by Chris Ward
Minus eight-hundred-and-seven Celsius. She grimaced. She’d need more than just a jacket and gloves.
A cluster of damaged transport ships stood nearby, lit only by her shuttle’s lights. They looked dead, abandoned. She did a video zoom and found a serial number on one. The shuttle’s database confirmed it as registered to the Trill System government.
‘Mother? Where are you?’ she whispered, heading down into the hold where she found an extreme cold-resistant spacesuit among several in the shuttle’s store. She pulled it on then loaded herself with as much weaponry and spare oxygen containers as she could carry.
Outside, the suit’s temperature gauges were off the scale. A headlight was her only source of light as she walked past the other spacecraft and into the cave, aware that the slightest malfunction of her suit would leave her dead, her body never to be found. The gravel felt light underfoot, vacuumed dry of even the slightest hint of moisture, although the gravity was near human-natural, making her tire quickly as she walked under the burden of the heavy suit.
She began to feel she was too late, that the ships were a legacy of people captured and imprisoned elsewhere on the moon, when her headlight caught a distinct shape in the gravel.
A footprint.
Lia quickened her pace, moving deeper into a tunnel that rose high overhead, opening out into a large cavern.
And there, on the other side, she saw lights.
Rock gave way to the angular metal of a hidden settlement. Atomic generators hummed, and lights glowed through glass portholes. Lia forced herself to stay measured, to walk safely, to remember the suit’s limitations, when all she wanted to do was run for the nearest airlock door.
She entered an old GMP override code into the airlock’s outer control panel, and the first of two doors slid open, paused long enough for her to step inside, then slid closed again. She waited until gauges and dials on the inner door had risen to safe levels, then pulled off her helmet and took a deep breath of musty, dry air.
Shapes had gathered behind the frosted glass of the inner airlock door. Lia could barely contain her excitement as the door slid open and a plump, gray-haired woman stepped forward, a smile on her face, her arms open wide. ‘Lia, my darling, you came.’
The hug was awkward due to the spacesuit, but Lia leaned close, smelling the familiar scent of the other woman’s hair. ‘Mother,’ she said. ‘I’m so glad you’re safe.’
Trina Covehill gave Lia a tour of the old mining station, a wry smile never far from her face. ‘We came through the wormhole two Earth-weeks ago,’ she said. ‘We got in contact with Loam’s government and were required to report to a base on this moon. However, on approach, one of our convoy picked up a distress transmission, warning that refugee convoys were being detained as prisoners in work camps where many were being killed or tortured. We aborted our scheduled landing, and a group of fighters came after us. We downed them, but we lost half our ships. After we escaped, we scoured the ground for somewhere to hide, and Bennett found this place. We had enough equipment on board our ships to get the base’s systems running, but it’s temporary. It’s been abandoned for hundreds of years. We managed to hook up some food processing machines and an air generator, but they’ll run out of power in a month or so. We have thirty-seven people here. We can’t hope to keep them all alive, but if we return to our ships we’ll be hunted again, and if Loam isn’t safe, where can we go?’
Lia frowned. ‘This isn’t right. Phevius System should be a safe haven for refugees.’
‘We thought so too. Trill System is overrun, with only a few outlying fire planets and moons still free from Raylan Climlee and the Bareleon Helix. Cable, Feint, most of the other major planets… they’ve been decimated, wiped out.’
Lia pulled her mother close. ‘I thought I’d lost you, too. I sent a transmission, but I heard nothing. I didn’t dare to hope, not after what happened with my Stephen and Andrew.’
At mention of Lia’s long-dead husband and son, Trina’s eyes widened. ‘What happened?’
‘Raylan tricked me into thinking they were alive. I nearly gave up my friends in exchange.’
‘He tricked you?’
‘He showed them to me, claimed they were still alive, and all this time they’d been his prisoners.’
‘Is that possible?’
‘I can’t believe it, but I have no proof. I try not to think about it, but as Caladan says, if they’re really alive, Raylan will keep them alive. He gains nothing by killing them.’
‘Then you still have hope?’
Lia wiped a tear from her eye. ‘I’ve never had hope,’ she said. ‘But I do have a dream. Isn’t that what keeps us all going? Dreams?’
Trina cupped Lia’s face. ‘I could never have prayed I would have such a wonderful daughter,’ she said. ‘You have made me proud a million times over.’
‘I’m going to stop him, Mother,’ she said. ‘I’m going to stop Raylan Climlee and free Trill System.’
‘How?’
Lia thought of Caladan, hopefully on Galanth by now and in possession of a transportation barge capable of moving the radiation core from the research facility. ‘I know some great people,’ she said. ‘When all this is done, Trill is free, and Raylan is just a bad memory. There will some names people never forget. Mine won’t be among them, but they’ll be people I have known, and I’ll forever be grateful for that.’
‘If there’s anything I can do to help, just ask.’
Lia nodded. She looked around her at the empty steel corridors of the mining facility, the automatic lights turned to their lowest setting to save power.
‘Where’s Bennett?’ she said. ‘I would love to talk with him.’
Trina smiled. ‘He’s outside. He doesn’t need oxygen like the rest of us, and I think he found these cramped corridors a little claustrophobic.’
