Fire Rage

by Chris Ward

  ‘We’re past the meeting time she agreed. We’ll give her a couple more days then we’ll have to figure out what to do with our cargo. She—’ he paused, feeling a sudden lump in his throat, ‘—might not have made it.’

  ‘I did run a scan of our local area,’ Jake said. ‘I wasn’t picking up any transmissions, so I searched for animate objects near the wormhole entrances which weren’t following natural orbits.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘There are a few you should have a look at. I’m a master of a different skill to space travel and its intricacies. You might see something I didn’t.’

  ‘Let’s look.’

  At a computer terminal, Jake pulled up the information he had found. ‘These three relate to wormholes out of Phevius System,’ he said. ‘That was where Lia went. I heard her mention an outlying moon, which could be this wormhole, that exits close to a moon called Steer. There are thirty-three objects which aren’t following natural paths, any number of which might have recently passed out of the wormhole.’

  Caladan sat down quickly. ‘Let me see,’ he said, pulling up the metadata on each. ‘Probably space junk, rocks, or whatever, but it’s worth a look.’

  He scanned through the data, but nothing stood out. He shook his head. ‘None are giving off extraordinary levels of heat or radiation.’ He pressed a button, bringing up a metadata list of the estimated masses of each object. The top nine were far too big, most likely asteroids or damaged deep-space cruisers left abandoned by their crew. But the smallest five were within the shuttle’s size range.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ he said, bringing up the Raging Fire’s database. ‘Do you have any recollection of that shuttle’s specific model?’

  Jake nodded. ‘I changed the serial numbers, but it took me a few goes to get it right. A 739J Interplanetary with a manufacturer’s stamp of Galanth in Phevius System.’

  ‘My favorite place. Give me a moment.’

  He input the model number into a search box and the shuttle’s data appeared on the screen. He split the screen, so he could see the scanned objects at the same time, and one was nearly identical.

  ‘We have a plus or minus of five percent,’ he said. ‘That’s almost certainly her. What’s she’s doing, I have no idea, but let’s go pick her up.’

  A few hours later, Caladan lowered the main thruster intensity to bring them down from deep-space cruising speed. The object that might be Lia’s shuttle was a few Earth-miles ahead, within touching distance. Even up this close, however, the Raging Fire’s scanners were picking up only tiny electronics readings, as though the shuttle was working on minimal power.

  ‘Lump, are you there?’ Caladan said into a transmitter. ‘Ready the scooping arm. We’ll bring her in like we did that radiation core but be sure to install her in the next hangar along.’

  ‘Got it…’ A pause. ‘…Caladan.’

  Caladan closed his eyes a moment, then glanced at Jake. ‘Still no readings?’

  The journalist shook his head. ‘The minimum. She might have taken some damage.’

  ‘Nothing’s showing on the scanners. It’s as though she’s powered down by intention. We’re detecting no threats in the area, though. What’s she playing at?’

  He didn’t want to think about the possibility they were collecting Lia’s body.

  ‘We have a real space visual,’ Jake said.

  ‘OK, be ready. Lump, do you see the ship? I’ll count you down.’

  ‘I see it.’

  ‘Ready… five… four… three… two… one… extend the arm!’

  On a view-screen showing the ship’s underside, Caladan watched the scooping arm swing down. A tiny metallic object nestled into its cradle then the arm withdrew back into the ship, the hatch doors closing.

  ‘We’ve got her,’ Caladan said. ‘Let’s go take a look.’

  Lump waited for them on a gallery overlooking the three connected cargo hangars serviced by the extendable scooping arm. The first, containing the radiation core, was sealed, and the second was empty, but in the middle of the third sat Lia’s shuttle. Without its landing gear extending, the huge scooping arm, now nestled back into a fitting in the hangar’s outer wall, had lowered the shuttle down on to a set of scaffolding brought out by remote droids.

  ‘Good work,’ Caladan said, patting the boy on the shoulder as he walked past, careful not to let any sentimentality seep into his voice. ‘Is there any visual damage?’

  ‘None,’ Lump said. ‘It was just floating out there like space debris.’

