by Chris Ward
Lia took the lead, blasters taken from the dead guards in each hand, the piece of circuit board tucked into her clothes. Caladan came behind, lugging the Boswell’s head with him.
‘This thing’s heavier than it looks,’ he muttered, as Lia let them out through the airlock.
Freezing air wrapped itself around them. Trill System’s star was dipping below the ridgeline.
‘Move,’ she shouted. ‘We don’t have much light left.’
They ran through the snow. Lia realized she’d picked up a nick from a blaster during the firefight, and a gash had opened up on her thigh. The air, where it touched the wound, sent shivers through her.
‘I can’t see the ship!’ she shouted. ‘Where’s it gone?’
Caladan’s laugh from behind her was nearly hysterical. ‘You fixed the camouflage, remember? At least we know it works.’
Lights appeared behind them, flickering across the sky. A cluster of fighters dipped and rose over the hills like birds rising and falling on the wind.
‘Down!’ Caladan shouted, pushing Lia to the ground and falling on top of her as the fighters appeared over the nearest ridgeline. ‘Remote drones. They’ll have heat sensors. A good job it’s so cold I can feel the skin on my back stripping off.’
The fighters dropped over the next ridge. Lia climbed up out of the snow and looked around, but could see nothing.
‘Where’s the ship? Don’t you have a remote or something?’
Caladan shook his head. ‘Everything I had got shot up. That cave up ahead—that should keep us out of sight.’
They struggled on as the wind rattled around them, blowing veils of ice shards into their faces. Lia was the first to the cave entrance, but as she made it, she turned around, waving her hands.
‘It’s the Matilda!’ she shouted. ‘The ice has nearly covered it!’
The metal struts of the Matilda’s landing gear stuck up out of a drift of blown ice shards nearly waist deep. Lia kicked her way through it and operated a hatchway control. With a strained groan, the hatch dropped open. She turned, looking for Caladan, and saw him lying face down in the snow.
‘Caladan!’
A strafe of cannon fire raked the ground nearby. As the fighters passed overhead, Lia ran to Caladan and hauled him up.
‘Got my foot caught in a fissure—’
‘They’re coming back!’
‘I’m aware of that. Help me get out!’
Lia tugged on Caladan’s arm, but his foot was caught. Overhead, lights filled the sky again as the fighters made another sweep.
‘I could shoot it up with my blaster, but they’ll see the blast flare,’ Lia said. ‘Pass me that head.’
‘What?’
‘Harlan’s head! Here!’
Lia jerked it out of Caladan’s hand, then with a howl, she slammed it down on the ice around his foot.
‘They’re coming back!’
She lifted the head again, baring her teeth. All through her coursed a sense of frustration and anger, that no matter how hard she tried, nothing ever worked out the way it should.
Imagining Raylan Climlee’s eyes in the blank stare of the robot head, she slammed it down once more.
Lights blazed over them as the fighters appeared again. Lia grabbed Caladan’s jacket and jerked him sideways a moment before cannon fire exploded across the ground.
‘Quick, move!’
She pushed him in front of her into the hatchway, then turned, lifting her blaster.
‘Leave us alone!’ she screamed, raking the nearest fighters with photon fire. Most missed or deflected off the shields, but one scored a direct hit, and a fighter spiraled into the ground, exploding against a wall of rock.
Behind her, the Matilda was lifting off the ground, showers of ice cascading off her casing to pile around Lia. Lights blinked on and the air began to warm as the lower thrusters engaged. Lia dived for the gangway hovering at head height, pulling herself up as the Matilda’s cannons turned on their attackers. They made light work of the drone fighters, but as they rose higher over the Parlow base, she saw larger ships taking to the air.
By the time she reached the bridge, Caladan was strapped into the pilot’s chair and leaning over the controls, his face deep in concentration as flakes of frozen blood melted and dripped down over the dashboard.
