Fire Fight

by Chris Ward

  She lifted a hand and flung a palm grenade at the hangar’s door mechanism. It exploded with a crash of metal and a hiss of escaping coolant. Then she was through, speeding into the street, blaster fire flashing around her, cut off as the massive fireproof door crashed down, trapping the other transports inside.

  A couple of other hover-bikes had followed her, but Lia had once ridden one for a living. It took no more than a few minutes to lose them among the squat blocks of protruding roof, and then she was out into the desert. Pausing to catch her breath, she activated the homing function on her intercom and headed for the ruined building where she had left the Dirt Devil.

  The last firestorm had left smoke stains over its wings, but it was otherwise undamaged, the walls having provided just enough protection. Lia climbed into the cockpit, feeling a heavy weight pulling down on her chest. She knew what needed to be done as she activated the ship’s controls and lifted the old fighter craft into the air, even though the thought of doing it filled her with an inescapable sense of loss.

  She set a direct path for Boxar. The Dirt Devil’s radar was broken, but it was her hunch as someone who had crossed the known galaxy a dozen times that a clunky transport moving between cities on a fire planet would take the most direct route.

  An hour into the journey, a lumpy, flying box appeared on her visual monitor.

  Flying low to the ground, the transport was doing no more than six hundred Earth-miles an hour. The Matilda could fly backward faster, and Lia slowed the Dirt Devil to a comparable speed and dropped as low as she dared, aware the transport might have working radar or even defensive cannons.

  Boxar was a hundred miles farther across the desert. Lia took a deep breath as she checked the Dirt Devil’s blaster cannons, aligning their sights with the transport. Gritting her teeth, she fired.

  The left blaster malfunctioned and exploded, knocking the ship sideways, but the right got off a shot which struck the transport cleanly in the rear. The Dirt Devil’s blaster was designed to break through armor plating, and it had no trouble with the transport’s weakest side, breaking through the rear door and damaging its lower thruster. The transport’s engines gave a booming groan, then it lurched sideways and crashed down into the sand.

  The fire caused by the damaged left blaster was spreading through the electronics of the Dirt Devil’s wing. Lia found it listing to one side, so she pulled the ship out in a wide arc around the transport, bringing it back around to see how much damage she had done.

  The transport had broken apart, and flames spewed from two sections. To her dismay, Lia saw a handful of survivors struggling through the sand in the direction of a rocky hill they hoped would offer cover. One of them, she knew, could be carrying the virus’s copy. The others would be innocent traders simply wanting to get on with their businesses.

  She knew the fiery wreckage contained several dozen bodies, but somehow, being unable to see them made it less inhuman, more manageable. As she turned the stuttering Dirt Devil on the survivors and opened fire, tears stung her eyes, blurring her vision, and by the time she wiped them away, nothing remained of the survivors but a few bloody patches of sand.

  ‘Damn you, Raylan,’ she muttered, punching a fist against the dashboard, as the true reality of the murder she had committed struck home. Saving the rest of the planet made her feel little better, but in time, perhaps, she would come to terms with it.

  Another small explosion rocked the Dirt Devil, and it ducked into a roll. Lia tried to correct it, but the damage was too great, and the desert rushed up to meet her. In the instant before she pressed the seat-eject button in the hope it might work better than the blasters, she thought about going down with the fighter, but knew, deep down, that she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

  She was a coward.

  21

  HARLAN5

  It was interesting to watch humans and their emotions, Harlan5 thought, as he went about the tasks set for him with the same zero feeling he did everything else. Of course his programming told him that in certain situations he ought to feel tired, or angry, or frustrated, or elated, when, perhaps, something that had hitherto appeared impossible snapped into place with the ease of sliding into an oil bath in the mechanics yards on Rogue, the metal planet in the Event System on which he had been assembled many hundreds of Earth-years ago.

