Fire Fight

by Chris Ward

  As the guards got to work, Raylan let out a sigh. He had enjoyed many long, enjoyable nights with the mangled thing sitting up on the bed with a grin on its powerless face. More of a concern, though, were the empty cuffs lying on the bed beside it.

  Lianetta Jansen was loose on his base, and perhaps for the first time in as long as he could remember, he felt a tingling of fear.

  ‘Lock down all areas,’ he said. ‘We need to capture her. I want her alive if possible. I have a special kind of punishment waiting for her.’

  The corridors, previously just tunnels of bland metal sheeting, became foreboding. Raylan called a droid to him and requested a special piece of armor. Lianetta Jansen wouldn’t be able to hide for long with his men combing the base; sooner or later she would take a shot at him. She genuinely believed in an eye-for-an-eye, that killing him would avenge her family. What she assumed was that he cared, that it mattered to him at all about the slaughter of her kin and their friends.

  It didn’t, and it never would. Nothing she could do would make him care, so her game was already lost. It was simply a case of tidying up the pieces.

  The droid returned. It held out a utility belt which Raylan fitted around his waist. A switch activated the mini shield, and although it gave him a headache as the extreme magnetism acted through his body, it also gave him a sense of invincibility.

  A smile returned to his face. ‘Lianetta, where are you? Come out to play.’ To a guard, he said, ‘Ready my shuttle. I will soon be heading out to orbit above Abalon 3 aboard my space station, the Prosperity. I have received word that a particularly fierce firestorm is on its way, and I wish to view it at close range. I will be taking a guest, so prepare for a passenger.’

  The man ran off. Raylan, flanked by as many guards as he could find in the sector, strode confidently down the corridor. Where would she hide? What would she expect him to do?

  Run.

  The fool woman would obviously associate his somewhat diminutive stature with courage. Knowing a former member of the Galactic Military Police was loose on his base, armed with both weapons and a sense of justice, she would expect him to run to his shuttle like a frightened rat and escape the base until she was flushed out.

  It made perfect sense that she would already be hiding on his shuttle.

  He called a droid.

  ‘My shuttle needs a little disinfecting,’ he said. ‘See to it that the inside is given a full gassing. Not strong enough to kill a human or human subspecies, but strong enough to knock them unconscious.’

  The droid headed off. Raylan, feeling more confident than ever, headed for the main hangar, taking his time, giving the droid and his guards time to do their work. So many people underestimated him, he thought. How many times had he been put into a situation of peril only to come out on top? He wasn’t the greatest warlord in the Trill System for nothing. It was time people realised that.

  When he arrived at the hangar, guards were climbing out of his shuttle, carrying the unconscious body of a woman on a hover-stretcher.

  Raylan smiled. All too easy.

  ‘When the disinfecting is over, load her back on board,’ he told the guards. ‘I will take her on a short journey up to the Prosperity.’

  As he stared down at her, he considered having his way with her while she lay unconscious, but he never found that so satisfying. He liked to look into their eyes as he violated them, watch disgust turn to surprise, then to fear, and finally to agony. Nothing gave him greater pleasure than to hear their screams of horror as he punished them.

  And, in addition, she had donned some of Lady Julienne’s clothes to cover her nakedness, rolling up the cuffs to make a better fit, and there was nothing he hated more than a common thief.

  26

  LIA

  Something was sucking on her toes. Lia opened her eyes, her feet itching from something rough and scratchy running over her soles, between her toes and back again. She kicked out, feeling a satisfied thud as her heel hit something bony.

  ‘You ungrateful whore.’ Raylan Climlee licked his lips and then scowled at her. ‘You’re no good to anyone unless you’re clean.’

  ‘I think we have different ideas about cleanliness. Let me go, or I’ll kill you like I killed that toy of yours.’

  ‘Such brave words, but you missed your chance. Like the rest of the military police I’ve killed, you were far too predictable. You deserve a long and slow death, but I don’t have time for that. Instead, what I offer is an extremely painful one.’

