by Nick Cole
Rechs sighed. But he shrugged and indicated the pilot should proceed.
“Follow me,” said Shurrigan. “Lounge is more comfortable.”
Jacobson led the way, blocking the pilot’s path should he want to make any sudden breaks. Rechs followed behind with his blaster rifle ready.
“It’s like this…” Shurrigan began, spinning around to look at Rechs and alternating between walking backward, forward, and sideways as they moved toward the lounge. “About five years ago there was this bigwig hotshot pilot who had the exclusive deal on running out the best shipments to Shangri-La. Ebaar Hum. A Tarrakoan with a real nice ship. One of those Bendetto blockade-runners with big holds and all the gear and tricks. He was bringing back sled loads of jade lotus. The pure uncut stuff that usually only sees the inside of the party palaces around Utopion. Illegal for the rest of us, look the other way for them. Makes ya think when I put it that way, don’t it?
“Anyway, he was the guy who had the main contract. The rest of us only got called out for special runs. No return cargo, but sometimes, if you were really lucky, they’d load you with black lotus. Which is really no favor because of the Sinasian locals who make that weird place their home. If they caught you distributing anywhere but the landing site… then it’s an immediate death sentence.”
Shurrigan found a seat and leaned back, kicking his long legs up onto a power converter. He seemed to be warming to his tale and enjoyed being listened to. Rechs preferred the quiet type of freighter pilot. The kind who felt that hauling the space lanes was a lonely business and preferred it that way.
Shurrigan was the opposite.
“Ebaar somehow made contact with a different group on Shangri-La promising him more if he would be willing to violate the established protocol.” Shurrigan wagged his finger as if warning Rechs and Jacobson. “Now let me tell you something… that’s like candy to a smuggler. We can’t resist an opportunity like that. I mean… c’mon. It’s what we do. We smuggle. We go where we’re not supposed to be, for more money. Easy, right? Anyway, so Ebaar makes the run, and he’s never seen or heard from again. In the flesh, I mean.”
Shurrigan looked toward the ceiling of the lounge. He cocked an ear and listened to something, though Rechs didn’t hear anything in particular. Probably the absence of some sound the ancient ship was supposed to be making that only the pilot knew to listen for.
The pilot continued. “About six months later at a bar in Rice Town, an old man shows up. Typical papa-san. Wooden sandals. Robe. Wide, flat, woven hat to keep the sun off. Gnarled staff. Me and the other pilots who’ve managed to make the runs in and out of Taijing without attracting too much Repub attention, we had a little chess club going on there back then. Now, Ebaar was always the big fish. That was because he was so in with ’em and all. That jade lotus is powerful stuff if you ever get a taste. But as they say, once and you’re hooked. You’re hooked for life. Never touch it m’self. Maybe if I get some horrible disease or I’ve gone off the charts and my engines have died and it doesn’t look like I’m getting rescued. Because you see, that’s the thing about smugglin’… no one knows where you are. Has to be that way. But what happens if ya get in trouble and you’re all out there on your lonesome? Huh? What happens then?”
He drew a long finger across his throat and made a sound with the side of his mouth.
Rechs clenched his jaw and indicated the pilot should return to his original narrative.
“Yeah,” agreed the pilot, though it was clear he would have been more than happy to continue talking about the dangers of space travel. “So, we’re sittin’ there on a dark and stormy night playing hyperchess, and I’d just lost my tyrannasquid to a cheap shot from a Basudi pawn, when in walks this old papa-san holding a basket in one hand and a cane in the other. I’ll spare you the imitation, but long story short, he tells us this: an opportunity to do ‘grand things for the Throne of the Emerald Dragon’ has opened up.
“Then he gives us a lecture about doing what one is told to do and doing it precisely. Some story about a kid who was fishing and a talking donkey who granted magical wishes. Can’t remember, but I got the gist all the same. Do what they said to do and only that. Rewards for obedience. And rewards of another sort for disobedience. And then he reaches in his basket and pulls out Ebaar’s head.”
