In Dark Service

by Stephen Hunt

  Carter and the Vandian exchanged suspicious glances; each knowing what passed through the other’s mind. That it would be a lot easier for Carter to hijack the patrol ship waiting outside if he was facing just its pilot and gunner; with the captain lying dead in a tunnel. For a moment Carter thought that the captain was going to have it out with him here and now, but their uneasy peace held for now.

  ‘You don’t want to say a prayer, before we set out?’ needled Carter. ‘If this is a temple to cosy up to the gods and journey into the afterlife?’

  ‘Keep your heathen witterings to yourself, slave,’ advised Captain Tybar. ‘You rejected the emperor’s grace when you betrayed your caste. I am protected by his favour’

  That and an inch of steel plate around your chest. ‘Let’s see what that’s worth, Captain, sir.’

  Tybar pushed Carter in front of him to lead the way. ‘Burial chambers are usually protected by traps to deter grave robbers.’

  ‘Still of service, then. Anyone would think you’re afraid of demons.’

  ‘The barbarian kind is the least trustworthy,’ muttered Tybar.

  They roamed the corridors and passages, a seemingly never-ending maze, Carter sniffing the air for a warm, hot breeze. Anything to indicate which direction the temple’s exit might lie. No current of air obliged him. Carter was on edge, imagining hinged flagstones opening up below his feet, dropping him onto spikes or bubbling pools of acid. But no traps were triggered by his presence.

  After half an hour of exploring the underground labyrinth, the two survivors came to an entrance to a cavern, far larger than any of the spaces they had explored before. Tybar seemed hesitant about exploring it, but Carter had no such qualms. He was growing thirsty, now, and tired. If they couldn’t find a way out of this labyrinth, it would become their tomb all too quickly. He stepped over the threshold. The space was vast enough that the luminescent moss accounting for their light was overwhelmed by gloom at the margins, the sound of their boots on the rock floor reverberating back at them as they entered. Carter could just distinguish more bone-like arches running along the top of the chamber.They really were in the belly of the beast. The far wall had a semicircle of menhirs driven horizontally into its surface, as though giants had played darts with the heavy stones. And if burial chamber this was, perhaps the black sarcophagus-sized blocks in the chamber’s centre were where the committal of dead chieftains had been practised? Tybar walked over to the nearest block and knelt down, examining its side. Carter heard something like a faint whispering. He swivelled around. The block behind him had a simple clear glass container sitting on its surface, filled with water and resting on the block’s centre. What’s going on – I’d swear that wasn’t there before? He went to inspect the container. Like a wide glass vase without any flowers. Just staring at it, he realised how dry his mouth had become.

  ‘Don’t!’ ordered Tybar, standing up. ‘It is a temptation sent by the hellspawn and you will pay a heavy price for drinking it.’ He tapped the block’s side, intricate carvings sculpted there. Carter stepped back and inspected his block. There were similar reliefs on its sides, a series of spider-like creatures with additional human limbs and torsos, as though a procession of arachnid centaurs had carefully been engraved along the block.

  ‘These are your demons? The carvings are probably to ward evil away from the tomb,’ said Carter. It didn’t take much to set the Vandian off on his superstitious histironics again. Not for the first time, he wished the exasperating officer had perished in the volcano’s crater and left him to escape alone. Carter reached out and dipped a finger in the water, withdrawing it. Cold and clean, with a slightly metallic quality to it. ‘In my country, stone masons carve devils we call gargoyles on the side of churches to protect worshippers from evil.’

  ‘You are a fool!’ Tybar’s voice rose in pitch, almost a girl-like shriek. He appeared genuinely spooked. Carter reached across, lifted the glass vessel and swigged from it – mainly to vex the Vandian – then insolently offered the water toward the officer. Tybar swiped his hand out, knocking the glass away. It slapped out of Carter’s hand and smashed across the chamber’s floor, the water draining down fractures in the floor. Carter felt fury swell up inside him. ‘You damnable idiot! We could have lasted a day on that!’

  ‘You drank from it! You are cursed!’

