by Chris Ward
‘Don’t they eat those apes or something?’
Harlan5 shook his head. ‘No. The Evattlans are herbivorous.’
‘Phew,’ Beth said. ‘So we’re safe if any show up.’
‘Only if you’re not considered a threat to their food source.’
‘Oh. Right.’
They moved on, continuing along the tree line as the moss heap came up on their left. It now towered above them, pressing among the trees, covering some entirely. Davar pulled a glass jar from his pack and scooped a little inside.
‘Look at this…wow, look at it expand.’
He held up the jar. The small sample he had placed inside had expanded to fill the jar and was pushing at the lid. He lifted it to his face, only for the glass to crack, startling him. He dropped it to the ground, where the glass shattered. The lump of moss rolled in front of his feet, continuing to expand. As it grew to the size of a football, obscuring his boots, Davar stepped back and nudged it away. ‘That thing’s growing pretty fast,’ he said.
‘Accelerated cell replication,’ Harlan5 said. ‘It has adapted for Vattla’s environment and is unknown on any other planet. It provides the main food source for the Evattlans upon their emergence, while its own life cycle is continued by the spreading of its spores in the Evattlan’s feces. The spores develop during the long night. The plant’s gestation period is roughly five months, followed by a few days of rapid growth.’
‘Incredible,’ Davar said.
‘Fascinating,’ Paul added, rolling his eyes. He spun a blaster on his finger and aiming it at some distant imaginary target. ‘That database of yours must be a thrilling thing to behold.’
Beth pointed at her feet. ‘It’s everywhere.’
The spongy moss appeared out of the ground, quickly forming around her boots. Paul waved at the rocky higher ground and they headed away from the trees to where the ground was bare beneath their feet. Beth stared as the patch of trees they had been standing under vanished inside a cloud of gray-green.
‘How big is it going to get, Harlan?’
The droid shook his head. ‘I do not know. My database does not contain that kind of speculative information. However, based on its growth speed my programming suggests that it’s going to get really big.’
The forest was gone. In its place was a rounded dome of moss miles in diameter. As they climbed the ridgeline, Beth saw other rocky outcrops poking out of the surface, stone islands in an ocean of green.
‘The Matilda’s in there,’ Beth said. ‘How will we get back to her?’
Paul drew both blasters, twirled them and replaced them in his belt. ‘We’ll blast our way through.’
Davar turned to him. Beth noticed the frustration in Davar’s eyes but said nothing. ‘At the rate of expansion we’ve experienced, it’s likely the moss would fill any space we create, trapping us inside.’
‘Is that right, robot?’
‘My programming suggests it is, Little Buck.’
‘Well, hot damn. I guess we’d better find ourselves some bigger guns. There any settlements around here?’
‘I will run a scan. Give me a few minutes.’
Beth climbed a little farther up the ridge until she reached the cutting in the rock wall. She scrambled over bare rock until a sea of uniform green appeared below her, punctuated by the same rock islands as on their side. Otherwise, the landscape was featureless.
‘We should have stayed with the ship,’ came Davar’s voice, and she turned to see him climbing up behind her, straining as he pulled himself up over the rocks.
‘Are you all right?’
He shrugged. ‘My injuries…the recoup tank did its work, but I can still feel them.’ He pointed to his head. ‘In here. I should be dead. That’s the natural way of things.’
Beth stared at him, then blurted, ‘I’m glad you’re not,’ before she could let her nervousness win.
‘Thanks.’
The moment had passed. Beth, her heart thundering, looked away from him. ‘I was worried about you.’ She found it easier to speak if she imagined he was no longer listening.
‘Paul perhaps not so much,’ he whispered with a light chuckle. Beth turned, but Davar was looking away, leaving her unsure whether he had intended her to hear or not. She wanted to say something to either confirm or deny his thoughts, but nothing felt genuine. Instead she stared out at the sea of moss, trying to concentrate.
