Dreamer's Cat: a sci-fi murder mystery with a killer twist

by Stephen Leather

  ‘Hold your fire,’ whispers Jill. ‘You take that one,’ she gestures with the barrel of her blaster, ‘Xavier, you look after the one behind us. I’ll take the one on the left.’

  Jill and I take aim in a kneeling position, while Xavier lies down flat on the ground. For a while nothing happens, the planes sit in the mud, engines off. Then all three emit a high pitched whirring noise and ramps descend from the bellies of the planes and splash down.

  ‘Ready,’ says Jill.

  Down each of the ramps slide silver cubes, about as tall as a man. They slip into the mud, and then the ramps are retracted. The engines of the planes burst into life and all three fly off in the same direction.

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ says Xavier, raising himself up. His suit is plastered with orange mud.

  ‘Hold your position,’ snaps Jill. She keeps us on alert for a full five minutes but the planes do not return.

  ‘OK,’ she says eventually. ‘Let’s check out these cubes.’

  We walk together to one of the silver boxes. Xavier tries to walk around it but is bounced back as if he has hit an invisible wall. I try to walk around in the opposite direction but the same happens to me. The two force fields meet at a sixty degree angle, apparently in the centre of the cube. We walk along the length of the field to the next cube, and finally back around to where we started from. We are trapped in an equilateral triangle which is about two klicks across at its widest point.

  ‘Right,’ says Jill, ‘let’s see what the blaster can do.’

  We walk to the centre of the triangle and she aims her blaster at one of the cubes, switches the safety off and fires. Nothing happens. She tries again. Nothing. Her blaster does not work. She checks the power pack but there is nothing wrong, it is fully charged. Without being asked Xavier tries, but his blaster is also useless. So is mine.

  ‘Now what?’ asks Xavier. ‘Now, we wait,’ says Jill.

  We don’t have to wait long. Some sort of helicopter, a long thin cylinder with three equally spaced rotors, arrives, flying low and almost silently. It touches down just outside our triangular prison. The rotors keep turning as a hatchway opens and three figures climb out. They are wearing the suits and helmets that the Commander had shown us back in the briefing room. The Kueians. All three are carrying blasters. They walk slowly towards the nearest cube.

  ‘Drop your weapons and walk towards us,’ one of the figures shouts, his voice amplified by his helmet.

  ‘We’d better do as he says,’ says Jill. ‘Our blasters are useless, anyway.’ We drop our weapons and raise our hands.

  ‘Walk towards us,’ the Kueian says, and we obey. One of the figures steps up to the silver cube and seems to stroke it, then all three walk through the force field. One is carrying strips of plastic which he uses to bind our hands behind our backs, then we are herded to the helicopter and pushed roughly through the hatch. There are two more Kueians there, standing guard over half a dozen Earth flight crews. Jill recognises a girl wearing Pilot insignia and she nods at her. We are pushed onto the floor at the rear of the cabin, then our captors shut the hatch and we lift off. There are no windows in the cabin so we have no idea how high we are flying or in what direction, but 15 minutes later there is a change in pitch of the engines and a bump as we touch down again.

  Three armed Kueians go out and come back with two more prisoners and they are shoved on the floor next to us. One is a Navigator, the other a Pilot. The Pilot has a cut above his left eye and his arm is in a sling from his survival pouch.

  We take off again. Five times we land and each time more prisoners are taken on board. Then we fly for a long time with no stops. There is no talking. The first time Xavier opened his mouth one of the Kueians stepped forward and hit him across the face with the butt of his blaster.

  Eventually the helicopter comes to rest again and we are shepherded out. We are on the roof of a tower block, looking down on what seems to be a space port, ranks of Kueian needle fighters and larger battle-cruisers and freighters. There are many towers around us, each with helicopter landing pads on the roofs. We are ushered to a circular pillbox in the centre of the roof. Two metal doors hiss open and we are pushed into a steel room. It is an elevator and we descend quickly. We go down for an age, far too long to account for the height of the building, so I guess we are being taken deep underground. My ears pop with the change in altitude.

