To Infinity

by Darren Humphries

  It was true that the Prison Warden of Srindar Djem would probably accept the recording of these events as proof of Kaymer Haynes’s passing, but the hunter was not so easily satisfied. Also there was the trifling fact that he had not been the one to kill Haynes and so the Warden might take it upon himself to argue about payment and it was always bad for business when he was forced to kill a client.

  The Halreptor ship, though, showed no signs of leaving. The damaged fighters, each the size of a galactic frigate, limped their way back to their hangar decks for repair, but even after all of these had been reclaimed, the larger ship remained motionless, floating on the edge of the star system.

  The hunter could not help but wonder what might be going on inside. He resolved to wait and settled himself comfortably back into his seat.

  The shock of the ship’s landing gear being deposited onto the hangar floor resounded faintly through the deck plates under Haynes’s feet. It was clear from Lyssa’s expression that she felt it too, probably far more clearly than he did. Keely had joined them at the airlock entrance in answer to Haynes’s shipwide call and had brought with her three electronic earpieces.

  “At least we’ll be able to talk to each other and the computer,” she explained as she handed them out, “if we get separated.”

  “If they let us keep them,” Lyssa pointed out.

  “That was good thinking,” Haynes congratulated her, not bothering to wonder why he hadn’t thought of it. This was not a time for doubts.

  “We’ve arrived,” the computer told him in his left ear.

  “You don’t have to shout,” Keely snapped.

  “Sorry,” the voice in the earpiece apologised, dropping several levels in volume.

  “Is it safe to go outside?” Haynes queried.

  “An unknown ship full of hostile aliens that we know nothing about?” the computer summarised archly. “I wouldn’t say so.”

  “I was asking about the air,” Haynes explained.

  “A little thick, but breathable,” Lyssa reported from a panel over at the edge of the airlock. “Oxygen rich as well so you might feel a little euphoria at times.”

  “On an unknown ship full of hostile aliens we know nothing about?” Haynes quoted dryly. “Euphoria is not something that I expect to be feeling any time soon.” He stepped into the airlock and the others joined him. The inner door hissed shut and there was a moment whilst the pressure equalised and then the outer door swung open.

  Not giving any thought to looking like a hero, Haynes peered around the edge of the door.

  “How many are there?” Keely asked, “and are they really gross looking?”

  “Er, none,” Haynes told her, checking again to make sure he was right about the number.

  “Not quite what we were expecting then,” Lyssa commented. “What do we do now?”

  “Maybe there’s nobody here and the ship’s all automatic?” Keely suggested.

  “Oh no, they’re here somewhere,” Lyssa assured her. “I can feel them trying to crawl inside my head. They’re just,” she paused, frowning with both concentration and confusion, “they’re just... afraid.”

  “So they should be,” Haynes agreed and, straightening up, he stepped out into the cavernous hangar.

  “It’s not us they’re afraid of,” Lyssa had to follow him out onto the ramp to tell him. “It’s something else.”

  “Ah,” Haynes turned around to find Keely securing the hatch behind her.

  “It’s breathtaking,” she said as she looked around her. “So... gothic.”

  The landing bay was cavernous in a way reserved mainly for caverns. There was no sheet plasteel or giant cablestring girders or construction elements of any kind. The walls soared up and over their heads until they met in a huge vaulted ceiling that could have been cathedral-like except that it was smooth and hemispherical. It didn’t look so much constructed as...

  “Hollowed out,” Lyssa finished the thought for them all.

  “Just what I was thinking,” Haynes agreed and then added more suspiciously, “in fact exactly what I was thinking.”

  “And me,” Keely confirmed, “though I’m not sure why.”

  “It’s them,” Lyssa said, looking around at the sealed walls of the chamber as though she could see through to the aliens that lay beyond. “They’re more powerful here, so focussed, like some sort of a...”

