Aldebaran Divided

by Philippe Mercurio

  Instinctively, he noted the scratches on their bodies and their weapon-laden harnesses. These were obviously experienced fighters. Reassured, he sped up, guiding the little band toward the coordinates Alrine had transmitted.

  They soon arrived in the deserted sector and plunged into the poorly lit corridor, only to discover that it divided into several paths. The place was a tangle of corridors and access tunnels to other levels. Fortunately, the trail left by the Orcants was easy enough to follow: the thick-shelled centaurs’ pointy extremities had left marks on the floor.

  Six Xilfs separated from the group. To ensure they wouldn’t be ambushed like Alrine and Deïna, they scattered randomly into the passageways. Approvingly, Laorcq noted that they were careful to lock all of the doors.

  Finally, Laorcq and his companions came into a large hall. With a hand signal, he told the aliens to stay behind. He knelt at the edge of the opening and carefully stuck his head out, keeping his body in the hallway’s shadows. Looking around, he saw a wide-open space, a sort of gallery covered with composite panels, bathed in orange light by a row of projectors. It was probably a sector designed to accommodate living quarters.

  At the far end, there were three sets of double doors guarded by five Orcants.

  He pulled back and whispered to Torg and the Xilfs. “Something’s not right. Kidnapping two people and then waiting patiently for us to come find them? It doesn’t make sense…”

  The cybrid bent down from his eight-foot height toward the human. With complete sincerity, he announced, “I have an idea. We smash them to pieces, but we leave one or two alive so we can interrogate them about what they’re doing.”

  The Xilfs immediately agreed with the cybrid’s plan. Laorcq put a hand to his forehead and sighed. Torg rarely bothered with subtlety, and there was no need to encourage him…

  He tried to dampen their enthusiasm. “I only have one weapon, and Torg is only effective at close range. I don’t think a frontal assault is a good idea.”

  One of the Xilfs displayed an object he had withdrawn from his harness: it looked like two pens linked by a thread of woven steel. “We’ll go up.”

  The Xilf in question, who was called Drizzl, took the lead and guided them into the jumble of tunnels. They crossed what seemed to Laorcq and Torg to be an interminable distance, climbed a ladder, walked for a while longer, descended a metallic staircase covered in rust, and, finally, stopped in the middle of a corridor.

  Drizzl knelt on his four stork-thin limbs and placed his strange device on the floor. One of the styluses hammered itself into the surface while the other began to spin around it.

  “The Orcants are just below,” Drizzl confirmed. “As soon as the opening is ready, we’ll jump down on them.”

  Laorcq was about to reproach him for acting hastily, then reconsidered. At least they knew now how the Xilfs had gotten into the Vohrn embassy.

  He tapped his watch, which concealed his navcom. It could detect living beings within several feet, even through some materials.

  A hologram appeared, showing five Orcant silhouettes in orange-y red. On the other side of the blue line that represented the wall, there were two different shapes, smaller and less brightly colored: Alrine and Deïna.

  Good. There are no Orcants with them. We can charge in…

  He had just arrived at this conclusion when the Xilf device stopped spinning. The surface of the freshly drawn circle disintegrated, as if the floor had lost coherence. In a cloud of dust, a round hole appeared at their feet. Without giving anyone time to react, Torg jumped in feet first. After hearing a nasty sound that reminded him of breaking eggs, Laorcq leaned over the hole: the cybrid had just landed on an Orcant, crushing him under his more than four hundred pounds. Taking care not to slip on the expanding pool of viscera, he launched himself at the other attackers.

  VI

  SCUTTLING

  Jazz was furious at himself for his own stupidity. He had overconfidently unleashed the hurricane of energy in the tube without verifying his program’s stability. If he didn’t fix the problem in the next three tenths of a second, Mallory would be vaporized.

  Once again under the influence of stimulants, the brain integrated into the Sirgan reanalyzed the plans for the half-finished liner. He scrutinized the diagrams of the synergetic propulsion system.

  Two tenths of a second.

