The Dark Wheel

by Robert Holdstock

  Coming so soon after his father's death, with the memory of Jason's murder so vivid in his mind, it was almost too much for Alex. He didn't know whether to glow with pride, or shake with apprehension. He slowly sat down at the astrogation console and played his fingers over the controls of the Cobra.

  After a while he smiled, and shrugged away the confusion and the sadness he was feeling.

  'Right. If that's what my father wanted, then I shan't disappoint him…'

  Chapter five

  Out of Witch-Space: the dizziness, the slight shudder, the brief disorientation. Ahead of them, the distant, red-blue disc of the planet Xezaor was only slightly brighter than the gleaming field of stars around.

  The planet's sun was dim and very close by. It glowed red. A dying star, as the world ahead of them was a dying world, a cooling world, a world whose wealth and industrial development could not hold back the process of Galactic ageing. Xezaor was a world where luxuries and warmth meant everything, now, and Shanaskilk fur, with the multiple heads still intact, would fetch a high price.

  Routine. A routine trade run. Elyssia dozed, Alex punched co-ordinates into the auto-pilot and prepared to pass the time of the long run-in to the world.

  Routine, a routine which Alex was by now well used to.

  Out of Witch-Space and then the slow approach until the Coriolis station came on target-Nothing to do…

  Nothing to see…

  The Cobra rocked and a sound like the screech of metal being bent apart echoed through the bridge!

  'Company!' Alex said loudly, and Elyssia blinked awake. She must have assessed the situation in an instant. She remained where she was. Alex was at the console and there were only seconds available for thought.

  Alex had been taken by surprise, not because he hadn't been paying attention, but because the attack ships had been so close to the egress point from hyperspace. With their tiny hulls between him and the glowing sun, they had not been visible for an instant, and they had been performing a 'tumbling' routine, mimicking slow-moving asteroids.

  Alex had half noticed them and half ignored them. They had got the first shot in, then overflown the Cobra.

  Now, they grouped behind as Alex punched up maximum speed, and scanned space for them.

  'Here they come…'

  The shields screamed as laser fire played off them. Beam lasers! Those ships were well equipped. But then, so, now was the Nemesis, the dramatic name that he and Elyssia had given to their ship. Alex checked the rear monitor and lined up the firing window. He stabbed out two bursts of fire from the newly installed aft-laser. The pirate ships veered apart, one of them struck.

  As he had them on the screen, he targeted a missile. A missile from one of the attacking craft began to weave towards them, and his screen flashed with warning. Alex operated the Nemesis's ECM, and after an agonisingly long few seconds the incoming missile vanished in a burst of heat and light. The hull screeched and Alex dived. He noticed that the shields had begun to put a drain on the first energy unit.

  Elyssia sat calm and quiet while Alex handled the situation. Ahead of them, the planet edged closer, rising and falling and spinning in a dizzying way as Alex fought for a better combat position.

  Then, instinct took over. He looped the Cobra a full 180 degrees and raced head-on at the pirate vessel that had been behind him. Now he could see that it was a Fer-de-lance, a sleek, fast ship that was probably loaded down with sophisticated navigational and defence equipment that had been installed by the original owner. Or maybe not… such equipment took cash to maintain, and this ship had seen battle service aplenty.

  As pirate and Alex closed, Alex took a chance. They had only four missiles and one was targetted. He punched for fire and the Cobra jolted as the deadly sting shot across space.

  It reached its target and the Fer-de-lance literally disappeared.

  Had it hyperspaced? No.

  When Alex activated the rear screen, he saw the spreading ash cloud, a silvery glimmer against the stars…

  'Good shooting!' Elyssia said enthusiastically.

  Through the cloud of metal and ash came the other ship.

  Alex looped again. A laser strike depleted the aft shield even more. But now that the enemy knew that its prey had an anti-missile system, it was going to try and dogfight Alex to destruction.

  The ship was a Cobra too. It's fuel-scoop gaped, ready to suck up the cannisters of precious Shanaskilk fur from the wreckage of the shattered trader.