  Watching Caladan as he stomped about the ship, actually jumping high enough that both legs left the ground at once when one of the workers they had employed successfully completed a difficult task, or banging his fist against the corridor walls when something went wrong, or periodically leaning out of a rent in the ship’s hull and staring up at the sky as though he might actually see Lia’s passage to Abalon 3, muttering obscenities under his breath while drumming his fingers on something to send little echoes pulsing through the ship’s empty chambers, was fascinating.

  Harlan5’s programming estimated that Caladan, despite his endless jokes, jibes, threats, asides, sarcasms, and occasional borderline-polite comments, actually cared about the captain.

  It was this emotion that Harlan5 found most interesting. He wondered if he should perhaps feel for other robots a similar feeling. Maybe, when he touched the Matilda, he ought to feel a sense of relief or happiness that she still existed, that she was still there.

  It was fascinating.

  ‘Are you done, robot?’

  Harlan5 straightened. ‘Five Earth-minutes more. My programming estimates that is the exact length of time remaining before this section of damaged wall is sealed safely enough for space travel.’

  ‘“Yes” was plenty, but thanks anyway,’ Caladan said, then marched off to check on one of the hired hands, his footfalls moving at a rate that Harlan’s programming told him was nine percent faster than his usual pacing speed, a suggestion of real urgency.

  Near the main doors, a group of hired workers had finished. While Harlan5’s historical memory suggested that as a general trait Karpali were untrustworthy, with six arms they made excellent manual laborers, making up for in speed what they lacked in quality. Harlan wondered why Caladan would risk flying the Matilda short of full repair, and even the pilot’s often-repeated response, ‘she’s been a piece of junk as long as I’ve known her. We just need to get her in the air’, didn’t reassure Harlan to the extent his programming would like.

  Still, what did he know? He was just a robot. He wrinkled the metallic features on his face into a grin and flashed the lights in his eyes in greeting. The Karpali stared at him like a collection of expensive parts to be broken down and sold, but their leader announced that, indeed, their work was done, the damage to the entrance was fixed, and the Matilda should fly without trouble.

  Harlan5 called Caladan on his intercom, and the pilot came running up from another part of the ship.

  ‘They claim we can fly,’ Harlan said.

  ‘Fantastic,’ Caladan shouted, jumping off the ground again in a display of excitement Harlan’s programming found disturbing. ‘Pay them.’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘I don’t know, anything. Find something in the cargo holds we don’t need or rip something off a different part of the ship.’

  ‘But isn’t that counter-productive?’

  ‘I don’t care. Get them off the ship so we can get out of here.’

  The Karpali laborers were staring at him with those hungry eyes again. Harlan5 told them in their native language he would be right back, then headed off to the cargo holds to see if he could find some junk hidden away in a corner that might satisfy them. Another man’s treasure; wasn’t that how the old Earth-saying went?

  As he descended into the ship, the echo of an unfamiliar sound followed him: it appeared Caladan was singing.

  22

  RAYLAN

  The burning ruin of the transport became apparent as the line of fighters approached. Raylan, watching through multiple visual screens from the command centre of his base, howled with rage, then tried again to call Fardo Galad u
p on his intercom. As before, though, no reply came.

  ‘Downed assailant craft spotted, sir,’ came the voice of a pilot. Raylan switched the main display screen over and saw the remains of a light fighter craft smoldering in the sand. One wing was a mangled ruin, and the engines still spat flames, but the cockpit hatch was missing.

  ‘Destroy it!’ he screamed, even though it was already in bad shape.

  The pilot fired two blasts and the ship exploded.

  ‘Sweep the area for survivors of the attack,’ Raylan said. ‘Round them up. And I want four teams on the ground, combing through the remains. Find Fardo and bring the pieces of him back to me.’

  He watched, filled with hate and anger, as his crews carried out their tasks. Most of the passengers had been incinerated in the attack, and there was no sign of Fardo, who had been carrying the virus. Something was bothering Raylan, though, something obvious that, in his anger, he had missed.