  He found a solution that would have the unfortunate side effect of destroying the ship. Who gives a shit! My dear captain’s life is more important than a monumental pile of scrap iron.

  A tenth of a second.

  He sent a new series of commands to the control unit. The energy surge abated, replaced by vibrations that seemed strong enough to shake the tube to pieces.

  Jazz completed another difficult deceleration to the speed of human thought, then opened the navcom’s communication line. “Mallory! Get out of there! Now! Jump out into space as fast as you can! It’s going to blow in less than a minute!”

  Inside the giant pipe, the pilot reacted immediately. She found a foothold, pressed against the partition, bent her knees, and, with a mighty push, launched herself out into the vacuum of space.

  As she moved away from the liner at an exasperatingly slow pace, she remarked, “The shipyard is full of people. It’s going to be a total massacre!”

  Once again caught making a mistake, Jazz swore copiously before declaring apologetically, “I just ordered a general alarm.”

  Employees began leaving their posts immediately. Unlike Mallory, they managed to get to the escape pods: plain cubes equipped with conventional engines, capable only of a single maneuver that was predefined in the evacuation protocol. They moved rapidly away from the shipyard like wasps suddenly abandoning their hive. For her part, Mallory continued her trip through the vacuum. Carried along by her momentum, she was moving backwards away from the ring and the planet. She had all the time she needed to examine the gigantic ring around Solicor. Its shadow fell along the planet’s equator, cutting it into two hemispheres covered with white clouds blending into the gray surface of the city-planet.

  The spectacular panorama was relegated to the background by the drama playing out before her eyes: as a result of the surge Jazz had created in the synergetic tube, the unfinished liner had ripped away from its mooring and was slowly falling apart. A vortex of pure energy had replaced the propulsion system and distorted the carcass of the stillborn space leviathan. Mallory saw debris the size of a cargo ship break off and float away.

  A shiver of fear ran through her when she imagined the damage that one of the pieces could cause if it fell on the overpopulated planet.

  Fortunately, the Gibrals had prepared for this eventuality: an armada of ships equipped with magnetic clamps and manipulator arms arrived on the scene. They immediately began to contain the colossal hemorrhage of composite and steel.

  On the still-open line, Jazz mumbled like a child reluctantly admitting wrongdoing. “Okay. Between the alarm and the security fleet, there shouldn’t be any deaths or injuries…”

  Although reduced to powerlessness, Mallory couldn’t hold back an acerbic comment. “Nothing but a pleasure liner, whose price I don’t even want to imagine, reduced to scraps. I hope you didn’t leave any evidence. If we’re ever accused of having intentionally caused the destruction of such a ship, even the Vohrn wouldn’t be able to protect us…”

  “Don’t worry about that—there’s no chance that it’ll be traced back to me. Oh! I sent the aeroglider for you. At least lugging that thing around turned out to be worth it.”

  “Good idea! It’s crawling with security ships here, and I’m worried one of them will find me…”

  “Relax! You should see the aero in two or three minutes.”

  Indeed, she soon caught a glimpse of the little tear-shaped machine. Its dark red hull floated towards her, and one of the entry hatches opened.

  Originally designed for atmospheric flight, the Vohrn had modified and improved the aero: it could now
travel between planets. Its ability to remain undetectable under most circumstances more than made up for its limited range. Previously owned by an assassin working for a shady industrialist, the Vohrn had taken it over after he died. Then Mallory had claimed it as a bonus when she signed her contract with them.

  As soon as she could reach it, she gripped the pilot’s seat and slid behind the controls. The hatch closed and the passenger compartment repressurized quickly, allowing Mallory to remove her helmet, to her great relief.

  She grasped the U-shaped helm but paused before setting a course for the Sirgan. She had just remembered something Jazz had told her: Ambassador Jarvik had recently traveled to Volda, the other planet in the Aldebaran system.

  A mischievous glow lit her dark eyes. For the moment, those who had tried to kill her believed that her corpse was floating in the ship’s debris field. I might as well take advantage. She left Solicor’s orbit, deciding instead to go find out what the deranged Vohrn had been up to.