‘We should have stayed with the Matilda,’ Davar said after a pause, and his tone had become workmanlike again, the voice of the engineering student she had got to know in the training camps. ‘Its life support systems would have sustained us, and that moss would have made the perfect cover against those seek-and-destroy teams. But here we are, out in the open.’
‘Harlan said we have a while before the Evattlans come to the surface.’
‘But how much does that robot really know? He doesn’t get serviced like he should. Do you understand the effects of repeated stasis-ultraspace trips on droids? It was something I worked on as part of my research thesis. It corrodes their memory chips, the same way a tumor might affect the human brain.’
‘I’ve certainly never met a droid quite like Harlan before,’ Beth said. She looked back to where Paul was standing with the droid, indicating a cluster of rocks as though considering a defensive position. It terrified her to think that within a few hours, giant insects would appear. She hoped Harlan5 was right about them being herbivores.
‘What’s that?’ Davar said.
Beth looked around. ‘Where?’
‘Over there.’ He pointed at the clouds out across the forest. Unlike the rest of the uniform gray that kept in the atmospheric moisture, in three locations almost equidistant from each other, whirlpools of cloud were filling with color.
‘It looks almost like a firestorm. Should we tell Harlan?’
‘Wait… no, it’s something else. Look.’
Angular lines appeared through the clouds, and a moment later three massive circular ships appeared, hovering above the sea of moss.
‘Get down!’ Beth shouted, pulling Davar down beside her. As their bodies pressed side-by-side she felt a momentary thrill. Then Paul was lying on her other side, a blaster trained on the sky as though it would have any effect on the distant ships. Beth tried not to flinch as Paul leaned against her, his cocked gun arm resting against her shoulder.
‘Shadowmen transports,’ Harlan5 said from behind them. Beth glanced back to see the droid squatting among the rocks. Perhaps taking Paul’s lead, he had uncovered his only working chest cannon, which flicked back and forth between the three ships.
‘Are they hunting us?’ Paul said.
‘No. They’re here to collect Evattlan young for Raylan Climlee’s armies.’
‘Slavers?’
‘My programming doesn’t know for sure. If we took a closer look, we might find out.’
‘But the moss—’
‘The growth process isn’t over yet. If we head down that ridge, you’ll see what I mean.’
While Beth was reluctant to leave their modicum of cover with the presence of the huge ships, Paul was keen to get closer. Davar, still a little groggy, was easy either way, so they trooped back down from the ridge, heading around the rocky slope until they were on the same side as the ships.
‘Huh? What’s going on down there?’ Beth pointed at the forest, which was re-emerging from beneath the bloom of moss, now held overhead by spindly wire-like stalks.
‘It’s reaching the end of its growth cycle,’ Harlan5 said. ‘Those are the roots. The upper surface is still expanding, but it appears passage is again now possible through the trees.’
Harlan5 was only partially right, they discovered as they reached the tree line. The spongy part of the moss now rested neatly on the forest canopy, but the wiry roots were so numerous that climbing through them was akin to climbing through a forest of ropes stretched from the ground up. Paul squeezed his way a few steps in, then came back out, shook his
head and pulled something from his belt.
‘We’ll have to cut our way in,’ he said, flicking open the plastic object which extended to the length of his arm. Two thicker ends were connected by a thin pipe. Paul pressed a button and the pipe glowed a deep crimson.
‘Laser knives might attract attention,’ Harlan5 said. ‘And my programming suggests tampering with the moss might be perceived by the Evattlans as a threat.’
‘Then what do we do, robot?’
‘You tell me, Little Buck.’ Harlan5’s eyes flickered, making Beth smile. ‘I am at your command.’
As Paul rolled his eyes, Beth exchanged a glance with Davar, who grinned.
‘Harlan,’ Beth said, ‘were you to assume command of this mission, what would your programming suggest we do?’
‘It would definitely wish to take a closer look at those ships, purely to fill in a space in my knowledge database of off-worlder races. Were I a little more human, however, and maintaining a personality on the reckless side, my programming might be interested in performing an action or actions that would cause some disruption to Raylan Climlee’s plans.’
