The Recollection

by Gareth L. Powell

  “It was a nice service. I’m glad you came. Shirley would have been pleased.”

  Ed had his fists balled in his pockets. He wore a black suit jacket over skinny dark jeans and a paint-stained Ramones T-shirt.

  He said, “I’m sorry I was late.”

  Beside him, Verne had his head down and his shoulders hunched. He said, “I suppose we should be grateful you’re here at all.”

  Ed stopped walking.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Verne turned to face him. “What do you think I mean? You’re always so wrapped up in yourself. When was the last time you bothered coming down here?”

  “I saw her at the wedding.”

  “Three months ago! Where were you when she really needed you, eh?”

  Ed bristled. His mother had been raised as a hard-working Valleys girl. She disapproved of his life as a penniless artist, and seldom missed an opportunity to voice her feelings on the matter. “I was going to come, you know I was. It wasn’t my fault she died when she did. And anyway, where the fuck were you?”

  Verne gave an exasperated sigh. He’d been in Mogadishu when Shirley died. “You know I would have been here if I could, if the rebels hadn’t closed the airport. They were shooting Europeans. We had to stay hidden in the hotel. Whereas you, Ed, all you had to do was catch a train.”

  Alice slid her arm out from under Ed’s.

  “Verne, this really isn’t the time.”

  “I’m just saying—”

  “Well, don’t.”

  She pulled the black fur hat from her head and shook her gloved fingers through her mussed, rust-coloured hair.

  “I’m sorry, Ed,” she said.

  She took his elbow and walked him to the gate. Moss dappled the cracked concrete path. Verne’s car waited on the opposite side of the steeply sloping street, in front of a row of terraced houses.

  “Are you sure we can’t give you a lift? We could drop you at Oxford and you could get a train back to London from there.”

  Ed glanced at his brother. Verne’s cheeks were a mottled red and he kept clenching and unclenching his fists.

  “No, don’t worry about it. I can get a local train from here to Cardiff, then straight through to Paddington. I’ve already booked the ticket and they don’t do refunds.”

  “Will you be okay?”

  “I’ll be fine,” Ed said. “I’ll probably sleep most of the way. And if not, I’ve got my sketchbook.” He pulled the small black Moleskine from his pocket. Its pages bulged with bookmarks, feathers and Post-it notes.

  Alice said, “You’ll have to let me look at that sometime.”

  Verne shouldered past them and opened the car door.

  “Goodbye, Ed,” he said.

  Alice sighed. “Don’t worry about him. It’s because he was in Africa when she died. He feels bad, and he’s taking it out on you.”

  Ed blew into his hands. “I know.”

  “He’ll be okay in a couple of days, you’ll see.”

  She stood on her toes. Her lips were warm on his cold cheek. Her hair smelled of peppermint shampoo.

  “I’ll come and see you soon. I’m in London next week. Verne’s going off on another assignment. I’ll drop by and make sure you’re okay.”

  She squeezed his arm.

  “If it’s any help,” she said, “I think as long as we remember someone, they’re not really dead.”

  She gave a last, brave smile and ran across the road to the waiting car. She waved once as they pulled away, and Ed watched until the brake lights reached the end of the terrace and turned right, out of sight, heading towards the M4. Then he turned up his jacket collar and began the long trudge back to the railway station.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE CRYSTAL SHIP

  Despite spending her youth in the Strauli system, Katherine Abdulov had never been this close to the Dho Ark. Under ordinary circumstances, civilian vessels were forbidden from coming within a million kilometres of its orbital path around the system’s solitary gas giant. Growing up on the beaches of Strauli, she’d seen pictures of it, of course, but as the Ameline fell into its shadow, she had to admit they’d been poor preparation for the sheer scale of the thing.

  The Ark had the appearance of a single, translucent quartz crystal. The hull was seamless, aside from a small, circular dock at one end, with sharp angles and smooth, polished facets. Leaning forward in her acceleration couch, Kat gave a low whistle.

  “That’s enormous.”