  After several hours of flight, Mallory arrived at her destination. She looked over the information projected by the on-board navcom. At first sight, Volda was little more than a sad, lifeless dwarf planet. Once she was finally able to catch sight of it directly through the aero’s windows, the uniformly black orb’s appearance confirmed her impression.

  She wondered if this was a wild goose chase. There was no good reason to visit a world like this.

  Suddenly, a new set of data replaced the information from the official database. The on-board radar indicated a nearby vessel and, more surprisingly, traces of recent activity on Volda’s surface.

  Intrigued, Mallory steered toward the unknown ship. They wouldn’t be able to detect her as long as she kept her distance.

  She flew for several minutes at moderate speed, navigating based on the coordinates indicated on the navcom. Finally, she saw what she thought was the strangest ship she had ever encountered. At first, it looked like a gigantic cruiser, vaguely spherical, and, as impossible as it might be to believe, completely lacking a synergetic tube. However, careful examination revealed that it was actually a knot of thousands of low-tonnage ships. The octagonal shapes were all of equal thickness, but some were as much as four times longer in diameter than the shortest ones.

  This collection of ships formed a tight ball about sixty miles in diameter, which is what caused her initial confusion…

  It’s not a large ship, it’s a swarm! Curiosity won out over caution: the pilot drifted a little closer. The agglomeration of octagons looked like a giant thistle, with the sharp edges of the geometrical hulls forming the spines. And, just like the flower, she had the feeling that touching them would be unpleasant.

  Without taking her eyes off the swarm, she opened a connection to the Sirgan. “Jazz? I’m sending you pictures of a fleet of weird vessels. See if you have any information about them.”

  The Natural Intelligence replied after a handful of seconds. “Zilch, Captain. Those machines don’t come from anywhere. And frankly, they’ve got a nasty look about them. Can I suggest you make a quick getaway?”

  Mallory barely considered the idea. The Vohrn hadn’t hired her to run away at the slightest threat. “Nope. The scans show activity on Volda. I want to take a look around before turning back…”

  Seeing their compatriot suddenly crushed under Torg’s bulk paralyzed the stupefied Orcants. The cybrid took advantage to lunge at the closest one, knocking him out with his steel-reinforced fist, while the Xilfs dropped one by one through the hole in the ceiling to join the battle.

  Hovering at the edge of the circular opening, Laorcq could only see shadows. The Xilfs moved so fast they might as well have been invisible. With the grace of dancers, they evaded the Orcants’ heavy onslaught and counterattacked without pity. Armed with blades somewhere between sabers and giant needles, they eliminated the attackers before they could open fire: to Laorcq’s dismay, because it meant he probably wouldn’t have a survivor to interrogate. The bug-eyed aliens weren’t known for their restraint.

  By the time he touched down on the floor of the lower level, hanging at the end of a thin cord, the battle was already over.

  “Well then, between the eating and the fighting, you’ve made some good friends…”

  Torg, who had been hanging around humans for years, replied with a smile that was supposed to look conspiratorial. Unfortunately, with his mouth, which was almost as wide as his head, and his rows of pointy teeth, the effect was rather chilling…

  Laorcq shifted his attention to the extraterrestrials lying on the floor. One thing bothered him. “That’s strange. Orcants are usually tougher than this. They seemed… I don’t know, tired or drugged.”

  “True,” admitted Torg. “They didn’t even touch me.”

  The cybrid leaned over one of the bodies, picked it up in one hand, and waved it around like a rag doll. “Look, this one’s still alive! We can ask him.”

  Pleasantly surprised, Laorcq told him to keep an eye on the prisoner, and then he went to the room where Alrine and Deïna were waiting.

  The door was held shut by a simple steel bar. He slid it out of its housing and went inside. The two women were unscathed, except for the policewoman’s foul mood.

  “Sent on a wild goose chase and cornered by five boneheads. I feel like a rookie, and I hate it!”

