The Empty Warrior

by J. D. McCartney

  There were three boats in the structure to choose from. First in line was a houseboat, its open rear deck perfect for lolling about with a rod on a hot summer’s day. Next was his bass boat, little more than a skiff really, that he used to poke into the numerous small coves that proliferated where the mountains met the water. Lastly there was his toy. It was a fast, miniature cigarette boat, which was still much too large for the proportions of his glorified pond; but he had the money, and he liked tearing wide laps around the lake at high speed, so he had bought it anyway. All three boats hung from the ceiling, suspended above the water by steel cables that were attached to wide, thick straps of reinforced canvas fabric that looped beneath the hulls and held the craft securely aloft.

  He chose the cigarette boat. The bass boat would have been quieter and shown less of a silhouette, but it would not get out of its own way in a pinch, and he might have the need for speed if things did not go well, so his toy would have to do. He gave the sleek craft a quick inspection before he lowered it. Everything seemed to be in order.

  Taking the proper remote from its hook on the wall he began to drop the speedster toward the water, stopping the pulleys just as the gunwale came to approximately the same level as the seat of his chair. He rolled down the mini-pier that formed one side of the slip and locked down his wheels as close as he dared to the edge of the planking before tossing his flashlight and the night vision binoculars over onto the vinyl passenger seat. Pulling the Colt from the other side pocket, he checked the slide lock, twice, and started to don the shoulder holster before cursing himself for his drunkenness. It obviously wasn’t going to fit over a life preserver. It took him a couple of long minutes to get out of the vest and then back into it after he had strapped on the gun.

  Finally he grabbed hold of the gunwale before him and swung his body around, just as he did when he exchanged one chair for another, until he was seated on the edge of the boat, facing away from it, grasping the remote in one hand and holding on tightly to the edge of the windscreen with the other. The boat rocked back and forth unsteadily beneath him. Once the movement subsided somewhat, he carefully slid backward until his buttocks were atop the left-hand seat. He then laid his back across the center console and pulled one leg at a time over the gunwale. In a few moments he was sitting erect before the wheel. Machinery whined as once again he began to lower the craft toward the water. The edge of the slip was almost at a level with his chest before the hull softly impacted the lake and the boat began the familiar swaying motion endemic to any floating object. Impatient as he was, O’Keefe was still careful to lower the straps deeper into the water.

  Once he was certain they were far enough below the surface not to interfere with the passage of the hull, he dropped the remote next to the flashlight and fired up the engines, a low rumble shaking the vessel as powerful twin inboards came to life. He stabbed at the garage door opener clipped to the dash, and the overhead door behind him began to roll upward. O’Keefe grimaced at the incredible racket of squeaks and metallic trundling noises made by the opener’s motor and the wheels of the door, but if someone out there heard it, they heard it. There was nothing to be done about it now.

  Pungent exhaust fumes carried on the wind that entered through the now fully opened door blew back by his nostrils as he engaged the props. He carefully backed the craft from the slip and out onto the lake.

  The open boathouse loosed an enormous amount of light out onto its surface, but O’Keefe had no way to douse the overheads from where he sat, an oversight he at that moment decided to correct as soon as possible.

  When the bow was clear, he punched the opener again and the door slid back down almost to the level of the water. Some light still escaped from beneath the structure, but he did not believe that it could be seen from the far end of the lake. A high, rocky promontory jutted into the center of the tarn from the south, giving it its kidney shape, and also obstructing the view between the boathouse and the spillway and dam. Hopefully whoever was down there had not been attentive enough to notice the soft wreath of light that had almost certainly framed the headland during the time the door had been open.

  Away from any enclosure now, he swung the bow to the left, reversed the propellers to provide forward thrust, and gave the boat just enough throttle to move it through the water at a walking pace. The speedboat wasn’t exactly a surreptitious way to arrive anywhere, but if he took it easy there were enough insects nosily inhabiting the trees to hide the sound of his approach until he was very close.

  O’Keefe crept through the western basin, steering a course almost directly at the head of the promontory. He was certain that whatever scofflaws lay beyond, there was no way they could detect his approach as of yet. The danger would come when he rounded the point. For a short time there would be a long expanse of water behind him against which he would be silhouetted and easily spotted if anyone on the eastern end of the lake was paying attention. If he could gain the far side of the promontory unnoticed, he would be able to troll in slowly, getting close enough to the dam to see while still being camouflaged against the dark and confusing backdrop of rubble and misshapen pines that populated the opposite shore.

  A few minutes later he began to round the promontory. He powered the engines up a bit and kept the boat as close to the shore as he dared until he was securely in the eastern basin. There he cut back the throttles nearly to idle. His eyes scanned the darkness before him, searching for some visible evidence of the trespassers he was sure were there. He saw nothing—no flashlights, no fire—nothing. He was halfway down the eastern side of the outcropping before he picked them out. A group of rental trucks, U-hauls and Ryders, were parked neatly across the spillway, approximately midway between the far side of the dam and the base of the mountain that formed the northern barrier of the lake. As he watched, the lighted shapes of several windshields appeared and disappeared, illuminated by the dome lights within as the occupants climbed in and out of their vehicles. O’Keefe killed the engines and drifted, straining to hear. Over the shrill grating of a million insects he could vaguely make out the sound of loading doors being rolled upward and voices which were indecipherable other than that they were both male and female.