  ‘The fighter’s pilot,’ he howled, slamming both fists against the computer terminal. ‘He ejected, didn’t he? Find him and gut him. Cut him up piece by piece, and if I miss one single second of the video feed I’ll do the same to every one of you, all of your family members, and everyone you’ve ever known!’

  His voice broke, reaching a pitch he rarely found and turning into a crackling mess. He spun around, searching the faces of his advisors for a single snigger of amusement, a lone flicker of mirth, but all of them had their eyes staring far too intently at a smaller version of the main monitor screen.

  ‘Got him, sir.’

  A video feed zoomed in on a figure running across the sand. Dressed casually, the frame was slight, but certainly human or human subspecies. Something stirred in Raylan, and he began to imagine a special form of punishment.

  ‘It’s a woman,’ he said. ‘Capture her. I don’t want her harmed, although I’ll forgive a few bruises if she fights. Bring her here to me. I will punish her personally.’

  The video showed three other fighter craft land in a circle around the running woman. She immediately took to cover, establishing a defensive position which impressed Raylan with her knowledge of tactics; this was a woman who knew her way around the military. Two blasters appeared in her hands, but each of his fighters contained five infantrymen, so soon they established an encircling ring. With nothing to lose, she fired on them, killing several, but their strength in numbers proved critical, and they were able to easily pin her down with return fire.

  ‘Rush her,’ Raylan said casually. ‘The man who disarms her will be rewarded with the command of a star cruiser from my personal fleet. Get to it.’

  The men broke from cover at once. Raylan rolled his eyes at how easily many of them died, but the woman couldn’t fire everywhere at once. By the time she was disarmed, beaten into submission, and restrained with steel bonds, fourteen of his soldiers lay dead.

  He shrugged. She had saved him a significant payroll.

  ‘Bring her in,’ he said. ‘And quickly. There’s another firestorm brewing.’

  His ships broke through the atmosphere just as the sky bloomed yellow and crimson, the raging, shifting mass of heat and color pouring outward to annihilate anything in its way. Raylan let out a long, frustrated sigh, aware that the firestorm would wipe away everything left on the sand, and with it, the virus. Unless he could find some way to break the quarantine on Avar before the cause of the deaths was discovered, then he was back to the beginning, and would need to find another way to satisfy his desire to control the massive trioxyglobin deposits beneath Abalon 3’s surface.

  There was no such thing as abject failure. There were only temporary setbacks. He had, however, suffered the mother of all such setbacks, and the reason for that setback would be docking at his spaceport in a couple of hours.

  Over many years he had built a reputation for being unforgiving, savage, and brutal.

  He couldn’t wait for punishment to begin.

  The fighters docked and moored in the base’s main landing bay. Two guards carried the woman between them, her feet dragging, barely able to find purchase. Her face showed signs of a real beating, while her hands were bloody as evidence of giving one out. Quite the heroine, it seemed. It would be fun to watch her slowly break over a period of several weeks.

  ‘I know you,’ he said.

  She lifted her head. The slit of one eye flickered as it watched him. The other was swollen shut.

  ‘It’s over,’ she said.

  ‘There is no such thing as over,’ he replied.

  With a smile he found somewhat disconcerting, she answered, ‘No, actually there is not. It’s not over for me, either. But it will be soon for you.’

  ‘I know you,’ he said again.

  ‘And I know you.’

  His back felt itchy. Either it was a return of the scaly yeast infection that often afflicted his lower regions, or her words were getting to him.

  ‘Of course you do. Everyone in Trill System knows me. I am Raylan Climlee, the merciless warlord. Isn’t that what they say?’

  ‘Raylan Climlee, the merciless, short warlord.’ She smiled. ‘Short in more ways than one.’

  ‘You useless whore.’

  ‘A contradiction. I just destroyed your virus. Kill me and get it over with.’

