Savage Fugitive

by Patrick G Cox

  “Gone, sir. Didn’t hang about. Soon’s the abandon ship was ordered . . .” Abram Winstanley left the end hanging. “I stopped to help a couple of the lads, sir.”

  Harry had a thought. “The hangar deck. Quickly. There may be a barge or a launch left. Round up everyone. Let’s go!”

  A motley collection of survivors joined Harry at the access to the hangar. A red light flashed above the door. Glancing through the glass panel, he stepped back and ordered, “Rig in EVA. The bays are open to space, but one of the launches is still intact by the look of her.” As an afterthought, he added, “Make sure you take all your normal kit with you. We’ll need it on the surface.”

  A scramble to obey ensued, and in record time everyone, including Rasmus, was rigged and cycling into the hangar, each one clutching a bundle of clothing to his suited chest. The launch proved to have some damage, but this was not in a vital area and would not affect re-entry — or so they hoped.

  “Hope we’re right, sir.” The Coxswain grimaced as the Engineering TechRate finished the checks a bit too methodically for his liking. “Run a check on everything else — quick as you can,” he growled at the man. “We don’t have time to spare, and if she breaks up on re-entry, we might as well have stayed aboard.”

  “Right.” Harry glanced around the group of suited figures. “Which of you is a pilot?” There was silence.

  The Coxswain glared at the group. “Come on then, don’t be bloody shy. What about you, Skoronski? Hodges?”

  “Not me, Swain, Propulsion Operative, that’s my line,” said Skoronski.

  “ComOp, Swain,” said TechRate Maddie Hodges. “Sorry, no can do.”

  With a shock, Harry realised the TechRate was a woman when he heard her voice, something he hadn’t expected because she was nearly as tall as he was and strongly built, and much of her shape was hidden in the bulky suit. When he took a surreptitious closer look, he could see her womanly figure, though she was very muscular and athletic. Adding to his confusion was her rather androgynous face and very short haircut, shaved on one side of her head with long dark-black bangs. Capping off this look, she had several ear piercings in the exposed ear, which he could only liken to the adornment of pirates in tales he’d read as a boy. She was altogether fascinating, and for several moments, Harry felt so flustered he couldn’t think straight.

  Snapping out of his lull in thinking, he remembered the urgency of the situation. “Take the Engine position then,” Harry said to Skoronski. “We’ll have to figure this out quickly. The Captain is planning an ambush. She thinks the ship’s clear of everyone.” He slipped into the pilot’s chair of the launch and secured himself. “This will be rough, so strap in!”

  He linked to the launch’s AI. These were less sophisticated versions of the AI network on the parent ships, and he hoped this one would be intelligent enough to give him the help he needed.

  Harry thought of the most logical command he could give the launch. “Delta Two Four, start your lift engines and disengage your docking ties, please. Then move us clear of the bay.”

  After a brief delay, Delta Two Four responded. “Please engage the navigation yoke and guide me through the docking bay doors.”

  “Very well.” Harry already felt impatient. He grasped the yoke and moved it gently as he had seen pilots do on numerous occasions. The launch responded, swinging dramatically and heading toward the bulkhead next to the door. Harry swore under his breath and swung the yoke in the opposite direction. Three or four attempts saw him successfully turning the nose toward the opening.

  “Hold a steady path through the opening, please,” Harry ordered.

  “I cannot see the opening,” came the response.

  “Use my eyes.” Harry was irritated at having to give the most basic, obvious commands to the launch. Clearly, some parts of its AI network weren’t working correctly. He wondered what damage might be lurking undetected.

  “You can see what I see,” Harry explained. “Now move us out of the ship.”

  “Is this how humans see? I usually use my scanners. If you engage them to auto, I can use them instead.”

  Harry threw a desperate glance at the console. He couldn’t see anything that resembled a switch for the scanners. “Engage your scanners to auto — you know how to do it!”

