Fire Storm

by Chris Ward

  Small dots could indicate animal burrows or nests, but something large could only be made by intelligent life. If he was lucky, he might have stumbled on a research station, though even encountering a hidden warlord base was an acceptable outcome. He had plenty of information he could trade for his life.

  He gathered his things and started off, stomping through the forest, keeping to a thin animal trail and staying near vegetation cover where possible. A couple of times he heard the massive footfalls echoing through the trees, but of their originators, he saw nothing. Occasional birds fluttered over his head, and in heat that was muggy and oppressive, bugs were never far away.

  The ground began to rise. Through the trees the air brightened, as though he were coming to a break in the forest. With the Interceptor’s systems broken, he hadn’t known how close he had landed to the great rent in Cloven-2’s surface, but he sensed something was about to happen. He slowed, approaching cautiously.

  A screeching cry caused him to turn. He caught only a momentary look at something huge rushing out of the sky toward him, then thick, metal claws encircled his body, lifting him up into the air. He twisted around, and one of two huge heads peered down at him, eyes the size of dinner bowls blinking with an audible snap. Caladan stared back, speechless, his body paralyzed by fear.

  The ground was already far below, and hot, humid air gusted around his legs. He tried to twist around, then, as the creature made a sudden about-turn, his head collided with a passing tree branch, and everything went black.

  9

  Lia

  A cold metal hand was shaking her awake. ‘Captain, we have two fighters on our tail. They followed us out of the wormhole. Captain? I think now would be a good time to sober up.’

  Lia shook her head and twisted around. An empty whisky bottle crashed to the floor and shattered. She’d found it stuffed into a hole in the front of Caladan’s pilot’s chair, its neck poking out. It had only been half full, just enough to keep her entertained during the stasis-ultraspace jump, but with the cargo bay sealed, it had been better than nothing.

  ‘Oops, sorry about that.’

  ‘Leave it to me, Captain. My current form is designed for such accidents.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She rubbed her eyes. ‘Where are they?’

  ‘On our tail. Out of range, but not for long. We’re down to auxiliary fuel. We can’t outrun them, and we need to save what we have to reach the next port. Should we engage?’

  ‘What choice do we have? Can you handle it?’

  ‘I’m afraid that in my current form, I’m unable to work the Matilda’s weapons systems.’ Harlan5 held up a hand. ‘These fingers are far too … stumpy. You’ll have to do it yourself.’

  ‘Very well.’

  Lia jumped across into the gunner’s chair. The ship immediately lurched, causing Harlan5, whose new body had none of the magnetic floor grips of the old, to tumble against a line of store cupboards.

  ‘I need it on autopilot, Harlan!’

  The droid sat up and shook his head. ‘The autopilot is malfunctioning,’ he said. ‘I was trying to fix it down on level three while we were investigating that freighter, but I didn’t have time to finish.’

  ‘Can you access it now?’

  ‘No—my current system is not compatible.’

  Lia scowled. On the monitor screen in front of her, two dots were fast approaching a larger dot.

  ‘They’re on a suicide mission,’ she said. ‘They won’t have the fuel for a return journey. Kyle sent them after me for one reason only, and they have nothing to lose. You want manual controls or guns? Your choice.’

  ‘I’m a droid!’

  ‘Okay, you’re on controls.’

  ‘I don’t know what to—’

  ‘There are buttons!’ Lia shouted, punching the dashboard. ‘Get over here. You know what to do!’

  ‘I’ve never flown a starship manually,’ Harlan5 said, climbing up and scrambling over. ‘And my programming suggests that in my current form, I’m not really adequate to deal with such a challenge—’

  ‘Here!’ Lia shouted. ‘Speed up, slow down. Up, down. I don’t know what this one does, so try not to press it.’

  ‘That’s the emergency landing control.’

  ‘Then you know it better than me. Keep us pointed straight and watch out for anything floating through space.’

  Lia jumped back into the gunner’s chair as Harlan5 lumbered over. She’d barely strapped in when the ship rocked under cannon fire.

