by Eric Brown
It was as if he were standing on the grass of a sport’s stadium. The decking underfoot was missing, presumably ripped up on impact, and the vegetation grew unhindered. Higher decks had collapsed, so that it was possible to look up and see, overhead, great rents in the panelling where patches of daylight showed through.
He looked right and left along the length of the ship, where corrosion and stress fractures from the impact had removed bulkheads. Pillars and fallen panels and twisted wreckage had become supports for vines and various grasses.
Weiss gestured towards a hunched figure beside a hole in the side of the ship. “I’d like to give Jenna a decent burial. Help me with the body—in the trunk.”
A single laser strike had caught her in the sternum, and as Vaughan took her beneath the arms and lifted, he avoided the stare of her glazed eyes.
They laid the body as gently as possible in the flier’s trunk, and Weiss closed the lid and gestured. “This way.”
Vaughan followed the radical across the grass, passing through columns of sunlight, two small figures dwarfed by the dimensions of the derelict alien architecture.
They walked the length of the ruptured starship for perhaps half a kilometre, arriving at a section relatively undamaged in the crash-landing. Here they passed down buckled, tubular corridors, obviously designed for beings smaller than themselves. Weiss and Vaughan were forced to duck as they hurried along, sometimes encountering lengths of corridor crushed like children’s drinking straws along which they had to crawl. Some sections were in darkness, others lit by sunlight slanting in from slashes and fractures in the walls.
At last the corridor opened out into a circular chamber, the silver, curving walls marked with hieroglyphs. Vaughan stared around him, then looked up at a transparent dome.
“This was some kind of observatory,” Weiss said. He indicated the lettering etched into the metal walls. “Breitenbach says those are a kind of star-chart.”
“How does he know?”
Weiss looked at Vaughan. “Breitenbach knows a lot about the aliens, according to what Travers told Jenna. Don’t ask me how. Perhaps when we meet him...” He shrugged. “Okay, this way.”
They passed down another corridor, this one undamaged. Vaughan had never before been aboard an extraterrestrial starship, and he was surprised at how similar this one was to Terran vessels in general layout and design, and at the same time how alien it was in the specifics, the small-scale details of hand-holds and press-select panels: they seemed designed for small, childlike hands.
“What did the aliens look like?” he asked Weiss at one point.
“I heard this third hand, from Jenna, who got it from Breitenbach. They were humanoid, two arms, two legs, but small—like kids, only covered in short, wiry hair. And red.”
“So scientists found remains?”
Weiss looked back at him over his shoulder. “That’s the odd thing. They didn’t. None were ever discovered.”
“So how come Breitenbach—?”
“I’m as curious as you, Vaughan. Down here. We’re nearly there.”
A recess, let into the wall of the corridor, dropped to the deck below by means of staple-shaped rungs, clearly meant for small feet. Weiss went first, gripping the flashlight in his teeth, and Vaughan followed, his feet slipping off the rungs as he descended.
They found themselves in a small chamber, its corners curiously rounded off. The only illumination was the dancing beam of Weiss’s light.
He found what he was looking for: at the far end of the room was a circular plug like the door of a bank vault.
Weiss paused before it, studying a press-select panel in the wall. Vaughan squinted at the hieroglyphs on each tiny keypad. Quickly Weiss tapped in a code, then stepped back quickly as, with a sudden hiss, the great metal plug ejected itself and swung open.
He grinned at Vaughan.
“This hasn’t been opened for thousands of years, Vaughan. We’re the first humans to enter here.”
Vaughan gestured. “After you.”
Weiss stepped inside, and as he did so a light came on overhead. The chamber was small, two by two metres, and surprisingly cold, as if refrigerated.
Three racks stood against the walls, and stacked on each one were what looked like faceted, blood-red gemstones the size of a fist, scintillating in the light. Vaughan counted eighteen individual stones, six to a single rack.
Vaughan gestured towards the glittering, bloody stones, and found himself whispering, “What are they?”
“Nobody knows,” Weiss said, then grunted a humourless laugh. “Well, no one but Breitenbach. The scientists didn’t have a clue. They guessed at some form of propulsion device, or even fuel.”
“What does Breitenbach want them for?” Vaughan murmured to himself. He reached out and touched one of the stones, expecting a cold surface. To his surprise, it was warm.
Weiss said, “Let’s get them back to the flier.”
He lifted a rack from the wall and carried it from the chamber, and Vaughan took a second. One was as much as he could carry in comfort. “We’ll come back for the other,” Weiss said, propping the rack against the wall as he climbed from the room. Vaughan passed him the crystals, and then his own rack, and followed the radical up the narrow ladder.
Slowly, carrying the racks with care, dragging them through crushed corridors, they made their way along the length of the ship to the open area where they had left the flier.
They stowed the gemstones on the back seat of the flier and were about to return for the third rack when Vaughan raised a hand to his temple.
