“Oh very well,” Cimma said. “Though don’t come screaming to me when something awful happens to both of you.”
Diva and Grace exchanged glances, brimful of amusement. “We won’t,” they chorused. Then the girls pressed the orthogel bracelets which Arcan had given them, and disappeared.
Cimma gave a disgruntled look at where they had been standing and then let herself relax back into her orthosupport. Truth be known, she was feeling exhausted. Not that she wouldn’t be able to carry on – she was up to anything! It’s just that she was feeling nostalgic for a long lie-down in the sarcophagus she had left behind in the skyrise on Valhai.
THE GIRLS FOUND themselves standing on the old orbital station above Kwaide, for Diva vaguely reminiscent of her journey to Valhai almost three years before. It was cold, abandoned and metallic. They began to explore, warily, each slipping a mask pack on because the station was in lock down and the air was bound to be unbreathable.
“No sign of any life up here,” Diva said.
“Nothing. He isn’t here either.”
Still, they made their way carefully right through the installations, checking to see if there were any sign of Six. It wasn’t until they reached the lower parts that their efforts paid off.
“Diva! Look!”
“What? Yes, you’re right. That belongs to Six.” Diva held up the kris blade that Six habitually carried. “He is here!”
Grace shook her head. “He was here,” she corrected. “They have taken him away. They must have had some space traders and space freighters tied up here. They will have spirited him away in one of them. They know it would be almost impossible for Arcan to find him in space. They will keep him somewhere away from all the systems.” She spread her hands apart. “What can we do now?”
For once Diva looked at a loss. “I have no idea,” she confessed. “He could be anywhere in the system, and Arcan has no possibility of finding him.” She kicked out at the metallic console in front of her. “We could check out the other orbital platforms from time to time in case they put in at one of those, but if they stay in deep space then we won’t find them. All we can do is wait. And I hate waiting!”
SIX WAS FEELING caged-in. He strode up and down the tiny cell in the Sellite space trader like a Cesan catumba in front of a vaniven. There was absolutely nothing he could do about his situation. Even if he escaped from the holding cell, which seemed an impossible task, he was still a captive in outer space on a small starship. He was going nowhere. He gave an ironic smile to himself. At least last time he had been able to sign to Diva, in the same situation.
This captivity was almost unbearable though. If the last one had been bad, this was ten times worse. They had given him nothing to do, no interscreen to teach or entertain. He had no idea how long he had been held here as the monotonous days had passed into weeks. He breathed heavily. It was a waste of time. He went back to pacing up and down, up and down, up and down. Instead of soothing him it jangled his nerves even more. What was happening out there in the worlds outside? Were the others safe? Better not to think about that. There was no way that even Arcan would find him now, trapped in a spaceship heading for the region of Nomus, the failed star.
There was the sound of scuffling outside the heavily barred door, and it opened slowly to reveal the unwelcome figure of Atheron in person, his white hair and beard not fully disguising the twitching inquisitiveness of his face. He was enjoying himself; that much was clear.
“Ah – Six. Having a smooth voyage, one hopes?”
Six forced himself to control any possible urges to crash his fist into the man’s face. He made his lips smile. “Perfect; thank you. Such a pleasure to be travelling the universe again.”
“Good, good. Well, I know you will be overjoyed to hear that we have spent some of this time … shall we say … cementing our relationship with the Coriolans, through the kind auspices of their leader, Maximus of Mesteta … I believe you have met …?”
“We are acquainted, yes. I spent some … err … time in his palace.”
“How quaint. I am sure that must have been a most pleasurable stay for you both. Of course, you are a great friend of his daughter, are you not?”
Six regarded him as stonily as he could.
“Yes. Well – moving on – as I was telling you, there have been some new treaties, beneficial we hope to both parties, and as part of those new treaties the Coriolans have been kind enough to share their excellent knowledge of herbal recipes with the Sellites.”
