Space Pioneers

by Hank Davis

  Vela smiled, teeth almost as white as Gant’s. “Is that all? Are you all they sent?”

  He was ready for the next slap, and rolled with it. The woman had an arm, but she was nothing next to the rebel on Janeiro who’d beaten the young Triaster Kalas of Maglona nearly to death when he refused to talk. “Didn’t find anyone else, did you?” Kalas asked, shrugging as if to say Doesn’t that answer your question?

  The woman smiled. “Those corporate sods are cheap.”

  A smile flickered over Kalas’s bruised face. She was sloppy. At least now he knew Gant was in the clear.

  “I assume this is what you’re after,” she said, slapping a heavy, white plastic crate a little more than a cubit to a side. She leaned against the edge of the desk. “Did you kill Sen?” Kalas didn’t answer. His silence was loud enough. “Seems like a lot of trouble to go to for a stack of human embryos.”

  “Ten thousand of them,” Kalas said, glancing over his shoulder at the monstrous figure with his white eyes. “You could have just bought them.”

  The Extrasolarian stepped forward—Kalas could hear the servos whining in his legs. “No need.”

  Kalas looked up into that dead, white face. He could see lights blinking in the black metal implants behind the creature’s right ear; still more shone from beneath the papery white skin. “What do you need them for?” Kalas asked, looking to the crate. “The children, I mean.” Silence from the woman and the machine man. “What?” he asked. “Won’t tell a dead man?”

  “You’re not a dead man.” Cold ceramic fingers stroked Kalas’s cheek, and he flinched away. “You’re coming with me. We need more men. You will serve nicely.”

  “I will not,” Kalas swore.

  “You will.” Giacomo patted Kalas on the cheek with one cold hand. He moved to stand in front of Kalas, between the old hunter and the woman at her desk. He crouched on his satyr’s legs and smiling, said, “You see, we’re a bit short-handed at the moment. We need good men . . . but they’re so hard to find.” His teeth were the same white as his eyes, and those eyes seemed to turn—how Kalas knew he couldn’t say—to look at the crate on the desk, “So much easier to make, mm?”

  Kalas was still enough the Imperial soldier to recoil. He thought of all the embryos frozen in that crate. They had been destined for some colonial world, to be raised by the few living colonists to inject genetic diversity into their growing population. They would grow up slaves instead, transfigured into something less than human to serve this pirate and his horrid captain. Looking at the man, Kalas could see why the Empire forbade such machinery. Giacomo was a monster.

  “You understand, don’t you?” Giacomo said, “Children are the future. But we cannot go on as we are.” He knocked on his metal chest to indicate his problem. “We need a next generation. New blood.”

  He found suddenly that he had nothing to say. Kalas had never been a great talker, but surely he ought to have said something. But there was nothing. He strained against his bonds, but nothing came. It was bad enough that someone would choose to destroy his own body the way this man had done—but to force such an existence on a hundred hundred lives?

  “What did you mean, no need?” Vela asked, interposing herself once more.

  It took Kalas’s muddied brain a moment to catch up. No need. He’d asked why the Extrasolarian hadn’t just bought the embryos from the Consortium directly . . . it was all too much. Kalas started laughing. Not loud, but softly to himself, shaking where he sat restrained by plastic ties. “He’s not going to pay you, you idiot,” he smiled up at her.

  Vela rounded on Giacomo, but the Extrasolarian was faster. One of his ceramic hands lashed out, catching Vela across the face even as he lanced out with one hoof—catching the seat of Kalas’s chair just between his knees—and kicked. Kalas went skidding back against the wall with a crash as Vela hit the edge of her desk and fell. Giacomo moved smoothly, reaching out of a hand to take the crate.

  Bang!

  Something hit Giacomo in the shoulder, shattering his arm. Bits of ceramic armor scattered on the air, carbon fiber tendons unraveling as the heavy machinery fell apart from the shoulder. A red alarm began to sound, indicating that the building’s air integrity was compromised.

  Bang!

  A second shot took Giacomo in the thigh, but succeeded there in only bending his leg out of shape. A second later Kalas saw the tell-tale glimmer of a shield’s energy curtain snap into being around the awful hybrid. A moment after that Kalas realized what was happening.