‘I knew it,’ Paul said, tapping Harlan5 on the shoulder with his blaster. ‘You’re a gunslinger, aren’t you, robot?’
‘Yee-hah,’ Harlan5 said.
‘So how do we get closer?’
‘Well, since you ask, I do have a plan.’
18
Lia
‘Let me hear it again,’ Lia said, leaning over Jake’s shoulder.
Jake pressed a control on the computer terminal and a static sound appeared. ‘Dear Ms. Jansen and crew,’ came a crackly voice. ‘After your kind interest in a deal, we would like to open the table for negotiations. We have something to trade which might interest you. At present, it is still in one piece, and therefore of relative value.’
Lia put a hand over her mouth. ‘Caladan’s alive?’
Jake looked at her. ‘That’s what the message suggests. Oh, praise be to the Stillwater.’
‘Where’s the transmission coming from?’
‘The control center.’
Lia shook her head. ‘We thought they were contained, but they were playing games with us the whole time. Send a code to say we wish to respond.’
‘OK, done it. The code’s been accepted. Speak.’
‘My name is Lianetta Jansen. Is the man known as Caladan alive and unharmed? If he remains so, we can negotiate. He must remain alive. Any harm done to him will jeopardize the chances of us making a deal.’
Jake watched a display on the computer terminal. ‘They’ve received the message,’ he said. ‘I’ll open the channel for direct communication.’
‘Well, hello there,’ came a crackly voice. ‘How nice to meet you. Got us a nice pie ready to be cooked right here. Unless you’ve got an alternative. You listening?’
‘I’m listening,’ Lia said.
Lia was unfamiliar with the shuttle’s controls, so it took some time to get to grips with the launch procedure. However, with Jake acting as co-pilot, they were soon flying over the moon’s black surface. ‘Are there lights on this thing?’
Jake punched a button, and twin spotlight circles appeared, revealing craters and ridges. ‘As inviting as a party without Stillwater.’
Lia pulled up the autopilot screen and entered the coordinates given to her by the man claiming to be Ken Norf-Oven, a long-disappeared criminal her superiors in the GMP had talked about with frustrated reverence. That he had ended up trapped here, reduced to a deformed, miniaturized version of himself, was an almost disrespectful end to such a feared criminal.
‘Just over that ridge.’ She pointed to a 3D render on the screen. ‘That’s where we’ll find what we’re looking for. Lucky it’s not far. We’re pretty low on fuel. No way we could ever do a planetary hop with this thing.’
The ship rose, following the contours of the landscape. They crested the top of a high ridge then descended over the other side, searchlights scanning the moon’s surface.
‘We’re right over the top,’ Jake said. ‘Spin her round again.’
Lia turned the ship back, angling the lights. There, beneath them, the moon’s surface was more uneven than elsewhere, as though they had found a jumble of loose rocks.
‘Spacecraft!’ Lia said. ‘This is where they hid them!’
On the valley floor below, hidden forever from view by the perennially dark side of the moon, dozens of trashed spaceships lay in haphazard rows, coated with a layer of dirt that had turned them into gray rocks. As they brought the shuttle in closer, Lia recognised the outlines of various types of vessel, from interplanetary shuttles to trading barges and even a couple of naval ships from the Quaxar Spacefleet.
‘That one,’ Lia said, pointing to a deep-space cruiser, cone-headed with a wide, sail-like rear end fitted with a solar generator. It was three times the size of the shuttle, comfortable enough for an escape. ‘It’s at the end of the line. Looks in decent condition. Do we have enough power to tow it?’
‘We can try.’
Bring me back a present from the treasure trove over the ridge.
Ken Norf-Oven’s instructions had been vague, but Lia had guessed what they might find. After all, the ships of the captured test subjects had to have gone somewhere. Without a debris pile anywhere near the research station, it was likely there was a dump close by.
She could only hope the ships were operational.
