Vanderdeken's Children

by Christopher Bulis

  ***

  Mokai broke off his somewhat confused conversation with Fayle when the strange antics of the lifeboat were brought to his attention.

  'Sound amber alert,' he ordered. 'They may be trying something.'

  ***

  As all the Emindian ships had been eliminated from the autopilot's options, it dutifully hunted for a new safe haven for its passenger, and promptly turned towards the Nimosian fleet.

  Had he been thinking clearly Lester would never have allowed the boat to continue on its new course. But by now he was hardly thinking at all. His mind filled with vague notions about claiming political asylum. All he wanted was to be free of the intolerable burden of what he had done - and what he had lost.

  'You can't get away from me that easily,' said a rasping voice in his ear.

  ***

  'Scanners, what's inside it?' Mokai demanded.

  'Can't be certain, Admiral. Looks like a standard Emindian lifeboat, but it reads oddly. Like nothing I've seen before.'

  'Put a beam on it and hold it clear of us.'

  'Can't get a proper lock, sir!'

  'Impact in twenty seconds, sir!'

  Mokai scowled.There was only one option left.

  ***

  Lester was on his knees scrabbling at the main hatch of the lifeboat, not caring that, even if he could have opened it, he would have been blown out into space. He felt a stab of cold in his arm and turned fearful eyes upward.

  A shadow was forming out of thin air: a shimmering grey image of a woman in a plain smock with a curiously indistinct face.

  A translucent hand reached up and peeled off the bandages and he saw the ruin of her face.

  Lester had the time for one final scream of terror that mingled with Rhonda Plecht's ghostly, slurred laughter, before the Nimosian fighters blasted the lifeboat into incandescent vapour.

  Chapter 33

  The Circles of Hell

  The Doria sped back through the long tunnel to the cavern that held the alien ship. Bendix was hunched over the controls, his face creased with anxiety.

  'What can we do to change anything if there was only ever one alien ship?'

  he asked, keeping his eyes fixed straight ahead. 'We've seen what happened to it.You heard the Doctor.'

  'The Doctor is a self-confessed liar who masqueraded as a Moderator,'

  Rexton retorted. 'Would you believe every word he says? Besides, the original ship we salvaged was badly damaged.This one is perfect, without any sign of repair work. They may be linked, somehow, but there are two of them.'

  'But he knows about time.'

  'Does that mean he invariably tells the truth? And even if he is some sort of time traveller, would you give up without a fight if there was the slightest chance of saving Emindar?'

  Bendix wavered visibly. 'No, sir. Not when you put it like that.'

  'Good man. Just get me to the ship and I'll do the rest. If they really have cleared it of those monsters we should have no trouble. If there is going to be a war, Emindar is going to have the weapon it needs to win!'

  Rexton knew that his time had come. It was as though all his life had just been a prelude to this moment, when his actions might shape the future of entire worlds. He was going to make a difference at last.

  ***

  Within his narrow world, Sho was as contented as he could ever be. He was going into battle at the head of a combat team. All they'd needed was a good talking to to get them back into shape and focused on the mission again. They were really responding to his leadership, almost as though they were obeying his thoughts. He didn't care whether they were dead or something else; at heart they were still Nimosian soldiers.

  He realised they still had the Emindian woman with them and briefly debated leaving her. But she was no burden in the light gravity and there was still a bit of life left in her. He would need to find a few more like her to keep the men strong. He might even find a use for her himself.

  His small force were gathered on the high terrace supporting the docking boom to which the ghostly form of the Cirrandaria was moored. One of the hatches it connected to was open, with only a couple of guards standing by it. They were obviously not expecting trouble.

  Even now the men he'd detailed were working their way along the underside of the boom out of sight of the guards. Once they had neutralised them the rest could cross by the upper walkway directly into the ship. If they were quick they could release the prisoners before the enemy knew what had hit them. Then he would have an army behind him!

  His daydream was shattered by the faint voice on his helmet radio.