  Gant.

  The peacock had done it! He must have gone back to his vantage point after the communications went dead. Earth and Emperor! But he had dramatic timing! He must have been waiting, watching to see what happened, and seized his chance when he saw things start to fall apart. A third shot from the man’s magnetic acceleration rifle caromed clean off Giacomo’s body-shield and buried itself in an inner wall.

  “Untie me!” Kalas yelled, hoping to reach Vela where she still slumped shell-shocked at the foot of her desk. The Extrasolarian paid them no mind, but seized the crate with his one remaining hand and turned to go, limping badly on his bent leg. He looked at Kalas a moment—only a moment—and reached the door just as Vela’s guards were coming in, drawn by the sounds of scuffle. Giacomo kicked one square in the chest with his good leg, staggering as his damaged limb took his weight. The fellow hit the far wall of the corridor with such force that Kalas heard his skull crunch. The second man got a shot off, but the bullet shattered when it hit the Extrasolarian’s shield. Kalas didn’t see how he died.

  “Untie me!” he snarled. “Cut me loose, damn it!”

  Vela was slow to find her feet. She glared at him, hair falling across her face. She seemed almost not to comprehend him, but when she did at last, she clambered to her feet, stumbled towards him. “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “Just get me out.”

  He’d known, of course. Known what it was they were retrieving, what Dr. Sen had stolen, and what this woman had sold—or tried to sell—to the Extrasolarians. Growing new colonists was big business, and it wasn’t the first time a stock had gone missing in the Consortium’s long history. Ten thousand souls. Ten thousand lives yet unlived. Unless Kalas got free, they would be ten thousand slaves, twisted as Giacomo was twisted.

  Vela cut him loose, and Kalas stood, lurching as his muscles struggled to remember their proper function. He was still numb in places from the stunner fire, but his hands worked. Reminded by the alarm, he fished his nose-tubes out of the osmosis pack at his belt and threaded them into his nose, sucking deep breaths of oxygen. He stopped in the doorway. Were the lifts left or right? Belatedly, he realized he was unarmed, and stooped to examine the bodies of the dead men. One of them had a simple pistol, which Kalas discarded. Giacomo was shielded. Bullets were useless. But the other had a plasma burner, a heavy piece: gloss-black and threatening as the Extrasolarian himself. Its range was limited, but against a shielded opponent it was better than nothing.

  “I set you free!” Vela called after him. “You owe me!”

  Kalas looked back a moment. He ought to have shot her. Killed her. Had she been a man, he might have done just that. But it didn’t feel right shooting a woman, even a woman willing to sell human embryos to the Extras. Still, he raised the plasma burner to make his point. She froze.

  He walked away, hurried after the injured chimera. There were deep gouges in the hard plastic floor where Giacomo’s injured hoof cut in, and three bodies between Kalas and the lifts. It only took a moment for one of the lift carriages to arrive, and Kalas punched the button for the roof.

  When he’d been a soldier, he’d fancied himself a knight. The sort of paladin they sang about in the old songs, the sort of hero who gave himself to the people—who safeguarded the helpless and protected those who could not protect themselves. The more time he spent in the Imperial service, the more Kalas realized that real knights were no such men. They were men, the same as all the rest
, and he was only a man himself. A killer now. But he’d realized, too, just how much the world needed real knights. Real heroes. Or needed to believe in them.

  He needed to believe in them.

  As he checked the charge in his plasma burner—checked the heat sink and the gas reserve—Kalas fancied himself a knight once more. It wasn’t exactly a princess he was saving, but there was a tower with a dragon at its top. Maybe he was only a hired dog, but it seemed to him that there were lives on the line. Ten thousand lives unlived. And if he didn’t act the knight, who would?

  The doors opened.

  The lift had played the role of airlock, and Kalas wasted no time. Dead ahead, the Extrasolarian was limping across twenty yards of open space, his one remaining hand still clasping the storage crate. Directly opposite, a ramp seemed to disappear into nothingness, rising from the far edge of the rooftop into the night. Kalas could almost see the shimmer of the cloaked Extrasolarian ship. How it hid itself he couldn’t speculate, and he didn’t care.

