Fire Fight

by Chris Ward

  Raylan allowed himself a small smile, one hidden from his men by the thick beard. It wouldn’t do to have them see such a chink in his armor, but the truth was, he felt unnaturally optimistic. Every step back was merely a pushing stone to three steps forward, and his next three steps were about to be taken. For now, though, he felt a need to dominate something.

  He remembered Lady Julienne, the curve of her legs, the swell of her chest, the fullness of her lips. It was time to return to his bed chamber and have her yield to him once more, to prove to her—as well as to himself—that the smallest of wraths could become the most powerful.

  LIA

  Trina wasn’t ready to let her go. Every time Lia tried to pull away, her mother’s thick arms pulled her tighter, until both were sobbing into each other’s hair.

  Finally, Trina pulled back. She held Lia out at arm’s length. One hand ran down the side of Lia’s face.

  ‘You’ve aged, Lianetta. Wow, we could almost be sisters.’

  It was an exaggeration, but not by much. ‘I’m tired, Mother.’

  ‘It’s been years. Where have you been?’

  Lia shook her head. ‘Surviving, however best I could.’

  ‘I know that what happened screwed you up—’

  ‘Screwed me up? Mother, what happened ended me. What you see is not the little girl you remember.’

  ‘She’s in there somewhere.’

  ‘Well, I can’t find her.’

  Trina shook her head. ‘We could go back and forth about this all day. What brings you here, Lianetta? What brings you home?’

  Lia pulled the chip out of her pocket. ‘I need to know what information this contains,’ she said. ‘I think it might be dangerous.’

  Trina narrowed her eyes. ‘Where did you get that?’

  Lia sighed. ‘If possible, can I just not tell you? It’s … complicated.’

  ‘It’s hundreds of years old. I can tell that just from looking at it. Back on Earth it would be lazy security, but out here … it’s genius.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The technology is so old it is impossible to read. Whatever material this chip contains, it’s hidden without a machine capable of reading it, but the kind of machine needed … you won’t find one anywhere in the Trill System. Maybe not anywhere in the Fire Quarter.’

  ‘Can we build one?’

  Trina laughed. ‘It’s possible, but it will take time.’

  Lia shook her head. ‘I don’t have time. I need to know what’s contained on this drive, so I can figure out what to do with it.’

  Trina gave her daughter a long, hard stare. ‘Are you in trouble?’

  Lia cocked her head and smiled. ‘Probably.’

  Bennett lived out in the marshland beyond the ring of grassland surrounding Seen. Trina rented them a jeep and they headed out, the whir of the nine caterpillar treads beneath them a continuous soundtrack to the bleak journey. Three hours after setting out, they passed through a line of hills and then dropped down into a deep, sun-shadow valley where vegetation thickened and pressed in at them as they followed a vague trail.

  ‘He might be dead by now,’ Trina said. ‘I haven’t heard from him in … oh, Earth-years. Of course, time isn’t as valuable to him as it is to us.’

  The jeep converted to water-capable as they entered the marshes. From time to time, rocks would pass beneath the submerged treads, but often there was only the slosh of thick, gunge-laden water. Trees, empowered by the lusher environment, began to appear from the water as they moved deeper, until the hills behind them were lost behind a screen of vegetation.

  ‘Here,’ Trina said, instructing Lia to bring the jeep to a halt. ‘The last time I saw Bennett, he lived around here. Can you see anything that resembles a structure?’

  Lia looked around her. A couple of mounds protruded out of the swamp like small islands, but there was no sign of any human inhabitance. The trees were taller now and closer together. In places their branches entangled overhead, cutting off much of the light from the Trill System’s single sun.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said.

  ‘Bennett!’ Trina screamed, alarming Lia with the suddenness of her voice, hands cupped around her mouth. ‘Where are you? It’s Trina Jansen! I have need of your knowledge and expertise!’

  The only answer was the squelch of water and mud, the croak of water creatures, and the call of some kind of bird.

