Pelquin's Comet

by Ian Whates

  One of the surviving suits turned and began to make its way towards her. She ignored it, centring instead on the one that was closing on Nate Almont and Drake – the pair looking to be in far more immediate danger than she was.

  That proved to be a mistake. The suit advancing towards her raised a forelimb and fired.

  The shot went low, slamming into the mound of artefacts and trinkets beneath her, which bucked and heaved like a giant turning over in its sleep. The pile, which had seemed so solid and stable before, was now transformed into a sliding and tumbling collection of individual components; Leesa among them.

  She slid sideways, rolling over as things struck her and sharp edges scratched and cut. She landed on a bed of discomfort, with something heavy coming down on top of her and pinning her left leg. For the moment, the Xter suit was lost to sight behind a heap of fallen artefacts. That worried her more than anything. She kicked and squirmed, freeing her leg, though the ankle throbbed as if it was twisted or perhaps broken. The needler was still clutched firmly in her right fist. Something tickled her left cheek and she wiped at it absently with her free hand, the fingertips coming away smeared with blood. She hauled herself onto the top of this new, low configuration of tumbled artefacts, to see the suit much closer.

  As she came into sight it raised its gun once more,

  Leesa didn’t hesitate, didn’t have time to seek a flat surface for support. Still on her knees she straightened her back. She brought her left arm up, forearm horizontal and across her body at shoulder height, and this was where she rested the needler’s barrel. The targeting display sprang to life. There was no time to think this through properly. She kept her left arm steady and let instinct dictate where on the front of the suit she should aim. With no room for doubt or time for hesitation, she pulled the trigger.

  A bright flare as the needler’s beam found its mark, burning through the front of the armoured suit and then on through the body to find its back. For a moment she thought she’d missed her mark, but then the suit stopped, its forelimb froze. In apparent slow motion the suit keeled over; toppling forward and to the right, where it lay unmoving.

  No time to celebrate, no time to feel anything other than a fleeting sense of relief. Two of the suits were still active and the needler was spent. She discarded the gun, rolling and pushing herself to her feet, sharp pain radiating from the injured ankle as she tested it with just a little of her body weight.

  “The motor and power supply are in the middle of the back, well protected but it’s the only way to stop them,” she yelled for the benefit of anyone who’d listen.

  No one answered, but then they were sort of busy.

  A hop, a limp, and she was back on her knees, scrabbling around in the fallen mound of artefacts, desperately searching for something to use as a weapon. She thought she had a few seconds, thought she knew where the danger was; until a shadow fell across her.

  Leesa looked up to find the second Xter suit she’d shot standing over her with its gun levelled at her head.

  Drake flung himself forward, trying to retrieve his cane, which had tumbled from his hand as he was sent flying by the Xter suit; the same suit that Nate Almont was currently grappling with.

  They might not have been the best of buddies on the journey out here but Almont was a good man to have beside you in a fight, no question.

  Even so, it was unnerving fighting a corpse.

  Drake had heard Leesa’s shouted advice about the suits having a possible weak spot at the back. God only knew where his gun had gone to, but, if he could get around behind their opponent while Nate kept it distracted, perhaps he could use his cane to disable the thing.

  As his fingers finally closed around the cane, something went sailing over his head to land heavily. Nate Almont, he realised. So much for the distraction.

  Almont groaned, rolled, and came to his feet, fragments of broken artefacts tinkling from his clothes. “Tough, bastard, isn’t it?”

  “Comes from having no pain receptors, I expect.”

  “Wish I didn’t.”

  The suit was almost on top of them again.

  “If you can keep the thing occupied, I’ll attack its power source at the back,” Drake said.

  “Occupied, huh? I’ll do my best.”

  With that, Almont flung himself at the suit again, which cuffed him away with a swing of a heavy armoured fist, like a batter striking a ball. Almont hit the ground hard and this time didn’t move. The suit seemed to remember the gun clutched in one of its mid-limbs. It raised the weapon, preparing to shoot its fallen enemy.