  ‘To hell with your Vandian superstitions. We need drink to survive. You noticed any underground streams on your travels through this maze?’

  ‘Look at your forehead,’ screeched the Vandian. ‘You are sweating. You are cursed!’

  Carter touched the skin above his eyebrows. He was sweating, but he didn’t feel any… he doubled up in agony as his thoughts turned into a hail of arrows thudding into his mind, clutching out at the sarcophagus to try and keep his balance. Through the fog of pain he could just make out the imperium’s officer stumbling away from him in terror. Then, as suddenly as the vice of agony had clutched Carter’s mind, it vanished, leaving him heaving on the edge of the stone block.

  ‘Possessed, you’ve been taken by them!’ spluttered Tybar.

  Carter waved the idiot to silence. He just had drunk too suddenly after too long dry, like a desperate traveller crawling through a desert, wracked by convulsions after gorging too hastily at a spring. That must be it.

  Tybar yelped as the far end of the chamber erupted in fire, confirming every demonic fear which gripped him. The space where the menhirs had been driven into the wall was occupied by a curtain of unnatural rippling fire so intense that it flared purple and blue. ‘A portal into hell itself,’ moaned the Vandian.

  ‘A portal, maybe. I can feel a breeze blowing fresh air from behind there,’ said Carter. ‘I think there’s something on the other side, and if it’s hell, it’s a lot cooler than the place my father used to preach about.’

  ‘Stand back, barbarian,’ snarled the Vandian.

  ‘What, and stay here with you? You overestimate the charms of your company. That’s the way out of here, and if a hidden floor-weight triggering a witch doctor’s ancient sparks and fireworks is enough to scare you off, you can leave your bones here for tomb-robbers to step over.’

  ‘Demons will feast on you, and when they have a taste for your flesh, they will come for me.’

  ‘I’ve already seen hell,’ said Carter. ‘And it was run by men. Anything through there is freedom, one way or another.’

  Tybar glanced around, furious, searching for something he could brain Carter with. His eyes stopped on the block nearest the fire portal, fierce illumination glinting off something that had been hidden in the darkness: a pair of short-swords in scabbards left abandoned there. The Vandian sprinted across to lunge for one of the weapons, Carter fast on his heels, needing no oracle to know what the officer was going to do next. Tybar snatched his sword and tried to send the redundant blade spinning into the gloom of the cavern, but Carter leapt for it, catching the leather scabbard as it slid away and pulled the blade free. It glittered in the spark-light, as sharp and deadly as the day it had been left to accompany its last owner into the afterlife.

  Tybar wasted no time; he stamped forward, throwing his sword towards Carter’s gut. Carter jumped back, bending, the officer’s blade stopping short of filleting him by a hair’s width. The officer made a sudden back swing, unaimed and quick, catching the side of Carter’s shoulder with a burning cut. Carter ducked around the block-like sarcophagus, using its bulk to block the Vandian’s advance. The two of them circled each other around the tomb, the block too wide to allow a decent thrust by either opponent.

  ‘You dare raise arms against your master? I’ll kill you!’ hissed Tybar.

  ‘Just let me pass through the portal,’ said Carter. ‘If you’re right, I’ll die with no blood on your blade.’

  ‘You’re already cursed,’ said the officer. ‘That’s why hell calls to you. You’ll tell the demons where to find me when you’re roasting in their flames.’

  ‘You’re a coward, Vandian.
You can die in this tomb, if that’s what you want. I’m getting out and taking your ship.’

  Tybar obviously felt the jibe about his courage. ‘Then I’ll roll your corpse through as an offering!’ The Vandian leapt across the block, swinging out violently at Carter as he mounted the sarcophagus. Carter backpedalled and took a swipe at the Vandian’s legs, but Tybar leapt over the blade and landed to his side. Carter cursed his luck. Tybar had come to this fight well-fed on military rations, not weakened by mine labour. The Vandian still had his armour, and the short-sword was the style of blade that all the imperium’s lackeys seemed to carry. Tybar must have been trained on it. Nothing like the long sabres and fencing blades that Carter was familiar with. Like trying to poke someone with a tooth-pick, or… a dagger. The voice of his territorial regiment’s sergeant echoed in his ears. The expected will see you dead. It’s the unexpected that lays your enemy open.