  ' Cirrandaria , close all external hatches. A hostile force may be about to attack the ship.'

  They had been betrayed! But who by? The false Vega? The girl?

  But his men had reached their objective. He saw them vault the rails and fall upon the guards before they could seal the hatch.

  'Forward!' he cried, and ran in long bounding strides along the walkway with the rest of his men, dragging Lyset after him like a rag doll. He would deal with her once he had taken the ship.

  Inside the hatch ghostly forms were fighting. Nets were being thrown and tridents thrust. But his men were pressing inexorably forward. With a fierce yell he loosed a spray of automatic fire into the melee, which passed through friend and foe alike without noticeable effect, and leapt in after them.

  He had taken half a dozen steps into the misty insubstantial interior of the ship before he realised his error. The deck gave like a sponge under his boots, separating coldly around them as he sank up to his ankles. He floundered forward another step, plunging down to his knees, looking for something solid to catch hold of but finding nothing. Even in the low gravity the deck was too insubstantial to support him! Lyset Wynter was struggling feebly but sinking as well. Then his legs were kicking in emptiness as the deck slipped up over his chest, imparting the slightest feeling of constriction, then closed over his head.

  He dropped slowly into a corridor on the next deck, scattering a crowd of insubstantial figures who had been running in apparent panic along it. He sank up to his waist in the floor and slid from sight in seconds, despite making desperate paddling strokes to try to resist his fall.

  They dropped again and again at a leisurely but inexorable rate, leaving the scene of combat far above them. He was being taken from his men when they most needed him! Suddenly they were sliding through the undercurve of the hull and there was nothing below but fifty metres of vacuum before the very real and solid surface of the next terrace. They dropped freely away from the soap-bubble ship, tumbling slowly as they fell, and hit the ground.

  hi the low gravity it was the equivalent of a fall of a little over two metres on Nimos. Sho hit with his knees together and legs bent to absorb the impact, rolled expertly and came up unharmed. Lyset landed awkwardly, bounced, and dropped back limp and winded.

  'Squadleader Sho!'

  The voice came over his earphones. It seemed familiar. A small party was heading along the curve of the terrace towards him. Some were ghosts, others solid real people. Some were wearing Nimosian uniforms.

  'Sho!' came the voice again. 'Remain where you are. That's an order.'

  It was the traitor Vega. He must have warned the liner of the assault. Now he and his fellow turncoats were coming after him. Sho looked desperately up at the glowing intangible liner above him, but there was no way he could return to it. All he could do was buy his loyal men time to release their comrades. He gathered up Lyset's limp form in one arm and held his rifle to the side of her helmet.

  'Stay back or she dies!'

  They skidded to a halt and he heard a confused babble of voices. He backed away until he had the wall of the next terrace behind him. How far away was the nearest ramp leading up? A hundred metres. He began edging sideways.

  A figure detached itself from the group and stepped towards him.

  'Stay back!' he warned.

  'I can't do that,' the man said flatly, almo
st without emotion. 'You see, I know you're going to shoot her anyway as soon as you get clear of us.That is what you mean to do, isn't it?'

  It was, but how did he know? Sho was certain he hadn't told anybody. He was getting confused.The man continued advancing.

  'So there's nothing to lose by trying to save her. I owe it to her. I let her down once before, but I won't do it again, hi a moment you'll have to point your gun at me, and then you die. Or you'll kill Lyset and then you'll die anyway. I'll kill you, I promise that. If you drop her and run maybe you'll live.That's the only way out.'

  He was less than five metres away now.

  Sho jerked his gun away from the woman's helmet and fired at the man, who clutched his side and fell to the ground, even as an indistinct form launched itself from the shadows. Cold fangs buried themselves in Sho's gun arm. He heard a ferocious snarling growl seemingly right inside his suit. He shrieked in pain, dropped the woman and with his free arm clubbed at the thing that was attacking him. But then the man was up again, tackling him low and knocking him to the ground, pinning him by the chest. The unseen thing continued to tear at his arm and he felt the pressure dropping in his suit. But all he could see was a fist holding a pistol filling his field of view, the muzzle rammed against his faceplate.