This was the big moment in the story. You could tell that Shurrigan had spun this tale before, and he’d been rather proud of the reactions he’d gotten from past listeners at this particular point.
Rechs wasn’t bothered by the head in the basket, and Jacobson didn’t seem to be either.
Shurrigan went for it once more, repeating the line like he’d probably done it a hundred times before. The reaction was the same.
Looking slightly crestfallen, Shurrigan shrugged and continued. “Now you might be thinking that’s just what happens to an old smuggler who’d done double-crossed the wrong people…”
“I know the type,” Jacobson scoffed.
“Yeah,” Shurrigan said, eyes darting from side to side. “Anyway, y’know… you might be thinkin’ fat and bloody head, eyes rolled up and staring, or seeming to, at some dark eternity unfolding. A silent scream forming at the mouth within the yellowish embalming fluid or what have you. That’s what you might be thinking, and you would be wrong. This wasn’t that kind of head.
“This head was inside a crystal ball. Swimming in a shimmering, almost iridescent electrical solution. And the eyes were seeing us. Mouth screaming in horror. Silently, on account of it being encased in the crystal. And it probably didn’t have no vocal cords.”
Shurrigan paused for effect, threw open his bird-like hands to full span, and exclaimed, “In other words, he was alive. Aware and bodiless inside that crystal ball the old papa-san had plunked down on the table. He told us this was the fate of any who did not follow the rules required of a smuggler who served the Throne of the Emerald Dragon.”
Shurrigan paused again, and frowned at his stoic listeners.
“Then he offered us jobs. There were twenty of us there. Only three of us agreed to fly the runs. One got caught by the Republic about a year ago and killed himself rather than talk. He didn’t want to take the chance the old papa-san, or whoever, would crystal ball his head for a thousand or more years. Safer to just go ahead an’ off yourself if you got caught, musta been his thinking.”
A silence fell over the lounge. And Rechs imagined, upon listening to the ghostly hum of hyperspace beyond the hull, that Shurrigan was hoping that the pause would allow for some reflection. The pilot was facing some bad results for rolling over on Shangri-La.
But Rechs didn’t particularly care. Shurrigan was lucky to still be alive.
“So what it all boils down to is, the landing zone is the landing zone, mate. I’m probably in big trouble already, but after just barely escaping the Repub, I’m done with Sinasian runs. I’ll drop you, then I’m gonna disappear out toward the edge for a while. I’m fond of my head right where it is, and its presence atop my neck is in serious jeopardy now that you two dragged me into all this.”
28
Ironically, Shurrigan’s head was right where it was supposed to be now that he was dead. The thing that was out of place was the massive shrapnel wound in his chest from the shattered canopy. The wound was unexpected and fatal. The disbelieving look in the pilot’s eyes, rolled up at the control panels above, seemed to indicate that he was the most stunned of all.
And his ship, which he’d lovingly called his goose, was in a dead spin over Shangri-La. They were at thirty thousand and dropping fast into the green-mist atmosphere. Distant, colossal mountains poked through other fogs, making it look as though the ship was dropping into some vast primordial lake of haze and mist.
“Rechs!” shouted Jacobson hoarsely from the navigator’s chair. She’d strapped in as they’d begun their approach to the mysterious and forbidden world of Shangri-L
a.
As the wounded ship fell, spinning out of control, centrifugal force was crushing both her and Rechs into their seats, preventing them from moving. They were helpless. A tornado of wind rushed through the shattered canopy, gale force and almost freezing. Jagged pieces of the canopy that hadn’t been torn away in the initial explosion whipped away from their tentative hold on the impervisteel-latticed viewing ports, cutting Rechs and Jacobson wickedly.
Altimeter, overspeed, and every other warning system that still worked shrieked violently for attention. An automated voice, that of the ship’s extremely primitive AI, kept announcing that a catastrophic structure malfunction had occurred.