  Carter swung left, a feint, and as the officer stepped to the right he pivoted and released the short-sword spinning towards the Vandian’s throat. Too short to be a sabre, but a little bit longer than a dagger, its length sank into the officer’s throat and impaled him above his fancy breastplate’s protection. Tybar looked shocked at the unorthodox use of the blade, tumbling to the floor where his blood fountained across the block they had just been duelling across. Carter kicked the officer’s sword away from him and knelt down sadly by his side. ‘I would have killed a hundred like you to escape from the mines, Captain, sir. But I’m still sorry it had to be you.’

  ‘Bar — barian,’ was all Tybar managed to gurgle, before he lay motionless.

  ‘Maybe I am at that.’ Carter stood up and looked at the stones, the false fire still fizzing and rippling. It was a good show. Enough to put off most grave robbers. But Carter wasn’t here by choice and all he’d managed to steal was an old blade he could barely use as a throwing knife. He raised a hand towards the exit, feeling the breeze on the other side blowing against his skin, and a strange tingling too. Was that the stink of the stratovolcano, too? But no heat. He took a few steps back and then sprinted forward, flinging himself through the veil of sparks. That was when Carter felt a jolt of pain like nothing he had ever experienced before exploding across his flesh and he suddenly realised that maybe the Vandian had been right all along.

  ELEVEN

  THE ESCAPED MAN

  Carter woke up burning, the hot sun high above him, a wan, white disc partially obscured by steam and fumes. His back was against the rock, and he felt as if he had been sleeping on the hard surface for the best part of a month. He rolled over, groaning. The silvery fabric of his survival suit was torn into ribbons and covered in black dust. Outside, I’m on the volcano again. And near the ground too. His air mask dangled around his neck, not over his face. He would have suffocated at a higher altitude; passed out and never woken. Carter felt his forehead, as damp from sweat again as if he had suffered a fever, but curiously no sign of the fiery exit tunnel. He didn’t seem to be burnt, so the cavern’s portal must have been a false display of rapidly igniting powders after all. What he had just survived felt as unreal as a dream; half the tears in his survival suit must have come from rolling down the crater. Carter slipped a hand to his shoulder, feeling the wound from Tybar’s blade. The underworld was real enough, then. Pity. He would almost have welcomed the possibility that fumes from the crater had leaked through his respirator, driven him half-insane, sent him fitting into visions while he scaled Old Smoky’s interior. He scanned the slope. Off on the left he could just make out the standing stones through the smog; where he and his band had first holed up inside the cave, riding out the worse of the eruption. His friends’ deaths were real. His crashed, lava-melted transporter was real. The company of dead Vandian soldiers they had put in the dirt was real. His lack of food and water and a painful death from dehydration within a few days was deadly real. Mist cleared along the ground, pushed by warm winds and… and it looked as though the transporter behind the menhirs might be real, too? One of ours? How long had Carter been unconscious if the mine’s workers were out laying sensor lines again? Long enough for that Vandian patrol ship to be long gone, a voice told him. Its pilot no doubt blaming the second eruption for the loss of their guardsmen on the slopes, all evidence of the escaping slaves erased by a river of lava flowing over the corpses. What were his chances of walking out of here, as weak as a kitten, no food or water on him? Carter wished he had stashed a few supplies back in that cave. But if hopes were riches, he would be wealthier than a king. He made his choice, as painful as it was, despair leaching into his heart with every uncertain footstep forced in the transporter’s direction. Shocked cries met his appearance.

  ‘Dear God!’ It was Duncan, Owen and Anna working behind the craft. The old gang, back together again.

  Carter stumbled in their direction, hardly able to speak through his brittle dry mouth – his greeting croaked back inaudibly.

  Duncan ran forward, unbelting his water canteen. Carter took it and drank greedily.

  ‘Drink it all,’ urged Duncan. ‘We’ve got a second stake tethered to the station now. We’re on long rations and even longer days.’

