by Various
They knew that once the children had eaten all the sweets there would be a knock at the front door. Then, when either Tarmin or Izmay answered it, one of the braver children might be waiting for them, ready to say thank you. Or there might just be the ornate silver tray, left on the ground close to the door.
Once upon a time, long before vortex drives and time capsules were even thought of, journeys through space took a very long time indeed. The distance between worlds was measured not in days or weeks, not in months or even years, but in centuries.
Some ships, like the great Leviathan fleet, were whole worlds in themselves. People lived, grew old and died in the artificial habitats on board these ships. Their children lived, grew old and died, and so did their children’s children. Generations later, the ships would reach their new worlds.
But, on most ships, the crew and passengers slept for the centuries it took to reach their destination. So it was on the Stellar Fire – the most advanced ship of its age, the pride of the fleet of colony vessels. The Stellar Fire’s captain was renowned for her courage and her skill; she was hailed as one of the very best officers anywhere in the space fleet, and this was perhaps why she was given command of its finest and fastest ship. She was as proud of her command as her crew was to work for her.
But even the most advanced and prized of starships encountered problems. The Stellar Fire was just fifty years into her voyage, skirting the frontier worlds of the Andromeda System, when her engines mis-phased, and the ship crashed on to a small, uncharted planet. All contact was lost with the main computers. The systems that were designed to wake the crew in an emergency failed, and the sleepers slept on …
That might have been the end of the story, but for one thing: the captain of the Stellar Fire had a brother. When the ship had started its journey, he was no one special – just a young man unimaginably proud of his older sister’s reputation and achievement. But, fifty years later, in his twilight years, Abadon Glammis had become one of the richest men in the galaxy – in any galaxy, come to that.
When he learned that all contact had been lost with his sister’s ship, he immediately organised a rescue mission. He did not know what had happened to the Stellar Fire, and he had no clue as to whether or not his sister had survived. Deep down, he had always understood that he would never see her again – but, in spite of that, she was still his sister and he loved her dearly. He felt his heart could not rest if he did not at least try to find her.
The crew of the rescue ship slept in cryogenic caskets for most of their journey, just as the Stellar Fire’s crew had done. The captain of the rescue ship had been chosen for his determination and energy as much as his skill and experience. He was young, but he was already one of the most experienced officers in the fleet. He had piloted a ship round the Horns of Angular and made the Neglev Run a record five times.
One of the reasons this captain was so successful was that he always ensured he understood his ship. He made sure he knew its strengths and also its limitations – where he could trust the technology, and where he needed to keep a close watch on it. He trusted the ship’s systems to scan every planet close to where the Stellar Fire had vanished. He trusted the systems to wake him when they found something – if they ever found something. If not, he might well sleep forever.
Back on the captain’s home world, time passed and, all the while, he slept and his ship searched. Abadon Glammis grew old and died. Slowly, the fate of the Stellar Fire and of the ship sent to find her faded from memory and into legend.
It was another hundred years before the rescue ship’s detectors finally found a trace – just the tiniest suggestion – of what might be the remains of the Stellar Fire. The rescue ship’s captain was awoken. He blinked the ice from his eyes, and felt the frost slowly melt from his cheeks. He yawned and stretched, and set in motion the sequence that would revive the rest of his crew. A glance at the instruments was enough to convince him that they had indeed found what they were looking for: the Stellar Fire. But would anyone have survived the crash?
The rescue ship lowered itself through the atmosphere and towards the small, unsurveyed planet. The world was covered in dense forest, and the nearest clearing in which the ship could put down was several miles from the crashed remains of the Stellar Fire. The darkness of this thickly wooded planet seemed safe enough. And so it would have been, if that was all that awaited them outside their ship.
Before they headed out into the forest, the captain assembled his crew.
‘No one knows what lies in this forest,’ he warned them. ‘We have our survival suits and our laser blasters. We are trained and equipped for anything we might encounter. But I cannot order you to follow me. I can only ask that, having come this far, you agree to accompany me the last few miles.’
Many of the crew had served with the captain before, and those who had not knew his reputation; they would go through anything if he asked them. Every one of them agreed to follow him.
‘I do not know what we shall find at the crash site,’ he admitted. ‘It may be that the ship was totally destroyed and everyone perished in the impact. It is possible that we have spent over a hundred years asleep for nothing. But, until we reach the crash site, we won’t know. We may discover that our journey has not been in vain – if we can rescue just one survivor from the Stellar Fire, then a century of frozen slumber is worth it.’
And so they set out through the forest. The way was dark and treacherous, with many hazards. Long creepers hung down through the foliage like the legs of huge spiders, and some of the plants hissed and spat at the humans as they passed. Sharp, thorny tendrils swiped at them; wild animals growled from the shadows, but were too afraid to approach these strange creatures who had descended from the sky into their world. At one point, a great chasm opened up across the landscape in front of them, and they had to fashion ropes from the hanging creepers to swing themselves across.
