Starship Home

by Morphett, Tony

  The insect spoke in the flat metallic voice characteristic of Slarn translation equipment. ‘Where did you get this?’ it asked.

  ‘I am the Sullivan Himself,’ he replied, ‘and I said let me go.’ Instantly pain surged through his body, penetrating his very bones, and he cried out.

  ‘Your pulse and respiration rates are being monitored,’ said the insect. ‘Direct and truthful answers to our questions will not hurt. Anything else including silence will be met with pain. Do you understand?’

  The Sullivan Himself understood scarcely a word of what the Slarn marine had said, but knew the expected answer. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘I am called far and wide by my own Horde and by lesser beings beyond the Horde The Sullivan Himself, Destroyer of Cities, Flail of God.’

  ‘And what is your job description?’ The Sullivan Himself frowned his incomprehension. The Slarn marine tried again. ‘What is your trade?’

  ‘Warlord.’

  The marine held up the Slarnstaff. ‘Now I ask again. Where did you get this?’

  ‘One of my followers found it..’

  On the bridge of the starship, Zoe, Harold, Zachary and Meg watched as Guinevere monitored the interrogation as it was being transmitted to the Slarn mothership in stationary orbit. ‘It was dropped by a member of a salt party crossing my turf,’ the Sullivan Himself went on.

  ‘And who were these people?’

  ‘Forester people travelling under Troll escort.’

  ‘I’m disgusted,’ said Zachary, ‘the wimp can’t take the slightest pain, he’s telling them everything!’

  ‘And where did they get it from?’ asked the Slarn marine interrogator.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Makes you sick,’ Zachary said, ‘they come on so macho, the police get ‘em in a back room and they start singing like canary birds!’

  In the Slarn skimmer, the marine interrogator looked at one of his colleagues who had been monitoring the equipment. ‘The equipment’s working, he’s telling the truth.’

  ‘Trolls. Forester people,’ mused the interrogator.

  ‘You will now release me,’ said the Sullivan Himself.

  ‘When we’re ready,’ said the interrogator and then turned and struck his right fist to the left side of his chest, and transmission faded.

  Meg moved for the doorway. ‘Got to tell the Don,’ she said.

  Zoe was following her. ‘And Our Mother,’ she said, ‘My fault, leaving the Slarnstaff, my fault.’

  ‘Wait on!’ said Zachary, ‘You can’t go out there while the Slarn are everywhere!’

  Meg turned on him. ‘You heard him. They’ll be going after the Trolls and Forester People next and we have a duty to warn them.’ And they left the bridge.

  ‘Duty,’ sighed Zachary. ‘Apart from honor, my least favorite word in the dictionary. Every time I hear it I know I’m in deep trouble.’ He turned to Harold. ‘Come on Harold, duty calls. You go with Zoe, I’ll ride herd on Mad Meg.’ And they left the bridge, missing Guinevere’s wry chuckle at Zachary’s words.

  Zoe and Meg had just emerged from the starship when Marlowe appeared from the scrub on the other side of the clearing, accompanied by the Eldest Looter and leading a party of Looters carrying old sheets of corrugated roofing iron. At the sight of this party, Zoe and Meg stopped in fright, preparing to flee back into the starship, until Marlowe shouted, ‘It’s all right! They come in peace, bringing iron for Guinevere.’

  ‘Who Guinevere?’ asked the Eldest, his tone suggesting that things were about to get nasty.

  ‘For Dark One,’ said Marlowe, correcting himself hurriedly.

  ‘Dark One eat,’ said the Eldest with some degree of satisfaction.

  Harold and Zachary now ran from the starship, and without another word Zoe and Harold took off in the direction of the village, while Zachary and Meg headed for Trollcastle. A moment later the Wyzen ran out, took one startled look at Marlowe and the Looters, and instantly disappeared into the undergrowth on the far side of the clearing.

  Marlowe now instructed the Looters to deposit the iron sheeting in a pile in the clearing, and then said to the Eldest, ‘The iron must now be brought inside the god. You will have the honor of helping me, but these others must stay outside the holy of holies.’

  ‘Or they be foods,’ the Eldest said.

  Marlowe nodded in agreement. The old maniac’s back on his favorite subject, he thought. ‘Or they be foods, quite so.’

