Showdown on the Planet of the Slavers

by Helena Puumala

  “I know when I’m faced with an irresistible force,” he said to Kati, beside him. “I just wish that she wasn’t implicating Lank in this.”

  “Lank is already implicated,” Kati responded quietly. She had not missed the claw tips. “I let him upload Chrush’s libris into his node, and I looked at his face after he had done that. You saw, and I presume, heard Kath. I didn’t look at the libris much but—you get the idea.”

  “Well, let’s get on with the evacuation. I don’t know how far away Gorsh figures that he has to be before he can press the button.” Mikal looked harried, but apparently had reverted to one of his default modes: when you can’t change a situation, do what you can, instead of fretting about what you cannot.

  Kati squeezed his hand, as they returned to work.

  *****

  They had everyone away from the immediate vicinity of the Citadel and Gorsh’s compound by the time the explosion came, but it was fortunate that Xanthus, Mikal and Lank had managed to disable, Mikal figured, about half of the echo chips in the vault. It was even more fortunate that the Cellar Spirit had taken it upon itself to do the best job of muffling the blast that it could. In the end the explosion was a muted one, taking down only the Citadel building itself, and tearing apart some of the ground around it. Other buildings shook, as if in an earthquake, and tremors were felt by people all over the northern half of Salamanka. But, all told, they escaped marvellously well, with no deaths at all in the city, and only minimal injuries among a few persons surprised by the shaking of the ground, and of some of the shabbier buildings.

  Kati and Mikal had been among the last to leave the area, and they were running south down a side street at the tail end of a crowd which had emerged from the houses, encouraged by the megaphones that Nabbish, and Gorsh’s guards had located somewhere, and were using to warn the residents of the danger. When the ground began to shake, Mikal pulled Kati into his arms, and leaned against the nearest sturdy-looking wall. Mentally he begged the Lady of the Lake and the other Nature Spirits to look after everybody, including his beloved Kati. Perhaps his prayer was answered; in any case the ground beneath them settled down after a while, and nothing fell down on them.

  When silence reigned again he kissed Kati, and held onto her for somewhat longer than was really necessary.

  “There shouldn’t be any aftershocks,” he finally said. “It wasn’t an earthquake.”

  “You don’t think Gorsh was cunning enough to make it two or more blasts?” Nabbish asked from where he had scurried to, against the same wall by which Mikal and Kati had taken shelter.

  “I very much doubt it. Xanthus Hsiss seemed to think that the intention was to have one big, glorious bang, causing a lot of damage. I suspect that how it went would be a sore disappointment to our Slaver.”

  “So it should be safe enough to go back and see how things are?”

  “Should be,” Mikal replied. “Only be careful, and tell everyone else to be careful, too. There is going to be damage: falling down buildings, torn wiring, toxins released, who knows what all. Clean-up is going to be necessary, and making sure that no fires start, or if they do, that they’re put out before they can turn into conflagrations.”

  “I have the feeling that the whole city is going to turn out to help with that,” said Seleni. “Not too many people will miss the Citadel, or Gorsh, or Chrush.”

  “Or Milla, and her damn tubers,” muttered Jaqui who had been running beside the Wise Woman.

  *****

  The big explosion that Gorsh and Crush had been expecting to see light up the disc of the planet Wayward never came.

  “Hey, Chrush, I activated the key crystal, just the way you told me to do it,” Gorsh complained, shortly after he’d done the deed. “Shouldn’t the fireworks be on our screen by now?”

  “Should have been pretty well instantaneous,” Chrush growled. “We’re not that far from the planetary surface yet. We should have been high enough to miss the impact of the fireworks, but near enough to enjoy the sight.

  “Are you saying that you didn’t see anything?”

  “I’m zeroing in with the telescopic viewer. Damn! This ship is in lousy shape! Why hasn’t it been properly maintained? Nothing ever gets done properly if you can’t do it yourself!”