  ‘You think I would? Do you know what the term “merciless” means?’

  ‘I could just ask my family … if they were still alive.’

  ‘Lianetta Jansen. Such a victim. I should have known it was you. Your husband and child really should have just stayed out of the way. I only kill people I really need to kill. Otherwise it’s such a waste of ammunition.’

  ‘They had no chance. They were far from any battle, on a designated neutral planet. So please tell me how they were in the way?’

  ‘It was necessary to make a political statement.’

  Her body was shaking. At first he thought it might be shock or even blood loss; then he realised it was rage. He smiled. Good. He enjoyed an angry lover.

  ‘You are not, and never will be, above galactic law.’

  ‘Well, that depends whether the stated galactic law is correct or not. And coming from the mass murderer of nearly a hundred innocent traders, that’s quite a statement of morality.’

  This time Lianetta Jansen had no reply. Behind the bruises, though, her eyes bored into his.

  ‘Take her to my bed chamber,’ he instructed the guards. To Lianetta, he explained, ‘I am Human-Minion, a former sub-species of human, although some would say an improved-species, wouldn’t you agree? Unfortunately, it is not possible for our particular species to mate and produce offspring. Coupling is slowly poisonous for the female, and when impregnation is achieved, the seed will slowly consume the carrier from the inside out over a number of extremely painful months.’

  ‘You’re a dog that ought to be melted down for glue,’ Lianetta said.

  Raylan forced himself not to lower himself into a war of traded insults. He made a note to remember to gag her. Then, grinning, he said, ‘Your punishment begins as soon as I feel ready. I hope you’re looking forward to it.’

  23

  CALADAN

  ‘My programming tells me that we should inform Seen’s space authorities of our intention to leave,’ Harlan said, but Caladan waved his only hand at the droid and scoffed as the Matilda roared up through the inner atmosphere, for the time being all four rear thrusters working as well as they ever had.

  ‘We didn’t tell them we were coming, so what’s the point?’

  ‘There are five Interplanetary Peacekeepers on our trail.’

  ‘Good. It’ll test whether the shields got fixed or not.’

  ‘Even if we deflect their fire, it’ll put great strain on the generators, and if we shoot them down, my programming tells me we’ll be designated outlaws across the whole Trill System.’

  ‘Aren’t we already?’

  ‘We’re on the “Unwelcome” list.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘An
y planet has the right to refuse us landing.’

  Caladan laughed. ‘A good job we never ask. What changes?’

  ‘The price of the bounty on our heads. At the moment even Lia’s is too low to attract many well-known bounty hunters. Soon, we’ll all be hunted, even me.’

  ‘Does your programming tell you that’s a problem?’

  ‘Of course. It also tells me that, in a certain sense, and disvaluing a certain moral code, it’s something to be quite proud of.’

  Caladan laughed. ‘It’s not impossible that you and I might get along after all, robot,’ he said. ‘But let’s make sure we get Lia back, just in case.’

  ‘My programming tells me I couldn’t agree more.’

  ‘Those fighters you mentioned, they’re engaging us.’

  The dots on the monitor were coming closer. Caladan had the computers do a scan of visible armaments and it revealed the IPs were loaded with a full complement of photon weaponry.

  They had no plans to capture the Matilda and her crew. They had come to shoot her out of the sky.

  ‘Engage full attack systems,’ Caladan said. ‘They want a fight, they’ll get one.’

  On a smaller ship’s detail monitor, he watched the Matilda’s outward appearance shifting. During flight, all eight arms extended in a cone of spines behind the central hub of the ship, the four main thrusters located in the rear of alternating arms, but when attack mode was assumed, the eight arms twisted like the talons of a bird, revolving at high speed around the stationary hub, while motion was controlled using a central thruster set into the hub itself. Firing at great speed from all eight photon cannons, creating a grid of fire that resembled a spider’s web and was nearly impossible to avoid, the Matilda made a fearsome enemy.