Forgotten Worlds

by D. Nolan Clark

  The administration building sat at the center of a modest campus of barracks and classroom buildings. It looked less like a university quadrangle and more like a step pyramid lost in some ancient rain forest. The building itself and a small parade yard out front had been kept clear of the ever-encroaching jungle, but it was clearly a constant struggle. Valk saw maintenance crews scouring its stone walls, scrubbing it with a liquid that smoked and glistened on the marble. Other crews were hard at work washing its many windows and polishing the triple-headed eagle mounted above its main entrance. Officers in immaculate dress suits barked orders at the work crews through megaphones.

  It made Valk want to curl up under a rock somewhere. It was all just too … clean.

  “I’m not sure I see how window washing prepares you to be a good pilot,” he said, keeping his voice low. He didn’t want any of those officers shouting orders at him.

  “The idea is to teach the cadets Navy discipline and professionalism,” Candless told him. “So they’ll take their work seriously. We can’t exactly let them see what being a pilot is really like.”

  “Mostly drinking and the smell of unwashed suits, if I remember right,” Valk told her.

  Candless surprised him by chuckling at his joke. He’d expected a nasty stare.

  “I haven’t completely forgotten, myself,” she said. He thought maybe the expression on her face could be described as “wistful.” If one were feeling charitable.

  She parked the cart and the three of them headed up to the building on foot. As they passed by the officers one of them stared at Valk and craned her neck around to watch him go by. At first he thought she was just reacting to his height—he got that a lot. Then he saw where she was looking. At his cryptab, a little gray rectangle on the front of his suit that contained his service record and vital statistics. Naval personnel could ping it just by looking at it, and see everything contained there. She must have noticed he wasn’t Naval personnel—or maybe she even recognized his name. The legend of Tannis Valk, the Blue Devil, hadn’t quite left the public consciousness.

  He reached up and put his hand over the cryptab, which was the exact wrong thing to do—it made him look like he had something to hide.

  So much for maintaining a low profile here.

  If she recognized his name, that could lead to all kinds of questions he wasn’t prepared to answer.

  This wasn’t exactly his element. He’d never been trained by the Navy—in fact, he’d originally been recruited to kill these people. He’d fought for the Establishment, a political movement that had sought the right of people to colonize planets without charters that locked them into working with the polys. It had been a grand dream, he’d thought at the time. A fight for freedom and self-determination. Of course it ended in flames—literally, for him. Nowadays Establishmentarians were considered little more than terrorists.

  The sooner they got out of Rishi, the better, he thought. Yet before they were halfway up the steps it was clear they weren’t out of the woods yet. Candless stopped and held out an arm to signal them to do likewise. “Damnation,” she said. “The last fellow I want to see right now.”

  Valk looked up and saw two cadets standing in front of the main doors of the building. He recognized them as the Hellion and his second. Both of them were looking at Candless as if they expected her to charge at them with weapons blasting.

  “What do they want?” Lanoe whispered. “Never mind—just get rid of them.”

  Candless sighed and took another step up toward the building. “Cadets,” she called out. “I’ve canceled my office hours. I’ve already had rather a hectic day.”

  “Sorry, Instructor,” the redhead said—Ginger, she was called, if Valk remembered correctly. “I’m sure you’re busy—”

  “Yes, I am,” Candless replied.

  “I promise we’ll just take a minute of your time. It’s—it’s important,” Ginger said. “Bury has something he needs to say to you.”

  “If you’re going to challenge me to another duel,” Candless told the boy, “maybe you’d be kind enough to give me twenty-four hours of peace, first?”

  “No, Instructor,” Bury replied. “I just—I need to—” His mouth kept twitching. Like he was trying to bite any words that might come out of it. The boy didn’t actually squirm but it was clear he was having trouble with this.

  He’s trying to apologize, Valk thought. He’s trying to say So sorry for trying to murder you, can we still be friends? He had to admire the kid’s courage in coming this far anyway.

