by Chris Ward
‘Both of you and your injured friend are also listed. You were identified during your hijack operation.’
‘Goddamn.’
‘So, I believe the old human expression is that we’re all in the same boat.’
‘Or on the same starship,’ Paul said, punching the nearest terminal. ‘We’re getting nowhere fast, aren’t we?’
Harlan5 looked down at the readings on the terminal. ‘We’re midway through refueling. The maintenance will take a little longer. Two or three Earth-days at the current estimate. We took too many hits in that firefight.’
Paul shrugged. ‘The clowns wanted to take us on, they got what they deserved. They were looking for your captain?’
‘From intercepted transmissions I have picked up, it seems my captain and our pilot have escaped from the prison ship and gone into hiding.’
‘How will we find them?’
‘We have to wait for them to resurface.’
‘Where’s a good place to wait?’
Harlan5 looked down at the terminal. ‘I will search the available database for suitable docking stations where we might remain unnoticed…oh.’
‘What?’
‘There’s a large cruiser approaching. A command vessel of some kind. Transmitting no identification, which suggests it’s not friendly. My programming suggests we abandon our current maintenance and refueling and leave for the nearest habitable moon.’
‘You suggest? Does that mean you’re asking us to make the decision?’
‘I’m interested in your opinion. My programming suggests that of several possible alternatives, there is no certain option to ensure our safety. Since my decision may end up killing you both, I’d like to know your thoughts before I make it.’
Paul turned to the screens. ‘Let’s get a visual.’
‘Wow, there it is,’ Beth said, as something huge and gray drifted into shot from behind the fueling station. Glittering with lights, cannon emplacements, transmission towers, and external ship-to-ship fighter installations, it was an elongated triangle with a downward curving front end and a haphazard, blocky rear.
‘That butthole is massive,’ Paul said. ‘Get a visual, robot. We need a positive.’
‘ID?’ Harlan5 asked, peering at the same screen as Paul, his programming telling him that a human would either feel annoyed or amused at Paul’s constant posturing. ‘It’s a Shadowman command vessel. The last time I saw one of those, it was operated by Raylan Climlee, the man who now calls himself Overlord of Trill System.’
‘We have to take it out!’ Paul punched the view-screen hard enough to make it flicker. ‘If we bring that monster down, we can free Trill System!’
‘Brave words, Little Buck,’ Harlan said. ‘Unfortunately, that might prove difficult. Its fighters alone are twice the size of the Matilda.’
‘A scrambler then. Something to disable it.’
‘What’s it doing here?’ Beth said.
‘Raylan Climlee forced an alliance with the Shadowmen in the wake of the attack on Trill System,’ Harlan5 said. ‘Part of the alliance involved the procurement of vast numbers of Evattlan warriors to be used as foot-soldiers for the ground offensives on Cable and Feint. My programming estimates that his ship is here to oversee the acquiring of a few million more.’
‘Vattla,’ Paul growled, breathing hard. ‘The scumhole of Frail System, which is the scumhole of the Estron Quadrant. You picked the worst of the worst, robot.’
‘Thanks to your cavalier flying,’ Harlan5 pointed out.
‘Something’s coming,’ Beth said, pointing at the screen. ‘Look.’
‘Zoom in,’ Paul said.
Harlan5, resisting the urge to return Paul to the restraints in the cargo bay, pulled up a zoomed image of the dot moving toward them. A Shadowman military transport, it was thirty-times the tonnage of the Matilda and quite capable of drawing her into its lower containment hangar.
‘My programming suggests we leave right away.’ Harlan’s metal fingers ran over the controls on his terminal, activating the autopilot.
‘So you just want to run, robot?’ Paul said.
‘They’re firing on us!’ Beth shouted.
The Matilda shuddered as it took a direct hit. Although Harlan5 noted that it was a mere speck compared to the transport’s full firepower, his programming told him it was time to resume control. Caladan, one of the galaxy’s great cowards, and the captain, one of its most brave, would have known what to do. The kids were clueless, and letting them have too much input would see the Matilda blown to pieces.