  Alex had other ideas.

  Again, Xezaor was ahead of them. Rear-shooting, Alex ducked and darted towards safety, and the pirate weaved a snaking pattern against the star-field behind. Alex targeted a missile-

  'Save it if you can…' Elyssia breathed.

  'I know,' Alex said. 'But we can afford a replacement…'

  'We won't afford the fuel-scoop then,' Elyssia reminded him, and they both laughed. At a time like this, worried about their shopping list!

  The space station, and the safety it afforded with its own fighter defences, was too far away. Alex veered sharply sunwards, and dropped his forward velocity dramatically. The pursuing ship copied the first movement precisely, but took a few seconds to orientate to the second. It overshot.

  Before it knew what was happening it was no longer the hunter but the hunted.

  'Go, Alex, go!' Elyssia shouted, as Alex shot off pulse after pulse of laser fire. The Cobra on the screen ducked and weaved, but Alex was equal to it, hardly thinking, just reacting. The temperature of his forward laser began to rise dangerously. The Cobra ahead of them launched a missile at them and Alex shot it, not even bothering to program the ECM.

  Elyssia gasped at the cheek of that, and glanced at the young man in whose hands her life was being so capably held.

  A moment later it was all over. The pirate exploded, his screen energy finally exhausted. Alex saw the wink and flash of a jettisoned escape pod and for a second — Remembering the beam of fire that had destroyed his own escape craft, remembering the savage destruction of the Avalonia…

  — he was tempted to go in pursuit. His better judgement prevailed. Around them, cargo cannisters tumbled like sycamore seeds.

  'And us with no scoop to pick them up!' Elyssia muttered.

  Alex grinned. 'We claim two. That's quite a bounty.'

  Elyssia looked down at him as he sat and guided the ship towards Xezaor.

  'Alex, you're a natural. It's an honour to ride the stars with you.'

  No-one had said a word, neither of them commented on it: the fact that this had been Alex's first solo combat'

  Chapter six

  They had been trading now for three standard months, and their Cobra craft, the Nemesis, was scarcely recognisable as the battered tomb-place of Trader Henry Bell. With new insignia, new welding, new colour and the pods and swellings of the armaments housings, it began to look like a fighter.

  Three months a trader. And not for one hour of one day of those months had Alex forgotten the reason behind this way of life. Something-someone disguised as a trader had killed his father, and done its best to kill him.

  His father had led a double life, and accordingly to the oldest relic in the Galaxy, had deputised his son to follow in his star path.

  Alex Ryder was not about to fail his father in that wish.

  There were so many questions, so much grief, so much anger. And for Elyssia too, although the Teorgian woman rarely showed the emotion that Alex sensed was bubbling just below the surface of her cool, wisecracking exterior.

  They were facing a task together, a task of growing, of becoming strong.

  There would have to be a time of waiting, and both were accepting that time with as much silent patience as they could muster. But it was not easy, not easy for either of them.

  And for Alex, with blood on his hands at last… not easy at all…

  The skirmish with the two pirate ships had scraped the paint a little, and loosened several hull plates, necessitating a trip to a
service satellite where, because of their bounty hunting, the work would almost certainly be performed free of charge. Though this had been Alex's first solo combat, it had not been their first battle. Elyssia would have qualified for

  'dangerous' status had she been eligible for a rating. As it was, her rating — on the evidence of the Nemesis's skirmishing — had been assigned to Alex. Now, for the first time, Alex felt he had taken a substantial step towards proving that he genuinely deserved that particular classification.

  Still at the astrogation console, he guided the ship to within a thousand kilometres of the surface of the dying world, so close that the planet filled everything in the forward vision screen. At dead slow approach speed he finally looped around and there, slowly spinning before them — a glittering metal cube was the space station, its access bay a wide, rotating mouth.

  'Oh for a docking computer…' Alex murmured as he began to match rotation and slowly approached.

  'Waste of money…' Elyssia chided. 'If you can't dock without losing your paintwork, you shouldn't be in space.'