  The intruders were chatty—yelling, laughing, and joking among themselves. But O’Keefe could not understand anything they were saying. At first he thought he was too far away to pick out individual words, but as he drifted closer it became apparent that his uninvited guests were not speaking English. Whatever language they were using, it was not one that he recognized.

  “Jesus,” O’Keefe whispered to himself, “they are drug dealers.” Foreigners. Maybe even terrorists. On his land, getting ready to pick up truckloads of drugs, or explosives, or guns, or whatever contraband they were here for. This was not good at all. There was no way anybody could para-drop enough of anything to fill all those trucks. But what kind of plane could put down on a lake this size and still carry that much cargo? An old PBY? Or maybe they were expecting a whole squadron of seaplanes. If they were, they had some time yet to wait as O’Keefe could hear no approaching engines.

  But there was another worry. The slight current in the lake was pulling the boat closer and closer to the dam. Soon he would either have to drop anchor or start the engines, either of which would almost certainly be heard from the shore. And whoever these people were, they had far too much equipment to be amateurs. They almost certainly would have automatic weapons, lots of them; more than a match for his lone .45.

  As he continued to drift toward the dam and the spillway, O’Keefe was able to make out some detail in the starlight. There were seven trucks of various sizes and at least twenty people on the shore, all of whom were unloading cartons from the back of each vehicle. What? O’Keefe was confused. “Why,” he asked himself, “would these people be unloading anything?” They should be here to pick up whatever it was they meant to smuggle in. It didn’t make any sense. As he contemplated the conundrum, his view was suddenly obscured,
as if a black shroud had been silently dropped between his eyes and the shore.

  Just as suddenly he became aware of the object that had cut off his line of sight. The sheer bulk of its dark shape and the soundlessness of its descent had kept him from seeing it at first. It was enormous. Some forty feet tall and at least two hundred feet wide, it looked like a giant black plate placed inverted atop another, only rounded at its edges. It hovered over the surface of the lake as solidly as if it were held by a giant vise, and yet it was utterly silent. Light suddenly radiated from a point on the far side of the craft, illuminating the shore. O’Keefe discovered that he could see under the thing on both sides where its body tapered out from the thicker, central core. A ramp extended from the same area as the light. He could see the legs of the people on the shore as they began to trudge up the ramp carrying in the boxes they had previously been unloading from the trucks.

  “Good Lord,” O’Keefe whispered to himself. “It’s a goddamned flying saucer!”

  CHAPTER SIX:

  Forbidden Planet

  Valessanna Nelkris paced. She knew it drove the bridge crew to distraction, but at present she was worried enough to be beyond caring. The acquisition team on the surface was in grave danger, which in truth was nothing out of the ordinary since they had been in harm’s way for weeks. But over the next half hour or so the danger they faced would be elevated exponentially. By now, they should have all reached the isolated lake that had been chosen as the extraction site, where the barge would drop from orbit and recover the team and their precious assemblage of purloined knowledge. It was the last but most perilous part of their mission. For the first time since their arrival on the planet, this was the one place where they would all converge, the one moment when they would have no believable cover story, the one point they were the most apt to be discovered. The barge was shielded well enough to deflect any sensor technology that it might encounter, but it was not wholly invisible. If someone were to see it descend and decided to sound an alarm, it could very well mean death for everyone involved. After all, the aberrants were nothing if not efficient when it came to parceling out murder and mayhem. And since Valessanna was powerless to do anything on the team’s behalf besides wait, she paced.

  She held her arms tightly behind her ruler straight back, her right hand clamped vise-like around her left wrist, while she traced an imaginary line with her footsteps from port to starboard and then back. Presently she halted and turned to face aft. Before her were two elevated and heavily padded chairs; her own, empty and on the right; and the officer of the deck’s, occupied and on the left. Sitting in the OOD’s chair was Colvan Busht, her executive officer. She stared at him. “Well, are they down yet?” she growled.

  Busht looked up from the monitor that the chair projected before his eyes and regarded her from beneath a furrowed brow. “No Val,” he said softly, patiently. “Deckar is still in orbit. The recon cutter has just now moved on station. As soon as I get the all clear from Lindy, I’ll send the barge down to retrieve the team.” Valessanna did not release him from her glare, which prompted a post script from the exec. “Don’t worry,” he said soothingly, “everything is going exactly as planned.” With that he went back to following their progress on his monitor.

