by Chris Reher
Tik and Cyann raced after him as his long strides set a quick pace down the hill. “Nigel, I think we’ve got it. Just keep an eye on life forms around us.”
“I see you,” came his reply. “That little one is with you? If so, there are four larger ones ahead of you and to the right, a fair distance. No idea if anyone’s below you. I suspect tunnels. Whatever this stuff is made of, we need to get us some of that.”
“From what I’ve seen, the asteroid material is fused by the energy emissions to make things.” She briefly shook her head, reminding herself to stop playing the explorer and focus on their situation. “I think Kiran is rubbing off on me. Let’s worry about this stuff some other damn day.”
Cyann scooped Tik up from the ground to gain some speed. Not sure where the Jur liked to bend, she seated her into the crook of her arm like a child. The small creature made an unclear sound but then grasped a fold of Cyann’s coveralls and looked around, apparently pleased with her new vantage point.
Kiran had sprinted some distance ahead, now on level ground behind the smallest of the domes. Cyann thought it might be the one they had toured with their guide Jur. They reached a row of five flat metal structures, each no higher than her knees and several paces across. Beside each a small pedestal stood ready to receive an occupied pod. Kiran knelt beside the first and pulled on some latches. “In here. Look.”
Cyann put the Jur down and came to help Kiran with the bolts. Three of them slid aside with a squeal. She braced herself and worked her fingers under the lid. It was likely not something she could have accomplished on Delphi, but here the sheet of metal lifted with ease and she was able to flip it aside.
“See?” Kiran said. “Want me to show you how it works?”
“No, that’s okay.” Cyann leaned over the device sunk into a pit. Nothing about it looked even remotely familiar, but a set of controls flashing on its side seemed to indicate that it was in working order. “Does it look like they’ve tampered with it since you built it?”
He peered into the pit and reached down to tap at the controls. “No. Settings still rhyme.” He frowned. “Things still add up... um.”
“I got it. Let’s check the others.” Cyann moved to the next box and then the one after that until all five lids were tipped back. Kiran dutifully checked the mechanisms, mumbling to himself.
“This, look. This!” he said excitedly. He ran his hand over the aperture. “New protocol. Double output. More! Clever Jur.”
“Does this have a power source? Fuel?”
“No, just the starter module has a little juice,” he said as if she were especially simple-minded. “We have that!” He gestured in the direction of the energy field.
She nodded. “Move back.”
“Why do you have that gun?”
Just then Tik began to emit a high-pitched wail. She ran at Kiran and pummeled him with her little hands to get his attention. They looked around to see what had upset her.
“Was there an alarm on these boxes?” Cyann said.
“Umm, I don’t remember.”
Several Jur had come outside the central dome and now moved quickly toward them, heads nodding and arms waving. Even from here, Cyann saw that their coloring had turned an angry purple. They were saying something but she had no interest in finding out what that might be.
“Going to break your machine now, all right?” She did not wait for Kiran to answer before she fired at the connectors and what she assumed to be the main control unit of the device. For good measure, she also shot the aperture fixed to the housing.
Kiran stared, eyebrows raised. “Uh, all right.”
She moved to the next one.
“No!” Kiran yelled. “No no no no. Don’t break those, Silly Blue. The Jur need those to leave the asteroid.”
Cyann cursed. “How long would it take them to recode these?”
“How would I know? They should have told me.”
“Come on,” she bent to grab Tik again and took his hand. “To the ship. Hurry.”
They raced in long, loping strides around the dome and the edge of the crater to where she hoped the Scout waited. She scanned the ragged skyline to find one of the peaks she knew to be near the ship. “Nigel,” she shouted into her com unit. “Got trouble.”
“I see it. More coming at you from around this side of the dome. Veer to your left, into that gully.”
She followed his direction. Kiran, long used to this gravity, huffed behind her, dragging on her arm as he started to fall behind. “Come on, Kiran,” she pleaded. “Just a bit farther.”