  “You had your men take the odd trip with it while it had the murk Creature in residence,” Chrush muttered. “The Creature is hard on mechanics, I told you that. It can drain energy out of inanimate objects.”

  “Not anymore, it can’t. Okay, I’ve got an image of the Citadel, or what’s left of it. Shit, it looks like it crumbled, rather than blew up.”

  “Let me see. That shouldn’t have happened. There were enough echo crystals in that vault, scattered all over, that even if only a fraction of them went off, they should have caused a chain reaction in all the various weapons there, and the result should have been pretty nearly the same as if they all had gone at once. So, even if those interfering sons-of-bitches managed to re-tune a lot of the crystals in there, that shouldn’t have mattered.

  “What the hell did they manage to do?”

  “You asking me, Chrush? You’re supposed to be the expert here.”

  “Well, we can’t very well go back there to re-do the thing. We’re going to have to find some place to hole up.”

  “I want to go back home to the Estate,” moaned Milla who was sitting in the seat on Gorsh’s other side, her eyes shut.

  “Don’t talk crap, woman!” Gorsh snapped at her. “You can’t go back. The Federation will pick you up so fast, and accuse you of using slave labour on that Estate, that you won’t even have time to draw a breath! You’ll end up keeping Joakim company in a Federation jail!”

  He switched the screens in front of him back to a general view of the space around them.

  “What is that?”

  He peered at the gnat that had apparently risen out of Wayward’s atmosphere and was coming towards them at a remarkable speed. He fiddled around with the magnification; then he started laughing.

  “Chrush, can you believe this?” he asked. “Those Federation dorks are coming after us with a Free Trader ship! Those things are babies! And they have almost no weapons! Couple of little laser cutters, that’s it! Whereas we’ve got all the stuff I had installed into this ship after I got it! We’ll be able to shoot them into smithereens! They must have a death wish!”

  “Always assuming that all the stuff you had installed still works,” growled Chrush.

  *****

  “Are they going to shoot at us?” Shyla asked, as she eyed the ship looming on one of The Spacebird’s screens.

  She nervously caressed the jini which was still curled, almost invisibly, around her neck.

  “Probably,” Lank replied from the pilot’s chair. “Though Xanthus came by to say that he had checked the vessel, and much of its equipment, including the armaments are in pretty bad shape. It’s possible that they might blow themselves up when they try to shoot at us.”

  “No such luck,” muttered Chrysalia from behind Lank’s chair. ”Lowlifes like that never let go of the mortal coil without having to be helped.”

  Her extra nails were flicking in and out about a half-centimetre, and the sight was freaking Shyla out.

  “No matter,” Lank continued placidly. “When Ciela and I maintained this ship we made sure that our shields were in excellent shape.”

  “You have shields?” Max asked, surprised.

  “The best defence a Free Trader has,” Lank replied. “Every one of them invests in good shielding. That doesn’t mean that it can’t fail, especially under a strong barrage. Though, we likely won’t get that, according to Scientist Hsiss’s latest report.”

  “Anybody besides me want tea?” Shyla asked. “I think I’ll go into the galley to make some.”

  She did not particularly want to think about the topic that was under discussion.

  “If you could bring me a mugful,” requested Ciela from the co-pilot’s chair.


  “We could all use a cup,” Max said. “I’ll come and help you, Shyla.”

  Llon came too.

  “I can’t interfere in this,” he said to Max, as all three of them were getting the tea paraphernalia together in the galley. “Though I really would rather have seen things done Mikal’s way. Still, I know that his way might have failed, and left Chrush free to get on with his madman’s habits all over again. Chrysalia can be a hard woman, but she is fair. And she knows exactly what she is doing, even though what she intends is pretty monstrous in itself.”

  “I thought that Lank was in charge of operating this vessel,” Max said mildly.

  “Those claws,” Shyla whispered.

  “Precisely,” Llon said and smiled at her. “Although, I believe that Lank has his own motivation for not arguing with her. Chrysalia won’t have to use threats this time.”