He lifted a hand to press the disengage button, just as Paul leaped for the gunner’s terminal and slammed a fist down on the controls.
The Matilda spun around, breaking loose from the fuel connector. Gases plumed from the broken end of the tube before an automatic shut off closed the leak.
‘What you’re doing is not advisable—’
‘Hold on, people.’ Paul jumped into the pilot’s chair, pushing Beth down beside him with one hand. He activated the rear thrusters and sent the Matilda surging forward, heading straight for the oncoming fighter.
‘They’re sending a transmission,’ Beth said. ‘Harlan, can you access it, please? It might give some explanation as to why they’ve attacked us without warning.’
Harlan5 connected the transmission to the ship’s speakers. ‘Lianetta, my dear, what a place to find you,’ came a crackly voice. ‘You came visiting my own backyard. Perhaps we could meet for a drink or some torture?’
‘Close your pie-hole, punk!’ Paul shouted. ‘Or we’ll fill it full of laser fire.’
‘Shut up,’ Beth hissed. ‘That’s Raylan Climlee. Isn’t it, Harlan?’
Harlan5 nodded. ‘My voice recognition software confirms an almost perfect match.’
‘Eat lead, bozo,’ Paul shouted then turned to Beth. ‘Shoot them!’
‘Shoot what?’
‘That ship!’
Beth, shaking her head, engaged the cannons and fired on the incoming fighter. Harlan5, standing at his terminal, engaged the shields just as return fire came in. It deflected away, but the shields took time to reach full charge. The right hit might break through.
‘Ooh, look at this,’ Beth said. She pressed a button, and on the 3D representation monitor, the Matilda’s cannons shifted, closing together like a net, transforming into a single, powerful gun. ‘Fire!’
A single condensed blast fired out, surrounded by a web of disorientating smaller blasts. The incoming fighter, confused, turned right into the line of the largest blast, exploding on impact.
‘Woo!’ Paul shouted. ‘Now aim for that command ship.’
‘Unadvisable,’ Harlan5 said. ‘The Matilda, at full extension is only one hundred and eighty meters. That command ship is ten Earth-miles long.’
‘Then we’ll take it out one piece at a time,’ Paul said.
‘We have enough power for six more condensed blasts.’
‘Then we’ll take six pieces!’
Hangar doors were opening on the command ship, and scores of fighters dropped out into space.
‘Might I advise that escape is more of a viable option to ensure our continued survival?’ Harlan5 said. He looked at his screen, but Paul had disengaged the autopilot.
With a growl of excitement, Paul swung the Matilda in toward the fueling station, racing along its smooth surface. Behind them, dozens of fighters followed, some outflanking them, others encircling the station in the opposite direction, aiming to cut them off. As they reached the station’s upper edge, Paul angled in toward the command ship, dodging cannon fire from the ship’s surface. Beth engaged the guns, taking out the cannon towers and any fighters that got in their way.
It was an impressive level of skill, Harlan5 thought, one that would impress both the captain and Caladan, but like all novices who’d done most of their piloting in space school simulators, a mistake was inevitable.
They had just cheered the explosion of a command tower when they took a direct hit to th
e underside.
‘We’ve lost the reserve fuel tank,’ Harlan said. ‘My programming suggests our mission just downgraded from bravado to suicidal. You have the choice now of dying as nobodies or escaping to fight another day.’
Paul looked at Beth. ‘I love you, goddamn,’ he said, wrinkling one corner of his mouth into an expression Harlan5’s database of assumed human features assessed as “punchable”. ‘But I can’t watch you die.’
‘A direct hit would cause near-instantaneous combustion,’ Harlan5 pointed out. ‘None of us would see or know a thing.’
‘Don’t ruin the moment, robot,’ Paul said. ‘Let’s get out of here. Can we make it back to Quaxar System?’
‘We can’t even get out of this sector,’ Harlan5 said. ‘The best we can do is land on Vattla.’
‘Bug world,’ Paul said, then flicked at his uniform as though removing an ant. ‘If that’s the best we have….’