  Drake knew he couldn’t wait any longer. He didn’t throw himself at the Xter as Nate had but stayed on his feet. The guardian seemed to be improving its control over the suits the whole time, but that control still wasn’t yet perfect; the suits didn’t move with the natural fluidity they would if their wearers were still alive, and Drake drew hope from that.

  He ducked under a bludgeoning upper limb that swung at him, and twisted away from a mid-limb that attempted to grasp. He was close enough now, and rammed his cane against the suit’s armoured hide, triggering the repellor field. The Xter staggered backwards. Had there been a live wearer inside it might have recovered, might have brought its mid-limbs down to the ground for increased stability, but the guardian was outmatched and the suit crashed backwards, limbs flailing.

  The news, however, wasn’t all good. The suit had gone over on its back, giving Drake no opportunity to attack its supposed weak spot. Also, as the limbs steadied, so did the Xter’s gun, which now pointed squarely at Drake. He didn’t have time to avoid, didn’t have time to think, he simply reacted, bringing up his cane and ramming it into the muzzle of the gun.

  Once again he had reason to thank the cane’s non-conductive nature, which didn’t stop the resultant explosion from swatting him with the force of a runaway bull. He was flung through the air, crashing into something hard and collapsing to the ground.

  Pain and oblivion threatened to overwhelm him but he refused to succumb, struggling to sit up. Agony shot along his left arm and shoulder as he pressed down with a hand to lever himself onto his knees. Blood ran from his nose and into his mouth. He struggled to clear his vision, to see or even to think. Once he had, part of him wished he hadn’t.

  The suit was there, looming over him. One mid-limb had been torn away and the armoured carapace was scorched around that area, but it could still move and could still reach for him; and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

  A frozen second of resignation passed; this was it. This was death. Then he registered that the suit was no longer moving, that its clutching limbs had come no closer but had frozen in mid-grasp. For a surreal moment he couldn’t quite accept this was real, but then a familiar voice said, There, I told you not to worry.

  Mudball?

  You were expecting someone else?

  No, but… The guardian entity?

  Toast. Kaput. Vanquished. Fear not, it will trouble you no more.

  Thank the gods… You took your bloody time, didn’t you?

  Now there’s gratitude for you.

  Drake climbed shakily to his feet. Looking around, he saw bewildered expressions on the faces of his companions, most of whom looked surprised to still be alive. Leesa in particular, who prodded the suit confronting her as if expecting it to come back to life at any second.

  “What the hell just happened?” Pelquin said.

  “I think the guardian’s burnt itself out directing all these suits at once,” Drake said as he limped towards the captain. It sounded lame even to his ears, but let someone else try to come up with a better explanation.

  TWENTY-ONE

  The clear up was a sobering affair. Anna’s death hit everyone hard. They placed her body in a cryochamber – not with any hope of revival this time, she was irrevocably dead. No, they put her in a cryochamber because they didn’t want to leave her here and there was nowhere else to put her.

  The buggy proved fun
ctional despite some minor damage. Leesa took over the driving duties. They completed the task of emptying the cache chamber because they felt obliged to now that they were here, but the joy had gone out of proceedings and the whole process had become an empty one rather than the pleasure it should have been.

  The doc made a decent job of patching up the injured – Drake and Leesa being the worst off, though Nate came a close third – and all of them were able to contribute to the work, but the going was a lot slower than previously.

  They laboured under the shadow of the guardian entity, afraid that it might return at any moment, all except for Drake, who knew better. “Matching limps,” he said to Leesa at one point.

  “Yeah, lucky us,” she replied, but it was said without any hint of malice. Previous petty differences seemed irrelevant after all that had happened.

  Darkness was falling by the time they’d finished. Pelquin took the Comet up and parked her in orbit. None of them wanted to spend a night close to the cache chamber or the Xter ship.

