by Chris Ward
‘You’re not. At least you wouldn’t be if you were pure human. But you’re Farsi, so you’re a bit more battle-hardened than us weaklings.’
‘Damn right.’ Caladan tried to sit up, but the pain was absolute. ‘What happened?’
‘We bargained. We found Ken Norf-Oven an old starship from a junkyard hidden behind a ridge. We traded it for your remains.’
‘My remains?’
‘You’re a bit of a mess.’
‘Thanks. What’s new?’
Lia shifted, and Caladan realized he lay on a gurney. ‘We’ll get you into the shuttle’s recuperation tank. A few days in there and you’ll be as good as… well, not new, that’s impossible. As good as you were before.’
‘I’ll take that as a complement.’
‘That’s the best you’ll get.’
‘Thanks for saving my ass, Lia. Or at least what’s left of it.’
Lia smiled. She lifted a hand and touched the side of his face in a rare show of tenderness. For a moment something interesting flickered in her eyes. Then she slapped his cheek and winked. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
‘Finally. Next time you’re flying and I’m reading the map. You’ve got a ship, right?’
Lia frowned. ‘We took enough fuel rods from the cruiser we found to power the shuttle.’
Caladan shook his head, the effort sending shudders of pain down his neck. ‘Please don’t tell me the shuttle’s all we’ve got?’
‘It’ll get us out of Quaxar System. That’ll be enough.’
‘No, it won’t.’
‘What do you mean?’
Caladan let out a deflated sigh. Was it possible for things to go worse? ‘They told me they disabled the stasis-ultraspace drive, in case you double-crossed them.’
Lia scowled. She whistled through her teeth and dropped her head, and for a moment Caladan saw the same sense of defeat in her that he felt in himself.
‘Then we have a small problem.’
21
Lia
‘Please tell me they didn’t do what I’m afraid they were going to do,’ Lia asked Jake, who was hunched over the controls. ‘They didn’t take the cruiser over that ridge and destroy the other ships hidden there. They didn’t, did they?’
Jake looked up. ‘I think we need a glass of Stillwater.’
Lia slumped in the seat, her head in her hands. ‘Then we’re stuck here all over again.’
‘At least we don’t have to worry about those munchkins, because they’ve all gone,’ Jake said. ‘That’s worthy of a drink at least.’
‘That generator we were looking for which got us into all this trouble in the first place…?’
‘They took it.’
‘What about the fuel rods from the transport? They might be just enough—’
‘Gone.’
‘So, we have nothing.’
‘We have the fuel rods we took from the cruiser. They’re enough to get us off this forsaken moon, Stillwater be praised.’
‘And get us where?’
‘Without that stasis-ultraspace drive, we could power up to full speed and hope to make it back to that fueling station before this moon’s orbit takes us too far out. If the Stillwater’s granting us luck, it might still be there.’
‘Luck?’
‘If we can escape once, we can escape twice.’
‘You really think they’ll be as careless next time?’
Jake lifted an eyebrow. ‘Of course not. But our choices are a little limited.’
Lia shrugged. ‘Let’s do it.’
She left Jake to set up the launch sequence and went through into the medical bay where Caladan lay inside the recuperation tank, inert in the viscous gel which would slowly repair his myriad wounds. Lia wiped away greasy finger marks in the dust on the capsule’s glass surface and stared down at the static face of her pilot. ‘Sorry about all this,’ she said, running a finger over the glass. ‘I’m not doing a great job as captain right now. Perhaps we should consider a reshuffle of management structure.’
Of course no reply came. Lia swallowed, wondering if she was about to shed tears over the man she’d spent the last decade joyfully deriding. ‘I made a mistake,’ Lia whispered. ‘I made a lot of them. If you come through this all right, I promise I’ll try to at least make a few less. Deal?’
She wished Caladan’s eyes would open, but he was held in stasis. She had set his initial recovery sequence for one Earth-week, but the extent of his injuries meant it might take a while longer. Whether they had the fuel supplies to survive that long, she didn’t know.
