by Eric Brown
“You don’t think...?”
“If he assumes we’re running away, trying to reach the colonists before him...” She shook her head. “I don’t know...”
He hurried after her. A grim possibility occurred to him. Technically, he was in the pay of Chandrasakar. He’d signed a contract, for which he’d not only receive payment, but more importantly Li would get the latest treatment for her illness.
If he was seen by Chandrasakar to be running away with Das... How might Chandrasakar react then? Surely even the tycoon wouldn’t stoop to contacting his people on Earth and halting Li’s treatment?
It was a slim possibility, but a frightening one.
Ten minutes later, the first laser vector scythed down a swathe of savannah three metres to their left.
The first that Vaughan was aware of the attack was a cry from Das followed, instantly, by the blinding flash of the laser vector and the sizzle of the fungus as it burned.
He dived, dragging down the alien with him. As he fell, he thought how repulsive the creature’s cold, slick skin felt. Only then did the fear kick in.
The sickening reek of charred fungus filled the air.
Das was beside him, breathing hard. “Okay, I think it’s best to split. Put a couple of metres between us and head for that outcropping in the foothills, okay?”
He nodded.
“Okay, let’s go!”
Vaughan half-stood and sprinted, hauling the alien to its feet as he went. The creature seemed aware of the danger and ran at a nimble crouch on a zigzag course through the fungus.
The second laser vector fried a stretch of fungus in their wake. Vaughan felt the heat of the blast on his back. He kept on running, rather than obey his impulse and go to ground. Better to present the bastards with a moving target rather than a sitting duck.
He chanced a backward glance in time to see the third vector lance out from the cliff-face. It was not a member of the security team firing, he saw, but a spider drone. That struck him as ominous. Drones were mechanical, things of precision, not prone to human error.
The dazzling blue laser beam lanced over his head by a matter of centimetres and set the savannah afire before them. They dodged the incineration, using the pall of smoke as cover as they sprinted for the foothills. Vaughan judged the tumble of rocks were perhaps half a kay away now; refuge was in sight. Once they’d made the outcropping it would be easy to remain hidden. He wondered if Chandrasakar would chance crossing the savannah, putting himself at risk of return fire. Then he wondered where the alien might be taking them: through the mountain to relative safety, hopefully.
It struck him, as he panted towards the first of the jutting rocks, that only one spider drone was firing, and he wondered why Chandrasakar was conserving the shots of the other two drones he had with him. Perhaps the tycoon was confident of picking them off without having to unleash his full firepower. He flung himself behind a stand of silver-grey rock, hauling the alien in beside him. A second later Das thumped down a metre away and rolled into the cover of the rock.
The fourth vector struck the rock formation above them, sending shrapnel shards shooting through the air.
The alien was squatting on its haunches, impassive. It stared up the hillside as if plotting the next leg of their flight.
Das said, “Okay, so far so good.” She squinted up the incline, then glanced at the alien. “Where are you taking us? We need to know. Do you understand that?”
The alien responded, not with words, but by extending a long, thin arm and pointing up the hillside.
Vaughan made out a jagged slit in the rock, perhaps half a kilometre away. The terrain in between was littered with rocks and boulders, which would provide adequate cover.
Das nodded. “Great. Okay... How do you want to do this, Jeff?”
He thought about it. “If we go one by one, from rock to rock, then we’re signalling exactly where each of us will be coming from. Let’s go together, okay?”
She nodded. “Sounds good to me. Got that?” she said to the alien.
It failed to respond. Vaughan found himself gripping its thin, boneless hand.
“Okay,” Das said. “After three. One, two, three! Go!”
They half-stood and sprinted to the next bulging rock up the hillside, twenty metres away. They made its custody without attracting any further laser fire.
“Right, again! See that spur right ahead? Let’s get there, rest up, and see if we can see what they’re doing, okay?”
Vaughan nodded. Das gave the count and they ran. Vaughan gripped the alien’s hand, almost dragging the creature in his wake.
This time, two vectors homed in on them almost simultaneously. The first one exploded rock at Vaughan’s feet, while the second missed him by centimetres. He yelled as a searing heat scorched his upper right arm.
He was still a few metres from the spur, and all the drone had to do was take its time, sight him, and fire.
He hauled the alien into his arms and sprinted. Seconds later, a laser vector exploding behind him, he dived painfully behind the spur, dropped the alien, and lay gasping for breath.
Das crouched over him. “They almost got you, Jeff.”
He sat up and looked at his upper arm. The material of his jacket was melted; he pulled it away from his raw shoulder, gasping at the pain, then ripped the sleeve to access the wound.
