The Queen's Pardon (Alexis Carew Book 6)

by J. A. Sutherland

  “There’s some’at out there, sir!” Hickson yelled, his rifle at his shoulder and aimed into the dark.

  “One of those snakes, centipedes, whatever-beasts?” Alexis asked.

  She peered at the waters then noted that the men with lights were shining them out straight, not down at the surrounding muck.

  “No, it were a … a creature, sir!”

  “Of what sort, man? Out with it, Hickson. What happened?”

  “I thort I heard a noise, sir, like a sucking sound while we’re walking through that muck, y’see? Not the drips we hear, no.”

  Alexis nodded. There was a constant patter of drops on the water’s surface as they slept, which would have been soothing if one wasn’t also being dripped on and didn’t know you’d spend the next day slogging through it. The wet slurp of drawing one’s boot out of the muck was also well known to them all by now.

  “An’ so I’m thinking some fool’s gone t’use the head on t’other hummock, see,” Hickson went on.

  The hummock they were sleeping on was large enough for that purpose, but not for so many men to use as a head as well, so they’d designated one nearby and nearly everyone had made a point of finishing their business before full dark.

  “Soes I shines m’light out there, t’be sure of it, an’ —”

  Hickson broke off and shuddered.

  “Cor’, sir, it were a sight!”

  “What was, Hickson?”

  “It were all over scales, sir, like them snakeys, an’ …” Hickson swallowed hard and looked out into the darkness before meeting her gaze again. “The Dark take me if I’m lyin’, sir, but it were some sort o’ lizard-man, sir! Walkin’ on its hind legs, standin’ tall as any man, an’ carrying a stick just like some sort o’ spear!”

  Six

  Barbary space’s known far and wide

  As a fine place to avoid.

  With shoals and winds on every side

  To leave your ship destroyed.

  “There are no lizard-men,” Alexis whispered to Dockett and Nabb, not wanting the rest to hear.

  “Not saying as there are, sir,” Docket said. His eyes darting to the surrounding mists belied his words. “but Hickson saw something.”

  “He saw his imagination,” Alexis said. “There are men out here, sure, as we’ve seen from the trap at the ravine, but they’ll be as human as we are ourselves —”

  She glanced over to where bloody Creasy was surrounded by nearly a third of the crew in huddled conversation.

  “Though I’ll grant you Creasy might be some sort of alien sent to torment me,” she added.

  “Creasy thinks we should turn aside,” Nabb whispered. “He’s saying the trap was a warning set by these alien creatures and the visit last night could be our last chance to leave their territory.”

  “And which way is this supposed territory?” Alexis asked. “How far does it extend, and where are we to go?”

  Nabb shrugged. “Creasy’s not one for details, sir — more of a big-picture sort.”

  “Creasy’s a bloody menace,” Alexis muttered. “I should have left him back on Dalthus.”

  Though if she had, the superstitious signalsman would likely have converted half the planet to worshiping shite-weasels, as her grandfather called the bearcats native to her home, and she’d come home to a bloody religious war.

  “There are no alien creatures,” Alexis whispered. “No aliens setting traps and warning us off. Whatever Hickson saw last night was some sort of beast. I’ll grant a scaled biped of some sort, but not intelligent.”

  “Hickson says he saw a spear.”

  “Through the dark and mist with a handheld torch?” Alexis shook her head again. “No. Humanity’s been traveling the galaxy for centuries now and we’ve found no evidence of other intelligences, not even any species with the most rudimentary communications or tool making above what’s typical of animals back on Earth. Nothing to even match the tool-use of some beasts back on Earth, either. To think that there’s been one on, of all places, Erzurum in the bloody Barbary all this time, and not a hundred kilometers from a human settlement, is absurd.”

  Dockett pursed his lips. “Not much traffic through here. Could be kept quiet, sir.”

  “Sweet Dark, man, the main complaint of the Barbary worlds is that they don’t get enough merchant traffic or investment to keep their economies going — word of an intelligent alien species would have scientists from a dozen worlds pouring bloody money into the place!”