‘Looks like the word’s out,’ Caladan said. ‘The whole fleet is coming around to give us a proper goodbye party. If I were you, I’d get that chip hooked up somewhere to see if it’s any use. If there’s anything worth transmitting, we need to get it off quick. We’re not likely to survive this.’
Lia stared at his grim expression, then wiped tears from her eyes. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘That’s not the Caladan I hired, is it? You’re always telling me this ship is something special. I’ve fixed it up for you and everything. Come on, prove it.’
‘Looks like our old friend Raylan has sold his tiny little soul out to the Shadowmen as well as the Barelaon,’ Caladan said. ‘We’ve got two troop carrier cruisers directly ahead. I’m arming everything we’ve got. We’ll blast our way through or go down in a blaze of glory.’
‘Tell me when I need to hang on.’
‘Soon, very soon.’
Lia plugged the circuit board into an instrument reader. Lines of code began to appear on a screen.
‘We’ve got something,’ she shouted, transferring the data through a filter into a format she could understand. ‘It’s the coordinates for an unused wormhole near Feint that will allow ships in the system to escape. It’s not much, but it’s something.’
‘Broadcast it,’ Caladan shouted back. ‘Send it out with an emergency transmission. Give what people you can a chance to get away.’
Lia frantically began tapping commands, but a red warning light flashed. ‘That fleet’s blocking our transmitters,’ she said. ‘We can’t send anything.’
‘Engaging,’ Caladan said. ‘Get in your seat. Let’s see just how well that engineer you hired fixed this old girl up.’
Lia pulled the instrument reader after her, hooking an arm through a seat strap a moment before the Matilda went into a roll, dodging incoming cannon fire as Caladan flew them straight into the heart of Raylan’s star fleet.
‘Over there, to the left,’ Caladan said. ‘A group of fighters from Cable have engaged the main body of the fleet. My word, they’re brave. They have no chance.’
‘Might be a rival warlord,’ Lia said, trying to untangle herself from the strap to get into the seat properly. ‘If Raylan takes control of the planet he’ll clean them out.’
The Matilda shuddered as her guns blazed. Through the real-space visual screens, Lia watched a cluster of attacking fighters explode, their debris scattering.
‘How did you do that? I thought I was the gunner.’
‘Remote targeting.’ Caladan grinned, then prodded a button under the dashboard. ‘This button here. It never used to work, but that engineer you hired got busy. I’ll teach you if we survive this.’
‘That cruiser’s turning its guns on us!’
‘I see it, I see it.’
A massive oval of grey and white was slowly turning in their direction. Farther out across the star fleet, clouds of what looked like smoke were coming closer.
‘Are those what I think they are?’
Caladan nodded. ‘Remote drone fighters. Thousands of them. Quickly, get that circuit board loaded up again. I have a plan.’
‘What?’
‘We scramble the transmission. They’ll lose it, think it’s white noise, background radiation. Some might slip through, hopefully, enough. If other ships pick up the coordinates, they’ll re-transmit them. Get it set up. I’ll bring us in as close as I can to that cruiser where its background radiation will be highest.’
Lia’s fingers panicked as she pulled up the data then set the encoder. She tried not to think of her husband and son and their terrified eyes as they faced the guns of Raylan’s guards.
‘I mourned you,�
� she said through gritted teeth. ‘I mourned you. I can’t go through that again.’
‘Have you done it yet?’ Caladan shouted as the Matilda shook, taking fire. A wall of grey-white dotted with cannon flashes filled the real-space visual screens. ‘Hurry up! This is our only chance!’
How many more would line up? How many more innocents would Raylan’s soldiers line up and cut down, if she couldn’t get this transmission away? Trill System’s only chance was help from the rest of the Estron Quadrant. If the system was cut off, and the only remaining wormhole access was controlled by Raylan and the Barelaon, its billions of people were as good as dead.
‘It’s not about me,’ she whispered. ‘It’s not about me … but I’m so, so sorry….’
Her finger shook as it hovered above the control.
‘Shoot it!’ Caladan screamed.