  They cleared the bay just as the Daring swung toward the enemy cruiser. Captain Maia had timed her move to perfection, and the enemy cruiser lost almost its entire forward end as the dying Daring smashed into her. The distraction allowed the launch to descend into the atmosphere of Planet Lycania undetected by the Consortium scan operators, who marked its descent as a large piece of debris, one among many in the storm of ship sections that rained into the atmosphere for the next several hours.

  Aboard the Delta Two Four, Harry had the bemused thought that communicating with the launch’s very basic AI was like explaining something to a child. “Now, just keep level and straight. I think there is a good landing place on the plateau.” Harry sought the coordinates and identified them to the launch. He hoped his rather hasty survey was right when Delta Two Four complained that he was not piloting it properly.

  This was going to be damnably difficult, but they had no other choice. How long could they survive on this planet? They had no real knowledge of it and almost no survival gear. He wondered if anything on the surface would serve as nourishment. Deciding to deal with that problem when it was relevant, he pulled himself together and focused on landing the launch.

  “This is going to be a bit rough, I fear,” he told his passengers.

  “It’s a bloody miracle you’ve got us this far, sir,” Coxswain Winstanley chipped in. “I reckon we only need to land once as long as it’s in one piece!”

  “I’ll do my best, Swain.” Harry managed a grin, adrenalin and bravado making him reckless. “But I’m no pilot, and the launch isn’t being helpful.”

  “Well,” Rasmus cut in, “I’m told any landing you can walk away from is a good one. Just make sure we can walk away.”

  “Remind me of it when we’re on the surface, Rasmus,” Harry replied. He coaxed the launch to bring them down gently and level on a narrow strip of open ground as he guided it with the yoke and the rudders.

  Barely fifty miles to the west of where Harry was attempting to land, Lieutenant Clarke mustered the survivors from the twenty or so life pods that had landed as a cluster. He looked about him anxiously. Heron wasn’t present, so there was a good chance he was dead. That meant no one would be able to testify about his having used the standard evasions against orders.

  Several other Lieutenants were present, but none more senior than he. The senior officers were either not present or not in a state to take command. This meant he could take charge — and he had already decided his course of action.

  “Right. Mr. Barolong, Mr. Matthews, organise the Rates please. I want all weapons handed in. I’m pretty sure the Consortium’s people will be here soon, and we aren’t going to resist. Our people have had enough. We’ll surrender as soon as they get here, then our wounded can get treatment and shelter.” He frowned as Paul Barolong made to protest. “No arguments, Paul. I’m the senior!”

  “Yeah, right,” came the retort from Lieutenant Matthews, who gave him a cold look. “So you’re ordering us to surrender, are you? Will you also be assigning our cell block numbers when we’re prisoners of war?” He shook his head in disgust.

  Clarke ignored that last comment. “We have wounded men and scarcely any supplies to feed or treat our people. I don’t like it either, but we have no other options.”

  “Like hell you don’t — sir.” Paul Barolong snapped a perfunctory salute and followed his fellow Lieutenant to carry out the order, albeit reluctantly.

  Chapter 7 — Survivors

  Ferghal came round to find himself lying on an inflatable bed. His head hurt, and his left arm felt numb. He tried to push himself up, but pain lanced through his left arm and leg, and he fell
back with a gasp.

  “Easy, sir.” The soft voice of the MedTech penetrated the fog in his head. “You’ve got a broken leg, and your elbow was dislocated. You’re lucky your people got you into a pod for EVAC. Trouble is you need a spell in a med-unit, and we haven’t got one. I just hope the Consortium people have.”

  Ferghal gathered his wits and asked, through gritted teeth, “Where’s Harry? Is Mr. Heron here?”

  “He’s not come down, sir. They say he didn’t make it off the ship.” She eased him into a more comfortable position. “Now take it easy, sir, and I’ll get you something for the pain.”

  Harry, you can’t be dead, old friend! You can’t leave us like this. I won’t believe you’ve gone — I’ll keep looking for you until I find you.