  He pressed a button, and the bench to which she was secured lifted into a sitting position so Lia could see out of a monitor screen. She was no longer hiding in the shuttle on the moonbase, but on a ship orbiting a planet. As she watched, far across the planet’s curve, a patch of color bloomed like a sudden explosion.

  A trickle of fear ran down her back. ‘Abalon 3.’

  ‘Clever girl. I have it on reliable evidence that one of the greatest firestorms in recorded history is imminent. I have prepared a special suit and an extension wire, and you will be lowered to a point where the storm’s uppermost part will erase you from existence for good.’

  ‘I won’t even feel it.’

  ‘Oh, you will. Lowering you into the storm itself would have you incinerated in an instant, so I have set the coordinates for the self-motion suit to lower you to a position where you will slow-cook over a number of hours. The pain will cause every nerve in your body to tingle with excitement.’

  ‘You’re a monster. How can you act so cruel?’

  ‘Says the woman who murdered dozens of innocent traders on the off-chance one of them carried something important. I am a product of my environment, no different to you. You talk to me about morality, yet you have none. A firefight is fair but a knife in the back is not?’

  Lia gritted her teeth, refusing to think about the bodies lying on the sand. ‘I save lives. You take them.’

  ‘Only when it suits me. We’re not so different, you and I, despite what you might think. Would you like to hear the voices of your husband and son again? I make a point of recording every death I can. It makes for such compelling listening.’

  Lia’s cheeks burned. She strained at her bonds, but she was held tight.

  ‘You look so eager,’ Raylan said, his ugly, troll face beaming. ‘Just have a little patience while I call up the ship’s computer and have it loaded. Who knows, I may even have visuals with this one too. Wouldn’t you just love to see your husband and child again? How long has it been? Ten years?’

  ‘Stop!’ Lia shouted. ‘What is it you want? I’ll do it. Anything. Release me. You want a plaything for your bed chamber, I’m yours. You can own me for the rest of my life. Anything … but that.’

  Raylan’s smile dropped. ‘Oh, come on, Lianetta. You think I can be bargained with? Whatever gave you that idea?’ He waved a hand toward the monitor screen. ‘Computer. I would like a visual recording pulled from the archives.’

  ‘No….’

  ‘Shh. Be quiet now. I may cut it off early if it pleases me.’

  Lia’s eyes filled with tears. ‘You wouldn’t do it to me, would you?’

  Raylan held her gaze. ‘Oh, my dear, I would.’

  The screen flickered into life as Raylan called out a series of coordinates. Two familiar faces appeared on the screen, faces Lia hadn’t seen in a long time. At first they looked happy, sitting at a table in a quaint living chamber, talking while her little boy flicked through the pages of a magazine.

  They had died in a bomb detonated in another part of the complex. They hadn’t died straight away like many had, but over several hours, trapped in their apartment while flames and smoke gradually reached them.

  The tears didn’t take long to come, but once they did, she found them impossible to stop.

  27

  CALADAN

  ‘There. Take us in, full battle mode. You still got a lock on that signal?’

  Harlan5 nodded. ‘Affirmative.’

  ‘We�
��re coming, Lia,’ Caladan said. ‘We’re coming. Just hold on in there.’

  Matilda, Matilda, Matilda.

  The signal had been meant for no one else. Only the three of them knew that the Pioneer-Class XL Rogue Hunter, serial number 938H, was nicknamed “Matilda”, after a beloved pet from Lia’s childhood.

  It was a calling card Lia knew would find them, and one that they knew meant she needed help.

  ‘Have you got a lock on their transmissions yet? I need to know what they’ll come at us with,’ Caladan said. ‘Get me an inventory of this warlord scum’s battle fleet.’

  ‘My programming wishes me to advise you that it would be far safer to jettison the ship, then try to access the base through other means.’

  Caladan turned in the chair. ‘Is that what I asked? Is it?’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘Then answer the question you were asked.’

  ‘Nineteen fighters on the base. Another seven on his orbiting space station.’

