Ship of Ghosts

by David Bischoff

  “Sic!” ordered Crais, black eyes flashing with psychotic intensity.

  The heads bounced off the table and started rolling his way.

  “There’s a signpost just up ahead,” said Rod Serling raising a ragged black eyebrow, speaking through his clenched teeth.

  The edge of the door canted. Crichton, losing balance, grabbed the dark coat-tail of the big-eyebrowed man, but the host of his nightmare jabbed his lit cigarette into the back of his hand. Like Alice into Wonderland, Crichton fell. A dark wind blew up from the caverns below, and Crichton found himself drifting past shelves stacked with complete collections of Tom Swift and Hardy Boys books, hula hoops and Furby dolls, and action figures, heavy on soldiers with weapon belts.

  “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here,” said a beanbag animal wielding a nasty-looking red pencil. “Beware, John Crichton!” said Robbie the Robot. “It’s illogical, Captain,” said a pointy-eared man with a bowl haircut, raising a razor-sharp eyebrow. “Force the Use, John!” cried another figure in a robe and a hood. “There’s no place like home,” said the Wicked Witch of the West, swooshing past him. “There’s no place like home.” Instead of Margaret Hamilton on the broomstick, though, it was Crais the Peacekeeper in black drag. “Which you’ll never see again!”

  With a maniacal laugh the last figure swept away.

  “Crichton!”

  Somebody was slapping his face. He felt cold liquid running down his front. He could feel a comforting and concerned emotional presence suffusing him. His fall stopped, and he was floating, floating.…

  * * *

  Crichton opened his eyes.

  The light from Moya’s lamps was dazzling, and he closed his eyes again to shut it out. His head hurt. His stomach was sour and there was a taste of fear in his mouth.

  “Crichton! Are you all right?”

  The soft voice felt like heaven. He opened his eyes again, slowly this time. Zhaan was kneeling beside him, her silken blue robes a soothing pool of tranquillity. The throb in his head began to subside. Zhaan leaned over and gathered him in her arms, and it felt good. He reached up and touched his face, and his hand came back sticky and red. Blood.

  With an influx of adrenaline his focus sharpened. He surveyed the expanse of the bridge: the arc of the steel-skin ribs framing the chamber, the walls studded with lamps, the gleam of the copper-colored floor, a DRD scurrying bug-like toward one of the dislodged cables hanging from a console. D’Argo stood behind the console, shaking his head as he tapped the controls insistently, and Aeryn stood looking at Crichton asprawl on the floor. Her arms were folded, her face clouded. When she saw that he was fully conscious, she nodded and moved to one of the scopes, a grim expression on her face.

  Then he remembered. The impact and the fall and that tractor beam—

  “Zhaan!”

  “I am here, John,” she said from his side. “You were unconscious and experiencing severe psychological disturbances.”

  Although usually he felt only aloofness and mystery from this alien woman, now he felt comfort and warmth and trust. He just wanted to fold himself up in her arms and weep and tell her about how he’d found his father and lost him again. “Extreme psychological disturbances? My life as I know it,” he said. “I was having a terrible nightmare.”

  “Welcome back to a terrible reality,” said Aeryn.

  Crichton pushed himself up. Now that his head was beginning to clear, he could see that the bridge was in disarray. The repair DRDs were tracing a jagged path between mechanical bits and pieces jarred loose from the consoles, and a crack had opened between two of Moya’s metallic ribs. The entire chamber was showered in yellow light from the vu-screens. Another group of DRDs whirred and clicked defensively and adoringly around Rygel, their eyestalks waving. Aeryn and D’Argo hovered over the scopes, working away but also clearly wanting to be near something solid if that kind of cataclysmic collision happened again. “The alien ship!” said Crichton, remembering the event that had pushed him into nightmareland.

  “Got us dead to rights, and moving in,” said Rygel, eyebrows agitated. He fingered one of the whiskers sprouting from his face. “Pilot seems to be taking a nap.”

  “I am prepared for docking and boarding,” said D’Argo, who had his Qualta Rifle—half rifle, half deadly sword—ready on his shoulder. “We shall not be captured without a fight!”