  Lanoe cleared his throat. “Whatever you have to say, send it to her address. The instructor told you she was busy.” He headed up the steps, clearly ready to knock these two over if they didn’t get out of the way.

  “Hold on,” Candless told him. “Cadet Bury?”

  The boy’s left eye began to twitch. He took a very deep, drawn-out breath, and then opened his mouth to finally speak. “I—”

  “I’m so sorry!”

  The words didn’t come from the boy. Someone else had said that. Valk whirled around to see who it was.

  Another cadet, looking even younger than Bury and Ginger, if that was possible. She had cropped black hair and her eyes were irritated and puffy, as if she’d been weeping.

  She was holding a big particle pistol, and pointing it right at Lanoe’s face.

  There was a good deal of screaming and the sound of pounding feet as people ran for safety. Lanoe ignored all the noise.

  He was focused on the gun in the girl’s hand. It was a bulbous, ugly thing with a narrow barrel. If she squeezed the trigger, she could cut him in half with that thing.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again. Her hands were trembling. Enough that she might let off a shot without even meaning to. Then it wouldn’t matter whether she was sorry or not.

  In his head Lanoe imagined a scenario where he leapt forward and grabbed the weapon from her. Most likely that scenario would end with her firing before he could close the distance between them.

  “Cadet Marris,” Candless said, from just behind his shoulder. “I am not completely sure you know what you’re doing.”

  “Go away!” the girl shouted. “All of you, all except—except him.” She nodded at Lanoe. “If he tries to run, I swear I’ll do it! I’ll blow him to hell!”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Candless said. She moved forward to get closer to the girl. Smart, Lanoe thought. If she could just get close enough—

  But then Candless stopped and lifted her hands, to show they were empty. “I’m going to stand right here, where you can see me. And we’re going to talk about this.”

  “It’s not about you, Instructor,” Marris said. “It’s him. I have a ship waiting. I’m supposed to take him … somewhere. It doesn’t matter where.”

  Lanoe breathed in through his nose. It was important in situations like this to remember to breathe. He couldn’t remember who’d told him that—maybe his own flight instructor, back in the day.

  “Okay,” Candless said. “He has to go with you. But can’t you tell me why? He’s a friend of mine. I’d really like to know.”

  “Marris,” the redheaded girl said. “Marris, we’re your friends! We can help, whatever this is! Yesterday you told me you had bad news from home. Is that it?”

  “Is it, Cadet?” Candless asked. “Some kind of family problem?”

  “My—my uncle,” Marris sputtered. “Whatever! It doesn’t matter why! All of you just get out of here. Why won’t you just leave?”

  Because as soon as they did, Lanoe knew, this girl was going to kidnap him—or at least try. He could see in her eyes how terrified she was. Fear was a great motivator. It could make people do the stupidest things.

  “What’s this about your uncle?” Candless asked. “Maybe we can help.”

  “Help? How could you help? He’s a drunk. You can’t make him not be a drunk. They said it was affecting his performance. That he was about to get fired from his job—he supports my whole f
amily. My mother, my brothers. They’ll all be out on the streets. But if I do—if I do this, they said they would keep him on. They won’t fire him.”

  The girl was shaking from head to toe. The pistol slipped in her fingers but she grabbed tightly on to it, steadying it with both hands.

  “Who does your uncle work for?” Lanoe demanded. “Which poly?”

  “C-C-Centrocor,” the girl said. “I was born on Irkalla. You can’t live on Irkalla and not work for thrice-damned Centrocor.”

  “We’ll get him a job with the Navy,” Candless said, moving a little closer to the girl. “We’ll make sure your family is okay. Just—”

  “Do you think I’m an idiot?” Marris screamed. “Don’t come any closer!”

  Lanoe could sense Valk moving behind him. Maybe intending to circle around and throw himself into the pistol’s beam.

  Before he could, though, Lanoe heard a roaring noise coming toward them, and he staggered backward in a gale-force wind. Out of nowhere he was buffeted by a blast of shredded leaves and plant matter.

  The girl turned her head to look at the source of the noise.

