its employees wear until they lost their last shred of dignity. On his head was an empty cardboard container for french fries, which he was wearing like a papal crown.
“You’ve ar-rived at Bis-kot Cen-tral,” he intoned like a Gregorian chant, holding his arms aloft in worship. “The Speed-star Cor-po-ra-tion wel-comes you.”
“Would you like to hear a-bout to-day’s spe-cials,” added the girl, head fully bowed into her clasped hands as she reverently voiced the holy syllables.
And that made rather a lot of pieces fall into place. These were the natives indigenous to Biskot’s planets, the local talent that Speedstar had hired cheaply to beef up Biskot Central’s staff in a not entirely ethical kind of way. But surely Speedstar had returned them to their home planets before they had withdrawn from the system?
On reflection, I couldn’t remember anyone from Speedstar specifically mentioning that they had done so. I’d just assumed they had, and the relevant regulatory bodies apparently had as well, because it was something that a corporation with the tiniest amount of shame would have done without saying.
“How . . . long have you all been waiting here?” I asked.
The smiles didn’t leave their faces, but the girl and her father exchanged confused glances, firstly with each other and secondly with the growing number of Biskotti-sized figures in the darkness behind them, emerging from motel rooms to see what was making all the noise. “Our people have waited since the Before Time,” said the father helpfully.
“And how long has that been?”
“Eons,” breathed the girl. “Many generations have passed since the time of the Ancients.”
“But Speedstar . . . I mean, the Ancients would have been here less than ten years ago.”
“Indeed,” said the father sadly, a nostalgic shine in his eye. “My great-great-great-grandfather was the last of my line to see the Ancients with his own eyes. Perhaps it was their blessing that caused him to lead such a long life. He almost reached the age of nineteen months.”
That filled in the rest of the picture. The cherry on the top of this already reprehensible sundae: the unusually short lives of Biskottis, thanks to their fast-moving planets.
“O Ancient,” said the father, voice quavering. “We exist to serve. Speak that which you desire, and you shall have it.” His voice switched to the weird staccato chant again. “Co-zy beds. Sump-tu-ous food. Twen-ty-four-hour en-ter-tain-ment. What-ev-er you need to make your stay Speed-star spe-cial.”
My jaw was hanging open. This was monstrous. Speedstar had exploited and abandoned these people and left them totally alienated from their home environment and culture for generations, until the last instructions they had been given had mutated into some plied-up religious dogma. They needed help. They needed to be taken back to where they belonged to begin the slow process of overcoming lifetimes of brainwashing.
That was what a star pilot would have done.
“Actually, what I could really use is a phone-charging station,” I said.
Chapter 20
The phone-charging station I was directed to was barely visible through a thick layer of painted artworks depicting ancient star pilots drawing down heavenly nectar with long drinking straws. The connection ports were stuffed with dead flowers, but the wireless recharge was functional enough.
It was located in a booth on the spaceport concourse between a couple of food stands, in an area that the Biskottis seemed reluctant to follow us into. Perhaps they didn’t understand or trust it, or were afraid that tainting the Ancients’ machinery with their lowly hands would have reduced the chances of the Ancients ever coming back. Either way, once I had reactivated it and my phone began to charge, I looked back and saw the entire mob of them—about fifty individuals—clustered around the top of the stairwell like schoolchildren at assembly waiting to
be dismissed.
“What pathetic creatures.” Derby leaned against the charging station next to me with his arms folded. He was holding his newly reattached wristlet under one armpit so tightly that I could hear the leather in the straps creaking. “If Davisham Derby had not been so overcome with pity at the sight of them, I would not have stayed my Taser.”
“What a relief,” I said, staring at my phone as I held it against the side of the charging station unnecessarily. “I was starting to think Davisham Derby might have simply plied it up. Ah.” The battery icon materialized in the center of my phone’s screen, and the power bar began to swell. It’d need another minute before the operating system could reboot and I could call someone.
“And who, exactly, do you intend to call?” asked Derby archly, watching the power bar expand.
“Daniel Henderson.”
“Excuse me?”
“Daniel. Henderson.”
“Yes, I thought that was what you said.” He clicked his tongue rhythmically for a few seconds, then said, “But I decided to harbor one last, desperate hope that anyone other than myself hadn’t utterly lost their minds.”
“Look, I’ve thought about it, and it’s our best option. Who else is there? Warden? It’s still safe to assume she sent those killers. Any other star pilot I know might be working for Salvation and therefore her, and even if they aren’t, they’re not going to want to get within a light year of plying Terrorgorn.”
“Hm, yes, sound logic,” said Derby, stroking his chin and nodding. “You’ve quite convinced me. The only remaining solution is to call up the victim of our recent heist, from which we barely escaped with our lives, and ask them nicely for a tow.”
My phone lit up, my contact list obligingly spreading itself across the screen. “Trust me.” I looked for the Ds, which was where Daniel Henderson’s number could be found under the heading “Dangerous Doints.” “Daniel’s a Jacques McKeown fan. And, more importantly, he’s an idiot. I can tell him what he wants to hear.”
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