  Crichton wobbled over to his own control area and punched up some scanners. “I see no sign of any kind of activity that would indicate they’re preparing weapons. Looks like absolutely nothing is happening over there.” He whistled. “That’s one big piece of hardware. How big is that ship?”

  “230 zacrons in diameter, 150 zacrons in length,” said Aeryn. “No Peacekeeper ever made a ship this large.” She was bathed in cool light from her display, looking grim but controlled. The worse the situation was, the fiercer she got.

  The alien ship was more massive than any he had seen, easily the size of a small moon—or the pocks and rubble of a small moon bound together with great sinews and arteries. It seemed to be a contorted mass of spatial geometries, filled out with hills and valleys and twisted fissures through which arced flashes of electricity. Next to something that immense, Moya must seem like a flea gazing at a dog.

  “And all that mass,” continued Aeryn, “is getting closer and closer.”

  “Where’s Pilot? Can we possibly use some other method to separate?” said Crichton, looking down at the organic cables below him. “Damn, I see the problem.” Lucky thing this part of the operations was his speciality. He refastened the loose connection and squeeze-sealed the tab. The impact must have shaken it loose.

  Instantly, the holograph of the arthropod frizzled back into view. It was much fuzzier than before, though it had white blips and futzed on and off.

  “Moya is frightened!” said Pilot instantly.

  “Can she maneuver?” said Crichton.

  “She is helpless. It feels as though the Peacekeeper collar is on again,” said Pilot, raising his articulated arms as though to slough off invisible chains. “Only this time, over the entirety of the hull. There is no room for movement.”

  “Damn!” said Crichton. “What does that ship want from us?”

  “Whatever it is, it needs to be close to get it. And,” said Zhaan, “it’s getting closer.”

  Crichton looked up. The sharp outlines of the vessel stood in vivid relief against the stars. Then, one by one, the stars were edged out as the monstrous ship filled more and more of Moya’s vu-screen.

  “Oh, great. Next it’ll be nuzzling up against Moya,” said Crichton. “What is this, some kind of starship mating ritual?”

  “Fortunately, the vessel does not appear to be sentient. Its approach is not a sexual advance,” reported Pilot.

  “No, I didn’t mean it literally,” said Crichton. “Well, good, if it’s not organic, then presumably it doesn’t want us for a snack either.”

  The problem with a starship like Moya was that, as big and spectacularly organically and technically equipped as she was, she had no weapons. The faster-than-light StarBurst route was pretty much her only trump card, and now that she couldn’t move, that was right out of the picture. This was one of the ironies that had always bothered Crichton. To get whisked out of the twenty-first century into a new galaxy was a lark, but part of the package was supposed to be whopping great zap guns and light sabres and the like to fight with. Moya was more or less buck-naked, in space opera terms.

  Then the tractor beam turned a bright red. The craggy hull of the vessel was so close now that if it were a seagoing ship, you’d be able to see the barnacles.

  “What’s happening?” said Rygel. The DRDs surrounding him had paused in their adoration, and the running lights that ringed their lower rims were quiet, as if they too were waiting.

  “We’re being towed in for docking, I presume,” said Zhaan. “Any ideas?”

  “I am still ready for defense!” said D’Argo, gripping his weapon in the
crook of his arm with savage intent.

  “You see,” said Rygel, his voice tinged with disdain, “we’ve absolutely nothing to worry about. One Luxan warrior should hold off a ship of any size, wouldn’t that be so?”

  Aeryn threw him a glance, her eyes narrowed. “I hear that in times of war,” she said, “Luxans save two energy bolts should they be trapped. One for suicide and one for puffed-up arrogant deposed rulers.”

  “Fortunately for me,” said Rygel mildly, “they are so dim they utilize the former first.”

  The Luxan growled and glared at Rygel, looking as though he was thinking of violence but was stymied by sheer wit. Fortunately for Rygel, vengeance, witty or otherwise, was interrupted by an outcry.

  “What are those things?” said Zhaan, startled. “Oh no! They’re coming toward us!”

  CHAPTER 3

  Crichton had never seen anything like it.