  “Have the folk packed off from their homes to protect the find, though, sir, isn’t that what those scientists’d do?”

  “But —” Alexis paused. Dockett did have a point at that. The mere fact that humanity had encountered no other intelligent species didn’t preclude the possibility of it happening — and if it did, then the impact on the world where they were discovered was more likely to be Dockett’s imagining than her own. The scientists and money would descend, true, but the natives … the colonists of that world would be packed off to somewhere else. There might even be a provision in the standard colony charters to specify that — buried down in the bits with the other things no one thought would ever happen.

  Alexis sighed.

  “The odds, though, Mister Dockett? Of intelligent aliens on this world, at this time, kept secret for so long, and now discovered by our little party?”

  Dockett pursed his lips again and narrowed his eyes.

  “Well, long, sir, mighty long … but there’s always some jammy bastard got to win the lotto, yes?”

  The next day’s march, and the next after that, saw a much tighter formation than the previous, with the whole crew accepting the trundled muck of their fellows in favor of proximity. Alexis would have praised their alertness, if it hadn’t meant the death of so many floating branches and tree trunks.

  “Looked like one o’ those snakies, sir,” Veals said after one such eruption of fire.

  Alexis ground her teeth and took a deep breath. “Save your shots, lads,” she said loudly enough for all to hear. “We’ve few enough chemical rounds and little chance to recharge our capacitors until these clouds have cleared, we’re out from under the trees, and have clear skies for a time.”

  She sighed.

  A platoon of ships’ Marines would do her well, she thought, and have a bit of fire-discipline as well. For the common crew, being issued arms generally meant a boarding, and that meant stick the open end toward the enemy and pull the trigger as fast as one might before things came to blades.

  It was no wonder they’d open fire at any perceived threat here.

  She thought, as they settled in that night, that the crew should have a much larger worry — that they might never locate the settlement she sought and would have to find some other way to call for rescue. Perhaps even expose themselves to the searchers, in hopes the commotion would be picked up by the ships in orbit. That would bring down the pirate boats first — they were detecting fewer of them every day, sometimes none at all, but they’d certainly converge if given some direction — and endanger any of the private ships’ boats that came to help. Unless such a large force was put together so as to overwhelm the searching pirates, which would mean abandoning the more strategic infrastructure positions they held.

  Alexis thought some of the other captains would not participate in such a thing, though. Perhaps Malcomson would send a boat or two on any rescue mission, but how many of the others would risk their crew and boats for her? That would leave Mongoose’s own boats, which Villar would certainly order come, and they’d all be overwhelmed.

  Nabb came and settled next to her on her hummock, there being none about large enough for the entire crew. The crew was split up into groups of six or so each, with her given courtesy of her very own small space, which she shared with Isom who was already asleep.

  “There’s talk you should hear, sir,” Nabb whispered.

  Alexis thought it must be something like that for him to have sat unbidden. Her coxswai
n was well aware of protocols, but was also her eyes and ears amongst the crew. They’d tell him things they’d never tell an officer or even a master’s mate, and the hearing of such things could let her stave off no end of trouble.

  In truth, she’d been expecting such a conversation for a day or two already. Their winding, nonsense path amongst the ravines and cliffs must surely have the men concerned for if they’d ever reach their destination. To be fair, she had such concerns herself.

  Her tablet’s maps of Erzurum were old and out of date, she had no access to a positioning system, only the tablet’s inertial guidance, and her sighting of the settlement on their boat’s descent had been an estimate at best. It was entirely possible she had no idea where they were or where they were going — or, if she had the one, that the other was right out.

  “It’s Creasy, sir,” Nabb said.

  “Oh, for f —” Alexis broke off and held her breath, counting silently to calm herself and glancing about to see if any of the crew were paying particularly more attention to her after her outburst. It wouldn’t do for them to see her put off her calm.