Das examined it. “Dammit, I had salve and synthi-flesh in my backpack.”
“Not as bad as I expected,” he said. “I’ll live.”
The alien squatted next to him, taking in the raw patch of flesh with its outsize eyes.
Das turned and looked through a split in the rock. Vaughan stood and joined her.
He searched the plain. As far as he could make out, Chandrasakar and his team were still somewhere on the cliff-face, though at this distance it was impossible to see them. He did see, however, the spider drones - and he knew why Chandrasakar had ordered only one of them to attack.
While the first drone had remained on the cliff-face, using its elevation to target them, the other two were making their way at great speed across the savannah. Their progress showed not as a nimbus of discolouration, but as a dark chevron ripple that swept through the fungal strands like the wake of a motorboat.
Das looked at him. “Shiva, look at them move! How long before they get here?”
They were covering hundreds of metres in a few seconds. “Not long. Ten minutes?”
“They’ll be in contact with the first drone, so they’ll know where we are.” She thought about it. “We wouldn’t be giving our position away if we fired at the bastards.”
“We’ve got to do it. If we let them come after us...” He looked up the incline; the opening was perhaps a hundred metres away. “We’ll probably never be in a better strategic position to strike at them.” He hesitated. “You think you can hit a target moving that fast?”
“I can give it a try. You?”
He nodded. “I’ve had training. Let’s just hope it proves worthwhile.”
She drew her laser pistol, and Vaughan pulled his laser from its shoulder-holster. He knelt beside the crack, below the standing Das, and tracked the advance of the spider drones.
“I’ll take the one on the left, Jeff, okay?”
“Let’s do it.” He eased his laser into position and took aim.
“After three. One, two, three... Fire!”
He touched the firing stud and a pulse blasted from his pistol. A second later he was amazed to see the drone spin into the air, all spinning silver limbs. It crashed to earth and was hidden in the savannah.
Das’s shot missed the target by a hand’s-breadth. Instantly it charted their position and a laser vector flashed out like a spoke, clipping the rock.
“You okay?” he shouted.
“I’m... I’m fine. Just got caught by debris.” She crouched, a gash across her forehead leaking blood.
He moved to the fissure, looked down at the savannah. He was shocked to
see that the surviving drone had made rapid progress; it danced through the fungus, eating up the kilometres and coming at them like a speeding flier.
Das joined him. “Shiva, it’s close!”
She took aim and fired. The vector zizzed out from between the rock, ringing in Vaughan’s ears. He peered down at the savannah. A second later the laser vector connected with the drone’s domed cowl and it exploded in a spectacular burst of flame and silver casing.
She fell back against the rock, wiping blood from her face with the sleeve of her jacket.
“Sharp shooting, Parveen.”
She nodded. “It’ll buy us a bit of time... Okay, let’s get out of here.”
They stood. The alien was already hopping from foot to foot up the hillside, almost comical in its unconscious imitation of a bipedal frog. Vaughan followed at a sprint, Das on his heels
They had almost reached the opening when the laser beam lanced past them and slagged a wall of rock. They fell on their faces, Vaughan rolling and sliding down the hillside.
At first he thought the third remaining drone, on the far cliff-face, had fired at them; then he saw the drone he’d hit: it was dragging itself through the savannah on three legs, trailing shattered limbs.
Das knelt beside him, took aim and fired.
Her beam hit the drone’s dome dead centre, spinning the spider off its remaining feet in a dervish whirl of limbs and ejected hardware.
“Persistent critters,” Das said. “Let that be a lesson. We can’t underestimate the bastards. And remember, there’s still one of them with Rab and his security team.”
“And three back with the scientists in the first cavern,” Vaughan pointed out. “Chandrasakar could always call them in as reinforcements.”
“Wish you hadn’t reminded me...” she said.
They stood and hurried up the hillside towards the protective cover of the opening, the alien leading the way.
* * * *
The opening turned out to be a cutting, open to the light, which passed between two rearing peaks. They entered the cutting and climbed a slope scattered with scree, the alien dancing ahead on its quick bandy legs.
She looked at him. “We’ve got to think about what we’re going to do...” she said at last.
“Go on.”
“It’s my guess that the alien is taking us to the colonists.”
He looked ahead. The alien was out of earshot. “It’s a possibility,” he said. “So...?”
“As I see it, we have the advantage here. We’re a few hours ahead of Rab and his goons. We’re that much closer to finding the colonists, maybe negotiating with them. At least, establishing friendly relations.”
“We?” he asked. “You make it sound as if I’m suddenly a fully paid-up member.”
