Fire Storm

by Chris Ward

  Caladan frowned. He had only ever seen such land-speeders used by scientists roving in uncharted areas, attempting to take samples of fauna with the minimum of fuss, but these bristled with gun emplacements. At their rear, thick wire nets tied up with twine left no doubt as to their modified use.

  So, these were the slavers.

  The crew was a ragtag bunch, most likely mercenaries, hired scum found hiding out locally in Frail System, the kind of degenerate he might be himself if Lia hadn’t pulled him out of the gambling pits of Seen and offered him a job. Most authoritative among them was a tall Rue-Tik-Tan, member of a hunched, spiny-backed race with pinched, mouse-like faces, which many humans and human-subspecies derogatively called ‘space hedgehogs’. They were devoid of the kind of recognised emotions that most off-worlders shared, impervious to the suffering of others, willing to perform the kind of torture no one with a heart could handle.

  Caladan nodded. It made complete sense that Rue-Tik-Tan would be behind this operation.

  A commotion near the tree-line made Caladan turn. A group of Rue-Tik-Tan with weapons slung around their shoulders hauled a Luminosi out of the trees and across to the huddle of crewmen. They pushed him to his knees, and Caladan saw he was covered by a purplish powder. At first Caladan thought it was blood, then as a slaver stepped forward, lifted a hose, and sprayed the rest of the man, Caladan realised it was a type of paint.

  ‘That’s how they catch you, is it?’ he muttered under his breath. He remembered seeing purplish patches on the ground before the bird had caught him, and thought they were some kind of fungus. Without knowing it, he had walked along the same path a past group of slavers had taken in their pursuit of the Luminosi.

  The Luminosi was begging for mercy. Caladan winced as the Rue-Tik-Tan chief instructed his underlings to beat the man. After a couple of minutes, the Luminosi, drunk from the beating, pointed off into the forest.

  With a grunt of excitement, the Rue-Tik-Tan waved the land speeder crews to their bikes. Caladan counted fifty men, about half of which were Rue-Tik-Tan, the rest an assortment of other off-worlders, even a couple of Farsi like himself.

  When the roar of the bikes’ engines had faded to a faint rumble, the chief turned to the beaten Luminosi. One thick leg swung out to kick the man, then, turning to the nearest mercenary guards, he barked an expression Caladan just caught. It meant, ‘Take him into the forest and kill him.’

  Then, without waiting to see what happened, the chief stumped up into the ship.

  Caladan made his way around the tree-line as the guards dragged the man away. They pulled him into the trees, one kicking him repeatedly, the other laughing at the pained expression on the Luminosi’s face.

  Caladan grimaced. It shouldn’t have affected him to see such brutality. After all, he’d suffered plenty of it himself, and given it out on occasion, but the innocent simplicity in the Luminosi’s eyes made his heart ache.

  As he reached the small clearing where the guards had taken the man, Caladan lifted his blaster and pointed it at the nearest guard’s head.

  ‘Look at me,’ he said. ‘I want you to see the man who kills you.’

  Too shocked to ignore him, the guard—a muscular Tolgier—turned, eyes wide with surprise.

  Caladan let him see the barrel of the blaster, then fired.

  As the first guard’s body rolled away into the undergrowth, the second guard dropped the Luminosi and turned to run. Caladan shot off his foot, then stepped over the fallen prisoner and rolled the screaming guard over with his boot.

  ‘Who are you?’ growled the guard—this one a biotechnologically enhanced human subspecies called a Lork. Thick fur poked awkwardly out of an officer’s uniform everywhere except over extra-large hands.

  ‘I’m retribution,’ Caladan said. ‘And you can call me “Sir.”’

  He pulled the trigger without waiting for a sarcastic response. As the body fell away, he turned to the battered Luminosi, who looked up out at him from eyes blackened with bruises. The man’s body pulsed with colour, but in too many places black stains remained visible.

  ‘What happened to you? What did you tell them?’ Caladan asked, aware the man was watching him with increasingly wide eyes. ‘Where did those land-speeders go?’

  ‘The God who Points the Way,’ the Luminosi muttered, then fell on to his face, muttering at Caladan’s feet.