  He felt a needle in his arm, and the world darkened again, and he drifted into an uneasy sleep disturbed by dreams of Harry, confused dreams of their boyhood mixed with their adventures on HMS Spartan, and the recent events that had landed him here. He was completely unaware of the arrival of the Consortium force and the discussion between Aral Clarke and the Consortium Major, who accepted Clarke’s surrender.

  The launch dipped then steadied as Harry concentrated on coaxing it into as normal a landing as possible. The ground was coming up fast now.

  “Brace yourselves,” Harry called over his EVA comlink. “I don’t think we’re going to land softly.”

  He was right. The landing was rough, not only because the launch’s AI chose the moment of touchdown to lose a large part of its circuitry, but because the ground, covered by short, rough vegetation, wasn’t exactly level, and it certainly wasn’t as even as it appeared from aloft. The undercarriage collapsed, dumping the launch onto its belly and throwing the occupants hard against their restraints as it crashed through the vegetation shedding chunks of itself. It finally came to rest at the end of a trail of wreckage, the fuselage miraculously still in more or less one piece.

  “Everyone okay?” The Coxswain was the first to recover. “Get the doors open.”

  “Thanks, Swain.” Harry made a quick check of the AI and discovered it had become just a simple programmable circuit, its self-awareness apparently gone. He levered himself free of the seat and turned round to look at his crew. “Everybody out. I think our launch is unlikely to be useable from here on.”

  “Well, mein freund, at least we walk away. A good landing, I think.”

  Harry laughed. “If you say so, Rasmus. I would have preferred to keep the launch useable though.” He cast his eyes about the landing area. “Anyone hurt?”

  A chorus of negative responses was reassuring. Instinctively, Harry checked the group for ComOp Hodges, having been raised to protect the safety of women first. She was joking with one of the men and seemed to be enjoying some banter.

  “The pods will have been programmed to make a landfall close to one another,” said the Coxswain. “I think they must have come down in a bunch to the west.” He glanced at Harry. “Engineering took a real beating, sir, but I think most of them got away. Their control room is close to a cluster of life pods.”

  “I hope you’re right, Swain. I hope you’re right.” Harry sent a prayer heavenward. Lord, look after Ferghal. If he be dead, keep his soul, and if he be alive, grant that we may be reunited speedily. If it be your will that I lead these brave souls, grant me the wisdom to do so wisely and the strength to do it for as long as need be.

  “Well done, Major.” Consortium Brigadier Newton was pleased. “Are you sure you have all the survivors?”

  “Yes, ma’am, Lieutenant Clarke is certain that all the survivors are accounted for. He seemed almost eager to be taken prisoner.” He grinned. “Couldn’t wait to hand over a complete list of everyone he had with him. Some of his fellow officers aren’t too pleased about it, either.” He shrugged. “It might have been very different if Commander Nielsen had been in a position to take command. I’ve put him in separate accommodation, if one can call it that. His injuries are stable now. He should make a full recovery.”

  “Good thinking.” The Brigadier nodded. “Perhaps we can get some useful information from them individually. Separate all the officers and NCOs from the rest and from each other. You never know what we may learn if we get them talking by playing them against one another.”

  “Already in hand,” the Major replied. “And there’s a bonus. We have one of that pair the Board had put out an all points bulletin on — the ones supposed to be from the nineteenth century. He’s in a med-unit, quite badly beaten up. According to Lieutenant Clarke, he can manipulate any AI without using an interface.”

  “Now that is something. Which one have we got, Heron or O’Connor?”

  “O’Connor is the name I have here.” The Major looked up from his tablet. “The Lieutenant seemed to think the other one died on the Daring. He’s not among the survivors.”

  Ferghal’s head felt much better when he awoke. His attempt to move was frustrated by his enclosure in the med-unit, though it took him a few seconds to recognise it, and that sent his thoughts hurtling back to his awakening on Vanguard almost four years previous. He lay still, his eyes shut tight as he tried to steady his thoughts. Where was this place? And where was Harry? He tried to link to the AI and discovered that he could only connect to the med-unit he was lying in. Everything else was nothing but a garbled buzz in his head.