Rechs wanted the thing to shut up and stop stating the obvious. But that wasn’t the real problem. The immediate threat—aside from the ground racing up at them from below—was the three interceptors that had jumped them on approach through the upper altitudes of mysterious Shangri-La.
All three were advanced tactical interceptors that Rechs had never seen before in all his years and crossings of the galaxy, and they had come out of nowhere, invisible to all sensors like a Republic stealth shuttle. There had been no hail, no warning. They had started firing immediately.
Each ship had a central pilot pod and three shaped panels that seemed to act as both thrusters and deflectors. The little crafts reminded Rechs of the shadow warriors of Katar. Nimble, dancing, everywhere at once, cutting until you bled out. He had a memory of such a fight and wondered if hypoxia wasn’t making his mind go all over the place.
And why deflectors? his mind asked, rather than trying to focus on something that might save them from smashing into the planet below.
“Warning!” bellowed the ship’s low-level AI.
Maybe there had been a higher-functioning AI that had been destroyed when the three interceptors started shooting up the hull, causing the rupture on the flight deck that had killed Shurrigan. The windstorm rushing through the smashed cockpit shifted the pilot’s body, flopping his head over to look at Rechs with that horrified I-can’t-believe-I’m-dead expression. Staring accusingly at Rechs as though somehow, everything was Rechs’s fault.
Because it is.
“Warning! Catastrophic structural damage has occurred. Abandon ship.”
Some large section of the ship ripped away with a tremendous groan. Jacobson may have briefly screamed. Rechs couldn’t be sure he heard her over the shrieking wind.
“Ship!” shouted Rechs.
Nothing.
Rechs sucked in what little air there was and shouted again. This time he got a response from the automated AI. “How may I help?”
“Access the flight controls!”
The AI’s tone bordered on cheerful. “I’m afraid I can’t help you with that. But we’re always working to improve my capabilities!”
The ship began to tumble, and the spin revolutions were so violent that a black cloud had begun to form at the edges of Rechs’s vision. In seconds he would pass out.
“Do it!”
Rechs was looking at the world through a tiny pinpoint of light.
“I’m sorry…” began the ship’s AI from down some distant hallway that Rechs was only distantly aware of. His body was held by gravity—pinned, really.
He was thinking about the little boy in the forest when he passed out.
***
“Ball, Papa.”
Ball.
Papa.
Except “Papa” wasn’t right. It had never been used. Just that one word. Ball.
Rechs remembered nodding and saying “ball.” His voice catching in his throat. The sound it made was a dry croak on a dark rainy afternoon on a planet called Raven where the children were like those forlorn, ever-watchful birds.
And then he had… kicked—gently—the ball to the strange boy in the forest.
The boy had smiled and run off to tell the other birds, the other boys, about the strange man in the woods.
And that had left Rechs with such a profound sadness. Like nothing he’d ever known in his life. A lonely life of lonely crossings and last man standings on all the worlds that had ever known war.
Rechs had been there.
Buried the dead.
Seen the field of corpses.
Added to their number.
But nothing, no feeling he could remember… or rather no failure… was like the boy in the forest dark. Hearing the word…
Ball.
Ball.
Ball.
Over and over, again and again.
Failure.
Rechs forced himself to surface from that black forest. That black lagoon of mind and memories.
Ball. Papa.
What he saw was the fog racing up at the ship. The spin had stopped. The yaw reversers had kicked in and stabilized rotation. But they were well below the ring of mountain teeth. Lower than the snow-covered conical fangs of their uppermost peaks.
What? wondered Rechs. Trying to figure out the altitude. Under twelve thousand at best.
The air wasn’t as thin as it had been.
“Ship!” croaked Rechs. “Engage reversers to full. Bring the repulsors online.”
There was no response but the sound of the wind screaming across the ripped fuselage.