  ‘Let’s go and look.’

  Together, the three of them headed down to the hangar. The outer hatch controls were unresponsive, so Caladan had a droid bring a remote battery to power it long enough for them to get inside. As the hatch swung down, he lifted his hand to halt the others as they moved forward.

  ‘If there’s something nasty to be found, it’s my duty to find it,’ he said. ‘Wait here until I call you.’

  They both nodded. Caladan headed up the gangway into the ship, resisting the urge to pull a blaster and use its infrared sight to see in the darkness. Instead, he used a regular flashlight, peering into each room as he passed, looking for signs of life.

  In the corridors, all the systems were off, and the ship had an unnatural deep-space coolness that had left some of the more susceptible materials covered with a fine layer of ice. Even though it was quickly melting as the shuttle adjusted to the hangar’s internal atmosphere controls, when his sleeve brushed against one metal support pillar, a piece of the cloth ripped away. When he looked down, he saw that the rubber soles of his boots had left black footprint marks on the corridor floor.

  By the time he reached the bridge, the air had warmed, and the worst ice had melted, but he found the systems almost completely shut down, some of them damaged by the prolonged exposure to temperatures cold enough to fracture steel.

  Only a single light was blinking.

  The incubation chamber.

  With an estimated crew of two and no express reason to be taking passengers, the shuttle only had a pair of incubation chambers designed for long-sleep space travel in a small compartment behind the bridge. Caladan opened the door and stepped inside, shining his flashlight down.

  One of the two-meter-long, glass-topped tubes was open, its inner fittings stained by ice residue. The other, however, was closed, its support systems blinking with red lights as it kept its occupant in deep sleep.

  Caladan took a step closer to look inside, but something crunched underfoot. The remains of a bottle, shattered by the cold into crumbs of glass. A label, miraculously, had survived, and Caladan picked it up, turning it over. Of whatever it had once said, only a couple of letters remained, but they were familiar ones: W-----y.

  He dropped the label and leaned over the tank’s controls. It had been set for ten thousand years. He wiped a layer of condensation off the glass and peered inside.

  Lia’s lay below him, her body nestled in preservative jelly, her mouth and nose covered by a respirator.

  ‘Whatever happened to you, it’s time we got you out of there,’ Caladan said, shaking his head. With a sigh, he pressed the deactivation button on the chamber’s control box, then stood back to wait.

  ‘It’s tea. Just drink it.’

  Lia gave him a tired look. ‘No Stillwater?’

  ‘Just tea. If I could have afforded a better grade of spacecraft, I would have done. We’re one step above prison food on here, but that’s about it. Are you ready to talk about what happened?’

  Lia, wrapped in a towel, shrugged. ‘I got drunk. I wasn’t feeling great, so I got in the tank.’

  ‘Wasn’t feeling great? Come on, you can do better than that.’ When she turned away, he leaned forward. ‘This is me you’re talking to, remember? No one else. You can tell me. What haven’t we been through?’

  Lia opened her mouth to speak, and for a moment Caladan thought she was about to tell him, then she closed her mouth and looked down at the floor. The cup sh
ook in her hands, then fell, bouncing and rolling over. Tea splashed across the floor, but before Caladan could move to clean it up, a tiny remote droid on wheels rushed out of a hole in the wall and sucked the substance up.

  ‘When you’re ready,’ Caladan said. ‘Whenever that might be.’

  Lia looked up at him. Their eyes met. She looked down again, burying her head in her hands. Caladan sat and waited while she sobbed quietly, unsure what to do, unsure what to say.

  43

  Lia

  It hurt just to function. Moving one leg in front of another, lifting a hand to press a door control, putting food into her mouth. It had been Earth-days since she had eaten; she’d neglected to set the food control when she drunkenly climbed into the deep-sleep chamber. Waking up after ten thousand years might have erased the memories of what she’d done, but anyone opening the tank would have found bones preserved in jelly.

  Caladan, not for the first time, had saved her life.