  Carter swayed on his feet as he poured the flask’s remainder over his sore, sunburnt face.

  ‘Had you marked down as dead,’ said Owen. ‘Vandians said you’d tried to make a run for it in a transporter and they shot you down over the dead zone.’

  ‘Looks like he is dead,’ said Anna. ‘Just dug out of his grave.’

  ‘Escape?’ coughed Carter, tasting the water over his thick tongue. ‘Horseshit. Talked about it, is all. Halfway out of the dead zone is still dead. I was separated from the others on the ground during the eruption. They were back in the air on the transporter by the time I dug myself out of my cave. Reckon the boys wrote me off. They’d lifted off for the station when a patrol ship appeared and shot them to pieces. They were flying in the sky near here—’ Carter jabbed a finger skyward ‘— not inside the dead zone. Alan’s transporter went down on the high slopes and the empire’s patrol ship landed nearby, then a second eruption sent a sea of lava sliding towards both craft and I was running and not watching anymore. Reckon the lava must have done for both birds and everyone on board.’

  ‘You’re the only survivor, Northhaven,’ said Anna. ‘The imperials recovered the transporter’s wreckage and gave it back to us. No bodies for burial. The Vandian patrol ship made it back intact.’

  ‘Damn them, anyway. Trigger-happy fools. Our people died on the volcano’s slopes, not out in the dead zone. That’s the truth, I swear.’

  ‘That explains why the transporter was melted so badly,’ said Anna. ‘Didn’t look like any fuel fire or engine explosion I’ve seen before.’

  Carter nodded, wearily, realising how things had gone down. The patrol ship’s orders must have been to shoot down the transporter when it was well over the dead zone. When the slave crew confounded expectations by flying back towards the sky mines, the Vandians had decided to keep things simple by executing the slaves on the spot, and to hell with what their informer had told them. The informer hadn’t known about Carter’s plan to ride a stray volcano rock to safety. Whoever had betrayed them thought they were going to try to get out the same way as every other escape, crossing the dead zone. My plan’s still intact. I can try it again. But who would follow him now, a marked troublemaker with the scent of his friends’ death clinging to him?

  ‘Some gunner got bored and decided to shoot up a lone transporter for kicks, then,’ said Owen. ‘Killing slaves isn’t murder in the imperium: it’s a property crime against their owner.’

  ‘They’ll try and hang it on you anyway, now,’ said Duncan. ‘Their story is that you were escaping. The Vandians won’t let a single survivor make a lie of what they say happened.’

  ‘If I was escaping, I’d be dead,’ said Carter. ‘Dead in the crash or burnt to a cinder on the slopes.’

  ‘Well, we have to take you back either way,’ said
Owen. ‘You’ll be finished down here for certain if you stay.’

  ‘Been doing just fine,’ said Carter, ‘after I learnt to drink lava. But I’ve missed all the fun in the sky mines. Making the princess even richer every day…’

  Carter’s words belied his feelings. He had failed. So close to escaping the empire’s clutches and his breakout had been well and truly scuppered. All he seemed to excel at was getting his companions into scrapes that saw them killed. It didn’t matter how many lies he told here or back in the sky mines. The truth was as plain to Carter as the fate he was surrendering to.

  Anna shook her head as she climbed into the transporter’s cockpit and kicked the engines into life. ‘Maybe we’d all be better off if we left you stranded in your cave down here.’

  Four soldiers restrained Carter as they dragged him towards Princess Helrena. It seemed a little excessive. Especially given the beating they’d delivered when he’d unexpectedly turned up in the station’s hangar. Now the princess waited at the end of the hangar with her retinue from the shuttle, station workers lined up along the parked transporters, waiting to see what his fate was to be. It was as though they had made a court of the slaves and this was to be his royal audience.

  ‘Every time we meet,’ said the princess, ‘there seems to be a lesson in need of being administered across your hide.’

  The soldiers forced Carter’s bloody, bruised face towards the hangar’s bare rock. He wanted to say something, but that would mean spitting the blood in his mouth out on her boots, which wouldn’t, he suspected, exactly endear himself to the emperor’s daughter.