She looked away from him. “Very well, absent yourself from the equation, Jeff. I’m half a day ahead. That’s to my advantage.”
“One slight problem,” he said, “is that the only means off the planet is aboard the Kali.”
She shook her head, summarily dismissing the objection. “I’ll put a call out for the Indian ship, which should be in the region, just as soon as I need to get away from here.”
“Via your handset?” He held his own aloft. “If you haven’t noticed...”
She shook her head. “I’m sure, once we’ve found the colonists, they’ll have the means to unlock it.”
He considered what she’d said so far. “Okay. So what’s to think about?”
“This: when we find the colonists, what do we tell them about Rab and the others? The truth, that he’s a businessman out for what he can get?”
“What’s the alternative?”
“A story that’d buy us time - time to get my government in here. A story along the lines that Rab fronts a multicolonial organisation that treats its subjects as little more than slaves...”
Vaughan squinted at her. “A lie, in other words?”
She shrugged. “That depends on one’s political philosophy, Jeff.”
“I might not like the man, but from what I’ve heard about his colonial interests he treats his people relatively well.”
She was shaking her head. “I think you’d rather the colonists, and the aliens, dealt with me and my government than the Chandrasakar Organisation.”
“I’d rather the poor bastards were left to themselves.”
“But that,” she said, “is an impossibility. Live in the real world, Jeff.”
They walked on, the alien leading the way tirelessly. Vaughan considered Chandrasakar and his motives.
“I’ve had a thought,” he said.
“Let’s hear it.”
“I’m not sure that these caverns - no matter how vast they are, and how many thousands of them there might be - are what Chandrasakar’s so interested in.”
She glanced at him. “How so?”
“Consider this: why was he shooting at us? What reason might he have for trying to stop us?”
“Like I said - he wants to get to the colonists before we do.”
He shook his head. “I can’t buy that, Parveen. So we reach the colonists before him, and tell them that Chandrasakar’s the devil incarnate... and all he does then is come along with all his business PR and soft-sells the colonists whatever they want. He simply buys them. Christ, Parveen, the man’s a multi-billionaire. His organisation owns half the Expansion. He’s not going to let the two of us get in the way of whatever it is he wants down here.”
“Which, Jeff, is why he tried to fry us.”
He shook his head. “No way. There’s something else. Something big. He’s trying to stop us before we reach the colonists, learn their secret, and report back to Earth.” He indicated their scabbed handsets. “He doesn’t know what’s happened to these, after all.”
Das paused and looked at him. “It’s worth considering, I suppose.”
“Mark my word,” Vaughan said, and trekked on.
Thirty minutes later the cutting opened out; before them was a short rise. The alien had come to rest on the brow, staring down into another valley cavern. This one was without the crystal suns set into the high ceiling; it was meagrely illuminated by the ubiquitous green fungus.
Vaughan came alongside the alien and stared.
The alien squatted, interlacing its long fingers over its knees, and contemplated what lay before them.
The valley was smaller than the one they had left, perhaps half its size, and it was not covered in a fungal savannah. Instead, streets and buildings formed an extraordinary alien city.
“It can’t be the colonists’ settlement,” Das said, her voice low.
He shook his head. “It’s definitely alien.”
It was in no way a modern city, similar to the kind he was accustomed to; it more resembled the pictures he’d seen of ancient, primitive cities, with two- and three-storey buildings laid out in a radial pattern, of a uniform sand colour and crumbling. The buildings were broad of base and tapering, terminating in flat roofs perhaps thirty feet high. Slit windows were their only feature.
As he stared, he made out a pattern to the city’s development. It had been built, he thought, in exactly the opposite way to the development of terrestrial cities. Older, crumbling buildings occupied the outer precincts, while the further towards the centre the buildings appeared more modern and of cleaner lines. He supposed that was to be expected, if aliens had come upon the cavern from the savannah cavern, and settled its perimeter first.
There was another odd thing about the city: it was as still and silent as a graveyard.
“There’s not the slightest movement,” Das said. “It’s dead, deserted.”
Vaughan tuned to the alien and gestured down at the moribund metropolis. “Was this your city?” he asked.
As if in reply, the alien rose to its feet and stepped nimbly down the hillside.
Vaughan and Das followed.
“What I’d like to know, Jeff, is where are the colonists?”
They approached the sandy, featureless walls of the outer suburbs and walked along wide boulevards. The alien trotted on ahead, as if intent on leading them through the centre of the city and out the other side.
“I wonder why the colonists didn’t make this their base?” he said. “I mean, it looks habitable enough.”
“But... monolithic,” Das said. “Forbidding. And the green lighting doesn’t help.”