  The next morning the Comet returned to the planet’s surface. Spirits aboard had revived a little, but the atmosphere remained muted.

  Drake, Bren, Nate and Leesa took the buggy across to the Xter ship. Drake was quietly pleased to note the subtle change in Leesa’s status. Any reservations Pelquin or anyone else might have had about her had clearly evaporated, and she was now working as a fully integrated part of the team.

  “Pel… You should see this,” Bren said over the com as they stepped aboard the alien vessel.

  “Yeah, and one day I will,” came the reply. “But not today.” He and the doc were busy compiling an inventory of what they’d brought out from the cache.

  Drake knew that images were being relayed back to the Comet via their suits, but Bren was evidently determined to add a personal commentary. “This is… weird; absolutely amazing.”

  “Almost alien, you mean?” Pelquin said.

  “Very funny. There’s no ‘almost’ about it, trust me.”

  Drake knew what she meant. You might suppose that an empty hold was just a big open space; pretty much the same no matter who had built it, but that failed to take into account what surrounded the space. Considered separately, each individual element might be familiar and logical, but the proportions were all wrong: designed for beings with different frames and a different number of limbs. In combination, the effect was reality-stretching and surreal. Drake had actually been on an Xter ship before, though he had no intention of admitting the fact, but never in its hold. He had to admit that there was something deeply unsettling about it.

  “Come on, we’ve got a job to do,” Nate muttered – evidently unfazed.

  They found the control room easily enough – a space far more deserving of the term ‘bridge’ than anywhere aboard the Comet – and while Nate and Bren went to deploy the Ptarmigan, Leesa set about trying to fathom the controls. Drake stayed with her to ‘observe’, interjecting when needed. Between Leesa and Mudball – ostensibly Leesa and Drake – they managed to work out the basics.

  I could fly this thing all the way home if you like, Mudball told him. The systems are far more logical than anything you humans have come up with.

  And that would be far more difficult to explain than programming the ship for a simple planetary orbit, Drake pointed out.

  They rendezvoused with the others back at the buggy. Both Nate and Bren were carrying a spacesuit each and an armful of other assorted Xter items. Bren grinned, “Waste not, want not.”

  Nobody wanted to hang around planetside any longer than necessary, and the Comet lifted as soon as possible once they were back on board.

  “The moment of truth,” Pelquin said, triggering the sequence that should see the Xter ship follow them into the air. Things went without a hitch, and the Comet then shadowed the other craft as they headed for the edge of atmosphere.

  “You’re sure it’s stable?” Pelquin asked, as Bren checked the Xter’s orbit for the umpteenth time. She was standing in for Nate, who had cried off bridge duties, still recovering from the injuries he had sustained in the cache chamber.

  “I’m sure.”

  “Okay, here goes.” Pelquin triggered the Ptarmigan, and the Xter ship immediately vanished from their sensors. He waited a few seconds and then turned it off. The ship reappeared.

  “Exactly where she should be,” Bren said. “Don’t worry, we can find her again.”

  For future retrieval and salvage.

  The enormity of what they’d achieved had begun to sink in at last, and a cautious sense of celebration overtook the crew, though news that Nate Almont was unwell soon put a dampener on things again. The cause of his tiredness proved to be more than just his injuries.

  “He’s picked up an infection,” Doc explained. “I told him he should have worn a slap mask, but would he listen? No, of course he wouldn’t.”

  “How come Pel and I haven’t got it?” Bren asked. “We both lost our masks in the chamber.”

  “Blind luck,” the doc told her. “As with any bug, exposure doesn’t guarantee infection it merely provides an opportunity and increases the likelihood.”

  “Can you cure him?” Pelquin wanted to know.

  The doc shook his head. “Not with the facilities we’ve got here. This is an alien virus. I might be able to slow it down, but cure it…? No.”

  “Will it kill him?”

  The doc shrugged. “Who knows? I can’t even say for certain whether it’s infectious or not. The ship isn’t exactly equipped for isolation and we’ve all been breathing the same air since we came back on board in any case. There’s every chance that more of us are going to catch whatever this is.”

