Blighted Star

by Tom Parkinson

  The fires were burning low now, and so, he knew, would be the ardour of the troops. He ordered three to remain, keeping the conflagration going by bursts from their targe guns. The others fell in behind him and began the trek to the south. There were grumbles, but right now he could do no wrong, he had brought them victory. The grass beneath his boots seemed to push back as he trod on it, and for the first time in many days he felt the benefit of Saunder’s World’s lesser gravity. He felt a giddiness, a loosening of his grip on his senses, and allowed himself the indulgence of a grin. When the next ship arrived, he would revert back to just being a sergeant. But that was two years away still. Until then, this whole planet was his. All that stood between that and him was one illegal piece of machinery. The engineer had put himself out of the picture by being implicated in whatever scam or plot the robot represented. When Raoul had dismantled her, he would decide what to do with Chan on the basis of whatever they found in her memory banks. Whatever it was, the engineer was up to his balls in it and Raoul had no intention of letting him off the hook.

  Above them the shuttle still hovered over the site of the burning. Lana would be wondering what they were doing, heading off to the south like this, but he would just let her stew. This one was for the chosen few only.

  <><><>

  Lana had indeed seen them heading south, and had wondered whether she should follow them. In the absence of further orders from Raoul, and unable to reach him, she had continued to hover. the flames below were beginning to die down a little and she could see that the pool was almost completely burned away. Even so, she could still feel the fire’s heat on her face where the light from those evil looking flames fell on her. Earlier, the fire had caused a considerable updraft, and she had been forced to move out of its buffeting. Looking across she could still make out in the firelight the column of filthy smoke which flowed into the sky and, high above her turned to the west, fanning out in the direction of Cassini. In a few hours, she reckoned, they would be able to smell the end of the battle back at the ship.

  It was hard to believe that they had won. In fact she doubted that they had, but at least the immediate crisis had been contained, and they had a powerful new weapon they could use to stave off any more zombies while they fixed Cassini’s drive and got the hell out of there.

  Raoul was their saviour. You could really see a master at work with the way he had directed the battle. There were patterns in the way the dots had moved which had been obvious even to her civilian eyes. It was like watching the history presentations the boys had gone in for at school in which they demonstrated the ways battles had played out. In the actions Raoul had directed, the winning strategist had been clear from the beginning each time. They had so much to be grateful to him for, every man woman and child left alive on the planet. There could be little doubt that it was his sure hand which had guided them out of the valley of the shadow of death.

  Whatever he was up to now, it must be something which would be in their best interests. Lana continued to hover in the darkness, waiting to hear her next instruction.

  <><><>

  The door to the locker room finally opened and Christel sat up. Her hair fell across her face and partially blocked her view of Gregorovitch. The soldier pointed silently at Grad and the pilot rose and walked over to him. The two exited, and Chan and Christel looked at each other anxiously.

  Outside in the corridor Gregorovitch leaned close to Grad.

  “We need to talk. You said disease is changing, no? What is change?”

  “It’s gone air borne, and it seems to react to ultra violet light, it seems to explode when you shine ultra violet on it, and all kinds of particles get in the air. Dr Clarke thought they were spores like those from a fungus.”

  “If ultra violet light does this then we are in great danger. Guns all fire ultra violet beams now.” The two men regarded each other as the information sank in.

  “You need to warn Raoul. They mustn’t fire on anything which looks black, or is growing out of green matter. Tell him the most dangerous bits look like black spheres. If he hits them he could be in real trouble. We have to get him to lift the communications block. can you do it?”

  “Is very difficult. system designed so that only commander can control in event of crisis. Raoul has code. In end I could build new system but would take hours to get even basic system working. We need to get Raoul. He can restart whole system with one command.”

  “It would take us hours to find him in this dark, and that’s assuming the night isn’t crawling with those things. If we had the shuttle… but Lana’s out there with it…”

  “There is other flying machine, you can fly that one, yes?”

  “Oh course! The Skyak! Come on!” Grad bounded away down the corridor, the Russian’s boots pounding behind him.

  <><><>

  They jogged on through the darkness, past the now empty ponds which still seemed to hold menace. Raoul knew the others felt the threat from the water because, with his heightened senses, he was aware of the changes in their body language whenever they were near a shoreline. He wondered if this was how the ancestors of man had felt, those who had prowess in the hunt, or ability to the fight back at the cave, or who had mastery of the art of building alliances within the group over the long years. Had they too watched the running forms of their fellows as the night of danger wore on. Had they too been alive to the same signals of fear, of elation, of readiness to fight or to flee in those they commanded? And had they felt the same mastery as he felt now, like a man holding the reins to a wild team of horses, plunging through the dark, an entity made up of disparate individuals, all subject to his will?