Lia donned her space suit and followed the tunnel Trina had indicated. It continued for a few hundred meters before ending at a wide shaft that rose both up to the moon’s surface and down into black depths. With no way of knowing which way Bennett had gone, she opted for her own preferred route, switching on small flame jets in her boots to slowly lift her up the rock walls to the surface.
As she neared the blanket of stars overhead, she switched off her light. Everything around her became dark. She sensed rather than felt the shaft’s rock wall, bored smooth by some giant, ancient mining machine.
She only knew she had reached the shaft’s top when the star field spread out around her, an impossibly beautiful panorama. With no synthetic light to taint it and Phevius star itself so distant, the universe and its infinite galaxies revealed itself.
Lia sat on the rocks and switched off her jet propulsion units. She just stared up at the sky, wondering if she was seeing places she had been or would one day go.
‘It’s beautiful, is it not?’ came a voice inside her helmet.
The initial shock was soothed by the calming tone, the volume turned down respectfully low. ‘I apologize for not announcing my presence sooner, but it took some time to detect and then patch into your frequency.’
What Lia had thought were rocks rose up beside her, a massive humanoid shape silhouetted against the sky. Even with no natural light, Lia could tell the huge, ancient robot was now missing the human tissue and organic camouflage she remembered from their last meeting. Stripped bare of any disguise, Bennett now showed himself in his true form, albeit as a mere shadow.
‘Bennett. I am happy to see you again. I’ve never forgotten how you helped me.’
‘Ah, Lianetta,’ came the voice again, ‘I live to serve. I don’t live for much else, do I?’
‘I assumed you were lost when Trill System fell. You and my mother also.’
‘We should have been,’ Bennett said. ‘We got lucky.’
The ancient robot lowered himself down, becoming one with the rocks again. Lia glanced in his direction but saw nothing. The temptation to switch on her light to take a look at him was gr
eat, but she knew how disrespectful that would be. Bennett, one of the few remaining individuals of a race as old as any in the known galaxy, was hunted along with his peers in all systems. The supposed knowledge contained in his antiquated body could, if rumors were to be believed, build or crush empires.
‘Why are you out here? Aren’t you cold?’
A gravelly chuckle through her helmet’s speakers showed Bennett’s mirth. ‘I’ve felt more than cold this long, endless night,’ he said. ‘But don’t fear for me. I have ways to protect those parts of myself which might be affected.’
‘You helped me once before,’ Lia said. ‘I wonder if you can help me again. What’s going on here in Phevius System?’
Bennett’s silhouette shifted. ‘You have the means to see for yourself, I think. On the other side of this moon, you will find a detention base. There you will find your answers.’
32
Beth
‘Hold on,’ Davar gasped in a rare moment when he could speak, as though Beth needed to be told. Her wrists ached from gripping his arms, and her knuckles had taken multiple scrapes as the river dragged them down narrow tunnels, bumping them through invisible subterranean rapids that were nothing more than a suffocating, terrifying torrent of liquid. They’d been dipping and bubbling through the river for what felt like hours, the water’s passage getting steeper and steeper until Beth was certain they were heading straight underground. A couple of times the jarring riverbed had fallen out from beneath them, and they had found themselves briefly airborne, splashing down into some inky black pool before the pull of the river took them on.
And then, at last, a glimmer of light came from up ahead.
The tunnel entrance grew larger as the river dragged them closer, a semi-circle of blinding brightness which hurt Beth’s eyes. She wanted to see, to know if they were out, or whether this was some diamond-clad cavern of illusion.
‘Don’t let go of me,’ Davar’s voice came in her ear, but whether it was for her protection or his that he was imploring, she didn’t know.
The light grew brighter. The rushing stopped, and for a moment, silence surrounded her.
Then they were dropping, plummeting into whitewater at the bottom of a jagged cliff. Beth hung on to Davar as long as she could, but as they went under, the raging water ripped them apart. She kicked out as hard as she could, desperate for air, and her foot struck something hard. She let the water take her, pushing her with the current, then kicked out again, shoving off the riverbed and up through the churning water.
She broke the surface, gasping for air. The water threatened to take her back under, but she flapped her arms, managing to keep herself afloat. Trees loomed, flashing past as the water pulled her onwards. Then, when she thought her strength was gone, she bumped against something which caught her.
The fallen tree lay across the river. Beth clung on to it, inching toward the bank. Her strength was fading, but dry land was so close she could almost reach it. Just a little farther—
Fingers closed over her wrist. ‘I’ve got you,’ Davar said. He pulled her out onto the bank and they lay beside each other, gasping for air, their bodies soaked and rapidly cooling in the cold air beneath the trees. ‘I thought I’d lost you back there,’ Davar said. ‘I got washed against the bank. I saw you surface but you were right out in the middle.’
‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘We’re one-a-piece now,’ Davar said. He tried to laugh, but he only coughed water over both of them.
Beth gave him a half-hearted slap on the stomach. ‘I lost Harlan in there,’ she said, sitting up, the euphoria of surviving the fall into the water quickly subsiding. ‘I didn’t realize at the time, but he lost his grip after the queen started to destroy the cavern. He gave me a chance to escape. We need to go back and find him.’