  'I told you,' said the man.

  Then the gun slowly sagged, limply, and the weight on his chest vanished as the man toppled sideways. Sho heard shouts of'Pick him up... I've got her... back to the shuttle... they're coming!'

  The teeth released their grip on him. He reached over weakly and tried to close the ragged tears in the arm of his suit, but he hadn't the strength.

  Above him he saw the Cirrandaria . A grey mist seemed to be pouring out of her. It was his men! They had released the prisoners! He had won!

  Even now some were dropping down from the upper terrace, falling like thistledown in the gentle gravity. Wait. His eyesight was fading but there was something wrong.They were falling as men, but by the time they touched the ground they had become...

  No-

  And so the insane host fell upon Harren Sho, and fed until they had drawn the last scrap of heat and life from him.

  ***

  The Doria emerged into the cavern containing the alien vessel and Rexton realised why he had not recognised it earlier. Apart from the gloom, walls had been blasted out to accommodate the huge craft. The war must have forced them to abandon the deep system security research complex and bring it here.

  But that would mean thiswas the same ship as before.

  He was getting confused. Damn the Doctor's tales! Focus on your objective, he told himself.

  They berthed the Doria in a twin of the bay they had used on the forward side of the alien ship's central tower.This time they would be on the far side of the interface. Now all they had to do was reach the control room.

  Rexton led the way through the triple-doored airlocks with his gun ready, while Bendix held one of the Doctor's nonnalisers. But the ship was totally still and silent, with no ceiling lights giving their telltale warning flicker. All the ghosts of whatever kind, and the Nimosians, too, must be back in the port with their hands full. Rexton could hardly have arranged it better. By the time they followed him here he would have accomplished his objective.

  He led Bendix along a transverse corridor, hoping that what he remembered would be there. It was. A round hatch in the ceiling at the top of a recessed set of rungs. He continued along the corridor, counting hatches until he reached the fourth. Then he started up, through the hatch, and into a long segmented shaft that stretched above him for two hundred clear metres.They were inside one of the vertical rod structures that ran up through the projecting laboratory modules on the outside of the tower.

  Service access shafts, they had classified them as.

  They climbed up and up, past four side hatches leading off the shaft. The fifth Rexton opened and stepped into another small triple-doored airlock, gasketed to allow for movement of the tower module. Beyond it was a large chamber ringed with curving banks of instrument panels.The chamber was divided halfway across the room by a shimmering blurred curtain.

  'It's the other side of the control room,' Bendix said, 'beyond the interface.'

  Rexton was already unslinging Lyset's camera. 'I never leave a job unfinished,' he said. 'With details of the rest of the main control functions they will be able to complete the repairs on the other ship. Then we shall have a device which will revolutionise the tactics of space warfare! Imagine being able to project a fleet right into the heart of an enemy system, even into orbit round its home planet! Now keep watch.'

  He began working his way around the chamber, recording the array of neatly labelled controls. Bendix watched him for a minute in silence, between anxious glances at the interface and the service hatch. Then he said hesitantly,'Councillor, if this is the original ship you found years ago, and the ghosts found these labels already here, where did they come from?'

  'The team working on the ship, of course,' Rexton said.

  'But where did they get the information from? You said they hadn't worked out the control functions. I can see there could be millions of possible combinations here. Did they work it all out in that last year of the war - or label them up from the pictures we're just going to send them? Isn't that a paradox, a loop in time?'

  Rexton hesitated, then said firmly, 'Paradox is just a word. It's an admission of ignorance. I only care if it works!'

  He finished snapping the last of the panels, wound the film on and ejected the cartridge. He held it up before Bendix. 'This is the most valuable item you will ever see. It's more important than your life or mine.' He slipped it into an outer pocket of his suit and closed the seal firmly. 'If anything happens to me, you are to see that it gets back home by any means at whatever cost. Understand?'