He looked over to see that Jacobson had passed out. Her chin was down on her chest, and her hair was flying about her head. At least she didn’t have to sit there knowing that they were about to die, smashing into the planet below.
Rechs realized that he’d been able to move his head to see Jacobson. And then he fought to move his arm. He searched for the controls in front of him. The reversers were there, all linked by bar handle.
He grasped the thrust reverser bar and pushed forward.
A second later there was a loud bang as the engines exploded, sending a soul-crushing shudder through the ship. Rechs could see the readouts indicating the damage.
It was bad.
The ship fell down into the mist bank that lay across the surface of the world like some lake. The soft green blanket of nothing seemed even to absorb the sound of the engines.
And of course, thought Rechs, the repulsors won’t come online because they’re slaved to the engines on an old rig like this.
Shurrigan’s Goose was in free fall. It would drop like a rock straight down until it hit the side of a mountain or a valley floor and just disintegrated into a million pieces. Along with Rechs and Jacobson.
The interceptors must have left them for dead. Rechs would’ve preferred that they’d vaporized him instead of leaving him to this death.
The old bounty hunter looked around from the co-pilot’s chair. Maybe there was something he could still do. Craning his neck, he saw a red metal tag that read, “Emergency Landing System.” Below it was a covered switch.
As Rechs flipped open the cover, the tag raced away in the wind, tumbling end over end back into the ship. Rechs pushed the switch—with no small effort—and heard a series of small explosions across the hull. The sound of a kite, or a parachute, rippling in the wind, an old and familiar sound to Rechs, could be heard repeatedly, big and booming like sail canvas.
And then the ship was floating, slowly, softly, down through the fog. Quiet. Silent. It came to rest in a small hidden lake. An ancient and forgotten-looking temple sat along the shore.
Maybe it was a good thing those pilots hadn’t vaped them after all.
29
The old freighter had finally come to rest in her last berth and was now sinking into the peaceful mire of the twilight lake. Green mists wandered over its battered and dingy surface as it slowly surrendered to the dark, murky waters.
Rechs had revived Jacobson, checked her for injuries, unharnessed her, and led her in a mad flight with whatever gear was at hand out through the flight deck’s only emergency hatch.
> Jacobson had had the wherewithal to keep her tactical ruck near her person, and Rechs still had the little he’d brought with him: his knife, the blaster pistol, the N-4 he’d taken off the leej, the fraggers in his pocket, and one banger. Not a bad haul considering how much everything had whirled and whipped about in the cockpit during the fall. But his slug thrower was gone, which was too bad. Rechs liked that gun.
The escape hatch had a spot for an emergency life raft, but when Rechs popped open its compartment, he found nothing but empty space. Rechs figured the smuggler had most likely ditched the raft long before so he could carry more contraband.
The pair dropped down into the dark, cold waters of the alien world. They swam for the shoreline and the old temple.
What they experienced of the world of Shangri-La was silent. An eerie quiet devoid of wind, animals, civilization—any of the things that Rechs was accustomed to in the galaxy. Only the sounds of their splashing strokes and breathing could be heard in all of the lake’s vastness.
It’s this mist, Rechs told himself. Smothering everything to death.
Indeed, the ever-present jade fog had settled everywhere, making the temple seem like the spire of a lost city and the trees like strange monsters wandering nearby.
The steps of the temple descended into the waters, and soon Rechs and Jacobson were able to eschew swimming for a dripping-wet climb, darkening the ancient gray stones with each droplet of water that fell from them.
Just outside the ancient temple, Rechs sat down and began to disassemble his N-4. Ideally he’d like to dry it as well, but the wan sunlight wasn’t enough to do that job. The damp pall that surrounded them was too oppressive.
“N-4s can be submerged,” said Captain Jacobson.
Rechs, straining for any sounds beyond the spy’s voice—which was like a shout amid the stillness—shook his head. “Maybe. Used to be, anyway. But with the way the House of Reason has slashed the Legion’s budget…”