  Alex was a great flier. But snaking neatly into the reception bay of a Coriolis station was his greatest weakness.

  He made it, though, and once inside the vast hanger space, magnetic traction drew the Nemesis slowly to a vacant berth. AutoCom links snaked out and clamped to its hull. Alex watched the bustle in the great, brightly-lit void, the customs ships, the police Vipers, the advertising modules, the repair modules, all moving slowly in the cube-space, touting for business. Elyssia hid in the escape pod as usual. Alex declared his cargo, and received confirmation of his bounty killings, and notification of his bonus: thirty credits!

  That exactly covered the cost of a new missile.

  When all the check-ins, log-ins and identity verifications had been run, Elyssia emerged from hiding. The escape capsule had been their first priority, and they had bought one second-hand for four hundred credits.

  They didn't intend to use it anyway, except to screen off Elyssia's unfortunate and unwelcome origins.

  Now began the routine of business. Selling, then deciding where to trade next, and what to buy to take with them.

  Trading is very much a hit and miss profession. With certain high demand, high turnover products, a small profit can usually be guaranteed in foodstuffs, textiles, simple machinery, simple luxuries.

  But the ship's running costs, and an occasional space skirmish, can soon eat up such profits, making the whole exercise essentially worthless. There is no way of knowing trade prices at other systems. Each planetary state jealously guards its stock-market information, and there are heavy penalties for Faxing the market prices of any item beyond orbit-space.

  Prices change, too. Speculators lurk in every system, no matter how poor.

  That tonne of frozen bladderlash that would have fetched eight credits a month ago at Ceinzala, against a buying price of three from its homeworld Reorte, will suddenly be worth only two. The demand for bladderlash had not lessened. The speculators made a secret killing, and fixed up the market.

  Hit and miss.

  Alex and Elyssia had been lucky so far. They had carried Vargorn mind-silk between Rexebe and Inera and doubled their intitial hundred credits. They had ferried the gold-flake scales of Geretean reptiles and only just covered their costs. They had supplied twenty tonnes of sunflower seeds to the grotesque amphibioid inhabitants of Bierle, to whom sunflower seeds were a particular delicacy, only to find that a mass, mind-induced mutation had occurred throughout the entire planetary population, changing their taste buds… The search was now on for the new delicacy to delight the palates of the Bierleans. Lubrication oil had come close, and lavender scented tissue paper. But somewhere there was a real profit to be made. One day. One year.

  Moving machinery from high-tech worlds to middle-tech worlds was also unexpectedly profitable, and demand for luxuries was always high on evolving industrial worlds. But on Xezaor the Shanaskilk furs (bought at thirty galactic credits the tonne) were likely to be their best bet yet.

  Alex nervously called up the buying price at Xezaor.

  He whooped with triumph as he saw that he and Elyssia had tripled their money.

  This time, in the hit and miss game, they had hit lucky.

  They sold the furs without trouble. Then Alex called up the price list at Xezaor of ship and armaments equipment. The new missile was the standard thirty credits. He ordered one and a small robot scuttled off to fetch the permitted weaponry. Beam lasers were one thousand credits, and the temptation to invest in one was strong. The price of the fuel and cargo scoop which the Nemesis so badly needed was high, at five hundred and twenty-five credits. But the energy bombs cost nearly twice as much!

  Of course a fuel scoop could be used for salvage, as well as topping up their fuel banks by sun-skimming, so it was a good investment, even at one hundred credits over the odds.

  Alex ordered one. Delivery and fitting would take twenty hours, a standard day. Alex fuelled the ship, next, and stocked up with Xezaorian delicacies.

  They had three hundred and twenty galactic credits left with which to buy trade stock, an uncomfortably low sum. On the other hand, their ship now had extra defensive shields, four-directional targeting of lasers and missiles, an anti-missile system and a fuel scoop.

  They were more than half way to becoming a battle cruiser.

  Elyssia scanned the planet's market list with Alex. For all that Xezaorians liked exotic things, they had precious little to offer. Two narcotics were available — arcturan burstweed and, strangely, tobacco — and Alex thought hard about them.