  Valessanna felt a bilious surge of irrational pique rising in her throat in response to the dismissive attitude displayed by an officer her junior in rank and under her command, but she fought the impulse to let fly a sharp retort. That urge, that sudden desire to direct spasms of anger at those around her in times of stress, was just one of the inner demons that she had carried with her for a lifetime. It had been a great hindrance to her early in her spacefaring career. But now, centuries removed from her initial forays into the cosmos, she had developed considerable self-control and was, in the end, successful at preserving the appropriate decorum for a commanding officer. It was bad enough for the state of the crew’s collective temperament to be witnessing their captain as nervous as a first time bride about to meet her future in-laws, but it might very well be ruinous for morale if they were allowed to see two senior officers having it out on the bridge. The passing of a few seconds was enough for the totality of her ire to evaporate.

  Then, once more on an emotional even keel, she was forced to admit to herself that, despite her deep-seated feelings of unease concerning the acquisition team and their safe return to the ship, Busht was in fact correct. There was absolutely no logical, concrete reason for any distress at present.

  That was why Busht had shipped out as her exec on a dozen consecutive cruises. They made a good team. Alone, his dispassionate temper would have made for a happy but lackadaisical crew, and without him to buffer them from her fiery perfectionism, Valessanna was certain that half of the Vigilant’s complement would have already resigned from the service. But the fusion of their styles had forged a ship with both excellent morale and utter competence. Under their command the Vigilant had accrued a well-deserved reputation of being one of the finest cruisers in the fleet. That, in large part, was why the ship had been chosen for this mission.

  Valessanna did a quick about face and looked forward—quick enough to catch several heads swiveling back to concentrate on their duties. Some of the crew had obviously been observing her interchange with the exec rather than monitoring their consoles. Predictably, the impulse to snap at them rose instantly to the forefront of her consciousness; but again, rather than giving it release, she satisfied herself with an imperious, grunting, “Humph.” She felt sure the crew got the message.

  There were less than a dozen of them on the bridge at present, seated here and there, leaving most of the thirty-six command stations unoccupied. The stations were arranged in three progressive arcs of consoles that mirrored and faced three large viewscreens mounted on the convexly curving forward bulkhead. The most important stations, such as navigation and communication, were situated on the third row from the front, the shortest row, which was also closest to the captain’s chair. Those deemed to be of lesser importance were on the middle arc of consoles while the least critical were arrayed along the longer front row.

  On the forward bulkhead, only one of viewscreens, the center one, was active. Directly at its midpoint hung a real-time and highly magnified representation of a brilliant blue globe set against the darkness of the void. The sight sent a chill down Valessanna’s spine. The world was lovely from this distance, but its beauty hid almost unimaginable horrors. It was the third planet in the Sol system, the only planet in the galaxy to be off limits even to police vessels. Union ships heretofore allowed to enter this system came only on specially authorized scientific missions, conducting their investigations from high orbits, using unmanned reconnaissance drones for any close-in work, the ships’ crews being strictly forbidden to set foot on the surface, and for good reason.

  Bizarre behaviors had cropped up on many human-inhabited worlds during the long Dark Age that followed the Cataclysm at Akadea; but they were for the most part harmless eccentricities that had given their respective worlds character and a sense of individuality. However, Sol Three was grossly more unique. Here, the population had sunk so deeply into depravity that their behavior had caused the very word aberrant to attain new and wholly sinister connotations. It was used in descriptions of the inhabitants more like a classification or a title than a noun or an adjective. The people of this world had deviated so far from human norms that they were not known as members of an aberrant population, or denizens of an aberrant world, but simply as “aberrants.” If one spoke of “aberrants” on any world in the Union, there was no mistaking to whom one referred.

  For Sol Three was a world where violence inflicted against one human being by another was every day fare; a world where life was short and any regard for it almost nonexistent. The people that inhabited the orb killed each other in droves on every rotation. And yet beyond even the commonplace carnage, the planet was subject to recurrent paroxysms of organized violence that at times left millions d
ead in their wake. It was savagery far beyond anything seen anywhere else in the galaxy.

  Thus it was natural for the aberrants to be universally feared. Their ever increasing slide into the abyss of madness was the stuff of the rest of the galaxy’s worst nightmares. And now Valessanna’s people were down there in the midst of them. She tried to swallow but found her mouth too dry. Trepidation flowed into her limbs anew, this time to an even greater degree than before. Unbidden by conscious thought, her feet again began to mechanically tread the unseen line from starboard to port and back.

  Adding to her anxiety was the fact that no one knew precisely how much danger a corporeal visit to the aberrant world actually entailed. This was, after all, the first time since the rediscovery that it had been done. Extensive surveys and monitoring had been undertaken of the emissions that radiated from the planet, which had enabled the Union to suitably translate several of the dominant languages that were spoken there. But the transmissions were filled with such a volume of contradictions, obvious half truths, and utter fictions that even the immense amount of words and images that had been collected left scholars able to reach very few definitive conclusions about the place other than it was violent and dangerous, facts patently obvious to even the most casual observer. The overriding question of why this was so had never been suitably answered.