  The lift doors open onto a long white corridor and we are taken down it to a doorway guarded by two Kueians. Their helmets are off and for the first time we can see the faces of our enemy, scaly dry skin and unblinking yellow eyes. One grins evilly and a black forked tongue flashes out like an obscene serpent tasting the air. There is a silver cube at the feet of one of the guards and he bends down to touch it before we are pushed through.

  We are in a high ceilinged room, five times the height of a man. Close to the roof there appears to be a mirror running around the edge of the room, several metres deep. I see only reflections but I know without a doubt that there are Kueians behind it and that we are being studied. I risk a look behind us and see the guard bend down and stroke the cube again. The doorway is the only exit.

  The walls and ceiling are orange in colour and seem to have been carved from the planet’s rock. The ceiling above us has a yellowish sheen and is the main source of light in the room.

  We are made to stand in a single line. Jill is separated from Xavier and I. She smiles as if to say ‘don’t worry.’ There are 18 of us in the line, a dozen men and six women. Our five captors, still wearing suits and helmets, stand in front of us, legs apart and blasters at the ready.

  The middle one - the leader perhaps - takes half a pace forwards. ‘Take off your suits,’ he says. The voice sounds as if it has been amplified. Nobody moves. He turns and gestures towards one of his colleagues who aims his blaster at the face of one of the women Navigators. I think he is going to threaten her but he fires and her head disappears in a cloud of red droplets and her corpse slumps to the ground. We are all horrified and stand with our mouths open. I am scared rigid.

  ‘All commands will be obeyed instantly,’ says the leader. ‘The penalty for failure to do so is death. Take off your suits.’

  We do as he says and drop them on the ground in front of us. Two of the Kueians collect them and put them in a pile at the back of the room. One of the Kueians walks slowly along the line reading our names and ranks aloud into a small recording device. When he is finished he hands it to the leader who looks at it and nods.

  ‘For you the war is over,’ he says. ‘For the moment at least. Four pilots, six Weapons Officers and eight Navigators. Seven Navigators, rather. That is all that remains of your attack force. Your attack was a dismal failure.’ A few of us hang our heads in shame but I look straight ahead. I can see my reflection in his helmet visor.

  ‘It is time for you to make a choice,’ he says, and reaches up to take off his helmet. His colleagues twist their’s off at the same time, and they lift them off together.

  The gasps of astonishment are even louder than when they killed the Navigator. They are men, like us.

  The leader has piercing blue eyes and blonde hair. His nose is tilted up at the end and his hair is lightly curled giving his face an angelic look, like a choirboy about to perform before doting parents. His companions are all male, all in their late twenties or early thirties, all with hair slightly longer than ours. One of the men has a black beard, whereas none of the Earth troops have any facial hair.

  These men are not Earth troopers but they carry themselves like soldiers and they are most definitely from our planet. Having removed his helmet, the leader’s voice sounds normal when he speaks again.

  ‘We too were once defeated in battle by Kueian forces,’ he says. He smiles, but it is not a pleasant expression, it’s as if he is remembering some cruel event from his past, pulling the wings off a fly or torturing a small bird, perhaps. ‘We decided to join the Kueians, as mercenaries. We fight with them, i
n our own squadrons, with our own officers and an Earth Commander. We live well and we get to do what we do best, what we have been trained to do. We are a warrior elite, and we win. Which is more than can be said for you.’ His smile broadens, but it still fails to convey any warmth. Other than the opening of his mouth to show his teeth his face is totally devoid of any animation, any humanity.

  ‘You now have a choice, the same choice that we were faced with some years ago. You can fight with us……’ He pauses for effect, swinging his blaster from side to side, marking us off one by one with the barrel of his weapon. ‘Or you can die,’ he says.

  He raises his voice for the first time. ‘All those who wish to pledge themselves to the Kueian Empire, take two steps forward.’