‘It is,’ Harlan said, as the ship shook from another glancing hit. Beth took out two fighters circling in front of them, but it wouldn’t be enough. The net was closing.
‘Then let’s roll,’ Paul said.
‘Does that mean yes?’
‘It means let’s hightail.’
‘My database doesn’t recognize your academy expressions.’
‘He means yes!’ Beth shouted.
Harlan5 nodded. Engaging the rear thrusters, he overrode Paul’s controls, accelerating the Matilda to a speed none of Raylan’s fighters could match, heading straight for the green planet that had appeared as a tiny ball to the left of Frail’s distant star.
Vattla. Even for a droid with only an assumed set of preferences, of all planets in the known galaxy, it was one of the worst.
13
Lia
In the main control center they found a computer running a 3D simulation layout of the test chamber floor. Even though the original scientists had been overthrown by their test subjects during some long-ago unrecorded mutiny, the computer had continued to process the information as though a research team would one day appear to collect it.
Nine hundred original test subjects had dwindled to less than three hundred due to infighting, a series of what the computer labeled “social issues”, which in more detailed notes turned out to be war, mass slaughter, and attempted genocide. However, of the survivors, many had interbred, and now two further generations existed, physically larger than their parents but still suffering from a genetically inherited minimalism. It was, according to the computer’s automated assessment, quite likely within five or six generations, the test subjects’ descendants would have returned to their forefathers’ original size, albeit in a genetically and physiologically altered state.
‘That room’s full of tiny monsters,’ Caladan said, turning the blaster over in his hand. ‘And you want us to go in there. Can’t we blast them or something?’
‘Says you who was preaching about the ethics of leaving them to die.’
‘Well, I hadn’t seen them close up. I think turning off the power would be a small mercy.’
Lia stared at the screen. A slideshow of still images taken by cameras still scanning the test chamber showed deformed miniature abominations representing more than two dozen off-worlder species, human, and human-subspecies.
‘Makes you shiver, doesn’t it?’
Lia nodded, her skin crawling as she glanced at the images between reading passages of the automated computer log. Even more impressive that the miniaturized people had managed to survive and breed was that they had arranged themselves into a microcosm feudal society, grouped around food or water sources which comprised entirely of adapted vending machines or old generators, with a hierarchal system in which the weaker, less populous groups were forced to provide services to the stronger in return for their own share of the consumables.
‘It’s like everything bad about the galaxy in miniature,’ Caladan said. ‘I mean, I knew it was a screwed-up place, but it’s not until you really see it that you get a good view.’
‘They’ve adapted for survival,’ Lia said, shaking her head in disbelief. ‘They united long enough to overthrow the scientists, then they split into clans, enacting wars, alliances, invasions, enslavement. Across the floor of a single chamber. It’s incredible and terrifying at the same time. You’d struggle to fit the Matilda into that space.’
They both watched a short video feed of a group of deformed, miniature Tolgiers torturing a captured group of deformed, miniature Rue-Tik-Tans. One by one the captors removed limbs using knives made from sharpened pieces of plastic, until they were left with small pieces of organic material, which were then tossed into a metal container. A light on the upper surface shone bright, and the group of torturers began a sadistic dance.
‘They’ve built a bio-energy converter,’ Caladan said. ‘And they’re fueling it with the bodies of their enemies.’
‘Not feeling quite so sorry for their offspring now, are you?’
Caladan shrugged. ‘Are you sure there’s nothing we can blast them with?’
‘Jake went to take an inventory of the old storerooms,’ Lia said. She lifted her transmitter to her lips. ‘Jake? You there?’ When no answer came, she looked back at Caladan. ‘Do you think he’s all right?’
‘I think he can look after himself. Quite a skill he has at his disposal.’
‘I told him not to leave the ship. Do you think we’ve been infiltrated?’
‘Do you want me to go back and check? I’m sure you’d be fine going in there alone.’
Lia glared at him. ‘No chance. We’re taking this on together. Remember, none of those things reaches more than knee height. Just be ready.’
‘This is crazy.’
‘Like anything we do isn’t?’