  “Fantastic. Your advice?”

  “A hospital, as soon as possible; preferably one capable of dealing with exotic diseases. I’ve taken the liberty of checking the data base and there’s one on a world not far from here, just into human space.”

  Drake was impressed, not to mention a little surprised by the doc’s initiative. Clearly the threat was serious enough to stir him into action.

  “We don’t really have much choice, do we?” Pelquin said. “Okay, Doc, give me the coordinates.”

  They delayed only briefly. In a ceremony that harked back to the days of seafaring and burials at sea, they committed Anna’s body to space, on a trajectory that would take her into this system’s sun.

  The journey to the doc’s hospital world passed without incident. On approach, they were directed to an isolated landing area and instructed to wait there with the ship sealed until they were contacted again.

  Drake sat in the galley. Bren, Doc and Nate were with him. The latter looked far from healthy – his skin pasty and sweaty. Not the most pleasant of sights, but Bren’s suggestion that Nate might like to wait in his own bed hadn’t gone down too well.

  “Yeah, and then again I might not,” the big man had said. “Look, if you’re going to catch it you’ve probably already got it by now. No point in making me a pariah at this stage.”

  The doc had dosed them all with a cocktail of drugs which he hoped might offer some protection from the virus. For all Drake knew, this might have been no more than a placebo, but at least it offered reassurance that something was being done.

  In the meantime, they waited.

  Drake yawned, feeling unaccountably tired; his limbs were suddenly heavy and he was struggling to keep his eyes open. A delayed reaction to all the excitement? It wasn’t like him to crash so completely, no matter how fraught recent events might have been. Then he noticed Bren slump forward, her head cradled in her arms, already asleep; Leesa was nodding off too.

  Mudball?

  I’m checking… Yeah, you’ve been drugged; poisoned. Sorry.

  Mudball had no access to his body, only his mind. There was nothing the little alien could do to affect his metabolism. Nate Almont finally making his move, it had to be; and a pretty successful one too by the look of things. Fake an illness and bring them all exa
ctly where he wanted them… Then he saw Almont try to stand, only for his legs to buckle, causing him to collapse onto the floor; clearly as much a victim as anyone else. If not Almont, who?

  By now Drake was struggling to keep his head upright and his eyes open. A contest he was losing. His head felt so heavy it was a wonder his slender neck ever managed to support it. With that thought his chin dropped onto his chest.

  As consciousness fled, Drake caught movement in the corner of his eye and strained to stay awake for just a fraction longer, managing to do so long enough to see Dr Ahmed Bariha step forward to examine Bren, as if to check that she really was unconscious. Only then, in the last seconds before awareness deserted him, did Drake finally understand. The doctor, of course…

  De Souza, Archer, Gant, and two additional heavies – big, solid, thick-set goons hired by Gant to provide extra muscle – rushed towards the waiting ship in a covered truck. Bariha had signalled that he’d taken control of the Comet and, true to his word, the loading bay door was unfolding even as they approached. By the time they arrived it was fully opened and they were able to drive straight up its ramp and into the ship. De Souza still had a lingering concern that this might all be some ruse and he was about to be greeted by Pelquin and the rest of the Comet’s crew bearing big grins and even bigger guns, but it didn’t happen. As Gant brought the truck screeching to a halt, the Jossyren executive opened the door and stepped out unopposed. Behind him, Archer and the hired muscle unfolded themselves from the more cramped seating at the back.

  A wall of Elder artefacts faced him. More wealth than most men, most hundred men combined, would ever encounter in their lifetimes; and it was all his. Well, mostly his.

  De Souza took a moment to stand and savour the heady flush of victory.

  Footsteps heralded the arrival of someone on the metal stairway leading to the ship’s upper decks: Bariha. The doctor looked nervous, as if anxious to get all this unpleasantness over with.