‘We barely escaped with our lives. Don’t worry, he’s a droid. They’re tough. I think we have worse problems to deal with first.’
Beth followed Davar’s gaze. Through the trees, the cliff they had fallen from was visible, the waterfall from the cave entrance a billowing streak of white. Above the cliff, however, a cloud of smoke rose into the air, while beneath them, they could still feel the earth rumbling.
‘The moss,’ Beth said, but Davar shook his head.
‘You weren’t as close to it as I was,’ he said. ‘It would have burned out by now. That smoke’s not drifting, it’s coming from active flames.’
They shared a glance. ‘The ships,’ Beth said.
‘And Paul.’
‘Paul?’
‘I didn’t have a chance to tell you. You know what he’s like. He ran off on a one-man crusade to battle those ships.’
‘You think he could have something to do with that smoke?’
Davar shrugged. ‘Only one way to find out.’
Shrugging off the aches and pains from a dozen cuts and bruises, they made their way back through the forest, following an uphill trail in the spectral gloom left by the threadbare net of moss that still hung among the trees. As they left the water behind them, the sounds of whatever awaited up ahead grew clearer. Occasional explosions punctuated a background rumble like a brewing storm.
The forest opened up at the foot of a loose scree slope leading up to a ridgeline. Davar took Beth’s hand and together they negotiated their way upslope, pausing and taking cover whenever the rumbling from over the ridge shook loose stones down toward them.
Finally, they cleared the scree and found themselves on open rock. Beth, despite the cold, had worked up a sweat, but Davar, only recently recovered from his injuries, had begun to struggle. Not far from the ridgeline he sat down on a flat rock and waved her forward.
‘You go ahead,’ he said. ‘I know what we’re likely to see. I need to rest.’
‘Davar—’
‘It’s not far. I’ll follow.’
Beth hesitated. ‘I can wait with you.’
Davar shook his head. ‘I’ll just be a minute,’ he said. ‘Go on.’
With one last look back, Beth moved on up the slope. Every muscle ached, and with the trembling ground repeatedly throwing her off her feet, each time she climbed off the ground she felt would be the last time she could manage.
Somehow she made it. As the ridge flattened out, the sounds from the plain beyond intensified to a deafening roar as the plain came into view. Beth gasped, slipping to her knees.
‘The queen…’
Gray clouds plumed from a rent in the earth hundreds of meters wide. More smoke came from two crashed and burning spacecraft, one lying atop a bed of trees, the other broken nearly in two by a collision with a ridgeline to the north. The third hung from the jaws of the biggest creature Beth had ever seen, a hulking black behemoth so large it seemed to suck the light from the air around it. Its features were indistinct. Appendages shifted and scrabbled at the earth, tilting the creature from side to side, its body slumped half in and half out of the cavern from where it had burst free.
The third spacecraft hung from a set of jaws so large the Matilda would have appeared a mere speck in comparison. With a long crunch, a dozen or more pincers ripped layers of metal free and spat them out like garbage. Then, with a squeal that made Beth dive for cover with her hands clamped over her ears, the creature turned and flung the spaceship toward the ridgeline.
With a single working thruster boosting its trajectory, Beth only became aware of its approach as a shadow fell overhead. She looked up, saw a burning wreck of metal fly overhead, then the hillside below her was breaking apart beneath the crushing impact as the ship touched down.
Beth sat up, at first unable to comprehend what had happened. She heard the queen lurching about in the valley below, the shriek of metal suggesting she had turned her attention back to one of the other wrecked ships.
‘Davar…’ She tried to get up from where she crouched but her feet slipped out from under her and she crashed to the ground. On all fours, she scrambled over the rocks, not caring as they bit into he
r palms and knees.
The ship lying against the hillside was a smoking ruin. Great rents in its side showed where the queen’s immense pincers had shredded metal like paper. Living quarters, cargo holds, engine rooms, all lay exposed through holes in a hull that had been punctured in a dozen places.
Beth saw it all through glazed eyes. She stared at the ground below where it had landed, at a place where Davar should have been. ‘No—’
He had been resting, regaining his strength, exhausted after coming for her in the tunnels. Davar, whom she realized now she loved, whom she’d never had the chance to tell.
Gone.
‘Davar… please.’
She scrambled over a rocky outcrop and found herself with the wrecked ship looming over her. From behind came the queen’s furious shrieks as she directed her anger at the two other ruined ships.
In the crash, several bodies had been thrown from the ship. Beth stepped over a dead Shadowman officer, his uniform stained with black blood, one leg missing. Others lay nearby, and there were more off-worlders too: she recognized a couple of Rue-Tik-Tan and even an Oufolani in an engineer’s tunic.
No Davar.
A groan came from behind her, a human groan.
She spun. A man lodged into the rocks was trying to lift himself up. Beth recognized the uniform and her heart leaped as she scrambled over.
‘Davar?’
The figure rolled over. Eyes opened, then widened. A smile creased tired lips.
‘Goddamn, am I pleased to see you,’ Paul said.
33