Lia pressed the button. Nothing appeared to happen, but lines of data began scrolling across her screen. She squinted, trying to concentrate as the Matilda swung alongside the cruiser, her cannons raking the surface even as volley after volley of return fire flashed across the visuals. Caladan was screaming, but on his face was a vicious grin, the kind she remembered, the kind she loved.
‘What are you doing?’
The Matilda had began to hum, her spinning battery of cannons twisting and reverting back into the elongated shape the ship used for high speed cruising.
‘Find us somewhere to hide,’ Caladan said. ‘Anywhere. A moon, a space station, anything you can before they shut the wormholes down.’
Raylan’s star fleet fell behind them as Caladan switched full power to the rear thrusters. The force of the acceleration pushed Lia back into her seat, her hands fighting the invisible G-force as she tried to pull up coordinates on her computer. Harlan5 had always been responsible for setting their courses and finding wormhole coordinates, his database holding all publicly available wormhole information. Without it, they were just lines of code on a screen.
‘Come on,’ Caladan said. ‘There must be somewhere we can reach before we run out of fuel. Anything to give us a head start.’
A line of code flashed on Lia’s screen, blinking green to show it was useable. ‘Found one. I don’t have any available data. It’s old, perhaps dating to one of the early Expansions.’
‘Anything will do,’ Caladan said. ‘We just have to get out of Trill System. Hold on now—I’ll take us in.’
On the visuals, nothing appeared to change, but there was a sudden dip in the timbre of the engines. Lia watched the stars, waiting for the telltale blur as they passed from one system to another.
‘We’ve arrived,’ Caladan said, a few minutes later.
‘Where are we?’
Caladan peered at his screen. ‘Huh, what would you know? Frail System.’
Lia sighed. ‘I guess it’ll be good place to lie low for a while until we can figure out what to do.’
Caladan smiled as he peered out into space.
‘It’s not such a bad place,’ he said. ‘Once you get used to it.’
34
Caladan
Trying to negotiate with off-worlders who didn’t speak the common tongue could be troublesome, particularly when trying to gesture using only one arm. With a sigh, Caladan wiped a fine coating of dust from his forehead and pointed at the tall body of the maintenance droid, rubbing his fingers together.
‘How much for this one?’
The off-worlder, a globular thing that looked like a Gorm with human arms, made a series of clicking noises.
Caladan held up a card. ‘Well, okay, let’s see if this works. If not, we’ll figure something out. And do you think it’s possible to install a memory database for me?’
The creature clicked again, its arms flapping like an Earth-chicken optimistically trying to fly.
‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ Caladan said. ‘A pleasure doing business.’
Half an hour later, the off-worlder led Caladan out of a waiting room where a rattling air-con unit had done its best to ward off the excessive heat from Frail System’s star. The off-worlder’s minions had brought the droid out of the workshop and stood it on the sand by the road, as though the deal was already done.
‘Start it up,’ Caladan said.
Lights flickered on inside the droid’s visual receptors, and chrome-plated shoulders shrugged as though testing out their surroundings.
‘Robot? Are you in there?’
The head turned toward him. ‘Caladan? The pilot? My name is Harlan5, reporting back for duty.’
Caladan grinned. ‘What does your programming tell you?’
‘It tells me that I’ve just woken up from a long and distressing dream.’
Caladan laughed. ‘Sounds about right. I hope you like your new body. It’s the best I could find on this scorched lump of rock.’
‘My programming tells me it’s a vast improvement on the previous one.’
‘For sure. Come on, we have to find the captain. She went off to trawl the bars for information, but it would be useful to catch up with her before she gets into a fight or laid, or both.’
Lia was drunk again, slumped in a chair in front of a visual screen showing images broadcast out of Trill System of the apparent takeover of Feint. Caladan sat down beside her then ordered a drink.
‘What’s going on?’