Night and day were lost beneath the heavy canopy of strange plants and alien vegetation. The crew camped when they grew weary, and the captain set a watch in case the animals hiding in the shadows should get too curious. But, as the crew got gradually closer to the site where the Stellar Fire had crashed, the growls of the animals quietened and eventually disappeared altogether. It was as though the animals knew of some greater danger ahead, and they didn’t dare follow the humans into it.
When the crew had rested, they moved on, all keen to find the Stellar Fire and – they hoped – its passengers and crew. The captain felt anticipation growing inside him as his navigation handset assured him they were closing on their destination. He had heard and read so much about the lost ship’s captain, and he could not wait to see the great ship she had commanded – and maybe even meet her in person.
And then, finally, they saw it.
The great metal hull of the Stellar Fire appeared through the orange and yellow leaves and stems in front of them. Dappled sunlight shone on its corroded sides. Multicoloured vegetation had grown up through the hull itself – plants with sharp, narrow leaves and studded with powerful suckers clung to every surface. The forest had claimed the ship for itself.
The crew found the main hatchway. It was partly buried in the ground, and matted over with vines and clawing roots – but it had been torn open. Something had already forced its way inside.
Cautiously, the captain led his team through the hatch. It looked like the ship’s systems were still running on emergency power, as the whole interior was bathed in a dull red glow. They made their way through the shattered remains of corridors and walkways, past storerooms and cargo holds, towards the cryogenic section, where the passengers and crew were sleeping – or so they hoped. They hacked their way through the trees and plants that had grown everywhere. Shadows loomed and deepened around them. They heard something scuttle away from them and into the gloom. The captain had been growing increasingly unsettled, but now he was certain: something was following them through the broken remains of the Stellar Fire.
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At last, the crew reached the sleeping passengers. They were in vast cryogenic chambers, laid out inside frozen caskets, preserved through the years. Sleeping … or dead. As the captain moved slowly through the chambers, he realised the terrible truth: some of the caskets had failed, and the occupants had aged to death in their sleep. Yet other caskets were smashed open, the sleepers inside gone. In one casket, a sticky, glutinous mass of green writhed and pulsed. As the captain and his crew looked on, it heaved itself over the edge of the smashed lid, and squelched down on to the floor.
It was like nothing the captain had ever seen before. But, thanks to the briefing implants he had taken before the journey, he knew what it was: the larva of an Andromedan parasite. His implants detailed the creature’s life cycle, and spelled out the threat it posed. Without hesitation, the captain drew his laser blaster and opened fire. In moments the creature was dead, a slimy mess across the floor of the chamber.
‘What was that?’ asked one of the members of the rescue team, her voice taut with nerves.
‘A Wirrn grub,’ the captain answered. He told them how the massive maggot-like creatures devoured sleeping passengers, absorbing not just their flesh but also their minds, memories and experiences too. ‘They lay eggs inside us,’ he explained. ‘Any casket that is not still sealed could contain a Wirrn, growing and ready to hatch out at any moment.’
The captain and his crew had no idea how many adult Wirrn they faced. But the captain knew that their strength lay just as much in numbers as in their laser blasters; they needed to awaken any survivors and escape back to their own ship. Soon the Wirrn, fearful of losing their food supply, would attack.
The captain and his crew moved back to the central area between all the doorways to the cryogenic chambers, and the captain set guards at the entrances to each of them. Pointing to a control panel set into the ship’s wall, he ordered his technician to begin the revival process.
The scuttling of the Wirrn seemed to be growing louder. The captain imagined dozens of the adult creatures, like huge upright insects, massing to attack them. Soon the crew would have to fight their way out – and the sooner the better, before the Wirrn were prepared.
‘How long?’ the captain demanded of his technician.
The technician shook his head. ‘The systems are damaged. I can prime the revival process to start, but the revival systems on each casket aren’t working. We need the ship’s main computer to trigger the awakening.’
The captain immediately saw the problem. ‘The computer will need a command access code,’ he said.
The technician nodded. ‘There’s only one person who will know this ship’s code: its captain. We have to revive her. Somehow.’
‘We have to find her first,’ the captain said. The ship’s officers were not kept with the passengers; they would be sleeping in a sealed compartment closer to the main control deck. If the Wirrn had not already reached them, that was.
The blast of a laser split the silence. A wounded Wirrn scuttled back from one of the chamber doorways. It was obvious now that the captain and his crew would have to fight their way out of the area they were in. Leaving half of his team to guard the sleeping passengers, the captain assembled the others and gave them their orders.
The first challenge was to escape from the cryogenic section and into the main ship. There were Wirrn at every doorway now, lurking in the shadows and biding their time. There was no doubt they would strike when they could.
One young man ventured too close to a doorway; the long forelimbs of a Wirrn snaked out from the shadows, wrapped tightly round the man and began dragging him away. Only the quick response of his comrades saved him – one grabbed his legs while another blasted at the Wirrn’s body until it released its grip. On the captain’s order, the rescue team opened fire again, blasting into the shadows and driving the monstrous creatures back. They scurried away, screeching in pain and fear and anger.