  ‘We’re hit!’

  Harlan5 punched a button and the ship lurched forward, dropping into a steep dive. The internal systems stabilizers immediately set to work, so that within a few seconds, Lia felt like she was on the level again, but the sudden change had already brought up half the whisky she had just drunk.

  ‘Gently!’

  Harlan5 lifted a hand as wide as her waist with fingers designed for scooping up trash. Steel net webbing between them limited their individual mobility. ‘My programming would like to point out that I have certain deficiencies when it comes to flying a starship.’

  Lia wiped spit off her chin and laughed. ‘You’re doing fine. More or less. Just … not so sudden.’

  The ship shuddered as cannon fire caught it another glancing blow. Lia considered engaging the shields, but the drain on fuel could leave them stranded. The armour would have to handle it.

  ‘Swing us around.’

  The ship lurched. Lia brought up a direct visual on her screen from the rear arsenal. With a jab of her finger, the Matilda’s arms began to extend and arch, the seven remaining of her spiderlike gun turrets transforming into attack mode. As she always did when she watched the visual, she felt a tingle of excitement. The Matilda, for all its age and failing condition, was a fearsome opponent in a space battle, and there was something about the bloodlust of a dogfight that got Lia’s heart racing. It was even better than—

  The ship jerked. Lia’s harness held her tight against the seat. The two fighters appeared on the visuals so she engaged all weapons at once. Spinning like a Catherine wheel, the Matilda sent forth a hail of blazing hellfire.

  One fighter exploded. The second ducked right, receiving a couple of shots to one wing.

  ‘Left!’ Lia screamed, and the ship jerked, swinging around to bring the fighter back into target. ‘It’s damaged,’ she muttered. ‘If we can pull it in, we could do with the fuel….’

  Trying to remember just what it was Caladan did when he was piloting the ship, she leaned across in front of Harlan5 and lowered the power on the guns.

  ‘Do we have a tractor beam?’ she asked.

  ‘We have a magnetic field. It’s only designed for bringing in space junk.’

  ‘Let’s find some then.’

  The fighter was retreating, heading back toward the wormhole, gradually slowing as its power died. Lia had Harlan5 increase the thrust to close the distance, then she took her aim carefully, looking to shoot out the second wing and leave the fighter’s body as scrap metal. The pilot, if he survived, could be imprisoned in one of the stasis capsules, then left behind at their next port of call.

  She closed one eye, lining up the shot, even though the guns had an automatic lock. ‘Okay—’

  ‘Captain! He’s turning!’

  ‘What—’

  ‘He’s going to ram us!’

  The fighter had indeed switched course, spinning and engaging its rear thrusters, rushing toward them as its damaged armour broke up. Lia had one shot and she took it, blowing apart the tiny ship’s cockpit, breaking it into pieces, but it was too late to avoid a collision. She closed her eyes, waiting for the shudder of a thousand pieces of debris—

  Her stomach lurched, and the rest of the whisky came rushing up her throat. She turned to glare at Harlan5, who was holding one thick finger on a large red button.

  ‘I engaged the emergency landing control,’ the droid said. ‘It can also act as a reverse thruster in extreme circumstances.’

 
Lia groaned as the ship’s systems stabilized again. ‘Are you sure there aren’t a few of that Boswell’s thought processes interfering with your own?’

  ‘I believe there are,’ Harlan5 said. ‘I’m feeling overwhelmingly excited about the idea of picking up some space junk.’

  Lia climbed out of the gunner’s chair and took over the controls from Harlan. The droid was quick to get out of the way, as though relieved. He stumped back over to a corner and prodded a finger at a screen displaying the Matilda’s status.

  ‘We’re a little low on fuel now,’ he said. ‘The nearest habitable planet is Seen, but I’d suggest avoiding the capital city of Cable, because the GMP might have been alerted to our presence. There’s a minor spaceport called Tantol near the Foam Sea, which would be preferable. It’s a disputed city, meaning the GMP are unwelcome there. They will certainly have agents on the ground, but no major presence.’

