Ghostworld (Deathstalker Prelude)

by Green, Simon R.

  Stasiak looked at Ripper, and then back at Diana. “Leave her here? Are you sure?”

  “That’s what she said,” said Diana. “Do you want to argue with her?”

  “Not really, no,” said Ripper.

  “I don’t know, Rip,” said Stasiak. “Anything could happen in there.”

  “Anyone else and I might be worried,” said Ripper. “But we’re talking about an Investigator, after all. Anything that runs into her has my deepest sympathies. Besides, do you really want to look her in the eye later and tell her you ignored a direct order?”

  “Not really, no.” Stasiak looked down the slope at the ship below. “What’s it like in there, Diana?”

  “Fascinating!” Now that she was out of the ship and back in the open again, Diana lost her nervousness and found herself bubbling with excitement, almost ready to rush back into the ship and explore it again. Almost. “I’ve never seen anything like it; the whole structure’s a combination of organic and inorganic materials, lying side by side and functioning together.”

  “You mean, like a cyborg?” said Stasiak, peering uncertainly at the huge shape below them.

  “I suppose so, yes, but on a much greater scale. The whole thing’s alive, or at least it used to be. I’d love to spend more time with it, but the Investigator was most insistent we get this memory crystal back to the pinnace. Typical. The moment you find anything interesting, the Empire immediately finds a way to take it away from you.”

  Stasiak smiled. “If you can’t take a joke, you shouldn’t have joined.”

  “I wasn’t exactly given a choice,” said Diana. “Espers do what they’re told.”

  And then the wry smile vanished from her face as she looked past Stasiak. The two marines spun round to discover what she was looking at, and their hands fell to their guns. Among the violet and azure trees at the edge of the forest a man dressed all in black was walking unhurriedly out of the mists. His face was hidden by his cape’s cowl, but they all knew who he was, who he had to be. He walked past without sparing any of them a glance, and started down the slope towards the alien ship. Diana shuddered as he passed, and had to fight down a sudden urge to reach out and touch him, to make sure he was real, even though the sensors said he wasn’t. Instead, she watched silently with the marines as the man in black came to a halt before the ship and looked at it thoughtfully, leaning elegantly on his ivory staff.

  “Is that him?” said Diana softly. “I thought he’d be taller.”

  “Not very impressive,” said Ripper. “But then, legends rarely are, in the flesh.”

  “Carrion,” said Stasiak, his voice low and harsh. “The man who lived with the Ashrai. The traitor who turned against humanity, for the sake of savages who still ate their meat raw. I’ve done some things in my time, and been ashamed of some of them, but I never betrayed my own species. Never.”

  “Take it easy, Lew,” said Ripper. “We don’t know the whole story.”

  “We don’t need to.”

  “Why does the Captain think he’s so important?” said Diana. “I mean, all right, he can fool the pinnace’s sensors, but he’s just another outlaw. Isn’t he?”

  “Carrion’s a killer,” said Captain Silence. “And he’s very good at it.”

  The esper and the two marines spun round again, to see Silence standing at the edge of the forest behind them, leaning against a tree trunk for support.

  “Captain!” said Diana, blushing with embarrassment. “I didn’t hear you approach. …”

  “Obviously,” said Silence. “Security on this mission is going to hell.” He broke off, grimacing as pain from his injured ribs hit him. Diana took in his torn and blood-stained uniform and started towards him, but he stopped her with an upraised hand. “I’m all right. I just ran into a little opposition from the local ghosts. Carrion rescued me. And no, I don’t want to talk about it. Odin told me about the Investigator’s discovery, and I brought Carrion along to take a look at it. How long have you been here?”

  “Not long,” said Diana. “The Investigator and I made a brief foray into the ship, but there’s no sign of any crew. We did find what appears to be an alien memory crystal. The Investigator decided it should go back to the pinnace for analysis. She’s still inside the ship.”

  “I thought she might be,” said Silence. “Carrion’s going to join her. Between them, they should come up with some answers.”