A sharp pain tore along her arm and she nearly missed her step. She looked down to see that her suit was torn, but not burned. “They have guns?” She pushed him behind a rock wall and put Tik on the ground. Carefully, she peered around the stone to look for their pursuers.
“Slingshots, sort of. Very powerful.”
“Why do they need slingshots!” Cyann fired a few rounds, startling the Jur into hiding as well.
“Sport,” he said. “Fun sport, actually. With targets. But sometimes they hunt, too.”
She sent a few blasts into the rocks. “There is nothing to hunt out here,” she said, unwilling to take a closer look at her wounded arm.
“There is when they send out the extra Jur,” he said, nodding in Tik’s direction. “The small ones they don’t need any more. Broken ones. Old breeders.”
Cyann stared at him in disbelief. “And you want to save these people?” She ducked when another of their missiles splintered a chunk of asteroid above them.
“These are good people. Were good people. Don’t be mean.” He peered around a corner and pointed across the valley that housed the crater. “The guides live there, in that bubble. See it? They’re the misery here. They changed the Jur ways.” He shook his head. “I should not have brought them here. Better off on their home world.”
Tik raised both hands to nudge him. “Home world is dead, too,” she reminded him.
Cyann continued to fire but by now they had caught their breath. “Let’s keep going. One more sprint, okay?” She stooped to pick Tik up with her uninjured arm. “Go!”
They raced back out into the open, toward the ship, more slowly now. Cyann sobbed with relief when she saw Nigel come toward them, a gun in each hand. He veered to the side and fired beyond them. “Go go go!”
They raced past him and Cyann saw the open entrance hatch of the Scout invitingly close. But then Tik squealed into her ear and waved her hands. Cyann looked back to see more Jur come over the top of a boulder, their jointless limbs moving effortlessly over the rock. “Nigel, behind you!”
He whirled and fired blindly, backing up as he did. His foot slipped into a fissure and he was thrown back. Although he still fired, a hail of projectiles tore into his body before he had even hit the ground.
“Nigel!” Cyann screamed. “Get up! Get up!”
But it was clear that he would not. Blooms of blood spread over his coveralls and he lay still, surrounded by Jur that now turned their attention to the rest of their quarry. She turned and fled, dragging Kiran with her. At the Scout’s gate she tossed Tik into the airlock, then turned and grabbed Kiran to shove him inside as well. She leaped after them and hit the lock, gasping for air through the too-thin valves of her supply when the door shut with a heavy and reassuring thump.
Kiran lay crumpled beside her, also breathing in loud, ragged gulps. Tik huddled in a corner, looking fearfully around the small chamber. Cyann crawled over to him. “Are you all right?” She ran her hands over his fragile arms to check for broken bones.
He nodded, stunned.
She flipped onto her back and tapped her com unit. “Anders,” she said. “Can you hear me?” She waited a while. “Anders?”
Finally, a reply. “Cyann! You’re back! Did Jovan get off this rock?”
“Yes. I’m in the airlock with Kiran. Can you go into the lab or the cockpit and see what’s going on outside?”
“Yes, wait.” He groa
ned and then she could hear him move around. Something fell to the floor.
“Uncle?”
“I’m all right. Just give me a moment.”
Cyann dragged herself upright and opened one of the storage units set into the wall. Among the equipment and provision kits she found a portable decon wand and a blade. After enlarging the hole in her suit, she treated the gash on her arm, alternating the program from Human to Delphian to make sure that nothing remained in the wound that didn’t belong there. She suspected that all of them were contaminated beyond what could be remedied aboard the Scout.
“My God, Cy, what happened out there?” she heard Anders’ startled voice.
“They had a long-range weapon. Big enough to take down the ships. Then they got angry. Is... Is Nigel...”
“No life sign,” Anders said.
“I have to go get him.”
“You will do no such thing! Those creatures are still out there.”
Cyann glanced at Tik. “They’re not all bad.” She snatched up a spool of tape and wrapped some of it around her torn sleeve before drawing her gun. “Scan for Jur at a distance. The slingshots they use have a fairly long range.”