Six’s face fell. Suddenly he had a nasty feeling that he knew where this was going.
“Ah … I see you are ahead of me, Point five six. You always were a quick pupil. You have guessed what the good news is, I think?”
This time Six actually took a small step towards the man, before being able to bring himself under control.
Atheron smiled again, his nose twitching in anticipation, eager to continue. “Exactly. They have provided us with a certain amount of extract of quenera root, and I have had the brilliant idea of allowing you to be the first subject I shall try it on.”
He signed to two heavy guards who were filling up the doorway with their muscles, and they came quickly and efficiently into the cell, hauled the Kwaidian prisoner out, and then half dragged, half carried him along a metal corridor and into a large chamber with stasis pods lining part of the bulkhead. Six was pulled over to two heavy rings set into the ceiling in the middle of the metal hold, and the shackles snapped shut around his wrists. He was left standing, but his movements were limited to a very small circle around his fastened hands. He closed his eyes. Not again! He was going to be forced to betray his friends. Desperately, he tried to find a way out of his situation, but there was nothing he could do. His very helplessness at the situation made him rage against it. At that moment he hated his body for its imminent betrayal of him. He knew from past experience that there was nothing to be done in the face of the quenera root. He would babble out answers to whatever questions Atheron asked. He hated himself with a ferocity that would have given him the strength to kill himself if they had let him loose.
His eyes futilely killed Atheron over and over again as the Sellite slowly filled a long syringe with the precious liquid. The Sellite moistened his lips as he counted the volume of the liquid carefully. His eyes flickered over once again to Six. “They recommend a dosage of twenty microcubits,” he said, “but I think, in your case, we could double that, don’t you agree? After all, you have, I hear, already been in contact with the product. You might well have built up a resistance to the … treatment.”
Six mentally slipped his blade through the throbbing jugular vein which he could just see beating at the back of the white beard.
“Yes, yes. I can see that you hate me,” Atheron smiled. “Don’t worry, I won’t hold it against you.”
I am going to kill you. Six blinked. Had he said that out loud?
“Now, I am afraid I have to put this syringe inside your neck. Yes, I can see that you might find it difficult to control yourself, not to worry though, these two gentlemen will help you to hold very still.”
Four hands clamped Six’s head in a Sell vice, and he felt the cold liquid as it passed directly into his system. The voices began to recede into an echoing blackness, and he fought to stop the waves of dizziness from taking him over.
WHEN HE WOKE up, it was even worse than before. He was still fastened to the iron rings. He had about ten centimeters of slack on each ring, and that was all. He looked down. They had taken his clothes away, leaving him tied naked to the rings set in the centre of the cargo bay. He swallowed. His jaw moved, and he felt for the first time utter defeat. A wave of tiredness swept over him. What if he just gave up? What if he simply closed his eyes, accepted his fate and drifted into comfortable unconsciousness. Hazily he let his mind drift back to the hard frozen ground on Kwaide, when he had been looking after his sisters. It seemed an inordinately long time ago. It was fading, and he felt he too was fadi
ng, was disappearing from life itself. His head drooped down onto his chest. The watching Atheron gave a faintly triumphant smile.
Chapter 8
SIX OPENED BLEARY eyes and hoped beyond hope that the scene in front of him would have changed. It hadn’t. He twisted on the end of the chains like a longfish on a hook. The conjunction of stars and planets were clearly not in his favour just at the moment, he thought savagely. Then he pulled himself up with a mental rebuke. Come on! You can do better than this. You always think of something.
Not true. Grace was the one who always came up with something, and Diva the one who wouldn’t give up, come what may. Six narrowed his eyes as he thought of the Coriolan girl. There was simply no way he was going to spend any longer being dandled on the end of these chains. Diva would certainly have done something about her situation, and he was not going to be less than her. Kwaidian nomuses may not be renowned in the system for their inspiring feats, but here was a chance to put the records straight. There was nobody – nobody – who could beat him when it came to bravery. And it was about time he pulled himself together and showed her mulchiness just how nifty his best could be.