The journey through the ship was a red-lit nightmare. Barbed plants whipped at them as they ran. Branches blocked their way. Ivy and creepers laced the floor and threatened to snare and trip them at every step. And Wirrn waited in the shadows – they reached out for any stragglers, hoping to pick them off. The rescuers fired at any movement, any shadow that seemed too deep and dark, any hint of the creatures.
They came across a whole section of the ship’s floor that had been slowly ripped away by the forest as it forced its way inside the Stellar Fire. The captain led the way across, clambering up the trunk of a tree and out along its branches until he could drop down on the other side. His feet clanged against the metal floor. A tentacle whipped out from a doorway, wrapping itself round his ankle and pulling him down. As he fell, he jabbed his laser blaster into the dark shape that was dragging him across the floor. The sound of the shot echoed around the metal structure, and was only drowned out by the piercing shriek of the dying Wirrn.
At every corner, they hesitated, checked for the creatures, then moved cautiously on. At every dark doorway, they glanced apprehensively ahead, expecting a ferocious Wirrn to hurl itself at them. With every step, they grew closer to their goal: the forward section of the ship, where they would find the control deck and the crew’s cryogenic chamber – and, they hoped, the ship’s sleeping captain.
The journey seemed to take forever, but finally they stood in front of the door to an official-looking chamber. It had to be the crew’s. Each and every one of them held their breath as the captain activated the opening mechanism and the door slid slowly open. The door groaned and protested, grown stubborn with age and the branches that had forced their way round and through it. It opened just enough for the captain to force his way through and into the chamber beyond.
The caskets inside were bathed in a pale blue light, a contrast to the blood red that had lit the rest of the ship. Here, it was cold and stark by comparison. The captain looked across the chamber, taking in the row of glass-topped caskets in front of him. He let out a sigh of relief, his breath misting in the air. The caskets appeared intact.
‘It doesn’t look as if the Wirrn have got this far into the ship,’ the technician said. ‘The air is colder here. This chamber has not been disturbed.’
The captain was already walking along the row of caskets, looking for the ship’s sleeping captain. But could they wake her when they found her? One casket stood apart from the others, slightly raised, as befits the senior officer on a ship. The captain knelt beside this casket. He wiped his gloved hand across the glass surface of its lid. It was thick with frost, but he managed to clear a space to see down into the casket – to see the woman lying sleeping inside. She looked so peaceful, so still. So beautiful. One look at her face, glistening with a sheen of ice, and the captain knew he had found the woman he was looking for. He had to save her.
Suddenly, he saw a movement. For a moment, he thought that she was waking, that her eyelids had fluttered impossibly into life. But then he realised that what he had seen was a reflection in the glass – the movement of the creature behind him.
A yell of warning came at the same moment as the captain realised his mistake. He threw himself sideways, and the Wirrn’s tentacles sliced through the air where he had been kneeling just seconds before. The creature’s tentacles clattered against the glass casket, sending up a shower of frosted particles that hung in the air as an icy cloud.
The Wirrn turned back to the captain. He saw his own reflection now, distorted in the huge eyes of the creature as it lunged at him once more. He raised his gun and there was a brilliant flash of light. The Wirrn was blasted backwards, dead before it hit the ground.
‘Can you wake her?’ the captain asked the technician, who was busying himself at the casket’s controls.
‘I can shut down the cryogenics and restore her body to its correct temperature,’ the technician told him. ‘But, without the command code to activate the revival process, it is up to the woman herself to begin to breathe.’ The technician set the controls. ‘Now all
we can do is wait.’
And so they waited. The ice in the casket began to thaw. Cold mist rose from inside. Slowly the frosted sheen on the woman’s face dissolved to water, and ran like tears down her cheeks. But her eyes remained closed, and she did not draw breath.
‘Wirrn!’ a voice called from the doorway. But the captain barely heard. All his attention was focused on the woman lying asleep in the casket. All his thoughts were about her frozen beauty.
‘Now,’ the technician whispered as he checked the controls. ‘She has to breathe now. If not, she will never wake.’
With the sound of blaster fire echoing around the room, and the screeches of the wounded and dying Wirrn ringing in his ears, the captain leaned down into the casket. He pressed his lips against the woman’s and breathed his own breath into her lungs, willing her to wake up.
Nothing.
He tried again – the kiss of life. And, this time, the woman’s chest heaved in a sudden, startled response. Her eyes opened, and she drew in great rasping breaths of the frosty air.
The captain helped her out of the casket. He shrugged out of his jacket and draped it over her shoulders to keep her warm while she recovered from her long, cold sleep. Then, as she sat shivering, he explained who he and his crew were, why they had come and what they had found. As the two captains spoke, the technician worked at a console, accessing the main computer. By the time he was ready, the newly woken captain had recovered. She keyed in the command code that she had learned so many years ago, back before her long journey had begun.
Behind them, the other caskets slowly started to thaw. Their lids sprang open. Helped by the processes activated by the command code, the sleepers inside took their first tentative breaths. Deep within the ship, the caskets in the other cryogenic chambers were also opening. Slowly but surely, the temperature in the crew’s chamber began to rise. Slowly but surely, the Stellar Fire was coming back to life.