‘We failed,’ she slurred. ‘The Barelaon have taken Feint, and Raylan’s fleet have taken Cable. It’ll be a matter of Earth-weeks before the rest of the system is under his control. Then I guess it’s a case of dividing it up as food for the Barelaon, play pens for the Evattlan, and a torture chamber for himself.’
‘We didn’t fail,’ Caladan said. ‘We broadcast enough wormhole coordinates to prevent the system being completely annexed, and when the droid blasted the terminal in the Records Depository it set off a handful of emergency transmissions which revealed several deep space wormholes that the people can use to evacuate. We saved billions of people, and without us, there would be no visual footage, nothing. Destroying that Barelaon Helix is someone else’s battle.’
‘I was mentioned by name,’ Lia said. ‘I was named as a commander in Raylan’s fleet, and a turncoat, a traitor, as if I wasn’t hunted enough already. He’s not giving up. He’s intent on doing to me what he did to my family.’
‘You didn’t see them die,’ Caladan said. ‘You have no proof they were even there. They could have been projections, clones, anything.’
Lia slammed a glass down on the tabletop. ‘And until I see them in the flesh, I can’t know. We have to go back.’
‘Small problem with that—the stasis-ultraspace coordinator drive got burned through during that little firefight. I didn’t know until I ran some checks. We’re trapped in Frail System until we can get it fixed.’
Lia sighed, arching her head back over the top of her chair. ‘Where can we do that in this hellhole system?’
Caladan grinned. ‘Well, as it happens, I know some people who might be able to help….’
END
Glossary of Characters
Major Characters
Lianetta (Lia) Jansen – former captain in the Galactic Military Police (GMP), now a rogue trader / mercenary and captain of the ship the Matilda.
Caladan – Farsi (human sub-species), one-armed, bearded, disgraced pilot on the Matilda.
Harlan5 – multi-purpose humanoid droid in the service of Lianetta Jansen onboard the Matilda.
Minor Characters
Al-Thith, Thith – Shadowman commander in Raylan Climlee’s navy.
Boswell GT – trash compactor and general cleaning robot.
Climlee, Raylan – warlord of the Human-Minion sub-species—a human infused with the genetics of a domestic cat—trioxyglobin trader, later Trill System governor and independent trade advisor to the Trill System Government as a member of the Trill System Independent Trade Council.
Dun Olind, Olin – Gorm, curator of a deep space lighthouse from Yool-4 System.
Jansen, Andrew – Lia’s son, presumed dead.
Jansen, Kyle– GMP General and Lia’s brother-in-law.
Jansen, Stephen – Lia’s husband, presumed dead.
Lorena – Luminosi, Solwig’s daughter.
O’Faln, Cote – warlord from Cable in Trill System.
Solwig – leader of the Luminosi on Cloven-1 in Frail System.
Teagan3 – female killer robot encountered on the GMP outpost in Trill System.
Vothstul, Deen – warlord specializing in bionetics trade from Cable in Trill System.
Ur-Larn’d, Stomlard – Karpali, former space fleet admiral encountered in Tantol on Seen in the Trill System. Now unemployed engineer.
Glossary of Systems
Systems, planets and cities in the Fire Quarter (Estron Quadrant)
Areola System
Iris – main inhabited planet, 1.02 of Earth gravity, three times Old-Earth’s size; cities include Louis Town (domed capital).
Dove – inhabited planet.
Event System
Larsisus – marsh world.
Rogue – metal-based synthetic planet, location of major Estron Quadrant shipyards.
Frail System
Cloven-1 – moon of See-Sar; location of a starship development base for the Phevian Navy
Cloven-2 – moon of See-Sar, home of the Luminosi
See-Sar – gas giant
Vattla – feudal world, home of the Evattlans
Quaxar System
Bryant – inhabitable planet.
Compar 8 – inhabited moon, trading outpost; cities include Ford Town.
Phevius System
Brentar – Fire planet
Loam – Fire planet
Galanth – synthetic machine world
Vantar – Prison Moon
Trill System
Feint – main inhabited planet