  Bendix nodded grimly. They started down the service shaft again.

  They were almost at the bottom when the ceiling lights began to flicker.

  ***

  It was a sight Sam would never forget. She had not realised how closely the concentric descending terraces of the port resembled the description of Hell from Dante'sInferno . But now they had really become a twilit hell, populated by souls as lost as any the ancient Italian had ever imagined.

  The rule of the insane had begun.

  They poured in a living stream out of the Cirrandaria , metamorphosing and changing even as they went, taking the form of every monstrosity that could be dredged from the darkest depths of the mind.Armoured guards went down before them, losing their own human forms as they fell. Dark and terrible things passed overhead, leaping and springing like monstrous grasshoppers.

  They ran before this unstoppable tide towards the remaining shuttle. Sam had Lyset Wynter slung over her shoulder - no burden in this light gravity, her weight even improved the traction underfoot. The Doctor was carrying Delray. Around them Vega's men fired at their pursuers with blasters and their copies of the Doctor's normalisers. Things flickered out of existence or fell to the ground, cut and burned, thrashing about as they regenerated and re-formed. The advance faltered and broke around them, but it did not halt.

  Sam saw hopping creatures pouring at incredible speed back through the tunnels leading to the other cavern and the alien ship. They want to use it to attack the real Cirrandaria again, she thought.And there are ten times as many of them now.

  Ahead she saw that the evacuees from the spaceport lounge had been caught in the open ground halfway to the Nimosian shuttle. Flashes of fire from the guards around it told them it was already under assault.

  'Even if we have time to get them all on and they let us take off, there isn't going to be enough roomi'Vega said.

  'Then we'll use the TARDIS,' the Doctor said.

  'What?'

  'My blue box.Trust me!'

  They arrived at the TARDIS, skidding to a halt in sprays of dust.The Doctor opened the door. Vega held back doubtfully. Sam pushed past him with her burden, thro
ugh the TARDIS's equivalent of a pressure curtain and into the improbable neo-Gothic spaciousness of the interior.

  'See - there's room for everybody,' she said.

  Vega recovered himself and spoke over his radio: 'Abandon theDauntless .

  Fall back to the Doctor's machine.'

  Sam laid Lyset down in the nearest armchair and unfastened her helmet.

  She looked exhausted and very pale, but otherwise unharmed. The Doctor came in with Delray. There was a blackened scar on the side of his suit. He wasn't moving.

  'Help get the rest inside, Sam,' the Doctor told her.

  She ran out of the doors again and started shoving the shambling, confused survivors through them. One of the first was Dan Engers Junior, propelled through by the shades of his parents. But they shrank back from the interior of the TARDIS as though it was painful. Suddenly she knew they would not be coming with them. All Sam could do was mouth through the visor of her helmet, 'He'll be safe -I promise .'Their faces were those of the twice dead as they turned away.

  She was practically throwing the survivors though the door. The remaining Nimosian marines formed a tight circle about the TARDIS, guns and normalisers stabbing out into the wall of slavering, clawing, slashing things that bore down upon them. Even as she watched something with folded legs and snapping mandibles dropped out of the darkness and snatched a marine away. A tentacle curled around the side of the TARDIS and she felt its cold caress. She kicked furiously and crushed it against the box's side.

  There were only four human ghosts left now: Vega, Lanchard and the Engerses, holding back the insane horde with tridents dropped by the guards. The final few survivors tumbled inside followed by the marines and Vega. Sam saw Jeni Engers's ghostly form melt into a black spidery shape and spring away. Her husband snatched after her and was gone. Lanchard was pulled down by the horde and vanished from sight.The ghost of Vega turned to them, his body flickering and breaking up. His features dissolved until only his mouth and one pleading eye was left. She saw his lips shape the words 'End this!'