They headed down in an elevator that took them to the test chamber level. Outside, they found a small armored truck designed for entering a hostile zone that had perhaps once been used to explore the moon’s rocky surface. The vacuum chamber where they had found it had kept it from corrosion, but the fuel reserves were low. Its main tank had been broken into long ago and the fuel siphoned off, but a small residual tank had been left untouched.
On its front and sides, using white paint they’d found in one of the shuttle’s storage cupboards, they had written, in every off-worlder language they knew, three statements:
We come in peace.
We wish to trade for fuel.
We have brought you gifts.
‘After you, Captain,’ Caladan said, opening the door.
It’d taken Caladan some work with a blowtorch to fix the damage to the truck’s doors. Lia had no doubt the monstrosities they were about to face had once broken into this truck and pulled its occupants free, subjecting them to some hideous form of torture before killing them and throwing them into their bio-generators. Their blasters were fully charged and the cannon on the truck’s roof loaded, armed, checked, and tested in case they were met with a hostile response. Caladan claimed they would be safe, but Lia could see the doubt in his eyes.
‘OK, here we go,’ she said. ‘Open up.’
The doors had been sealed from the inside. Attempts to communicate with the chamber from the control room had been met with silence, so they had no choice but to blast their way in. Old, the doors parted like paper after a couple of blasts from the cannon. Stamping the accelerator, Caladan lurched the truck forward.
‘We come in peace,’ Lia said through a loudspeaker as they entered the chamber. ‘We wish to speak to your leader.’
They had gone barely a few paces into the gigantic room when the truck began to bump, its wheels catching and spinning as they jerked and skidded. Caladan glared straight ahead through the front windscreen, his mouth set. Lia glanced out of the window and gasped. They were bumping over the bones of hundreds of dead. Tiny and mostly broken up, they resembled white gravel.
‘They’re jamming the axle,’ Caladan growled, steering the truck left and right to free up its wheels
. ‘This isn’t working. We have to go back before we’re stuck.’
Something struck the side window. Lia flinched as a lump of metal bounced away. Another followed, then a whole volley. The glass didn’t crack, but scratches littered its surface.
Up ahead, a heap of accumulated furniture made a rough city. Towering over their heads, Lia peered up just as something came crashing over the top.
‘Left!’ she screamed, pulling the wheel out of Caladan’s hands, jerking them to the side as a huge lump of plastic, metal and glass came crashing down where the truck had been a moment before. Molded and welded together, it was a synthetic boulder created of waste material.
‘Keep talking to them,’ Caladan shouted.
‘I don’t think they’re listening!’
Caladan tried to reverse the truck, but its back wheels spun. ‘I think it’s time to abort the mission.’
‘Look out!’ Lia shouted, but it was too late, as another huge boulder struck the side of the truck, knocking them sideways as it bounced away. The force of the impact left one door crumpled, the locking mechanism damaged.
Figures darted through the trash, approaching cautiously at first, then faster, swarming the truck’s sides, ripping and tearing at the doors. Through the windows Lia saw snapping maws and wild eyes staring out of twisted, deformed faces, their origin species no longer obvious from the abominations they had become.
Caladan pulled his blaster. ‘Damn, if they think we’re going down without a fight—’
‘Can you turn us around?’
Caladan kicked the accelerator. The truck spun in a circle then stopped.
‘That’s not what I meant!’
‘The front axle’s damaged. Probably impact of that rock. We’re stuck. We’ll have to run.’
Lia met his eyes. ‘This hasn’t worked out so well.’
‘Don’t lose faith just yet.’ Caladan forced a smile. ‘Our legs are longer than theirs.’
‘Optimism. I like that. On three.’
‘Three!’ Caladan kicked open the door, knocking away the monstrosities pawing at the window. He blasted into the space, shouting a war cry as the creatures fell back. They howled with hate, anger and pain, serrated teeth snapping at him, claws arched. ‘Come on, let’s see what you’ve got,’ he shouted, blasting everywhere, backing up against the damaged truck for cover while Lia clambered out.