  Raoul scorned the enemy he had vanquished. If there were any of the creatures left mobile out in the dark places, it didn’t matter much now. Their time was finished, and only mopping up was needed to free the colony of them forever. But was that necessarily the best thing to tell the civilians? It might suit him very well if they were left a little bit scared…and in fact, there was still some threat out there anyway. Whatever had caused deaths in the first place had to still be there in the environment, so people would have to be kept under control for the foreseeable future.

  That was all stuff for the morning. For tonight he had one more task, and he tried to find in himself some remorse for what he was going to have to do, but there wasn’t any. He felt nothing, truth to be told. His righteous indignation of earlier had evaporated so entirely that he couldn’t help but suspect that it had lacked substance. Rum had that side effect of very deeply held feelings which could leave as quickly as they arose. It was, he supposed, all part of the intensity of impression which came with the drug. It was like a sky clearing of cloud. However, the fact that he didn’t feel any malice towards the artefact didn’t mean he didn’t have to do what he what he was going to have to.

  <><><>

  Gregorovitch helped Grad to guide the skyak out of the hangar. The craft bobbed gently at knee height above the ground, and needed only the slightest touch to get moving or to steer. When he had been racing to help Christel Grad had leapt into the small aircraft and had shot through the hangar opening without a moment’s thought or hesitation, but now in the cool night air his confidence completely deserted him and he dragged the skyak well clear of Cassini, not trusting his control over the skittish machine. Once in the open, he reached into the cockpit and flicked the power switch. The craft laid itself into the grass with a soft noise as it crushed the stalks beneath its gentle weight. Grad sat in, switched the power back on, and rose wobbling into the air. At ten metres he set the fan motor going, and as speed built up he felt the air pressure against the hull convey some stability.

  Why Lana enjoyed this sort of thing he had no idea. He himself adored flying, considered a day without flight to be a wasted day. Yet there was something about having an open cockpit which just didn’t appeal. He felt the same way about mountains and towers; they were too exposed. It wasn’t exactly a fear of heights, more
a fear of vacancy. He loved altitude, but only through the barrier of some glassteen. Up here with his top half sticking out of this unstable craft he felt totally unprotected, but he gritted his teeth, aware of the irony of a pilot who was uncomfortable with high places, and angled towards the new quarry. In the distance the sky was just beginning to pale slightly enough so that a craft might be silhouetted against it, and he sincerely hoped that he would get a visual fix on Lana as he got close. When Raoul had cut off comms with Cassini he had at the same time cancelled the life trace readout and so Grad was forced to pick up the trail of the soldiers at their last known position to the north of the quarry. Hopefully he would be in time to warn Raoul of the development of the spores, and then he would fly south to pick up Athena who would by now have finished her cycle in the vat.

  Somewhere in the darkness ahead, Lana was circling above the troops. More than ever he felt the absence of his internal comms. Not having her dot on his wrist readout was strange and sad. As if she had gone even further from him. Dully, like the slow tightening of a vice, the realisation that she was truly gone crushed his heart a little more. He felt as little control over his love life as he did over this bucking and twitching craft. When the nose dipped forward for no particular reason and he felt a yawing emptiness within, it seemed as if it could come either from the unpredictable flight or from the loss of equilibrium in matters of his heart. It would be just his luck, he thought as he strove to regain control, to be reunited with Lana in the wreckage of a mid-air smash. He wished he had thought to clip a light to the skyak.

  The skyak flitted on through the clear sky beneath the vortex of the stars, passing within a few metres of one of the strands of grey particles which drifted like shreds of cloud towards the starship.

  <><><>

  Athena’s inert form was jammed tight within the root packed vat. Above her, from the hatch, a great fist of matter rose into the sky, metres tall. A fruiting body whose skin stretched close to splitting over the deadly contents. As the first rays of light from the still hidden sun bounced from the upper atmosphere and mixed a little paleness with the stars, the surface of the fruiting body began to stiffen and become brittle. Flakes and scales began to form as the flesh beneath the outer skin continued to expand under the pressure from within. And still, inside, new spores were forming and growing, acquiring the tough outer sheaths which would protect them from daylight until they could find a host, even if that took a thousand or more years. The move would mean the effective extinguishing of all other life on the planet, just as the evolution of another species far away on other worlds had led so often to the extinction of whole biospheres, including that of Earth. In a sense, the strategy was a poor one, as the parasite would once again be a victim of its own success, destroying the very hosts upon which it relied. Yet like all living things, it had no control over its nature, and was itself subject to the same forces which had created it. The arrival of the new hosts on Saunders World had been a lucky break, but one which could only give it a temporary respite from the slow decline it had been undergoing for thousands of years since it had wiped out its major prey species. With the last flourish the dawn would bring, the organism would conquer the entire world, but at the same time would doom itself to millennia more of life in the dirt among the grubs and worms.