The sudden, faint signal of a distant mind impinged upon his consciousness.
“What is it?” Weiss looked alarmed.
“Denning. They’re on their way.”
Weiss nodded. “Where are they?”
Vaughan scanned, sending out a probe. He could not make out, at this remove, individual thoughts— merely a miasma of mind-noise, fragments of emotion, like faint music heard briefly on a weak radio frequency.
“Hard to tell. I’d guess they’re about five kilometres away, maybe less.”
“We got time to fetch the third rack and get out of here?”
Vaughan calculated. “It’s not worth the risk. If I’m wrong, and they’re closer...”
“We could always leave them in the flier, come back later.”
“And what if the bastards are at the other side of the valley,” Vaughan said, “and have the ship under surveillance?”
“So what do we do?”
“If we conceal the flier somewhere in the ship, then lie low...”
Weiss nodded. “They’ll find the wreckage of the off-roader, and the bodies. Thing is, will they realise the bodies are their own men... or will they assume they’re mine and Jenna’s? They’re beside our off-roader, after all.”
“Christ,” Vaughan said, remembering Indira Javinder. “They’ve got a necropath with them.”
Weiss was staring at him, his thin face slick with sweat. “Will he be able to read the bastards’ minds? They’re burnt pretty bad.”
Vaughan calculated. “They died less than an hour ago—but as you say, they’re badly burned. It’s touch and go. There might be a lingering cerebral signature, enough for Javinder to identify them...” He shook his head, aware of the adrenalin slamming through his system. “We’ll just have to hide...” He was about to suggest that Weiss should fry the bodies’ heads with his laser when he caught the faint beacon of Denning’s mind-signal.
“What?” Weiss said, alerted by something in Vaughan’s expression.
“They’re entering the valley. We have about three minutes, maybe less.”
Weiss looked up, scanning the ship. “Okay. We’ll take the flier up there, conceal it on the gallery, and lie low.”
They jumped aboard the flier and Weiss lofted it into the air. Vaughan held tight as they rose with a dizzying rush. Weiss banked the flier and they slipped over the crumpled lip of an upper deck, which ov
erlooked the belly of the ship like a gallery.
He eased the flier down, out of sight from below, then jumped out and opened the trunk of the flier. He took something from Jenna Larsen’s belt and tossed it to Vaughan. “Do you know how to use it?”
It was a standard automatic laser pistol. He nodded.
Weiss made for a rip in the flank of the ship. Vaughan followed, heart thudding, aware of a cold sweat clamping his torso.
It was a long time since he’d last endangered himself like this and, despite the adrenalin thrill, he had the crystal clear desire to be back home with Sukara, drinking coffee in some top level café bar.
He crouched beside Weiss, pressing himself against the curving skin of the ship and peering through the gap that cut through the metal like a slash in a Chinese lantern.
He concentrated. Denning’s mind was closer now, individual thoughts discernible against the background music of his emotions.
Denning was in a flier with Javinder and two other Scheering men. They were entering the valley, and Denning could make out the starship and the wreckage of the off-roader. The exec felt relief that at last the chase was over, then a stabbing resentment that the surveillance team had got there before him.
Denning raised binoculars, focused on the off-roader, and made out the two twisted corpses.
>>> Hope to hell Javinder can read something in there... Vaughan read, along with apprehension as to what Scheering might say if the radicals had died without divulging their information.
Then Denning wondered where the hell the surveillance team was, and he looked around the bowl of the valley for any sign of their flier. Seconds later he made out Vaughan’s concealed Bison, and a thought niggled at him: why had the surveillance team bothered with a ground-effect vehicle?
Then he said to the pilot, “Let’s get down there, fast!”
Vaughan peered through the rent. At the far side of the valley, against the grey slabs of the mountainside, he made out the flash of silver that was Denning’s flier, banking and heading towards the starship.
Beside him, Weiss fingered his laser. “They’ll stop by the off-roader,” he whispered. “Check the bodies. If they realise they aren’t who they thought they were, they’ll come looking... might even enter the ship.”
Vaughan shook his head. “They’ll come looking even if they think the bodies are yours,” he pointed out. “They’ll wonder where their colleagues are. The first place they’ll look is in here.”
Weiss grimaced, his nervous tic pulling at his left eyelid. “I can’t risk not getting to Breitenbach with the crystals,” he said. “If there’s any chance of them finding the flier, then I start shooting. You okay with that?”
Vaughan hesitated, then nodded. The thought of killing, even if it meant the success of Weiss’s mission, filled him with dread.
He turned back to the slit in the metal, hoping the corpses out there were too dead and fried to offer up their true identities.
The flier was slowing and coming in to land beside the off-roader. The two heavies jumped out before it settled and stood at the ready, big laser rifles on their hips, looking ridiculous in such confrontational postures before imaginary foe.