  ‘He’s gone,’ Trina said. ‘Perhaps he finally gave up living and died. Let’s turn back. Sorry, Lianetta; it looks like I’m of no help after all.’

  Lia began to back up the jeep, but the rear treads snagged on something under the water. She revved the engine, but nothing happened, the wheels caught so tight they couldn’t move.

  ‘I think we have a problem, Mother,’ she said. ‘How far have we come?’

  ‘Try it again.’

  Lia revved the engine again, but this time something cracked inside it, and a wisp of smoke rose into the air.

  ‘Hmm. That didn’t sound too good.’

  ‘Okay,’ Trina said. ‘I think we’re walking. No point standing around, is there? Let’s see if we can find dry ground before dark. We have six Cable-hours before sundown.’

  Lia leaned out of the jeep, looking for something solid to climb down on. Even stuck out here in the middle of the wilderness, she really didn’t want to get her boots wet if she could avoid it. Just beneath the water’s surface was a lump of grey rock. She leaned out of the door, swinging her leg down.

  As her foot touched the water, the jeep shifted, lifting up into the air as water sloshed around it. Trina screamed and grabbed Lia’s arm, pulling her back inside the vehicle. Clutching each other, they hung on as it rose up out of the water and rolled sideways.

  As the jeep shook, something huge and grey appeared outside the windows. Lia reached for her blaster, but as she pulled it free and aimed, Trina grabbed her jacket and jerked her arm down.

  ‘No!’

  The blast went off, striking the jeep’s dashboard and causing an explosion of sparks, leaving no doubt that they were walking back to Seen.

  ‘Mother, what are you doing?’

  Trina ignored her. ‘Bennett! Put us down!’

  The jeep stopped moving. Something that smelled of rotting fish grunted. Lia cracked her head on the jeep’s roof as it fell into the water with a splash that briefly drenched and obscured the windows.

  Trina kicked open her door and climbed out onto the jeep’s roof. Lia, rubbing her head, followed her out.

  ‘Bennett! There you are! Did you hear me calling you?’

  Lia stared. The thing standing in front of her was at least thirty feet tall. It was a mottled grey color, covered, she realised, in a thick clay paste. Where parts had fallen away, the angles of metal and the curves of flesh were visible; lights flickered, thick veins pulsed in the skin, and the giant, half-organic, half-robot creature lifted a thick arm and reached down a hand to Trina.

  The fingers, flesh and metal caked with clay, were as thick as Trina’s neck, but she reached out with both hands and gave the nearest one a shake.

  ‘Bennett,’ she said, smiling. ‘It’s so lovely to see you again. You’ve grown.’

  The creature had a head and face. Eyes were blue lights, but the mouth and jaw was from some giant canine creature. A lower jaw filled with sword-length curved teeth clacked open and closed.

  ‘Trina,’ said an electronic voice that came from within Bennett’s clay-covered chest. ‘It’s been a while. Who is your companion?’

  ‘My daughter, Lianetta. I’m certain you haven’t met her before, or at least not since she was too young to remember. Of course, she only visits me these days when she needs something.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Selfish and spoilt and misguided. I remember your exact words.’

  Lia glared at her mother. Trina blushed. ‘Bennett, we really need to work on your understanding of social context,’ she said. ‘I should visit more often.’

  ‘Loyal and brave and
beautiful. Like a second sun shining in the sky.’

  ‘I said that?’

  Lia wiped away a tear. ‘Mother?’

  ‘Every day of your daughter’s absence breaks your heart again,’ Bennett said, seemingly unconcerned that both Lia and Trina were now crying. ‘Burdened by a great betrayal and loss, you feared you had lost her forever.’

  ‘Bennett, you can shut up now.’

  A great clank of internal machinery suggested a chuckle. ‘What brings you to see me after so long?’

  ‘Lianetta brought me something,’ Trina said. ‘I need to know what information it contains. I know how you have certain … knowledge, and wondered if perhaps you could help.’

  Bennett squatted down. As he did so, more of the clay broke away, revealing the body of a creature built out of the remains of other creatures, both organic and synthetic.