  Thick tendrils of some sort, great vegetable stalks ending in barbs and snags, moved outward. They wavered towards them in a flock of perhaps twenty, like floating seaweed. This kelpy stuff seemed to move with a purpose. Even as they swam towards Moya the stalks coiled and separated, flinging themselves out to surround and enfold the Leviathan. Crichton flinched as they wrapped over the screens. The bridge shook and the screens frizzled off and then back on again.

  The lights died to a soft ambient green glow which hushed all into a mordant sour yellow.

  The Pilot hologram wavered but held fast, as though it were keeping itself alight through dint of sheer will-power. “Moya has been held fast by some kind of scix-plast extensors,” he reported, his voice calm but concerned. “Biosystems indicate no hull damage. I’m tracing through the internals for signs of difficulties, and DRDs are being readied for any necessary repairs.”

  “So we’re under attack, then,” said Crichton.

  “We don’t know if it’s that,” said Zhaan. Somehow her terse and steady voice exuded a calming peace. She seemed to glow blue. And the deep floral scent of her still had a pacifying effect on Crichton. “There is something unusual about these attackers. For one thing, their ship is a giant plant.”

  “A plant?” said Crichton. “You can’t be serious.”

  “I know plants,” said Zhaan, “and I am serious. And remember, they’ve shown no signs of weapons and we haven’t been harmed.”

  Crichton touched his hand to his head and held out evidence to the contrary, slick and slimy and upsetting. Still, its iron smell was familiar and as he looked at it, he realized that it had been brewed in the genetic labs of Mother Earth—and therefore, so far from home, it seemed worthy of reverence—almost holy. “That’s called blood.” He held up his hand with its smear of red for all to see. “Red blood. Human blood. My blood.”

  D’Argo leaned over, sniffed it, grinned and seemed to approve of the smell. He clamped a brotherly hand upon his companion-in-arms and looked toward the alien ship, wiggling like a Picasso squid in the sea of space.

  “Let them attack,” said D’Argo. “I am prepared.” Eyes afire, he reached back and touched the gleaming golden weapon slung over his back in an almost ritualistic way. “I shall fight with tooth and tentacle, should it be necessary.”

  Aeryn turned her molten eyes toward the others. The sides of her white shirt were damp with sweat. “I stand ready as well. Pilot! Access Moya’s data banks. We need all the information we can get on past encounters with such vessels—mythical or otherwise.”

  “A number of the starfaring races used to have legends about the Nokmadi,” said Pilot after a moment of concentration, the dome atop his head tilted down in a decidedly monkish manner. “The legends say this is a very ancient race indeed. They named their ships Navigators because their quest was to map the universe. Whether they succeeded, the stories do not say. This is where my knowledge of the legends ends. But there is unknown data and foreign matter of the past, far, far beyond my ken. And there are also bits and pieces of information in the biocomputer that have been partitioned away over the years.” He paused and glanced down at the complex consoles that made up his interface with Moya. “There is a very small amount of information about the Nokmadi there, but it is fragmentary, like a star map that shows only half the stars. Moya has the silhouette of a Nokmadi ship recorded, but it is an ancient silhouette, produced from a drawing, and the ship in it differs from this one somewhat.” Pilot’s hands reached out to punch buttons, and the outline of the ship came up on Crichton’s screen. Zhaan, Aeryn and D’Argo gathered around the console to study the drawing. It was clearly drawn by someone whose skills were rudimentary: barely more than an outline. Like the ship in front of them, the vessel in the drawing was a large ovoid like a distorted moon, but in the drawing its sides were smooth and featureless.

  “Any idea how big the ship in this drawing is supposed to be? And who made this drawing, and how long ago?”

  Pilot shook his head slowly. “Incomplete data. I’m afraid Moya can tell us no more.”

  “Very well,” Aeryn said. She turned to face Zhaan. “Why don’t we access your databanks, Zhaan? Knowledge could be the only kind of power we’ve got now.”

  After some moments, Zhaan nodded and closed her eyes. The gently draping aquamarine robe that hung from her statuesque body shimmered. As always, John Crichton felt he was in the presence of something deep and enigmatic.

  Zhaan rubbed her fingers lightly over her forehead, as though massaging memories to life. “Yes,” she said. “There is something there. I can remember tales of the Nokmadi—” She sighed. A moment passed in stillness. Then her eyes opened again and she shook her head. “Ships, travelling, Navigators, ancient stories. But like Moya’s memories, they’re only fragments.”