  *****

  Gorsh’s stolen ship was so well equipped with armaments that Lank and Ciela had the opportunity to grow anxious, even if the weaponry was in sub-par condition, and The Spacebird Two was in first-rate condition, in spite of being a little ship with a few years behind it.

  “Thing is that we need to get pretty darn close to them,” Lank said to Ciela and Chrysalia, even as he clutched at his tea mug, and winced with every hit that The Spacebird’s shields were absorbing, or deflecting.

  “Can we last long enough?” Chrysalia asked from behind the pilot’s chair.

  She had refused tea, and was still flicking her talons, in and out. Apparently, her nerves were on edge, too.

  “We’ll last long enough,” Lank replied, grimly. “Even if we have to crawl back to Wayward.”

  “Or band-aid the ship in space,” Ciela said lightly. “You know that you and I can do that.”

  Lank grinned at her.

  “I must admit that it’s nice to have a knowledgeable co-pilot along with me,” he said. “And an enthusiastic one.”

  *****

  “Damn!” Gorsh swore. “There must be something wrong with this ammunition! I’ve been targeting them since they came into range, but it’s as if I’m not doing anything! They keep coming closer, and look as intact as ever! Are there some new shields out there that I know nothing about? Ones that can withstand the best shot that the Space Trade Lanes can provide?”

  “More likely that you got cheated on the ammo,” muttered Chrush.

  He was not looking good, nor feeling good, for that matter. He was getting towards the time when he would have to sacrifice another young life to absorb its force into his own being, plus he did not have any of his daily elixir on board the ship. The two things were going to become problems very soon, and he had no idea how he was going to solve the dilemma. He might have to sacrifice Milla, and get out of her whatever little there was to be got—it might be enough to allow him to reach some place where he could do something properly. He had lost his libris with its recipes, too, but that was an inconvenience, not a game-changer; by now he had all the recipes stored in his node. Why had he insisted on hanging on to the libris, anyway? Habit, more than anything; he hadn’t wanted to give it up. Once, before he had allowed Gorsh’s doctor to implant him with a node, it had been an absolutely essential piece of equipment.

  Not having a lace-crystal knife was more than an inconvenience, but a sonic cutter would do in a pinch, if he could get his hands on one. Probably there was one aboard the ship if he just knew where to look.

  “Well, I’ll just have to use all we’ve got at once, and blast the little gnat into the next galaxy,” Gorsh snarled. “I had hoped to salvage their ship; they might have something worthwhile on board. But I guess it’s not to be; they’re begging to be destroyed.”

  Chrush shrugged as he watched Gorsh from under half-shut lids. He didn’t much care about the Free Traders’ stuff right now—unless they had been hauling a cargo bay full of long shards of lace crystal, and he very much doubted that. The Crystolorians were misers with the stuff—once, not so long ago, he had hoped to have figured out a way to have Gorsh’s people steal the stuff from the planet; after all, it was everywhere on that world, ready for the picking. There was something about it, though, that might have made getting away unnoticed difficult, but he could not remember what it was. He was old, and things had begun to drop off some ledge in his mind, and disappear into some canyon of no retrieval. But that meant nothing; he was not even close to death. With his rituals and potions he could go on evading the grim reaper indefinitely. Death was for other people; not for him.

  *****

  “Oh, damn!”

  Lank was staring at the numbers indicating the strength of the blast of energy that was coming at them from the other ship.

  “They must have directed everything that they’ve got at us! I don’t know if we can withstand it! Our shields certainly won’t!

  “Ciela, get down to the engine room and see what you can do from there to protect the ship’s core—I’ll try to do what I can here!”

  There was an old trick—get the ship’s defences to concentrate the shield where it was most needed at the expense of the other directions. Should work, if he had enough time to redirect the shields. If it succeeded they’d be okay; certainly Gorsh would have nothing else to throw at them after that blast!

  Ciela ran off the Bridge and headed for the engine room downstairs. She tried to think of what there was that she could do there—Lank must have had something in mind. As she ran she braced herself for the impact that was sure to come.