  In the feeding chamber, the hatch sealing off the feeding pit slid back as Marlowe and the Eldest entered with the first load of iron. The Eldest was entranced with what he had so far seen of the starship. ‘Dark One much better now,’ he crooned, ‘Dark One big. Dark One strong. Know why Dark one must eat so much.’ He peered down into the pit. ‘Dark One cooking pot. Fit many foods inside.’

  He was leaning so far over the pit that Marlowe feared that the Eldest might end up as food for his own god, so to distract him he gestured and said, ‘To the Eldest the honor of feeding Dark one first.’ The Eldest took the hint and with a great show of dignity, slid his load of roofing iron into the pit. ‘Dark One,’ he intoned, ‘I give you iron make your teeth and claws strong. In return you give Human Race many foods to eat!’ Vapor rose, and there were bubbling and hissing sounds as Guinevere consumed the iron. The Eldest drew a deep breath of the fumes rising from the pit. ‘Dark One has excellent breath.’

  The Looters were sitting in a rough circle in the clearing when Marlowe and the Eldest emerged from the starship to get their next load of iron. The Eldest was radiant, like some latter-day Moses coming down from Mount Sinai. ‘Many mysteries I tell you later!’ he proclaimed. ‘Mystery of Dark One’s sacred cooking pot! Mystery of Iron Castle!’ And then he and Marlowe picked up more iron to take inside.

  The Foresters’ village was seemingly deserted when Zoe and Harold ran into it, though a close observer might have discerned faces peering from within the dark interiors of the huts. They ran directly to Helena’s hut and entered, only to find Helena sitting on her chair of office, facing three Slarn marines, each holding a Forester Person, one of whom was Maze! They had entered in the middle of a conversation, and one of the marines was saying in the flat metallic tones of its translator equipment, ‘You may have these prisoners back when we have our answer.’ And then, as they watched, and before they could act, the three Slarn marines and their captives dematerialized. One moment they were there, the next gone.

  ‘We came to warn you,’ said Zoe.

  ‘They’re looking for their starship, and for you,’ Helena told her, and there was a world of disapproval in her voice.

  ‘They can’t have Maze. They can’t! She’s got the Talent to be a starship! They’ll take her, and make her like Guinevere, her mind and soul trapped forever in some huge metal thing! You should’ve told them where we were!’

  ‘You think I wouldn’t have sacrificed you for my Clan? Even you, my sister? Of course I would have. But the Don fancies himself ‘in love’ as the young call it, with the teacher Meg, and had I sacrificed her the Don would have taken his vengeance on us all. We would have paid in blood.’

  ‘But Maze!’ Zoe was heart-broken at the thought of the fate that awaited her little niece.

  ‘Maze has her Talent and an understanding beyond her years. This will be the first testing of them. She may survive. She may do very well indeed.’

  Meg and Zachary were now running up the hill toward Trollcastle while inside, as Trollwarriors stood by on full alert, the Don sat at the high table, poring over a map of the district with Father John, Rocky and Ulf. Ulf pointed to the map. ‘The Sullivans hit here, then they hit the village, so if I were them I’d try and drive a wedge through here next.’ A voice from the speaking tube interrupted. ‘Sir Zachary and the Lady Meg on their way in.’ The Don took the speaking tube. ‘Admit them.’ And then he looked back at the map, when suddenly three Slarn marines materialized in the Hall! Two
covered the warriors with their Slarnstaffs as the third moved up to the high table. Immediately a warrior turned to a rope dangling from the ceiling and pulled on it and somewhere in the castle a bell tolled the alarm until one of the Slarn marines zapped the warrior unconscious.

  Meanwhile the marine who had gone to the high table was showing the Don his Slarnstaff. ‘Someone in this region has been using one of these. A horse barbarian named the Sullivan Himself and a lot of other made-up titles claims it came from a salt party of Forester People which was crossing Sullivan turf under Troll escort.’

  ‘A Sullivan has never been known to tell the truth,’ the Don replied.

  ‘Have you ever seen such a thing?’