  Seeing his face had brought a sense of joy she no longer thought existed, that comfort of a home now long gone, a sense of belonging she continued to lose as the days passed. It was no longer just her husband and child whom she’d failed. She could elevate her mother to the same pedestal to stand beside them, holding eternal judgment over her failings.

  ‘It would have been better to have let me die.’ The words echoed through the living quarters Caladan had assigned to her, the empty rooms only reminding her of everything she had lost.

  And what had she gained? Had the message she had sacrificed everything for made it through? Had it all been in vain?

  Pulling on some clothes, she stumbled out of the living quarters and up to the bridge. She found Jake sitting alone, looking out of the wide window at the stars.

  ‘Hey, Mr. Stillwater.’

  Jake turned. Something in his eyes showed a sense of regret she hadn’t seen before, taking away the edge from his boyishly handsome face. He hid it with a smile, but she sensed more than simply the loss of his treasured drink, which Caladan had joked about to cheer her up.

  ‘I’m glad to see you up and about,’ Jake said. ‘Praise the Stillwater for your swift recovery.’

  Lia shrugged. ‘I’m doing my best. Not sure I can fix what’s broken, but I’ll try. I can’t float in space forever, can I?’

  Jake stood up. He patted her on the shoulder as he walked past to a computer terminal with lines of text scrolling up the screen.

  ‘We’ve found the Helix,’ he said. ‘It’s moved from orbit around Feint and is on a course for Abalon 3. The main contingent of its navy is moving with it. Over a hundred thousand ships. If that radiation core down in the hold there does what you’re hoping it will do, we have a chance to strike a major victory.’

  Lia nodded. ‘We have no choice but to try. We can’t let… everything be for nothing.’

  ‘Caladan is down checking the shuttles, to see what we can use to get away.’

  Lia was silent a moment then shook her head. ‘No. There’s no getting away. For our plan to work, we have to get close to the Helix’s central core. When the core explodes, its aftershocks will come too quickly for this ship to escape. It’s a one-way mission.’

  Jake shook his head. ‘Caladan said you’d say that. He’s a little more optimistic.’

  Lia sighed. ‘I wish I was too. What we have to do is greater than all of us. If we can destroy that Helix, we’ll save billions of lives.’

  ‘We have a couple of days to think about it.’

  ‘It won’t make any difference.’

  Jake lifted his empty hands. ‘If I have to stay optimistic, then so do you.’

  Lia rolled her eyes. ‘You lost your Stillwater, so what? It was water. That’s all. Do you know what I had to—’

  ‘It wasn’t just water.’ Something in Jake’s eyes had changed again. He looked down for a long time, before looking up and meeting her gaze.

  ‘What was it, Jake?’

  ‘Cask System has been closed off for dozens of millennia. There are reasons.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Our flora contains a vitamin we’ve evolved to require. Without it, we will slowly die, poisoned by whatever we consume that doesn’t contain it. The Stillwater was my vitamin solution.’

  ‘But wasn’t it just a drink?’

  Jake lifted his shirt and clicked open a compartment on his belt. ‘This contained my tablets. I was allowed to keep them onboard the prison ship due to them being required for my survival. However, my flask contained my last one. I have, at a rough estimate, one Earth-week to return to Cask System and replenish my support, or I’ll slowly die from intoxication.’

  Lia stared. ‘Can’t you get those pills on a black market somewhere?’

  Jake smiled. ‘Oh, I’m sure. Show me one in the vicinity.’

  ‘Then what do we do?’

  ‘We destroy that Helix. Then I hurry on back to Cask System before I die, to where fame and fortune awaits. And if it transpires that someone must fly a suicide mission, then it makes sense that it ought to be me.’ He stood up, walked up to her, and patted her on the shoulder again.

  ‘I’m sure you don’t need me or Caladan to tell you, but you are a hero, Lianetta Jansen. I’m a journalist. Caladan is a one-armed mercenary pilot. You’re a hero. And in the coming years, the Fire Quarter is going to need as many of those as it can get.’

  ‘If only you knew what I’d done—’

  Jake put up a hand. ‘It doesn’t matter what you’ve done. Trust me, I know. It only matters what you do that people see. And if your actions can inspire people, it can have a knock-on effect. Do you get what I mean?’