  ‘I interest you, I can tell,’ Bennett said to Lia. ‘Few look at me as though I were an art project. Well, few look at me at all, I would say.’

  Lia shrugged. ‘You’re neither human nor an off-worlder, I’d guess.’

  ‘I’m neither organic nor machine either,’ Bennett said. ‘Once, many years before I can remember, I was built. And some time after that, I was abandoned. My own memory grows from there, thick with the desperate need to cling to this fateful thing we call life by any means necessary. And the means for me were to build and rebuild, until what I once was is but a memory.’

  Lia nodded. She had heard of such creatures. Some said they were broken robots, some said they were biotechnologically created sentient beings that had gone wrong. Some said they were both.

  In many parts of the galaxy, they were hunted.

  ‘You hide out here,’ Lia said.

  ‘It’s not so bad.’ Bennett’s huge shoulders lifted in a shrug, showering them with drips of water and pieces of weed. ‘It becomes familiar over time. Tell me, what is this thing you have brought?’

  Lia reached into her pocket and withdrew the chip. ‘This.’

  Bennett leaned closer. ‘Where did you find this?’

  Aware of her mother’s eyes on her, Lia said, ‘I was hired to recover it from a hijacked cargo freighter. However, I had a change of heart when the time came to deliver it. I feared it might contain harmful information.’

  ‘What kind of harmful information?’

  Lia shrugged. ‘I was told it contained information about an uprising on Abalon 3 … and how to crush it.’

  ‘There is no such uprising on Abalon 3.’

  ‘Is there not?’ Trina asked.

  ‘No. The Abaloni are a simple people whose lives are controlled by the harshness of their environment. You are aware of the nature of Abalon 3? It is a fire planet, where the atmosphere has a habit of spontaneously combusting. It is a particularly lethal place.’

  ‘Yet it has a population?’

  ‘The Abaloni are farmers. They have adapted to survive in the conditions, and have no reason to leave.’

  ‘Then why this talk of an uprising?’

  Bennett shook his huge head. ‘The governors of Trill concentrate their policing efforts on Cable and Feint. Abalon 3 is mostly left to govern itself.’

  ‘I heard there were warlords living out there.’

  Bennett nodded. ‘The planet, as well as the moons and asteroids within its orbit, are rich in trioxyglobin. There are many off-world mining operations, both legitimate and … less so. The planet, though, belongs to its inhabitants, despite off-world pressure to open up more mines. Here. Let me look at that.’

  Lia held up the chip. A cable snaked out of Bennett’s side and took hold of it in pincers so delicate they could have plucked eyelashes. The creature lifted the chip, and the cable disappeared into a cavity in his huge body.

  ‘Bennett?’

  The huge blue lights blinked, then shuddered from side to side. The cable withdrew from Bennett’s body cavity and he dropped the chip to the ground.

  ‘Destroy it.’

  ‘Why?’

  Bennett shuddered, showering them with pieces of clay. ‘That thing … it is death. Death for millions.’

  ‘What does it contain?’

  Bennett let out a huge sigh that sounded like a great gust of wind blowing through the trees. ‘The farmers of Abalon 3 are no longer fully human. To adapt to life on a fire planet, they long ago incorporated biotechnology into their bodies in order to deal with the conditions and live a normal life. Like myself, they are now part machine, but that part is so integrated that it lives and grows like human flesh. That chip contains a virus that disturbs the biotechnological part of their bodies. I do not know exactly what it will do, only that it means death. If allowed to reach Abalon 3 it could decimate the population in a matter of days. Destroy it. Destroy it now.’

  Lia looked down at the chip. ‘Yeah, I can do that. However, it’s not that simple. Because I had no idea how valuable it might be, I had my droid use the ship’s self-repair system to manufacture an exact copy. We weren’t able to access or decode the encrypted information, but we were able to scan it and replicate it.’

  ‘Then you’d better get back to your ship as soon as possible, before someone who might be hunting for this chip gets there first.’