  I look to the left and then to the right. Nobody moves at first, everyone seems confused. I do not know what to do. The decision is made for me by Xavier. He grips me tight with his hand and holds me still.

  One of the Weapons Officers, a small, stocky man with a bullet-shaped head, is the first to step forward, his eyes fixed on the wall in front of him. One or two of the men in the line curse him, but quietly, under their breaths, as if wary of punishment.

  A second figure moves, this time the Pilot with his arm in a sling who was captured soon after Xavier, Jill and I. He too looks straight ahead. I look at Xavier and he narrows his eyes and shakes his head. I am very frightened and wonder if this is when the Dreamer died, if Miss Dewar stood her ground while laying down the psi-disc and was blown apart. I think of pulling out but reject the idea. Max will not let me down. I am sure of it. I hope.

  Two more men step forward, both Weapons Officers. I take a perverse pride in the fact that no Navigators have offered to turn traitor.

  ‘Is that all?’ says the angelic warrior. Nobody else moves. I can feel a tightness in my chest and I find it hard to breath, and I’m not sure if it’s my own reaction to the fear, or if they are emotions that Miss Dewar has woven into the psi-disc. If the emotions are her’s then this is one of the most advanced psi-discs I’ve ever experienced and she deserves an Oscar. My mouth is dry and I cannot swallow.

  ‘Very well,’ says the angel. He nods to his men and they take aim with their blasters. I close my eyes as they begin to fire and I hear bodies slump to the floor but there is no pain, no burning sensation, no blinding light. I open my eyes. The bodies of the four men who had left our line lie on the floor, dead. The Pilot with the sling is on his back, a smouldering hole in his chest and a look of absolute surprise on his face. The stocky Weapons Officer lies on his side, a red wound under his ribcage where he had been shot as he turned to run.

  Xavier is looking at me with an ‘I told you so’ expression. I want to hug him. The angel walks up and down the line, just beyond the corpses.

  ‘Good,’ he says. ‘Only four. Twenty two per cent. That is in the lower quartile, you will be glad to hear. The Kueians have no desire for troops who are prepared to change sides so readily. Make no mistake, at least half of you will end up serving the Kueian war machine, but we will decide who will fight and who will die. You will be taken to your cells now and you will be fed. Tomorrow we will make the final selection.’

  He dismisses us and we are taken out of the room and back along the corridor. We are split up into smaller groups and taken in different directions through a maze of corridors and placed in individual rooms, two metres by three metres, twice as high as a man, with no windows and no door. The entrance is guarded by a silvery cube, smaller than the ones used to hold us in the triangular prison on the surface of the planet. I don’t even try to get through it. I wait.

  The cell is made from the same orange material as the room, with illumination coming from the yellowish ceiling. There is no sense of time passing, my watch has been taken from me. All I have are my uniform and my boots.

  Two guards come for me eventually, one of them I recognise, he was one of the five guards in the room, the one who had taken our name and ranks and read them into the recorder. He leans down and touches the cube and then waves me into the corridor. They stand either side of me and march me back to the hall. A group of prisoners are already waiting there, I see Xavier and Jill and they both give me a half wave. They are standing and talking quietly and I begin walking over to them but then one of the guards, a middle-aged man with wisps of red hair and a scar on his neck shouts at us and tells us to line up. I manage to get next to Xavier but Jill is pushed to one end of the line, out of reach.

  We stand at attention while the rest of the Earth troops are marched in and added to the end of the line. There are more guards carrying blasters this time, as if they are expecting trouble.

  The angel stands in front of us once more, his legs apart and his chin up in an attitude of arrogance, looking down his upturned nose at us.

  ‘Yesterday I told you that you will have the choice to serve the Kueians, that we want the best of you to fight alongside us as mercenaries. What I didn’t tell you is that you will all help the Kueian war machine in some way. If you are lucky then you will serve as troopers. As warriors. I am now going to show you how those who do not fight will serve.’ The cold smile slowly creeps across his face and he rests the butt of his blaster on his hip. With a slow grating noise an orange panel in the wall behind him slowly slides back showing a large video screen. The image on the screen is so awful, so bizarre, that it takes seconds to register what it is we are looking at.