  “What’s the bloody fool on to now?” she whispered back once she felt she could open her mouth without calling for Mister Dockett to lay the idiot’s back open. For once, she could almost feel sympathy for those captains who over-used the cat.

  “The lizard-men, sir.”

  “There are no bloody —” More counting, this time with her eyes closed, allowed her to calm herself.

  “As you say, sir, but —” Nabb shrugged. “— Creasy.”

  “Aye, Creasy. Go on — I’ll try not to shout at you for bringing the news.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Nabb looked around to see no one listening and went on. “It’s all tied together for him, see? Boots, crashing on this world, that serpent Veals shot, and the liz … whatever it was Hickson saw that night. It’s Destiny he says. Can fairly hear the big letter when he says it.”

  Alexis cut her eyes to Isom’s cot where the Vile Creature also slept, its little pointed snout poking out from under Isom’s blanket and twitching to scent the air. Isom was recovering and walking some each day, but his skin was still sensitive and his joints ached.

  “How in the Dark could even Creasy tie all this together into some sort of meaning?”

  Nabb took a deep breath. “Well, sir, Boots, mongooses, -geeses, well, they eat snakes, and so we named the ship and then that merchant captain calls us snakeaters and then it’s him, that very merchant captain, what gives us the word that sends us here to Erzurum, so that’s connected see? And we’re the only ship what’s damaged, and the only boat what’s crashed, and of all the planet we’re crashing here, right in this very swamp with those snakes —”

  “They’re not even proper snakes,” Alexis said. “They have legs — quite a lot of them in fact.” She ignored the voice in her head that seemed to be chanting It doesn’t matter, ever since she’d heard Creasy’s name. There was no amount of logic that would breach the man’s delusions.

  “It’s the scales, sir, the lads’re no never mind to the legs, what with the scales … and the fangs, those fit.”

  “Snakes, if I recall, have two fangs, and these have … a great many more.” It doesn’t matter.

  Nabb nodded.

  “Then the liz … whatever Hickson saw, sir, have scales, so it’s all wound up in Creasy’s head.”

  “Even if Hickson is right about what he saw, lizards are not snakes. The ‘snakes’, in fact, fit better as lizards, given the legs.” It doesn’t matter.

  Nabb nodded. “It’s the fangs —”

  “The fangs, yes, I see, but —” It doesn’t matter. “What’s the rest of it, then?”

  Nabb scratched at his neck. “I’m not sure I rightly understand it myself, sir. Creasy’s got it all packed up tight the way he tells it and — well, a body comes away convinced, even if he don’t remember all the details.”

  “But shouldn’t one understand what —” It doesn’t matter. “Go on, tell me what you can of it.”

  “Something about Boots and Destiny and lizard-alien-men — knowing as I do that there ain’t none, sir, as you say — and them wanting to take over the whole universe from us and —”

  “Hickson says he saw a bloody spear! How are bloody lizard-men from one planet in the bloody Barbary, for the Dark’s sake, supposed to take over the bleeding universe with spears and rocks —”

  It doesn’t matter.

  “Oh, I see it, sir, but —”

  Alexis sighed. “Creasy.”

  “Aye, Creasy, sir.”

  They sat in silence for a time, contemplating the sheer volume of conviction that could be generated by how little mass of brain Alexis was certain Creasy possessed.

  It doesn’t matter.

  “Says we’re here for a Purpose, sir, and you can fairly tell he’s got a right big P on that one too.”

  “I see. So, if I’ve got this straight,” Alexis said, “Creasy’s thought — though I hesitate to put such a word so very close to the man’s mention — is that the Creature has somehow brought us here to Erzurum to save humanity from hostile lizard-men?”

  “That’s the size of it, sir … well, more serpent-men — with arms and legs.”

  “But serpents don’t have —” It doesn’t matter.

  “He’s fair certain they’ll have fangs, sir, and that makes all the difference.”