Denning climbed out slowly, staring at the blackened, shrivelled bodies beside the off-roader. Vaughan read his squeamish revulsion before he averted his eyes and nodded to Javinder. Denning’s heart rate had increased, and he was sweating, overcome with apprehension and fear. Below his strata of fear, an aggrieved voice was telling himself that he was an executive, not a combat marine. He gripped a laser pistol in a palm wet with sweat.
Vaughan looked down on the tableau, his vicarious experience of Denning’s heightened emotion feeding back and increasing his own tension. He wondered, for a second, if he should deactivate his implant, save himself the torture of sharing this unpleasant man’s craven thoughts.
But that would be a tactical error. Denning was in charge down there. Whatever he ordered, the team did. If Vaughan continued to monitor his thoughts, he could pre-empt any actions they might take.
Javinder, dressed in her trademark black bodysuit, knelt beside the first body and closed her eyes. This time there were none of the theatricals she had used to impress the cops back on Bengal Station. She merely concentrated for a second, then moved towards the second corpse and knelt again.
Vaughan looked down, watching Denning, and at the same time had a mental image of what Denning was seeing, along with running commentary of his thoughts.
Denning was staring at the Indian necropath, anxious. The executive was no fool. He knew that something was wrong. If the bodies were those of the radicals, then where was the surveillance team? If this was the team, horribly mutilated before him, then their killers, the radicals, were at large somewhere.
At that second the executive looked up, his gaze running over the length of the ship.
Vaughan felt a stab of alarm—then realised that the sweep of Denning’s gaze had passed the rent where he was crouching.
He felt a hand on his arm, squeezing. “You reading him?” Weiss whispered.
Vaughan nodded. “He’s suspicious. Wait—”
Down below, Javinder looked up, shaking her head. At first, Vaughan took the gesture to mean that she was beaten, that there was no hope she could read the dying thoughts of bodies so badly burned...
Then she said to Denning, “It’s Rasmussen and Zijac.”
A flare of fear bloomed in Denning’s mind, obliterating all other thought and emotion for several seconds. Then the executive wondered where his colleague’s flier might be. If the radicals had taken it, he thought...
Vaughan pulled back his probe, startled by the degree of the exec’s fear as he scanned the sky for his enemy. At the same time, he was heartened that Denning should be so frightened of what might lie ahead.
Perhaps Denning would order that they leave the area immediately, not bother to search the ship.
Denning said to Javinder, “This is the radicals’ vehicle. It looks like they took the flier.”
“They might be anywhere by now,” Javinder replied.
Denning nodded. Self-preservation vied in his mind with the desire to do Scheering’s bidding successfully: Denning hoped that the radicals had fled in the flier, but he knew that he had to search the ship.
Vaughan turned to Weiss, who was peering through the rent, trying to discern visually what Vaughan was able to read.
Even then, even though Vaughan knew what he should do, something in him was reluctant to tell Weiss that they were about to enter the ship.
But what was the alternative? Scheering’s team would shoot first, ask questions later. Denning had been ordered to take the radicals dead or alive... and the fact that Vaughan was not a radical was a technicality Denning’s team were hardly likely to consider in the heat of battle.
He said to Weiss, “They’re coming in.”
Seconds later Denning ordered, “Okay. We’ll search the ship. Javinder, we’ll go in this way,” he indicated a gaping hole in the ship, perhaps a hundred metres away. “You go in there,” he said to the heavies, gesturing towards the rent that gave admission to the great chamber above which Vaughan and Weiss were crouching.
Even as Denning gave the order, Vaughan felt the executive’s fear combined with the ego-kick of being in command.
He watched Denning and Javinder hurry along the side of the ship, Denning’s thoughts slackening off. Then he turned his attention to the heavies.
He stood, so he could watch them as they ran from the grass and into the ship. They passed from sight. He heard them below. “Okay, we take the front end first, section by section. I’ll go in first.”
Weiss was on his feet. He crept towards the lip of the gallery, gesturing for Vaughan to follow. “I’ll take them out. Cover me, okay?”
Vaughan nodded, his gut tight. They split. Weiss fell to his knees and aimed over the edge. Vaughan stretched himself out, flat on his belly, and hauled himself to the edge of th
e sheared metal.
He peered over.
The heavies were moving away from where he and Weiss lay, which made what happened next so sickening.
Weiss fired, a single quick pulse of blinding blue light accounted for the first Scheering man, drilling a neat hole the diameter of a coin between his shoulder blades and killing him instantly.
The second heavy, alerted, turned and raised his rifle. Weiss’s second shot hit him in the chest, sending him sprawling backwards across the grass. Vaughan closed his eyes, grateful that the men’s dying thoughts were shielded. Then he considered Denning, whose thoughts he would read as he died—if he failed to kill his implant in time.