  'Surely we could get away with tobacco…'

  'Uh-huh.' Elyssia murmured. 'No way. Nicotine is deadly, even in low doses, to many races.'

  'If we carried it to a human world?'

  'Still too risky.'

  Minerals were on offer, but were pricy. Durassion — one of the ores that could be refined and 'time-stressed' to give duralium for ship's hulls — was available at eight credits the tonne, and that would sell exceptionally well at Lave… but Lave was many light years away, now, and any dura-ore could bottom — out on a standard day when a richer ore was found.

  Too risky.

  Gemstones? There were maroon and silver spectonals for sale, and red-green emeronds. A pirate convoy would smell such booty from two light years away.

  As for the curiosity market there were two hundred fossilised Dironothaxaurian life-bones on offer, at forty credits each.

  'Ever heard of them?' Elyssia asked.

  Alex said, 'I've seen one. And heard one. In a museum on my homeworld. They sing. They're over forty million years old, and still they sing; waiting for something, a hatching, or a change of climate. They're bones from the pelvic region, so they could be incubation pods. Nobody knows…'

  'Are they valuable?'

  'Very. Exactly by how much I don't know.'

  'Check it for restrictions…'

  Alex did so. There were no known import restrictions, or potential legal violations involved in trading in these fossilised animal bones.

  'Better than food—' Alex said.

  'Any day,' Elyssia agreed.

  'So we go for it…'

  'I suppose so.'

  But as Alex began to key into the trade-centre to purchase the goods, the console flashed the words, 'Incoming message…'

  'Rafe!' Alex said. And Elyssia too seemed excited at the prospect of seeing and talking with Rafe Zetter again.

  But it was not the wizened, crusty old space trader who appeared on the screen as Alex accepted the call.

  Nothing like.

  It was a human being, and not a humanoid alien that faced them. But what had happened to its face was beyond description. There were many ways to change ordinary human looks to nightmarish caricatures of the same: flying too close to certain stars, being exposed to the interstellar vacuum too often, working in certain ore and mineral mines… But Alex, as he stared at the lumpy, grey swellings that s
wathed this person's flesh, could not imagine what grotesque disaster had befallen the caller.

  Lips like quivering gossamer wings trembled in the grey flesh. A hand, skeletal and crippled, shot through with bright red blood vessels, touched the wispy ginger hair that grew in a bizarre floral circle around the deformed head.

  'Are you Ryder?'

  The voice, at least, was normal. And male.

  'Identify yourself, caller.'

  Ignoring the question the other man went on, 'What're you trading in this time? Minerals? Specialities?'

  'What's it to you?'

  'Whatever it is you're thinking of buying, I can do you a better deal.'

  'I wouldn't trade with you if I was running hot from a supernova.'

  The human grinned (or so it seemed).

  'Rafe Zetter would. How come you're so fussy?'

  'You know Rafe?' Alex asked, perturbed and puzzled by the grotesque man's invocation of the friendly name.

  'Me and half the Universe.' The deformed man leaned closer to the monitor.

  His features filled the screen totally. 'Parasites.'

  'I'm sorry?'

  'These things. This… 'tapping his face. 'Parasites. Spider worms. I did a stint in the pen. on Dykstra's world, and the little buggers took a liking to me. These are the larvae, about two million of them. They'll hatch out in about ten years, and that'll be the end of me. I sort of hope

  I'm at a dinner party with someone I don't like, at the time, but you can't plan for these things. I don't blame you for not trusting me…' Pale eyes glittered from beneath the heavy, pulsating folds of grey flesh. 'But don't judge by appearances. Alex — it is Alex, isn't it? I mean, for hell's sake tell me if I've got the wrong number…'

  'I'm Alex Ryder.'

  'And I'm Patrick McGreavy. I'll say just two things to you. The first is this: when you kill the snake, you'll lay a ghost that's haunted me for more than five years. I'm not a flier. What I am doesn't matter. There are more people like me than all the sunflower seeds you've traded in your life. People who need vengeance. People who can't do it for themselves.