  It is our Commander. What is left of him. He is lying on a parody of a hospital bed, a white couch with chains for restraining straps, and his head is held in a metal clamp. He is conscious, we can see his eyes occasionally blink. There is a large machine next to him, boxlike with cylinders attached to its side and a thick grey plastic tube leading from it to his mouth and tubes containing red fluid (blood?) crawling up to his neck and another, thicker, tube running to his stomach. There is no sheet covering the Commander, and we can clearly see what has been done to him. His right leg has been removed, close the groin, and his left foot taken off at the ankle. Both arms are missing, one taken off at the shoulder and one at the elbow. One of his eyes is nothing but a socket filled with clotting blood.

  The angel does not look around. ‘Those of you who do not choose to fight alongside us will help those who do,’ he says.

  ‘Occasionally our men get hurt in battle and we take care of them. We have the best medical treatment in the galaxy, there is no injury we cannot repair……providing we can get the spare parts.’

  He lets that sink in before continuing. Xavier is standing with his mouth wide open and is breathing like a sleepwalker.

  ‘Those who do not fight will be used to give life to those who do. We are in need of a range of body parts following the cowardly Earth attack on Kuei. Any that are not used immediately are kept on life support systems. It is not a pleasant way to live. Or perhaps I should say, it is not a pleasant way to die.’

  The four guards standing with him take aim with their blasters and I hear the guards behind us do the same. One of the women is crying but I do not look around.

  The angel continues. ‘You now have the choice I gave you yesterday. You can fight with us, or you can die. Let me repeat, you will help us anyway. There is no dishonour now in choosing to fight. Those who join us will be trained in the Kueian way, the Kueian philosophy, and in time you will fight because you want to. But if you choose not to fight now, you will not get another opportunity.’

  He looks at each and every one of us, one by one. My heart chills when his eyes pass over me. An angel with the power of life and death.

  ‘Those who wish to fight, take two steps forward,’ he barks.

  Again the decision is taken for me when Xavier steps forward and takes me with him.

  Only one man and two women do not move. They are marched out in silence. We are now reduced to ten in number.

  The angel seems pleased and runs his hand up and down the barrel of his blaster.

  ‘Good,’ he says, almost to
himself. ‘Good. Now, there is one more stage to go through before you begin combat training. And it will be your first lesson in Kueian philosophy. Kueian society is very much a male-dominated system. The females do not fight, nor do they associate with the male of the species unless it is mating time. The role of the female is solely one of procreation and the raising of the young to puberty. At puberty the males are separated from the females. Education, medicine, business, science, all are the prerogative of the male.’

  One of the women in our line sighs as if relieved, and I begin to think that maybe he is going to tell us that he is about to release the women.

  ‘The Kueians insist that we follow their philosophy, so that captured women cannot fight in our mercenary squadron. Their beliefs also forbid us from using female spare parts in male surgery.’

  It is obvious then that he does not intend to let them go and I wonder what will happen to the two women who have already been taken out. He has something sinister in mind, of that I’m sure. I look over at Jill and she has her hand up to her mouth as if she knows what is coming next.

  ‘To put it bluntly, we have no use of the three women in your group, other than as your next test.’ He is now only addressing the men in the line as if the women have ceased to exist.

  ‘You must now prove that you are prepared to turn your back on your past, to commit yourself fully to your new masters.’

  One of the guards behind us walks around and hands each of us a hunting knife of the finest steel, ridged on one side and lethally sharp on the other. They will do us no good against the guards and the blasters, but the unarmed women are a different matter.

  ‘You are to kill the females of your species,’ says the angel. ‘This is something you must do if you are to join us. We have all been through it. It is your blooding. Your new masters are watching…’ he raises his eyebrows and tilts his head up at the mirrored gallery overhead ‘…and the better you perform, the better will be your prospects.’