Beneath her, the floor rumbled as Jake lifted the shuttle off. Lia headed back up to the bridge, where Jake was sitting in the co-pilot’s chair, leaning over the controls.
‘We have enough fuel to get out into the shipping lanes,’ he said. ‘It would practically run us dry, but we could put out a distress signal or try to hitch a ride.’
Lia scowled. ‘It’s risky but might be our only chance. Are there no deep-space trading outposts or fueling stations nearby?’
‘None that I can find.’
‘You sometimes get private or rogue stations operating in the outer systems. Sure, they’re mostly for smugglers and bandits, but I’m on first name terms with the owners of a few. Keep looking.’
‘Will do.’
Lia took a seat at the communications terminal. She pulled up information on the base that had uploaded since their initial landing and went over what had happened. Ken Norf-Oven and his miniature army had gone, taking the Maybelline III and blasting into stasis-ultraspace in search of adventure, but not before turning the cruiser’s guns on the spacecraft junkyard. With enough time she might find a few more salvageable fuel rods, but what their shuttle no longer had was a working stasis-ultraspace drive. She had checked, just to make sure. Without it, their options were limited.
‘Do it,’ she said to Jake at last. ‘Set a course for the fueling station where we jumped the prison ship. We’ll turn ourselves in, hope for leniency.’
Jake turned to her and lifted an eyebrow. ‘Are you sure, Captain? Such a soft end-plan for someone so revered? I have to point out as the good Caladan’s current replacement and curator of the eternal Stillwater that your plan blows.’
Lia kicked the foot of her terminal. ‘Well, what do you suggest?’
‘May I offer a little bit of journalistic creativity, a little bending of the truth?’
Lia shrugged. ‘If you think it’ll help.’
‘We put out a signal to say we’ve captured a notorious criminal, but we sustained damage during the firefight. We have him in recoup, but our systems are dying. However, there’s a reward for his safe capture and presentation to… I don’t know. I’ll let you choose an appropriate government but only if he lives. Dead, he’s worthless. We’re willing to split the reward with any ship’s captain with the resources to keep our prestigious prisoner alive.’
Lia frowned. ‘I guess that might work. But what about our transmission code? It’ll alert any nearby ships that we’re using a stolen shuttle.’
Jake grinned. ‘While you were playing tag with those munchkins, I took the liberty of switching the transmitter out of our shuttle for the one in that diplomatic cruiser. Whatever we send now will carry a political authority code. It’ll keep us hidden a while longer from any mercenaries combing Quaxar System for our whereabouts.’
‘You never cease to surprise me. OK, let’s try it.’
Jake pulled up the transmissions data and with a few of Lia’s politically worded alterations, they set the transmission to send. ‘All done,’ Jake said. ‘Now we wait.’ He held up his flask. ‘Stillwater?’
Lia nodded. ‘Don’t mind if I do.’
Jake passed her the flask and she took a sip of something cool but utterly tasteless. In fact, were she to put a label on it, she would have said it really was still water.
‘Delicious,’ she said.
Jake grinned. ‘The best. It flows freely back on Ra
yol, in rivers and streams, pooling in great amounts we call lakes.’
‘Amazing,’ Lia said. ‘I’ve never been to Rayol. I don’t know that anyone has.’
‘A select few are allowed in. There is only one official wormhole for visitors, the code of which is changed for each entering ship, requiring all visitors to abide by the system’s rules or be trapped there.’ He grinned. ‘Of course, there are unofficial ones.’
‘Like the one you took?’
‘I’m a direct government employee. I know all of them.’
‘Maybe I’ll visit there someday. If I can think of a decent reason.’
Jake shrugged. ‘There aren’t many. Too many rules a fun game don’t make. We do have Stillwater, though. Praise be.’
‘Praise be.’
As Lia leaned back in her chair, she realized she still knew very little about Jake. During their brief moments of deep-space they had all rested, and while stuck on the scientific research base their conversations had been limited to those necessary for their immediate continued survival. She could barely remember what their original deal had been.