  > Target measures eleven hundred kilometres from bow to stern.

  She shook her head.

  “That’s not a ship, it’s a moon.”

  > Size isn’t everything.

  Kat rubbed her eyes. She’d been in the couch for the last two hours, since Victor’s surprise departure from Strauli Quay. Her skin felt gritty and the muscles in her back and shoulders were stiff with the need to get up and stretch.

  “Replay the footage from the Quay,” she said.

  > Again?

  A window opened in her right eye. It was a grainy shot of Victor’s ship, the Tristero, taken from the security camera in his assigned landing bay. The news stations had been replaying it constantly since the incident. Now, as she watched it again for the fifth or sixth time, she saw the ship shudder as its jump engines came online. One moment, it was a long silvery wedge squatting in the centre of a nest of cables. The next, the camera blanked out in a white flash. The ship’s engines generated a wormhole and all the air in the bay vanished, the resulting depressurisation rocking the station. Even though the walls of the bay were reinforced, built to withstand exposure to vacuum, they still sagged inward. They buckled under the wormhole’s gravitational stress. By the time the picture cleared, there was nothing to see. Disconnected hoses twitched and flopped like decapitated snakes, pumping arterial sprays of fuel and water into the sudden vacuum. The wormhole had collapsed, and the ship had gone.

  > Idiot.

  Despite the scorn, Kat sensed a grudging respect in the Ameline’s tone, a respect she found she shared. She couldn’t help but be impressed by his cold-hearted willingness to endanger the lives of hundreds, possibly thousands of people. It revealed in Victor Luciano a callous determination that, hitherto, she’d only suspected. After this, he’d never set foot on the Quay again. He’d be arrested on sight. The whole station was in uproar. The news networks were going batshit. In the last two hours, she’d been called by three reporters. They knew Victor was heading for the Pep harvest on Djatt. They’d heard about her relationship with him and sensed a conspiracy. They accused her of working against her family, of plotting the entire episode. In the end, she’d asked the ship to block their calls, which only fuelled their speculation.

  At least the port authority weren’t bugging her. They knew the score. Her father had given them a copy of her letter of introduction, confirming her position as a full captain in the Abdulov fleet.

  From trainee to outcast, then from outcast to captain: looking out at the approaching bulk of the Dho Ark, she caught the ghostly reflection of her own smile.

  At least some good’s come of all this...

  Then she thought of the missing Abdulov ship, the Kilimanjaro, and the smile died on her lips. There had been fourteen men, women and children on that ship, their fate now unknown. Up until this moment, she’d harboured the possibility that accident or technical malfunction had delayed the vessel. She hadn’t wanted to believe Victor, her ex-lover, capable of outright piracy. She hadn’t wanted to think of him as a murderer. Now though, having seen the way he’d blasted off the Quay, she felt a cold certainty creeping over her.

  She pictured the Kilimanjaro with its hull torn open, spilling air and warmth into the void, the corpses of adults and children turning slowly end-over-end, surrounded by frozen scraps of food, odd shoes, smashed hull plates. Some of the dead would have been her cousins, nieces, nephews. She imagined a stuffed bear clutched in a dead child’s hand, and her lip curled in disgust. Sudd
enly her blood felt like ice, and she knew she had to beat Victor to Djatt. More was at stake in this race than money or prestige. It wasn’t about their failed relationship any more. It wasn’t about family honour. No, she told herself, all that mattered to her now was vengeance for the blood on his hands. She had to stop him from hurting anyone else.

  And for a moment, she almost believed it.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ANGRY BLUE SPARK

  As they rolled out of the portal, half-blind from the flash, they heard the creak of scum-greased timbers beneath the Land Rover’s tyres.

  “What the fuck?”

  Ed stood on the brake, felt the wheels slip. They were sliding across the deck of a wooden sailing ship. All he could see was water beyond the splintered rail. Alice screamed and grabbed his arm; he jammed all his weight onto the brake pedal and dragged the steering wheel to the right. The back end of the Land Rover slewed around with sickening slowness. For an awful, heart-stopping instant it looked as if they weren’t going to stop in time, and then the tyres bit into the wood and the big car juddered to a halt, centimetres from the remains of the broken rail.