  LEON-AR

  He hated the color green. It was a despicable, ugly color, one that suggested damp, mould, sweat, and slime. There was something to be said for desert worlds, where you could run your fingers and toes in the sand, and provided you avoided the kind of sand worms that burrowed under the surface, the grains would have dried and fallen away before you returned to your ship.

  It was a pleasant, relaxing feeling.

  On horrible forest-based or marshland worlds, you didn’t get that same sense of peace. The slime followed you everywhere, like a snake around your neck that had burrowed into your skin and wouldn’t let go.

  The little landing craft bumped and bucked through the heavy turbulence on Janfar 9’s smallest moon, Jan-lan-last. A little bigger than Earth’s moon, its rotation and gravitation systems had made it a botanist’s dream and a sand-lover’s nightmare. Intricate tree systems rose miles high, and even the grasses were taller than an average human. Its great mass of vegetation made it a fantastic place to hide, not just for the kind of nightmarish creatures that made Leon-Ar break out in a cold sweat, but for the sort of criminals and Underworlders who had no wish to easily be found.

  The supposed city of Jak was more like a village of tree-living bumpkins. He was met on the landing pad by a group of dignitaries wearing cloth-woven tunics in a mixture of greens and browns, as though they had stripped the bark from the very trees themselves. Their legs were bare, but on their feet they wore shoes with metal claws embedded into their outer edges. Leon-Ar tried not to laugh. In every other system he’d visited, the locals used elevators.

  ‘Welcome, delegate,’ said the foremost man, identified as important by a ring of flowers in his hair. ‘We trust you found the journey to your liking.’

  ‘Traumatic,’ Leon-Ar said. ‘I gather your hospitality will ease my exhaustion.’

  ‘For sure, for sure. We will provide you with the greatest luxury our society can provide. May I just ask, has the donation been sent?’

  Leon-Ar nodded. ‘Soon your dilapidated spaceports can be refurbished with modern off-world facilities.’

  They didn’t appear to notice the little dig at their agrarian society. With smiles all around suggesting that some of his generous donation would be siphoned off for the benefit of the ruling class, they led him into their sorry excuse for a city.

  The apartment allocated to an apparent delegate was more satisfactory than expected. A series of log cabin rooms, it had a double door system to keep out the bugs, while, despite the system being basic, it had hot water and a self-warming bed. The dignitaries provided him with as much food and drink as he could consume—most of it imported from off-world, much to his relief—and a couple of local girls, who, despite being a little small for his Tolgier
stature, took his mind off the journey in ways that left him humming with pleasure. By the time the hour had come for him to meet the dignitaries for a welcome social event, he was tired enough to sleep on his feet.

  ‘Lianetta Jansen,’ he reminded himself, when he closed his eyes one too many times. A death that needed to happen if his reputation were to be restored. He called forth one of the two girls, closed his eyes and imagined her to be Lianetta, then threw her down on the bed and punished her appropriately. When he was done, he got dressed, then headed for the welcome party with his head held high.

  The event was all for show, but he played the part of visiting delegate as best he needed. Despite being merely the possessor of funds that could rebuild whole villages of hillbilly tree-huggers, he was treated like royalty.

  Near the event’s end, after he had been passed among dozens of groups of nameless nobodies, he found himself taken aside by the head dignitary, a man named Jak-Johnson-Paul.

  ‘You will be taken out at first light to meet the Hispirians,’ he said. ‘They have been informed of your intention to do business.’

  ‘And their response?’

  ‘Ambiguous, as ever. You will know of your success only if you return.’

  ‘That’s not particularly helpful.’

  ‘The Hispirians require no payment; you know that—only the offer of an irresistible challenge. If they turn you down, they will not allow you to leave. Enjoy your time in Jak this evening, sir.’

  Leon-Ar tried his best. Despite the delights of his two companions, he was unable to concentrate, and by midnight he had sent them home, taking with him to bed only a bottle of local liquor, a spicy thing that had the unwelcome aftertaste of tree sap.

  It was difficult to sleep, knowing that by the following day’s end, either Lianetta Jansen’s life would be abandoned, or his would.