The moon’s near-zero gravity meant all they had to do was create motion, and the dusty cruiser bounced up into the air, attached to the shuttle by a remote extended grapple. Lia engaged the thrusters and they headed back to the base. Once there, they pulled the cruiser over a landing pad and let the tiny gravitational pull take it down. Much of the dust had fallen free during the flight, revealing the ship as a diplomatic transport out of Bryant from Quaxar’s inner system. Lightly armed but fast, it was capable of stasis-ultraspace jumps, something Ken Norf-Oven would require if he wanted his people to escape.
They donned spacesuits and headed across to the recovered ship. From the shuttle they had detected no transmissions or signs of electrical activity, so they had to force activate an airlock using a remote battery charger taken from the shuttle. They inserted it into a port in the cruiser’s side and began to pump the old ship full of juice. Lia watched Jake as they waited for the power source to take hold, the Cask System journalist’s eyes searching the cruiser’s outer side as though searching for a story angle.
She began to think the cruiser was junk when a light flicked on and an outer door slid open.
They disconnected the battery charger then climbed up into the airlock. The door slid shut, and a dim light flicked on, followed by a terminal screen by the inner door. Lia selected a breathable atmosphere for humans and subspecies then they waited while the old ship rumbled into life.
When the inner airlock door slid open, they found themselves inside a dimly lit maintenance bay.
Jake pulled off his headgear and sniffed. ‘Praise to the Stillwater. Bit dusty and dry, but breathable.’
Lia followed suit. The cruiser, with its internal power generators activated, was slowly recharging itself. If there was enough power in the fuel cells powering the thrusters and the stasis-ultraspace drive, they could escape.
‘You’re thinking to cut a deal with Ken Norf-Oven?’ Jake said. ‘Think we can ship-share our way out of here?’
‘I’d rather we left him behind to tend the base, but if this ship is operational, there’s no reason why the others won’t be too.’
They wandered through the ship as it warmed up, the lights becoming brighter, a couple of maintenance droids even appearing out of wall installations to begin clearing the dust. Everything seemed sanitized and functional, as though the ship had been simply waiting all these decades for its owners to return.
‘Oh, look at that.’ Jake pointed. The body of a fallen soldier lay across the corridor, a gun still in his hands.
They approached,
Lia frowning as she recognised the uniform of a Bryant Planetary Government guard.
‘There are more up there. And there…glory to the Stillwater, there’s one of those little things.’
The body of a miniature lay between two guards, a hole burned through his body by a photon blaster. His blood had long since congealed and hardened, and as Lia stared in disbelief, a cleaning droid appeared, brushes and sprays protruding from its casing as it began to clear the mess away. A short distance behind them, another was dragging away the body of the first soldier.
‘They sent the little people on board,’ Lia said. ‘There was a firefight.’
‘And the survivors replaced the dead no doubt,’ Jake said. ‘In among that test chamber there are the bones of a miniature ambassador.’
‘And possibly his or her descendants.’
They reached the bridge. There were more bodies, more signs of a battle. Lia powered up the pilot’s terminal and used an old GMP breaker code to access the captain’s log. The last recorded entry stated that the ship, the Maybelline III out of Bryant on its way to table a trade agreement with Ergogate’s planetary government, had responded to a distress call. There were no further entries, so the eventual fate of the delegation party remained unknown, but an automated log remote-updated by the droids claimed fourteen bodies had been recovered of a total complement of twenty-four, meaning the other ten had likely met their fate inside the scientists’ miniaturization machines.
‘This ship is trioxyglobin-powered,’ Lia said, running a finger down a list of configurations. ‘Fuel batteries filled with compressed gas. Its main supply has been siphoned off, but the reserve is full. There’s easily enough to get far away from here.’ She opened another screen and watched the systems charging up. In another hour the long-dormant ship would be fully operational.
‘So what do we do? Cut the little people a deal?’
‘Our deal is Caladan. We free him, and we take it from there.’
‘But if we get trapped here—’
‘We won’t. There must have been fifty ships under the dust on the other side of that ridge. If this one is operational, it’s likely the others will be too. Just in case, it might be wise to transfer a couple of fuel rods to our shuttle. A ship this size won’t miss them.’