“Cyann—”
“I’m doing this, Uncle! We can’t leave him on this rock. I won’t.” She punched the release for the exit door, her pistol ready. There was no one at the rear of the ship and she moved purposefully to the front where a half dozen of the Jur guides had gathered by the lifeless body on the ground. None of the smaller Jur had come outside their domes.
“Get away from him,” she said, aiming the gun gripped in both hands. It shook a little. Aboard the Scout, Anders fed the perimeter scans to the screen inside her visor. “Move back!”
They stared at her silently, unmoving. She had expected an attack and hoped for a retreat, but this quiet challenge was puzzling. She moved closer. As one, the colors of the guides flickered purple and then seemed to synchronize their rhythm. It felt like a countdown. She lowered her weapon and fired into the ground.
“To your right,” Anders warned of an approaching life form.
One of the guides raised what appeared to be a hoop attached to a handle. Cyann shot through it and his head disappeared in a spray of clear fluid. She turned and fired at the more distant Jur to the right, taking him down in two shots before returning her aim at the guides near Nigel. “Drop those weapons,” she hissed.
They backed off, finally, and tossed their slingshots aside. Their colors flashed in less coordinated patterns now. Cyann ducked when the Scout’s laser weapon strafed over her head to find some target in the distance. She moved to Nigel and grasped his collar. Even in this gravity she could not carry him in one arm while aiming at the Jur and so she dragged him back toward the ship. When one of them took a step to follow her, Anders’ aim dropped him at the feet of his compatriots.
“Hurry,” Anders said when she reached the ramp. “Getting all sorts of activity going on in that small dome back there. I think they’re all waking up now.”
She passed her data unit over the lock to an external compartment beside the entrance to the ship. It was empty, as she knew it would be, and she lifted Nigel into it. Carefully, she straightened his limbs and then removed his hood to deactivate the climate sensors in his suit. She stroked his hair for a moment before setting the freezer controls.
“Behind you!”
She whirled to fire at two Jur that had come around the Scout’s landing struts, out of Anders’ line of sight. They pulled back but she continued to shoot while she waited for the entrance door to open. It seemed to take an eternity after she slipped inside for it to close again. Ships like the Scout were not designed for hasty departures.
“Cyann!”
“I’m here.” She struggled for breath as she slid to the floor. Her knees felt suddenly very wobbly. “Made it. We’ve got him.”
Anders’ sigh turned into an agonized cough. “Now all we need is a pilot.”
“What do you mean?”
“There is no way I can interface with the ship with my head in this state. I... I feel dizzy and I have trouble seeing.”
She closed her eyes, willing herself not to scream in frustration. Or slap some sanity into Kiran. Why hadn’t she gone to flight school? “Maybe Kiran can manage,” she said finally and knelt beside him. He had crawled into a corner where he seemed to be talking to himself. “There must be one or two pilots still floating around in his head.”
Kiran turned to her but there was a distant look in his faded blue eyes that she had not seen there before.
“Kiran?”
“Shhh,” he said. “Keyhole. Very busy now.”
Chapter Ten
The pain in his head was unbelievable. Some sort of vise seemed clamped around his skull, tightening with clear intent to shatter bone and then continue on to turn his brain into sludge. Having no one to hear him, Jovan moaned loudly, perhaps he screamed at some point. It was this pod, he was sure of it. Hurtling him through space, toward the damn keyhole that he absolutely no longer wanted to enter.
If any space had existed between his tightly folded arms and legs and the interior of this shell, he would gladly have kicked and clawed his way out of here, never mind that he would spill out into the cold hard nothing of this barren galactic sub-sector.
“Kiran!” he yelled into his oxygen mask. He shivered with cold while sweat poured from his body. Was he seeing the inside of the Tughan’s mind? Was this exposure about to destroy his own, as it had destroyed Kiran? He fought against thoughts that weren’t his and emotions he did not want. Why was Kiran upset? Why was he angry? What was happening on that damn asteroid?