  “Hive mind?” It was Haynes’s turn to finish the thought. He pulled the tie he had worn on Caldarea out of a pocket and wrapped it around his neck. “How’s that?”

  “Helps, thanks,” Lyssa gratefully refocused her mind on protecting herself and Keely. The resonance that they had all been catching echoes of diminished.

  “Well where are they all then?” Keely demanded, walking away from the ship. “Have they brought us in here just to ignore us?”

  At that moment, part of the wall nearest to them crumbled away in a cloud of dust to reveal a gloomy tunnel mouth.

  “Come into my parlour?” Lyssa wondered, sharing a significant look with Haynes. She didn’t need to be able to read him any longer to know they were thinking the same thing.

  “The Halreptors being the spider?” Haynes rejoined.

  “Funny you should say that,” the computer commented in their ears.

  “I find nothing even remotely funny in this whole situation,” Lyssa told it shortly.

  “It’s a tunnel!” Keely called, rather redundantly, peering into the newly-appeared opening. “A bit dusty, but definitely a tunnel.”

  “But to where?” Haynes mused as he and Lyssa moved to join her.

  “Only one way to find out,” Keely decided brightly.

  “Buy a map from a tour guide?”

  “Well we can’t just stay here,” Keely pointed out.

  “And why not?” he challenged.

  “Because it’s really boring here,” she shot back and stepped into the tunnel.

  “You know, ‘boring’ is a word that’s been given a bad name,” Haynes muttered. “There are times when I would kill for some boredom in my life.”

  “Oh come on!” Lyssa followed Keely into the tunnel.

  “Like now,” Haynes said mournfully and went after them.

  They couldn’t see a lot in the tunnel. This was partly from the still-settling dust and low light levels, but mainly because there was nothing to see. The smooth, arched walls lay ahead of them, curling away in a slight curve that hid whatever lay ahead of them from sight.

  “Anybody need a definition of the word foreboding?” Haynes queried as he caught them up. “I wonder what the military manual would say about swapping large open spaces with great visibility for tiny, cramped ones with none.”

  “Probably the same as the advice on getting trapped in giant alien spaceships crewed by thousands of hostile aliens,” Lyssa retorted.

  “Don’t do it,” Keely clarified.

  “It’s not as if I planned this,” Haynes muttered under his breath as the two women started, with more caution he noticed, to advance down the corridor.

  “In case anyone’s interested,” the computer’s voice sounded in their ears, “someone is trying really hard to hack into my systems remotely.”

  “How are they doing?” Haynes asked in concern.

  “Don’t you worry about that,” the computer assured him, “nobody penetrates me without dinner and a movie first.”

  Lyssa shook her head in exasperation, “I really don’t know about that computer. You should have let me reprogram it.”

  “I heard that,” the computer complained primly.

  “Well it’s not like I was whispering or anything,” Lyssa replied hotly.

  “Can you two ladies leave the catfight until we’re out of here,” Haynes asked. He glanced over his shoulder and froze, his spine achieving temperatures rarely measured even in empty space in the shadow of an asteroid during an eclipse.

  There were shadows on the wall behind him, shadows that did not belong to the three of them.
There were far too many legs involved and the edges were too sharp and not very round. Many of the edges converged into very nasty points.

  “I think that we might be being followed,” he suggested.

  “What gives you that...” Lyssa started to demand. Her voice tailed off when she saw what he was looking at, “Oh.”

  “Would you like some bad news?” Keely offered.

  “Right now I can’t remember any other kind,” Haynes replied.

  “They’re ahead of us as well.”

  Haynes looked past her and saw what could have been mirror images of the shadows behind him had there been large sheets of glass in evidence.

  “This does not look good for the home team,” Keely ventured.

  “As they are the home team, technically,” the computer corrected her cheerfully, “I would suggest that things do, in fact, look pretty good.”

  “Did I ask you?” Keely snapped.

  “No need to get snappy,” the computer commented. “Remain calm.”