  ‘Flights in and out?’

  ‘Three freighters in the last hour, according to Abalon 3’s traffic log. That’s only the authorised movement.’

  ‘The unauthorised?’

  ‘How would I know?’

  ‘What have the scanners picked up?’

  ‘Three fighters and a transport shuttle docked at the space station two Earth-hours ago.’

  Caladan looked up. ‘That’s where she is.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I’m more or less human. I know how other humans think.’

  ‘According to my programming, Raylan Climlee is only sixty percent human.’

  ‘Close enough.’

  ‘My programming hopes so.’

  ‘Trust me. But if I get it wrong, I never said that.’

  ‘I have visual and audio memory databanks.’

  ‘You’re malfunctioning. I’ll send you for a refit. Maybe just for recycling.’

  ‘My programming hopes you’re right.’

  ‘So does mine.’

  Caladan engaged the rear thrusters and locked the Matilda on a course for Raylan’s space station. As they slowly closed, the distance counter ticking down under ten million space miles, he brought up what the ship’s encyclopedia had stored about the warlord and his operations.

  A former human subspecies, Raylan Climlee was estimated to be around two hundred Earth-years old by standard counting, his actual age—like everyone who moved around by stasis-ultraspace or spent time in regeneration chambers—likely far higher. His business operations consisted of trioxyglobin mining across nine moons and more than thirty major asteroids in the Trill System, predominantly around the system’s major fire planet, Abalon 3. His secondary businesses—all assumed, and logged under pending galactic criminal investigations—included funding civil wars in more than four systems in the Estron Quadrant, supporting the same with direct recruitment of mercenaries—mainly roving Barelaons—as well as various levels of his own warring behaviour in constant battles against other warlords, some of which occasionally required the involvement of Galactic Military Police.

  It was claimed—unproven, like many of the charges against him—that he was behind the assassination of the governor of Loam, the major fire planet in the Phevius System, and attacks on at least three military police training bases in the same system, one of which had left more than three hundred personnel—mostly families of duty officers—dead.

  Caladan sat back and scrolled through to the next screen. This listed the inventory of Raylan’s assumed fleet: in addition to his planetary bases and asteroid mining operations, he controlled one major space station named the Prosperity, as well as ninety-five deep space freighters, seventy interplanetary warships, and nine hundred three-man fighters.

  He frowned. It was awfully light for a man with such a reputation, even though Raylan had publicly claimed that he wished to transition into legitimate business, leaving his criminal past behind.

  The distance counter ticked down to nine million Earth-miles.

  ‘Okay, it’s time,’ Caladan said. ‘Are the charges set up?’

  Harlan5 nodded. ‘Although my programming would like to point out that this should not be considered a good idea. What if the damage doesn’t remain isolated to the single leg? What if the rest of the ship is damaged? It’s no good to the captain then.’

  ‘These are the chances we have to take.’

  ‘And, of course, my programming would like to remind you of the galactic law we are about to break. “Any large-space orbiter with the capacity is required by galactic law to provide assistance to any stricken vessel releasing a distress call within its jurisdiction, providing the stricken vessel can prove by way of a closed computer log that all remaining weapons systems have been disarmed.”’

  ‘Yeah, thanks for reminding me. Do you have those fake logs ready?’

  ‘Yes. But my programming would like to point out that this action will make us outlaws across the Estron Quadrant.’

  ‘Yeah, well, some things can’t be helped. Okay, blow those charges.’

  Caladan flicked the screen to a computer-modeled representation of the Matilda. Single hand flickering over the controls, he extended the battle arms until the Matilda was a beautiful symmetry of deadliness. Then, with a regretful smile, he detonated the charges at the tip of the seventh of eight legs.

  The ship shuddered, nearly throwing Caladan out of his seat. Behind him, Harlan5 began grumbling about destroying recent repairs, but the robot’s normally mundane voice had taken on a quiet note of fear. Caladan, too, felt it, that feeling that he might have done something very bad, but that it was too late to back out now.