  Lia shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Just have a little faith.’

  ‘We need more than faith. We need a space navy.’

  ‘We don’t have that, but we have this one old ship. Maybe that will work to our advantage. They might pay us no attention, think we’re junk or something.’

  ‘We still have to get too close.’ Lia shook her head. ‘It’s impossible.’

  The door opened, and a small, misshapen head appeared, followed by a small body decked out in an adapted engineer’s uniform.

  Lia smiled. ‘Lump. It’s good to see you again.’

  Lump’s eyes lit up. ‘Miss Lianetta. Fa—I mean, Caladan told me you were awake. I’m so pleased to see you’re OK.’

  ‘Well, on the outside, maybe.’

  ‘That’s a good place to start.’

  Lia laughed. ‘You look good, Lump. That uniform suits you.’

  ‘Just trying to help.’ Lump looked up at Jake. ‘Do we have a plan yet?’

  Jake turned to the nearest terminal and brought up a representation of their sector of Trill System. ‘The Helix is heading for Abalon 3, along with most of its fleet. We’ll attempt to head them off.’

  ‘How long?’ Lump asked, leaning to look over the screen.

  ‘About two Earth-days.’

  ‘Can I see?’

  Before Lia or Jake could react, Lump had climbed up onto the technician’s chair and was tapping away at the computer touch-screen. Lia glanced at Jake and lifted an eyebrow. Jake just shrugged.

  After a moment, Lump turned back. ‘Can we make it there half a day faster?’

  Jake shrugged. ‘I guess if we diverted power from unnecessary systems to the thrusters, it’s possible.’

  Lump pointed at the screen. A grid reference coordinate appeared under his finger. ‘This is an inter-system wormhole,’ he said. ‘The Helix is coming by deep-space because its fleet is too large to go through. They’d be backlogged for months. We, however, only have a single ship. If we intercepted the Helix right in front of the wormhole… we could deliver our package and then slingshot straight through.’

  Lia glanced at Jake. ‘Would that work?’

  Jake shrugged. ‘Don’t ask me, I’m just a journalist.’

  Lump was frantically tapping buttons on the screen. ‘Of course it will work. Look. All the coordinates and
measurements are right here.’

  A crash came from behind them, and Lia turned to see Caladan stumbling through the door. He wore overalls flecked with grease and carried a wrench in his hand. ‘Well, one shuttle will fly, at least. What’s going on?’

  Lia grinned and patted Lump on the back. ‘You were right. This fine young man definitely isn’t your son. No way you could have given rise to such genius.’

  44

  Beth

  A water dispenser in one corner of the Matilda’s cramped guest quarters that Harlan5 had given Beth wasn’t cold enough, but it was wet, and it helped her feel human again. She looked up at the shock of hair, the blotchy skin, and the bloodshot eyes staring back at her from a mirror above the water dispenser and wondered who she really was. The creature staring back looked barely human, and there was little life in her eyes.

  She stumbled down the corridor to the bridge. Harlan5 still stood in his brace at the back of the small flight cabin. Light strips illuminated the small cabin with its seats for the pilot and co-pilot and the two passenger berths behind. Through view-screens stretching in a curve that covered one hundred and eighty degrees, she saw a featureless night sky.

  ‘Good morning,’ Harlan5 said, his eyes twinkling as he saw her. ‘Did you sleep well?’

  Beth shrugged. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever sleep well again.’

  ‘My programming would like to point out the state of grief you now feel is temporary. In most cases, it will pass in a few days.’

  ‘Thanks for your computerized estimation,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t help much.’

  ‘It’s a gentle reminder,’ Harlan5 said.

  Beth shrugged. ‘Where’s Paul?’

  ‘He is still in the recuperation tank but should shortly be awakening as his wounds have now healed. I took the liberty of extending his period of recovery by a few hours in order to give you a little extra peace and quiet.’

  Beth smiled. ‘Whoever programmed you definitely had a sense of humor,’ she said.