‘You want to get into Trill System?’ she said.
‘Yes. If I can bring back insider news of the war there, I’ll be very famous and very rich back in Cask System. Although, neither can shine a light to the prestige. The galaxy is too wide, don’t you think? Too many names. Too few ever remembered. If I can seal a coup, mine, at least for a while, will be known across all of Cask System.’
‘Better in lights than under spotlights,’ Lia said. ‘I’ve been hunted for ten years for something I didn’t even do. I had no choice but to escape and I turned into a worse criminal than those I used to hunt. The GMP made a mold for me, and I fitted myself into it.’
‘Even when there isn’t a war, there’s a war,’ Jake said, making Lia frown. ‘If it’s not outside, it’s the one you wage in your own heart. You can only be you, and this is coming from a man who can be anything I want to be under the circumstances. Isn’t that strange?’
Lia smiled. ‘Strange indeed. Pass me that Stillwater. Would you mind if I added a little whiskey?’
‘Whatever caters to personal tastes.’
She was awoken by a bleeping noise. Jake had gone through into the small hold to take up one of the bedchambers, but Lia had stayed on the bridge to monitor their progress. She now found herself sitting up in the pilot’s chair, a glittering field of stars her only companion.
The beeping came from the transmissions console. Lia brought up the data, wondering if someone had answered their distress call, but it came from something else, a private transmission code of her own she had added to the system during their incoming journey in the hope of picking up a distress signal from the Matilda.
At the first sound of the voice, Lia sat up, her face smarting, sweat beading on her forehead.
No.
It couldn’t be.
‘Lia, my darling. Perhaps you think I’m dead, and you’ve been mourning me. It isn’t true. Not yet. We made it off Cable just before the invaders came. We made it to Phevius System through a wormhole before it closed, and hid on Steer, a moon around the fire planet of Loam. I am here with Bennett and a handful of other survivors, but something is going on. We are hunted, persecuted, when we should be safe. My darling, we need you. We need your help. Mother.’
The transmission ended. Lia stared at the console. The words were those of a ghost. Trina Covehill, her mother, had been on Cable when the Bareleon Helix attacked Trill System. While the planet of Feint had taken the full destructive power of the Helix’s attention, Cable had been swarmed by Raylan Climlee’s armies. Lia had given her mother up for dead.
But now… she was alive?
Could this be another one of Raylan’s tricks? He’d tricked her into thinking her husband and child were still alive, something Caladan had convinced her were a lie. Even if at the back of Lia’s mind she still imagined them trapped somewhere on one of his ships, she had accepted their deaths ten years before. How could he have known about her mother, though? Trina had lived on Cable for years, leading a peaceful life under a secret identity. For a while they had flown together, but her mother had always preferred solid ground and they had again gone their separate ways.
It had to be true. The message had mentioned Bennett, a secretive, ancient creature of unknown origin, one of the last of a race hunted across the galaxy for their knowledge and safekeeping of archaic, long-forgotten technology. No one knew about Bennett’s existence except Lia and her mother.
Phevius System should have been a safe place, far from Raylan Climlee’s armies and the terrifying Bareleon horde. The Intergalactic Code of Communication required that all peaceful systems receive refugees in the event of an interstellar war.
Yet Trina had said they were hunted.
Lia gave a slow nod. She saved the transmission to her private database then recorded a short reply:
Hold on. I’m coming.
22
Beth
They sat frozen while all around them a sea of grazing beasts hacked at the moss with sharp pincers before shoveling the spongy substance into their mouths. A few times Evattlans had approached the tree branches where they crouched, pincers rising into the air as a softer organ hidden underneath vibrated, a form of nose sniffing at the air. But each time, to the relief of all of them, they had moved on.