  The Don rose to his feet. ‘You come into my castle without permission, armed and armored for war. You do not tell me who you are. So know that I am the ruler of this country, and if your ruler wishes to sit down with me and parley, then that may be arranged. Or if his kingdom is far away, then he can send an ambassador. But I am Don Costello and I do not answer questions from passing strangers!’

  Before the marine could answer, a section of Troll warriors with swords drawn rushed into the Hall in response to the warning bell, and made straight for the two Slarn marines who were holding the other warriors at bay. Instantly the marines deployed their Slarnstaffs on stun and panned them across the charging warriors, who went down like clanging, armored skittles. Ulf, always ready to fight, whipped out his sword and was moving on the marine who had been talking to the Don, but his intended victim turned his Slarnstaff on Ulf and held him at bay with a tractor beam. It was as if an invisible pole was suddenly thrust into Ulf’s chest. The marine looked at the Don and said, ‘we’ll take this one with us. When you tell us what you know, you can have your man back.’ And then he and his two fellows dematerialized, taking Ulf with them.

  Father John began moving among the prostrate Troll warriors, checking their pulses, making sure they were alive, and then Meg and Zachary burst into the hall and ran to the high table. ‘They’ve already been here?’ Meg gasped, gesturing at the unconscious warriors. ‘We came to warn you.’

  The Don fixed Zachary with a steely gaze. ‘I blame you for this, Zachary. Letting women you’re responsible for run around like savages when they should be safely under lock and key.’

  Meg flushed with anger. ‘I don’t have to take that patriarchal garbage from some jumped up Mafioso…’ she began and then was stopped by the pain she could read on the Don’s face. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘They’ve got Ulf,’ he said. ‘They’ve taken my oldest, truest friend.’

  At that moment, a messenger panted into the hall with news of the strange Slarn vessel which had been spotted in the grasslands north of the forest.

  68: PUT TO THE QUESTION

  When Zoe and Harold got back to the starship they found the Looters sitting around listlessly waiting. Of the roofing iron they had brought with them there was now no sign, but as they passed the Looters, there were murmurs of appreciation, mainly about what good foods they would make. Zoe whispered to Harold, ‘They sound just like Year 12 boys,’ and then, realizing with a guilty jolt that all the Year 12 boys she had once known were probably now dead on some Slarn slave planet elsewhere in the galaxy, she hurried into the starship, with Harold at her heels.

  As they entered the starship, Marlowe and the Eldest were in the feeding chamber, consigning the last of the iron into Guinevere’s feeding pit. ‘What next?’ asked the Eldest.

  ‘Charcoal,’ said Marlowe, ‘the weight of four men.’

  ‘Four bony men? Or four plump, juicy delicious men?’

  Sometimes Marlowe wondered whether the Eldest ever thought of anything else. ‘Four plump juicy men,’ he answered, consciously avoiding the term “delicious”.

  ‘It shall be done.’

  On the bridge, Harold and Zoe were reporting to Guinevere the news of Maze’s abduction by the Slarn. Guinevere was disturbed by the news. She had been monitoring radio traffic between the Slarn skimmer and its mothership far out in space, and already knew that the Slarn had taken a Troll warrior and three Forester People, one of them a child, but she had not known that the child was Maze. ‘Alas, poor child,’ she said, ‘if they test her for the Talent, she may end as I am’, And then she broke off as, on one of the screens, appeared an image of Ulf, immobilized on the Slarn skimmer’s interrogation couch.

  The Slarn interrogator was showing Ulf the Slarnstaff and in its flat, metallic translated voice it was asking him if he knew where it came from. ‘I defy you!’ shouted Ulf, which was not exactly an answer to the question they were asking. His defiance was answered with a lightning bolt of pain surging through his every sinew. Ulf took it like a true Troll trying, as best he might, not to let his reaction show.

  On the bridge of the starship, Guinevere was impressed. ‘What steadfast knights the Don doth have,’ she murmured, and then a voice from behind her said, ‘There’s that idiot Ulf.’ They turned. Marlowe had entered the bridge and was looking at the screen, as Ulf bellowed, ‘A coward’s weapon! Fit only for Sullivans and Looters!’ And this time the pain level was set so high that he grunted at it.