  ‘Who controls the city now?’

  Harlan5 shook his head. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know. I wiped all but the most vital information from my memory in order to fit it into the Boswell. Trash compactors don’t require large memory banks.’

  ‘So the city might not even be there?’

  ‘Oh, my programming assures me it probably is,’ Harlan said. ‘Isn’t it true that the nice places all go to hell, but the hellholes perpetuate for all eternity?’

  ‘Is that a quote?’

  Harlan5’s eye lights flickered with apparent happiness. ‘Yes, indeed it is.’

  ‘Who from?’

  A grumble in the compactor’s body could have been laughter. ‘Caladan.’

  Lia smiled. ‘Now, why does that surprise me?’

  10

  Caladan

  His head ached from the inside out, but as he reached up with his only hand to ease his eyes open, Caladan figured that being alive was better than being dead. Then he rolled over and saw, no more than an arm’s length away, the sleeping form of a two-headed bird—one head organic, the other a horrifying mixture of metal and tissue—and figured death was probably the more painless prospect.

  Beneath him, thick twigs poked into his back. He twisted around and sat up, and found himself in a small hollow on the edge of a birds’ nest bigger than the Matilda’s bridge. The design was unlike anything he had ever seen before: a giant wicker basket with a covered section at one end presumably to keep out the rain, and a large opening at the other to accommodate whatever behemoth had dragged him here.

  Whatever that was, it wasn’t the monstrosity currently dozing away nearby. That thing, with its organic head and second, metal-infused biotechnological one, had the gummy-feathered look of an infant, and at only twice his size could never have carried him here. The creature was, he realised now, lying among a heap of broken eggshell while resting against three other massive eggs, each easily big enough to fit him neatly inside.

  As he stared, still feeling in something of a state of shock at this sudden turn of events, one of the other eggs shifted. A splitting sound came from the upper edge, and a jagged black line appeared down the side.

  He felt along for his blaster, but his belt and all its useful gadgets was gone. Instead, he felt a deep gash along his hip, which would likely be deeper had his belt not taken much of the damage for him.

  ‘There’s unarmed, and then there’s … now,’ he muttered, failing to muster the enthusiasm to laugh at his own joke. ‘Where am I?’

  It was apparent he was food for his captor’s offspring. The chick—for want of a better word for something so monstrous—must have hatched since he had been lying here. Perhaps, when it returned, the chick’s parent would gently teach it how to rip and tear living flesh.

  He twisted around, trying to figure out where he was, pushing himself up on the twigs to lean over the nest’s edge.

  Breath caught in his throat and he pushed himself back. The jutting ledge on which the nest sat loomed over a chasm hundreds of metres deep. Far, far below, he saw forest stretching away into a steep v-shaped valley, the trees so tiny he felt as though he could reach down and tear a bunch free with his fingers.

  Several Earth-miles distant, a similar wall of rock rose up the valley’s other side. Large enough to be visible from space, he had found the rent scarring the moon’s surface.

  As soon as his heart had slowed enough that he could trust his reactions, he leaned back out, this time peering upward, only to find he was some way down from the ravine’s top edge. While an able-bodied man might chance a death climb rather than wait to become a bird-monster baby’s first feast, the lack of an arm made such a feat impossible. He would do better to close his eyes and roll out of the nest into the yawning chasm.

  He looked out again across the wide valley. In one direction, the rock walls pinched tightly together, but to the other, the valley gradually widened and flattened out, becoming a softer bowl filled with trees that towered nearly as high as the ravine walls themselves.

  And out there, above the canopy, he saw the giant twin-headed birds wheeling and diving.

  They appeared to be fighting each other. One would swoop to an attack only for its opponent to dip into the trees and disappear from view, reappearing some way distant to begin an attack of its own.

  Caladan crawled back from the edge. He scrambled around the sleeping chick and put his hand on the egg that hadn’t yet cracked. Perhaps if he could push it out, he could create some kind of diversion, but when he leaned his weight on it, nothing happened. It might as well have been made of solid rock.