  “And in these fragments, did they travel the universe capturing innocent Leviathans?” asked Aeryn. With a slim but muscular arm she wiped away the sweat on her brow.

  Zhaan took her fingers from her temples and sank onto one of the seats. “I don’t know,” she said with a trace of sorrow in her voice. “It’s as if the Nokmadi were so ancient that no memory is deep enough to reach them. I can retrieve a fragment here and a fragment there, but nothing to put together into understanding. I suppose it’s as if I too have a star map with only half the stars.”

  Rygel fingered the purple collar of his pint-sized potentate’s robe impatiently. “Any emperor would know,” he declared, “that you get the scribes to copy the maps onto translucent pieces of paper, and then lay one over the other. In my day I had sixty-six auto-scribes copying night and day, and those were just the accounts of my glory. Of my glorious ancestors, Rygels I through XV—”

  “The miniature one has had a good idea!” interrupted D’Argo. “Parwenian gneezels are flying! The fiery deserts of Flameworld are freezing over! The—”

  Aeryn rolled her eyes. “You say there was a good idea, D’Argo? The rest of us missed it.”

  This time Pilot interrupted, his four arms working simultaneously on the controls, his brow furrowed. “Yes,” he said, “yes, that might work. If we combine databanks, we will certainly improve upon the partial knowledge of each. And with her particular physiology, Zhaan can establish a direct link to Moya’s neural circuitry for a brief time, if I can locate the exact neural connection.”

  “Combine databanks?” said Crichton.

  Zhaan strode over to Pilot’s hologram. He nodded at her, the carapace that domed his head shining in the light. “As if we laid one star map over another.”

  Pilot’s head dipped. “Zhaan’s metabolism is slow enough that she can take in the data from Moya without overwhelming her own system. But it must be brief. Zhaan?”

  Zhaan gave a quiet smile. “Certainly, Pilot. I welcome any opportunity to gain knowledge.”

  “Excellent! Then it will all be taken care of!” said Rygel, who looked decidedly bedraggled and roughed up by all this bouncing around. His clothes were awry and his eyes looked as though they’d just spun around inside his brainpan, while the usually well-groomed
threads of hair growing from his face were all fuzzed and mussed. “If you find something out, I give you leave to act on your own. Now I need to use the little king’s room.” He started away, trailed by DRDs.

  “He is going to hide!” D’Argo barked, glaring after the little alien. “Rygel, stand fast and do the honorable thing! We prepare for battle. Select your weapon and stand by our sides. If our lights of life are to be extinguished, let it be only after battle. Come, repair your good name with honor and glory!”

  Rygel lifted a hand in a dismissive manner, fingers doing a toodle-oo. “You know where I can be reached!”

  “Yes, in a room full of helium farts!” said Aeryn. “Are you ready, Zhaan?”

  Zhaan nodded. On Pilot’s instructions, they detached the thickest of the living cables from the main console. Zhaan took her position on a bench just behind the console, and D’Argo volunteered to attach the cable to Zhaan. He took a fiercely serrated short knife and held it above Zhaan’s neck. She craned her neck to look back at D’Argo and nodded slowly.

  Crichton heard a sharp intake of breath from Zhaan. A cable was now trailing into the console from the back of her blue robe. She saw Crichton looking at her with shock and gave him a wan smile. “I regenerate very quickly,” she said.

  “We must begin,” urged Pilot. “Data transfer commencing.”

  Zhaan closed her eyes and brought her head down to her chest. She became as silent as a stone settling to the bottom of a pond. The only noise was the sound of a DRD whirring past and a muttered curse from Aeryn as she tapped on her console panels.

  Abruptly, Zhaan opened her eyes. It was like flowers blossoming, full and rich, abounding in deep color. But she wavered and seemed about to pitch forward.

  With astonishing speed, D’Argo jumped forward and caught her. With a swift flick of his knife he yanked the cable free and dropped it to the floor. He cradled her in his arms for a moment, then gently lowered her onto the bench. “Aeryn, water!” he barked.

  “I’m doing a vital job here!” said Aeryn.