  “Pardon me for asking, Captain,” said Stasiak, “but what makes the traitor so important?”

  “Carrion used to be an Investigator,” said Silence. “One of the best. Trained to outthink species that don’t think as we do.”

  “If he was that good,” said Ripper, “what went wrong? How did he end up siding with the Ashrai?”

  Silence smiled humourlessly. “Perhaps we trained him too well.”

  He looked down at the alien ship below, and the others followed his gaze. Carrion had climbed up onto the ship and was examining the entrance Diana had found. His black cloak hung about him like folded wings, and he looked morethan ever like a carrion crow, feasting on a dead carcass.

  “What’s that staff he’s carrying?” said Stasiak.

  “A power lance,” said Silence.

  “But they’re outlawed!”

  Silence smiled briefly. “So’s he.”

  Carrion threaded his way through the twisting corridors of the alien ship, following the ragged path Frost had cut through the webbing. It led him eventually to a vast circular chamber deep in the heart of the ship, a great metal cavern studded with bulky, enigmatic machinery on all sides. The curving walls were pockmarked with tunnel mouths of various sizes, many high above the floor with no obvious way of reaching them. Thick strands of rotting gossamer hung from the ceiling, interspersed with long crystalline creepers that gleamed and sparkled in the unsteady light as they turned slowly back and forth. The flickering light came from deep in the tunnels, casting strange, elongated shadows on the floor and ceiling. The air was hot and humid and thick with the stench of rotting meat. Frost stepped out of the shadows and into the light, and Carrion nodded to her courteously.

  “I know you,” said Frost.

  “No,” said Carrion. “That was someone else. I am Carrion. I bring bad luck. I am the destroyer of nations and of worlds.”

  Frost raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

  “The Ashrai believed it.”

  They studied each other for a while in the uncertain light, and whatever they recognised in each other’s faces they kept to themselves.

  “I’m surprised you remember me,” said Carrion finally. “It’s been a long time.”

  “All Investigators remember you,” said Frost. “The Academy still holds you up as a bad example. You broke the prime rule; you got involved.”

  “I broke my conditioning,” said Carrion. “But then, I was always involved, with one species or another. When you’ve spent half your life learning to move your mind in alien ways, it becomes hard to think in wholly human terms anymore.”

  Frost shrugged. “Empathy’s a useful tool, but that’s all. Aliens are for killing. I’ve found something interesting. Come and take a look.”

  She led him into a small compartment off the main chamber, through an opening so low they had to crawl through on hands and knees. The compartment was filled with spiky crystalline machinery that flowed seamlessly into the walls and floor. The ceiling was just high enough to let them stand upright, and suffused everything with a dull red glow that was disturbingly organic. The floor was uneven, solid ridges rising like bones to press against their boots in undulating rhythms. Everywhere, high-tech instruments blended into organic constructs, living and unliving components functioning side by side, as though the ship had been grown as much as made.

  “This appears to be the control centre,” said Frost. “Or one of them, anyway. I’ve traced a whole series of power lines that converge here, but I can’t be sure until I can get some of my equipment down from the Darkwind.”
r />   “Have you identified the main power source?”

  Frost shook her head angrily. “I can’t even find the hyperdrive. By any reasonable standards this thing shouldn’t even fly, let alone jump across the stars.”

  Carrion nodded, his eyes vague and far away. “Perhaps I can find the drive for you.”

  A breeze from nowhere ruffled his cloak, and Frost’s hackles rose as strange lights glowed suddenly in the instruments around them. There was a feeling of pressure on the air, of something imminent and unstoppable. A hatch shot open in the wall beside her, and slammed shut again likemetal jaws. Instruments extended and reshaped themselves in subtle ways, and far off in the distance Frost thought she could hear something howling in anger and agony, as though the decaying ship had been somehow stirred to horrid life again. Carrion was smiling, and it was not a pleasant smile, his dark eyes fixed on something only he could see. Frost’s hand drifted casually closer to the holstered gun at her side. At that moment, the outlaw seemed every bit as alien and as dangerous as the ship they were investigating. A loud juddering sound vibrated through the floor, rattling their teeth and shaking their heads, and then the floor opened up in the centre and a great tower of steel and diamond rose up into the chamber, shining so brightly they had to turn their heads away. Deep in the tunnels the howling died away, and a sudden silence filled the chamber as the alien machinery grew still. Carrion and Frost slowly turned back to look at the tower, shielding their eyes with their arms.