  Laorcq immediately understood that Alrine’s pride had been injured. Instead of trying to comfort her, he attempted to redirect her anger. “We’ve got a prisoner. You should interrogate him…”

  Alrine gave him a hard look, straightened her shoulders, and left the room. “With pleasure!”

  Laorcq urged Deïna to follow the policewoman. He didn’t want to miss a second of the events to come.

  In the large hall with the metallic structure, Alrine surveyed the carnage perpetrated by her saviors. Four Orcant cadavers, one of which looked like it had been crushed by a steamroller… Her forehead wrinkled as she approached Torg and pointed at the flattened alien. “That’s your work, I suppose?”

  The cybrid let out a guilty grunt and stared at the ground with an embarrassed air. Alrine had a rare gift: the ability to scold this invincible giant as if he were a child.

  Laorcq smiled when he saw that the guide was staring at Alrine, eyes wide. The spectacle was rendered even more outlandish by Torg, who was still holding onto the unconscious Orcant.

  Alrine leaned over it. With a sudden gesture, she jabbed her stiffened index and middle fingers under the alien’s prominent jaw.

  Laorcq remembered that Orcants have a tiny, hypersensitive area at that location, similar to a human lymph node.

  The extraterrestrial regained consciousness and bellowed. Torg stepped behind him and grabbed his other arm to fully immobilize him. The policewoman looked the alien right in the eyes and said, “Awake? Perfect. Now we can have a nice little conversation…”

  Alrine got down to business, and Laorcq turned to Deïna. “Not too upset?”

  The woman shook her head. “No, but I don’t understand what’s going on… We were looking for Cole Vassili. The embassy’s AI sent us here, and then suddenly the Orcants attacked us and locked us up!”

  He waited for her to calm down a little and continued. “Did you see or hear anything that could help us?”

  She thought for a second, then said, “One of them examined me very carefully. Afterward, he talked to the others, and he didn’t disconnect his translator right away. He said something about a human with tattoos…”

  Laorcq gazed at the fine network of silvery lines that permeated Deïna’s skin. The Orcants had made a mistake. If they meant to take Mallory, the incident would make sense: the pilot had stuck her nose into Jarvik’s affairs. It was therefore no coincidence that the embassy’s AI had sent Alrine and the guide to the hatchet men, who had actually been after the other tattooed woman.

  Laorcq didn’t like this turn of events. Without the Xilfs’ help, even Torg wouldn’t have been able to handle five Orcants, no ma
tter how sluggish they were. Evidently, Jarvik had orchestrated the whole thing to get rid of Mallory. It remained to be seen whether Vassili’s disappearance was also the Vohrn’s fault.

  “We’ll continue to look for your client, but you should go home,” he said to Deïna. “While you wait, don’t say a word to anyone and stay away from the embassy and from Jarvik.”

  After finishing up with her, Laorcq asked two of the Xilfs to accompany her to a sector where she’d be safe.

  He watched the human walk away flanked by the spindly extraterrestrials, then caught up with Alrine.

  Looking annoyed, she groaned, “We’re going to need an autopsy. I asked the Orcant two questions and he fell over stone dead, without giving up any information.”

  Laorcq thought for a moment. “A cerebral hemorrhage?”

  The policewoman made a face. “I don’t think so, it was much too sudden. I hope the medical examiner will be able to tell us more.”

  The combination of facts and irrational behavior made Laorcq suspicious. He decided to hand the Orcant cadavers over to the Xilfs. Curiously, Frrrj seemed to be the only trustworthy person on Solicor. The harsh sincerity Frrrj had displayed probably brought out this sentiment.

  The humans and Torg parted from the Xilfs and returned to the inhabited sectors. Laorcq and Alrine planned to head to their hotel. They noticed that the passersby were agitated, as if something rather serious had happened.

  Laorcq heard the cybrid’s voice from behind him.

  “I can’t get in touch with Mallory. I have a bad feeling.”

  Making sure that Torg and Alrine could also hear the call, Laorcq opened a line to the Sirgan. They were treated to a summary of the pilot’s recent adventures. When Jazz told them about the mistake he made with the unfinished ship’s drive, the cybrid lost his temper.