  He was close enough.

  He raised both hands and aimed, the plasma burner in one, Dr. Sen’s antique autorevolver in the other. The hammer back, it was an easy thing to fire the old-fashioned pistol. The handgun jumped in his hand, and the bullet caught Giacomo between the shoulder blades. It caromed off his shield, but the shot surprised the chimera, and he turned, snarling, teeth and eyes so white they were almost blue in the night light. They glowed violet as the plasma burned forth, chasing magnetic lines in a great arc like the blades of chainsaw, shooting out and curling back again from the plasma burner’s mouth like the bow of a solar flare. Blue and violet, half as bright as Kanthi’s pale sun.

  Kalas had aimed for the creature’s face, for the parts of him that were still flesh—still human. The energy shield could absorb the kinetic energy of impact, but the air plasma burned hot as the surface of a dwarf star, and that heat at least would radiate across a shield’s curtain and cook the pirate like lobster in his shell. But when the glow died down, Kalas saw Giacomo still standing. His pale face had vanished, was lost beneath a caul of white ceramic that shut over his face like a giant eyelid.

  “You nearly got me, boy,” the Extrasolarian said, “that’s promising.” The visor retracted, folding back up over Giacomo’s face and forehead. “You’re not bad, you know? You’d make a fine addition to our crew!”

  “Why would I want to do that?” Kalas asked, both weapons still pointed directly at the Extrasolarian. Where was Gant? If he was still watching, the other hunter should have seen what was going on. He should have gone for the flier.

  “Eternal life!”

  “Like you?” Kalas asked, taking in the dented horror of the man’s metal body. “No thanks.”

  “Very well!” The Extrasolarian let the crate with its stock of human lives slide to the ground, arm lengthening to deposit its cargo. “Suit yourself!” He leaped forward, faster than Kalas could have believed on his damaged leg. The old hunter threw himself backwards, firing the old-fashioned handgun on reflex. The bullets all shattered against Giacomo’s shield, filling the air between them with shrapnel.

  What had he been thinking? The man was more than half machine. Stronger, faster, more resilient than any mortal man. What chance did an old soldier from Maglona have against such a one?

  A knight, indeed.

  The handgun clicked—empty—and desperate Kalas threw it at the chimera. It pinged off Giacomo’s head, but the man kept coming, reaching out with his one remaining hand. Hard fingers seized Kalas by the shirt front, lifted him bodily into the air. For a moment, Kalas feared to lose his nose-tubes, but he had bigger problems. He pounded uselessly against Giacomo’s armored torso as the man pivoted, hurling Kalas across the plastic rooftop. He tried to get a bead on the Extrasolarian and right himself at the same time. No good. The chimera was too fast, despite his injuries. He seized Kalas again, by the throat this time, iron fingers implacable as the crush of tectonic plates. He raised Kalas up before him, and Kalas could sense the man’s smile even through that blank white plane he called a face.

  “You could have been so much more, little man,” he said, squeezing. “I don’t think you get it. There’s no place for us out here, not like we are. Look at you. Can’t even breathe in the world you call home. We’re the future humanity needs. Not the Empire, not you! We’re the ones who can survive what’s out there!”

  Though he could hardly breathe, Kalas managed to croak one word, one single word, “Doubt . . .” And on that note he jammed the muzzle of his plasma burner through the man’s shield and into the ragged hole in his chassis left by the ragged ruin of his shattered arm.

  And fired.

  The plasma chewed through Giacomo’s innards, melting wires and sending ugly tongues of black smoke curling out through slits in his pale torso. Kalas winced as he felt the skin on his hand sear from radiated heat. He tried to cry out—to scream—but the pressure on his throat stopped his voice with his breath. Until it didn’t. Giacomo released him, and with a cry more of surprise now than pain, Kalas fell to the ground at the Extrasolarian’s feet. Giacomo took a step backwards before keeling over.

  Silent.

  Dead?