  ‘Well, I guess if you have to call me something….’ He gave the man a gentle nudge with his foot, then noticed how the Luminosi had fallen still. Caladan reached down to touch the man’s shoulder, but his body was swiftly cooling.

  The beating had killed him.

  Caladan was still wondering what to do when the sound of engines rose up through the trees. He crept back to the clearing and peered through the foliage as the land-speeders appeared out of the forest.

  The nets of each now bulged with trapped Luminosi, some wailing with pain or distress, others packed so tightly they could barely breathe. Caladan lifted his blaster, singling out the Rue-Tik-Tan chief who had reappeared from the spacecraft and now laughed as he poked a stick at the trapped Luminosi in one net, but there were too many. One heroic shot wouldn’t save these people.

  As the slavers loaded their living cargo up onto the barge, Caladan retreated back into the forest.

  Solwig was waiting for him on the ridge, but Lorena had gone.

  ‘What did you see?’

  ‘It’s as you said.’

  Solwig nodded gravely. ‘It has been happening to our people for generations. They snare us, and take us to Cloven-1. Few ever return.’

  ‘You cannot hide from them?’

  ‘We have tried. Our people are nomadic, but wherever we go, they find us. We have tried hiding underwater, in caves, among the trees. Here, in the shadow of the God who Points the Way, is the safest place we have found. The hill is too steep for their ships to land, and we are out of range of their land-speeders. They farm villages in flatter areas, but when those people are all enslaved, they will push forward. All the time, as we see our children, families, and friends taken, we have kept our faith—our faith in you.’

  Caladan nodded. ‘The God who Points the Way.’

  Solwig’s face was rapturous. Caladan tried to look confident in what they wanted him to do.

  ‘We must return to the village,’ he said. ‘I need to … meditate on this.’

  Solwig nodded. ‘We joyously await your judgment.’

  The wrecked ship hidden away in the bowl of rock was some way off being space-worthy. Caladan had a little time to prepare, perhaps to find a way to arm these people. Without knowing the threat he faced on Cloven-1, he would be flying blind, something that rarely ended well.

  But as Solwig and Caladan rounded the jutting rock that hid the cave entrance from view, Lorena came running up to them.

  ‘Father! God who Points the Way! There’s great news!’

  ‘My daughter, what?’

  Lorena turned to Caladan. ‘The ship … it has power. It can fly tomorrow, if need be.’

  16

  Harlan5

  The suspicious Karpali was at least doing a good job with the repairs. Lost in the depths of space, the captain had retired to the recuperation chambers for a couple of Earth-days, leaving Stomlard to patch the Matilda up and Harlan to search the surrounding areas for either wormholes out of here, or some deep space asteroid base or space station where they could stop.

  In the dogfight, the Matilda had sustained damage to part of the stasis-ultraspace drive. They could still make inter-system hops, but getting out of Trill System was now an impossibility. And with the reserve fuel tank also taking a hit, they only had enough left for one jump. The single nearby wormhole led right back to where they had come, and Lia was keen to avoid jumping straight back into a fire.

  The Karpali, crouched by a systems panel he had prised open, and engulfed in sparks from a welding iron, was suspiciously busy. Harlan’s programming told him not to trust anyone other than
the captain and Caladan, and Caladan only had a trust rating of sixty percent. All strangers ranged from zero to ten percent, with formerly homeless, supposed ex-space fleet personnel closer to zero than ten.

  Harlan5, manually scrolling through a list of coordinates with one hand while clumsily trying to remove a resalable memory chip from Teagan3’s damaged casing, made a sound that a human would associate with clearing one’s throat. The Karpali didn’t appear to hear him.

  ‘Um, engineer? May I be so bold as to ask how your progress is coming along?’

  Stomlard switched off the welding iron and turned. Karpali, Harlan5 knew from summary files he had retained on all known species of off-worlder, had evolved for physical skill rather than mental aptitude. Six powerful arms above a solid torso and blocky legs meant they could lift as much as many machines. With smaller, thinner heads than humans that looked out of place on their bulky frames, their brains had elongated to extend down into their necks and were protected by a hard, scaly body casing that gave them a slightly stooped appearance.