  “That’s easy for you to say, alone in the cargo bay and protected,” Keely pointed out.

  “I’m not quite so alone,” the computer told her. “I am surrounded by what I would roughly estimate to be six thousand, three hundred and seventy one aliens.”

  “Roughly estimate?” Lyssa repeated.

  “Not the point to focus on,” Haynes pointed out.

  “I’d rather focus on that than the fact that we’re trapped in this tunnel and our only escape route is now surrounded by a lot...’

  “Roughly six thousand, three hundred and seventy one,” the computer reminded her helpfully.

  “A lot,” she continued with emphasis, “of aliens who don’t seem too keen on rolling out the welcome mat.”

  “Well, when you put it that way,” Haynes admitted helplessly.

  The first alien appendage appeared around the curve of the corridor. It was long, heavily-armoured and possessed edges that could slice metal without noticing and points that were probably used for skewering more than kebabs. Then again, the idea of these aliens having kebabs wasn’t much more comforting considering the meat supply available to them.

  “Do you have a plan?” Keely asked him desperately.

  “They all involve us not being here,” Haynes admitted. “It’s at times like these I find it best to just hope for something utterly unexpected to happen and rescue me.”

  “What do you mean ‘at times like these’?” Lyssa demanded. “How often have you had times like these?”

  “More often than is fair,” he told her, just as something unexpected happened to rescue them.

  There was a loud bang, a dull flash of light and an intensely bad smell. Part of the wall near to them exploded (well it was more of a case of fell, but who quibbles at a time like this?) outwards and an unlikely figure appeared. They couldn’t see much detail because he was backlit in true heroic fashion, but he was about Keely’s height, sported goggles that reflected the ambient light so that you couldn’t see his eyes and had a bright red and white polka dotted handkerchief around the lower part of his face. Around his neck he was sporting what appeared to be a feather boa that contrasted with the dirty vest and camouflaged combat trousers. Since all of the scenery around them was a single dull colour, the trousers made him stand out rather than camouflaged him. On his head was a tiara. Strangely enough it didn’t seem out of place. Finally, over one shoulder, he was carrying a stereo player that was blasting out a badly overamplified version of what appeared to be ‘Another suitcase in another airlock’ from ‘Starflight Express’.

  “Come with me if you want to live!” the figure shouted over the second chorus.

  The trio hesitated as the smell of the explosion washed over them. Haynes pushed Keely into the new tunnel behind their saviour and quickly followed.

  “I’m not sure I want to live that much,” Lyssa dug the piece of oil-marked rag that no self-respecting engineer is ever without from her back pocket and shoved the corners up her nose. The stench of burned bearing oil came as a blessed relief.

  “Get in quickly before the song finishes,” the figure yelled urgently. “They don’t understand music. It scares the hell out of them.”

  As the singer bemoaned the end of another starcrossed (literally) love affair, Lyssa slipped into the new passageway. The man in the boa dropped a couple of small objects and then pushed her down the tunnel as another two wet thumps shook the ground and the roof caved in, sealing the entrance.

  “Come on,” the man ordered, silencing the wailing songstress. “It won’t take them long to dig through that and we need to be somewhere else.”

  The man led them through the interior of the spaceship without ever seeming to lose his way despite the fact that all the tunnels were fashioned out of the same drab-coloured material. A few of the shorter, linking tunnels seemed to have been created by the same odorous explosives he had used to save them. After what seemed like a long time, he led them into a small chamber full of boxes and crates and other junk.

  “What is this place?” Haynes asked, realising that it was their likely destination.

  “Ssssh!” the man with the goggles hissed and pulled out a small, homemade device that seemed to be several others cobbled together with wires and transistors. He took the stereo player off his shoulder and plugged it into the device.

  Lyssa gave a sharp cry, grabbed her head and collapsed onto the floor.

  Haynes moved swiftly, grabbing the man by his feather boa and pulling it tight, dragging his face to barely a nose length from his own, “What did you do?”