  “I didn’t know you were a polter,” said Frost.

  “I would have thought it’d be in my file.”

  “Your file’s Restricted.”

  “It would be,” said Carrion.

  They peered more closely at the structure before them, as their eyes adjusted to the glare. The tower was an intricate latticework of metals, complex and mysterious, surrounding a brilliant cluster of glowing crystals. There was meaning and purpose in its structure, but none of it human.

  “What is it?” whispered Frost, impressed despite herself.

  Carrion smiled slowly. “Judging by the remaining power flow, this is the ship’s hyperdrive. Even if it does look nothing like ours. The Empire uses crystal technology in its computers; apparently these aliens found other uses for it.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  * * *

  Inside Base Thirteen

  DIANA sat slumped in her seat in the pinnace, and wondered why she still didn’t feel safe. It had come on her suddenly, as they were walking back through the metallic forest to the landing field. Without any specific cause that she could name, the esper had suddenly been convinced that they were being watched, by something huge and awful and dangerous. Her stomach lurched, and sweat sprang out on her face. She managed to keep from crying out, but the feeling of imminent danger persisted, even though she couldn’t see or hear anything to justify it. Nothing moved in the mists among the trees, and the only sounds were the quiet voices and footsteps of the people with her. Diana raised her esp and threw it out, scanning for anything near or approaching the group. Nothing had changed. The trees blazed in her mind like exclamation points of light, but there was no trace of any other living thing in the forest. She cast her net wider, till her mind fell over Base Thirteen and she saw something looking back at her.

  It was huge and dark, filling the Base, and it looked at her with hungry eyes. There were voices screaming in the background, human voices, full of anguish and horror. There was a blood-red feeling of menace, of danger close and deadly, and then it was all gone, as suddenly as if she’d imagined it. She focused her esp on the Base, but there was nothing there now. If there ever had been.

  She hadn’t told the others what she’d sensed. She had no proof, and it had all happened so fast she wasn’t sure she trusted it herself. It had the hot, hazy feeling of a fever dream, its very vagueness part of what was so horrifying. So she stayed silent, all the way back to the pinnace, and once she was aboard she curled up in her seat like a dog in its box, and tried to put it out of her mind. Only that was somehow worse, so she instructed the AI to patch in an exterior view through her comm implant. The steel bulkheads seemed to become transparent as the computer broadcast a real-time view of what its sensors were picking up. There was nothing but the landing pads and the trees and the curling mists, the two marines standing guard, and the Base, waiting inside its impenetrable force screen. She should have felt safe and secure, protected by the pinnace and its weaponry, but somehow she only felt more visible, more vulnerable. The pinnace was the only ship on the pads, and seemed to her a conspicuous target, small and defenceless against the size of the landing field and the endless forest that surrounded it. She kept a careful watch in every direction, unable to settle but unwilling to raise her esp again for fear of drawing the watcher’s attention back to her.

  The more she put off telling anyone, the more it seemed to her nothing but an attack of nerves, a product of her own fear and insecurity. She tried to recapture some of the enthusiasm she’d felt about contacting the new alien species from the crashed ship, and that helped her push back the fear a little. It was just nerves, exacerbated by the waiting and the tension. She’d be all right, when the time came to finally enter the Base. But in the meantime she kept her eyes open and her mind damped down, just in case.