  ‘I thank thee for the iron, Marlowe,’ said Guinevere and he nodded, and told her that the Looters had now gone to fetch charcoal. But his attention was firmly on the screen and Ulf’s interrogation. ‘What’s Ulf doing in a Slarn skimmer?’

  ‘Hostage,’ said Harold.

  ‘Give me a blade,’ Ulf was saying, ‘and you have a blade, and we shall see who the real warrior is!’

  The Slarn interrogator sighed. ‘We’ve got a real throwback with this one,’ he said, and then turned back to Ulf. ‘Try and get this into your dumb head. Every time you don’t answer our question we will hurt you. And this can go on for as long as we like.’

  ‘You say that the call of honor lies in not answering your questions? I hear that call and obey it!’

  The Slarn looked at him. The interrogator finally summed it up. ‘Old style Grade A barbarian berserker warrior type. I haven’t seen one for a while. Hopeless. They’d rather die than cooperate. Let’s try the little girl.’

  Marlowe directed a quick, questioning look at Zoe. ‘He means Maze,’ she said.

  Now he looked at the image of Guinevere. ‘Where is this skimmer?’

  ‘Why needest thou know?’ Guinevere replied.

  ‘She’s my great-grand-niece, my mother’s successor. I should try and rescue her.’ There was a silence, as Guinevere paused. ‘I just got you iron! I’m getting you charcoal! What further proof do you need of my good intentions?’ He sounded like a man in agony.

  Guinevere answered by throwing up on one of her screens a map of the surrounding terrain, and there, marked on it by a pulsing dot, was the whereabouts of the skimmer. ‘But if mayhap you don’t succeed, I shall surrender this my body to them in exchange for Maze’s freedom. She must not end up such as I.’

  And then, on the screen showing the interrogation room in the skimmer, they could see Maze being led in and placed on the couch. Maze looked at them in their armor and was reminded of the yabbies, the freshwater crayfish, that swam in the streams and formed part of her diet. ‘You very ugly, you yabbie-people, you know that?’

  The interrogator lifted the Slarnstaff. ‘We want to know who had one of these.’

  Maze looked at him, deadpan. ‘You want to know who had one of those.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘That’s right. That’s what you want to know.’

  The Slarn exchanged a look and Maze, without being able to see their faces, knew what they were thinking. ‘You thinking bad things about me. Well I think bad things about you too.’

  Zoe slumped in despair. ‘Oh no! Maze, don’t tell them!’

  But Maze was in full spate. ‘You think stupid gritzyblain. I say you stupid gritzyblain, nerdywimp yabbie-people!’

  The interrogator looked at Maze. ‘You know what we’re thinking?’ Maze fell silent in th
e face of danger, but it was too late. Working swiftly at the controls the interrogator turned the main lighting from green to orange, as one of its helpers adjusted the head rest on the couch to hinge up on both sides and enclose Maze’s head. Instantly, Maze felt an alien presence in her mind and reacted in panic. ‘Get out of my head, ugly yabbie-people! Get out of my head!’

  And all Zoe and Harold could do was watch the screen, aghast.

  Meanwhile from a ridge overlooking the Slarn skimmer, the Don, with Meg and Zachary lying beside him, was watching it through binoculars. The Slarn had expanded the forcefield to provide an area between it and the skimmer which could be used as a holding bay for prisoners. Within this area were Ulf, lying seemingly unconscious, the Sullivan Himself, who sat cross-legged, staring out at unattainable freedom, and two Forester Men who paced backward and forwards like wild animals in a cage. Suddenly Ulf seemed to snap awake, looked this way and that, rolled onto his feet and made a break for liberty, only to run full-tilt into the shimmer of the otherwise invisible force field! As he hit it, there was a zapping sound, his whole body stiffened, jagged blue light outlined him, and he fell back, writhing and moaning.

  ‘They have an invisible wall of some kind,’ murmured the Don, and looked at Zachary pensively. ‘Just how are we going to get you through that?’

  Zachary experienced that old familiar sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. How come the Don inevitably picked such a dedicated coward as himself for what always looked to be suicide missions? ‘Me? Through that?’

  The Don nodded. ‘I need someone in there before we attack.’

  ‘You do?’

  Then the Don looked back down the slope to where Troll warriors were minding the horses. ‘I believe I have an idea,’ he said.