  ‘Well, trash compactor droid, it’s going better than expected.’

  ‘I thought it only polite to point out that while the captain is in recuperation, I assume command of the Matilda.’

  ‘Your model must be proud. I doubt such an elevation is common among your lowly line of machines.’ The engineer gave a thin, lizard-like smile.

  ‘My programming tells me you are attempting the same kind of sarcasm common among humans and human-subspecies.’

  ‘We Karpali are not masters of the art, I’ll admit.’

  Harlan5 gave up his search for an escape route and stumped over. While Stomlard was crouched, they were about the same height. ‘What is it exactly that you’re doing?’

  ‘Your flight controls have corroded. Stasis-ultraspace jumps have a habit of causing corrosion to certain metals essential to starship drives. If a ship is properly serviced, these things are noticed. Has this ship ever been serviced?’

  ‘The captain has never deemed it necessary to the best of my retained knowledge.’

  ‘I figured as much. Are you aware that you are running at two-thirds propulsion, with one third of your fuel use discarded as byproduct?’

  ‘Which means what?’

  ‘You could be going a lot faster. Watch.’

  Stomlard touched two wires together. For a moment the bridge lights brightened, and the ship’s engines took on a different timbre. A speed indicator above the pilot’s terminal ran up through several numbers.

  ‘If I get this fixed, you’ll have no trouble with planetary slugs like those Devastators again. I wondered why you weren’t able to outrun them. It should have been easy in a ship like this.’

  ‘I guess the captain thought we were going fast enough.’

  Stomlard grinned. ‘There’s no such thing as fast enough.’

  Harlan5 cocked his chunky head. ‘What was your rank, engineer? Back in the Trill System Starfleet?’

  The Karpali’s smile vanished. ‘I had a few over the years. Us Karpali live a long time. The highest rank I reached was vice-admiral.’

  Harlan5 would have raised an eyebrow if his new form had possessed one. The old facial control settings his memory banks had retained felt criminally underused. ‘But that’s—’

  ‘The third highest rank in the entire fleet,’ Stomlard said. ‘At one point I commanded ten thousand ships.’

  ‘While it may not appear it from my expression, internally I am registering great surprise. What happened?’

  ‘I fell on hard times.’

  ‘I think the captain would understand that.’

  ‘Lianetta Jansen.’ Stomlard nodded. ‘I thought I’d heard the name before. Once she was famous; now she’s notorious.’

  ‘My programming wishes to point out that she drew from a rigged deck, as a gambler might say.’

  ‘As many of us did. Yourself included, I’d imagine.’

  ‘My old body was taller, and at least a little cleaner. It also had a far greater memory capacity, and defensive capabilities.’

  ‘But couldn’t crush trash with quite the same eloquence?’

  Harlan5 shook his head. ‘I have some uses now, to be certain.’

  Stomlard looked about to say something more, but as he began bundling the wires back into the wall, a light began to flash, accompanied by a low blare that Harlan5 hadn’t heard before.

  ‘What’s that?’

  Stomlard looked down at the wires in his hand. ‘At a guess I’d say it’s an early warning system against approaching ships. It appears to not have been working until now.’ He pulled two wires apart, and both the light and alarm abruptly cut out.

  Harlan5 stumped over to the pilot’s controls. ‘You’re right. Ships are approaching. At the moment they’re a long way away, but they’ll pass within engagement range in the next few Earth-hours. They don’t appearing to be moving in a threatening way, but cruising out of deep space toward the inner-system.’

  Stomlard came over. Harlan5 reluctantly relinquished his position to allow the former star fleet vice-admiral to look at the systems readings.

  ‘It’s something big being towed by accompanying ships,’ he said. ‘We’re too far off for visuals, but we can send out a welcome transmission to find out what we’re dealing with.’

  ‘A welcome transmission? Isn’t that asking for trouble?’

  Stomlard shook his head. ‘We’re too distant to consider them a threat. It used to be galactic protocol, to ensure ships passed by each other at a safe distance. Too many firefights happen in error.’

  ‘My programming tells me that such galactic protocol used to be stored in a section of memory that was archived when I transferred my cognitive abilities to this alternative form.’