Six began to examine his situation from all angles. He was suspended from unbreakable chains, inside a starship which was somewhere near Nomus – an inhospitable environment which could allow nobody to survive. He knew that Atheron was also on board, plus the two guards, and he had to assume there would be at least one other Sellite manning the spacecraft.
Easy, he thought. All I have to do is break free of the chains, take over control of the ship and head it back to Valhai with Atheron and his cronies locked up firmly. He gazed around him, hoping to spot something to make all that come true. Come on! What would Diva have done? Where is that insignificant little something which was going to make all the difference between success and failure?
At least they haven’t put you into stasis, he thought feelingly. He had no wish to repeat that experience. He looked at the stasis pods in front of him, noticing a very slight frosting around the top valve on one of the pods. Suddenly a thought came into his mind. He tilted his head and half-closed his eyes in concentration. It might – just might – work. Yes, if the luck of Sacras was with him, it might.
He gave an angry shake to the chains binding him to the rings. But what if it didn’t? He would be risking his life.
No, there could be no doubts, he decided. Diva would simply go right ahead and execute the plan. So would he. If it worked, all would be well. If it didn’t – well, he would be as dead as the proverbial lost animas of Xiantha. Way to go, he thought. At least he would be choosing the how and the when – better than hanging around here waiting on Atheron’s whim. Certainly better than giving away any more secrets under the influence of the quenera root.
The decision taken at last, the Kwaidian chin came up and out, and the owner of the chin began to swing to and fro, gradually increasing the rhythm of each swing. After a couple of minutes his feet were describing an arc through the air of several metres to each side of the pivot. He had made himself into a human pendulum.
Finally he found that he was able to touch one of the stasis pods on the side of the ship with the tips of his toes. He used this to push hard away from the metal to try to gain even more impetus. The effort was straining his arms, and the rings were biting into his hands viciously, causing him go white with the pain. He felt the taste of blood in his mouth – he had bitten his lip.
It must have taken over ten minutes, swinging ignominiously to and fro, but at last he was able to hook his legs over one of the stasis pods lined up along the sides of the hold; the one with the sheen of frosting. The sudden jolt as the pendulum was forced into immobility nearly pulled both of his arms right out of their sockets, but he still managed to keep silent. Anchoring himself with one foot, he struggled a little to extricate the other, and then began to use it to batter at the tube leading up to the faulty top valve on the exterior of the stasis pod.
A few minutes later he was gasping with the effort, and sweat was pouring off his body. It now seemed an impossible feat. He clenched his teeth. Think of Diva, he told himself sternly. Keep going! At whatever cost, you must keep going. Surely you aren’t going to sit back and let them win without protest? You? A no-name like you?
It took another long few minutes before he felt part of the tubing begin to cede under the pressure he was exerting. An exultant thrill replaced the gloom. Thank Sacras! In a fevered hurry now, in case Atheron should return before he could complete the plan, he kicked the piping again and again towards himself, willing it to bend, to detach itself from the pod.
Each centimetre seemed to take a century. But slowly, agonizingly slowly, the tube was beginning to bulge out towards him. He could now hook the whole of his foot around it and exert more pressure, pulling it towards him. He ignored the pain in his wrists – that could wait. All of his energy was concentrated in that one foot, in bringing more and more pressure to bear on the pipe.
When it finally broke free of the rest of the container, it did so with an enormous crack and an explosive hiss as the liquid helium contained within the tubing was released, spewing out from the end of the pipe in a fine stream, and causing Six to writhe desperately to escape from its radius. He wasn’t too keen to have any part of his body exposed to the liquid helium. But he forced his foot to maintain the contact, to maintain the pressure. There was still a huge amount to do. If he let go now everything would have been in vain. With an immense final effort, he succeeded in wrapping the bottom half of his leg around the end of the tubing, so that the tube protruded out from his knee, aiming its deadly contents away from him. The tube was already icing over on the outside, and it stuck immediately to the skin on his bare leg.