  Moments later she realized that she was in the engine room, leaning against the engine casing, still waiting for the impact. What? What had happened? Why didn’t she remember running into the engine room, and how come there had been no shattering blast?

  The com on the wall lit up and beeped. Ciela turned it on.

  “Yes?” her voice shook.

  Lank’s voice:

  “You might as well come back up. Xanthus saved us. He yanked us a few seconds into the future so we missed the blast. Shyla’s jini says that he’s going back to his body now, to sleep until the mind-tangler wears off. He’s totally beat.”

  *****

  “What? This is not possible!”

  For once Gorsh sounded scared. Chrush opened his eyes a bit wider to stare at him.

  “What’s not possible?” he asked.

  “That ship is still there. I just directed every bit of energy left in our laser cannons—the ones that were still working—at that gnat. It ought to have been enough to totally destroy it, and I followed the beam with the instruments as it went out; it should have taken the ship with it, destroying it utterly in the process. The beam’s gone now, on its way to the next galaxy, no doubt, but the frigging Free Trader vessel is still there. It’s as if it disappeared from the world just long enough to avoid the blast, and then reappeared. That’s just not possible.”

  “All the damn Witches, and Shamans, the Magi and the Wise Women that your cursed home world is full of,” Chrush snapped. “All the so-called Nature Spirits. They’ve all turned against us, and want to see us dead, carrion for vultures. I hate them all!”

  *****

  Ciela had returned to the co-pilot’s seat, looking a little pale, but ready to do whatever Lank required of her. Max had come back onto the Bridge, his face very serious. He had barely been aware of the close shave; only when Shyla had begun to talk in shaky tones about what the Scientist Hsiss had just told her, had the facts sunk into his brain. Shyla had lain down on the couch in the living area, her eyes tightly closed and one hand caressing the jini; she was suffering from aftershock. Llon had gone into the galley and was pouring water and dry soup mix into a pot; he had muttered to Max that somebody had to think about meals, too.

  Chrysalia was standing behind Lank’s chair still, breathing hard. Her talons were flicking in and out, in and out. Other than those things, she did not show much the effects of the brush with death.

  Lank brought The Spacebird Two closer and closer to Xanthus’ ol
d ship. Suddenly that ship slowed down, and turned in an arc to face The Spacebird, instead of continuing to flee.

  The Spacebird’s communicator crackled.

  “That’s not us making that noise,” Lank said. “Must be that even their communications system is falling apart.”

  “This ship is falling apart,” said an indistinct voice on the communicator. “We request evacuation.”

  “Do we have to?” Ciela asked. “They tried to kill us.”

  “No,” said Chrysalia in a tone that brooked no argument.

  The talons were flicking in and out, in and out.

  “Can’t we just leave them to drift in space?” Max asked. “There’s not likely to be anybody coming by to offer them rescue.”

  “No,” Chrysalia said again. “I’m not taking the chance that some ship might come by.”

  “So what are you going to do?” Max asked, more of Lank than Chrysalia.

  Lank smiled a thin smile.

  “Watch,” he said.

  “Darla’s trick, right?” Ciela asked.

  “Right.”

  “Only,” added Chrysalia, “target the life support system, not the engine. Xanthus Hsiss has the right to try to salvage his vessel, and there will be more of it left that way.”

  Lank half-turned in his chair to study the Crystolorian’s face for a moment. Then he nodded.

  “That’s what we’ll do,” he said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Kati and Mikal did not hurry on the walk back to the Citadel compound. There was no need to do so; the Waywardians seemed to have taken control of the aftermath of the explosion, blunted as it was, into capable hands. Nabbish, Kortone and Gerr, along with Seleni, were rushing back to find out what the amount of damage was. Nabbish had corralled Morg and his men to help with whatever needed to be done, and Mikal was amused to see that Gorsh’s main muscle man was listening intently to Continent Nord’s chief law enforcer as the two of them loped along the street.