  The marines had felt something of it too. They’d been jumpy all the way back to the pinnace, and had seemedalmost relieved when Silence ordered them to stand guard outside the ship. Silence, on the other hand, seemed strangely calm and relaxed, despite the beating he’d taken on his way to meet Carrion. He still wouldn’t talk about that. He sat stoically as the ship’s med unit stuck him with half-a-dozen needles, and then adjusted his uniform so that it provided more support for his ribs. And now he sat comfortably in his seat, half-reclining, talking calmly with the AI about the memory crystal Diana had found in the alien ship. Odin had swallowed the crystal some time back, but apparently the AI was having to create a whole new series of diagnostics just to access the damned thing. Diana smiled briefly. If she’d known it was going to be this much trouble, she’d have used her esp on the crystal and accessed the memories directly. Only that would have meant raising her esp again, and she wasn’t ready to do that, not just yet.

  Silence scowled at the comm panels before him. Given time, the AI should be able to make the crystal do everything but sit up and beg, but they didn’t have that much time. The Empire wanted the mining machinery working again, and it wanted it now. If the Captain couldn’t deliver, they’d send someone to replace him. And that really would be the end of his career. Silence sighed, and winced at the discomfort in his ribs. The alien ship held the answer to what had happened in Base Thirteen, he was sure of it. One or more of the aliens had entered the Base, there’d been a conflict of some kind, and the force screen had gone up. Simple as that. But just in case it wasn’t, he wanted the information in the alien memory crystal before he tried to break into the Base. Going into a potentially dangerous situation without a thorough briefing was never wise, and that went double here; with ghosts on the one hand and strange new aliens on the other, this had all the makings of a really messy disaster.

  “Captain,” said a quiet voice behind him, “I need to talk to you.”

  “Not just now, esper, I’m busy.”

  “You’re supposed to be resting.”

  “I’ll rest later, when I’ve got time. I’m just waiting for Carrion and Frost to return, and then we’re going into Base Thirteen to scare up some answers.”

  “Captain … if there are aliens inside the Base, we shouldn’t be going in aggressively, looking for trouble. We should at least try to make contact with them. They could be peaceful. This could all be the result of some ghastly mistake or misunderstanding.”

  Silence turned round in his seat and looked patiently at the young esper. “This is all new to you, Diana, but the Empire has a set procedure when it comes to handling first contacts. And the first and main part of that procedure ca
lls for the Investigator to decide how we handle it. She’s the expert.”

  “An expert at killing.”

  “Yes. The Empire doesn’t like the idea of competition, so its attitude toward aliens is really quite straightforward. They’re either friendly, in which case they become part of the Empire, whether they want to or not, or they’re unfriendly, in which case they get stepped on. Hard.”

  “Like the Ashrai?” said Diana.

  “Yes, esper. Like the Ashrai. I knew where my responsibilities lay, even then. Look, if I can see a way to sort this out without bloodshed, I’ll take it. I don’t believe in putting my people at risk unnecessarily. But I can’t be optimistic about this. The most likely scenario is that one or more of the aliens have entered the Base and killed all the personnel.”

  “You can’t know that.”

  “That’s right, I can’t. But that’s how I have to play it. If whatever is in there is willing to talk, I’ll listen, but they’ve made no move to contact us so far. Have you been able to pick up anything?”

  “Just … impressions. Nothing I can be sure of. Because of my own fears, I could be misinterpreting the little I am getting. Couldn’t we at least wait till the AI’s cracked the memory crystal? It could hold all the answers we need.”

  “Esper, I’m running out of time and patience. I’ll wait for Carrion and Frost to get back here, but then we have to go, ready or not.”

  The esper’s jaw muscles worked for a moment, but when she spoke, her voice was calm and measured. “I’d like to try something, Captain. I want permission to go into the Base on my own, once you’ve got us through the screen, and attempt to make contact with my esp. They might not see one person as a threat.”

  “My orders are quite specific,” Silence replied. “I’m to discover what happened inside Base Thirteen, and take whatever action is necessary to re-establish the Base and restore mining operations. Everything else is of secondary importance. There were one hundred and twenty-seven men and women in that Base. We’ve heard nothing from them since the screen went up. The odds are they’re all dead. If they are, then whatever killed them has to die. The Empire can’t afford to be seen as weak.”