  Ed killed the engine. No-one spoke. The silence seemed to press in on their eardrums. Ed looked down at the hand he had resting shakily on the gear lever.

  “You can let go now,” he said.

  Alice turned to him, dragging her eyes from the watery precipice beneath her window.

  “What?”

  “My arm.”

  “Oh shit, sorry.” She snatched her hand away. There were white marks where her fingers had been. On the back seat, Kristin cursed.

  “Jesus aitch fucking Christ!”

  She cracked the door and fetid salt air muscled into the cab, thick with the smell of putrid seaweed.

  “Let’s see where we are,” she said.

  Alice wrinkled her nose and waved a hand in front of her face. “After you.”

  With her hand over her mouth and nose, Kristin stepped out. Ed followed, still rubbing his arm.

  They were on the edge of a broad deck, a thousand metres in length, maybe a quarter that across. On one side of the car, a fifteen metre drop to the water; on the other, algae-covered timbers and masts the size of Redwoods. There were no sails, only rotten scraps of sun-bleached fabric flapping on the highest spars. At the stern, the superstructure rose in a series of stepped decks, linked by ladders. Doors hung open on their hinges. Broken portholes gaped. Slimy green and yellow algae dripped from every surface. A row of arches stood on the main deck between two of the tallest masts. Ed counted fifteen. They were lashed together with lengths of mouldering rope, some of which had rotted or frayed, and several of the arches had fallen flat against the deck.

  Ed scratched his hair. He walked around the Land Rover to the ship’s smashed rail and inched his way to the edge of the deck. The algae squelched beneath the thick soles of his boots. Below, the sea moved sluggishly against the timbers. It looked oily with algae and black weed, and it stank of rotting vegetation. He spat into the water. A pair of outriggers jutted from the bows, each the size of a cross-Channel ferry, yet both dwarfed by the bulk of the main hull.

  “Big ship,” he said.

  Beside him, Kristin banged the toe of her boot against the planking.

  “This wood seems flexible, but it must be incredibly tough stuff. On Earth, you couldn’t build a wooden ship even a tenth this big. It wouldn’t be strong enough to withstand a heavy sea.” She tapped her foot again. Then looking thoughtful, she folded her arms and walked off, in the direction of the stepped decks at the stern, stopping every few paces to examine the workmanship on the wooden deck, masts and rail. She even crouched to scoop a handful of algae into one of her plastic bags.

  Ed watched her for a moment, then turned as he heard Alice slide open her window. The Land Rover had stopped with less than half a metre to spare, and her door overlooked the long drop to the weed-choked water. She craned her neck, peering down. Then with a shiver, she flicked her eyes upwards instead, away from the water.

  “Look,” she said. “Two suns.”

  Ed tipped his head back. The larger sun looked round and yellow, roughly the size of the Sun as seen from Earth. Beside it, the other appeared about the size of a button held at arm’s length: an angry blue spark in the sky, throwing its own faint shadows. It was the most alien thing he’d ever seen. He shivered and looked away.

  Alice wriggled across to the driver’s door and stepped gingerly onto the slippery deck. She had her camera in her hand. Her hair shone like copper in the double sunlight.

  “Come on, I want to take some pictures.” She took Ed’s arm and led him towards the stern. “What’s with all the arches?”

  Ed was concentrating on not slipping over. “Maybe they were taking them somewhere, collecting them all together?”

  “Like with the stone circle?”

  “Yes, why not?”

  Alice pursed her lips. “Perhaps they were trying to get rid of them, dump them all in the sea?” She turned towards him, shading her eyes. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? First the stone circle, now this. What were they afraid of?”

  Behind her, a figure slid from an open door. Ed looked up expecting Kristin. Instead, he found himself gaping at the barrel of a compact machine pistol. Instinctively, he raised his hands. Alice jerked back from him, confused. She still hadn’t seen the man behind her.