  “Good, you’re awake, Mr. O’Connor.” The voice came from out of his line of sight. “As I’m sure you’ve discovered, you can’t access our network — a simple precaution to ensure you don’t escape.”

  “Where am I?” Ferghal opened his eyes and tried to make out the details of his surroundings. “Where are the rest of our people? How do you know who I am?”

  “The rest of your people are in the main camp.” An attractive woman moved into view. “You’re in our special lab. Your Lieutenant Clarke was kind enough to supply us with all your names. He identified you when we recognised your name and service number on the list.”

  Ferghal snorted. “Typical. Bloody traitor.”

  “Depends on your point of view.” The woman smiled an empty smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “You see, we couldn’t take the risk of you getting into the network at the base. You’re in an isolation lab, and we have a special screen to prevent you linking to anything outside this space.”

  “What do you intend to do with me?” Ferghal kept his voice level.

  “Some of our top scientists are on their way to examine you and find out why you are able to interact with AI networks through your thoughts alone.” The woman seemed a little annoyed. “Several of us here are trained to do all the tests and investigative procedures, but you will make someone’s name famous.”

  “You spáilpíns will get little enough from such tests,” Ferghal snapped, using one of his favorite Irish insults. “Your people did their worst on Pangaea.”

  She ignored his comment. “I must say you’re quite a fine specimen.” That comment rankled, but Ferghal chose not to respond. He didn’t need her twisted form of flattery. “Your leg is healing nicely, and your arm is almost back to normal. You had a rather nasty dislocation of your elbow and a massive contusion — but it has all sorted itself out rather better than I thought it would. You must have taken a very hard knock to do that damage.”

  “I suppose having a console land on you can be counted as a hard knock.”

  Ferghal vaguely remembered what had happened. The last thing he could clearly recall was an explosion and then searing pain as a bulkhead caved in and a console fell on top of him.

  He attempted again to link to an AI and succeeded in accessing the medical network, but this time he ran into a problem he had never encountered before. The system demanded he submit his security access code. He wondered what this might be, then he had a stroke of luck. Through the network, he watched someone in the building enter a code and gain access. That was all he needed.

  Badly shaken by the narrowness
of their escape and at a loss as to what to do, Harry wrestled with the inconceivable thought of losing Ferghal. He was certain his lifelong friend had died in the Daring, and he felt utterly alone now, bereft of hope and ill equipped for the task ahead of him. He pushed his anguish aside and set to thinking while studying the terrain.

  Twisted spires of rock glistened with silicates and pyrites, the eroded shapes forming fantastic sculptures that gave a hint of ferocious winds and extreme temperatures of heat and cold. The vegetation was spiky. Leathery foliage furled or turned to catch the light of the bluish sun that gave the landscape a cold florescence.

  The wrecked launch made a forlorn sight in the devastated vegetation littered with its debris.

  Their situation seemed hopeless. They had few weapons, no transport and very little in the way of food. Harry looked around at the people with him, a motley collection of twelve men and one woman, excluding himself. There was Rasmus, who had no business being with them anyway, and the rest of the crew represented almost every department of the ship. Three had minor wounds, one a sprained wrist and all of them were tired, shaken and hungry. He stood up. He was the officer, and officers had to lead their people. He put his doubts and uncertainties aside.

  “Right, Swain,” he said. “We can’t stay here, and there’s nothing salvageable of the launch. Set the demolition charges and let’s get everyone moving. We’ll use the lift packs in the suits to go into those hills and get some distance. I want to get off this plateau and into some shelter before sundown in case anyone comes poking around looking at the wreckage. As soon as we’re clear of this place, we can stop for refreshment.”

  “Right you are, sir.” The Coxswain turned. “Right, you lot, you heard the Lieutenant. Keep below the treetops and stay together. Turner, Singh, Maroti, Kemp, you’re carrying the kit packs for now. We’ll change round at the next leg.”