  ‘Okay, log the damage, amend it, then get it sent out. I’ll take us in. By the time they issue their authorisation, we’ll be close enough to get our shot.’

  What had before been no more than a dot on a scanner appeared now on the open space monitor. Caladan killed the engines and let the Matilda drift toward the space station Prosperity, circling in the orbit of Abalon 3. It was an ugly thing, a thoroughly modern design that resembled an ancient Earth-creature called a sea urchin, like a metal ball that had exploded, all spines and protruding wings. Caladan checked the central payload cannon, which fired from the Matilda’s central hub, then disconnected it from the computer to avoid it appearing on the digital log, something that by galactic law had to be open to viewing by the transmission computers of any docking space port, should they wish to check.

  ‘This had better work,’ he muttered.

  ‘My programming says—’

  ‘Nothing,’ Caladan answered. ‘Your programming says nothing at all.’

  ‘Here comes the escort,’ Harlan said. ‘Wow, they’re not taking any chances.’

  Nine fighters appeared on the monitor and encircled them. Caladan sent them a vaguely sarcastic acknowledgement for ensuring the ship’s safe passage, then set a course for the main maintenance hangar.

  ‘Okay, robot, I need that detail.’

  Harlan read off a list of coordinates, which Caladan repeated into an intercom. As he read the last digit, he added, ‘You got that? We get one shot at this. That’s it. Miss and we’re dead.’

  ‘Got it,’ answered a crackly voice through the intercom.

  ‘On nine.’

  Some of the fighters were docking. Only as they flew alongside the massive hangar doors did the thing’s scale become apparent—the fighters, themselves fifty metres across, became specks in front of the huge opening that had to measure two Earth-miles from end to end.

  ‘Eight.’

  This close, Caladan could see a hive of activity inside the hangar: ships being cleaned and maintained, larger cargo vessels unloading.

  ‘Seven.’

  Humans and off-worlders were visible now too, milling around, protected in their work by a false gravity system and a clear oxygen screen.

  ‘Six.’

  Caladan’s fingers tingled, clutching for non-existent weapon control
s, remembering his younger days as a fighter pilot for hire. Nothing beat the adrenaline of a good firefight.

  ‘Five.’

  Through the clear screen he spotted something larger docked at the hangar’s rear, a fuel transport. When that baby ignited, it would rival the firestorms of the planet’s surface.

  ‘Four.’

  They were nearly directly in front of the hangar now, no more than a couple of dozen Earth-miles out.

  ‘Three.’

  Tiny shapes appeared to start running, perhaps scrambling to fighters. Caladan licked his lips, his body tingling with the thrill of battle.

  ‘Two.’

  A voice was crackling on the external intercom, demanding to know why they were ignoring protocol, drifting across the front of the hangar rather than heading in to dock. Caladan told them to take a running jump and switched off the link.

  ‘One.’

  The fighters escorting them made a wide sweep, then turned back to engage.

  ‘Blow it!’

  The Matilda shook as she blasted fifty tons of electrical interference into the open hangar. The whole space station appeared to shimmer as the shields came up, but they weren’t fully charged and the payload blasted right through.

  A colossal explosion bloomed from the hangar’s rear, but Caladan knew the real damage was being done to the Prosperity’s systems, as exposed electrical and computer systems were attacked by the microbots contained within the bomb, temporarily shutting the station down.

  ‘Take that, you clowns!’ Caladan shouted, cutting the Matilda into a dive, the gun arms whirring as they unleashed fury on the attacking fighters. Five blew apart, but others were scrambling, even as the lights in the hangar blinked off, and a wave of darkness extended out across the Prosperity like a black tide.

  ‘Quite the blackout,’ Caladan whispered, as he jerked the Matilda right, cutting through the lines of oncoming fire, wincing as a couple found their targets. ‘I hope whatever you paid those mechanics with, you’ve got more,’ Caladan shouted at Harlan5, but the droid’s answer was lost over the din of the Matilda buckling under a direct hit.