  Valk had been aware of the approaching fighter—a Z.XIX, he thought—long before he saw it. Long before anyone else heard it. It had lifted off from a pad near the lip of Rishi’s cylinder, dozens of kilometers away, and covered the distance in a matter of seconds.

  His senses were better than any human’s. Ever since he’d come to understand what he really was, an artificial intelligence in a space suit, he’d discovered he wasn’t subject to the limitations of his former human body. He could see in wavelengths invisible to the human eye, hear things too soft for a human to even be aware of them.

  He could move faster than a human, too, maybe twice as fast. Even as the fighter approached he had started moving, readying himself to sprint toward the girl and grab the pistol.

  The fighter slewed around to a complete stop right above them. Its retros chopped at the air with a staccato pattern of burns and one of its four PBW cannon hissed as it fired a single, dazzlingly bright shot.

  The girl’s hand came off at the wrist, the stump cauterized by the particle beam. She screamed and stared down at the blackened stump where her hand had been. Lanoe grabbed her and threw her to the ground, shielding her in case the fighter tried to finish her off.

  It made no effort to do so. Instead it drifted sideways on its lifters, rising a little to stay clear of the building.

  It was making room. Another craft was already inbound—Valk could see it silhouetted against one of Rishi’s circular skies, a dark blotch against a river of blue fire. A bigger ship, with an angular silhouette. As it came closer he saw that its airfoils were stubby, perfunctory things and its prow was a single, enormous rectangular hatch.

  A troop transport. Whoever had sent the fighter, now they were sending in the Marines.

  The fighter had speakers mounted on the exterior of its hull. They came alive with a squeal of feedback. “Lanoe, be a good fellow and don’t move. Just stay down while my boys contain this situation.”

  Valk knew that voice. That sneering, condescending tone.

  The transport settled down on the parade ground, bracing itself on four sturdy landing legs. Its front hatch fell open and a half-dozen marines in heavy suits and opaque silver helmets came boiling out. Meanwhile the fighter kept drifting lazily across the open space, its nose—and its guns—always pointed at Lanoe and the girl. Its flowglas canopy melted away and Valk saw the pilot. He had his helmet down.

  “Maggs,” Lanoe said. As if his mouth were full of excrement.

  “In the flesh,” the pilot called. “And just in the nick of time. As usual.”

  The marines moved fast to make a cordon around the parade ground, blocking anyone from getting in or out.

  Maggs stood up in his cockpit, most likely so he could lean out and look down at Lanoe where he still lay covering the wounded girl.

  “You might as well get off of her now,” Maggs said. “Really, the initial impulse might have been chivalrous. But now it just looks unseemly.”

  Lanoe glared up at Maggs, wishing for nothing more than to have a weapon in his hand. He didn’t, so after a moment he rolled off of Marris and helped her to her feet. “You all right?” he asked her.

  “My hand—my hand,” she wailed.

  Well, it had been a dumb question.

  “Is that Tannis Valk down there with you?” Maggs asked. “You’re supposed to be dead. But of course the Blue Devil always was hard to put down.”

  “What are you doing here, Maggs?” Lanoe demanded. “I know I didn’t send you an engraved invitation.”

  Maggs chuckled. “We intercepted a Centrocor transmission saying you were here. I came to Rishi as soon as I could. I was planning a more cordial reunion, but this’ll have to do.” The bastard was really enjoying this—that much was obvious.

  Lanoe had never trusted Auster Maggs, not from the first time they’d met. At the time Maggs had just defrauded an Elder of the Transcendentalist faith out of a huge sum of money.

  Lanoe and Valk had run him down—and made him come with them to Niraya, to help stave off the alien invasion there. Of course Maggs, being Maggs, found a way to betray them even then, when he tried to convince the Nirayans to give him money to help defend their planet. He had, of course, intended to take the money and run off before his life could actually be put in danger. The last time Lanoe had seen Maggs, the swindler had swooped in right at the end of the battle with the aliens, just in time to take credit for the victory without actually having to do any fighting.