  Even through the thick goggles, he could see that the man’s eyes held a perplexed expression. “Is she a telepath?” he asked.

  Haynes nodded.

  “Give me your tie.” The man impatiently repeated himself when Haynes hesitated, “Give me the bloody tie! You can have it back when we leave.”

  He tore it out of Haynes’s hands almost before he had taken it off his neck and wrapped it around Lyssa’s head. She immediately relaxed.

  “It’s a telepathic resonator,” the man removed his goggles to better examine Lyssa and revealed watery blue eyes. “It hides this place from them when I’m not here. It’s currently broadcasting Stardustmania the Musical. It drives them nuts and keeps them the hell away from me. Of course for a human telepath close to the source it would be...”

  “Worse than opera,” Lyssa groaned from the floor.

  “I’m sorry,” the man said, kneeling concernedly beside her. “If I’d known I would never have...”

  “It’s all right,” Lyssa struggled up into a sitting position with Keely’s help. The fact that she accepted Keely’s help was a sign of how shaken she was. “Of course this tie doesn’t go with anything I’m wearing.”

  “Speaking of which,” Haynes said significantly, “why are you wearing a feather boa?”

  “At a time like this you’re asking fashion questions?” Keely demanded. “Of the man who just saved your life?”

  “That’s all right,” the man removed the boa, along with the goggles and handkerchief to reveal a face that would probably have been gaunt and haggard had it not started out from such a plump starting point. “Introductions first. I’m Dennis Crump of the space freighter Freighter 2671/5a, First officer (administrative).”

  “They really don’t show much imagination naming those freighters do they?” Haynes said sympathetically.

  “What ship are you from?” Crump asked eagerly.

  “Erm, we haven’t actually named it yet,” Haynes admitted. “I’m Kaymer Haynes, this is...”

  “Keely,” Keely said with a wide smile.

  “...and this is Lyssa.”

  “Look I really am sorry about that,” Crump apologised again. “That resonator is the only thing that’s kept me alive and I didn’t think that anyone would be stupid enough to bring a telepath aboard.”

  “How long have you been here?” Keely asked, abandoning Lyssa to further question him.
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  “I’ve lost track,” Crump admitted, “but it seems like an eternity.”

  “Two weeks three days,” the computer told them via their earpieces. “I checked the news database.”

  “What happened?” Keely was now utterly transfixed on Crump.

  “The Halreptors attacked the freighter. I made it out in an escape pod, but was taken aboard with the sugar.”

  “Sugar?”

  “The cargo that the freighter was carrying,” Crump explained.

  “Sugar,” Haynes mused. “You know that might explain...”

  “Excuse me,” the computer interrupted, “but I worked this out days ago and tried to tell you but you wouldn’t listen so I’ll do the explaining.”

  “Go on then,” Haynes allowed.

  “Go on what?” Crump asked, confused.

  “Our computer’s just explaining something to us,” Keely indicated the earpiece.

  “By cross-referencing all of the previous Halreptor attacks I was able to identify the common denominator,” the computer elaborated, clearly enjoying itself. “From that I was able to surmise that they were...”

  “An insect race with a need for sugar in order to survive and a hive mind capable of telepathy,” Haynes interrupted irritably.

  “Hey!” the computer complained. “I could have spread that explanation out over ten minutes - with slides and everything.”

  “Telepathy would explain how they were able to outmanoeuvre and destroy our ships so easily,” Lyssa summarised.

  “That and the fact that their ships are ten times more powerful than ours,” Haynes agreed, turning back to Crump. “but that doesn’t explain how you got here, Mr Crump, nor how you evaded capture and stayed free for so long.”

  “My escape pod got caught up amongst the cargo and was brought aboard at the same time. It wasn’t of any interest to them so they threw it in a corner.” A thought occurred to the administrative officer, “They’re not very tidy for spacegoing creatures.”