  Kalas found his knees, his feet. He’d dropped the plasma burner, and clutched his burned hand to his chest, cradling it delicately so the oozing flesh didn’t touch anything. The mere touch of the air was agony, and he grit his teeth. There was the plasma burner, not three paces from where he’d fallen. He stooped and collected it.

  The crate wasn’t far—was right where Giacomo had left it, just near the base of the ramp to his unseen ship. With his left hand fouled up, Kalas shoved the weapon into the pocket of his coat and picked the crate up with his good hand. It must have weighed forty pounds. Maybe fifty. He stopped a moment, breathing deeply. He forgot to breathe in through his nose a moment, and felt suddenly lightheaded.

  He needed to go.

  “Gant!” he said, and remembered—too late—that his comms patch and earpiece had been taken away when he was stunned. He sighed. The lifts then. He turned to go.

  The whine of a flier’s repulsors filled the night, and a bright light came streaking down from the heavens above. Kalas whirled, helpless with his weapon in his coat pocket. Gant’s flier barreled down out of the darkness, flying low and fast. Kalas had a brief impression of a white-armored figure leaping towards him, one hand outstretched.

  Giacomo.

  The Extrasolarian wasn’t dead after all, but lumbering towards him across the open rooftop. Gant’s flier collided with the chimera at full speed, knocking the Extrasolarian off his course. Giacomo tumbled through the air, soaring like a payload dropped out of the back of a shuttle in the moments before the parachutes engage.

  He didn’t fly far.

  Something broke inside the machine-man’s chest. Some containment field or fuel cell. A moment later Giacomo exploded, the white-armored man transformed into a ball of white light. The sound of it crushed Kalas’s eardrums, the force of it blew him from his feet, and he flew—and Gant’s flier flew with him—back over the edge of the building.

  He was a long time falling. The crate was still in his hand. A cool, detached piece of himself nodded in approval. It wouldn’t matter anyway. He felt certain that he wouldn’t live to collect the reward. No matter. He had lived a lived a life of violence. And violent lives should end violently. At least Gant would be all right. At least they’d won in the end.

  Kalas hit the ground a moment after and sank through it. The shock of impact knocked the wind from him and made him release the handle to the refrigerated crate. Something was wrong. Or right. He wasn’t dead, but he couldn’t breathe either. There were hard pincers on his throat again, strong as the hands of the Extra had been.

  Water.

  He had landed in one of the great fishery vats that stood open beneath the Narayan building.

  He was underwater.

  Something brushed past him in the deep, green darkness. Another
.

  He tried to breathe through his nose-tubes, but nothing came. Which way was the surface? Which way was up? Another something swam past him. It touched his wounded arm, and the pain sharpened his vision. Green light and red filtered up towards him past his boots. Up? No. Down. He’d fallen in head first. And the payload? It must have sunk to the bottom. The bottom?

  Another something—something silver—flickered past his eyes.

  A fish. Of course it was a fish.

  He might have laughed. He found fish on Kanthi after all.

  And soon enough someone would have to come fishing for him.

  QUIETUS

  by Ross Rocklynne

  Explorers will take their hometowns with them in their head; they won’t be able to help it. Which could lead to misunderstandings, even tragic ones, when they forget that they’re not back on the block and misinterpret a situation, whether on another continent or another planet, and act accordingly—and wrongly. Which will likely be just as true if the explorers are not human . . .

  The creatures from Alcon saw from the first that Earth, as a planet, was practically dead; dead in the sense that it had given birth to life, and was responsible, indirectly, for its almost complete extinction.

  “This type of planet is the most distressing,” said Tark, absently smoothing down the brilliantly colored feathers of his left wing. “I can stand the dark, barren worlds which never have, and probably never will, hold life. But these that have been killed by some celestial catastrophe! Think of what great things might have come from their inhabitants.”

  As he spoke thus to his mate, Vascar, he was marking down in a book the position of this planet, its general appearance from space, and the number and kind of satellites it supported.

  Vascar, sitting at the controls, both her claws and her vestigial hands at work, guided the spherical ship at slowly decreasing speed toward the planet Earth. A thousand miles above it, she set the craft into an orbital motion, and then proceeded to study the planet, Tark setting the account into his book, for later insertion into the Astronomical Archives of Alcon.