  “Don’t move,” Ed warned.

  The red-faced man with the machine pistol stepped forward, aim unwavering.

  He snapped, “Both of you, hands on your heads.”

  Alice turned.

  “What?”

  She came face-to-face with the gun barrel and her eyes crossed trying to focus on it. She staggered backwards, stumbled, and ended up sat on the deck at Ed’s feet.

  “Who are you?”

  “Shut up!”

  The man took a step forward, eyes wide and nostrils flared. He had a black moustache and he wore an olive vest, black combat trousers and high-laced boots. His skin was red and peeling from his face. The wind from the sea pulled at his hair.

  “Get up and put your hands on your head.”

  He watched her rise, and then stepped back out of reach. He looked around.

  “Now, where’s your friend?”

  Ed’s hands were clasped behind his neck, fingers interlocked, palms slick with sweat. His pulse hammered in his ears. Where was his gun?

  He glanced back at the Land Rover’s open door. The shotgun stood propped in the foot well behind the driver’s seat. It was maybe twenty metres away. Could he reach it?

  His calves tensed.

  “Where is she?” The man held the pistol at his hip, its barrel wavering back and forth, covering both targets. Ed could see his index finger tight against the trigger.

  “I’ll count to three.”

  “I’m here.”

  Kristin appeared at the rail of the next deck up, hands held at shoulder height. She had her hood down and her peroxide white hair shone in the blue and yellow light of the two suns.

  The man jerked.

  “Lieutenant Cole?”

  “At ease, soldier.”

  The gun barrel dipped.

  “I was beginning to think you weren’t coming.”

  Kristin lowered her hands. “Well, I’m here now.”

  The man’s eyes flicked back to Ed and Alice. “And these two?”

  “They’re with me.”

  The eyes narrowed for a second. Then the soldier’s stance straightened and he shouldered the weapon.

  “If you say so.”

  Kristin looked at Ed. “This is Specialist Otto Krous,” she said. “He’s part of my team.”

  Krous hadn’t eaten for two days, so Kristin dug a chocolate bar from Ed’s pack and gave it to him.

  “What happened here?” she asked as he tore the wrapper.

  They were standing by the broken rail, looking out at the flat, featureless horizon. A few feet away, Ed leane
d against the Land Rover’s fender, arms folded, listening. His nostrils were full of the stink of the seaweed, and his skin itched where the light touched it. He looked at the skin peeling from Krous’s face, and glanced up at the blue and yellow suns.

  “We should cover up or we’re going to get fried,” he said.

  Behind him, Alice sat in the cab, shotgun resting on her knees, still angry about being held at gunpoint. Oblivious to her glares, Krous chewed a mouthful of chocolate and swallowed.

  “We came through the arch too fast,” he said. “I mean, Fischer was driving and we can’t have been rolling at more than walking pace, but we were still going too fast to stop.” He kicked a heavy boot at the slippery algae on the planking of the deck. “Fischer hit the brakes as soon as we cleared the arch, but...”

  Kristin put a hand on his shoulder.

  “You went over?”

  Krous leaned forward, looking down at the fetid black weed choking the water. His lips were a hard line. His eyes wouldn’t keep still.

  “Yes, sir. We went straight through the rail. I managed to kick my way out.” He shuddered. “I had to fight through the weed.”

  “And the others?”

  Krous shook his head. He screwed up the chocolate bar wrapper and let it flutter down into the water. Kristin’s lips pressed together. She looked at Ed. From where he stood, he could see her eyes were filmy with unshed tears.

  “So, what did you do?” she asked Krous, voice level.

  The soldier looked up at the sky. “I clawed my way around to the back of the ship. There’s a dock there for small craft, and I managed to climb out of the water. I had my gun strapped across my chest, but everything else went down with the truck.” He swallowed hard and coughed into his fist. “For the last week, I’ve been living on glucose tablets and rain water, hoping you were coming.”