  Next, he tried digging his way into the nest itself, hoping to find some way to hide beneath the thick branches, perhaps to let the mother think he had escaped, but the branches were so intricately woven he could barely even reach inside.

  He glanced back at the entrance, and his heart began to race. Far out across the valley, something with a wingspan as wide as most space fighters had turned and was making its way back home.

  Caladan stared at it, frozen for a few seconds, before cajoling himself back into action. He crawled back to the nest’s edge, peering out again. If he could just get onto the stone ledge behind, he could at least make it difficult for the birds to eat him. As he glanced back at the approaching creature, something in the far distance caught his eye, a line of light jetting down from the sky to disappear into the forest. A spaceport? He had got so close—

  The bird creature was within fire-breathing distance, and as Caladan stared, he could quite imagine one of those the two heads spurting forth a spear of flame to sear his beard clean off, lightly grilling him before consumption.

  ‘What do you want? Well-done or medium?’ he croaked, failing to find the energy to laugh or even make a decent stab at a final joke. ‘Raw? Or like baked in a bucket … pan? A pan? I’m … I’m … saucy—I mean I taste better with sauce—’

  The bird shrieked at him and pulled back, hovering in the air. Caladan gave a wild cackle. Perhaps it was appalled at the sight of him. There was a price on his head in each of the seven systems in the Fire Quarter, and some of the evilest warlords in the galaxy had sent militias and bounty hunters on his tail.

  Yet here he was, about to become feed for a giant, two-headed robot chicken.

  The creature still hung back. It wailed at him, jutting its heads in turn as though unable to decide which one to start with.

  ‘Flap off, you stupid turkey,’ he shouted. ‘Don’t you know who I am? I’m Caladan, the galaxy’s greatest one-armed pilot.’

  The bird creature shrieked again. Caladan frowned. Pointed eyes hidden in tufts of wire-like hair were looking past him, at something on the ledge behind. Hardly daring to take his eyes off the creature, he risked a quick glance back.

  ‘Ah—’

  He dived sideways, over the edge of the nest, plummeting straight down. He closed his eyes, not wanting to see his death, but the image of what he had seen clinging to the rocks behind him was even worse. He jerked his eyes open, catching a view of rocks and tall trees rushing up toward
him, then something snagged his ankle, pulling him hard, swinging him sideways.

  He crashed beard-first against a wall of rock. Pain rocketed through his body, making his vision blur. He tried to reach for what had snagged him, but he had jarred his shoulder and couldn’t twist around.

  He began to descend, something that felt like a woven vine digging into his ankle. He spun around like a yoyo on a string as the ground came up, then he found shale and soft vegetation under his back. He looked up and saw the wheeling bird creature far above, still shrieking at the creatures attacking its nest. Caladan shook his head, wondering if he had been mistaken, if perhaps the luminous, transparent humans that could only have been ghosts were nothing more than a figment of his traumatized imagination.

  Then a dozen or so crowded in above him, and though he could see the trees through their translucent, humanoid bodies, he felt as though he had fallen from one trap into another.

  With nothing else to do, he began to scream.

  11

  Kyle

  ‘Commander,’ the guard said, snapping a salute. ‘It is my regret to inform you that the fugitive has avoided capture. We locked transmissions on the two fighters that followed the escaped ship into the wormhole, but both have been cut off. It is my fear that the two fighters were destroyed.’

  Kyle clenched a fist, but otherwise maintained his cool. ‘We underestimated her,’ he said. ‘We will inform the GMP Command of her last known position. And of the stolen Interceptor?’

  ‘It fled through a wormhole into Frail System,’ the guard said. ‘Its fuel reserves were severely limited. We have estimated it could only have reached the gas giant of See-Sar. The only habitable moons within reach are hostile and contain no human settlement.’

  Kyle nodded and dismissed the guard. As the door closed, he allowed himself to scowl. Lia’s pilot, he was unlikely to get far. Lia herself, though, she was free.