  <><><>

  The smouldering ashes were a beacon which Grad could not miss and he glided in above them, straining his eyes into the dark to pick up the shuttle’s form. Suddenly it was there, its black framework stark against the horizon. He drifted in, praying that Lana wouldn’t make an unexpected move and either crash into him or be lost again in the night. He could see her sitting hunched among the spars, he was almost upon when she heard his calling and looked up in bewilderment. In the dark her head seemed an odd shape, only when he was actually next to her did he realise that it was because she was wearing breathing apparatus. He felt very vulnerable as he drew in the cool night air and he wondered how many of the breathing units there were in Cassini’s stores. Not many he suspected, probably just enough for the troops who were also expected to use them to fight fires or deal with toxic spills and so on. He didn’t think one would have done Doctor Clarke any good in any case.

  Quickly he outlined the developments back at Cassini. The windows on Lana’s mask reflected the first glimmers of the predawn twilight, and behind them the expression in her eyes was unreadable. the death of Doctor Clarke was received with a slight bowing of her head.

  “We have to warn Raoul not to fire on any new objects. They could explode and cause the contagion to go air borne.” he finished, but Lana merely shook her head.

  “There aren’t any of the monsters left Grad. Raoul’s got rid of the last of them down there. He’s already done it Grad. He’s won.”

  Grad pondered for a moment. Perhaps Raoul had been in time, striking before the black nodules could form in the gel. Maybe, for once, they had been lucky… However, there was still the matter of Athena.

  “Where is Raoul now?”

  “He took three men with him and headed south. I think he’s going to check out the quarry.”

  “Lana, he’s going to kill Athena. You have to help me to stop him.”

  “Are you serious? Why would he want to kill Athena?”

  “Athena’s an artificial person. He thinks she’s a spy or something. Look, we can sort all that out later, we’ve got to stop him killing her.”

  “Athena’s artificial? Is she a spy? Maybe Raoul’s got a reason.”

  “Look, please help me. Raoul punched Chan and locked him up. He’s cut off all comms, and now he’s going to kill Athena. Whatever his reasons, we can work them out tomorrow, give everyone a say. But for now, we have to save Athena from him. If you won’t help. her death will be just as much on your hands.” he looked long and hard at the pale silver windows which hid her eyes, then with a curse, he peeled away from the shuttle and shot like a silent arrow towards the quarry.

  Chapter 28

  They were getting very close now, they had already passed the pool where Williams had dived earlier that day, and Raoul was pleased to note that her stride didn’t alter at all as they skirted the shore. Whatever feelings she had she was learning to disassociate herself from them, though he knew that later she would pay a price.

  He indicated silently that they were to spread out in a line, twenty paces between each man, his senses coming back on to full alert. Most likely this was a hunting party pure and simple, but it was also possible that it might become more of a fight. God knew what weapons or skills the robot had, and he wasn’t going to risk dispersing his group any further than that. Another factor was that he wasn’t one hundred percent sure of any of them. Right now Williams was the most reliable because she was in a sort of daze. He was sure she would pull the trigger on anyone. But the others? He would have bet on their loyalty, indeed he was doing, but their willingness to carry out this special mission might fade when actually presented with their erstwhile leader. In some ways it might help if she fought back, give them something to kick against.

  He checked his commander readout again. It gave him a distinct feeling of power, knowing that he could see where everyone was, while they were blind. There was now only one single dot on the display; that of Athena. There seemed a particular satisfaction to be had in rubbing out that final mark; a neatness and a sense of closure. All that would remain would be his blue dots and green dots. He felt an urge to get the dots to arrange themselves in pretty patterns for his amusement, perhaps tomorrow he would organise a parade. Within the mask he had to stifle a giggle, and he struggled to get a grip on his skittering feelings. Next moment a wave of doubt flushed through him; who knew what access she would have through Cassini’s mainframe. It was even a possibility that she was feeding him misinformation. Her trace had been stationary all through the last day and night. Now it was red again. Maybe it was a false beacon. He would know soon enough.

  To his left the sky was now appreciabl
y lighter, and he estimated that they had about twenty minutes or so before the sun came up. That was just about perfect.

  <><><>

  Pressure was building up to bursting point now within the fruiting body. The surface where the reflected rays of pale light fell was completely crazed with flakes of dried outer skin. The sun was now setting the eastern horizon aflame and would be rising in a matter of minutes. when that happened the outer skin would burn to ash in a moment and the pressure would be released in an explosion of spores.

  <><><>

  Raoul saw it first and immediately raised his fist, at the same time dropping onto one knee, Williams, Hernandez and Patel sank into the grass beside him. He pointed, but there was little need to; the monstrous shape towering over the vat was plain to see against the gathering dawn. For the first time since the death of Lieutenant Jackson he felt indecision grip him. It was paralysing.