  ‘Then you know what I’m talking about.’

  ‘My programming tells me that I can assume a prior understanding of that knowledge.’

  ‘Well, then. It might be wise to wake the captain.’

  From the bridge, Harlan5 activated the controls of the recuperation tank down in the hold, and a few minutes later a groggy Lia stumbled through the door.

  ‘I need a drink. Why the hell did you get me up?’

  Stomlard pointed at the screen. ‘We’re coming into the vicinity of a large vessel and accompaniments coming this way. In a couple of minutes we should get a visual.’

  ‘How far?’

  ‘Ten point two to the power of eight billion Earth-miles.’

  Lia rolled her eyes. ‘Now I really need a drink. That’s half a system away.’

  ‘It’s two Earth-hours away at full thrust,’ Stomlard said, giving Harlan5 a wink. ‘At least, now it is. This old thing can shift now we’ve tweaked the acceleration controls.’

  As Lia began to grumble again, Harlan5 said, ‘I really think you should listen to the vice admiral, Captain—’

  ‘Vice admiral? What vice admiral?’

  Stomlard shot Harlan5 a conspiratorial look, which Harlan5 took to mean he wanted the extent of his involvement in Trill’s star fleet kept secret. ‘Of an old Gorm mining barge,’ he said, grinning that serpentine grin again. ‘But a rank’s a rank, right?’

  ‘Do we have a visual yet?’

  ‘Coming up.’

  Stomlard tapped the screen, and three shapes appeared. The central one looked like a giant robotic squid, while the two on either side were thick blocks of metal with rounded front ends. ‘Well, that’s unexpected. It’s a deep-space lighthouse. Looks like it’s returning to the inner-system, perhaps for repairs, propelled by a couple of tug cruisers.’

  ‘A lighthouse,’ Lia said, nodding. ‘They used to build them by the hundreds after early Expansions, throwing them out into the deep space at the farthest reaches of systems to keep an eye out for ships like ours. Smugglers, pirates—’

  ‘And lost traders,’ Stomlard said. ‘Though, from the information coming through, I’d guess it’s not in operation.’

  ‘How do you know?’


  ‘Well, the strangest thing is that it’s neither sending nor receiving transmissions. None, of any kind. Almost as though its systems are completely scrambled. Our transmitters have identified its specifications and design, but for all we know, it could be abandoned.’

  ‘The tugs?’

  ‘Could be automated. No transmissions coming from those, either.’

  Lia stared at the screen. ‘Take us in,’ she said.

  ‘Captain, is that a good idea? My programming suggests—’

  ‘It’s neither receiving nor sending transmissions, right? Have you located that tracker yet?’

  ‘Working on it—’

  ‘Which means no.’

  Harlan5 put up a hand. ‘My programming would like to point out that it wishes something those recuperation capsules could fix was a lack of patience.’

  Lia glared at Stomlard as the engineer snorted a laugh, then aimed a kick at Harlan’s outer casing.

  ‘My fear is that Kyle Jansen is working with whoever owns the military arsenal we found hidden on that freighter. The GMP crosses the galaxy, but it’s just a policing force. It doesn’t have infinite resources. I’m not worried about having the GMP on my tail, because I know how to shake them. I’m worried about warlords, mercenaries, and worse. Until you find the tracker hidden on our ship, we’ve got to stay out of sight. And what better place to hide than a lighthouse caught inside a transmissions blockade?’

  Stomlard nodded. ‘She has a point,’ he said.

  Harlan5 looked as pained as a primitive garbage compactor droid could. ‘My programming still suggests it’s foolhardy.’

  Lia spread her arms. ‘Who’s the captain?’

  Harlan’s programming attempted to get the Boswell GT to perform a human-sigh. The sound came out crinkly, like foil being crushed.

  ‘I’ll set a course,’ he said.

  Lia put up a hand. ‘No, no. After last time, I think it’s best if Stomlard sets the course.’

  On the real-space visual screen, the towed lighthouse was a dot growing in size, the tugs still too small to see. Harlan5, whose emotional capabilities required manual selection, of course, stared at it without feeling anything. Had he been a human with a less headstrong attitude, however, his programming would have told him to feel very worried indeed.