WhatWhatWhat? Be still be still.
“Stop thinking, you lunatic. You are breaking my brain!”
Busy. Be still. Very busy.
“What’s going on?”
Tending the garden, two three. Almost there.
“I’m almost there? To the keyhole?”
Yes. Shantir is going home. Come back soon.
“If you don’t stop your ranting I swear I’m going to kick your ass when I see you.”
I’m very fragile. Next stop, keyhole. Ready?
“No, wait. What do I do?”
Find exit. You’re a spanner. So span. I will calculate. Ready?
Jovan muttered a sting of curses. If this were a jump-capable ship, he would by now be firmly linked to its circuitry, guiding the processors through the required calculation and awaiting their results from which to choose his exit. And now he had no choice but to rely on Kiran’s questionable mental processes.
You better not be talking like that around my sister.
“Is she all right?”
Shantir’s in love, Kiran giggled into his brain. Can’t concentrate. Keyhole! Keyhole!
Jovan nodded to himself. He was right. He breathed deeply of the tasteless packaged air, calming himself for the task ahead, blocking out the pain in his head and Kiran’s disjointed mental images and all but the keyhole that he now sensed through his link with the Tughan.
“I see it,” he said. “How are you going to open it?”
Let the Tughan work. I could tell you how it’s done without stuffing the thing full of negative energy until the poor thing shouts for mercy but then where will we be? You’ll want to play with it and soon you’ll have another war on your hands and more rebels and more people wanting to go places they shouldn’t. Trans-Targon is plenty big enough for all of you. So don’t be asking me for easy answers because you won’t get them.
“It’s easy, then?”
No, silly Delphian. Not for you. Let the Tughan work. I might sing.
“It’s opening,” Jovan said.
Your turn. Touch it. Feel it. Find the door. Go go go. Hurry back.
Jovan cast his thoughts into the vast amount of data that Kiran showed him. It was not the orderly system he usually felt when linked to a processor, but there was a strange beauty, even logic to the pattern. And then, as always
, the talent that made him a Level Three spanner allowed him to recognize his destination as if someone had turned on a light. Before further debating the wisdom of this, he signaled Kiran to launch him into the now-open jumpsite.
Things did not disappear. The disquieting but familiar nothing of sub-space did not envelop him. He saw and felt and most of that was pain and confusion. He wanted to get out of this, desperately, and he clawed at the hood over his face, wanting to tear it off even as he realized that he could not move. Once, long ago, he had stood too close to a broken hangar door that had crashed down onto its metal track, breaking his eardrum as it did. The sound in his head now was a lot like that, accompanied by a strange melody. He was losing his mind, he knew, joining the Tughan like all those other people had to become part of the creature and leave behind only an empty shell. He suspected that he was screaming.
* * *
The sound had changed now. Tapping. Distantly and unevenly. Then humming. Were those voices he heard?
Jovan opened his eyes, seeing nothing, blinking slowly. He became aware of breathing. It felt wonderful. Of stillness. Of gravity. He was alone in his head now. That felt even more wonderful.
He turned his hand and placed it against the inside of the pod as Kiran had shown him and then touched the thread on the other side to complete a circuit. A few moments passed and then he felt the pod dissolve. It took a long while and he was glad for that, needing time to appreciate the fact that he was alive. Eventually, he was able to push his legs outward, stretching the pod’s interior skin until it broke. He let himself slump sideways onto the ground.
Someone was there, touching him. Faces behind visors. Two. Three. A milky fog surrounded everything and he knew that everyone was very busy with decontaminating the thing that had arrived in the pod. He heard the clack-clack of radiation emitters emitting whatever these people thought suitable for the occasion. Someone cut his suit away, then his clothes. More decon gas.
He stretched his cramped limbs out on the floor and let the technicians do their thing. He was shaking but not sure why. There was a glass wall and behind it stood people, watching. They looked worried. Finally, the fog dissipated and the strangers around him removed their protective gear. “He’s clean. So’s the pod.”