  “You might say ‘thank you,’ honestly,” Maggs told him. “I did just save you from a kidnapper.”

  “By shooting off her hand,” Lanoe said.

  “You do love to split hairs, don’t you?” Maggs asked. “Never mind. Gratitude being too much to ask for, apparently, perhaps we can at least talk like civilized human beings.”

  “Why don’t you come down here, then?” Lanoe asked. “So I can hear you better.”

  Maggs shrugged. “I’m sure you’d enjoy that, Lanoe. I’m sure you’d love to have me down there where you could throttle me. But no, what I have to say won’t take long and I promise I won’t use any big words. I have orders to take you into custody,” he said. “You and anyone you’ve been talking to. Will you come peacefully?”

  Lanoe might have said something sarcastic, except just then a green pearl appeared in the corner of his vision. An incoming message—from Valk. Interesting. He hadn’t heard the big pilot record anything.

  Maybe that was another one of Valk’s newfound abilities. To send voice messages without actually bothering to vocalize them.

  Lanoe flicked his eye across the pearl.

  Do we make a break for it? the message read. I can cause a distraction. Rush some of these guys, maybe even knock one of them down and get his gun. Then we can—

  Lanoe didn’t bother listening to the rest of the message. He looked over at where Valk stood, ringed by three marines almost as big as he was.

  Maybe it was possible. Maybe Valk could have broken through that ring, maybe he would be able to get away with a weapon. Maybe then—

  Maybe then what?

  Lanoe was an old man. He was still in pretty good shape, he supposed. He could run pretty fast.

  Not nearly as fast as Maggs’s fighter, though.

  “You’re not here to just kill me,” he said. “At least, not in front of witnesses.”

  “I didn’t come to kill you at all,” Maggs said. Sounding genuinely exasperated. “I was sent by someone—I daren’t say their name—who would like to talk to you. That’s all. Now, again, will you comply? Or are we going to have some fun first?”

  Lanoe took a deep breath.

  “Okay,” he said. “Okay, you got us.” Slowly he lifted his hands.

  “Good. Now, boys—let’s not take chances with this one,” Maggs said.

  Lanoe had the sensation someone was rushing up beh
ind him. He started to turn, but the marine there had already fired his weapon. Tendrils of darkness curled around Lanoe’s brain, his vision narrowing down to a single bright dot. And then the dot vanished, and nothing remained.

  Chapter Seven

  The planet Irkalla circled an orange dwarf, a K2-class star eight-tenths as massive as Earth’s sun. The star had once been known as Epsilon Eridani, but the residents of Irkalla had renamed it Ereshkigal. Most of those residents—most of the human beings who had ever been born on Irkalla—had never seen the star with their own eyes.

  Ashlay Bullam’s yacht exited the local wormhole throat three days after it left Niraya. Its onboard systems negotiated a flight plan with local traffic control without bothering her about the details. Because the yacht was an official Centrocor vehicle, it was given priority clearance and it was only a matter of hours before the yacht entered Irkalla’s atmosphere, sinking rapidly through bands of clouds that thickened until the air around the yacht became darker than the void of space. Only occasional flashes of lightning—some of them hundreds of kilometers long—broke through the gloom. The flowglas dome over the yacht’s deck was drenched in rain and the yacht was buffeted by winds moving upward of two hundred kilometers per hour.

  In her bed, held down by the invisible hand of a powerful inertial sink, Bullam fought to hold back a whimper of agony.

  She had spent most of the voyage curled up under her sheets, oscillating in and out of consciousness. Her disease had returned with a vengeance. Lucidity brought pain, so she had requested that the yacht’s onboard medical suite keep her sedated as much as possible.

  The yacht could fly itself just fine without her help. She had never been in any danger. At least—she hadn’t so far. The descent was another matter. She needed to be awake for that part.

  The spacecraft hit a patch of turbulence, a place in the sky where two great winds crashed into each other. The ship’s hull shook with the fury of the storm, and despite all her ship’s safety features Bullam was thrown to one side of her bed. She felt like she was being torn apart.