  Seven

  O’, pull me hearties, pull me mates,

  And let your hearts go low.

  It was deep inside the Barbary

  That Chipley caught his foe.

  The night was cold and wet, and the ground under Alexis was hard and lumpy with rocks and roots. The hummocks were mostly roots, clinging to the remnants of land that had long since washed away into the muck and ravines, too little replenished by any earth coming down from the cliffs above.

  The survival blanket she wrapped herself in offered thin, scant protection from any of those things. It kept a bit of the rain off, but some still struck her exposed head and face to trickle inside. She could cover herself entirely, but that made the air inside the blanket stuffy and difficult to breathe.

  The cold seeped in through her head, too, and with only her vacsuit liner and the blanket between her and the roots, she could feel every bit of the wood’s grain, not least of which because the vacsuit liner itself was growing thinner and thinner with each passing day. Far more quickly than she could credit, in fact. Perhaps the contractor for her old one, it was from her time on Nightingale, after all, had cut corners, but that didn’t explain why the rest of the crews’ were also wearing so. Those came from dozens of different ships and systems, yet, under the persistent mud, showed the same sudden rents and patches of wear as her own had acquired.

  Even whole, though, it would provide little more protection from the lumpy roots, especially with the weight bearing down on her.

  Alexis shifted in her sleep, half-raising a hand to pet the Creature, as the weight on her chest made her think it had left Isom to rest on her as it was sometimes wont to do. It hadn’t come to her in her sleep since they’d crashed on Erzurum, instead staying with Isom, and she hadn’t begrudged that. Isom’s injuries made his rest all the more important and she’d had no nightmares for the Creature to chase away with its presence, being too exhausted from the mud-slogging march.

  Not that the Creature’s presence actually kept the nightmares at bay, her sleepy thoughts argued, while coming a bit more awake. That was mere coincidence, and that she might — occasionally, she’d allow, and not without some reservation — like to wake with the thing’s warmth on her chest was more testimony to her brain being half-addled with sleep of a morning and not that she’d come to tolerate the Creature.

  Alexis grumbled and shifted.

  The insulating properties of the blanket, little though she thought it did for Erzurum’s cold, were doing well enough against the Creature’s warmth — she felt none of that comforting sen
sation through it, only an oppressive weight on her chest, as though the thing had doubled in size on its new diet of emergency rations and the crew’s pocket supplies instead of vat-grown beef …

  Which I’ll allow may be a possibility, was the thought that ran through her head. They might all put on a few kilos if that were the case.

  The image of her crew coming off a march through this swampy forest and being unable to fit through a ship’s hatch came to her and she snorted. One did think the oddest things when waking.

  Take the Creature, for instance.

  Not only did its weight seem to have increased, but her snort disturbed its own slumber and it was now kneading her with legs that seemed to have both shrunk and multiplied. Two of its little paws normally alternated pushing at her chest as she woke, but now there were more, running the thing’s full length from her chest, over her stomach, down her thigh, and even across her shin. All its tiny little legs pressing her over and over and …

  Alexis froze and her eyes snapped open to find a wedge-shaped, scale-covered head fixated on the hand she had half-raised to stroke it.

  Even in the dim bits of light filtering through the canopy from Erzurum’s moon the snake-thing’s scales glistened and its eyes gleamed. Or perhaps the light came from the beast’s eyes, for they seemed to glow all on their own.

  A forked tongue … no, triforked … no …

  Sweet Dark, the thing’s tongue has as many tips as it does legs.

  The dozens of tiny tendrils tickled across her upraised palm and fingers, making her strain to keep still when she wanted nothing more than to scream and thrash about to get the thing off her.

  It seemed fascinated by her hand for the moment and Alexis took the opportunity to cast her eyes about in search of anyone who might help, but she was alone on the hummock save for Isom and he was asleep. Nabb had taken up bedding down near her as well, but she couldn’t see him — he also took a periodic walk about the camp with Dockett, so might not be close, or was as asleep as Isom.