The moss’s level was lowering as the Evattlans ate through it. Tightly packed at first, it became softer underfoot as it expanded, and Paul and Davar had already given up letting it support them and had lodged themselves into the tree branches. Beth, smaller and lighter, still stood atop it, while Harlan5 had lowered his body into the moss itself, leaving only his head showing.
The waiting was the worst thing, and Beth could barely imagine what it did to Paul. On Harlan5’s insistence, they’d turned off all their blasters and other systems, leaving nothing but their own bodies to generate heat. Sitting as still as they could, they had watched as thousands of Evattlans clambered across the moss, taking up positions so regularly spaced apart they were like the pieces on a single massive board game.
As Harlan5 had said, the workers were each the size of an Earth-elephant, towering above them, cutting and chewing clumps of moss the size of a human in each mouthful. At first Beth had wondered how their spindly bodies could consume so much until she noticed the slowly expanding pouches on the backs of each, which now, after several hours of continual eating, outsized the creatures themselves three to one. How their legs could support such a mass, she was desperate to ask Harlan5, but the droid had told them to keep as quiet as possible. The Evattlans had no ears but their feet could detect vibrations in the air, and anything they considered a threat would be dealt with mercilessly.
Beth would never forget the monkey.
It had appeared from the branches at the top of one of the trees, screeching with terror as it raced across the moss. It had got past three Evattlans before one turned, scooped it up in its pincers, and reduced it to shreds of bloody flesh.
Uneaten, its remains had lain there for nearly an hour before falling through a widening gap in the vegetation. Even Paul, who’d been whispering about making a run for it, had been silent since.
All at once, the creatures stopped eating. Beth stared. As far into the distance as she could see, the Evattlans stood stock still, as though listening to something only they could hear. Then, as one, they burrowed back down into the moss, making great hollows in the surface to allow for the entry of their great cargos of stored food.
In less than a minute, the threadbare, crumbling moss field stood empty.
‘They are returning to their nests,’ Harlan5 said. ‘Those were workers. They’ve taken food back for their adolescents and for their queen, which will soon lay more eggs. Now might be a good time to get back to the Matilda.’
The moss was no longer strong enough to support them. Instead, helped by Harlan5, they clambered down the tree to the forest f
loor.
Everything looked far different now. Light shone down through the remains of the moss and pooled in great circles where the Evattlans had pushed their swollen bodies through. Encouraged by the light, new sprouts were budding and emerging from the root tendrils but growing at a far slower rate to before.
‘There’s still loads left,’ Beth whispered to Harlan5.
‘Soon the Evattlan young will emerge,’ Harlan replied. ‘Once they’re strong enough. My information on their growth cycle is incomplete, but my programming estimates that they will likely feed beneath ground at first, enter a period of growth, then emerge to continue feeding while the workers tend to the fresh eggs.’
‘The queens,’ Paul said. ‘I mean, the workers were pretty massive. How big are the queens?’
‘Are you sure you want to know?’
Paul shivered. ‘It could be important.’
‘It is possible that across the entirety of the distance we have walked, we could have traversed across the back of no more than a single queen. The planet is porous, filled with tunnels. The queens cannot move far, and they do not come above ground, but all that food you watched being collected, perhaps half will feed her.’
‘She’s hungry,’ Davar croaked, wiping sweat off his brow.
‘An eating machine,’ Harlan5 said. ‘Luckily we’re not on the menu.’
‘Is that a joke?’
‘My programming says it is.’
‘Is now an appropriate time?’
‘I have no concept of appropriate time.’ His eye lights twinkled. ‘Actually I do, but my programming prefers to ignore it.’
‘How lucky for us.’
Harlan5 cocked his head. ‘In the interests of lightening a dire situation, yes, it is.’
‘Look!’ Beth said, pointing between the trees and root stems of the moss. ‘The ships. They’re coming down. Since we’re this close, let’s go see what they’re up to.’
Harlan5 suggested it would be better to return to the Matilda, but with the Evattlans gone to ground Paul was keen to follow Beth, leaving Davar to decide. Grimacing at the robot, he nodded at Beth.