He panted, and kept pulling. He needed enough length of tubing to reach the chains. Gradually, infinitesimally slowly, he drew the coils of pipe away from the pod and towards him, contorting his body until at last the tubing was long enough to direct the end of the pipe over his head at the chains.
It was a critical moment, he knew. He had to aim the liquid helium out of the tube onto both chains at once, and try not to let it drop onto his hands. It would be a pretty pointless exercise if he escaped but left his hands frozen into place on the rings. He closed his eyes for just one moment in a silent plea for help and then with another huge effort twisted in the air to present the chains to the piping. A few drops inevitably fell on his hands and he bit down further on his lip to stop himself from crying out loud. Great blisters of skin blossomed up under each drop, and he knew that there was a danger of it finding its way under the skin and expanding inside his body, but there were other dangers too. The build-up of pressure inside the cylinder could easily cause a substantial explosion. Even more immediate was the possibility of suffocation due to the helium gas displacing the oxygen in the hold. He could feel his lungs struggling to filter enough oxygen already. There was not much time to get this thing done.
Seconds were hours. It seemed to take forever. The veins in his forehead and neck were stretched to bursting point. The lack of oxygen was blackening his vision, and the pain in his wrists was almost unendurable. He glared through sweat-soaked eyes at the chains he could no longer see, willing them to separate, willing them to obey his wishes.
When he finally thought that he could hold on to his consciousness no longer, he felt that the bonds were stretching, had become elastic. Then that yielding movement stopped, and suddenly they parted, precipitating him to the floor, still twisting and turning in an attempt to avoid coming into contact with the contents of the pipe.
He sprang to his feet, which buckled under his weight, then held, and raced over to the valve at the head of the stasis pod. Even turning the valve was agony on his battered hands and wrists. He cursed the blood which was flowing freely from his wrists, making his hands slippery, making it hard to open the liquid helium tank altogether. Only by liberating the rest of the tank safely could he prevent an explosion.
<
br /> At last it was done. Six doubled over for a few seconds. But there was too little time, there could be no respite yet. He had to get out of the hold before the lack of oxygen succeeded in felling him, and then he had to get control of the ship.
His eyes darted around again. He hadn’t got this far to give up now, that much was for sure! He ran over to the one locker in the hold and forced his hands to open it. There! A laser gun! He checked it was loaded, and set it to hard stun, then managed to stumble out of the lethal hold to the corridor, where he bent over double, gulping down great breaths of the oxygen he had been starved of.
WHEN HE ERUPTED into the cabin there was little opposition. None of those present were expecting the apparition of a crazed Kwaidian wielding a stun gun, and in the time it took the three occupants to realize what was happening, their chance at retaliation was over and the three members of the crew were sprawled unconscious on the metallic floor of the cabin. Six looked around. Atheron was not one of the Sellites lying on the floor.
He checked the laser gun, went to another locker in the cabin to provision himself with a spare, and then made his way as silently as he could along the corridor which must lead to the sleeping quarters. It was more than likely that Atheron had been alerted by the noise, so he proceded with great caution. Atheron had already threatened to kill him once, and would not now, he was sure, exercise any discretion in this matter.
Atheron’s head protruded from a door on the left, saw Six, and hastily withdrew. The white-haired man was attempting to close the door when an irate body slammed it open, causing the Sellite to jump back with an exclamation.
“Yes,” shouted Six, “you are right to cry out, Atheron, and you are right to be afraid of me. Luckily for you I am not prepared to kill just to have things turn out as I would like, so you can relax. I am only going to knock you out for a time.” He allowed himself to shoot two lasers into the Sellite, who was holding up his hands in a futile attempt to impede the shots from finding their mark.
Ammonite Planets (Omnibus): Ammonite Galaxy #1-3 Page 33